Searching for GOD...

[BashfulAnthony]

Well go and find the nearest available ten year old.

So finally, to just make it clear why people like you use such language, let's say:  firstly: limited intelligence; then limited exposure to better ways of expressing themselves; a desire to fit in (usually with other people who express themselves crudely); and finally, shock value.
So, they also feel compelled to fit in with the crowd, who may say it's cool to have a poor vocabulary:  but it shows no respect for others.  But, unfortunately, when you say something too often it loses its power and, in the case of swear words, it makes the "user" just look cheap, illiterate and an undesirable person to be around.  Must ring a few bells with you, eh?

Lest you say I am derailing  (capital offence, that!), then you can easily trump me by ignoring what I say.  Let's see if you do!

[Shaker]

So finally, to just make it clear why people like you use such language, let's say:  firstly: limited intelligence

Done this before - surprise surprise. If you hold to this then you have to hold that innumerable of the greatest ornaments the English language had and has, from Chaucer on down to today, were and are of limited intelligence. When this is pointed out to you, you dodge and bob and weave and try to claim that while they may have used what you call bad language (since this is unavoidable and undeniable), they did so for what you think were "proper" reasons. This is because you're a rank hypocrite, as I and several others have pointed out in the past when you signally fail to chastise any theist (such as Vlad - whichever ridiculous name he happens to be using this week) for also using "bad language." That's given a free pass by you.

then limited exposure to better ways of expressing themselves; a desire to fit in (usually with other people who express themselves crudely); and finally, shock value.

Except, who's shocked but a few maiden aunts? Indeed, in this context who is shocked at all except you?

So, they also feel compelled to fit in with the crowd, who may say it's cool to have a poor vocabulary: but it shows no respect for others. But, unfortunately, when you say something too often it loses its power and, in the case of swear words, it makes the "user" just look cheap, illiterate and an undesirable person to be around. Must ring a few bells with you, eh?

No.

Lest you say I am derailing  (capital offence, that!)

It's not a capital offence; it's just incredibly repetitive and therefore incredibly boring. Gordon may well be a more patient chappy than I am - not exactly difficult - and might not be bored witless by having to explain the forum rules to you over and over and over and over again; but I wouldn't be remotely surprised if he is.

then you can easily trump me by ignoring what I say.  Let's see if you do!

That's what makes the world a better place - ignoring rank stupidity. Works every time.

[Alan Burns]

OK I'll remind you.

Go out this afternoon and find a dead tree stump and a dog.  Give them both a good hefty kick. My prediction would be that you will have no problem kicking a tree stump, but you will be unable to kick the dog. Why would that be ? Your aversion to attacking the dog is born of your belief (which you keep denying here) that the dog is a sentient being that actually experiences pain and pleasure like you do.  Maybe it is trivially true that we cannot prove that other creatures have inner experience, but there again the same goes for other people.

But this argument does not address the issue of what defines the self awareness and conscious choices we experience as human beings.  I am still not convinced that animals experience the same conscious awaress as humans, and it does nothing to deny these spiritual properties we experience.  Comparing humans to animals just highlights apparent similarities, but many profound differences remain, particulartly pertaining to our ability to experience faith in God.

[SusanDoris]

If they are happy believing stuff that you think is wrong, why is that sad?

Because they are living with a belief that is false, totally lacking in objectivity and testability,  which has been passed down through the generations so that there are too many who believe there is some 'thing', spirit or something which exists, and because of thatbelief  will probably end their lives under the same misapprehension. If that makes them happy, then, as long as they are not holding back real,, practical world progress, or harming others, then there is of course and rightly so, a place for them.

Why force your beliefs on them and make them unhappy?

The only people who force beliefs on others are the terrorists for whom control and power are their aims.

If death is the end, and we all wind up there anyway at some point, why not let them enjoy what life they have?

I can only say from experience that I have enjoyed all the moments I have had since finally stepping away from belief in a God far more completely than the moments before, and would, if I wasted time on that sort of thinking, resent the time spent on believing there was a god..

Why destroy it for them?

Explain why you think knowledge of facts, and the ability therefore to differentiate fact from fiction, would ‘destroy’ them?

If they are not hurting anyone else with it, why do you take it on yourself to spoil their beliefs and make them unhappy?

Why do you think it is not harming others if these others  have been taught to believe in a God/god?  It is teaching them to pursue an ever-elusive, non-existent  shadow.

Isn't it a little bit egotistical to do that?

I do not know how one would do this in an egotistical manner!

Alans beliefs are his own, I might not share them, but I don't expect him to change them.

Nor do I, but am incurably optimistic that one day, when he is older and perhaps has to rely more on the scientific side of life to give him as long a life as possible, he will see that this is the one and only life we have.

I think what is sad is the intolerance of different people's beliefs, and the attempt to take them away at any cost to the victim.

Why should anyone be tolerant of the religious cults that demean women, make young girls marry the man their father chooses, regardless of feelings, that teach that the words of the book they call holy must be obeyed, that teach there is reincarnation etc without a crumb of truth anywhere in such an idea, that teach there was a person resurrected after three days of being dead, etc. How would you decide which beliefs to be tolerant of, and why?  Don’t you think that a good education with a good dose of critical thinking and an ability to realise that if you don’t know an answer, you say, I don’t know the answer,’ – you do not say, ‘Ah, god-did-it.’ is far superior?

Discussion as disagreement is fine, but I think you have to respect someone's right to believe as they do.

Yes, I agree that a person has the right to believe as they do, but why should I respect the belief, especially if I know it to be 99.9…9% wrong?

Alans religion obviously gives him great comfort, not sure I approve of trying to take that away.

Well, I certainly approve of people presenting facts in their side of the discussion which, even if AB doesn’t take them up, some browsing readers just might.


Note to a mod: I've got the quote tags slightly wrong on one of Rose's quotes, and would be grateful if you could fix it. I think the meaning is still clear.

[Alan Burns]

So far as I can tell, the 'recipient' you're suggesting can't be defined at all. The 'recipient' - us - can quite easily be defined in physical terms: we are the pattern of activity in the brain.

Broadly, yes. Data, actually, but yes.

There is no evidence for this independent 'entity', no evidence for any communication coming into the brain from an undetected source, no gap in the information flow through the brain. The recipient of the information is an emergent property of that data flowing.

The pixels on the screen, though, are not the pattern of understanding, they are hand that waves because of the understanding.

The software in the processor that sends that signal to the screen is the correct analogy - it's highly unlikely that any of those software architectures are sufficiently complex to evince the sort of awareness we have as humans, but given the subjectiveness of self-awareness we have no idea if they are the equivalent of plants, or snails, or fish, or simple mammals.

O.

Software may well be compared with the functions of certain animals or plants, but until you can define how (or if) human self awareness "emerges" from the flow of data you can't make any assumptions about the feasibility of generating self awareness from software.

To describe your awareness as a pattern of brain activity or an emergent property is just an assumption based upon the observation that nothing else can be detected by human endeavours.  These phrases do not define how self awareness is generated.  And ultimately any pattern of activity or emergent property is entirely defined by the events generated from uncontrolled atomic particles.

[Bubbles]

That's what I was referring to.
No, don't buy it. Horseshit spray-painted gold, covered in glitter and given a squirt of Channel 5 is still horseshit.

If you stop referring to it as horseshit and spread it around your roses as horse manure  it's actually quite useful stuff.

Which costs a bit to buy with your hard earned gold  too  .

Look at how beautiful flowers can be when nurtured , and their perfume inspired things like Chanel no 5.


Outrider is right, it's how it is presented.

  🌹💐🌺🌸

[torridon]

The sad thing for me is knowing people who can't discover God's love.

I suppose it would be nice if there were a god and one that loved people; reading your presentation however it seems that gods love seems to go hand in hand with the espousal of a shed load of unjustified unevidenced contradictory and usually just plain wrong tangential beliefs and I'm not sure which way round the cause and effect works here - whether your positions on free-will, souls, consciousness, heaven etc. result from having excperienced god's love or does god's love result from espousing all these unreasonable (to my mind) beliefs.  If there is a loving God, then the I presume he would value all people equally for what they are and not merely elect into his presence only those individuals that are prepared to abandon all intellectual integrity and discernment in order court the accompanying constellation of loosely connected irrational beliefs.

[torridon]

OK I'll remind you.

Go out this afternoon and find a dead tree stump and a dog.  Give them both a good hefty kick. My prediction would be that you will have no problem kicking a tree stump, but you will be unable to kick the dog. Why would that be ? Your aversion to attacking the dog is born of your belief (which you keep denying here) that the dog is a sentient being that actually experiences pain and pleasure like you do.  Maybe it is trivially true that we cannot prove that other creatures have inner experience, but there again the same goes for other people.

But this argument does not address the issue of what defines the self awareness and conscious choices we experience as human beings.  I am still not convinced that animals experience the same conscious awaress as humans, and it does nothing to deny these spiritual properties we experience.  Comparing humans to animals just highlights apparent similarities, but many profound differences remain, particulartly pertaining to our ability to experience faith in God.

Goal post shifting : nobody claims that other creatures have the same inner experience as humans, clearly there will be differences.  But it does address the inconsistency in your position in insinuating that all non-human creatures have no inner experience or self awareness, implied by your use of the phrase 'biological robot'.  The evidence is overwhelming that all higher creatures, all mammals, all reptiles, all birds, probably most fish, they all have some form of inner experiential consciousness analagous to ours, and this sense of self and agency works fine for all those creatures apparently without recourse to a supernatural soul to make sense and meaning out of all that neurobiological activity.

[Outrider]

No, don't buy it. Horseshit spray-painted gold, covered in glitter and given a squirt of Channel 5 is still horseshit.

Horseshit is still horseshit, but I'd rather be offered an opportunity to take it if I wish than have it thrown at me with the scattershot pattern of a shotgun, or have it offered to me by an idiot who is either pretending it's coffee or genuinely believes that it's coffee.

O.

[Outrider]

Software may well be compared with the functions of certain animals or plants, but until you can define how (or if) human self awareness "emerges" from the flow of data you can't make any assumptions about the feasibility of generating self awareness from software.

Why do you arbitrarily decide that human self-awareness is qualitatively different from other animals and not merely quantitatively?

To describe your awareness as a pattern of brain activity or an emergent property is just an assumption based upon the observation that nothing else can be detected by human endeavours.

No, though it starts with that basis. It grows through the reality that when we compare consciousness/awareness against brain activity there is nothing missing, and nothing added.

These phrases do not define how self awareness is generated.

That's because the model doesn't presume that self-awareness is anything 'else' - it's not generated, it simply is a feedback loop within that activity.

And ultimately any pattern of activity or emergent property is entirely defined by the events generated from uncontrolled atomic particles.

Neither I nor the model have a problem with that conclusion. You don't like it, but you've not given a reason to reject the idea, just a motivation for you to want to do so.

O.

[Alan Burns]

Goal post shifting : nobody claims that other creatures have the same inner experience as humans, clearly there will be differences.  But it does address the inconsistency in your position in insinuating that all non-human creatures have no inner experience or self awareness, implied by your use of the phrase 'biological robot'.  The evidence is overwhelming that all higher creatures, all mammals, all reptiles, all birds, probably most fish, they all have some form of inner experiential consciousness analagous to ours, and this sense of self and agency works fine for all those creatures apparently without recourse to a supernatural soul to make sense and meaning out of all that neurobiological activity.

But they all exhibit reactions which are easily explained by natural instinct or learnt experience.  Human behaviour extends far beyond these boundaries which is why I can conclude that the human combination of conscious free will and awareness is unique in the animal kingdom.  You would never be able to hold other animals to account for their actions because they are just doing what they are programmed to do.  Humans have the unique ability to override their natural instinct and learnt experience and just do something because they want to, using the gift of conscious free will.

[Shaker]

You really are absolutely desperate for humans to be unique, aren't you Alan? And don't care which hole you have to pull your excuses out of to do it.

[Outrider]

But they all exhibit reactions which are easily explained by natural instinct or learnt experience.

I'm not sure that's true - elephants bury their dead, dolphins and whales have mourning rituals, these aren't simple cause and effect behaviours. Chimpanzees and gorillas are capable of understanding language and communicating concepts - and there's tentative evidence that they do so naturally, too. These are the things that we previously thought were the unique elements of human intellect and awareness, but it seems that we're just 'better' at it.

Human behaviour extends far beyond these boundaries which is why I can conclude that the human combination of conscious free will and awareness is unique in the animal kingdom.  You would never be able to hold other animals to account for their actions because they are just doing what they are programmed to do.

Is a dog's cowering a reaction to previous punishment or an awareness of guilt? Is a human's reaction any different because it can communicate it, or because it has a greater degree of self-awareness is it simply more complex?

Humans have the unique ability to override their natural instinct and learnt experience and just do something because they want to, using the gift of conscious free will.

Any number of animals perform rituals for no discernible reason - many animals, particular whales and dolphins appear to simply play for the fun of it, they'll assist humans they've never encountered before if they're in danger for no obvious benefit. Apes comprehend ideas like 'justice', becoming agitated if they are treated unfairly. Humans are not anywhere near  as unique as many of us seem to think.

O.

[Alan Burns]

I'm not sure that's true - elephants bury their dead, dolphins and whales have mourning rituals, these aren't simple cause and effect behaviours. Chimpanzees and gorillas are capable of understanding language and communicating concepts - and there's tentative evidence that they do so naturally, too. These are the things that we previously thought were the unique elements of human intellect and awareness, but it seems that we're just 'better' at it.

Is a dog's cowering a reaction to previous punishment or an awareness of guilt? Is a human's reaction any different because it can communicate it, or because it has a greater degree of self-awareness is it simply more complex?

Any number of animals perform rituals for no discernible reason - many animals, particular whales and dolphins appear to simply play for the fun of it, they'll assist humans they've never encountered before if they're in danger for no obvious benefit. Apes comprehend ideas like 'justice', becoming agitated if they are treated unfairly. Humans are not anywhere near  as unique as many of us seem to think.

O.

You are picking out perceived similarities between some animal behaviour and humans, but the main point I am making is that the animal's behaviour is largely predictable because it is derived from instinct and experience.  Human behaviour is not as predictable because there is the element of free will which makes us (our soul) accountable for what we do.

[Alan Burns]

You really are absolutely desperate for humans to be unique, aren't you Alan? And don't care which hole you have to pull your excuses out of to do it.

I think your post aptly demonstrates the elements of free will your soul is generating to reply to my comments.

[Shaker]

How does it do that, then, Alan?

[torridon]

But they all exhibit reactions which are easily explained by natural instinct or learnt experience.  Human behaviour extends far beyond these boundaries which is why I can conclude that the human combination of conscious free will and awareness is unique in the animal kingdom.  You would never be able to hold other animals to account for their actions because they are just doing what they are programmed to do.  Humans have the unique ability to override their natural instinct and learnt experience and just do something because they want to, using the gift of conscious free will.

and just 'because they want to' is exactly why it isn't free. We are tied to our desires.  The fact that you wrote 'because' in that sentence is the give away that you subconsciously acknowledge that cause and effect is at work in our choices, but for some reason you also like to deny it.  If we did things for absolutely no reason whatsoever then we could justifiably call if 'free'.  But that is not the case thank heavens, like everything else, our choices serve a purpose, even if that purpose is subtle or complex or below the level of our conscious awareness.

[torridon]

You are picking out perceived similarities between some animal behaviour and humans, but the main point I am making is that the animal's behaviour is largely predictable because it is derived from instinct and experience.  Human behaviour is not as predictable because there is the element of free will which makes us (our soul) accountable for what we do.

the fact that you acknowledge that choices are 'largely predictable' or 'less predictable' shows that you understand that there is a spectrum of predictability, it is not a binary either/or situation.  If we had free will then you can forget that sliding scale, in a free will situation there would be absolutely zero predictability because your choices are not traceable back to any cause. I agree humans are harder to predict than say a rabbit. and that is because we have developed a greater range of sophistication in our cognitive abilities. 

Greater (relative) unpredictability is a survival advantage for a prey animal (which humans are) as it confounds predators that depend on their ability to predict what their prey will do next.   Greater (relative) unpredictability is a survival advantage for predators (which humans are) as it allows us to explore a greater range of possibilties and niches.

[Maeght]

I think your post aptly demonstrates the elements of free will your soul is generating to reply to my comments.

No it doesn't at all. You cannot know that the post is not a result of prior experiences and events producing a response that is not free at all but determined by the way the brain is wired due to nature and nurture.

[Outrider]

You are picking out perceived similarities between some animal behaviour and humans, but the main point I am making is that the animal's behaviour is largely predictable because it is derived from instinct and experience.

You haven't given any reason to think that human behaviour isn't, you've just claimed it. I've shown that some animal behaviour has no obvious or immediate practical benefit - it's complex, social behaviour of a similar nature to our own, perhaps more limited but not different in substance.

Human behaviour is not as predictable because there is the element of free will which makes us (our soul) accountable for what we do.

No, human behaviour is often entirely predictable, any number of areas of our culture and society rely on that. The rules to which we conform are more complex, but they are there. We have a significantly larger capacity for abstraction than other animals, we don't need to invent unevidenced explanations for our differences.

O.

[Alan Burns]

The rules to which we conform are more complex, but they are there.

And we have the ability to break these rules if we so wish.  If our "will" was pre determined we would not have the ability to consciously break these rules.

[Outrider]

And we have the ability to break these rules if we so wish.  If our "will" was pre determined we would not have the ability to consciously break these rules.

And the desires that we have to do so are, equally, a part of that complex social structure.

O.

[Alan Burns]

- intellectually he's had his posterior handed to him on a salver.

And really, when he comes out with such blithering arse-gravy as his oft-repeated assertion that atheists are atheists because they're blinded and led astray from "the truth" by Satan (last wheeled out just over a week ago)

Just to elaborate a little on this point.

I have been blessed with an awareness of God which will not allow me to doubt His existence, though I do have the capacity to question things about God.  Looking at human history there is evidence that most human beings have been blessed with some form of spiritual awareness which prompts them to seek out the spiritual nature of their lives and has led to many man-made attempts to discover God in the numerous religious beliefs of this world.  My own belief is firmly held in the faith that God has revealed Himself through Christianity.

The first chapter of the Bible is a revealing insight into the human weakness to give in to self centred temptation.  People's natural awareness of their spirituality has been eroded by the temptation of pride in believing that human intellect is all that is needed to explain our existence and that there is no need for any spirituality in our human nature.

The irony is that it is the human soul driving our free thought processes which brings up the perceived human intellect.

[Maeght]

And we have the ability to break these rules if we so wish.  If our "will" was pre determined we would not have the ability to consciously break these rules.

Yes we would. Firstly, it appears from recent scientific study that most of our apparent conscious choices are actually made subconsciously and we only then give a conscious explanation for our choices and secondly even if this were not the case the conscious thinking could just as well be determined by our nature and nurture. These points have been made several times - perhaps you could address them specifically.

[Shaker]

Yes we would. Firstly, it appears from recent scientific study that most of our apparent conscious choices are actually made subconsciously and we only then give a conscious explanation for our choices and secondly even if this were not the case the conscious thinking could just as well be determined by our nature and nurture. These points have been made several times - perhaps you could address them specifically.

Soul something something God something something uniquely human something something.

There, that should cover it.