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Interestingly, there are many debates online from people who have (ostensively) read his books on this that argue amongst themselves over whether Dennett is actually claiming that consciousness is an illusion. Perhaps it comes down to how one defines “self”, “consciousness”, and maybe even “illusion”.

What seems important to me, WRT our understanding of these terms, is the kind of properties we ascribe to consciousness (or self): *Free will* As I have argued, #63, I hold that consciousness must have real (top-down) power of its own — free will. If consciousness is depicted as just a link in a chain of determined events, then things no longer make sense. There would be no way to assess the truth of anything, since assessment would be tainted, just like everything else. *Rationality* Consciousness must be rational. If consciousness and its rational content comes about by fermions and bosons, which are governed by physical law rather than the rules of logic, then things no longer make sense. I’m not sure what Dennett or Strawson has to say on this topic, but Rosenberg, commendably, bites the bullet — according to him thoughts are not about anything. *Oneness* Consciousness must be one thing — as opposed to many things — see #66 #73.

That’s a problem with these discussions – everyone seems to be mean different things by such words. Same with “free will”. You said that Dennett doesn’t believe in free will, but Dennett himself says he does, and Harris and Dennett have debated on the subject, with Harris arguing against free will and Dennett arguing for. Then again, Dennett is a determinist, so he might mean something different when he says “free will” than you do, as many believe that the two are incompatible.

I agree. Moreover, I hold that philosophers who are unable to clearly state their ideas should be best ignored; Dennett being a case in point, but there are many more.

But if determinism is incompatible with free will, then how can one believe that free will exists and believe that God knows the future?

Personally I am neutral on whether God knows the future or not. Maybe he does, maybe not.

The future is only knowable if it’s determined. If it’s not determined, then there is no future to know.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. However, there is one objection to be made: possibly God can exist outside of time. Arguably, from this position, he can see the future even if we make free choices.

But maybe one can then argue what it means for something to be “determined”!)

I reject the possibility that everything is determined (including our thoughts and actions) simply because rationality would break down: IF the course of my thoughts and actions has been settled/guaranteed by entities beyond my causal reach, then I am not the author of ‘my’ thoughts. Even ‘my’ understanding would not be ‘mine’. Even my will to understanding would not be mine. If I must hold belief ‘X’ due to entities beyond my causal control, whether I want it or not, then it cannot be said that I believe ‘X’. And if do not believe ‘X’ I would also do so because it was settled by entities beyond my causal reach.Origenes

April 27, 2018

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,,, A transcendent component to our material bodies that is “conserved”. That is to say that it cannot be created nor destroyed,,,,, as Stuart Hameroff states in the following video: “the quantum information,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”

“Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” – Stuart Hameroff – Quantum Entangled Consciousness – Life After Death – video (5:00 minute mark) https://youtu.be/jjpEc98o_Oo?t=300

Thus, as far as empirical evidence and logic, via Godel, is concerned, the Christian Theist is sitting VERY well in his claim that he has a soul. A soul created by God in which the “whole person” can be rationally grounded. Whereas the “neuronal illusion” of the atheist is, once again, at a complete loss to coherently explain why he is should be considered a ‘real person’ instead of a ‘neuronal illusion’ in the first place,, as well the atheists is at a complete loss to coherently explain why any of the preceding evidence that was presented should be found to be as it is: Verses

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” George MacDonald – Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood – 1892 Psalm 139:13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul? Matthew 16:26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Matthew 22:37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

bornagain77

April 26, 2018

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Immaterial “abstract” Mathematics is particularly interesting to think about.

An Interview with David Berlinski – Jonathan Witt Berlinski: There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time…. Interviewer:… Come again(?) … Berlinski: No need to come again: I got to where I was going the first time. The number four, after all, did not come into existence at a particular time, and it is not going to go out of existence at another time. It is neither here nor there. Nonetheless we are in some sense able to grasp the number by a faculty of our minds. Mathematical intuition is utterly mysterious. So for that matter is the fact that mathematical objects such as a Lie Group or a differentiable manifold have the power to interact with elementary particles or accelerating forces. But these are precisely the claims that theologians have always made as well – that human beings are capable by an exercise of their devotional abilities to come to some understanding of the deity; and the deity, although beyond space and time, is capable of interacting with material objects. http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/found-upon-web-and-reprinted-here.html

If our mind, instead of being immaterial as is commonly held, were purely physical as the atheistic materialist holds, then how is it that our mind is even able to think about abstract immaterial concepts such as mathematics in the first place? Moreover, if atheistic materialism were true, and mathematics is basically, like consciousness, illusory, then why is it that science itself is so crucially dependent on this immaterial illusory thing of mathematics?

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences – Eugene Wigner – 1960 Excerpt: ,,certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin’s process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.,,, It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here, quite comparable in its striking nature to the miracle that the human mind can string a thousand arguments together without getting itself into contradictions, or to the two miracles of the existence of laws of nature and of the human mind’s capacity to divine them.,,, The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.” https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html

It is extremely ironic that, besides Darwinian evolution already being shown to be mathematically impossible (Sanford, Dembski, Marks, Axe, Behe, Durston etc.. etc..), Darwinian evolution is now also falsified as being a scientific theory since it denies the very reality of the one thing it most needs, i.e. mathematics, in order to be considered scientific in the first place. Many times atheists will claim that there is no empirical evidence for the immaterial mind. Yet the fact of the matter is that they, apparently, never looked for any evidence. If they would have looked for evidence for the immaterial mind they certainly would have quickly found it.

Materialism of the Gaps – Michael Egnor (Neurosurgeon) – January 29, 2009 Excerpt: The evidence that some aspects of the mind are immaterial is overwhelming. It’s notable that many of the leading neuroscientists — Sherrington, Penfield, Eccles, Libet — were dualists. Dualism of some sort is the most reasonable scientific framework to apply to the mind-brain problem, because, unlike dogmatic materialism, it just follows the evidence. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/01/materialism_of_the_gaps015901.html Do Conscious Thoughts Cause Behavior? -Roy F. Baumeister, E. J. Masicampo, and Kathleen D. Vohs – 2010 Excerpt: The evidence for conscious causation of behavior is profound, extensive, adaptive, multifaceted, and empirically strong. http://carlsonschool.umn.edu/assets/165663.pdf “We regard promissory materialism as superstition without a rational foundation. The more we discover about the brain, the more clearly do we distinguish between the brain events and the mental phenomena, and the more wonderful do both the brain events and mental phenomena become. Promissory materialism is simply a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists who often confuse their religion with their science.” – John C. Eccles, The Wonder of Being Human: Our Brain and Our Mind – 1984 The Case for the Soul: Quantum Biology – (7:25 minute mark – The Mind is able to modify the brain – Brain Plasticity, and Mindfulness control of DNA expression) https://youtu.be/6_xEraQWvgM?t=446

To further drive the point home that the entire concept of ‘personhood’ will forever be beyond the scope of reductive materialistic explanations, it is good to remember Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. Gödel’s incompleteness theorems can be stated simply as such, “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove”

“Gödel’s incompleteness theorem (1931), proves that there are limits to what can be ascertained by mathematics. Kurt Gödel (ref. on cite), halted the achievement of a unifying all-encompassing theory of everything in his theorem that: “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove”. Thus, based on the position that an equation cannot prove itself, the constructs are based on assumptions some of which will be unprovable.” Cf., Stephen Hawking & Leonard Miodinow, The Grand Design (2010) @ 15-6

Gödel went on to state this in regards to the implications of his incompleteness theorems for reductive materialism.

“In materialism all elements behave the same. It is mysterious to think of them as spread out and automatically united. For something to be a whole, it has to have an additional object, say, a soul or a mind.,,, Mind is separate from matter.” Kurt Gödel – Hao Wang’s supplemental biography of Gödel, A Logical Journey, MIT Press, 1996. [9.4.12]

Gödel incompleteness theorems have now been extended to physics and now prove that the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution will forever lack the explanatory power to be able to explain why any particular organism may take the basic macroscopic form that it takes:

Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics – December 9, 2015 Excerpt: A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable,,, It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven. The findings are important because they show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, “We knew about the possibility of problems that are undecidable in principle since the works of Turing and Gödel in the 1930s,” added Co-author Professor Michael Wolf from Technical University of Munich. “So far, however, this only concerned the very abstract corners of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. No one had seriously contemplated this as a possibility right in the heart of theoretical physics before. But our results change this picture. From a more philosophical perspective, they also challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.” http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html Darwinism vs Biological Form – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w

That is to say that, in order to explain why any particular organism may take the specific form that it does, it is necessary to go beyond the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution and, via Gödel, posit “a soul or a mind”. Moreover, positing a soul answers the simple, but profound, question of what is it exactly that keeps the trillions of cells of our material body from disintegrating into thermodynamic equilibrium “precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer”

The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings – Stephen L. Talbott – 2010 Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. ,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? Despite the countless processes going on in the cell, and despite the fact that each process might be expected to “go its own way” according to the myriad factors impinging on it from all directions, the actual result is quite different. Rather than becoming progressively disordered in their mutual relations (as indeed happens after death, when the whole dissolves into separate fragments), the processes hold together in a larger unity. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings

And to add further empirical evidence to the claim that it must be a ‘soul’ that is keeping our material bodies together “precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer”, advances in Quantum Biology now reveal that there is a transcendent, non-local, i.e. beyond space and time, component to our being that is found in every molecule of our material bodies…

Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – video https://youtu.be/LHdD2Am1g5Y

bornagain77

April 26, 2018

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As to:

to dismiss the brain as the source of integration in favor of some non-material unifying mind doesn’t seem justified to me.

Since when did empirical justification matter to a Darwinist? In fact, Darwinists believe all the amazingly intricate complexities of life randomly evolved in spite of all the evidence to the contrary that directly contradicts such a outlandish claim! Materialists have no clue where a single neuron of the brain came from.

"Complexity Brake" Defies Evolution - August 8, 2012 Excerpt: Consider a neuronal synapse -- the presynaptic terminal has an estimated 1000 distinct proteins. Fully analyzing their possible interactions would take about 2000 years. Or consider the task of fully characterizing the visual cortex of the mouse -- about 2 million neurons. Under the extreme assumption that the neurons in these systems can all interact with each other, analyzing the various combinations will take about 10 million years..., even though it is assumed that the underlying technology speeds up by an order of magnitude each year. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/08/complexity_brak062961.html

Much less do Darwinists have a clue how the brain integrated into the "beyond belief" complexity that it has:

The Human Brain Is 'Beyond Belief' by Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Ph.D. * - 2017 Excerpt: The human brain,, is an engineering marvel that evokes comments from researchers like “beyond anything they’d imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief”1 and “a world we had never imagined.”2,,, Perfect Optimization The scientists found that at multiple hierarchical levels in the whole brain, nerve cell clusters (ganglion), and even at the individual cell level, the positioning of neural units achieved a goal that human engineers strive for but find difficult to achieve—the perfect minimizing of connection costs among all the system’s components.,,, Vast Computational Power Researchers discovered that a single synapse is like a computer’s microprocessor containing both memory-storage and information-processing features.,,, Just one synapse alone can contain about 1,000 molecular-scale microprocessor units acting in a quantum computing environment. An average healthy human brain contains some 200 billion nerve cells connected to one another through hundreds of trillions of synapses. To put this in perspective, one of the researchers revealed that the study’s results showed a single human brain has more information processing units than all the computers, routers, and Internet connections on Earth.1,,, Phenomenal Processing Speed the processing speed of the brain had been greatly underrated. In a new research study, scientists found the brain is 10 times more active than previously believed.6,7,,, The large number of dendritic spikes also means the brain has more than 100 times the computational capabilities than was previously believed.,,, Petabyte-Level Memory Capacity Our new measurements of the brain’s memory capacity increase conservative estimates by a factor of 10 to at least a petabyte, in the same ballpark as the World Wide Web.9,,, Optimal Energy Efficiency Stanford scientist who is helping develop computer brains for robots calculated that a computer processor functioning with the computational capacity of the human brain would require at least 10 megawatts to operate properly. This is comparable to the output of a small hydroelectric power plant. As amazing as it may seem, the human brain requires only about 10 watts to function.11 ,,, Multidimensional Processing It is as if the brain reacts to a stimulus by building then razing a tower of multi-dimensional blocks, starting with rods (1D), then planks (2D), then cubes (3D), and then more complex geometries with 4D, 5D, etc. The progression of activity through the brain resembles a multi-dimensional sandcastle that materializes out of the sand and then disintegrates.13 He also said: We found a world that we had never imagined. There are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to eleven dimensions.13,,, Biophoton Brain Communication Neurons contain many light-sensitive molecules such as porphyrin rings, flavinic, pyridinic rings, lipid chromophores, and aromatic amino acids. Even the mitochondria machines that produce energy inside cells contain several different light-responsive molecules called chromophores. This research suggests that light channeled by filamentous cellular structures called microtubules plays an important role in helping to coordinate activities in different regions of the brain.,,, https://www.icr.org/article/10186

Nor do Darwinists have a clue how the trillions of cells of the body defy disintegrating towards thermodynamic equilibrium "precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer". If Darwinists were ever concerned with finding the truth, instead of propagating their atheistic religion, they would have found that it is transcendent information, (information which is separate and distinct from matter and energy), that is holding life so far out of thermodynamic equilbrium "precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer".

Information is Physical (but not how Rolf Landauer meant) - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H35I83y5Uro

As to justifying the unity of mind over and above the material brain. I will reiterate part of post 2, 3, and 4,,, To get this point across even more clearly, if a person were merely the brain, as materialists hold, then if half of a brain were removed then a ‘person’ should only be ‘half the person’, or at least somewhat less of a ‘person’, as they were before. But that is not the case, the ‘whole person’ stays intact even though the brain suffers severe impairment:

Removing Half of Brain Improves Young Epileptics’ Lives: – 1997 Excerpt: “We are awed by the apparent retention of memory and by the retention of the child’s personality and sense of humor,” Dr. Eileen P. G. Vining,, Dr. John Freeman, the director of the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Epilepsy Center, said he was dumbfounded at the ability of children to regain speech after losing the half of the brain that is supposedly central to language processing. ”It’s fascinating,” Dr. Freeman said. ”The classic lore is that you can’t change language after the age of 2 or 3.” But Dr. Freeman’s group has now removed diseased left hemispheres in more than 20 patients, including three 13-year-olds whose ability to speak transferred to the right side of the brain in much the way that Alex’s did.,,, http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/19/science/removing-half-of-brain-improves-young-epileptics-lives.html

In further comment from the neuro-surgeons in the John Hopkins study:

“Despite removal of one hemisphere, the intellect of all but one of the children seems either unchanged or improved. Intellect was only affected in the one child who had remained in a coma, vigil-like state, attributable to peri-operative complications.”

Further notes along this line:

Strange but True: When Half a Brain Is Better than a Whole One – May 2007 Excerpt: Most Hopkins hemispherectomy patients are five to 10 years old. Neurosurgeons have performed the operation on children as young as three months old. Astonishingly, memory and personality develop normally. ,,, Another study found that children that underwent hemispherectomies often improved academically once their seizures stopped. “One was champion bowler of her class, one was chess champion of his state, and others are in college doing very nicely,” Freeman says. Of course, the operation has its downside: “You can walk, run—some dance or skip—but you lose use of the hand opposite of the hemisphere that was removed. You have little function in that arm and vision on that side is lost,” Freeman says. Remarkably, few other impacts are seen. ,,, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-when-half-brain-better-than-whole How Removing Half of Someone’s Brain Can Improve Their Life – Oct. 2015 Excerpt: Next spring, del Peral (who has only half a brain) will graduate from Curry College, where she has made the dean’s list every semester since freshman year. http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/70120/how-removing-half-someones-brain-can-improve-their-life

The following study is particularly interesting because it lists many case studies where even more than half a brain is missing from a “whole person”

Discrepancy Between Cerebral Structure and Cognitive Functioning: A Review – 2017 Excerpt: The aforementioned student of mathematics had a global IQ of 130 and a verbal IQ of 140 at the age of 25 (Lorber, 1983), but had “virtually no brain” (Lewin 1980, p. 1232).,,, This student belonged to the group of patients that Lorber classified as having “extreme hydrocephalus,” meaning that more than 90% of their cranium appeared to be filled with cerebrospinal fluid (Lorber, 1983).,,, Apart from the above-mentioned student of mathematics, he described a woman with an extreme degree of hydrocephalus showing “virtually no cerebral mantle” who had an IQ of 118, a girl aged 5 who had an IQ of 123 despite extreme hydrocephalus, a 7-year-old boy with gross hydrocephalus and an IQ of 128, another young adult with gross hydrocephalus and a verbal IQ of 144, and a nurse and an English teacher who both led normal lives despite gross hydrocephalus.,,, Another interesting case is that of a 44-year-old woman with very gross hydrocephalus described by Masdeu (2008) and Masdeu et al. (2009). She had a global IQ of 98, worked as an administrator for a government agency, and spoke seven languages.,,, https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/12/Discrepancy-between-cerebral-structure-and-cognitive-functioning-JNMD.pdf

Besides “personhood”, there are also many other “abstract” immaterial things that the human mind thinks about that are not reducible to the material states of the brain.

The Fundamental Difference Between Humans and Nonhuman Animals – Michael Egnor – November 5, 2015 Excerpt: Human beings have mental powers that include the material mental powers of animals but in addition entail a profoundly different kind of thinking. Human beings think abstractly, and nonhuman animals do not. Human beings have the power to contemplate universals, which are concepts that have no material instantiation. Human beings think about mathematics, literature, art, language, justice, mercy, and an endless library of abstract concepts. Human beings are rational animals. Human rationality is not merely a highly evolved kind of animal perception. Human rationality is qualitatively different — ontologically different — from animal perception. Human rationality is different because it is immaterial. Contemplation of universals cannot have material instantiation, because universals themselves are not material and cannot be instantiated in matter.,,, It is a radical difference — an immeasurable qualitative difference, not a quantitative difference. We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/11/the_fundamental_2100661.html The Representation Problem and the Immateriality of the Mind – Michael Egnor – February 5, 2018 Excerpt: The human mind is a composite of material particular thought and immaterial abstract thought. Interestingly, modern neuroscience supports this view. Perception of particulars maps with precision to brain anatomy, but abstract thought is not mapped in the same way. Material powers of the brain are ordinarily necessary for exercise of abstract thought (e.g., you have to be awake to think about justice), but matter is not sufficient for abstract thought. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/02/the-representation-problem-and-the-immateriality-of-the-mind/

bornagain77

April 26, 2018

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Bornagain77 @74 Thank you for broadening the "binding problem." The question why ...

... things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?

... is extremely relevant to consciousness. What makes a coherent whole of billions of neurons firing? What power makes it coherent? What prevents them from making a complete mess?Origenes

April 26, 2018

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jdk: the very brief search I did led me to believe that research being done on the subject involves studying the brain: to dismiss the brain as the source of integration in favor of some non-material unifying mind doesn’t seem justified to me.

Well, that's just your opinion isn't it? It would be good to know why you hold that opinion, since now it just sits there: unsupported and irrational. Can you at least tell us at which point you would consider it justified? Plotinus' argument is as relevant today as it ever was. All the models neuroscience and psychology have come up with have failed. "Some non-material unifying mind" is by far the best explanation out there. Christopher Viger, Robyn Bluhm and Sharday Mosurinjohn write:

Our review of the neuroscientific and psychological literatures on the binding problem has revealed three broad classes of proposed solutions: grandmother cells, temporal synchrony, and object files. Unfortunately none of these solutions is adequate on its own. Grandmother cells, at least as a general account of perception, are untenable because of combinatorial explosion. Temporal synchrony and object files both seem to require some prior mechanism relevant to binding. In the case of temporal synchrony, something must establish the synchronous firing rate among the to-be bound processes. Object files also require some kind of mechanism to track objects so that features can be listed in the correct object files. There is a feeling in studying this problem of being a victim of the Greek gods; like poor Tantalus, just as one approaches a solution it recedes. [The Achilles of Rationalist Psychology, Chapter 15]

The writers go on proposing their new theory — a combination of all the others —, which, has not received much traction to date.Origenes

April 26, 2018

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Thanks, Origenes: I appreciate that you are familiar with some of the work and authors on this issue, at a level beyond the high school psych I taught. I do know that there is much we don't know, and that most of what we know about what consciousness is and how it works is speculative. However, the very brief search I did led me to believe that research being done on the subject involves studying the brain: to dismiss the brain as the source of integration in favor of some non-material unifying mind doesn't seem justified to me.jdk

April 26, 2018

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jdk @76

jdk: Twelve men are not connected biologically, and all the parts of the brain which produce each perception are.

Ok, twelve connected parts, which part holds the whole sentence?

jdk: Origenes, I’m wondering how much background you have in the biology of the brain. I used to teach a high school psych class, and there were chapters on the senses, perception, cognition, the parts of the brain and their functions, the biochemistry of neuronal functions, etc.

Jdk, are you aware of the fact that "the binding problem", which we are discussing, poses a formidable problem for the neurosciences today? That experimental work on the binding problem is done in the area of e.g. electrophysiology? Do you know that this has led theorists (e.g. Malsburg, Damasio, Roskies, Barsalou, Treisman, Ghose and Maunsell, Kahneman and many others) to posit hypothesis on binding that fall in two main classes: structural and operational — temporal localization vs hierarchical hypothesis? Do you know that science today does not know how it works? Do you know that all we have is speculation? I am asking since you seem to think that the answer is in your school books. Which, again, suggests that you are blissfully unaware of the challenges of the binding problem.Origenes

April 26, 2018

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to GUN: I agree that the issues are embedded in different meanings of key words. For instance does the word "self" refer to an independent non-material entity which informs itself upon the body and integrates mental experiences (which is the meaning held here by many, it seems), or does "self" refer to an organism's organization of its activities and perceptions into an integrated biological whole that works to meet the needs of the organism as a whole. The issues are substantial, but using the same word for different concepts embedded in different metaphysical systems is bound to lead to arguments that are more semantic than substantial. Same with "will", "illusion", etc.jdk

April 26, 2018

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re 73: the quote from James is not very relevant. Twelve men are not connected biologically, and all the parts of the brain which produce each perception are. Origenes, I'm wondering how much background you have in the biology of the brain. I used to teach a high school psych class, and there were chapters on the senses, perception, cognition, the parts of the brain and their functions, the biochemistry of neuronal functions, etc. I also took a course in a comparative study of the nervous systems of organisms, from the simplest organisms with light-sensing cells to humans. I wonder if you have ever studied any of this, in school or on your own? I mention my background not to make the claim that I know more and am therefore right (because I know there are people who know vastly more biology than I do who agree with you philosophically), but to see whether you do have a biology background or whether your thoughts about the inadequacy of the brain to integrate perceptions are primarily philosophical.jdk

April 26, 2018

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Origenes, A big reason why I haven’t read Dennett’s books on this particular subject is because, while I find the subject interesting, I’m very skeptical that he (or anyone) has actually made much headway on where consciousness comes from, or what it is, etc. Interestingly, there are many debates online from people who have (ostensively) read his books on this that argue amongst themselves over whether Dennett is actually claiming that consciousness is an illusion. Perhaps it comes down to how one defines “self”, “consciousness”, and maybe even “illusion”. That’s a problem with these discussions - everyone seems to be mean different things by such words. Same with “free will”. You said that Dennett doesn’t believe in free will, but Dennett himself says he does, and Harris and Dennett have debated on the subject, with Harris arguing against free will and Dennett arguing for. Then again, Dennett is a determinist, so he might mean something different when he says “free will” than you do, as many believe that the two are incompatible. (But if determinism is incompatible with free will, then how can one believe that free will exists and believe that God knows the future? The future is only knowable if it’s determined. If it’s not determined, then there is no future to know. But maybe one can then argue what it means for something to be “determined”!) If you do any reading or listening of Dennett, there are countless examples of him saying that we’re (obviously) conscious. Even Strawson, in the the earlier thread that attacks Dennett for denying that consciousness exists, says that Dennett would never actually say that he denies that consciousness exists: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/strawson-attacks-the-great-silliness/ Actually, after reading the article twice, I still can’t pinpoint anything that Dennett and Strawson disagree on. Their disagreement may be purely semantics.goodusername

April 26, 2018

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Funny,,,, jdk seems to think that modern biology has helped him. If anything, modern biology has exponentially exasperated the 'problem of unity' for the reductive materialist and/or atheist.

The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings - Stephen L. Talbott - 2010 Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. ,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? Despite the countless processes going on in the cell, and despite the fact that each process might be expected to “go its own way” according to the myriad factors impinging on it from all directions, the actual result is quite different. Rather than becoming progressively disordered in their mutual relations (as indeed happens after death, when the whole dissolves into separate fragments), the processes hold together in a larger unity. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings picture - What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? http://www.crystalinks.com/obe.lady.jpg

Whereas the reductive materialist has no clue how to answer the question of "What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?", the Christian Theist can appeal directly to quantum biology to support his belief in a transcendent soul that is capable of living past the death of the material body.

Darwinian Materialism vs Quantum Biology – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHdD2Am1g5Y “Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” - Stuart Hameroff - Quantum Entangled Consciousness - Life After Death - video (5:00 minute mark) https://youtu.be/jjpEc98o_Oo?t=300

Verses:

Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul? Psalm 139:13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. Matthew 22:37 Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'

Of supplemental related note: Biological "form" is now also shown to forever be beyond the grasp of reductive materialistic explanations:

Darwinism vs Biological Form - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics - December 9, 2015 Excerpt: A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable,,, It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven. The findings are important because they show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, "We knew about the possibility of problems that are undecidable in principle since the works of Turing and Gödel in the 1930s," added Co-author Professor Michael Wolf from Technical University of Munich. "So far, however, this only concerned the very abstract corners of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. No one had seriously contemplated this as a possibility right in the heart of theoretical physics before. But our results change this picture. From a more philosophical perspective, they also challenge the reductionists' point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description." http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html

bornagain77

April 26, 2018

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jdk @71

jdk: The integration of sensations of which Plotinus speaks (without knowing anything about the structure or biochemistry of the brain) is accomplished by the brain.

Not conceivably, which is exactly the core of Plotinus’ argument. You have to step up jdk, now it is as if you are unable to understand the problem of ‘many and one’. Perhaps this helps:

‘Take a sentence of a dozen words, and take 12 men and tell to each one word. Then stand the men in a row or jam them in a bunch, and let each think of his word as intently as he wills; nowhere will there be a consciousness of the whole sentence.’ [William James, The Principles of Psychology].

The brain consists of billions of neurons, and the question is, what contains ‘the whole sentence’, if you will.

jdk: And my argument against the statement “Only a simple, unified substance can unify representations”, (which I think is wrong on more general grounds) is that the brain, which is a very complicated structure, does in fact unify sensations into a unified perception.

See above. Merely stating that, even if it is inconceivable, the brain somehow does it is not an argument.Origenes

April 26, 2018

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jdk, seeing as Eastern religions have a far higher preponderance of negative and hellish NDEs than Christian NDEs, coupled with the fact that NDEs have far more evidence going for them than Darwinian evolution does, I would think, for normal people, that should matter to the 'illusion of you' very much. But alas, if "you" really are an illusion, as "you" claim to believe from Eastern religions, then I guess not much of anything can ever really matter to "you" since illusions, by definition, are not real and therefore can have no experience of reality ever really matter to them. Please let me know if and when "the illusion of you" begins to see the self defeating nature, and sheer absurdity, of your "you are an illusion" worldview.bornagain77

April 26, 2018

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The integration of sensations of which Plotinus speaks (without knowing anything about the structure or biochemistry of the brain) is accomplished by the brain. How you can say that biology is irrelevant to his argument is beyond me, as he is talking precisely about the integration of sensations into a perception. And my argument against the statement "Only a simple, unified substance can unify representations", (which I think is wrong on more general grounds) is that the brain, which is a very complicated structure, does in fact unify sensations into a unified perception. This is Psych 101.jdk

April 26, 2018

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jdk @68

jdk: I don’t believe that [(2): Only a simple, unified substance can unify representations.] is a universally, unobjectionably true premise.

Yet you seem unable to provide an argument as to why this is not "a universally, unobjectionably true premise".

jdk: Also, I don’t think quotes from ancient philosophers are very relevant, as they knew virtually nothing about modern biology of the human body.

That's weird thing to say, because biology is completely irrelevant to Plotinus' argument. It is equally valid to make the objection that the ancient did not know about IPhone's.Origenes

April 26, 2018

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Goodusername @62

Goodusername: This seems to be almost identical to what Daniel Dennett is saying. I haven’t read “Consciousness Explained” yet, but I’ve watched a few hours of videos of Dennett talking about the subject, and at no point did I ever get the impression that he doesn’t believe that we’re conscious or that consciousness doesn’t exist. And, in fact, I’ve seen many statements where he asserts that we are, obviously, conscious.

In an article, titled Is Consciousness an Illusion?, prof. Thomas Nagel reviews a book by Dennett. Excerpt:

... Dennett holds that consciousness is not part of reality in the way the brain is. Rather, it is a particularly salient and convincing user-illusion, an illusion that is indispensable in our dealings with one another and in monitoring and managing ourselves, but an illusion nonetheless.

Reading this, one wonders how, according to Dennett, an illusion monitors and manages itself.Origenes

April 26, 2018

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re 66: Origenes writes, as part of a syllogism of sorts,

(2): Only a simple, unified substance can unify representations. ... It seems to me that Goodusername and jdk deny the second premise. I would like to see some arguments.

True: I don't believe that is a universally, unobjectionably true premise. Also, I don't think quotes from ancient philosophers are very relevant, as they knew virtually nothing about modern biology of the human body. At 67, ba writes, "... as to jdk’s fascination with Eastern Mysticism." As opposed to ba's fascination with Christianity, QM, out-of-body experiences, etc.?jdk

April 26, 2018

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Of somewhat related note as to jdk's fascination with Eastern Mysticism, i.e. the escape of pain and suffering by imagining that 'self is an illusion'.

Buddhist Retreat Why I gave up on finding my religion. By John Horgan Excerpt: most people are distressed by sensations of unreality, which are quite common and can be induced by drugs, fatigue, trauma, and mental illness as well as by meditation. Even if you achieve a blissful acceptance of the illusory nature of your self, this perspective may not transform you into a saintly bodhisattva, brimming with love and compassion for all other creatures. Far from it—and this is where the distance between certain humanistic values and Buddhism becomes most apparent. To someone who sees himself and others as unreal, human suffering and death may appear laughably trivial. This may explain why some Buddhist masters have behaved more like nihilists than saints. Chogyam Trungpa, who helped introduce Tibetan Buddhism to the United States in the 1970s, was a promiscuous drunk and bully, and he died of alcohol-related illness in 1987. Zen lore celebrates the sadistic or masochistic behavior of sages such as Bodhidharma, who is said to have sat in meditation for so long that his legs became gangrenous. http://www.slate.com/human-interest/2018/04/our-one-fight-the-worrywart-vs-the-zen-master.html

Of related note to that, A while back I looked at the Near Death Experiences (NDEs) of different cultures. Eastern culture NDEs were particularly strange, even horrifying:

Near-Death Experiences Among Survivors of the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake (Chinese) Excerpt: Our subjects reported NDE phemenological items not mentioned, or rarely mentioned in NDE's reported from other countries: sensations of the world being exterminated or ceasing to exist, a sense of weightlessness, a feeling of being pulled or squeezed, ambivalence about death, a feeling of being a different person, or a different kind of person and unusual scents. The predominant phemenological features in our series were feeling estranged from the body as if it belonged to someone else, unusually vivid thoughts, loss of emotions, unusual bodily sensations, life seeming like a dream, a feeling of dying,,, These are not the same phemenological features most commonly found by researchers in other countries. Greyson (1983) reported the most common phemenological feature of American NDE's to be a feeling of peace, joy, time stopping, experiencing an unearthly realm of existence, a feeling of cosmic unity, and a out of body experience. http://www.newdualism.org/nde-papers/Zhi-ying/Zhi-ying-Journal%20of%20Near-Death%20Studies_1992-11-39-48.pdf Near-Death Experiences in Thailand: Excerpt: The Light seems to be absent in Thai NDEs. So is the profound positive affect found in so many Western NDEs. The most common affect in our collection is negative. Unlike the negative affect in so many Western NDEs (cf. Greyson & Bush, 1992), that found in Thai NDEs (in all but case #11) has two recognizable causes. The first is fear of `going'. The second is horror and fear of hell. It is worth noting that although half of our collection include seeing hell (cases 2,6,7,9,10) and being forced to witness horrific tortures, not one includes the NDEer having been subjected to these torments themselves. (Murphy 99) http://www.shaktitechnology.com/thaindes.htm Near Death Experience Thailand Asia - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8M5J3zWG5g Near-Death Experiences in Thailand: Discussion of case histories By Todd Murphy, 1999: Excerpt: We would suggest that the near-constant comparisons with the most frequently reported types of NDEs tends to blind researchers to the features of NDEs which are absent in these NDEs. Tunnels are rare, if not absent. The panoramic Life Review appears to be absent. Instead, our collection shows people reviewing just a few karmically-significant incidents. Perhaps they symbolize behavioral tendencies, the results of which are then experienced as determinative of their rebirths. These incidents are read out to them from a book. There is no Being of Light in these Thai NDEs, although The Buddha does appear in a symbolic form, in case #6. Yama is present during this truncated Life Review, as is the Being of Light during Western life reviews, but Yama is anything but a being of light. In popular Thai depictions, he is shown as a wrathful being, and is most often remembered in Thai culture for his power to condemn one to hell. Some of the functions of Angels and guides are also filled by Yamatoots. They guide, lead tours of hell, and are even seen to grant requests made by the experient. http://www.shaktitechnology.com/thaindes.htm A Comparative view of Tibetan and Western Near-Death Experiences by Lawrence Epstein University of Washington: Excerpt: Episode 5: The OBE systematically stresses the 'das-log's discomfiture, pain, disappointment, anger and disillusionment with others and with the moral worth of the world at large. The acquisition of a yid-lus and the ability to travel instantaneously are also found here. Episode 6: The 'das-log, usually accompanied by a supernatural guide, tours bar-do, where he witnesses painful scenes and meets others known to him. They give him messages to take back. Episode 7: The 'das-log witnesses trials in and tours hell. The crimes and punishments of others are explained to him. Tortured souls also ask him to take back messages to the living. http://www.case.edu/affil/tibet/booksAndPapers/neardeath.html?nw_view=1281960224&amp The Japanese find death a depressing experience - From an item by Peter Hadfield in the New Scientist (Nov. 30th 1991) Excerpt: A study in Japan shows that even in death the Japanese have an original way of looking at things. Instead of seeing 'tunnels of light' or having 'out of body' experiences, near-dead patients in Japanese hospitals tend to see rather less romantic images, according to researchers at Kyorin University. According to a report in the Mainichi newspaper, a group of doctors from Kyorin has spent the past year documenting the near-death experiences of 17 patients. They had all been resuscitated from comas caused by heart attacks, strokes, asthma or drug poisoning. All had shown minimal signs of life during the coma. Yoshia Hata, who led the team, said that eight of the 17 recalled 'dreams', many featuring rivers or ponds. Five of those patients had dreams which involved fear, pain and suffering. One 50-year-old asthmatic man said he had seen himself wade into a reservoir and do a handstand in the shallows. 'Then I walked out of the water and took some deep breaths. In the dream, I was repeating this over and over.' Another patient, a 73-year-old woman with cardiac arrest, saw a cloud filled with dead people. 'It was a dark, gloomy day. I was chanting sutras. I believed they could be saved if they chanted sutras, so that is what I was telling them to do.' Most of the group said they had never heard of Near-Death Experiences before. http://www.pureinsight.org/node/4

There is good news though. China on course to become ‘world’s most Christian nation’ within 15 years

China on course to become ‘world’s most Christian nation’ within 15 years – 19 Apr 2014 Excerpt: Officially, the People’s Republic of China is an atheist country but that is changing fast as many of its 1.3 billion citizens seek meaning and spiritual comfort that neither communism nor capitalism seem to have supplied. Christian congregations in particular have skyrocketed since churches began reopening when Chairman Mao’s death in 1976 signalled the end of the Cultural Revolution. Less than four decades later, some believe China is now poised to become not just the world’s number one economy but also its most numerous Christian nation. “By my calculations China is destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon,” said Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule. “It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people are prepared for this dramatic change.” China’s Protestant community, which had just one million members in 1949, has already overtaken those of countries more commonly associated with an evangelical boom. In 2010 there were more than 58 million Protestants in China compared to 40 million in Brazil and 36 million in South Africa, according to the Pew Research Centre’s Forum on Religion and Public Life. Prof Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, believes that number will swell to around 160 million by 2025. That would likely put China ahead even of the United States, which had around 159 million Protestants in 2010 but whose congregations are in decline. By 2030, China’s total Christian population, including Catholics, would exceed 247 million, placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the United States as the largest Christian congregation in the world, he predicted. “Mao thought he could eliminate religion. He thought he had accomplished this,” Prof Yang said. “It’s ironic – they didn’t. They actually failed completely.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10776023/China-on-course-to-become-worlds-most-Christian-nation-within-15-years.html

bornagain77

April 26, 2018

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Goodusername @62, jdk@64

Goodusername: The illusion is that there’s a single “thing” that’s the self, when it’s more likely to be the result of an emergence of several things in the brain working together.

jdk: the sense of self being the product of a number of separate but related processes.

How can the activity of millions of neurons lead to unitary percepts or singular actions? (1): Unification of representations takes place. (2): Only a simple, unified substance can unify representations. Therefore, (3) The human soul or mind is a simple unified substance. It seems to me that Goodusername and jdk deny the second premise. I would like to see some arguments. Plotinus (204/5 – 270 AD):

It is clear from the following that, if the soul were a body (soma), there could be no perception. . . . If something is going to perceive anything, it must itself be one and must take hold of it (antilambanesthai) in one act, both if several impressions are [perceived] through many sense-organs, or many qualities [are perceived] in one object, or if one senseorgan [perceives] a complex object, for example, a face. For there isn’t one [perception] of the nose, and another of the eyes, but one identical [perception] of all of them together. And if one [sense-object] enters through the eyes, and another through the hearing organ, there must be some one thing to which they both go. Otherwise, how could we state that they are different from each other, if the sense-objects did not all come together to one and the same [percipient]? Therefore, this [unified percipient] must be like a center point, and the perceptions coming from all places, like the lines coming from the circumference of the circle, must terminate there. And what takes hold of these must be of this kind, truly one.

Origenes

April 26, 2018

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Post 62 and 64 gloss over Grand Canyon type discrepancies. One glaring one is, as Origenes pointed out, free will.

Determinism vs Free Will - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwPER4m2axI

bornagain77

April 26, 2018

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Good post at 62, GUN. I'm not a Harris fan, but you found a good quote. I also like your remark about the sense of self being the product of a number of separate but related processes. One can think that the self is a unique entity separate from other psychological processes is an illusion without thinking that the sense of self that arises from various process working in an integrated fashion for the benefit of the organism as a whole is an illusion. And it's worth noting that in the Eastern religions understanding that the self is an illusion (which is different than saying consciousness is an illusion) is a goal of spiritual enlightenment.jdk

April 26, 2018

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Goodusername @62

Whether one agrees with Harris or not, I find it odd to interpret that to mean that Harris believes that the self or consciousness aren’t real.

I do believe that both Harris and Dennett have claimed that self (or consciousness) aren’t real and I strongly suspect that relevant quotes are forthcoming. However, let us put that aside for a moment. Harris, like Dennett and Rosenberg, argues against the existence of free will — see his book "Free Will." No free will means, as W J Murray argued, that we are biological automatons, who have but the illusion of making autonomous decisions.

WJM: There would be no way for a biological automaton to determine whether or not any statement was in fact true or not since all conclusions are driven by chemistry and not metaphysical “truth” values; indeed, a biological automaton reaches conclusion X for exactly the same reason any other reaches conclusion Y; chemistry. If chemistry dictates that 1+1=banana, that is what a “person” will conclude. If chemistry dictates they defend that view to the death and see themselves as a martyr for the computational banana cause, that is exactly what they will do. All such a biological automaton has is whatever chemistry generates as what they see, hear, taste, smell, touch, feel, think, and do. If they eat some stale pizza and, through a chaotic cascade of happenstance physical cause and effect, accept Mohammed with great faith and zeal, then no determined atheist can resist – that is what will occur. And they will think it was a logical conclusion, if chemistry says so. They can only be whatever chemistry dictates.

In my view, denying free will amounts to denying the existence of consciousness. If there is no free will, then consciousness is an irrelevant powerless bystander unable to intervene in occurrences dictated by chemistry. Do you agree? - - -Origenes

April 26, 2018

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Origenes,

Do you know of a leading materialist who makes the case that consciousness is real?

Apparently Sam Harris for one:

It is surely a sign of our intellectual progress that a discussion of consciousness no longer has to begin with a debate about its existence. To say that consciousness may only seem to exist is to admit its existence in full—for if things seem any way at all, that is consciousness. Even if I happen to be a brain in a vat at this moment—all my memories are false; all my perceptions are of a world that does not exist—the fact that I am having an experience is indisputable (to me, at least). This is all that is required for me (or any other conscious being) to fully establish the reality of consciousness. Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion. https://samharris.org/the-mystery-of-consciousness/

Odd thing for “one of the leading proponents of the ‘consciousness is an illusion’ school” to say. I haven’t read a whole lot of Harris, but I have seen times where he says that there’s an illusion of self – but he hasn’t meant it in the sense that it doesn’t exist. The illusion is that there’s a single “thing” that’s the self, when it’s more likely to be the result of an emergence of several things in the brain working together. Whether one agrees with Harris or not, I find it odd to interpret that to mean that Harris believes that the self or consciousness aren’t real. This seems to be almost identical to what Daniel Dennett is saying. I haven’t read “Consciousness Explained” yet, but I’ve watched a few hours of videos of Dennett talking about the subject, and at no point did I ever get the impression that he doesn’t believe that we’re conscious or that consciousness doesn’t exist. And, in fact, I’ve seen many statements where he asserts that we are, obviously, conscious. Albeit there are times when I’m not sure what he’s saying (I might have to read the book to fully understand him), but like Harris when he speaks of an “illusion” of consciousness he seems to mean it in the sense that there’s an illusion of a single thing rather than several things working together to produce consciousness.goodusername

April 25, 2018

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Bob O'H @ I repost my question to you:

Do you know of a leading materialist who makes the case that consciousness is real?

Origenes

April 25, 2018

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Seversky: The evidence you seek is abundant and easily accessible. You have seen, read, or heard much of it already. You just don't accept it as true. It was enough to convince Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Blaise Pascal, G.K. Chesterton, C.S Lewis, and many, many other brilliant minds, so you certainly can't claim intellectual superiority ... at least not credibly. Also, belief in God is based on faith, not evidence. Evidence can strengthen our faith and help us be more certain of the truth, but it can never replace faith as the foundation for our belief in God. God wants you to place your faith in him, but you choose instead to place your faith in materialism, multiverse theory, etc. for which there is very little evidence, and certainly no empirical evidence.Truth Will Set You Free

April 25, 2018

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One more crack like 46 and you will be escorted to the exit.

AgainET

April 25, 2018

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Seversky:

Put some evidence for this God on the table...

Put some evidence for materialism on the table or shut up already.ET

April 25, 2018

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BA77 @ 52: Excellent use of links to support your arguments. The Richard Dawkins pinpoint video citation is new to me. I hadn't known that he made such a statement. Well done.Truth Will Set You Free

April 25, 2018

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Thanks for keeping the peace, BA. I really think Allen Keith has good intentions (we have had worthwhile exchanges), but emotions sometimes get the best of us. These are serious topics that challenge all of our worldviews. I understand the emotion, but let's try to keep things civil... even friendly.Truth Will Set You Free

April 25, 2018

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