Shedinger: When Darwinism becomes culture, mental issues become physical

^^^^^^ And that is a perfect example of the disingenuous nature in which atheists debate: Per post 29 (which was blatantly ignored by our atheistic troll):

in 2010 the Maxwell’s demon thought experiment, which was originally devised by James Clerk Maxwell in 1867, was finally experimentally realized. As the following paper highlights, it has now been experimentally demonstrated that knowledge of a particle’s location and/or position converts information into energy. Maxwell’s demon demonstration turns information into energy – November 2010 Excerpt: Scientists in Japan are the first to have succeeded in converting information into free energy in an experiment that verifies the “Maxwell demon” thought experiment devised in 1867.,,, In Maxwell’s thought experiment the demon creates a temperature difference simply from information about the gas molecule temperatures and without transferring any energy directly to them.,,, Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information. http://www.physorg.com/news/20.....nergy.html And as the following 2010 article stated about the preceding experiment, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010 Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican......rts-inform And as the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,, quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,, Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell put it, “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.” In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply. They’ve found new, quantum versions of the laws that scale up to the originals. Rewriting the theory from the bottom up has led experts to recast its basic concepts in terms of its subjective nature, and to unravel the deep and often surprising relationship between energy and information — the abstract 1s and 0s by which physical states are distinguished and knowledge is measured.,,, Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/ Again to repeat that last sentence, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,”

Of supplemental note: the following 2018 article states that, “Physicists have experimentally demonstrated an information engine—a device that converts information into work—with an efficiency that exceeds the conventional second law of thermodynamics.”

Information engine operates with nearly perfect efficiency - Lisa Zyga - January 19, 2018 Excerpt: Physicists have experimentally demonstrated an information engine—a device that converts information into work—with an efficiency that exceeds the conventional second law of thermodynamics. Instead, the engine's efficiency is bounded by a recently proposed generalized second law of thermodynamics, and it is the first information engine to approach this new bound.,,, https://phys.org/news/2018-01-efficiency.html

bornagain77

It is not me that you are disagreeing with, it is with the fairly recent results of experimental science itself that you are disagreeing with!

No. I’m pretty sure it is you he’s disagreeing with. Brother Brian

Perhaps, besides the nuances you ignored in my post, you should, first and foremost, learn about Maxwell's demon and the recent experimental realization of that thought experiment? It is not me that you are disagreeing with, it is with the fairly recent results of experimental science itself that you are disagreeing with! bornagain77

Bornagain77@ 29

In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.

Which tells me that classical and quantum information are not the same thing, not what they are and how they differ, apart from one can be created or destroyed but the other can't.

Conservation of quantum information is a foundational axiom within quantum information theory. So much so that it has created a mini-crisis in theoretical physics via the information loss paradox of black holes:

You still haven't explained what this quantum information stuff is and why, according to quantum physics, it must be conserved.

Moreover, classical information is shown to be a subset of quantum information by the following method. Specifically, in the following 2011 paper, researchers ,,, show that when the bits (in a computer) to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that (in quantum information theory) an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer.

Are you saying that you are entangled with the computer you are using and know more about the contents of its memory than would be possible without that quantum entanglement? How did you become entangled with it in the first place? In the article you are citing does it explain how the observer and the computer become entangled or are they always entangled?

Again to repeat that last sentence, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,” Think about that statement for a second. These experiments completely blow the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution, (presuppositions about information being merely ’emergent’ from some material basis), out of the water, and tie the creation of immaterial information directly to the knowledge of the ‘observer’ in quantum theory.

Since you apparently understand this better then me, perhaps you can explain what Renner means by entropy here and how it should be the property of an observer rather than the system being observed.

In other words, contrary to the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, immaterial information, particularly ‘thermodynamic positional information’, is now experimentally shown, via quantum information theory, to be its own distinct physical entity that, although it is immaterial, it can, none-the-less, interact with matter and energy,,, and is even shown to be its own independent, ‘non-local’ beyond space and time, entity that is separate from matter and energy. On top of all that, this immaterial ‘thermodynamic positional information’ is found, via quantum information theory, to be, to repeat it once again, “a property of an observer who describes a system.

Again, you refer to "immaterial information" and "thermodynamic positional information" and "quantum information" as if you understand what is meant by those terms and how they differ from classical information. Perhaps you would like to expand on what they mean or, at least, what the researchers you are quoting mean by them? Seversky

The following videos, in a bit more detail, touch upon how consciousness, quantum information theory, and molecular biology correlate

Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – Part II – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSig2CsjKbg How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate – video (how consciousness, quantum information theory, and molecular biology correlate – 27 minute mark) https://youtu.be/4f0hL3Nrdas?t=1634

The most important thing to take note of is that quantum information/entanglement is a non-local effect that requires a 'beyond space and time' cause in order to explain its existence,

Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php

There simply is no materialistic explanation, i.e. no 'hidden variables', that Atheistic materialists can possibly appeal to in order to ‘explain away’ quantum entanglement.

Quantum correlations do not imply instant causation – August 12, 2016 Excerpt: A research team led by a Heriot-Watt scientist has shown that the universe is even weirder than had previously been thought. In 2015 the universe was officially proven to be weird. After many decades of research, a series of experiments showed that distant, entangled objects can seemingly interact with each other through what Albert Einstein famously dismissed as “Spooky action at a distance”. A new experiment by an international team led by Heriot-Watt’s Dr Alessandro Fedrizzi has now found that the universe is even weirder than that: entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do. http://phys.org/news/2016-08-quantum-imply-instant-causation.html%C2%A0 Experimental test of nonlocal causality – August 10, 2016 DISCUSSION Previous work on causal explanations beyond local hidden-variable models focused on testing Leggett’s crypto-nonlocality (7, 42, 43), a class of models with a very specific choice of hidden variable that is unrelated to Bell’s local causality (44). In contrast, we make no assumptions on the form of the hidden variable and test all models ,,, Our results demonstrate that a causal influence from one measurement outcome to the other, which may be subluminal, superluminal, or even instantaneous, cannot explain the observed correlations.,,, http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600162.full%C2%A0

And whereas atheistic materialists are at a complete loss to explain how particles can be instantly correlated within molecular biology via quantum entanglement/information, on the other hand Christian Theists readily have a beyond space-time, matter-energy, cause that they can appeal to in order to explain the pervasive quantum non-locality within molecular biology:

Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

The implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and even ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. 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.”

Leading Scientists Say Consciousness Cannot Die It Goes Back To The Universe – Oct. 19, 2017 – Spiritual Excerpt: “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://www.disclose.tv/leading-scientists-say-consciousness-cannot-die-it-goes-back-to-the-universe-315604

Verse:

Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul?

Here is an interesting supplemental note: Darwinian materialists, with their reductive materialistic framework, have no clue why our temporal material bodies, conservatively estimated to contain at least a billion trillion molecules, should remain unified as single entity for precisely a lifetime, especially considering the thermodynamic onslaught that is endured by those billion trillion molecules during our lifetimes. As Stephen Talbott succinctly puts it, “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?”

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

The Christian Theist, of course, has a ready answer for that question of “What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? “. The answer, as Christians have been saying for two thousand years now, is, of course, that it is the soul that holds that power off “precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer”.

James 2:26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. Luke 23:43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

bornagain77

Seversky states,

I understood you to hold that information can be neither created nor destroyed. If that is true then there is no need to generate or store it. It must all already be there. In fact, it would also seem that there is no need to invoke a creator for that which was never created.

If you are going to try to debate these issues Seversky, you really need to educate yourself on the differences that are found between classical information and quantum information. In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.

Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time - 2011 Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html

Conservation of quantum information is a foundational axiom within quantum information theory. So much so that it has created a mini-crisis in theoretical physics via the information loss paradox of black holes:

Black holes don't erase information, scientists say - April 2, 2015 Excerpt: The "information loss paradox" in black holes—a problem that has plagued physics for nearly 40 years—may not exist.,,, This is an important discovery, Stojkovic says, because even physicists who believed information was not lost in black holes have struggled to show, mathematically, how this happens. His new paper presents explicit calculations demonstrating how information is preserved, he says. The research marks a significant step toward solving the "information loss paradox," a problem that has plagued physics for almost 40 years, since Stephen Hawking first proposed that black holes could radiate energy and evaporate over time. This posed a huge problem for the field of physics because it meant that information inside a black hole could be permanently lost when the black hole disappeared—a violation of quantum mechanics, which states that information must be conserved. http://phys.org/news/2015-04-black-holes-dont-erase-scientists.html+/

Moreover, contrary to the gist of your claim Seversky, conserved quantum information can be, via quantum entanglement, manipulated for useful purpose. As the following article states, “quantum entanglement, plays crucial roles in quantum information processing such as quantum computation, quantum teleportation, dense coding, quantum error correction, quantum cryptographic schemes, entanglement swapping, and remote states preparation.”

Quantum Information and Entanglement - 2010 Excerpt: ,,, quantum entanglement, which can be traced back to the EPR paradox in 1935 and gave rise to the discussions on the foundations of quantum mechanics related to reality and locality, plays crucial roles in quantum information processing such as quantum computation, quantum teleportation, dense coding, quantum error correction, quantum cryptographic schemes, entanglement swapping, and remote states preparation. Many striking achievements have been witnessed for the past ten years. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/amp/2010/657878/

And as the following article states, “Quantum entanglement is a physical resource, like energy,,, A pair of quantum systems in an entangled state can be used as a quantum information channel to perform computational and cryptographic tasks that are impossible for classical systems.”

Quantum Entanglement and Information Quantum entanglement is a physical resource, like energy, associated with the peculiar nonclassical correlations that are possible between separated quantum systems. Entanglement can be measured, transformed, and purified. A pair of quantum systems in an entangled state can be used as a quantum information channel to perform computational and cryptographic tasks that are impossible for classical systems. The general study of the information-processing capabilities of quantum systems is the subject of quantum information theory. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-entangle/

Moreover, classical information is shown to be a subset of quantum information by the following method. Specifically, in the following 2011 paper, researchers ,,, show that when the bits (in a computer) to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer's state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that (in quantum information theory) an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object's entropy is always dependent on the observer.

Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy - June 1, 2011 Excerpt: Recent research by a team of physicists,,, describe,,, how the deletion of data, under certain conditions, can create a cooling effect instead of generating heat. The cooling effect appears when the strange quantum phenomenon of entanglement is invoked.,,, The new study revisits Landauer's principle for cases when the values of the bits to be deleted may be known. When the memory content is known, it should be possible to delete the bits in such a manner that it is theoretically possible to re-create them. It has previously been shown that such reversible deletion would generate no heat. In the new paper, the researchers go a step further. They show that when the bits to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer's state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object's entropy is always dependent on the observer. Applied to the example of deleting data, this means that if two individuals delete data in a memory and one has more knowledge of this data, she perceives the memory to have lower entropy and can then delete the memory using less energy.,,, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110601134300.htm

Moreover, in 2010 the Maxwell’s demon thought experiment, which was originally devised by James Clerk Maxwell in 1867, was finally experimentally realized. As the following paper highlights, it has now been experimentally demonstrated that knowledge of a particle's location and/or position converts information into energy.

Maxwell's demon demonstration turns information into energy - November 2010 Excerpt: Scientists in Japan are the first to have succeeded in converting information into free energy in an experiment that verifies the "Maxwell demon" thought experiment devised in 1867.,,, In Maxwell’s thought experiment the demon creates a temperature difference simply from information about the gas molecule temperatures and without transferring any energy directly to them.,,, Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a "spiral-staircase-like" potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-maxwell-demon-energy.html

And as the following 2010 article stated about the preceding experiment, "This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,"

Demonic device converts information to energy - 2010 Excerpt: "This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content," says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. "This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale," says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform

And as the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,, quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,, Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,

The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell put it, “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.” In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply. They’ve found new, quantum versions of the laws that scale up to the originals. Rewriting the theory from the bottom up has led experts to recast its basic concepts in terms of its subjective nature, and to unravel the deep and often surprising relationship between energy and information — the abstract 1s and 0s by which physical states are distinguished and knowledge is measured.,,, Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/

Again to repeat that last sentence, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,” Think about that statement for a second. These experiments completely blow the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution, (presuppositions about information being merely ’emergent’ from some material basis), out of the water, and tie the creation of immaterial information directly to the knowledge of the ‘observer’ in quantum theory. In other words, contrary to the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, immaterial information, particularly ‘thermodynamic positional information’, is now experimentally shown, via quantum information theory, to be its own distinct physical entity that, although it is immaterial, it can, none-the-less, interact with matter and energy,,, and is even shown to be its own independent, ‘non-local’ beyond space and time, entity that is separate from matter and energy. On top of all that, this immaterial ‘thermodynamic positional information’ is found, via quantum information theory, to be, to repeat it once again, “a property of an observer who describes a system.” bornagain77

seversky:

I understood you to hold that information can be neither created nor destroyed. If that is true then there is no need to generate or store it.

That doesn't follow. ET

1 bornagain77

Bornagain77@ 23

Sev: I would say that the consequences of atheistic materialism for humanity in terms of knowledge of the Universe at large,

Huh? If atheistic materialism were actually true, there would be no “knowledge of the Universe at large”. For man to accumulate “knowledge of the Universe at large” requires, first and foremost, that man first have the ability to generate, communicate, and store information

Yes, how is that a problem?

Atheistic materialists have no clue how material processes could possibly generate, communicate, and store information.

I understood you to hold that information can be neither created nor destroyed. If that is true then there is no need to generate or store it. It must all already be there. In fact, it would also seem that there is no need to invoke a creator for that which was never created.

For crying out loud, that is the main point of contention between Darwinists and ID advocates. As Stephen Meyer stated, “The information on a computer screen can be traced back to a user or programmer. The information in a newspaper ultimately came from a writer — from a mind.

What is displayed on a computer screen are images, text and symbols. They might be intended to convey meaning to a viewer or they might be the output of a random number generator which would be meaningless to a viewer. Are they both information? Yes, a newspaper has text and images printed on its pages which are commonly held to convey information.

As the pioneering information theorist Henry Quastler observed, “Information habitually arises from conscious activity.”

Is that true? What about the information a dendrochronologist infers about the history of a tree from observation of the tree rings? What of the information about ancient life-forms a paleontologist derives from the study of fossils? Or the information about the history of the planet acquired by geologists from the study of ancient rock strata? Or information about far-distant celestial objects and events gleaned by astronomers from a few photons of light entering their telescopes? As far as we can tell there was no sender, no intended meaning, in any of those examples, yet we regard that as informing the observer in each case.

Even leading Darwinists themselves admit that they have no clue how man acquired his unique ability to generate, communicate, and store information.

The human ability to communicate is arguably more complex and sophisticated than that of other animals. But is it unique? What of the 'dances' performed by bees to indicate to their fellows roughly where a good source of nectar can be found? Doesn't that involve generating, storing and communicating information?

In fact, instead of information being ‘emergent’ from a material basis, (as Darwinists hold), advances in quantum mechanics now show that it is material that is ‘emergent’ from an information basis, (as Christians have always held)

In the following video at the 48:24 mark 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

A few years back, Dr Dembski quoted a list of some forty definitions of information and complexity compiled by a researcher, which brings us to the point. Is 'information' the monolithic concept implied by popular usage? What do you mean by 'information'? What does Zeilinger or Vedral or other quantum information theorists mean by 'information'? Is it all the same meaning or are their technical definitions in certain fields which are not the same as what you and I mean? If there are then there is the risk of equivocation when discussing these matters.

It is hard to imagine a more convincing proof that we are made ‘in the image of God’, than finding that both the universe and life itself are ‘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 have come to ‘master the planet’ precisely because of our ability infuse information into material substrates.

No, even if there is an "information theoretic" basis to the Universe that does not necessarily imply the existence of the Christian God. There is nothing in the Biblical reference to "in the image of God" to indicate it refers to similarities at the quantum level. In fact, there is nothing in the Bible to indicate that the authors were aware of the existence of a quantum domain at all.

The ‘technology we all take for granted’ is certainly NOT the result of Seversky’s atheistic materialism but is clearly the result of intelligent design.

Yes,human intelligent design based on materialist or physicalist models of - or information about - the natural world. Seversky

Brother Brain once again demonstrates his severe OCD and his cluelessness. Another own goal for BB... BTW, the comment @ 22 was not an insult. It was an observation based on the evidence. ET

AaronS1978

I wasn’t, i was just saying it wouldn’t be helpful due to the how it can both change and how it varies per person

I was just suggesting that conditioned responses may use the same chemical (neuronal) pathways as those that have gone awry with severe OCD. For example, the next time you get in a car, try not to buckle your seatbelt. And as to my comment about a person’s obsessive need to respond to every comment I make with an insult, I refer you to comments 12 and 22. :) Brother Brian

In response to this fact,,,

BA77: The consequences for man in assuming Atheistic Naturalism, on both the personal level and on the level of societies as a whole, have been devastating.

Seversky responded as such

Sev: I would say that the consequences of atheistic materialism for humanity in terms of knowledge of the Universe at large,

Huh? If atheistic materialism were actually true, there would be no “knowledge of the Universe at large”. For man to accumulate “knowledge of the Universe at large” requires, first and foremost, that man first have the ability to generate, communicate, and store information. Atheistic materialists have no clue how material processes could possibly generate, communicate, and store information. For crying out loud, that is the main point of contention between Darwinists and ID advocates. As Stephen Meyer stated, “The information on a computer screen can be traced back to a user or programmer. The information in a newspaper ultimately came from a writer — from a mind. As the pioneering information theorist Henry Quastler observed, “Information habitually arises from conscious activity.”

Yes, Intelligent Design Is Detectable by Science - Stephen C. Meyer - April 24, 2018 Excerpt: intelligent design is detectable in living systems because we know from experience that systems possessing large amounts of such information invariably arise from intelligent causes. The information on a computer screen can be traced back to a user or programmer. The information in a newspaper ultimately came from a writer — from a mind. As the pioneering information theorist Henry Quastler observed, “Information habitually arises from conscious activity.”8 https://evolutionnews.org/2018/04/yes-intelligent-design-is-detectable-by-science/

Even leading Darwinists themselves admit that they have no clue how man acquired his unique ability to generate, communicate, and store information.

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 The Galilean Challenge - Noam Chomsky – April 2017 Excerpt: The capacity for language is species specific, something shared by humans and unique to them. It is the most striking feature of this curious organism, and a foundation for its remarkable achievement,,, There has been considerable progress in understanding the nature of the internal language, but its free creative use remains a mystery. This should come as no surprise. In a recent review of far simpler cases of voluntary action, neuroscientists Emilio Bizzi and Robert Ajemian remark, in the case of something so simple as raising one’s arm, that “the detail of this complicated process, which critically involves coordinate and variable transformations from spatial movement goals to muscle activations, needs to be elaborated further. Phrased more fancifully, we have some idea as to the intricate design of the puppet and the puppet strings, but we lack insight into the mind of the puppeteer.”8 The normal creative use of language is an even more dramatic example.,,, One fact appears to be well established. The faculty of language is a true species property, invariant among human groups, and unique to humans in its essential properties. It follows that there has been little or no evolution of the faculty since human groups separated from one another,,, There is little evidence of anything like human language, or symbolic behavior altogether, before the emergence of modern humans.,,, Our intricate knowledge of what even the simplest words mean is acquired virtually without experience. At peak periods of language acquisition, children acquire about a word an hour, often on one presentation.26 The rich meaning of even the most elementary words must be substantially innate. The evolutionary origin of such concepts is a complete mystery.,,, --- Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at MIT. http://inference-review.com/article/the-galilean-challenge

In fact, instead of information being ‘emergent’ from a material basis, (as Darwinists hold), advances in quantum mechanics now show that it is material that is ‘emergent’ from an information basis, (as Christians have always held)

"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

In the following video at the 48:24 mark 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

It is hard to imagine a more convincing proof that we are made ‘in the image of God’, than finding that both the universe and life itself are ‘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 have come to ‘master the planet’ precisely because of our ability infuse information into material substrates.

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.

Seversky goes on to claim that atheistic materialism led to,

effective treatment of disease,

And yet Darwinian presuppositions have had nothing to do with man developing ‘effective treatment of disease’,

Against "Darwinian Medicine" – Dr. Michael Egnor - August 9, 2016 Excerpt: Darwinist Randolph Nesse has been peddling "Darwinian Medicine" for years.,,, He argues for integration of Darwinian science into medical school curricula,,, The very admission that Darwinism has had no role in medical science is a telling argument not for its inclusion, but for its irrelevance. Medical science is remarkably successful. Antibiotics, cybernetics, cancer chemotherapy, bone marrow transplants, hip replacements, heart transplants, and a host of near-miraculous advances have greatly extended our lifespan and improved the quality of our lives -- all without Darwin. Whether or not Darwinian hypotheses can be teased out of some medical advances, it is simply a fact that doctors and medical researchers pay no attention to Darwinian speculations in their work, and their work has been astonishingly successful. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/08/against_darwini103058.html

In fact in so far as Darwinian presuppositions have influenced medical thinking those presuppositions have had horrid consequences for man. i.e. Eugenics, Euthanasia, and rampant medical malpractice brought on by the false Darwinian belief in ‘vestigial’, i.e. useless’, organs. Shoot, biology itself does not need Darwinian presuppositions,

"In fact, over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry, and physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all." Marc Kirschner, founding chair of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, Boston Globe, Oct. 23, 2005 "While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky’s dictum that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”, most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas. Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superflous one.” A.S. Wilkins, editor of the journal BioEssays, Introduction to "Evolutionary Processes" - (2000).

Seversky goes on to try to claim

increased crop yields

And again, Darwinian evolution had nothing to do with “increased crop yields“. As Jerry Coyne himself admitted, “Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’. Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties. Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all.”

“Truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say. Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. But hasn’t evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding? Not very much. Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’. Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties. Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all.” (Jerry Coyne, “Selling Darwin: Does it matter whether evolution has any commercial applications?,” reviewing The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life by David P. Mindell, in Nature, 442:983-984 (August 31, 2006).)

Seversky goes on to try to claim that atheistic materialism lays behind,,,

the technology we all take for granted, to name but a few, have been highly beneficial.

The ‘technology we all take for granted’ is certainly NOT the result of Seversky’s atheistic materialism but is clearly the result of intelligent design. Specifically, the ‘top-down’ infusion of mathematical and/or logical information into material substrates, by intelligent minds, lies at the very basis of many, if not all, of man’s most stunning, almost miraculous, technological advances in recent decades.

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 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

Seversky further remarked,

There can be very few now who would be prepared to give all that (technology) up.

And yet Seversky himself, when he rejects Intelligent Design, specifically rejecting it because of God, and adopts atheistic materialism, is himself apparently “prepared to give all that up” without even batting an eye. Thus in conclusion, Seversky’s post is, (as is usual for his posts on UD), a baseless series of claims for his atheistic materialism for which he has no evidence. Baseless claims that are, in fact, completely opposite to the reality of the situation. It is a shame. Seversky is certainly not a complete idiot but his atheistic worldview repeatedly makes it seem as if he is. I think the Bible says something about that, i.e. ‘claiming to be wise, they became fools,’

Romans 1:22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools,

bornagain77

A more serious one is a person I know who finds it necessary to respond to a certain commenter on a blog with an insult, regardless of what the original comment was (OCD possibly combined with Tourets).

Brother Brian does that. He will even bring up a person who isn't even part of the discussion just to get a low blow in. He does it all of the time. He even lies about people just to try to get attention. Nice own goal, ace... ET

Lol oh boy just read it, ha. BB thank you and no i hope I didn’t come across as comparing, I wasn’t, i was just saying it wouldn’t be helpful due to the how it can both change and how it varies per person But thank u AaronS1978

seversky:

I would say that the consequences of atheistic materialism for humanity in terms of knowledge of the Universe at large, effective treatment of disease, increased crop yields and the technology we all take for granted, to name but a few, have been highly beneficial.

That's because you are deluded and don't care about reality. ET

AaronS1978, no, your comment made perfect sense. Obviously my minor OCD is not debilitating, as yours can be. I sincerely hope that you continue to be able to keep on top of it. Brother Brian

I wouldn’t say it really would produce any kind of help to be honest with you because of the variation in OCD now everybody does have some level of it but that’s only because everybody has a capacity for fear, OCD can latch itself to various different things just so happens to be that you’re friends with OCD is latched to morality In my case my OCD has bounced from various different things it hasn’t been always just one type of behavior sometimes you can overcome the behavior and then your OCD latches to something else to very frustrating thing So in your friends case OCD has latched to the consequences of morality and their her fear reflex will probably chime off which causes her a lot of problems That’s why I can be anywhere between opening a door three times and washing your hands wearing about if someone is going to post something in future events and you can’t control it and you freak out about it and you have to check every single time every single day and you feel that if you check it’s not going to happen but you have to keep checking no matter what I apologize if this message is messed up I’m using talk text at this point as I am driving and I should not be doing that AaronS1978

Bornagain77@ 10/i>

The consequences for man in assuming Atheistic Naturalism, on both the personal level and on the level of societies as a whole, have been devastating.

I would say that the consequences of atheistic materialism for humanity in terms of knowledge of the Universe at large, effective treatment of disease, increased crop yields and the technology we all take for granted, to name but a few, have been highly beneficial. There can be very few now who would be prepared to give all that up.

In the following study it was found that, “those middle-aged adults who go to church, synagogues, mosques or other houses of worship reduce their mortality risk by 55%.”

I will note that the lead author of that study is both a professor of medicine and ordained clergy so I would prefer to see a detailed analysis of the methodology before accepting its conclusions. That said, I don't find them surprising. We are social animals. I would expect that membership of a stable and supportive social group - such as a religion - would have beneficial health effects for that reason alone. In fact, the key takeaway for me was that the benefit was there regardless of faith or denomination. The religion was irrelevant.

Needless to say, living “9.45 and 5.64 years longer” is about as dramatic a demonstration as you could have that our ‘spiritual’ beliefs do indeed have a direct effect on our physical well being.

Again, it doesn't matter which beliefs. They all have beneficial effects, which is all the other studies seem to show. There is nothing to indicate that Christianity is better than any other faith by that measure.

As to society as a whole, the devastating consequences when a government tries to enforce atheistic ideology on a people have been unimaginably horrid. The unmitigated horror visited upon man, by state sponsored atheism, would be hard to exaggerate,,, Here’s what happens when Atheists/evolutionists/non-Christians take control of Government:

“169,202,000 Murdered: Summary and Conclusions [20th Century Democide] ...

And over the centuries before the twentieth, when Europe was a collection of Christian states of various flavors, we have:

Let us look for a moment at the number of victims sacrificed on the altars of the Christian Moloch: — 1,000,000 perished during the early Arian schism; 1,000,000 during the Carthaginian struggle; 7,000,000 during the Saracen slaughters. In Spain 5,000,000 perished during the eight Crusades; 2,000,000 of Saxons and Scandinavians lost their lives in opposing the introduction of the blessings of Christianity. 1,000,000 were destroyed in the Holy(?) Wars against the Netherlands, Albigenses, Waldenses, and Huguenots. 30,000,000 Mexicans and Peruvians were slaughtered ere they could be convinced of the beauties(?) of the Christian creed. 9,000,000 were burned for witchcraft. Total, 56,000,000.

-- Quoted fromThe Rationalist's Manual (1897) by M D Aletheia

All this underscores the blatantly obvious fact that when a man denies God he ends up subtracting all the real meaning, hope, and purpose out of his his/their life(s), and then all one is left with is the utter despair of nihilism with no real hope or meaning to cling to.

All this underscores that, if you actually want to practice the scientific method you claim to be following, when approaching these issues, you need to examine all the evidence bearing on such matters, not just the bits that support - or can be turned to support - your personal beliefs.

Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

Ephesians 4:25 Seversky

AronS1978, I think we all have OCD to some level. When I walk down a hallway, I always tap on the wall. I have a friend who always circles the block to double check that he closed his garage door. Obviously these are extremely minor inconveniences and not even worth trying to address. A more serious one is a person I know who finds it necessary to respond to a certain commenter on a blog with an insult, regardless of what the original comment was (OCD possibly combined with Tourets). Other people have even more severe OCD, to the point that it seriously affects their lives. As a previous commenter said, OCD is a spectrum. It is not one size fits all. What I would be interested to find out is if the OCD drugs reduce the anxiety and guilt we experience when we violate one of our moral values. If they do, it would provide valuable information on the origin and nature of our sense of morality. Brother Brian

Most OCD’s have one thing in common fear Fear is the reaction that actually motivates the behavior even morality can be based off of a fear Not doing the action causes a great amount of fear almost a shock to your body it’s like being electrocuted is the best way to describe it You know it’s irrational, You were completely aware of the fact that doing the action has nothing to do with reality But doing doing the action Is literally the only way to relieve the pain or the fear There are certain environmental causes that can trigger the OCD and in many cases I was able to out think it and rationalize it away But it takes a lot of work and a lot of concentration because it’s that shock to the system that fear that kicks in and it makes you want to do it Now in regards to meditation prayer and chemical changes that are connected to those, they’re all a process called mindful thinking and being part of be mindful can actually physically change your brain Jeffrey Schwartz does do a lot with this and I did find it very helpful he’s been one of the most helpful things that I have ever encountered But again it depends on the type that you’re suffering with The fact that mindfulness can cause a chemical change in your brain hints more to an immaterial power, But like I said I am a firm believer in both in a previous post I was arguing about how the mind and brain are very similar to the combination of the piano a pianist and music, you need both to create the music, If you have a broken piano you’re going to make crappy music, if you have a terrible pianist you’re going to make crappy music, But the fact that the music is terrible the pianist goes out of his way to change things and vice a versa, and the Pianist can go and fine-tune or fix the piano to also improve the music But I can’t emphasize this more it’s both you need both you don’t have one you don’t have the other you have both because if it wasn’t both you would be entirely under the mercy of any physical change in your brain and you would never be able to change it and you wouldn’t know better, and if it was truly all immaterial there would be no way for you to interact with the physical world around you Anyways guys thanks for your cares and concerns I do appreciate that and let me tell you it is a huge pain in the ass sometimes I went through three different types of medications from Prozac to something called copoleprine ( I am not 100% sure how to spell that it made me fat though) The one thing that it did do was take the edge off the worry feeling that you would get that was coupled with the excessive compulsive behavior But it never stopped the intrusive thought it would make you lethargic in many cases and it was hard to think and others but the excessive compulsive thought or the intrusive thought was always there That was the thing that was triggering the fear response in the first place It wasn’t until I actually started learning coping mechanisms an actual real cognitive therapy and just flat talking to someone that really started to help me But that’s my advice I think one of the biggest helping factors was just talking to someone about it more than anything AaronS1978

as to OCD:

Jeffrey Schwartz: You Are More than Your Brain - Science Uprising Extra Content https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFIOSQNuXuY

bornagain77

Someone close to me has a version of OCD that highly concerned with not making mistakes of any kind. His moral sense is extremely sensitive, and the thought that he might have done or might do something morally wrong paralyzes him with anxiety. As BB implies, like most personality traits, OCD lies on a spectrum: for some people it makes them highly productive people but for others it becomes excessive and debilitating. DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) has helped him some, mostly by getting him to accept that he has severe mental illness and needs to use coping skills as best he can. hazel

What does Brian do for its obvious OCD? ET

Aaron1978

Mental illness is success treated with Cognitive therapy too and a combination of the two works even better

I agree. But it is also known that things like therapy, meditation and other activities involving the brain change the chemistry in the brain. I guess the big question is whether these chemical changes are the result of physical causes or immaterial causes. The challenge is trying to figure this out. I am sorry to hear about your OCD problems. I have always thought that OCD is just a necessary trait that is amplified. Is “muscle memory” nothing more than a minor form of OCD? And “muscle memory” simplifies our lives in thousands of different ways. I have also wondered if our sense of morality is just another manifestation of OCD. We all know that we find it very difficult to do something that violates one of our moral values, and that we feel very uncomfortable (guilty) when we do. A similar feeling, I would think, we feel when we don’t do something that our OCD compels us to do. Brother Brian

The consequences for man in assuming Atheistic Naturalism, on both the personal level and on the level of societies as a whole, have been devastating. On the personal level we find that the mortality rate for those who adhere to the atheistic worldview is significantly higher than those who believe in God. In the following study it was found that, “those middle-aged adults who go to church, synagogues, mosques or other houses of worship reduce their mortality risk by 55%.”

Can attending church really help you live longer? This study says yes – June 1, 2017 Excerpt: Specifically, the study says those middle-aged adults who go to church, synagogues, mosques or other houses of worship reduce their mortality risk by 55%. The Plos One journal published the “Church Attendance, Allostatic Load and Mortality in Middle Aged Adults” study May 16. “For those who did not attend church at all, they were twice as likely to die prematurely than those who did who attended church at some point over the last year,” Bruce said. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/06/02/can-attending-church-really-help-you-live-longer-study-says-yes/364375001/

That translates into living “9.45 and 5.64 years longer…”

Study: Religiously affiliated people lived “9.45 and 5.64 years longer…” July 1, 2018 Excerpt: Self-reported religious service attendance has been linked with longevity. However, previous work has largely relied on self-report data and volunteer samples. Here, mention of a religious affiliation in obituaries was analyzed as an alternative measure of religiosity. In two samples (N = 505 from Des Moines, IA, and N = 1,096 from 42 U.S. cities), the religiously affiliated lived 9.45 and 5.64 years longer, respectively, than the nonreligiously affiliated. Additionally, social integration and volunteerism partially mediated the religion–longevity relation. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/study-religiously-affiliated-people-lived-religiously-affiliated-lived-9-45-and-5-64-years-longer/ Can Religion Extend Your Life? - By Chuck Dinerstein — June 16, 2018 Excerpt: The researcher's regression analysis suggested that the effect of volunteering and participation accounted for 20% or 1 year of the impact, while religious affiliation accounted for the remaining four years or 80%. https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/06/16/can-religion-extend-your-life-13092

Needless to say, living “9.45 and 5.64 years longer” is about as dramatic a demonstration as you could have that our 'spiritual' beliefs do indeed have a direct effect on our physical well being. Moreover, Theists recover more quickly from mental illnesses than Atheists do:

Christians respond better to psychiatric treatment than atheists: - July 21, 2013 Excerpt: “Our work suggests that people with a moderate to high level of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term psychiatric treatment than those without, regardless of their religious affiliation. Belief was associated with not only improved psychological well-being, but decreases in depression and intention to self-harm,” explained Rosmarin. The study looked at 159 patients, recruited over a one-year period. Each participant was asked to gauge their belief in God as well as their expectations for treatment outcome and emotion regulation, each on a five-point scale. Levels of depression, well being, and self-harm were assessed at the beginning and end of their treatment program. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/religion/if-religious-believers-are-crazy/ Research on religion and serious mental illness Harold G. Koenig David B. Larson Andrew J. Weaver - 27 February 2006 According to this review, religion plays a largely positive role in mental health; future research on severe mental disorders should include religious factors more directly https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/yd.23319988010

Moreover, not only do Theists recover more quickly than Atheists and are living significantly longer than Atheists, but Theists are also found to be much happier with their lives than Atheists are:

Are Religious People Happier Than Atheists? - 2000 Excerpt: there does indeed appear to be a link between religion and happiness. Several studies have been done, but to give an example, one study found that the more frequently people attended religious events, the happier they were; 47% of people who attended several types a week reported that they were ‘very happy’, as opposed to 28% who attended less than monthly. In practical terms, religious people have the upper hand on atheists in several other areas. They drink and smoke less, are less likely to abuse drugs, and they stay married longer. After a stressful event like bereavement, unemployment, or illness, those who worship don’t take it as hard and recover faster. All of the above are likely to be beneficial to a person’s happiness. Additionally, religious people, as a result of their beliefs, have a greater sense of meaning, purpose and hope in their lives. http://generallythinking.com/are-religious-people-happier-than-atheists/

As to society as a whole, the devastating consequences when a government tries to enforce atheistic ideology on a people have been unimaginably horrid. The unmitigated horror visited upon man, by state sponsored atheism, would be hard to exaggerate,,, Here's what happens when Atheists/evolutionists/non-Christians take control of Government:

“169,202,000 Murdered: Summary and Conclusions [20th Century Democide] I BACKGROUND 2. The New Concept of Democide [Definition of Democide] 3. Over 133,147,000 Murdered: Pre-Twentieth Century Democide II 128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERS 4. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State 5. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill 6. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State 7. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime III 19,178,000 VICTIMS: THE LESSER MEGA-MURDERERS 8. 5,964,000 Murdered: Japan’s Savage Military 9. 2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State 10. 1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey’s Genocidal Purges 11. 1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State 12. 1,585,000 Murdered: Poland’s Ethnic Cleansing 13. 1,503,000 Murdered: The Pakistani Cutthroat State 14. 1,072,000 Murdered: Tito’s Slaughterhouse IV 4,145,000 VICTIMS: SUSPECTED MEGAMURDERERS 15. 1,663,000 Murdered? Orwellian North Korea 16. 1,417,000 Murdered? Barbarous Mexico 17. 1,066,000 Murdered? Feudal Russia” This is, in reality, probably just a drop in the bucket. Who knows how many undocumented murders there were. It also doesn’t count all the millions of abortions from around the world. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM

All this underscores the blatantly obvious fact that when a man denies God he ends up subtracting all the real meaning, hope, and purpose out of his his/their life(s), and then all one is left with is the utter despair of nihilism with no real hope or meaning to cling to. As Dr. Craig points out, "without God, man and the universe are without any real significance."

The Absurdity of Life without God - William Lane Craig Excerpt: Meaning of Life Without God, there can be no objective meaning in life. Sartre's program is actually an exercise in self-delusion. Sartre is really saying, "Let's pretend the universe has meaning." And this is just fooling ourselves. The point is this: if God does not exist, then life is objectively meaningless; but man cannot live consistently and happily knowing that life is meaningless; so in order to be happy he pretends life has meaning. But this is, of course, entirely inconsistent—for without God, man and the universe are without any real significance. https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/the-absurdity-of-life-without-god/

Fortunately the truth of the matter if far different than what Atheists prefer to believe. Man and the universe, as far as science itself is concerned, are found to have 'real significance, meaning and purpose' and therefore our lives are not utterly meaningless as atheists are forced to believe when they reject God:

Overturning of the Copernican Principle by both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics - August 2019 https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/how-many-earth-like-planets-are-there/#comment-682422

bornagain77

'Except for the fact that “materialistic science” is a contradiction of terms. And no one went onto researching the brain and epilepsy saying “the mind arose from the mindless via blind and mindless processes therefore the problem is …”' ...in a nutshell, ET. But we must be careful not to fall into the quackery of drawing logical inferences from empirical data, mustn't we? That just wouldn't be scientific. Axel

Yet many mental illnesses are successfully treated through chemical means.

The mental illnesses are due to faulty hardware brought on by genetic entropy. Faulty material corrected by material means. That has no bearing on whether or not the brain arose via materialistic processes. ET

Mental illness is successfully treated with Cognitive therapy too and a combination of the two works even better I have been on multiple chemical treatments for my excessive compulsive and manic depression ( severe ) I do mean multiple and they have wrecked my body and they did nothing for me what he did work was cognitive therapy No I’m not saying What worked for me would work for everybody else but just because some chemical treatments work for some people doesn’t mean works for others Nor is it proof that materialistic treatments being 100% correct Now my previous post is a perfect example of why AI sucks And I am stupid for continuously using it because I’m lazy and I don’t want to type with my fingers AaronS1978

Mental illness is success treated with Cognitive therapy too and a combination of the two works even better I have been on multiple chemical treatments for my excessive compulsive and suppression and I do mean multiple and they have wrecked my body and they did nothing for me what he did work was cognitive therapy No I’m not saying that supposed to be for everyone but just because some chemical treatments work for some people doesn’t mean works for others Nor is it proof that materialistic treatments being 100% correct AaronS1978

Yet many mental illnesses are successfully treated through chemical means. Brother Brian

Yes, we still have a long way to go in understanding completely how the/brain and body work but materialistic science has made a little progress.

Except for the fact that "materialistic science" is a contradiction of terms. And no one went onto researching the brain and epilepsy saying "the mind arose from the mindless via blind and mindless processes therefore the problem is …" ET

Not a psychiatrist, nor do I play one on TV. But, > The medical model has increased self-stigma as sufferers come to see themselves as physically compromised and destined to a lifetime of disability and medication. Um, I see the opposite here: I see less stigma, and people who would not be able to cope with real life are able cope thanks to modern drugs. I would agree that times are more mentally stressful now, thanks to a lot of cultural factors (longer hours at work, more singleness/less marriage, and so on). >And there has been a huge spike in mental illness as of recently which is very alarming It is hard here to separate the increase in actual illness from our greater ability and propensity to diagnose it in more detail in more people. I see people being more willing than ever to seek help, rather than to keep it in. Just my opinions. EDTA

Seversky It’s not the fact that it hasn’t made any progress it’s the fact that a lot of people who are also philosophically motivated wheeled materialistic science as a weapon against immaterial things and assume that it is an all or nothing situation The fact of the matter is it’s both It’s not one it’s not the other there is definitely a circular dichotomy going on between the mind and the brain they both feet on one another you break one and you break the other The big issue is when you completely base it off of one that’s when you start getting the problems people become chemically dependent on something that isn’t solving the issue, And there has been a huge spike in mental illness as of recently which is very alarming But it is dangerous to be one way or the other the human brain does require a human mind and the human mind does require a human brain it is not one or the other it is both AaronS1978

So a Professor of Religion is a also competent authority on psychology and evolutionary biology? Yes, we still have a long way to go in understanding completely how the/brain and body work but materialistic science has made a little progress. For example, we now understand that epileptic seizures are caused by misfiring brain cells not demonic possession and that diabetes can be managed effectively now we know of insulin and its role in glucose metabolism, while prayer is ineffective. It makes sensed to stick with what works for as long as it works, doesn't it? Seversky