Hey, Atheists...

[stevevw]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the answer to this would be something, although not exactly, along the lines of what
Barbara J. King has suggested as an alternative approach to that of Richard Dawkins.

what did Barbara J. King suggest as an alternative approach to that of Richard Dawkins.

 

[Hans Blaster]

I don't mean wrong as in it doesn't occur but that it is not the only or dominant cause of evolution.

Actually it is in many cases as what has been attributed to genetics in some cases is not. This is an example of what I was talking about how Neo Darwinist try to explain everything, all human behaviour in genetic terms.

But If people claim that evolution and genetics explain morality then what exactly is evolution and what role it plays in morality should be included in ethics.

Your general assault on evolution and genetics was not relevant. Nor was your attempt earlier to push thing to abiogenesis or the big bang.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Some instinctual behaviour is very basic and not about morality but just about how people and animals live together practically so they are not in each others face or invading others space. So each species has their territory and space and encroaching that space destablises the situation.

"how we live with each other" is all morality is. This run to "practicality" does not move us away from the same continuum of behaviors and rule setting.

What do you mean just "human exceptionalism". Of course its "human exceptionalism". We are different to animals when it comes to morality. We live this way everyday by the fact we hold humans accountable for their behaviour and treat them on a different level to animals.

It is not a matter of kind, but of degree. It is on a continuum. Various speices of animals police their own for deviations from the behavioral norms (morality, etc.) of their group. Humans are no different than other animal species.

No it was just a general statement. Monkeys are known to mimick humans. So I wondered how much of their behaviour was natural and how much was mimicked due to being in close contact with humans in these experiments.

Your statements about mimicry and these kinds of experiments are implicitly expressing "the results are invalid because the subjects were contaminated due to poor experimental design by the scientists." You have no external reason to support this implication as you haven't examined the data, etc. The scientists certainly knew if any such contamination would have been possible and included it in their reports. I should add here, that the specific manner of the response, throwing back the "bad reward", was not the important point. It was the demonstration of understanding unfairness. The subject could have "flipped the bird" at the researcher (a mimicked sign of anger and disrespect) and it would have demonstrated the fairness comprehension in the same fashion.

I'm not doubting that. I am just saying that this is different to human morality.

Why does that matter its still life. Humans who kill animals out of cruelty are prosecuted.

And animals that kill humans are summarily executed. What is your point?

There are animals that kill their own species, canablise them or kill the babies within theior own group to get a reproductive advantage. They leave the weak to die.

That is, apparently, part of the moral system of those animals. (It is also a list of things that *humans* also do.)

 

[Hans Blaster]

Why do you say that so absolutely. You do realise that even science supports the idea of Mind being fundemental to reality.

What I would say to anyone, lay or professional, making wild claims about mind being fundamental to reality:

Write down the Lagrangian for the mind field.

It seems at the fundemental level they don't actually exist in how we percieve them. The chair your sitting on may seem like a solid object but its actually 99.999% empty space. Rather its the energy particles pushing against each other and resisting.

An interesting poetic notion useful for understanding how small the nucleus is, but otherwise misleading. If we want to know the "size" of something in physics we can do a scattering experiment. Scatter hydrogen atoms with other hydrogen atoms and the size measured from the scattering data gives the size at the Angstrom scale. Break the hydrogen atom in to a proton and neutron and collide those with each other and the size measured from proton-proton collisions is femtometer scale and the electron size from electron-electron collisions is much much smaller (possibly 0).

We can measure chairs the same way. Take a group of steel folding chairs and throw them at each other. By measuring how close they get to each other, you have determined the size. If you examine the components of the chair it is a rigid lattice of iron atoms with separations on the same scale that you would find if you did the atomic scattering experiment.

Besides how do you know your not in a simulation. Your just programmed to believe you are in reality. Some future advanced aliens developed a simulation of reality. Afterall if we believe materialist ideas then logically machines can become conscious and then who knows who is real. Conscious machines can make conscious machines and before you know it we lose touch of what is reality.

It is a rather silly notion (propagated largely by those who have never simulated anything), but it doesn't really change anything.

 

[stevevw]

This isn't a forum for people who believe in warlocks.

Why not. Its about atheist morality, what atheist use to base their morality on. So I would have though opposing or alternative beliefs about what is morality will be included for comparison.

My point was that morality can only be measured by a belief in some metaphysical idea of the world and reality. Warlocks, fairies, the universe as a mind and God or gods are all metaphysical ideas about where morality comes from.

I told you that it's a process. The Hard Problem isn't how the process operates. It's what we experience.

What we experience is the 'hard problem of consciousness' compared to the physical processes you speak of. Thats the point. Because they are experiences the physical processes cannot explain consciousness. The electrical nerve signals from the eye to the grain neurons and the light spectrum ranges the human eye recieves do not explain the experience of seeing red.

Its like trying to explain the experience of love by the physical reactions of the body. A bit like Sheldon lol. Like a robot explaining the physical reactions of love and missing the whole experience of it.

No, to the person.

Ok relative to the person. Same thing. If its relative to the person then how can there be an objective morality between two or more people with different relative positions or circumstances. .

They found that each person has different ideas about morality.

Your supporting my point that under the atheistic material worldview there is no objective reality beyond human subjective and relative morality.

No, you can't. You can measure what the car does. You can see how it operates. You can point to various parts of process (including the driver) and explain what they are doing. But driving is a process.

Yes a process we can break down and factually map out. Then we behave that same way to be a proper driver. We can say to be a car driver you must do this and this behaviour. If you close your eyes while driving you will crash ect. So you must open your eyes. Driving is a mechanical and instrumental process.

The concept of driving as a conscious experience would be what its like to drive or fly or move through space. But that belongs to a different aspect of reality which is similar to other experiences like colors, watching a sunset, underwater diving, the sensation of falling ect. A completely different aspect of reality.

You shouldn't tempt me like that. But yes, they can. When it's all gone, they can't. I'll let you come to your own conclusion about that.

I am not sure you seem pretty vague. If consciousness reuires a physical brain with complex firings then having half a brain missing would undermine consciousness being entirely based on the physical brain. The same with NDE and out of body experiences or blindsight.

It can tell you that I think it's wrong.

Exactly. So science and evolution cannot objectively tell us what is morally right or wrong. End of story.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Why not. Its about atheist morality, what atheist use to base their morality on. So I would have though opposing or alternative beliefs about what is morality will be included for comparison.

My point was that morality can only be measured by a belief in some metaphysical idea of the world and reality. Warlocks, fairies, the universe as a mind and God or gods are all metaphysical ideas about where morality comes from.

How about this base reality: Humans are social animals living in cooparative groups.

No matter how things got that way, that fact is the most important bit of information for evaluating behavior and morality..

[SNIP for berevity]

Exactly. So science and evolution cannot objectively tell us what is morally right or wrong. End of story.

No one is asking "science" to determine what is right or wrong. We are only using science to demonstrate why there *is* a sense of right or wrong.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the answer to this would be something, although not exactly, along the lines of what
Barbara J. King has suggested as an alternative approach to that of Richard Dawkins.

In simple terms, Barbara J. King suggests that anthropology should be included as an operative qualifier in addressing the question of 'how' evolution works. She also suggests that evolutionists, even atheists like herself, be a bit more respectful of the reasons that modern bipeds like us gravitate toward valuing religion and community as a part of ever human behavior.

See the following two articles:

​

https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/04/14/474137262/it-s-not-all-genes-how-can-we-get-evolution-right-when-explaining-human-behavior

​

https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2012/03/26/149310560/atheist-firebrand-richard-dawkins-unrepentant-for-harsh-words-targeting-faith

Of course, it should go without saying that I don't rely merely on her theorizing alone, but I do like her position.

 

[BCP1928]

Exactly. So science and evolution cannot objectively tell us what is morally right or wrong. End of story.

Neither can religion. Science at least gives us a plausible explanation of how we developed what we might call a "conscience." Your religion tells us we acquired it by eating a piece of magic fruit.

 

[stevil]

Your missing the point. What your tqalking about as in concepts of mind even the idea of the material world itself is the very debate going on about what is fundemental reality 'mind or matter'.

The mind is just the workings of our physical brain.

The language you are using in the first place about 'whats it made of', how do we measure it' How much does it weight ect is assuming a priori that we should measure what is reality by these quantities. In other words its assuming material reality is verified when it hasn't. That is a metaphysical belief and not a scientific one.

All things that exist are made of something, have a size, a place, a speed, Things that have a weight(mass) move slower than the speed of light, Things that are massless, move at the speed of light.
When we come up with concepts, these are things that don't exist, they are merely ideas. they are a simplification, they model something or some part of something, they don't have all the properties of existant things.

Concepts are of the mind and we make them real and they rule our world.

Nonsense.
A circle is a concept of a 2D structure where all points of the shape are equal distance from a centre point which isn't part of the shape. This concept would expect to be thought of by any intelligent life anywhere in the universe. Human's didn't create the concept and make it real. It isn't real, it's just a concept and is an intuitive concept that we would expect anyone to think of. The circle concept doesn't rule our world.

So we could say there are two aspects that rule reality. One is the quantifiable and measured in quantifiable terms. The other is qualitative and measured in qualitative terms (what its like, our experience of the world). Both play a role.

Qualitative, like how do I experience the world, is a mixture of physical, e.g my body has receptors and can experience touch, sound, heat etc and my body has abilities to make me feel certain ways through serotonin and dopamine etc.,
But as an advanced animal, I have learned and developed ideas, generally based on words and expectations and perceptions, because my brain is reasonable advanced that I can think in such ways. But my happiness or jealousy or sadness isn't an existant thing.

I guess the best way to explain what I mean is to quote Lewis himself.

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such a violent reaction against it?... Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if i did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist - in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless - I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality - namely my idea of justice - was full of sense. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”
― C.S. Lewis

Gobbilty gook.

Your missing Lewis point. Just like we cannot tell a bent stick unless we know what a straight one is its the same for justice. If the universe is meaningless then why worry about injustice.

I don't expect the universe to have justice. I don't worry about it.

But to worry about injustice means we must know about the truth of justice. Sothe universe has meaning afterall. If it does then its more than just material reactions evolving.

We humans who live in a society, we can create the idea of justice if we want. We can come up with rules, like collectively if we don't want to spend all our time guarding our possessions, we can choose to create a government, a police force and a justice system. We can create a society law to discourage others from taking our stuff, and we can create a "justice" by having our police lock up people that steal. But the universe doesn't care. My cat doesn't care, my neighbor's dog doesn't care, if anyone steals stuff.

Why do you say that so absolutely. You do realise that even science supports the idea of Mind being fundemental to reality.

No it doesn't.

It seems at the fundemental level they don't actually exist in how we percieve them. The chair your sitting on may seem like a solid object but its actually 99.999% empty space. Rather its the energy particles pushing against each other and resisting.

But there is that small percent that does exist, that is measurable.
What of the immaterial is mesurable?
What is god made of?

Besides how do you know your not in a simulation. Your just programmed to believe you are in reality. Some future advanced aliens developed a simulation of reality. Afterall if we believe materialist ideas then logically machines can become conscious and then who knows who is real. Conscious machines can make conscious machines and before you know it we lose touch of what is reality.

We might be simulations, I agree.

So you believe the only reality there is that we could possibly know is physical/material reality.

If evidence comes to light for immaterial stuff, I will then be very interested. But at the moment there is no existence of the immaterial.

 

[Bradskii]

Why not. Its about atheist morality, what atheist use to base their morality on. So I would have though opposing or alternative beliefs about what is morality will be included for comparison.

Secular morality would be a better way for you to describe it. And I'm not too au fait with warlock and fairy concepts of morality, so I'd prefer to concentrate on religious v secular.

What we experience is the 'hard problem of consciousness' compared to the physical processes you speak of. Thats the point. Because they are experiences the physical processes cannot explain consciousness. The electrical nerve signals from the eye to the grain neurons and the light spectrum ranges the human eye recieves do not explain the experience of seeing red.

Which has nothing to do with how we know that you'll not be conscious when I remove your brain. Stay focussed.

Ok relative to the person. Same thing. If its relative to the person then how can there be an objective morality between two or more people with different relative positions or circumstances.

No. A person and a culture are not the same things. And there is no objective morality. I think someone told you that. Oh yeah, it was me. So why ask me about something I say doesn't exist? Are you going to ask me about warlocks next?

Your supporting my point that under the atheistic material worldview there is no objective reality beyond human subjective and relative morality.

Well done.

Driving is a mechanical and instrumental process.

Well done again.

I am not sure you seem pretty vague. If consciousness reuires a physical brain with complex firings then having half a brain missing would undermine consciousness being entirely based on the physical brain.

I'll add neurology to evolution as 'things you don't understand'. Living a Whole Life With Half a Brain - Stanford Medicine Children’s Health Blog

Exactly. So science and evolution cannot objectively tell us what is morally right or wrong. End of story.

Well done yet again. You are seriously on a roll, my man.

 

[stevevw]

Secular morality would be a better way for you to describe it. And I'm not too au fait with warlock and fairy concepts of morality, so I'd prefer to concentrate on religious v secular.

Ok secularism. But isn't there some beliefs within secularism that are not religious in the traditional sense. My point was that people can have other metaphysical beliefs besides religious ones about God as the basis for they morality.

Which has nothing to do with how we know that you'll not be conscious when I remove your brain. Stay focussed.

Ok I am trying to understanding what you mean by "its a process". I said that conscious experience is different to the mechanical material processes. Removing the brain does not negate this. If consciousness is beyond the physical brain then removing the brain is be live removing the radio reciever and transmitter. The radio waves will still be there.

No. A person and a culture are not the same things.

Yes they are when it comes to making morality non objective. They both appeal to a human made idea about morality according to something changable and not objective.

And there is no objective morality. I think someone told you that. Oh yeah, it was me. So why ask me about something I say doesn't exist? Are you going to ask me about warlocks next?

I am not asking if objective morality exists I am arguing that your own arguements it doesn't exist are wrong. Are based on faulty logic and reasoning and that logically objective morality does exist.

Well done.

Likewise thankyou.

Well done again.

I'll add neurology to evolution as 'things you don't understand'. Living a Whole Life With Half a Brain - Stanford Medicine Children’s Health Blog

And I will note that you don't understand consciousness.

Why Science Will Never Explain Consciousness

Why Science Will Never Explain Consciousness

A physical explanation for consciousness isn’t just a hard nut to crack. It’s a conceptual impossibility.

www.psychologytoday.com

Why science can’t explain consciousness scientifically
https://medium.com/what-matter-feels/why-science-cant-explain-consciousness-scientifically-acd5e79bc2f8

Well done yet again. You are seriously on a roll, my man.

Therefore the atheistic materialist worldview has nothing to say about morality. Its dead in the water.

 

[Bradskii]

Ok secularism. But isn't there some beliefs within secularism that are not religious in the traditional sense. My point was that people can have other metaphysical beliefs besides religious ones about God as the basis for they morality.

Yeah. Like warlocks and fairies. You should start a thread.

Ok I am trying to understanding what you mean by "its a process". I said that conscious experience is different to the mechanical material processes.

An experience and the process by which you experience it are not the same thing. The process is the distributor distributing, the spark plugs sparking and the piston pumping. The experience is 'driving'.

Removing the brain does not negate this. If consciousness is beyond the physical brain...

It isn't. It's what the brain does.

...then removing the brain is be live removing the radio reciever and transmitter. The radio waves will still be there.

If you a destroy the transmitter then there are no radio waves any more. I mean, what are you talking about?

Yes they are when it comes to making morality non objective.

No. I am an individual. I am not Australian culture. Don't be silly.

I am not asking if objective morality exists I am arguing that your own arguements it doesn't exist are wrong. Are based on faulty logic and reasoning and that logically objective morality does exist.

Darn it. You forgot to to give an example. Maybe next time.

And I will note that you don't understand consciousness.

It's a practical process. I can explain it if you like. Neurons, dendrites etc What I can't explain is the experience.

Therefore the atheistic materialist worldview has nothing to say about morality. Its dead in the water.

Secular world view. And yes, it has nothing to say about objective morality. You know why.

 

[stevevw]

The mind is just the workings of our physical brain.

How do you know that. Where in the brain is there the feeling of pain or the color red. Is there little experiencing neurons that see red lol. Explain how this happens physically. If you can't then your taking a leap of faith. A sort of God of the gaps. We cannot explain this but we know and assume its true.

All things that exist are made of something, have a size, a place, a speed, Things that have a weight(mass) move slower than the speed of light,
Things that are massless, move at the speed of light.
When we come up with concepts, these are things that don't exist, they are merely ideas. they are a simplification, they model something or some part of something, they don't have all the properties of existant things.

A mind can bring up a memory from 50 years ago in an instant and the experiences of that moment can be relived and thus having an effect on the present physical world. That is a non physical phenomena happening faster than the speed of light. Consciousness is non local yet a real phenomena and that does exist.

Nonsense.

I gave the idea of money. Here we have turned a paper or metal object into a conceptof mind and now it rules the world and can cause killing and wars. That seems pretty real to me. What caused it was not a physical thing. The physical paper or metal did not cause this. But a mind concept. The pen is mightier than the sword.

A circle is a concept of a 2D structure where all points of the shape are equal distance from a centre point which isn't part of the shape. This concept would expect to be thought of by any intelligent life anywhere in the universe.

Yes a mind and not a rock or chemical reactions looking to survive. A circle can also be a 3D shape as well. Another interesting aspect is whether math itself is inherent in the universe as a reality. Cerain shapes are repeated in nature and I don't think its a coincident. Maybe this is how morality works. Humans just discover these truths and realities.

Human's didn't create the concept and make it real. It isn't real, it's just a concept and is an intuitive concept that we would expect anyone to think of. The circle concept doesn't rule our world.

Not really. What we attribute to the concept of a circle goes well beyond what would be seen by non humans or even a different culture. There are the practical physical aspects which you mention are instinctive like the wheel will help move stuff or physics can create a circular shape through erosion.

But a circle goes beyond time a space. Its part of sacred geometry for example where circles are seen as a part of the non material fabric of the universe. A bit like math and the universe. The universe being made of math. This suggests a mind behind the physical universe itself.

Qualitative, like how do I experience the world, is a mixture of physical, e.g my body has receptors and can experience touch, sound, heat etc and my body has abilities to make me feel certain ways through serotonin and dopamine etc.,
But as an advanced animal, I have learned and developed ideas, generally based on words and expectations and perceptions, because my brain is reasonable advanced that I can think in such ways. But my happiness or jealousy or sadness isn't an existant thing.

That is not experience but sense perceptions. Like I said we sense something hard but its not actually something hard but energy particles pushing against each other. So what we sense does not represent true reality.

Its how we experience the physical world beyond our sense perceptions. That is a different realm to the physical senses our physical body has to navigate the world. A robot or zombie without conscious experiences can navigate the world by sense perceptions wired into them. But to be conscious and experience what it is like is another level of reality.

Gobbilty gook.

Gee I havn't heard that word for a long time.

I don't expect the universe to have justice. I don't worry about it.

You don't worry about justice. Your not getting the truth principle that Lewis was alluding to. If the universe or whatever material reasoning we use is just meaningless and purposeless material processes then why do we object to injustices unless justice stands as a truth beyond the material universe.

If it stands as a truth in the material universe then this implies a moral lawgiver or some entity beyond that makes justice a truth.

We humans who live in a society, we can create the idea of justice if we want.

If we want. That doesn't mean it subjective. That could mean we know the truth value of justice but choose to deny it. If we want. But in some ways its not a case of 'If we want" because reagardless of whether we want to or not we live like we believe in justice. We embody the truth of justice being a thing by how we respond and react to injustices.

We can come up with rules, like collectively if we don't want to spend all our time guarding our possessions, we can choose to create a government, a police force and a justice system. We can create a society law to discourage others from taking our stuff, and we can create a "justice" by having our police lock up people that steal. But the universe doesn't care. My cat doesn't care, my neighbor's dog doesn't care, if anyone steals stuff.

Yes but like you say another culture may choose not to or choose another version of justice or morality. That means whatever it is you are basing your societies morals on is not objectively the truth. Its just a version of what you and other cultures think or believe is the truth according to a relative belief and assumption about the world and reality.

Therefore the kind of morality you are talking about is not morality at all.

No it doesn't.

Freeman Dyson one of the great pioneering physicists is not the only pioneering physicists who supports the idea that Mind/Consciousness is fundemental to reality.

Freeman Dyson, It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every electron.”

Physics Must Evolve Beyond the Physical - Activitas Nervosa Superior

Contemporary physics finds itself pondering questions about mind and consciousness, an uncomfortable area for theorists. But historically, key figures at the founding of quantum theory assumed that reality was composed of two parts, mind and matter, which interacted with each other according to...

link.springer.com

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulating consciousness.” – Max Planck, theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.​

But there is that small percent that does exist, that is measurable.

No its not really. If the majority is just energy vibrations then its energy vibrations and not a solid billiard ball schema like materials think. The small does not dictate the overall reality.

What of the immaterial is mesurable?

The only way to measure consciousness is through direct experience of it. Experiences cannot be measured in scientific terms of quantity. So a different paradigm is required. Sort of like how quantum mechanics could not have been understood without abandoning the old billiard ball schems of little bits of solid matter reacting in cause and effect to a more indeterminant view of many possibilities.

Going back to the experience of red. No scientific measure could tell the blind scientists what a 'red experience was' until they could see red and then experience it and gain new knowledge about reality. So asking the experiencer what a red experience is like is the only way we can measure conscious experience. It is the knowledge from these experiences that reveal a deeper dimension of what is going on in the world (reality).

What is god made of?

Thats a good question. If He exists in some dimension beyond the material world then who knows what that is. Some posit that in John saying that 'the Word' was what created everything and has always been there is that something beyond the material creation of the world. Christ became the physical representation of that. Not just the man but the spirit of Christ which represented that dimension beyond the physical. Sort of being born again in the spirit which lives on beyond the material world.

But this same concept has been adopted by other beliefs such as the univers or mother nature itself has some extra dimension of reality we must obtain. Even secular metaphysics as in consciousness is a seperate realm of existence. Or even with the new identity politics strangly enough. The idea that our gender identity is like some spirit or essense of humans that cannot be pinned to a physical basis and yet is reality. Is the real person.

We might be simulations, I agree.

Yes so any appeal that what we see, the solid objects and objective world may just be a program of pixels and binary code and its not real in objective terms (beyond what we are programmed to sense.

But this supports the idea of intelligence beyond what we see. Someone had to programm us. The same idea can be applied to God or any god. God created us with certain senses to percieve and navigate the world. But ultimately this is just an interface for a deeper reality beyond which is Gods realm.

If evidence comes to light for immaterial stuff, I will then be very interested. But at the moment there is no existence of the immaterial.

The evidence is already there and its all around us. The reason you can't see it is because you live in a different paradigm about how the world is. That paradigm which is really based on unfounded assumptions and beliefs disallows you from expanding your view and evidence. It has rules that say the world is only material and any imaterial aspects are a delusion before you even begin to investigate.

In other words your restricted to see and measure reality due to you prior beliefs. Just like people claim religious people have been doing for millenia.

 

[stevevw]

Yeah. Like warlocks and fairies. You should start a thread.

I don't need to as you have supported my point and thats all that matters. So agreeing that secularists can have metaphysical beliefs besides religion supports my point that humans even atheists naturally create different kinds of metaphysical ideas to account for morality and reality.

So the material atheist claims about morality and beliefs is but a metaphysical belief itself.

An experience and the process by which you experience it are not the same thing.

Yes I agree.

The process is the distributor distributing, the spark plugs sparking and the piston pumping. The experience is 'driving'.

You mean driving as an experience say in the back seat. I don't think the driver can have an experience of driving. Maybe they fleet in and out of some experience. But as the driver needs to concentrate on the task at hand different parts of the brain kick in to do with moter skills.

Some would say when it comes to reality its the mind, the conscious observer thats doing the driving and the sparks and all that are just coming along for the ride lol.

It isn't. It's what the brain does.

Yes as some sort of reciever capable of having a conscious experience. But that is not the same. The processes getting someone there are not the experience itself and cannot be reduced to this. To conflate the two would be making a category mistake of conflating two different aspects of reality together.

Otherwise if its just what the brain does mechanically then we should be able to one day create consciousness mechanically.

If you a destroy the transmitter then there are no radio waves any more. I mean, what are you talking about?

This has not be verified and in fact evidence shows that consciousness can go on with a dead brain or with virtually no brain signal. If consciousness is a complex firing of the mechanical brain then this should not be possible. We also have evidence from people who have had out of body experiences while not brain dead. There is also a host of other evidence from remote viewing, blindsight, ect.

The thing is we could have 1,000s of bits of evidence from peoples testimonies of everyday life. imtuition, coincidence, ect but its immediately dismissed by materialisdts as imagination, delusions ect. Like I said the only way we can understand consciousness is from the experiencer. Taking seriously what they say on certain matters.

No. I am an individual. I am not Australian culture. Don't be silly.

Your missing the logic. The idea of relative morality applying to groups (cultures) and subjective morality applying to individuals is that it logically makes morality non objective outside the individual or culture. The same reasoning applies when it comes to morality being objective or not.

Darn it. You forgot to to give an example. Maybe next time.

I don't need to give examples because its a matter of logic and reasoning. I am using your reasoning. Refer to the above logic. Right so if there are no objective morals beyond the relative and subjective morality as a matter of logic and reasoning. Then what atheist materialsits are actually talking about is not morality. Hense well there is no coherency to atheist morality.

It's a practical process. I can explain it if you like. Neurons, dendrites etc What I can't explain is the experience.

Exactly. So don't use neurons, dendrites, genetics, biology, evolution to explain consciousness and morality as they cannot be reduced to such material processes.

Secular world view. And yes, it has nothing to say about objective morality. You know why.

Yes I do. But do you really know why this is a problem when it comes to morality. There is none. And yet we live like moral truths are as everybit a law as physics. Why is that when we cannot reduce this to the physics. Some non physical law that dictates reality. Even objective reality. How can that be in an atheistic and materialist worldview.

 

[stevil]

But a circle goes beyond time a space.

Yip, that's how concepts work.
They are all omnipresent, beyond space and time, eternal and all powerful.
The number 1, Circle, Square, God, all just concepts, not actually things.

Therefore the kind of morality you are talking about is not morality at all.

Yes, I'm a moral nihilist.

Freeman Dyson one of the great pioneering physicists is not the only pioneering physicists who supports the idea that Mind/Consciousness is fundemental to reality.

This idea is utter nonsense.

Thats a good question. If He exists in some dimension beyond the material world then who knows what that is.

Yip, need to come up with a tangible definition of what this god is along with some tangible evidence so that it's not just fantasy.

Some posit that in John saying that 'the Word' was what created everything and has always been

Sounds like nonsense to me.

But this supports the idea of intelligence beyond what we see. Someone had to programm us.

ToE disagrees.

The same idea can be applied to God or any god. God created us

There is no evidence for this at all. Not any evidence for a god or any god. Not even a coherent definition of one.
Which is why I am an ignostic atheist.

The evidence is already there and its all around us.

OK. that's just lazy.

 

[stevevw]

Yip, that's how concepts work.
They are all omnipresent, beyond space and time, eternal and all powerful.
The number 1, Circle, Square, God, all just concepts, not actually things.

Lol I just looked at your icon signature. That explains a lot.

Yes, I'm a moral nihilist.

Ok, a fan of Nietzsche's moral philosophy I would assume.

This idea is utter nonsense.

The idea comes from quantum mechanics itself. The psychicist who dicovered QM Max Planck says the same think.
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulating consciousness.” – Max Planck, theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.

Yip, need to come up with a tangible definition of what this god is along with some tangible evidence so that it's not just fantasy.

So anything that cannot be verified by empirical science is fantasy.

Sounds like nonsense to me.

I am glad you said 'sounds' nonsense as sounds is just a subjective belief itself. A belief that its nonsense according to a belief that only material science can determine the truth and reality.

ToE disagrees.

Actually the theory agrees. It acknowledges the design, guidence and purpose. It just rationalises them as being programmed. But then what programmed the program. What if God designed creatures with those programs.

It seems that new discoveries in science show that evolution is less dominated by natural selection and random mutations and more by directed selection and mutations.

There is no evidence for this at all. Not any evidence for a god or any god. Not even a coherent definition of one.
Which is why I am an ignostic atheist.

How do you know when you just acknowledged that we could be in a similation. At the very least this acknowledges some intelligence behind the simulation. Some intelligent being made the simulation, made the programs.

That makes the so called objective reality we live in as an illusion and interface of something that is not materially object. It points to intelligence. In others a Mind. Now that may not be God but whatever it is its godlike as it exists outside time and space as we know it.

OK. that's just lazy.

Its got nothing to do with laziness and everything to do with a worldview. What you consider lazy another considers fundemental reality. So in that sense they are the opposite of lazy. They have done a good investigation and been open to all possibilities so not to dismiss anything and therefore base their position on a complete understanding of reality. Which includes the non material aspects that materialist dismiss.

 

[stevil]

The idea comes from quantum mechanics itself. The psychicist who dicovered QM Max Planck says the same think.
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulating consciousness.” – Max Planck, theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.

Regardless of who is saying this stuff, it is nonsense.

So anything that cannot be verified by empirical science is fantasy.

People have the capability of dreaming a million things, they dream up vampires, fairies, ghosts, werewolves, ghouls, wizards, witches, demons, angels, gods... Just because they can imagine, doesn't make these things real. If they are to claim such exoctic things, and if we are to take them seriously, they had better come with some evidence before we waste time looking for these things.

Actually the theory agrees. It acknowledges the design, guidence and purpose.

LOL, where in the ToE does it talk about design, guidance and purpose?

What if God...

You can posture that if you want, you can even search for it. But I won't until you show me clear definitions backed up by credible evidence.

How do you know when you just acknowledged that we could be in a similation. At the very least this acknowledges some intelligence behind the simulation. Some intelligent being made the simulation, made the programs.

It is possible we exist in a simulation, but I am not saying that we do. If we aren't in a simulation then there is no intelligence behind the universe, just physical laws and natural processes.

it is its godlike as it exists outside time and space as we know it.

Yup, abstract concepts are godlike, they "exist" outside of time and space, they are omnipresent, they are indestructible, they are eternal.
Amazing how that works.
They are also untestable, made of nothing, weigh nothing, invisible, ... just like god.

Its got nothing to do with laziness and everything to do with a worldview.

If a scientist makes a claim and just says "The evidence is already there and its all around us."
They would be considered very lazy, and no one would take them or their claim seriously.

 

[RamiC]

Regardless of who is saying this stuff, it is nonsense.

Citation needed.

People have the capability of dreaming a million things, they dream up vampires, fairies, ghosts, werewolves, ghouls, wizards, witches, demons, angels, gods... Just because they can imagine, doesn't make these things real. If they are to claim such exoctic things,

How does the fact that these things can be imagined mean they are not real?

and if we are to take them seriously, they had better come with some evidence before we waste time looking for these things.

Who is the "we"?

LOL, where in the ToE does it talk about design, guidance and purpose?

Increased chances of survival = purpose?

 

[stevevw]

Regardless of who is saying this stuff, it is nonsense.

It does matter who is saying it as to whether its nonsense or not. If a doctor makes claims about their own science we don't just say its nonsense because its coming from those who know better at what they are talking about.

This is coming from the very pioneers who created the physics of QM speaking about their own findings. They know what they are talking about and its not nonsense. Its nonsense that you think you know better than the experts in their fields.

People have the capability of dreaming a million things, they dream up vampires, fairies, ghosts, werewolves, ghouls, wizards, witches, demons, angels, gods... Just because they can imagine, doesn't make these things real. If they are to claim such exoctic things, and if we are to take them seriously, they had better come with some evidence before we waste time looking for these things.

Its not about the different ideas people use as metaphysical beliefs. Butthe fact that coming up with these ideas, looking for them and making them real is a natural human tendency. So yes people can even make scientific materialsim a metphysical belief.

Thats the point, that is the evdience for belief that as humans we have a a natural inclination to believe. From this we can either say its all illusion of there is some truth that the tendency to believe maybe based on the reality that there is something beyond what we see. But both options are open.

In fact I would say the weight is towards there being something beyond. That our natural belief is not all an illusion based on our lived experiences.

LOL, where in the ToE does it talk about design, guidance and purpose?

What do you mean. Dawkins famously states that evolution has the appearence of design. Listen to the language used. Its full of design and purpose. In fact so much so that evolutionists like Mayr made it a point to change the language as he didn't like that it inferred design.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, biologists were actively avoiding any sort of purpose-oriented language, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness. Mayr suggested that we can use the term teleonomy to represent something that operates according to a purpose because of a program.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321339258_Evolutionary_Teleonomy_as_a_Unifying_Principle_for_the_Extended_Evolutionary_Synthesis

So scientists were already naturally referring to purpose and design in eviolution. They has to come up with some way of minimizing this through teleonomy. But this is still teleological in nature as it just pushes back the teleology to a program of design and purpose. How did the problem come about with some purpose.

I will give you some expamples of the not so constrained langauge now being used in evolution today because of the recognition creatures themselves can direct their own evolution.

Non-genetic inheritance can bias the expression and retention of environmentally induced phenotypes, thereby influencing the rate and direction of evolution [68].

Non genetic inheritence includes culture and the choices made to bring about a particular purpose. In this case beneficial behaviour that enhances fitness.

Niche construction frequently scales up, across individuals in a population, and over time, to generate stable and directional changes in environmental conditions [73,74].

Niche construction is when an organism makes purposeful changes to their environment that directs the course of their evolution in stable and beneficial ways ie beaver dam building creates a adaptive habitat. Or humans make certain changes to the environment to enhance their survival rather than having to be adapted to the environment as is. In other words environments don't dictate the direction of evolution but creatures do in how they make changes to it.

The EES is thus characterized by the central role of the organism in the evolutionary process, and by the view that the direction of evolution does not depend on selection alone and need not start with mutation.
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1813/20151019

So the direction of evolution is not just caused by natiral section and mutation but also by the organism itself. Its choices and behaviour.

The programmed view Mayr wanted to use to minimize teleology in evolution has been relegated to a minor role among several forces in evolution. So it cannot negate the purpose and direction inherent in evolution that is generated by other influences mentioned.

You can posture that if you want, you can even search for it. But I won't until you show me clear definitions backed up by credible evidence.

Theres no way to direcly prove God. That is the idea I think, faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.

It is possible we exist in a simulation, but I am not saying that we do. If we aren't in a simulation then there is no intelligence behind the universe, just physical laws and natural processes.

But the mere possibility (that springs from a materialist view of reality and not a thiestic one). Means that the possibility cannot be counted out and therefore any claim about objective reality being the only reality is undermined.

But I think theres a stronger case for something beyond because if you add up all the theistic beliefs for which there are many and the majority of the world believes. Even non theists believing in some sort of soul.

As well as all the non theistic metaphysical beliefs like the 'Simulation theory', the many theories that stem from QM such as Multiverse and Hologram principle, String theory, Wheelers Participatory universe, Quantum Bayesianism, Panphysicism ect which all posit some intelligent Mind fundementally.

The evidence seems to point more in the direction of something beyond, some sort of mind or intelligence beyond what we see.

Yup, abstract concepts are godlike, they "exist" outside of time and space, they are omnipresent, they are indestructible, they are eternal.
Amazing how that works.
They are also untestable, made of nothing, weigh nothing, invisible, ... just like god.

So are you saying because they are untestable they are all fantasy. It doesn't follow.

We can't test for love but does that make it a fantasy. You seem to think the only way we can know reality is by physically testing it.
But that can only account for one aspect of reality which is the physical aspects. What about all the rest.

Lets say God is real. According to your logic there is no God and yet God is real. How do you get around your worldview counting out what may be real automatically because it doesn't fit to a limited way of measuring reality. Your more or less saying GOd is unreal not because He is truely unreal as in verified as unreal. But is unreal because of a biased way to see the world that counts out everything except what we can see and test.

If a scientist makes a claim and just says "The evidence is already there and its all around us."
They would be considered very lazy, and no one would take them or their claim seriously.

Ok but when I say the evidence is all around us I am saying the work was already done in looking for the evidence and accummulating it.

Its just that according to your worldview (scientific materism) it regards that evdidence as unreal and fantasy. While others with a different world view see it as evidence.

For example I gave you examples of studies and evidence for remote viewing. Now materialist will say its fantasy but those supporting consciousness beyond brain will see it as evidence. The same with studies on coincidence (not being coincidence), NDE, OBE, and even prayer.

The materialist worldview will dismiss all this but those supporting an immaterial fundemental reality like Mind or consciousness beyond brain see it as evidence. In that sense the evdience is all around us but materialist cannot see it dioes to a bias that makes that evidence fantasy.

 

[BCP1928]

Citation needed.


How does the fact that these things can be imagined mean they are not real?


Who is the "we"?


Increased chances of survival = purpose?

Whose purpose?