Fascism Watch

_{Barry Arrington

December 4, 2016

Intelligent Design}

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One would think that the French, having been overrun by a fascist country in 1940, would be especially careful to reign in the fascist impulses of their progressives. But one would be wrong:

In 2014, in conjunction with World Down Syndrome Day (March 21), the Global Down Syndrome Foundation prepared a two-minute video titled “Dear Future Mom” to assuage the anxieties of pregnant women who have learned that they are carrying a Down syndrome baby.

More than 7 million people have seen the video online in which one such woman says, “I’m scared: What kind of life will my child have?” Down syndrome children from many nations tell the woman that her child will hug, speak, go to school, tell you he loves you and “can be happy, just like I am – and you’ll be happy, too.”

The French state is not happy about this. The court has ruled that the video is – wait for it – “inappropriate” for French television. The court upheld a ruling in which the French Broadcasting Council had banned the video as a commercial. The court said the video’s depiction of happy Down syndrome children was “likely to disturb the conscience of women who had lawfully made different personal life choices.”

Comments

According to Wesley J. Smith, “Animal rights, properly understood, is an ideology that insists the capacity to feel pain is the basis for possessing rights. Hence, several years ago, PETA claimed that eating meat is an evil equivalent to Auschwitz.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/01/you_are_immoral102041.html Most people probably think this only applies to animals on the higher end of the chain of being-- sheep, goats, cows, deer and chickens etc. However, recently this thinking has been extended to fish, because there are studies showing that they too experience pain. Writing in the Huffington Post, Marc Bekoff, a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, at the University of Colorado argues that…
we need to do something about this now because billions of fish are killed globally for food as if they don’t care about what happens to them. As Robert Jones of the Department of Philosophy at California State University, Chico, notes in his essay called Fish sentience and the precautionary principle, not only does Dr. Key’s argument contain a logical flaw, but also, “First, according to a study by the U.K. fish welfare organization Fishcount.org, about 970 to 2,700 billion fishes are caught from the wild annually. If fish are sentient (and there is good evidence that they are), then the number of sentient beings in the form of fish that are slaughtered for food annually equals at least twelve times that of the current human population (Mood & Brooke 2010). If the idea of such a moral atrocity weren’t enough, current world fishing trends point to a global eradication of all taxa currently fished, causing a total collapse of the fishing industry by the year 2048 (Worm et al. 2006). Surely, by any moral calculus, applying the precautionary principle regarding fish welfare is reasonable and prudential, if not obligatory.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marc-bekoff/fish-feel-pain_b_8881656.html MatSpirit writes, “By definition, something without a mind is not a person.” But where does Mat get this definition? Did he make it up himself? And why personhood? The animal rights people think the standard-- the right to life-- should be based on the ability to experience pain. And since humans are animals it applies to us as well, does it not? Is a human fetus capable of experiencing pain? (It is.) At the point that it is capable of experiencing pain, is it more or less advanced than a fish? Does it have the potential to become more advanced? If the animal rights people are right, don’t we have a moral obligation to not destroy such life? My point is pretty basic. Which interpretation or assumption provides the moral grounding for a human right to life, personhood or the capacity to feel pain? And the problem doesn’t end there. Other people think we should use viability, the capability of the fetus to survive outside the womb, as the determining factor. With no real self-evident starting point and no certain answers, how can anyone give a morally justifiable criteria? Human kind beginning with itself as the only reference point appears to be totally incapable of creating a truly adequate system of moral standards or basis for human rights. At best, from a non-theistic, view the answers are arbitrary. Any kind of moral obligation is impossible if it is based on arbitrary answers upon which there is no agreement. Not only is there no basis for a right to life for the unborn. There is no real basis for human rights of any kind.john_a_designer_{December 6, 2016
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Four plus hours of message writing is enough for one day. I don't want to get into the KF or BA77 range of locquacity. I'll write more tomorrow. Vjtorley, nice to see you back.MatSpirit_{December 6, 2016
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BA77 @ 39: Rather than answer each of the quotes in your message in turn, I'll point out a few facts of life. Newton's theories, along with some information on elasticity, materials science and similar matters will enable you to accurately predict the EXACT path a rubber ball will take when it bounces down a hill ... IF you know the exact composition of the ball and the rocks on the hill, the dirt on the hill, any grass or other plants growing on the hill, the exact contours of the hill AND the exact location of every rock, plant and piece of dirt on the hill. Plus the starting location and initial velocity of the ball. If you don't have all that detailed knowledge then you can't predict the path of the ball from your theories, no matter how good the stories are, even if they're Newton's theories. You can predict some things from theories alone. The ball will generally travel downhill for instance. You can predict the ball won't run uphill unless it's on a bounce, you can predict that it won't come to a rest two counties away, you can predict that it won't explode - you can predict lots of things, but you can't predict it's exact path. Similarly with evolutionary theory. You can't predict every step of how some organ forms with evolutionary theory alone. You can predict that it will appear in small steps, it won't poof into existence in one step. You can predict that you'll get bacteria long before you get rabbits. You can predict that the organ will act according to conventional physics and not magic. You can predict lots of things, but you can't predict the exact path by which some organ or organism will develop. So please stop posting blurbs saying evolution has no idea of how such and such developed. It just screams, "I don't understand evolution." Similarly, we do not presently know all of the details of how the mind works, although I think we know a lot more than you dream of. But we do have a very very good idea of where its located. Nick Herbert at least realizes it's located in the head. We can further localize it to the brain because just about anything we do to the brain affects the mind. If we kill the brain, consciousness is gone forever. If we give the brain alcohol, the mind gets drunk. Ditto for a whole range of drugs. Get them into the brain and the mind gets high. But we can get closer than that. Put a person's head in an MRI machine and ask them to do math problems in their head. The neurons being used for those thoughts will start working harder, this will cause them to use more blood and you will see those parts of the brain "light up" on the screen. Now ask the person to stop doing math and compose a poem instead and you will see the first set of neurons fade on your screen and a new batch, in different places in the brain, will light up! That's not watching thoughts in action. The resolution is much too low. But it does show us exactly where those thoughts are being thought, down to the millimeter! In honor of your punctuation style, I'm going to add some more exclamation points: !!!!!! WE'RE LOOKING AT THE PLACES WHERE THOUGHTS ARE TAKING PLACE AND WE'RE MEASURING THEIR POSITIONS WITH MILLIMETER ACCURACY AND THEY'RE LOCATED IN THE BRAIN. Please don't post blurbs saying we don't know where consciousness is generated. It just screams, "I'm way out of my depth here!" We don't know HOW the mind works yet, but we're making progress by leaps and bounds. We know exactly WHERE the mind is produced. In the brain.MatSpirit_{December 6, 2016
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Mat, 'you' (if there really is a 'you' in that body instead of a automaton) have no clue what your materialistic belief system actually entails. Simply put, you want to have your cake and eat it to. That is to say, you want all the advantages of personhood and free will without honestly acknowledging the truth that they both can only be reasonably grounded in Theism. You are not smarter than all those experts I cited. Shoot, you are not even smarter than a six year old who knows that rocks can't possibly be conscious. That you elaborately lie to yourself to avoid what is plainly obvious, and think that you are smarter than everybody else because you do so, while everybody else can plainly see how philosophically and empirically naked you really are, is a sad testimony to the willful ignorance you have imposed on yourself just so as to avoid God. Mat showing off his new wardrobe https://kutluer.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/kingisnodressed.jpg
John 3:19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
bornagain77_{December 6, 2016
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Silver Asiatic @ 38: "Hothouse" is probably not the best term. "Cocoon" might be more accurate. Something signifying a controlled environment where conservative Christians are protected from ideas that challenge their beliefs and are constantly bombarded by reinforcements to the religious thoughts of the day. I'm thinking of religious schools, home schooling, Fox News, this blog, other blogs full of pre-digested tidbits like BA77 includes in his messages - everything that shields you from challenges to and reinforces the religious status quo of the day. I'm not particularly trying to convert anybody, but I do feel a moral obligation to tell you what's happening to you. It's What Jesus Would Do. P.S. I never gave a damn about religion until the religious right started injecting it into politics. Religion and politics makes alcohol and driving look tame in comparisom.MatSpirit_{December 6, 2016
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BA77 @ 36: What is with the fascination with brain plasticity? First News co-writes a book about it and now this. The mind changes the brain all the time. We learn things and store that knowledge by changing synapses so they fire differently. We now know that the brain grows new brain cells throughout life. (This is new. We used to think you were born with all the neurons you'd ever have and they only died after that.) It would be no great surprise if the mind affects some of their placements. The bit about the mind changing gene regulation is interesting, and I'd like to know more about it, but changing gene regulation is a key part of how we live and I'm not surprised if the central nervous system is involved, since it is, well, central. Your George Ellis quote makes him look like a bit of a prat ("The mind is not a physical entity...") and it's not news that it's causally effective. Raise your hand if you doubt this. However, reading the first page of the full paper doesn't look so bad. I'll check it out if I ever get caught up answering messages.MatSpirit_{December 6, 2016
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BA77 @ 33: Thanks for the quotes, but Nancy Pearcy is the wrong "expert" to cite, at least if you want to maintain any credibility. I've been reading her since she was just getting started, back in the '70s. She wrote for a little newspaper called the Bible Science Newsletter, published in Minnesota, back then. I don't remember how I discovered the B. S. Newsletter, but I read it (and her columns) for a couple of years. Eventually, the group publishing the Newsletter broke apart. The Newsletter got sold to somebody relatively sane and the residue of the original editors started a new organization devoted to "Biblical Astronomy". Biblical Astronomy, as you might guess, is devoted to the idea that the sun goes around the earth. I got a new girlfriend about then and let my subscription to B.S.N. lapse, so I don't know which group Nancy went with. I see from your quote that she hasn't changed much. Somebody really should kick Dan Dennett's butt though. He should have known that even if your sense of self is the result of multiple mental modules, it still exists. As it is, he's confused lots of good people and encouraged people like Ms. Pearcy. Speaking of confusing people, I lay the blame for the free will confusion squarely on the hordes of theologians and secular philosophers who have pontificated on the non-problem since at least the classical Greeks. As Arthur Conan Doyle had Sherlock Holmes say, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” "Free Will" is generally defined as doing what you want to do instead of what something outside of you forces you to do. It was a bit of a mystery until the mid 20th century when data from computer science and neurology finally showed us how it's done, but several thousand years of philosophical / religious obfuscation has kept it mysterious for most, apparently including Dawkins. (You don't give enough quotes from him to be sure.) One way to get free will is to set up a loop in the mind that constantly observes the world, figures it out as much as possible, identifies as many different paths of actions to take as possible, calculates the consequences of taking each path, chooses the path that will best satisfy your desires and then takes that path. Simple, easy to understand, let's you freely choose your actions, works with any brain at least down to mouse level and below and no outside orders are needed. Not only that, but it turns out that consciousness actually works in such a loop! See "Consciousness Explained" by Dennett for details on that loop and the easy way experimenters using nothing more complex than lights, switches and timers can manipulate consciousness, to the extent of making things disappear from your awareness just by flashing a light at precisely the right instant. Please tell Jason Peterson that if he doesn't understand another person's world view, than any pontificating he does based on that misunderstanding will fail miserably, as his example does. Regarding your half brained epileptics, are you really surprised that they improved when their seizures stop, even at the cost of half their brains? They don't do such surgery for someone who has occasional seizures, they have to be having continuous daily seizures so severe that no normal life is available to them. Stopping that horror makes their lives hugely better! Read some of the split brain studies where surgeons cut only the corpus callosum to stop seizures. Start with Wikipedia's "Split-brain" article. Read the part where they discuss the left brain's inability to see flashing lights in their right field of view or how the right brain can hold an object in its left hand and not be able to name it, but could pick it out of a bunch of objects they could see. Oh, and the part where the left side of their bodies does one thing and the right side another. There's a lot more going on than you are aware of.MatSpirit_{December 6, 2016
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I see at comment 11, Barry feels he can relate to what it would be like to be a Jew in Europe during the holocaust. How about the rest of you. Do you feel that also? Are you worried about us "warming up the ovens" for you? Given that you equate abortion as akin to Nazi atrocities, are you going to do anything beyond complaining on a blog? Or just sit around waiting until the fascist takeover is complete and your time comes to be rounded up and taken to the ovens?Pindi_{December 6, 2016
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“The law of selection exists in the world, and the stronger and healthier has received from nature the right to live. Woe to anyone who is weak, who does not stand his ground! He may not expect help from anyone.” - Adolf Hitler http://www.wnd.com/2014/09/charles-darwin-and-world-war-i/ "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." - Jesus Christ - How the Nazis mandated and used evolution and Darwin in the textbooks - November 7, 2013 Excerpt: The authors then asserted that the three main human races – European, Mongolian, and Negro – were subspecies that branched off from a common ancestor about 100,000 years ago. They argued that races evolved through selection and elimination, and the Nordic race became superior because it had to struggle in especially harsh conditions. Throughout this pamphlet the terms “higher evolution,” “struggle for existence,” and selection are core concepts that occur repeatedly.” (p.550) Weikart https://uncommondescent.com/darwinism/how-the-nazis-mandated-and-used-evolution-and-darwin-in-the-textbooks/ The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution. - Arthur Keith National Socialism is nothing but applied biology. - Rudolph Hess The Role Of Darwinism In Nazi Racial Thought - Richard Weikart - October 2013 Excerpt: The historical evidence is overwhelming that human evolution was an integral part of Nazi racial ideology. http://www.csustan.edu/history/faculty/weikart/darwinism-in-nazi-racial-thought.pdf These lower races (such as the Veddahs or Austrailan negroes) are psychologically nearer to the mammals (apes or dogs) than to civilised Europeans; we must, therefore, assign a totally different value to their lives. - Ernst Haeckel The holocaust before the holocaust - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa2_1Xb5A7M The Nazi Holocaust is seen by many as a gruesome but aberrant event in history. But 60 years earlier the Darwinian idea that some humans are not fully human resulted in horrifying brutality perpetrated upon the Herero people in South-West Africa. "It Did Happen Here," And It's Still Happening - Michael Egnor - October 23, 2013 Excerpt: The birth control/abortion movement's emphasis on preventing the birth of African American children continues apace. Black children are aborted at a rate about three times that of white children. In the United States, since 1973, roughly 13 million black children have been aborted. Seventy-eight percent of Planned Parenthood's clinics are in minority communities.,,, But the eugenicists have won, to an extent even they could not have dreamed. The state no longer needs to use its resources to cull the unfit. We now breed ourselves -- "Every Child a Wanted Child"-- aborting our handicapped children at genocidal rates and aborting our black and Hispanic children at rates of which Sanger and her fellow eugenicists could only have dreamed. The Darwinian view of the human race as domesticated animals in need of breeding is well entrenched in the halls of science and government, and in the hearts and minds of too many ordinary Americans. "Voluntary unconscious selection" has been a brilliant marketing strategy by ideologues enamored of the Darwinian view of man. The fight against eugenic abortion and birth control continues, led by those who insist emphatically that these practices are a horrendous affront to human dignity and are attacks on innocent human life. Defenders of human exceptionalism and human dignity were right a century ago, and they're right today. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/10/it_did_happen_h078231.html
bornagain77_{December 6, 2016
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MatSpirit: "My father spent some of his most precious years fighting the Nazi Christians " How ironic, then, that your father's son grew up to be a fascist who divides people into "human" and "sub-human" categories just like the Nazis.Barry Arrington_{December 6, 2016
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Oldarmy94, what a coincidence! My father spent some of his most precious years fighting the Nazi Christians too, just like your grand father. He brought back a souvenir, a German belt buckle that has "Got mit uns", or "God be with us" stamped on it. Don't worry, he didn't take it off the body of a dead Christian, he bought it at an English flea market. He was always proud of helping to stop the Nazi plans. Being an American, he had no idea of how much anti-semitism was imbedded in the warf and woof of Christian culture. Being born in an American Baptist family, he was shielded from passages like the one in Titus that I quoted from above. The hothouse at work. I do remember hearing the pastor in his church (General Association of Regular Baptists) lament, sadly, that "the Jews" had voluntarily taken the responsibility for Jesus's crucifixion on their heads. I remember him shaking his head sadly, as if he was sorry about that and wished they hadn't. Then a little later he pulled a trombone out of the pulpit and played along with the choir. Sometimes the most vital parts of a religious education aren't planned, they just happen.MatSpirit_{December 6, 2016
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MatSpirit writes, regarding the fetus:
By definition, something without a mind is not a person. That is, it has no thoughts, sensations, feelings, memories, knowledge or anything else mental that goes into making up a mind. That’s why nobody considers a tree a person. It doesn’t have the physical equipment necessary to have a mind. You and I do have the equipment necessary to support a mind, namely a brain.
A fetus has something a tree does not: a human genetic program which regulates and controls its development into a rational human adult. That program is there from the get-go. It's meta-information: it processes any incoming information that we receive and it also governs the development of our brains. And before it even has a brain, this genetic program makes sure that it gets one. All it needs is a hospitable environment containing food and oxygen and (after birth) human contact. You don't need to believe in God or a soul in order to see that. You mentioned Dr. Bernard Nathanson's movie, "The Silent Scream" (1984). Well, I happen to have heard Dr. Nathanson speak in 1979, when I was 18 and Nathanson was an ardent atheist. (He only came to believe in God some years later.) He didn't talk about fetal pain - that wasn't what swayed his mind on abortion. (If you want to know what did, it was reading a novel that forced him to think about who qualified as a human being and who didn't.) I can still remember him saying, "God is not real, but the fetus is." No religion there. The guy knew something about abortion: he personally performed about 10,000 abortions. He came to regret that. Let me tell you another story. I'm well aware that fetologists are divided on when consciousness first appears in a human being, with estimates varying from 18 weeks after conception to a little while after birth. Most plump for 25 to 30 weeks after conception. But no matter. I can remember coming home one night, after a day's work. Inside the train station at my home town, there was a bird's nest, and there were several chicks inside. Looking at them crying out to be fed, their movements struck me as rather mechanical, like the cuckoo I'd seen in a cuckoo clock, as a child. "I wonder if they're really conscious, I thought." And then it hit me. It didn't matter. The bird's parents knew that too: they fed their chicks, not minding whether they were conscious or not. As a parent, I realized that the way in which I loved my child had absolutely nothing to do with whether he was conscious or not. If you're a parent, you love your child from the get-go. You know that an unborn child has something inside it that'll eventually make it just like us. That's enough for it to matter.vjtorley_{December 6, 2016
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Ah, yes...therein lies the problem. This is one of those non-sequitur traps in which atheists are forever ensnared. They boldly claim that no objective moral standard exists, then claim (with equal boldness) that their morals are superior to others. I'm just glad to have escaped that worldview. Good riddance.Truth Will Set You Free_{December 6, 2016
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True. But by what standard are they morally superior? Don’t you need some kind of morally objective standard to think that way? Where would such standards come from? Did somebody just make them up? Who? When? How?john_a_designer_{December 6, 2016
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JAD @ 49: "Notice how so many of our interlocutors come across as smug and morally superior?" Yes. And I think it is because they really believe they are morally superior. They truly believe that natural selection has elevated them to a higher level of understanding. They are our superiors and we are their insubordinate inferiors. Sad but true.Truth Will Set You Free_{December 6, 2016
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I find it extremely interesting, and strange, that quantum mechanics tells us that instantaneous quantum wave collapse to its ‘uncertain’ 3-D state is centered on each individual conscious observer in the universe, whereas, 4-D space-time cosmology (General Relativity) tells us each 3-D point in the universe is central to the expansion of the universe. These findings of modern science are pretty much exactly what we would expect to see if this universe were indeed created, and sustained, from a higher dimension by an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal Being who knows everything that is happening everywhere in the universe at the same time. These findings certainly seem to go to the very heart of the age old question asked of many parents by their children, “How can God hear everybody’s prayers at the same time?”,,, i.e. Why should the expansion of the universe, or the quantum wave collapse of the entire universe, even care that you or I, or anyone else, should exist? Only Theism offers a rational explanation as to why you or I, or anyone else, should have such undeserved significance in such a vast universe:
Hebrews 4:13 “And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to Whom we must give account.” Psalm 33:13-15 The LORD looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men. From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works. Psalm 139:7-14 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
And although General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics both give the observer an ‘unexpected’ privileged frame of reference in the universe, General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, none-the-less, in the much sought after ‘theory of everything’, simply ‘refuse to talk to each other’. i.e. The expansion of every 3-D point in the universe, and the quantum wave collapse of the entire universe to each point of conscious observation in the universe, is obviously a very interesting congruence in experimental science, yet it is a very interesting congruence in experimental science that Physicists, and Mathematicians, seem to be having an extremely difficult time ‘unifying’ into the much sought after ‘theory of everything’. (Einstein, Penrose, and Hawking, among many others, have failed at trying to mathematically unify the two theories).
Quantum Mechanics & Relativity – Michio Kaku – The Collapse Of Physics As We Know It ? – video https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1190432337636364/?type=2&theater
And yet when the Agent causality, i.e. God, of Theists is rightly let ‘back’ into the picture of physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned, (Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, and Planck among others), then an empirically backed unification between Quantum Theory and General Relativity is readily achieved by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from death:
Resurrection of Jesus Christ as the Theory of Everything – Centrality Concerns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uHST2uFPQY&list=PLtAP1KN7ahia8hmDlCYEKifQ8n65oNpQ5&index=4 Shroud of Turin: From discovery of Photographic Negative, to 3D Information, to Quantum Hologram https://youtu.be/F-TL4QOCiis Astonishing discovery at Christ’s tomb supports Turin Shroud – NOV 26TH 2016 Excerpt: The first attempts made to reproduce the face on the Shroud by radiation, used a CO2 laser which produced an image on a linen fabric that is similar at a macroscopic level. However, microscopic analysis showed a coloring that is too deep and many charred linen threads, features that are incompatible with the Shroud image. Instead, the results of ENEA “show that a short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation can color a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin, including shades of color, the surface color of the fibrils of the outer linen fabric, and the absence of fluorescence”. ‘However, Enea scientists warn, “it should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts )”. Comment The ENEA study of the Holy Shroud of Turin concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology. https://www.ewtn.co.uk/news/latest/astonishing-discovery-at-christ-s-tomb-supports-turin-shroud
Thus General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, our two most experimentally verified theories in science, both give the ‘observer’ unexpected importance in the universe, and moreover, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead gives us an 'unexpected' solution to the much sought after 'theory of everything and also the primary reason why the universe was brought into existence by God in the first place: Verse and Music
Colossians 1:15-20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. “Alive” – W,Lyrics, By Natalie Grant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AFpgzjRD44
Supplemental note:
Special Relativity and General Relativity compared to Heavenly and Hellish Near Death Experiences – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbKELVHcvSI&list=PLtAP1KN7ahia8hmDlCYEKifQ8n65oNpQ5&index=1
bornagain77_{December 6, 2016
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As to the attack by materialists against human exceptionalism, Stephen Hawking goes further than saying we are no different than animals, as Darwinists generally say. Hawking bluntly states his very low view of humanity like this:
“The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can't believe the whole universe exists for our benefit.” - Stephen Hawking
Yet modern science itself reveals that we are far from just being, as Hawking put it, ‘chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet’. Hawking’s own area of expertise, which he cut his teeth on, i.e. General Relativity,,,
“Every solution to the equations of general relativity guarantees the existence of a singular boundary for space and time in the past.” (Hawking, Penrose, Ellis) – 1970 Big Bang Theory – An Overview of the main evidence Excerpt: Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space.1, 2 According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy.”3 Steven W. Hawking, George F.R. Ellis, “The Cosmic Black-Body Radiation and the Existence of Singularities in our Universe,” Astrophysical Journal, 152, (1968) pp. 25-36. Steven W. Hawking, Roger Penrose, “The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, series A, 314 (1970) pp. 529-548. http://www.big-bang-theory.com/
Hawking’s own area of expertise, which he cut his teeth on, i.e. General Relativity, gives us powerful evidence that humans are not nearly as inconsequential as Hawking, (and and Atheists in general), would prefer to believe. In what I consider an absolutely fascinating discovery, 4-dimensional (4D) space-time was created in the Big Bang and continues to ‘expand equally in all places’:
Where is the centre of the universe?: Excerpt: There is no centre of the universe! According to the standard theories of cosmology, the universe started with a “Big Bang” about 14 thousand million years ago and has been expanding ever since. Yet there is no centre to the expansion; it is the same everywhere. The Big Bang should not be visualized as an ordinary explosion. The universe is not expanding out from a centre into space; rather, the whole universe is expanding and it is doing so equally at all places, as far as we can tell. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/centre.html
Thus from a 3-dimensional (3D) perspective, any particular 3D spot in the universe is to be considered just as ‘center of the universe’ as any other particular spot in the universe is to be considered ‘center of the universe’. This centrality found for any 3D place in the universe is because the universe is a 4D expanding hypersphere, analogous in 3D to the surface of an expanding balloon. All points on the surface are moving away from each other, and every point can be considered central to the expansion, if that’s where you live.
You Technically Are the Center of the Universe – May 2016 Excerpt: (due to the 1 in 10^120 finely tuned expansion of the 4-D space-time of General Relativity) no matter where you stand, it will appear that everything in the universe is expanding around you. So the center of the universe is technically — everywhere. The moment you pick a frame of reference, that point becomes the center of the universe. Here’s another way to think about it: The sphere of space we can see around us is the visible universe. We’re looking at the light from stars that’s traveled millions or billions of years to reach us. When we reach the 13.8 billion-light-year point, we’re seeing the universe just moments after the Big Bang happened. But someone standing on another planet, a few light-years to the right, would see a different sphere of the universe. It’s sort of like lighting a match in the middle of a dark room: Your observable universe is the sphere of the room that the light illuminates. But someone standing in a different spot in the room will be able to see a different sphere. So technically, we are all standing at the center of our own observable universes. https://giphy.com/gifs/xT4uQEEBWRiB2gcxbO https://mic.com/articles/144214/you-technically-are-the-center-of-the-universe-thanks-to-a-wacky-physics-quirk
In fact, as far as general relativity itself is concerned, centrality in the universe is left completely open for whomever is making a model of the universe to arbitrarily decide for themselves what is to be considered the center in the universe,
How Einstein Revealed the Universe’s Strange “Nonlocality” – George Musser | Oct 20, 2015 Excerpt: Under most circumstances, we can ignore this nonlocality. You can designate some available chunk of matter as a reference point and use it to anchor a coordinate grid. You can, to the chagrin of Santa Barbarans, take Los Angeles as the center of the universe and define every other place with respect to it. In this framework, you can go about your business in blissful ignorance of space’s fundamental inability to demarcate locations.,, In short, Einstein’s theory is nonlocal in a more subtle and insidious way than Newton’s theory of gravity was. Newtonian gravity acted at a distance, but at least it operated within a framework of absolute space. Einsteinian gravity has no such element of wizardry; its effects ripple through the universe at the speed of light. Yet it demolishes the framework, violating locality in what was, for Einstein, its most basic sense: the stipulation that all things have a location. General relativity confounds our intuitive picture of space as a kind of container in which material objects reside and forces us to search for an entirely new conception of place. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-einstein-revealed-the-universe-s-strange-nonlocality/
Moreover, in both General and Special Relativity, the observer himself is given a privileged frame of reference in which to make measurements,,,
Introduction to special relativity Excerpt: Einstein’s approach was based on thought experiments, calculations, and the principle of relativity, which is the notion that all physical laws should appear the same (that is, take the same basic form) to all inertial observers.,,, Each observer has a distinct “frame of reference” in which velocities are measured,,,, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_special_relativity The happiest thought of my life. Excerpt: In 1920 Einstein commented that a thought came into his mind when writing the above-mentioned paper he called it “the happiest thought of my life”: “The gravitational field has only a relative existence… Because for an observer freely falling from the roof of a house – at least in his immediate surroundings – there exists no gravitational field.” http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node85.html
And whereas in General Relativity. (and Special Relativity), the observer himself is given a privileged frame of reference in which to make measurements, in quantum mechanics it is the measurement itself that gives the observer a privileged frame of reference in the universe:
New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It – June 3, 2015 Excerpt: The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html Quantum Enigma:Physics Encounters Consciousness – Richard Conn Henry – Professor of Physics – John Hopkins University Excerpt: It is more than 80 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics gave us the most fundamental insight ever into our nature: the overturning of the Copernican Revolution, and the restoration of us human beings to centrality in the Universe. And yet, have you ever before read a sentence having meaning similar to that of my preceding sentence? Likely you have not, and the reason you have not is, in my opinion, that physicists are in a state of denial… https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-quantum-enigma-of-consciousness-and-the-identity-of-the-designer/ “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!” – Scott Aaronson – MIT associate Professor quantum computation – Lecture 11: Decoherence and Hidden Variables
bornagain77_{December 6, 2016
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MatSpirit @ 37
I don’t know what a metaphysical materialist is . . .
That makes you astonishingly ignorant of even basic philosophical concepts. Yet, you feel free to pontificate on philosophical matters. There is an obvious disconnect there.
A fetus contains nothing that can care.
“Fetus” This is what people like MatSpirit call unborn babies they want to allow people to kill.
When you say that atheists believe, “Morality is just an illusion foisted on us by our genes”, you are talking straight from the hothouse.
Really? “morality is a collective illusion foisted upon us by our genes.” Influential atheist Michael Ruse. Again, you have shown yourself to ignorant of even basic facts. MatSpirit, you strike me as one of those people who is often wrong but never in doubt.
Morals are the rules that enable us to live and work in groups and enjoy the astounding advantages we get from society . . . We can’t successfully live together if we’re constantly killing each other . . .
Except, apparently, the people you want to be free to kill. In this very comment thread you advocate killing disabled unborn babies, because you consider them to be lebensunwertes leben.
We call developing such proclivities becoming social animals. This has occurred to other species, but we are the only species that labels this socialization “morality” and credits it’s development to gods instead of evolution.
Yes, yes, we know. Evolutionists are very good at telling just so stories and then stamping their feet and insisting that their just so story is true even though there is not a shred of evidence to support it. It all falls apart upon examination. I will demonstrate: Is it wrong at all times for all people in all places to torture an infant for personal pleasure? The only possibly correct answer to that question is “yes.” Therefore, absolute morality exists. Or will you next argue that it is possible that it may be good to torture an infant for personal pleasure just has you've argued it is good to kill disabled unborn babies? Maybe you will. That says more about you than it does about the nature of morality.
When we contemplate the things that would really make society impossible if widespread, such as killing a (real) baby, most of us feel a deep revulsion. That’s our evolved social instincts at work.
You have arrogated unto yourself the God-like power of deciding which are the “real” babies (which cannot be killed) and which are sub-babies (which can be killed by the millions). As I said, your brand of fascism is no different at bottom from that displayed by your fascist predecessors, right down to dividing people into “human” and “sub-human” categories and killing the latter by the millions.Barry Arrington_{December 6, 2016
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Notice how so many of our interlocutors come across as smug and morally superior. So, just giving their opinion, or making a baseless assertions, is equal to giving an argument? But where does that self-righteous conceit come from? Here is one explanation:
[M]ost so-called liberals today aren't liberals at all. They're progressives — and progressivism is an ideology that has little if any interest in learning from the greatest books, ideas, and thinkers of the past. And that's because, as the name implies, progressivism is a theory of historical progress. It doesn't see itself as an ideological project with premises and goals that had to be established against alternative views. Rather, at any given moment it identifies itself with empiricism, pragmatism, and the supposedly neutral, incontestable examination of facts and data, which it marshals for the sake of building a future that is always self-evidently superior (in a moral sense) to everything that came before.
http://theweek.com/articles/665446/how-conservatives-outintellectualized-progressives The problem is that progressivism provides no basis for any kind of moral truth because there is no transcendent-- “objective”-- foundation for moral truth. There is only mindless herd like group think. Nietzsche understood this; the typical modern progressive, on the other hand, cannot see beyond his own self-centered smugness. Just because someone thinks they are right, doesn’t mean they are right. Obligation is a necessary feature any moral or ethical belief system. However, I have no obligation to accept someone else’s opinion just because it is their strongly held opinion. If morality can break down so easily in this trivial interpersonal sense, how could it ever work for society as a whole?john_a_designer_{December 6, 2016
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I’ve been doing that for the last fifty + years
MatSpirit, This is another illusion you are clinging to. As a self-declared Atheist, you probably need an outside source to let you know that the universe is a really big place, and your declaration is based on a very small sample size of evidence you could've possibly examined. If you are truly a scientific thinker, you'll reconsider your declaration in light of the fact that you're drawing conclusions about a universe you've never explored. Andrewasauber_{December 6, 2016
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SA: “As evolutionists say, “there is nothing significantly different between a human and a cat” anyway, so this argument isn’t going to work either.” MS: Evolutionists say nothing of the sort.
I don't have direct quotes but I believe Rosenberg's: "The Atheist’s Guide to Reality" does say something just like that. Also, the whole question of "Human Exceptionalism" (you can google lots of links) has strong opposition based entirely on evolutionary thinking.Silver Asiatic_{December 6, 2016
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Moreover, besides being foundational to physical reality, information, as Intelligent Design advocates are constantly pointing out to Darwinists, is also found to be ‘infused’ into biological life.
Information Enigma (Where did the information in life come from?) – – Stephen Meyer – Doug Axe – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA-FcnLsF1g Complex grammar of the genomic language – November 9, 2015 Excerpt: The ‘grammar’ of the human genetic code is more complex than that of even the most intricately constructed spoken languages in the world. The findings explain why the human genome is so difficult to decipher –,,, ,,, in their recent study in Nature, the Taipale team examines the binding preferences of pairs of transcription factors, and systematically maps the compound DNA words they bind to. Their analysis reveals that the grammar of the genetic code is much more complex than that of even the most complex human languages. Instead of simply joining two words together by deleting a space, the individual words that are joined together in compound DNA words are altered, leading to a large number of completely new words. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151109140252.htm Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: – Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz’ deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures. http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~angel/tsb/molecular.htm “a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.” – R. C. Wysong ‘The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica.” Carl Sagan, “Life” in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894
It is hard to imagine a more convincing scientific proof that we are made ‘in the image of God’ than finding both the universe, and life itself, are both ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis, and that we, of all the creatures on earth, uniquely possess an ability to understand and create information, and, moreover, have come to ‘master the planet’ precisely because of our unique ability infuse information into material substrates. Perhaps a more convincing evidence that we are made in the image of God could be if God Himself became a man, defeated death on a cross, and then rose from the dead to prove that He was indeed God. But who has ever heard of such overwhelming evidence as that?
Resurrection of Jesus Christ as the 'Theory of Everything' - Centrality Concerns - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uHST2uFPQY&t=10s&index=4&list=PLtAP1KN7ahia8hmDlCYEKifQ8n65oNpQ5 Shroud of Turin: From discovery of Photographic Negative, to 3D Information, to Quantum Hologram – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-TL4QOCiis&list=PLtAP1KN7ahia8hmDlCYEKifQ8n65oNpQ5&index=5 Astonishing discovery at Christ’s tomb supports Turin Shroud – NOV 26TH 2016 Excerpt: The first attempts made to reproduce the face on the Shroud by radiation, used a CO2 laser which produced an image on a linen fabric that is similar at a macroscopic level. However, microscopic analysis showed a coloring that is too deep and many charred linen threads, features that are incompatible with the Shroud image. Instead, the results of ENEA “show that a short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation can color a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin, including shades of color, the surface color of the fibrils of the outer linen fabric, and the absence of fluorescence”. ‘However, Enea scientists warn, “it should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts )”. Comment The ENEA study of the Holy Shroud of Turin concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology. https://www.ewtn.co.uk/news/latest/astonishing-discovery-at-christ-s-tomb-supports-turin-shroud
Verses and Music:
Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and that life was the Light of men. Colossians 1:15-20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Newsboys – We Believe (Official Music Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjZ01FcK0yk
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Mat claimed,
"Cats have some of the mental attributes of a human, especially feeling pain and wanting to stay alive and thus are given many of the rights of a human, but if it ever comes down to a human or a cat dying, the cat gets it."
And that false belief, i.e. that humans are basically no different than animals, and that we are not made in 'the image of God', is what lies at the basis of Mat's, and other Darwinists's, 'moral justification' for abortion, (and for many other atrocities).
How Darwin's Theory Changed the World: Rejection of Judeo-Christian values Excerpt: Weikart explains how accepting Darwinist dogma shifted society’s thinking on human life: “Before Darwinism burst onto the scene in the mid-nineteenth century, the idea of the sanctity of human life was dominant in European thought and law (though, as with all ethical principles, not always followed in practice). Judeo-Christian ethics proscribed the killing of innocent human life, and the Christian churches explicitly forbade murder, infanticide, abortion, and even suicide. “The sanctity of human life became enshrined in classical liberal human rights ideology as ‘the right to life,’ which according to John Locke and the United States Declaration of Independence, was one of the supreme rights of every individual” (p. 75). Only in the late nineteenth and especially the early twentieth century did significant debate erupt over issues relating to the sanctity of human life, especially infanticide, euthanasia, abortion, and suicide. It was no mere coincidence that these contentious issues emerged at the same time that Darwinism was gaining in influence. Darwinism played an important role in this debate, for it altered many people’s conceptions of the importance and value of human life, as well as the significance of death” (ibid.). http://www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn85/darwin-theory-changed-world.htm
Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, is rather blunt in laying out, and advocating for, the ethical implications inherent in the Darwinian worldview
Australia Awards Infanticide Backer Peter Singer Its Highest Honor – 2012 Excerpt: Singer is best known for advocating the ethical propriety of infanticide. But that isn’t nearly the limit of his odious advocacy. Here is a partial list of some other notable Singer bon mots: - Singer supports using cognitively disabled people in medical experiments instead of animals that have a higher “quality of life.” - Singer does not believe humans reach “full moral status” until after the age of two. Singer supports non-voluntary euthanasia of human “non-persons.” - Singer has defended bestiality. - Singer started the “Great Ape Project” that would establish a “community of equals” among humans, gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees, and orangutans. - Singer supports health-care rationing based on “quality of life.” – Singer has questioned whether “the continuance of our species is justifiable,” since it will result in suffering. – Singer believes “speciesism” — viewing humans as having greater value than animals — is akin to racism. http://www.lifenews.com/2012/06/12/australia-awards-infanticide-backer-peter-singer-its-highest-honor/
Yet contrary to what Mat, Professor Singer, and other Darwinists believe about humans being basically no different than animals, and using that as a 'moral justification' for all sorts of atrocities against humans, the fact of the matter is that science itself, as it has progressed, has restored human exceptionalism. Restored human exceptionalism to the point where Theists can hold their heads up high and confidently claim that science itself testifies to the fact that we are indeed made 'in the image of God'. Although the purported evidence for human evolution is far more illusory than most people realize,,,
Darwinian evolution, since it has no empirical evidence that it is remotely feasible, (M. Behe, D. Axe, etc.. etc..), is heavily reliant on imaginary just so stories.,,, No where is Darwinian evolution more reliant on imaginary just so stories than it is in its myth of how humans supposedly evolved from apes.,,, (November 2016) https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/todd-wood-the-latest-is-homo-naledi-just-fell-into-the-dinaledi-chamber/#comment-620536
Although the purported evidence for human evolution is far more illusory than most people realize, it is interesting to note exactly where leading Darwinists themselves admit that they have no clue how a particular trait in humans could have possibly evolved.
Leading Evolutionary Scientists Admit We Have No Evolutionary Explanation of Human Language – December 19, 2014 Excerpt: Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.,,, (Marc Hauser, Charles Yang, Robert Berwick, Ian Tattersall, Michael J. Ryan, Jeffrey Watumull, Noam Chomsky and Richard C. Lewontin, “The mystery of language evolution,” Frontiers in Psychology, Vol 5:401 (May 7, 2014).) Casey Luskin added: “It’s difficult to imagine much stronger words from a more prestigious collection of experts.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/12/leading_evoluti092141.html
Best Selling author Tom Wolfe was so taken aback by this honest confession by leading Darwinists that he wrote a book on the subject. Wolfe provided a précis of his argument:
“Speech is not one of man’s several unique attributes — speech is the attribute of all attributes!” – Wolfe “Speech is 95 percent plus of what lifts man above animal! Physically, man is a sad case. His teeth, including his incisors, which he calls eyeteeth, are baby-size and can barely penetrate the skin of a too-green apple. His claws can’t do anything but scratch him where he itches. His stringy-ligament body makes him a weakling compared to all the animals his size. Animals his size? In hand-to-paw, hand-to-claw, or hand-to-incisor combat, any animal his size would have him for lunch. Yet man owns or controls them all, every animal that exists, thanks to his superpower: speech.” —Tom Wolfe, in the introduction to his book, The Kingdom of Speech
That humans should master the planet due his unique ability to communicate information is completely contrary to the ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking that undergirds Darwinian thought. i.e. Although humans are fairly defenseless creatures in the wild compared to other creatures, such as lions, bears, and sharks, etc.., nonetheless, humans have, completely contrary to Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking, managed to become masters of the planet, not by brute force, but simply by our unique ability to communicate information and, more specifically, infuse information into material substrates in order to create, i.e. intelligently design, objects that are extremely useful for our defense, basic survival in procuring food, furtherance of our knowledge, and also for our pleasure. And although the ‘top-down’ infusion of information into material substrates, that allowed humans to become ‘masters of the planet’, was rather crude to begin with, (i.e. spears, arrows, and plows etc..), this top down infusion of information into material substrates has become much more impressive over the last half century or so. Specifically, the ‘top-down’ infusion of mathematical and/or logical information into material substrates lies at the very basis of many, if not all, of man’s most stunning, almost miraculous, technological advances in recent decades. Here are a couple of articles which clearly get this ‘top-down’ infusion of information point across:
Here is one by Peter Tyson Describing Nature With Math By Peter Tyson – Nov. 2011 Excerpt: Mathematics underlies virtually all of our technology today. James Maxwell’s four equations summarizing electromagnetism led directly to radio and all other forms of telecommunication. E = mc2 led directly to nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The equations of quantum mechanics made possible everything from transistors and semiconductors to electron microscopy and magnetic resonance imaging. Indeed, many of the technologies you and I enjoy every day simply would not work without mathematics. When you do a Google search, you’re relying on 19th-century algebra, on which the search engine’s algorithms are based. When you watch a movie, you may well be seeing mountains and other natural features that, while appearing as real as rock, arise entirely from mathematical models. When you play your iPod, you’re hearing a mathematical recreation of music that is stored digitally; your cell phone does the same in real time. “When you listen to a mobile phone, you’re not actually hearing the voice of the person speaking,” Devlin told me. “You’re hearing a mathematical recreation of that voice. That voice is reduced to mathematics.” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/describing-nature-math.html
And here is one by George Ellis
Recognising Top-Down Causation – George Ellis Excerpt: page 5: A: Causal Efficacy of Non Physical entities: Both the program and the data are non-physical entities, indeed so is all software. A program is not a physical thing you can point to, but by Definition 2 it certainly exists. You can point to a CD or flashdrive where it is stored, but that is not the thing in itself: it is a medium in which it is stored. The program itself is an abstract entity, shaped by abstract logic. Is the software “nothing but” its realisation through a specific set of stored electronic states in the computer memory banks? No it is not because it is the precise pattern in those states that matters: a higher level relation that is not apparent at the scale of the electrons themselves. It’s a relational thing (and if you get the relations between the symbols wrong, so you have a syntax error, it will all come to a grinding halt). This abstract nature of software is realised in the concept of virtual machines, which occur at every level in the computer hierarchy except the bottom one [17]. But this tower of virtual machines causes physical effects in the real world, for example when a computer controls a robot in an assembly line to create physical artefacts. Excerpt page 7: The assumption that causation is bottom up only is wrong in biology, in computers, and even in many cases in physics, ,,, The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities. http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Ellis_FQXI_Essay_Ellis_2012.pdf
What is more interesting still about the fact that humans have a unique ability to understand and create information, and have come to dominate the world through the ‘top-down’ infusion of information into material substrates, is the fact that, due to advances in science, both the universe and life itself are now found to be ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis. Renowned physicist John Wheeler stated “in short all matter and all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe”.
“it from bit” Every “it”— every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. “It from bit” symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has a bottom—a very deep bottom, in most instances, an immaterial source and explanation, that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment—evoked responses, in short all matter and all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe.” – Princeton University physicist John Wheeler (1911–2008) (Wheeler, John A. (1990), “Information, physics, quantum: The search for links”, in W. Zurek, Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information (Redwood City, California: Addison-Wesley))
In the following article, Anton Zeilinger, a leading expert in quantum mechanics, stated that ‘it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows.’
Why the Quantum? It from Bit? A Participatory Universe? Excerpt: In conclusion, it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Thence the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the Word.” Anton Zeilinger – a leading expert in quantum mechanics: http://www.metanexus.net/archive/ultimate_reality/zeilinger.pdf
In the following video at the 48:24 mark, Anton Zeilinger states that “It is operationally impossible to separate Reality and Information” and he goes on to note, at the 49:45 mark, the Theological significance of “In the Beginning was the Word” John 1:1
48:24 mark: “It is operationally impossible to separate Reality and Information” 49:45 mark: “In the Beginning was the Word” John 1:1 Prof Anton Zeilinger speaks on quantum physics. at UCT – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ZPWW5NOrw
Vlatko Vedral, who is a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and who is also a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics, states,
“The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena.” Vlatko Vedral – Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and CQT (Centre for Quantum Technologies) at the National University of Singapore, and a Fellow of Wolfson College – a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics.
bornagain77_{December 6, 2016
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Matspirit- Can you please state the differences between a baby at 3 months in the womb, and a baby at 3 weeks old, and why it might be wrong to terminate one and not the other.You also say morals are the rules, please tell me who makes the rules , give me a concise definition of moral that we all can agree on.Marfin_{December 5, 2016
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#17. Thanks for that, I needed a good chuckle. I'm not commenting on the topic of conversation, I just can't believe an intelligent thinker like yourself could say such a goofy thing -- actually type it out and present it in public. I think I'll print it out and hang it on my office wall. I'll have to choose which wall, though, and I have three choices. One wall backs up to our studio control room, another backs up to a rack farm of processors and servers. And the third has huge conduits running through it; some going out to our UPS to protect the signal, and others going up to the antenna that transmits to our tower complex. Probably won't use that wall. By the way Bob, dFSCI is a linear sequence of symbol-vehicles that must be physically interpreted while preserving the discontinuity between the symbol-vehicles and their effects in the system - like it is inside the cell. Why the heck would you think there is dFSCI in a mountain? Matt, The sign on the door says ID. This is primarily an ID blog. Let me remind you of something you've probably just forgotten. ID doesn't have a position on abortion. Or human rights, or homosexual conduct, or thievery. It doesn't have a position on access to healthcare or man-made global warming. Those are topics that get kicked around here from time to time, but none of them has a damn thing to do with information or IC. If we have to endure your boiling rants over the injustices of men, can you try to learn at least something about the actual blog topic? You say that all we see is the result of evolution. Great, why don't you try to find out what is required for evolution to even occur. The data is already out there in the scientific record. Is that just too much to ask? (...just kidding Matt. What would you possibly do here if you couldn't rant on dumb people, right?)Upright BiPed_{December 5, 2016
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I think Barry is allowing Mat to be here because he is a good example how neo-fascism operates on the internet. I must confess that I haven’t read everything he has written because I have seen no interest on his part to engage in honest discussion or debate. It appears me that he is only here to deflect, derail or disrupt the discussion. That is how the neo-fascists operate. Up until recently I thought that maybe by some kind of misfortune only UD had attracted these kind of bad apples. However you don’t have to look very far to see that this trend has become increasingly widespread. Here is an example of how this new fascism is disrupting honest inquiry on the college campuses: http://video.foxnews.com/v/5236831005001/?playlist_id=5198073478001#sp=show-clips Deliberately shutting discussion is the exact antithesis of a free, open and tolerant society.john_a_designer_{December 5, 2016
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MS @ 31
When I use the word “spirit” I mean the mind. Call it the material spirit if you want.
Ok. That's an unusual view: spirit=mind=material. Normally, we are asked for some references in the scientific literature. Do you have any for this?
Complexity is important because the human mind is complex. If you don’t have a certain amount of complexity and if it’s not ordered in the right way, a mind is impossible.
As above, some biological references would help here. You're saying that a "certain amount" of complexity gives us a mind. How much complexity? Where is that quantified? When, precisely, does a baby have a mind? What configuration does it have physically/materially?
The realization that such complexity and organization are not present in the womb was the impetus behind Roe v Wade.
If you're saying that our neurological understanding in 1972 was sufficient to determine when a baby had a mind, or not - and that this determination separated human from non-human, I'd really like to see a reference for that also.
Cats have some of the mental attributes of a human, especially feeling pain and wanting to stay alive and thus are given many of the rights of a human, but if it ever comes down to a human or a cat dying, the cat gets it.
Again, we're all free to offer an opinion, but it seems that's all you're giving here. But the question is why anyone should accept what you're saying.
“Silent Scream” was made in 1984. In 1979, C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer released, “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” which accelerated the conservative Christian return to anti-abortion politics that was started by the hated and reviled Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision.
If you're saying that conservative Christians lead the opposition to legalized abortion in the 70s' and 80s, I fully agree. Also, you've mentioned conservative Christians several times with some disdain -- do you like liberal Christians?
You’d see the same thing with a cat fetus. Pain avoidance is a very low level function that has nothing to do with minds.
When a pregnant mother learns that the baby she is carrying is capable of feeling pain, don't you think that would be an excellent reason why she would want to prevent that? Or if you told her "your baby's pain has nothing to do with it having a mind", do you think that would cause her concern for her child to disappear? Beyond this, you're saying that a baby in the womb eventually has does have mind, right? And before that time, it doesn't - and so therefore it can be killed. But what if you're wrong about that? What if the baby has a mind earlier than you think? Would you be guilty of murder (or at least a serious crime) if you acted on your current (if mistaken) view?
That was when the religeous right abandoned science once and for all when it came to abortion and started doing what seemed right in their own (goggled) eyes.
Many on the religious left also oppose abortion. In fact, many non-religious do also. And they do this for scientific, not religious reasons.Silver Asiatic_{December 5, 2016
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I'm archiving this thread. Looks like Barry let a fox into the hothouse.Daniel King_{December 5, 2016
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Mat claims that materialism has consciousness all figured out when he, without evidence, repeatedly claims that the brain generates the mind. Yet, contrary to what Mat may prefer to believe, there is simply no empirical evidence whatsoever that anything material will ever be remotely capable of generating subjective conscious experience. As Rutgers University philosopher Jerry Fodor says,
"Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness. Regardless of our knowledge of the structure of the brain, no one has any idea how the brain could possibly generate conscious experience."
Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist Sebastian Seung makes this clear in his book “Connectome,” saying:
“Every day we recall the past, perceive the present and imagine the future. How do our brains accomplish these feats? It’s safe to say that nobody really knows.”
Nobel neurophysiologist Roger Sperry wrote,
"Those centermost processes of the brain with which consciousness is presumably associated are simply not understood. They are so far beyond our comprehension at present that no one I know of has been able even to imagine their nature."
Nobel prize-winner Eugene Wigner wrote:
"We have at present not even the vaguest idea how to connect the physio-chemical processes with the state of mind."
Contemporary physicist Nick Herbert states,
"Science's biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head, rather than the foot."
Thomas Nagel, a renowned atheist philosopher, wrote in "Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False" - pg.128
"I have argued patiently against the prevailing form of naturalism, a reductive materialism that purports to capture life and mind through its neo-Darwinian extension." "..., I find this view antecedently unbelievable---a heroic triumph of ideological theory over common sense".
Physician and author Larry Dossey wrote:
"No experiment has ever demonstrated the genesis of consciousness from matter. One might as well believe that rabbits emerge from magicians' hats. Yet this vaporous possibility, this neuro-mythology, has enchanted generations of gullible scientists, in spite of the fact that there is not a shred of direct evidence to support it."
- Andrew Smart, a cognitive scientist, wrote:
“The “certain quite widely accepted position” is known as computationalism—which is the belief that consciousness is isomorphic with or caused by computations. It is nothing short of an article of faith, since we have no empirical evidence that computation, whatever it is, leads to conscious experience.”
David Chalmers is semi-famous for getting 'the hard problem' of consciousness across to lay people in an easy to understand manner:
David Chalmers on Consciousness (Descartes, Philosophical Zombies and the Hard Problem) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1Yo6VbRoo
Simply put, 'the hard problem' of consciousness is the experience of being subjectively aware. Moreover, whereas the Atheist does not have one shred of empirical evidence that matter can ever become subjectively aware, on the other hand, the Theist has very powerful evidence from quantum mechanics for his belief that the conscious Mind of God precedes material reality. First off, it is important to note that quantum mechanics has an irreducible subjective element to it:
On The Comparison Of Quantum and Relativity Theories - Sachs - 1986 Excerpt: quantum theory entails an irreducible subjective element in its conceptual basis. In contrast, the theory of relativity when fully exploited, is based on a totally objective view. http://books.google.com/books?id=8qaYGFuXvMkC&pg=PA11#v=onepage&q&f=false How (conscious) observation is inextricably bound to measurement in quantum mechanics: Quote: "We wish to measure a temperature.,,, But in any case, no matter how far we calculate -- to the mercury vessel, to the scale of the thermometer, to the retina, or into the brain, at some time we must say: and this is perceived by the observer. That is, we must always divide the world into two parts, the one being the observed system, the other the observer.” John von Neumann - 1903-1957 - The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, pp.418-21 - 1955 http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/neumann/ Does Quantum Physics Make it Easier to Believe in God? Stephen M. Barr - July 10, 2012 Excerpt: Couldn’t an inanimate physical device (say, a Geiger counter) carry out a “measurement” (minus the 'observer' in quantum mechanics)? That would run into the very problem pointed out by von Neumann: If the “observer” were just a purely physical entity, such as a Geiger counter, one could in principle write down a bigger wavefunction that described not only the thing being measured but also the observer. And, when calculated with the Schrödinger equation, that bigger wave function would not jump! Again: as long as only purely physical entities are involved, they are governed by an equation that says that the probabilities don’t jump. That’s why, when Peierls was asked whether a machine could be an “observer,” he said no, explaining that “the quantum mechanical description is in terms of knowledge, and knowledge requires somebody who knows.” Not a purely physical thing, but a mind. https://www.bigquestionsonline.com/content/does-quantum-physics-make-it-easier-believe-god “Reality is in the observations, not in the electron.” – Paul Davies “We have become participators in the existence of the universe. We have no right to say that the past exists independent of the act of observation.” – John Wheeler
Although there are many lines of evidence supporting the Theist's claim that consciousness precedes material reality, this following recent experiment is my favorite
New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It - June 3, 2015 Excerpt: The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html
Thus, to reiterate, Mat has no empirical evidence whatsoever for his belief that matter can generate consciousness, whereas the Theist has very strong empirical evidence from quantum mechanics for his belief that the Mind of God sustains this material universe in its continued existence. i.e. that the Mind of God' precedes material reality. Supplemental note:
Double Slit, Quantum-Electrodynamics, and Christian Theism – video https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1127450170601248/?type=2&theater
Verse and Quote:
Colossians 1:17 "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." "As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." Max Planck - The main originator of Quantum Theory - Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], speech at Florence, Italy (1944) (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797)
bornagain77_{December 5, 2016
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MatSpirit
I say the same thing to those trapped in the conservative Christian hothouse. The first step to clearing your vision is to climb out of the hothouse. LOOK at it and look at what the hothouse is doing to you.. That’s the conservative Christion hothouse talking. It will help you escape from the hothouse/echo chamber you’re living in. was an irresistible invitation to error for hothouse dwellers. Of course, they had been living in their Christian hothouse you are talking straight from the hothouse. People who live in the hothouse call it ...
Just a suggestion here, but I don't think any of us is going to be concerned that you think we live in hothouse. I mean, nobody is going to be convinced about your point of view by the mere repetition of insulting terminology. "I had better agree with MatSpirit because otherwise he is going to think I live in a hothouse"??? If that's the kind of response you're looking for ... it's not going to happen. I suggest you just set that metaphor aside.Silver Asiatic_{December 5, 2016
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