Details here:
A few months ago I painted this portrait of noted evolutionary biologist and writer Richard Dawkins. I shipped the portrait to England on May 15th, 2015, destined for Cambridge, UK CB3. It was shipped from Burlington, Ontario, Canada. It hasn’t been seen since.
If you have any information on the whereabouts of this very special portrait, please contact me at heather “at” heatherhorton “dot” com. Thank-you very much…
We have no idea where the portrait is.
Except Canada Post, absent a tracking number, is a black hole.
To judge from the portrait, if Dawkins believed in God, it could be a Sunday School poster.
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The atheistic messiah is right here. He’s got an important message for all of us.
This guy is proud to wear a t-shirt that says “consciousness is an illusion”? He’s rich and famous because of what again?
I’m not sure what’s “messiah-like” about the portrait.
Mapou,
No, this is the original image. That image was manipulated by someone who believes that with atheism that “consciousness is an illusion”. (Which is a claim that I can never understand: Who’s having the illusion?)
Hey, Mapou at 2: Trust me, if Dawkins thinks that consciousness is an illusion, Canada Post is a slam dunk for his position. The portrait could turn up in a staff fridge or broom closet somewhere, eventually.
On the other hand, fyi only, people have made big mistakes assuming that everything in Canada is zombie time. It usually isn’t. And we are scaling back Canada Post.
goodusername:
Well, Box was being less than truthful about that link. It fooled me.
The atheist/materialist would say that the brain is having the illusion of being conscious. The “consciousness is an illusion” meme is obviously a way for the atheist/materialist to deny the existence of the soul. As if science and nature gave a rat’s behind about deniers. But why do they want to deny the existence of the soul? It’s only because their motivation was never about science in the first place. They got a beef with established religions and they must contradict religious teachings as much as they can.
In so doing they created their own chicken shit religion. They now believe in their own lies. They are convinced that not having a soul gives them the means to achieve immortality: upload the contents of your brain into a machine et voila! You are now the immortal anti-soul of the machine.
Under materialism? Blind particles in motion for sure — since that is all that exists.
** BTW Dawkins does hold that consciousness is an illusion.**
Box,
Do you have a quote to that effect?
It’s possible he said something like that (although he certainly didn’t in all the times I’ve seen him speak about the subject) but if he did I’d ask him the same thing I ask theists: Who’s having the illusion?
How can particles have an illusion unless they are conscious? And what does it mean to say that a conscious being is having an illusion of consciousness? To say that something/someone is having an illusion presupposes a consciousness.
as to: “Who’s having the illusion?”
Given materialism, there is no ‘who’ to have an illusion.
The amazing thing about Dawkins, and other militant atheists, in their claim that God does not really exist, is that, in their denial of the reality of God, also end up denying that they really exist as real ‘persons’.
In other words, given atheistic/materialistic premises, there really is no such person named Dawkins, (or Coyne or etc..), there is only a neuronal illusion of a brain who thinks, (if illusions could think), that it is a person named Dawkins, etc..
And although Dr. Nelson alluded to writing an e-mail, (i.e. creating information), to tie his ‘personal agent’ argument into intelligent design, Dr. Nelson’s ‘personal agent’ argument can easily be amended to any action that ‘you’, as a personal agent, choose to take:
Dr. Craig Hazen, in the following video at the 12:26 minute mark, relates how he performed, for an audience full of academics at a college, a ‘miracle’ simply by raising his arm,,
What should be needless to say, if raising your arm is enough to refute your supposedly ‘scientific’ worldview of atheistic materialism, then perhaps it is time for you to seriously consider getting a new scientific worldview?
Verse and Music:
Here — during his debate with Rowan Williams — you can hear Dawkins say it.
– – –
During the debate Rowan Williams asks ”If consciousness is an illusion…what isn’t?”.
at 37:51 minute mark of following video, according to the law of identity, Richard Dawkins does not really exist as a person: (the unity of Aristotelian Form is also discussed)
Atheistic Materialism – Does Richard Dawkins Exist? – video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVCnzq2yTCg&t=37m51s
Box,
He does come kinda close:
“I think there are some philosophers that believe that consciousness should be seen as a kind of illusion to bring together the different aspects of the mind.”
But a couple of things: He said this in response to Rowan saying something similar about the soul – that different aspects of the brain or mind may work together in concert to give rise to the soul. (I don’t have access to the video right now to quote him directly).
And so Dawkins was essentially just responding with ”how interesting, there are some philosophers that say something similar…” So he wasn’t necessarily backing the idea, he was just adding to what Rowan was saying.
In fact, when Rowan argued against the idea that Dawkins presented, he seemed to agree with Rowan’s objections. And so it was more of a conversation than a debate at that point.
Also the “illusion” that Dawkins was referring to was merely that certain aspects of consciousness may be an illusion. That instead of consciousness being a singular “thing”, that it’s several things working together that produces consciousness, even though it kinda feels like a single thing.
It’s certainly not meant in the sense that “we aren’t actually conscious” or that “consciousness doesn’t actually exist” or other similar things I’ve heard people say that would supposedly be a consequence of materialism.
I think Rowan also makes a good point that even if consciousness is the product of several aspects of the mind working together that it doesn’t make sense to call it an “illusion”. (Again, I don’t have access to his exact words right now.)
I agree that even if that is how consciousness is produced, “illusion” is probably the wrong word to describe it.
Calling it an illusion would imply that our sense of consciousness is somehow “wrong”, which seems very strange to me.
In ref to the t-shirt: Consciousness is an illusion….to whom? Who is being deceived? Isn’t ‘self’ an illusion as well? Doesn’t the concept of ‘illusion’ require a perceiver (person)? Absurdity.
psypaul,
Yeah, pretty much my point with the question of “who’s having the illusion?” I can’t make any sense of the statement (which is one of the reasons I was pretty sure Dawkins didn’t wear such a shirt).
A consistent materialist is compelled to believe that consciousness does not exist. Central to consciousness is the notion that one is ‘one being’. Under materialism this simply cannot be the case, since numerous particles in motion constitute reality, the brain and consciousness / oneness. So, under materialism, in reality there cannot be ‘one being’, not ‘a person’. Therefor the notion that one is one being must be an illusion.
Now that is an excellent question.
None of that makes sense to me. The dispute between materialists and non-materialists isn’t whether consciousness exists, but as to the source of consciousness. Is it the brain? A soul? (Or an interaction between the brain and soul?)
Not sure why the brain being composed of numerous particles should be an issue.
Goodusername, suppose that lego bricks are ontologically fundamental. We have a universe consisting of only lego bricks — nothing else.
My question to you is: is a construction consisting of 7 lego bricks ‘one thing’ or is it (in reality) ‘7 lego bricks’?
If there are 7 legos used to construct a chair – I’d say it’s a chair, and thus one thing. One thing composed of 7 legos.
The chair I’m sitting on is actually composed of many parts. How many? No idea. It’s not relevant to anything (at least not since putting it together). I just call it a chair.
Let’s say it turns out that consciousness is produced by a single particle with the brain instead of multiple particles working in tangent. Should we then view consciousness fundamentally differently than we did before? I don’t think I would. It would only be an interesting bit of trivia.
I’m in agreement with Rowan – it makes no sense to call consciousness an illusion just because it’s the result of multiple particles working together.
Hey, the hardworking staff at Uncommon Descent News have come up with a plan:
Once the painting is found, instead of bothering with Canada Post, we were at first going to use homing pigeons. But were advised by British hobbyists that pigeons could not possibly carry anything that big.
So we are breeding homing turkeys instead. It will take a while. Turkeys are not terribly smart or long-flighted, in their natural state.
The Canada geese refused all contact with our project, as they are supporters of design in nature, and don’t care if the painting is stacked with firewood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co9f8ecXEvw
What is this ‘chair’? What is this ‘one thing’? What makes this chair irreducible to 7 lego bricks?
I could quote to you the definition of a chair, but that would probably be condescending. Although I have no idea what it might be, I’m guessing you have a larger point. The reason a chair requires multiple lego bricks is because there is no single “chair lego”.
Goodusername, our starting point is a universe which consists solely of Lego bricks — nothing else. These Lego bricks are irreducible — ontologically fundamental.
My first question to you was: “Is a construction consisting of 7 lego bricks ‘one thing’ or is it (in reality) ‘7 lego bricks’?”
Your answer: “If there are 7 legos used to construct a chair – I’d say it’s a chair, and thus one thing. One thing composed of 7 legos.”
You seem to hold that a chair is ‘something more’ than 7 Lego bricks. I would like you to explain to me what that ‘more’ is. Is ‘chair’ something real in our fictional universe which consists solely of Lego bricks?
Are lego bricks not used to construct… “things”? 7 legos arranged and put together as a chair is different than 7 separate legos. The difference is the former can serve the purpose and definition of a chair and individual lego bricks cannot. It’s therefore a distinct “thing”. Just like my chair is a “thing”.
But, of course, our universe is much complicated than the one you’re describing. Atoms aren’t like legos. Oxygen atoms have properties that individual protons or neutrons don’t. H2O has properties that individual atoms do not. And a river has properties that a water molecule doesn’t. And a pack of connected neurons has properties than an individual neuron doesn’t.
Is ‘serving the purpose of a chair’ or ‘serving the definition of a chair’ intrinsic to the arrangement of Lego bricks?
Suppose there are no persons in the ‘Lego universe’, and therefor ‘chairs’ serve no purpose and suppose that in the Lego universe there is no person who can define what a chair is — IOW suppose ‘chair’ has no meaning in the Lego universe — would the arrangement still be one thing?
Two questions:
Is a heap of sand ‘one thing’? If not, why not?
Define “thing”?