BS: The God Delusion 2010

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,josep
Date: 19 Sep 10 - 09:41 PM

"Leakey believed that habilis was a direct human ancestor, with erectus out of the picture. While H. habilis is a generally accepted species, they opinion that it was a direct human ancestor seems to be in question. There are now at least two species of early Homo (whether habilis and rudolfensis or an undescribed species) living prior to 2.0 myr. In addition, H. erectus (which is almost universally accepted as a direct human ancestor) continues to be pushed further back into the paleontological record, making it possible that it is the first Homo ancestor of modern humans.

"Other problems include that some people see KNM-ER 1813 as a near perfect erectus, except for its small brain and size. It could be an erectus that was at the small scale of a wide variation of traits, or it may belong to ergaster, which some believe to be the ancestor of erectus. The questions are far from solved, and new specimens are needed. Homo habilis may be a direct human ancestor, a dead-end side-branch that leads nowhere, an invalid species whose designated examples belong in other species, or Wolpoff may be right, and all these species are basically part of one highly variable widespread species." –C. David Kreger

http://www.archaeologyinfo.com/homohabilis.htm

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,josep
Date: 19 Sep 10 - 09:43 PM

"Despite its distinctively human cranium and its chronological position near the origin of the human line, habilis had a fairly apelike physical form: its arms were almost as long as its legs. It is therefore a controversial species. Similar in physique to the australopithids, without a clear evolutionary descendant, and appearing highly variable in the fossil record, habilis raises more questions than the available fossils are able to answer."

http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/hfs4.html

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,josep
Date: 19 Sep 10 - 10:03 PM

///"I know a guy who had a heart attack and died for a short time. When they revived him he had no short term memory."

*sigh* Well, he didn't really "die" then, did he?///

Well, fuck, I don't know--do you?? He was pronounced dead and then he was revived and when he woke up, he had no short-term memory. Am I going too fast for you??

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,josep
Date: 19 Sep 10 - 10:12 PM

////Also, just because we don't know everything *about* how the mind comes from the brain, doesn't detract from the knowledge that it's doing it somehow. Again, what else could reasonably be hypothesized?////

Except you haven't hypothesized anything. You're making a dogmatic statement and apparently expecting people to buy it. Either you have a scientific experiment that proves your assertion or you have a logical argument.

The only thing that has been experimentally proven is that consciousness collapses the wave function into a particle, into matter. That HAS been experimentally proven. So it is highly unlikely that the brain-which is matter-produces the agent necessary to create matter from quantum waves. If this doesn't prove that the brain does not and cannot make consciousness, it very strongly indicates it. Now, what do you have to proves this not to be true? Just saying "what else could it be?" won't cut it. It could be a lot of things. You have to make a case.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 19 Sep 10 - 10:51 PM

You have to make a case

You don't seem to have made yours to anyone's satisfaction yet.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: TheSnail
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 07:45 AM

GUEST,josep

The only thing that has been experimentally proven is that consciousness collapses the wave function into a particle, into matter. That HAS been experimentally proven.

You keep saying things to that effect, but try as I might, I can find no evidence to back it up. Could you give us some references?

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 11:13 AM

Conjoined twins with two heads have two minds, no matter how conjoined they are. Those with one head have one mind.

No, I didn't do the experiment, Nature did.

Again, what else could *reasonably* make mind, other than brain?

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 11:26 AM

stringsinger-if your post included answer to mine,it appears to me you missed my point.the dissenting scientists do present evidence countering evolutionary theories but these are dismissed on philosophical grounds.they[i suggest]cling to a dogmatic faith position as much as the creationist though darwin may be the nearest they get to religious devotions.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 11:55 AM

"*sigh* Well, he didn't really "die" then, did he?///

Well, fuck, I don't know--do you?? He was pronounced dead and then he was revived and when he woke up, he had no short-term memory. Am I going too fast for you??"

No, but perhaps the docs were going too fast for him. They didn't need his kidneys by any chance, did they? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 12:01 PM

since modern humans came about in less time than that (20,000 year)

GUEST,josep

I don't suppose you have a source for this?

My understanding is that genetically we have been "Homo sapiens" the species we are now for for longer than 100,000 years.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 12:03 PM

"...they[i suggest]cling to a dogmatic faith position as much as the creationist ..."

This is simply an equivocation on the notion of "dogmatic faith". Scientists do not employ "dogmatic faith" if one does, he is not acting as a scientist at the time.

(Equivocation--"misleading use of a term with more than one meaning or sense (by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time")

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 12:28 PM

"those alleging macro evoluton as established fact"

That would be unscientific, wouldn't it?

I think the difference is in the paradigm of belief rather than any single fact or set of facts.

I know that I can't take genesis as a literal description of modern science. That falls apart in the first few hundred words.

There was light, day and night and thriving plant biology before there was a sun?

The stars were created 4 days after the earth and apparently the stars were visible at that point, even though the closed is so far away that its light would take 4 YEARS to reach the Earth.

If you accept physics and cosmology, It is wise to accept biology is well. But more importantly, if the bible refutes Darwin, it equally refutes Kepler, Copernicus, Newton and Einstein.

I believe that "Creationists" are bearing false witness. If you have enough knowledge to make a science-based argument for creation as literal truth, and you do not have the courage to also defend the first few hundred words of the Bible as literal truth.

One of the most wonderful things about the Bible, is that it is written in a way that enlightens the truth seeker in every age and at every age.

The story of creation tells the child or the person of remote time past all he needs to know. But to the curious, the logical, knowledge-based seeker, The first few words have a completely different message. It is saying. "You cannot take this literally as science. You must search for deeper meaning."

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Amos
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 12:42 PM

Again, what else could *reasonably* make mind, other than brain?

Well, start with what constitutes a mind. Is it the neurons themselves? What does a neuron "mean"?

If it is not the structure of the brain, then perhaps it is the mental impressions and pictures we use to sort out who's who and what came from where and so on. Most people have HUGE collections of these images of mental impressions, which get called up for remembering, and used in calculations. If these are the mind (the content of it) then why assume they are generated by the brain rather than by the conscious spirit of the owner/operator of the brain? This model adds spirituality into the mix, which is of course anathema to those whose sole training in science is in materail practices and who cannot gettheir wits around non-material existence and reasoning about same, but that is not the point. For some people, you are a spiritual being having a phsyical adventure. For others you are purely a physical structure who occasionally has a spiritual delusion.

It is short-sighted, IMHO, to assume that one or the other of these views should be left out of the range of possibilities.

If by your question you mean "what other physical thing" could make the mind, there are possibilities. For example, the fields of themind might be electromagnetic waves hologramicazlly interpreted by the brain, not generated by it, a sort of sea of solitons generated by ... oh, wait, there we go again.. by folksingers!!! Voila!



A

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 12:43 PM

There is certain Dogma in science. There is also a requirement for some degree of faith.

But both are a result of too many enthusiastic scientists, trying to make mark by being the first to point something out.

You need to have a certain degree of faith in the process, because you cannot test every thing yourself. If you bring up something outside of accepted theories, you are likely to be met with dogma because of the amount of work that went into establishing the theories in the firsty place.

I can't think of a field where this is more true than Evolutionary Biology. Given the amount of time and effort that has gone into this debate, I cannot imagine that any theory of biblical creation has not been analyzed thoroughly to the full extent that it can be. Scientists had looked at this pretty thoroughly by the time of Darwin's death. In the intervening years pretty much every piece of significant evidence has been looked at through that lens. The evidence is just not there.


Carl Sagan said it very well. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 12:53 PM

Amos,

Mind without a brain? It's not a scientific question. Its philosophy. The "mind" is not even a scientific concept is it?

Science is about what can be measured. The question would be more like what computational tasks is the organism capable of? On the other hand, I don't think having a brain alone is enough to allow one to have a mind. Lots of critters have brains without having a mind, and even we react to our environments without engaging our brains. At the very least, a human mind requires a complex endocrine system to add the dimension of emotional response.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 12:56 PM

>>>"*sigh* Well, he didn't really "die" then, did he?///

Well, fuck, I don't know--do you?? He was pronounced dead and then he was revived and when he woke up, he had no short-term memory. Am I going too fast for you??"<<<


Obviously a lot of the debate over the so called "God Delusion" stems from changing knowledge of an ideas about concepts like Death.

It is certain that such concepts were much less murky 2000 years ago.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Amos
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 01:01 PM

Jack:

We're talking about a whole different topic here; to put it another way there are two views of what a person is (maybe more, but two major ones): one is that a person is merely a body with a complex computer on top, and a lot of experiential wetware patterns that add up to what passes for thought.

Another view is that a human being is a spiritual being running a mind and a body complex.

In the latter model, minds (complexes of thoughts and pictures and methods for using them) are a byproduct of thought by the being, not a product of meat. And in that model, an OOB individual, for example, thinks quite well. Those who have had NDEs while flatlining a brain-monitor and have then come to also report they had a continuous mental life throughout, regardless of the flat-line monitor.

Go figger! :D


A

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 01:20 PM

Amos, LOL, folk singers?

Again, though, I'm not saying HOW brain makes mind, only that we know it does.

Life is biochemistry, mind is electrochemistry. Life makes brain, brain makes mind. That is why there is no life before or after death of the mind. There are, however, memories of the dead in the mind of the living, and if you can keep *that* up, you can live forever - in the mind of others. And not knowing abou it.

That is why I want to live forever.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 01:56 PM

I would think that a near-death experience, where the heart temporarily stops feeding oxygen to the brain, would affect the electro-chemical processes of the brain in ways hard to predict, but like physical inputs during dreaming, would cause strange patterns as the brain tried to cope with it all.
Upon resuscitation, I'd imagine there would certainly be 'unusual' memories of it, like intense dreams. *I* have had many flying dreams, and in a couple of them I seemed to 'see' myself floating.....though most were just seeing the landscape from 'above'. In no case was I near death.
I know that's not nearly as interesting a theory as 'having a spiritual side' that is not dependent on the brain, but it certainly is easier to explain!

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Amos
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 02:13 PM

Life is biochemistry, mind is electrochemistry

Well there you have it in a nutshell, don't you!

Man from mud, and Mozart from a very large number of molecules and a dash of lightning.

The subtle paradox of thought characterizing itself as matter --humorous though it is-- seems to escape your radar for some reason.

Never mind, I am not about to try and convince anyone of anything. I just think you are leaving the largest half of existence completely out of her calculations.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 02:38 PM

>>Another view is that a human being is a spiritual being running a mind and a body complex.<<

That may be a view, but it is in no way scientific.

A brain is a body part.

A mind is a philosophical construct. I don't believe in the mind as an existential thing any more than I believe Karma, the Id or the Ego.

But all are useful words to describe small portions of much more complex ideas.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: TheSnail
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 03:04 PM

Amos

Man from mud, and Mozart from a very large number of molecules and a dash of lightning.

Yes. Wonderful, isn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Amos
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 03:22 PM

That may be a view, but it is in no way scientific.

A brain is a body part.

A mind is a philosophical construct.

Right. No pictures, Jack? No images of data? Pfft.

As for this being in no way scientific, you have just defined yourself out of the conversation, with the same circular reasoning I protested about up thread. "Science deals with material things only. Scientific method only applies to material objects. Therefore no assertion about non-material existance is scientific BECAUSE it is not material." THat's a foolish logical chain, IMHO.

A

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Paul Burke
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 04:25 PM

Science deals with material things only. Scientific method only applies to material objects.

That would mean science couldn't deal with this chain of computer programs I'm writing this on. Which is clearly tosh. The hardware or the disc or the disc image isn't the program; only the process allows me to type here and you to read it there.

So science CAN deal with abstract chains of events; for example memories and minds.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Amos
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 04:27 PM

If a mind were merely an abstract series of events, how could you see your own memories?

A

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 04:35 PM

"Therefore no assertion about non-material existance is scientific BECAUSE it is not material."

No, It is not scientific, because it cannot be observed.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Amos
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 05:17 PM

Wal, I dunno; first of all, every phenomenon that has been reported HAS been observed, but it's the kind of observation science gets jittery about because it is individual rather than shared as common. But the realm of shared common perception is the commons of space-time. Individual perceptions aren't replicable in the same way.\

It is well and good to say such things are "not scientific" in the sense that they can't be hard-metered the way light, gravity, mass and other attributes can be. But it is a serious error to move from that position to saying they do not exist.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 05:44 PM

Indeed, it IS wonderful!

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 07:24 PM

I get very suspicious when anyone declares that anything at all is beyond science. Science isn't a bunch of boffins in white coats filling up test-tubes. It's us and the way we think about the world, how we investigate it, gather evidence about it and how we reason. I can't think of a single thing that we should properly regard as beyond science, and especially not God.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,josep
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 08:08 PM

///The only thing that has been experimentally proven is that consciousness collapses the wave function into a particle, into matter. That HAS been experimentally proven.

You keep saying things to that effect, but try as I might, I can find no evidence to back it up. Could you give us some references?///

It's called the Delayed-Choice Experiment and it was formulated by John Wheeler. It's complicated and requires diagrams but wikipedia shows it pretty well. It builds on the slit experiment. The slit experiment was simple--when we fire electrons through single slit with some film behind it, the film shows impact patterns meaning they were particles. But when the electrons are fired through two parallel slits, they form an interference pattern meaning they were waves.   

What Delayed-Choice did was emit a beam of light onto a a half-silvered mirror M1 and split it at angles and then both beams are reflected off regular mirrors such that they converge at a point P. Now we put a half-silvered mirror M2 at P which forces the beams to interfere constructively at one side of P and photon counter there will register a tick meaning we are registering a photon.

At the other side of P, the beams interfere destructively and a photon counter there registers no tick meaning we have a wave. For there to be interference means that the photon is split at M1 and travels BOTH routes not one or the other. Otherwise there could be no interference. And interference pattern indicates a wave.

To register the particle aspect of the wavicle, we simply remove M2 and let one or the other counter register a tick and that path has the particle--either the transmitted one or the reflected one.

Now suppose we decide at the last pico second (and this was actually done in the laboratory) to remove the half-silvered mirror M2 at P1 to measure the particle even though by then, the beams are converging to interfere as waves. What happens? Both counters tick one at a time. No interference. That is, we still register a particle if M2 is removed at the last possible moment. This should be impossible. It means that even though we had a split wave packet at M1, it somehow retroactively went back and changed to a particle along which ever path we register the particle on. It seems that causality was violated. The photon seems to respond to our delayed choice retroactively.

The delay really has nothing to do with anything. It just illustrates the point that the collapse of the wave packet is, as they say, non-local--action-at-a-distance without signals. The split at M1 was only in potentia--nothing had been "decided." Nothing really happened in space-time. It was just possibilities. By choosing when to remove the mirror, we can choose to see a particle or a wave because we are collapsing the wave function in one beam which automatically negates the possibility of the particle einb in the other beam.

Getting back to Schroedinger's cat, the wave function is collapsed by conscious observation but there is only one path that will contain the particle. The other paths, which were only possibilities are now negated. So if 100 people look in the box at the exact same moment, they will all see the same thing. Consciousness must be a unity. Therefore it is impossible that the brain manufactures consciousness or all consciousnesses would see something different. That they can only see the same collapsed wave function, the same state, each and every one, each and every time, could only be because consciousness is a unity. If consciousness is a unity, it cannot be manufactured by the brain. If it is not manufactured by the brain, then consciousness is separate from the brain.

In other words, there is no fixed objective world but neither is there a separate world for each consciousness because there is only one consciousness and objective reality is its dream.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,josep
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 08:15 PM

///since modern humans came about in less time than that (20,000 year)

GUEST,josep

I don't suppose you have a source for this?

My understanding is that genetically we have been "Homo sapiens" the species we are now for for longer than 100,000 years.///

Yes, it's a bit confusing. I agree that H. sapiens has been around closer to 200,000 years but I was referring to us specifically--the present human race and the only surviving primates of the Homo line.

"Are we genetically different from our Homo sapiens ancestors who lived 10-20,000 years ago? The answer is almost certainly yes. In fact, it is very likely that the rate of evolution for our species has continuously accelerated since the end of the last ice age, roughly 10,000 years ago. This is mostly due to the fact that our human population has explosively grown and moved into new kinds of environments, including cities, where we have been subject to new natural selection pressures. For instance, our larger and denser populations have made it far easier for contagious diseases, such as tuberculosis, small pox, and the plague, to rapidly spread through communities and wreak havoc. This has exerted strong selection for individuals who were fortunate to have immune systems that allowed them to survive. There also has been a marked change in diet for most people around the globe since the last ice age to one that is less varied and now predominantly vegetarian with a heavy dependence on foods made from cereal grains. It is likely that the human species has been able to adapt to these and other new environmental pressures because it has acquired a steadily greater genetic diversity. A larger population naturally has more mutations adding variation to its gene pool simply because there are more people. This happens even if the mutation rate per person remains the same. However, the mutation rate may have actually increased because we have been exposed to new kinds of environmental pollution that can cause additional mutations.
It is not clear what all of the consequences of the environmental and behavioral changes for humans have been. However, it does appear that the average human body size has become somewhat shorter over the last 10,000 years, and we have acquired widespread immunity to the more severe effects of some diseases such as measles and influenza."

http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_4.htm

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Ed T
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 08:16 PM

"Every phenomenon that has been reported HAS been observed"
Is this true? I suspect not so.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Amos
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 08:32 PM

Ed:

Well -- it has been perceived in some manner. The problem of perception and postulated realities is dicey as hell, really--they get entangled.

Josef, here's an interesting article warning about putting too much emphasis onto consciousness and quantum mechanics.

A

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Ed T
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 08:40 PM

"it has been perceived in some manner. The problem of perception and postulated realities is dicey as hell, really--they get entangled"

Agree with that.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 09:14 PM

I reckon consciousness is a state, not a thing, so it can't be separate from the brain. Destroy the brain and consciousness is lost. I need a volunteer and a large hammer to demonstrate this. (I happen to like cats.)

So if 100 people look in the box at the exact same moment, they will all see the same thing. Consciousness must be a unity. Therefore it is impossible that the brain manufactures consciousness or all consciousnesses would see something different. That they can only see the same collapsed wave function, the same state, each and every one, each and every time, could only be because consciousness is a unity. If consciousness is a unity, it cannot be manufactured by the brain. If it is not manufactured by the brain, then consciousness is separate from the brain.

Or... they all see the same thing because the moggy is either dead or alive and can't be both.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 09:17 PM

Although the cat in question was of course only theoretical, and so could be both dead and alive.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,josep
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 09:22 PM

////Josef, here's an interesting article warning about putting too much emphasis onto consciousness and quantum mechanics.////

It looked to me more like an article about not letting new-agers bullshit you by cloaking their agendas behind QM. I never brought them up, I brought up actual experiments performed by people who were the prime formulators of QM. QM isn't like string theory. QM has been tried and tested, has plenty of math to back it up, has made predictions that came true and it is here to stay.

I read papers and books by qualified people. Deepak Chopra is not a physicist to my knowledge. I probably have far more nuclear training than him and I'm not good enough to be a physicist. But I know when I'm reading or watching bullshit. I laughed through "China Syndrome" which was so full of crap and I was working in a nuke plant at the time: "The generator tripped off the line causing the reactor to scram." Really? So if the generator needs to be repaired, we can't trip it off the line without scramming the reactor, eh? Well, that's a real problem and an incredibly bad design for a nuke plant. I wonder how it passed inspection because I would have failed it big time.

But who would believe a paper on nuclear physics written by a Hollywood script-writer?

But John Wheeler, Werner Heisenberg, Neils Bohr, Erwin Schroedinger, Yukawa Hideki--those are some heavy cats. REAL heavy cats.

Btw, Neils Bohr was knighted in Denmark for the Copenhagen Interpretation (which you REALLY should read up on) and have you ever seen what he chose as his coat-of-arms?

Neils Bohr's coat-of-arms

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,josep
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 09:46 PM

///I reckon consciousness is a state, not a thing, so it can't be separate from the brain. Destroy the brain and consciousness is lost. I need a volunteer and a large hammer to demonstrate this. (I happen to like cats.)///

Consciousness is outside space-time. That's why it collapses the wave function. Nothing material can do that. Anything material picks up the dichotomy, what we call a von Neumann chain. Consciousness needs the brain because that is its gateway into space-time.

////So if 100 people look in the box at the exact same moment, they will all see the same thing. Consciousness must be a unity. Therefore it is impossible that the brain manufactures consciousness or all consciousnesses would see something different. That they can only see the same collapsed wave function, the same state, each and every one, each and every time, could only be because consciousness is a unity. If consciousness is a unity, it cannot be manufactured by the brain. If it is not manufactured by the brain, then consciousness is separate from the brain.

Or... they all see the same thing because the moggy is either dead or alive and can't be both.////

That's the classical physics way of thinking and it won't hold up against quantum physics. The physical world is composed of quantum objects. It's been proven. It's indisputable. Quantum objects are just waves in potentia until specifically regarded. If you don't like that, go fight with Murray Gell-Man and David Bohm and Jack Sarfatti. It's out of my hands.

Even classical physics can throw you for a loop. Take four cannonballs that weigh a pound each. Add their weights together and what do you get? 4 lbs. Now weigh them all together at once and what do they weigh? 4 lbs. Now take a nucleon with an atomic weight of 1. Add up four of them and what do they weigh? 4. Now combine them into a nucleus--helium in this case--and what do they weigh? Approximately 3.97 or so. Yes, they weigh less as a nucleus than they do weighed separately and then summed up. That's called mass defect? How can it be? It's perfectly logical once you know the answer.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Amos
Date: 20 Sep 10 - 11:41 PM

The notion that consciousness is a state -- or a class of states--of the body+mind state machine--is intriguing from an informational perspective, I agree, Smokey. But there are a couple of kinds of events which tend to disqualify that model. One is the connection of the state with information from beyond the scope of interaction of the state machine; simple knowing about a remote loved one, or memories of data from prior to the specific machine's existence, and so on. This kind of violation occurs with many of the various spiritual phenomena that have been touched on in these threads--NDEs, OBEs, mystic connections of various kinds.

The other is the simplest kind of understanding, and how such a state machine could actually modulate from complex nets of transmission to a bubble of clear comprehension--an "aha!" moment--and how it could generate understanding mechanically given how distinctly unmechanical understanding itself is.

Rule all those non-conforming data out, on some grounds, and of course you have a neat and complete model.

Why you would want to just forcibly rule out data that was anomalous to your model, I am sure I don't know though. The anomalies are always the most revealing sort of data, because they tell you where your paradigm is leaking.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 21 Sep 10 - 12:16 AM

I'm apt to opt for the (arguably) more likely down to earth explanations of 'spiritual phenomena', Amos, and I think the "aha!" moment is when the brain detects the pattern which makes sense of the information. Not always correctly, I'll grant you..

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Amos
Date: 21 Sep 10 - 01:24 AM

Well, be sure and thank your brain for doing all that detecting of patterns for you. It certainly keeps life interesting.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Amos
Date: 21 Sep 10 - 11:19 AM

Here's a fascinating review of a book by a woman who got caught up in the Suppressed Childhood Memories movement of the early '80's and discovered she had been (according to her suppressed memories) abused by her father as a child. She went on record, accusing him, which caused them (understandably) to become very distant from each other.

Later, when the movement of pop psychology shifted to False Memories Syndrome she realized that it was all false, and she had generated a lie with some telling consequences. She patched things up with her father. She talks about other men, though, who spent twenty years in prison on false charges from the same wave of popular thinking.

The story demonstrates how plastic the mind can be, and how treacherous the mesh of group agreement can become. I suppose there's a lesson in it.

A

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Sep 10 - 11:22 AM

Perception of the same stimulus by multiple people as the same perceived (i.e. created by their mind) thing is hardly evidence that it wasn't their brains *with which* they perceived that stimulus.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 21 Sep 10 - 11:30 AM

hi jack-pleased to see you have some reguard for the bible .the apparent problem of light is not new but if you believe in God light is no problem-he has been the source of the stuff from eternity.it crops up miraculously often in the narratives.possibly the reversed order emphasizes God as creator and sustainer rather than a deified sun .as reguards the other scientists-you assert but dont specify .i think that you are quite right in that evolution is well established-and that would make it harder to dismantle.as i said before presuppositions determine the interpretation of the evidence,and problems are overcome by recourse to further theories on one side and theology on the other.this not to say that creationists dont tackle science-they do and are keen to debate on that level.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Stringsinger
Date: 21 Sep 10 - 12:06 PM

Not enough is known about quantum mechanics to make definitive assertions. The scientists who are exploring it, warn us about that.

"The story of creation tells the child or the person of remote time past all he needs to know. But to the curious, the logical, knowledge-based seeker, The first few words have a completely different message. It is saying. "You cannot take this literally as science. You must search for deeper meaning."

I believe that the meaning is obfuscated by religious agendas. The injunction is inferred
that you must give this biblical nonsense some credibility as having "a deeper meaning".
The meaning is implicit. Believe in this or else. All religions have this at the base of their
tenets. There is no room for non-belief in these tenets.

As to deeper meanings, I think we will have to look for these in science and not in religion which is varied degrees of dogma. Mythology may tell us something about the behavior
of humans but in no way should it be interpreted as being physically or scientifically "true". One can juggle scientific descriptions around as economists and others do with statistics but the implication that these formulations which are spouted hold absolutely in most cases is specious.

There are some "theorums" that we do know that have nothing to do with religion.
1. Gravity. 2. Evolution 3. Big bang (which is still being explored).

The god delusion is where there is an attempt to offer religious contradictions to science.
Stephen J. Gould wants to separate the two. NOMA (no overlapping Magesteria). Dawkins wants to investigate the scientific validity of religion by examining it using scientific methods. When this is done, religion falls apart as a useful device except as a device
for interpreting human behavior.

Deepak Chopra tries to obfuscate by declaring that there are religious bases for scientific conclusions and he offers his resume for weight to his arguments. I don't think any scientist who has studied quantum mechanics would lend any credence to Chopra's arguments.

I reiterate. People have the right to believe that the moon is made of green cheese and the earth is flat if they want to provided they don't attempt to pass this off as a true
scientific finding.

When you "attack" an idea, this is not the same as attacking on a personal level. A person is not wholly what they believe. A lot has to do with how they behave. Well you can see that can't you? There are a lot of bloodthirsty Christians professing that their beliefs and only their beliefs are true. Not just Christians of course.

Why does religion breed violence and war? Rhetorical question, this is what dogma does.
And conflicting dogmas.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Amos
Date: 21 Sep 10 - 12:51 PM

Perception of the same stimulus by multiple people as the same perceived (i.e. created by their mind) thing is hardly evidence that it wasn't their brains *with which* they perceived that stimulus.

Well, I don't think anyone claimed it did, Mrz. So... But here's a question. How do you know it's the same perceived thing?

And look, it is obvious the brain is intimately involved with sensory systems--sight, tactile, sound, temperature, tastes, etc.
I don't think anyone questions that at all.

The boundary is where the proposition arises that not only organic stimulation but thought itself are alike S_R mechanisms; that's where I get off the train.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Sep 10 - 02:01 PM

Sure they did, whoever said that proved that consciousness was unity and therefore not brain.

And I don't, I was going with what the aforementioned person said wrote.

Nor did I say that perception of stimuli was "like SR mechanisms" - let alone that thought/consciousness was/were. Are. Whenever.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Amos
Date: 21 Sep 10 - 02:06 PM

No you didn't say it was S-R, I stand corrected; but if you really believe thought is a by-product of chemicals, what other position could you take?


A

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: olddude
Date: 21 Sep 10 - 02:15 PM

Dawkins wants to investigate the scientific validity of religion by examining it using scientific methods. When this is done, religion falls apart as a useful device except as a device
for interpreting human behavior.

Not true Strings my dear friend, there are many many top scientists that are men of faith because their scientific views lead them to the existence of God. On cannot make general statements about scientists. For everyone that says no there is another that says yes. It is impossible to prove of disprove hence it is simply down to faith. Likewise someone said no one can claim atheism as a faith since it is like saying not collecting stamps is a hobby. Not true, I know for a fact stamps exist. However since it is impossible to determine the existence of God then it is simply a belief system. Hence a faith ..

my take anyway and it is not meaning to offend anyone

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Amos
Date: 21 Sep 10 - 02:17 PM

I am a fervent non-collector of stamps. Just so you know to be careful what you say, Dan. I am also a passionate non-collector of hand-crafted knives, poison-tipped Uruguayan arrowheads, rare Dutch ceramic representations of peasant girls in traditional dress, and plates with pictures of queens.

I avoid these things like the plague, as an article of faith.

A