How to prove that GOD exists from a scientific point of view?

[dlamberth]

Do you think an atheist cannot feel as much and as deeply as you.

God or not God has not been brought up. But life has. That's what is being pointed towards.

 

[dlamberth]

Explanatory models have their place.
They are great for understanding wave action
say,
Of course they cannot address the awe of standing on
a sea cliff and experiencing the
mighty surf from a distant typhoon.

But why divert your gaze to some ineffable "Beyond
that you will never find, when all the wonder and mystery is
crashing on the rocks right there below your feet?

That is a mystery to me, why people do that,

Not doing that. I think your projecting.

The mystery lies between between the material self and the non-material self. The use of the word mystery here is not God focused, but acknowledging there's something going on in a life form that is married to matter yet is not matter. The image of the infant child is only one of an infinite number of examples that we all experience.

 

[SelfSim]

.. The mystery lies between between the material self and the non-material self. The use of the word mystery here is not God focused, but acknowledging there's something going on in a life form that is married to matter yet is not matter. The image of the infant child is only one of an infinite number of examples that we all experience.

Curious.
How do you explain software or AI's intelligent decisions, without 'material' influences? Can you provide such an explanation?

Slime mould exhibits signs of intelligence. Is it translating information at some 'non-material' level too?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

You are correct those are the questions,
Now study the specific incidents.
They pass , with flying colours.
None of those explanations work.

There are many. The witnesses are medical and sceptical so they asked and discounted all the same questions.

On timing ,( eg) some witness difficulties with their own defibrillation , long after the cardiac arrest, consciousness is lost after seconds , some are actual flatline ECG. Medical Consciousness did not reappear till later.

To give an idea of a specific case. Another when all blood was drained from brain to operate a brain stem aneurism and deliberately held hypothermic whilst ECG was monitored flat. Ears plugged , loud noises , and eyes taped. Yet she saw what they did , even though she did not expect any of it.

They witness places and conversations and actions they cannot possibly have seen or guessed at from the vantage point , so conscious or not , the brain cannot be the source.

All I can suggest is read them

As for lommel he doesn’t pronounce an explanation, there is none.
He looks at all the medical factors , pharmacology, treatment, background, correlating factors and comes to the conclusion there are none.

He does note many eminent physicists comments on non locality and subjectivity So suggests it as a place to start looking.

But the lack of explanation doesn’t invalidate the evidence they happened.

All I can suggest is read the books I suggested. Start with bellg, then self does not die, then van lommel which has masses of medical background, and trials detail,

Lol - as usual, it's "read the books", without details, references, or citations.

However, I did find "The Self Does Not Die", which appears to be a collection of NDE anecdotes, with a telling review that concluded:

"... The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences" cannot be considered any more than a collection of “wonder stories” suitable for believers, and those who desperately want to believe. Accordingly, it scores no more than two points because it does contain a large collection of NDE accounts.
​

I also found a review of a van Lommel book: 'Consciousness Beyond Life', by a doctor:

"... I was disappointed because only 23 of the 340 text pages dealt with the medical scientific assessment of NDEs. The rest provide background for the author's speculation in regard to "endless-nonlocal consciousness...

...conclusions about never-ending consciousness in absence of a brain and an eternal afterlife appear to be definitely premature."​

Hardly encouraging...

I also came across some stuff I don't remember having previously seen - such as a quote by A. Gauld:

“... Any attempt (not least Myers’s) to systematize and interpret the ostensible evidence for human survival of bodily death has to take on board the empirical facts, so far as they are known, of the relationship between memory and the brain. Most modern neuroscientists regard memory as totally a function of the brain, a view which if justified (and it was widely enough held in Myers’s own time) is fatal to the possibility that memory and related features of personality might survive death as Myers hoped, believed, and argued. It is curious how many subsequent persons who have discussed the evidence for survival and its interpretation have failed to take this crucially relevant question fully on board.”​

I also found a brief summary of NDE physiology and an interesting website about NDEs: Near death experiences and life after death.

So, meh.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

An infant smiling and giggling with happiness and glee in response to a mothers play.

Are you suggesting that a bacterial cell doesn't have the 'spark of life' but an infant does?

Humans are very large collections of cells of various types, working together. Smiling, giggling, happiness, and glee are behaviours generated by ~86 billion brain cells working together. Emergence is an amazing phenomenon.

 

[Astrid]

Lol - as usual, it's "read the books", without details, references, or citations.

However, I did find "The Self Does Not Die", which appears to be a collection of NDE anecdotes, with a telling review that concluded:

"... The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences" cannot be considered any more than a collection of “wonder stories” suitable for believers, and those who desperately want to believe. Accordingly, it scores no more than two points because it does contain a large collection of NDE accounts.
​

I also found a review of a van Lommel book: 'Consciousness Beyond Life', by a doctor:

"... I was disappointed because only 23 of the 340 text pages dealt with the medical scientific assessment of NDEs. The rest provide background for the author's speculation in regard to "endless-nonlocal consciousness...

...conclusions about never-ending consciousness in absence of a brain and an eternal afterlife appear to be definitely premature."​

Hardly encouraging...

I also came across some stuff I don't remember having previously seen - such as a quote by A. Gauld:

“... Any attempt (not least Myers’s) to systematize and interpret the ostensible evidence for human survival of bodily death has to take on board the empirical facts, so far as they are known, of the relationship between memory and the brain. Most modern neuroscientists regard memory as totally a function of the brain, a view which if justified (and it was widely enough held in Myers’s own time) is fatal to the possibility that memory and related features of personality might survive death as Myers hoped, believed, and argued. It is curious how many subsequent persons who have discussed the evidence for survival and its interpretation have failed to take this crucially relevant question fully on board.”​

I also found a brief summary of NDE physiology and an interesting website about NDEs: Near death experiences and life after death.

So, meh.

So typical, so predictable

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The problem I've always had with your well considered argument, is the mysterious quantum leap you take in asserting that the evolutionary explainable mechanism for consciousness, (ie: complex physical/chemical brain processes), somehow exists truly independently from our minds .. the latter of which, (underlined), is exactly the same pure belief assumed by @stevevw's(?)

Unfortunately, I don't recall asserting that - can you quote me or point me to the post where I did?

 

[SelfSim]

Unfortunately, I don't recall asserting that - can you quote me or point me to the post where I did?

Well perhaps not explicitly, but I believe you implied it(?) Post #2502:

You need a reasonably well-defined concept of consciousness independent of humans before you can talk of degrees of consciousness in living things in general.

I have no idea why you would propose that, unless you saw that notion as being, at least, feasible(?)
I suppose there's always the chance I misunderstood your intended context there, though(?)
(If so, then please consider my objection withdrawn).

There are useful models in the neurosciences for researching degrees of consciousness including non-mammalian species .. (with no need for them being taken as existing independently from those neuroscientists):

Assuming that not only humans but even some non-mammalian species are conscious, a number of evolutionary approaches to the problem of neural correlates of consciousness open up. For example, assuming that birds are conscious—a common assumption among neuroscientists and ethologists due to the extensive cognitive repertoire of birds—there are comparative neuroanatomical ways to validate some of the principal, currently competing, mammalian consciousness–brain theories. The rationale for such a comparative study is that the avian brain deviates structurally from the mammalian brain. So how similar are they? What homologues can be identified? The general conclusion from the study by Butler, et al.,[117] is that some of the major theories for the mammalian brain [118][119][120] also appear to be valid for the avian brain. The structures assumed to be critical for consciousness in mammalian brains have homologous counterparts in avian brains. Thus the main portions of the theories of Crick and Koch,[118] Edelman and Tononi,[119] and Cotterill [120] seem to be compatible with the assumption that birds are conscious. Edelman also differentiates between what he calls primary consciousness (which is a trait shared by humans and non-human animals) and higher-order consciousness as it appears in humans alone along with human language capacity.[119] Certain aspects of the three theories, however, seem less easy to apply to the hypothesis of avian consciousness. For instance, the suggestion by Crick and Koch that layer 5 neurons of the mammalian brain have a special role, seems difficult to apply to the avian brain, since the avian homologues have a different morphology. Likewise, the theory of Eccles[121][122] seems incompatible, since a structural homologue/analogue to the dendron has not been found in avian brains. The assumption of an avian consciousness also brings the reptilian brain into focus. The reason is the structural continuity between avian and reptilian brains, meaning that the phylogenetic origin of consciousness may be earlier than suggested by many leading neuroscientists.

(Apologies for long quote there .. but I think it demonstrates the point).

 

[Kylie]

I don't entirely agree. Of course, there's no way to share any individual's experiences, but we can make the general assumption that as members of the same species there should be similarities in the kinds of experiences we have, and we can compare the reported characteristics of other's experiences and interpret them in our own terms.

So if A describes his predominant feeling of love as an intense urge to protect his partner from hurt but not so much an urge for intimacy, and B describes his love as an overwhelming urge for intimacy and for joint action to avoid hurt to both, we can have some idea of the differences between their experiences of love in terms of our own emotions and feelings.

This fits with what I was saying. It's different for different people.

 

[Kylie]

But that is exactly how science works. Scientist claim there is such a thing called 'matter' out there beyond our minds but there's no way to get outside our minds to check if this is actually the case. So basically we all subjectivity agree despite not being able to get inside another persons head to see if they actually agree. Sort of like mass hallucination.

That's seems to be the same as you just describe about why we cannot measure love. But the same logic applies. We all agree there is such a thing called love. We know its real and has a real effect on us and the world. We can't get inside another person to check if they do believe love is real but we all agree its real nevertheless. That's despite 'Love' being transcendent and cannot be verified.

I mean we go to war over love and kill with hate. I reckon their way more a power force in the universe than any physical reaction lol. We see its influence around us every minute of the day.

Our conscious experience is all we have to know reality. Everything is subjective even the idea that we can make some independent measuring system that will measure the world objectively because we don't really know if there is an objective world out there because we keep getting in the way.

This would lead us to brain-in-a-jar-ism.

I think we create reality by the choices we make and what we choose to know.

And your idea is just as nonsensical as you think mine is. Perhaps even more so, since yours can't be tested experimentally, yet the idea of a material aspect to the universe can be tested and everyone who does the test gets results that agree.

 

[stevevw]

This would lead us to brain-in-a-jar-ism.

Not necessarily. I think it can help us understand reality may be more than what we see. But the brain in a vat idea are sort of similar to other ideas like the Simulation theory or the holographic universe. They are based on interpretations of QM where what we see may be just an interface of some deeper fundamental reality like information or Mind.

And your idea is just as nonsensical as you think mine is. Perhaps even more so, since yours can't be tested experimentally, yet the idea of a material aspect to the universe can be tested and everyone who does the test gets results that agree.

Actually its not my idea but there are several varying ideas along the same lines.

Such as the observer effect in quantum interpretations such as Wigner's Friend, the Participatory Universe (Wheeler) and QBIsm. But other ideas that make consciousness, Mind and Information fundamental like Panpsychism, Integrated Information theory, and many variations of these.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The basic problem I think is that the "some other origin" in a deterministic model that reduces everything to material mechanisms doesn't work no matter what origin is postulated because conscious experience is not reducible to material mechanisms itself.

Begging the question. If you assume that conscious experience is not reducible to material mechanisms, material mechanisms clearly won't be explanatory. But this is just an argument from incredulity.

You've dismissed the evidence for material mechanisms as the origin of consciousness because you can't understand how that could be, and (ironically) this forces you to be credulous of an 'explanation' for which you have no evidence, no mechanism, that is unfalsifiable, and has a central contradiction - the problem of interaction.

You're welcome to imagine whatever you like to explain whatever you like, but if you imagine something that is, by definition, beyond the purview of science & the physical world, that's not science's problem, it's your problem. The onus is on you to show why anyone should take it seriously and how it is a good explanation.

You can't explain the experience of love or beauty by physical processes. There's a mismatch in the type of phenomena we are trying to understand.

We can, in principle, explain everything about love or beauty in terms of physical processes except what it is like to be a system running those processes - because subjective experience is intrinsically inaccessible.

Intrinsic nature is what something really is or is 'in itself'. Not what its correlated with.
For example we could describe the physical behavior of love. It correlates with brain activity, people behave in certain ways. But none of that explains what love is in and of itself.

As I keep telling you, all we ever have are correlations - the Kantian noumenon, the 'thing-in-itself', is unknowable - all we can do is 'say what we see', to paraphrase Catchphrase).

Love is a concept we use to describe a particular set of behaviours and their associated feelings. It's a mistake (a category error) to reify such abstractions. This is the problem you (and many others) also have with 'mind' and 'consciousness'.

But its that 'something like' that we cannot explain. Attributing certain physical activities to a phenomena that transcends physical activity is like saying if we build a machine with certain configurations it will produce a spirit.

Again begging the question. If consciousness is emergent from physical activity, then that problem goes away.

Emergent behaviours are deterministically reducible to the interactions of the elements involved, but unpredictable, rather like mathematical chaos. Looking at the behaviours of murmurations of starlings or large shoals of fish, where tens or hundreds of thousands of very similar elements follow very simple rules, we should not be surprised that the activity of ~86 billion complex neurons of various kinds interacting in numerous ways, in hierarchies of networks, produces as yet inexplicable emergent behaviours and characteristics.

There's an explanatory gap between what mindless matter and animated matter in the form of conscious experience which cannot be reduced to those mechanisms even if there is a certain arrangement of those mechanisms.

If you mean subjective experience is unexplained, I agree.

The problem is unlike other phenomena which can be isolated within a material conception consciousness cannot. Consciousness is the human and cannot be separated out.

To do that would mean ignoring what the human is directly saying about consciousness and attributing a secondary association which only describes how someone conscious behaves. Which is subjective anyway.

As before, the nature of subjective experience is inaccessible to objective inquiry, but don't forget that almost every characteristic of conscious experience can be changed by specific interference with specific areas of brain function. The implication is obvious.

But basically its still about genes and NS. Creatures adapt to environments due to forces acting on bodies through a blind and random process. The creature itself is passive, has no agency and control over whats happening.

You haven't said what you mean by Neo-Darwinism, but contemporary evolutionary theory includes behaviour at individual, group, and ecology levels. As we discussed many moons ago, the factional differences are mainly in viewpoint and approach.

There are interpretations of QM that make the observer central. Wheeler's 'Participatory Anthropic Principle' for example.
https://futurism.com/john-wheelers-participatory-universe/

Or Harry Stapp who worked with Einstein.
Mechanics and the Participating Observer he summarizes his research (Stapp 2011). In essence (Stapp 2011, p. 160)

Yes, I'm aware of them. Working for Einstein doesn't imply any special insight (argument from association with authority?) - Einstein himself struggled with aspects of QM.

The problem is the material explanation wants to reduce our conscious experience that we are more than out mechanisms is mechanisms. To do that we have to make out any sense of self, of meaning and agency is an illusion.

The problem is that you persistently straw-man science to suggest it's ignoring something significant, but all you have are contentless apophatic labels (immaterial, non-physical, supernatural, etc.) - and you seem indignant that science can't address them. Your labels, your problem.

Yet the strength of consciousness as a qualitative force transcends this in some many ways its impossible to reduce it to matter without denying our own minds.

Word salad.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Well perhaps not explicitly, but I believe you implied it(?) Post #2502:
I have no idea why you would propose that, unless you saw that notion as being, at least, feasible(?)
I suppose there's always the chance I misunderstood your intended context there, though(?)
(If so, then please consider my objection withdrawn).

Perhaps I wasn't clear... what I meant was that you need a general or universal definition of consciousness, i.e. one that doesn't depend on the characteristics of humans.

There are useful models in the neurosciences for researching degrees of consciousness including non-mammalian species .. (with no need for them being taken as existing independently from those neuroscientists):
(Apologies for long quote there .. but I think it demonstrates the point).

Yes, that quote rather illustrates what I had in mind. If behavioural correlates are insufficient, comparative anatomy is also problematic - and runs into serious problems determining or assessing the potential for invertebrate consciousness, e.g. octopus. Something more general is required.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

This fits with what I was saying. It's different for different people.

Ah, OK. It's different for different people, but we can get some comparative idea of how it's different, although, as ever, only through unreliable appeal to shared objective experience.

 

[Kylie]

Not necessarily. I think it can help us understand reality may be more than what we see. But the brain in a vat idea are sort of similar to other ideas like the Simulation theory or the holographic universe. They are based on interpretations of QM where what we see may be just an interface of some deeper fundamental reality like information or Mind.

You were literally saying that there's no way to check that matter is actually real.

Actually its not my idea but there are several varying ideas along the same lines.

Such as the observer effect in quantum interpretations such as Wigner's Friend, the Participatory Universe (Wheeler) and QBIsm. But other ideas that make consciousness, Mind and Information fundamental like Panpsychism, Integrated Information theory, and many variations of these.

And, pray tell, how could such an idea be tested?

 

[SelfSim]

Perhaps I wasn't clear... what I meant was that you need a general or universal definition of consciousness, i.e. one that doesn't depend on the characteristics of humans.

Understood .. (from the scientific model practical utility purpose/viewpoint), but unfortunately such a definition would still depend on human observations, language, meanings and thus, consciousness. In the context of this philosophical discussion, that dependence is thus far unavailable and may well be unachievable in the long run, given we can't even agree on an objective definition even amongst ourselves.
The scientific 'materialistic'/matter/mechanistic 'emergent behaviour based definitions, I think, are likely our only bet on coming up with a consistent one for the purpose of making progress in understanding of ourselves.

 

[stevevw]

If the mind is just a byproduct of matter (mindless matter) then it should not be able to change the form and function of our bodies. That would be like the knobs on a machine or the images on a computer screen can change it's software or hardware.

 

[Kylie]

If the mind is just a byproduct of matter (mindless matter) then it should not be able to change the form and function of our bodies. That would be like the knobs on a machine or the images on a computer screen can change it's software or hardware.

Can you grow wings by thinking about it real hard?

 

[stevevw]

You were literally saying that there's no way to check that matter is actually real.

That's right. How can a concept of the mind that claims matter is real be verified by a concept of the mind. Its circular reasoning.

And, pray tell, how could such an idea be tested?

OK well Wigner's friend is well known and has been supported by several experiments.

New quantum paradox throws the foundations of observed reality into question
Wheeler's delayed-choice gedanken experiment with a single atom | Nature Physics

Rather than link straight to technical papers here are some articles arguing for these ideas in a easy to understand way but with links to the papers.

Physics Is Pointing Inexorably to Mind
Physics Is Pointing Inexorably to Mind

Putting Mind Back into Nature: A Tribute to Henry P. Stapp
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1904/1904.10528.pdf

The Case For Panpsychism
a number of leading philosophers and neuroscientists are now finding that working within a panpsychist framework bears fruit.
The Case For Panpsychism | Issue 121 | Philosophy Now

At Nautilus: Electrons DO have a “rudimentary mind”
Panpsychists in science believe that nature is all there is but, they say, it includes consciousness as a fundamental fact of nature
At Nautilus: Electrons DO have a “rudimentary mind”

Integrated Information Theory
Tononi's theory of Integrated Information Theory (IIT), published in the journal BMC Neuroscience, is one of a small class of promising models of consciousness. “IIT is a very mathematical theory.
Can our brains help prove the universe is conscious?


Minding matter
Many prominent architects of 20th-century science have affirmed a unified, collective aspect of consciousness, in which all individual minds are connected as a single whole.
Materialism alone cannot explain the riddle of consciousness | Aeon Essays

Consciousness: here, there and everywhere?
Integrated Information Theory can explain a range of clinical and laboratory findings, makes a number of testable predictions and extrapolates to a number of problematic conditions
Consciousness: here, there and everywhere? | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Quantum Bayesianism
Experiments have confirmed that — as predicted by quantum mechanics — reality is contextual, which contradicts at least intuitive formulations of realism and corroborates the hypothesis of a mental universe.
http://ispcjournal.org/journals/2017-19/Kastrup_19.pdf

Non-local consciousness in the universe: panpsychism, psi& mind over matter in a hyper dimensional physics
the paradigm of non-local consciousness in a participatory universe
View of Non-local consciousness in the universe: panpsychism, psi & mind over matter in a hyper-dimensional physics

 

[Kylie]

Rather than link straight to technical papers here are some articles arguing for these ideas in a easy to understand way but with links to the papers.

Hold on there.

I don't want opinion pieces about this.

Show me the actual scientific data that supports the claim that consciousness creates matter. Show me the experiments that were done in the real world.