Searching for GOD...

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

What I have dared to suggest is that some of the beneficial mutations needed for the evolution process could be guided by creative forces to produce a specific goal.  There is no way to prove or disprove whether each beneficial mutation was due to random events, but looking at the complexity of the finished product might well indicate that some intelligent intervention was needed.

First there's nothing daring about suggesting something, however scientifically illiterate that suggestion may be.

Second, you can "suggest" anything you like. What you actually do though is a lot more than just suggesting - rather you assert your claim to be true, and on that basis evangelise for something you call "God".

Third, yet again you have evolution completely ass backwards: the apparent complexity of the organisms it produces categorically does not require any planning to that effect at prior stages of evolution.   

Apart from all that though...

[bluehillside Retd.]

Wiggs,

Say it ain't so!

Sorry.

Still, you never know - our chum may finally be galvanised into making a case now that doesn't rely on fallacy, misunderstanding or un-argued assertion.

You bring the Vimto and I'll get the Twiglets in. Here we go then...

Alan?

[wigginhall]

I was thinking about the dinosaurs being wiped out, possibly by an asteroid.    Thus, mammals were enabled to thrive, and here we are!

Well, Alan, this is a pretty complicated series of events, and permitted humans to develop - so do you think it was intelligently planned?  Maybe God thought those damn reptiles are getting too clever, I'm gonna throw a big rock at the earth, and help those little critters (mammals).

[Rhiannon]

God created and then killed the dinosaurs so that people would have the fun of digging them up and figuring them out.

Don't believe me? No dinosaurs, no Natural History Museum. Nuff said.

[wigginhall]

God created and then killed the dinosaurs so that people would have the fun of digging them up and figuring them out.

Don't believe me? No dinosaurs, no Natural History Museum. Nuff said.

Or maybe it was Satan who created the dinosaurs, so that there would be all these fossils, and then people would doubt God.   But God, bless his cotton socks, thought hello, I'm not having this, and quick as a flash, little marmosets were spreading all over the place, and they got bigger, and BECAME HUMAN.   God is great, oops, wrong religion.,

[Rhiannon]

So the NHM is really a temple of Satan. Thank goodness you figured it out, Wiggs. People take their kids there, you know.

[torridon]

Quite right Gonnagle, though I've been doing it in fits and starts and without any sound on the computer, cannot do videos, but it is fascinating and something we can revisit after the course finishes.  Thank you Torridon.

Hugs to Brownie, also Wiggs and Gonners for kind comments.    Try and get some audio visual Brownie, Solms is a good educator, that comes across strongest through his lecturing style.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Torridon,

Your the man

Dear Forum, ( On My Way To The Forum )

Sorry folks but this thread is finished, Alan Burns is right, we do have a soul, everything has a soul, the Universe has a soul

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness?CMP=share_btn_tw

Sorry, slight amendment, Zombie's don't have souls

The article is long, very long, make yourself a cuppa before reading.

Gonnagle.

PS: Is there a Hard Problem??

[Sassy]

Your self-importance is hardly an argument.

Please feel free to present the logic....

Is that an admittance you can find no argument to stand against Alan so you resort to insult and sarcasm.

It would appear logic would be lost on you at this present time.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sassy,

Is that an admittance you can find no argument to stand against Alan so you resort to insult and sarcasm.

It's neither insult nor sarcasm. Alan consistently resorts to personal opinions to argue for objective truths for the rest of us - about the limits of what science could discover, about his incredulity at evolution requiring no blueprints etc. Some merely points out that it's self-important to assume that his personal opinions should be considered persuasive for that purpose. 

And pretty much all the arguments that undo Alan's claims stand in any case - which is why he just ignores them in favour of further unqualified personal opinions.

It would appear logic would be lost on you at this present time.

No, Some was entirely logical: Alan's personal opinions say nothing to objective truths for the rest of us, and it's self-important of him to think that they do.

[Udayana]

Dear Torridon,

Your the man

Dear Forum, ( On My Way To The Forum )

Sorry folks but this thread is finished, Alan Burns is right, we do have a soul, everything has a soul, the Universe has a soul

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness?CMP=share_btn_tw

Sorry, slight amendment, Zombie's don't have souls

The article is long, very long, make yourself a cuppa before reading.

Gonnagle.

PS: Is there a Hard Problem??

Well written, informative, article - good find Gonnagle.
There certainly is at least one problem, "hard" or not, still to be solved.

[torridon]

I too admire Torridon's posts on this thread.  They are always interesting, thoughtful and thought provoking.  I am sorry that I may not have given him the credit he deserves.

Whilst not denying the truth contained in his posts, I have tried to show that they do not give the full picture.  The reality of our existence has a spiritual dimension which does not contradict our scientific discoveries, but fits in perfectly to explain the true reality in which we live.  And I can look upon this reality with wonder and awe.

I think many of your ideas are in opposition to science, not supplementary to it. 

Your relegation of evolution by natural selection to a mere fine tuning process is an ignorant neo-creationist put-down to the power and elegance of Darwin's great idea. 

Your idea of the human soul as recipient and conscious agent of subjective experience amounts to a position of solipsism with respect to all other sentient creatures, which I think is untenable in any sense.

I do agree there is something fundamentally difficult at the core of that, the hard problem of consciousness, which has given rise to 'souls' as a traditional means towards explaining the gap between objective and subjective experience. For hundreds of years science has all but ignored subjective experience, taking it as something axiomatic, beyond investigation. Consider a schizophrenic - hearing voices in his head. He doesn't imagine these voices, he actually hears them, and they are often very loud, deafening almost to the point of pain. Yet there are no voices, and furthermore if we put a microphone next to his head it registers zero decibels. This is something happening that is very loud from a personal subjective aspect, but is completely silent from an objective aspect.  How do we explain that something can be simultaneously very loud and completely silent ?  Understanding this is the hard problem of consciousness, but we are starting to make inroads into this, working towards building a framework of understanding that incorporates both first person subjective experience and third person objective; in the course of that we may have to fundamentally re-examine our base concepts of the nature of matter and energy; the fact that we are making progress means time is running out on traditional concepts like souls.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Torridon,

Understanding this is the hard problem of consciousness, but we are starting to make inroads into this, working towards building a framework of understanding that incorporates both first person subjective experience and third person objective; in the course of that we may have to fundamentally re-examine our base concepts of the nature of matter and energy; the fact that we are making progress means time is running out on traditional concepts like souls.

So you disagree with Dennett, consciousness is just an illusion, a conjuring trick, there is no Hard Problem.

Daniel Dennett, the high-profile atheist and professor at Tufts University outside Boston, argues that consciousness, as we think of it, is an illusion: there just isn’t anything in addition to the spongy stuff of the brain, and that spongy stuff doesn’t actually give rise to something called consciousness. Common sense may tell us there’s a subjective world of inner experience – but then common sense told us that the sun orbits the Earth, and that the world was flat. Consciousness, according to Dennett’s theory, is like a conjuring trick: the normal functioning of the brain just makes it look as if there is something non-physical going on. To look for a real, substantive thing called consciousness, Dennett argues, is as silly as insisting that characters in novels, such as Sherlock Holmes or Harry Potter, must be made up of a peculiar substance named “fictoplasm”; the idea is absurd and unnecessary, since the characters do not exist to begin with.

Gonnagle.

[torridon]

Dear Torridon,

So you disagree with Dennett, consciousness is just an illusion, a conjuring trick, there is no Hard Problem.

Gonnagle.

Maybe it is an indicator of a hard problem when high profile thinkers cannot even agree whether there is a 'real' hard problem in the first place. I would say it is a hard problem in the generic sense that to even think about it clearly is challenging; on the other hand I'm not with those who believe 'hard problem' is code for 'insoluble problem', so I'm probably closer to Dennet than Chalmers, but it is all work in progress and somewhat too early to make any definitive pronouncements.   Some more resources for anyone interested :

http://www.closertotruth.com/series/why-did-consciousness-emerge

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1668/20140167#sec-3

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ehz/the_rawexperience_dogma_dissolving_the_qualia/

a paper by Mark Solms on the hard problem :

http://www.pubfacts.com/detail/25012708/A-neuropsychoanalytical-approach-to-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness
 
 

[Alan Burns]

I think many of your ideas are in opposition to science, not supplementary to it. 

Did you look at the link I gave a few posts ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHUaNAxsTg

Sheldrake is a biologist who (in his own words) seems to have been excommunicated from the scientific community for his unconventional ideas about science.

And here is an interesting commentary from the Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/27/science-delusion-rupert-sheldrake-review

I admit I am unsure about his ideas on morphic resonance, but I find his points about the limitations of material science, and the need to extend the boundaries of scientific investigation are remarkably similar to my own, which I came to long before reading his work.

[wigginhall]

I find the Dennett stuff intriguing, as I know a few Buddhists who maintain that consciousness doesn't exist as a separate force or entity.   But then Buddhists quite often argue that there is no such thing as matter or spirit, so they are really shifting the whole framework.   An old friend of mine used to ask, 'why is that ash-tray suspended in the air?'   Well, it's a barmy question, of course.

But there is a difference between me and the chair.   On the other hand ...

[Alan Burns]

Dear Torridon,

Your the man

Dear Forum, ( On My Way To The Forum )

Sorry folks but this thread is finished, Alan Burns is right, we do have a soul, everything has a soul, the Universe has a soul

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness?CMP=share_btn_tw

Sorry, slight amendment, Zombie's don't have souls

The article is long, very long, make yourself a cuppa before reading.

Gonnagle.

PS: Is there a Hard Problem??

Thanks Gonnagle for this interesting read.
I particularly liked the idea that humans have as much chance of understanding consciousness as a squirrel has of understanding quantum physics. 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I find the Dennett stuff intriguing, as I know a few Buddhists who maintain that consciousness doesn't exist as a separate force or entity.   But then Buddhists quite often argue that there is no such thing as matter or spirit, so they are really shifting the whole framework.   An old friend of mine used to ask, 'why is that ash-tray suspended in the air?'   Well, it's a barmy question, of course.

That's all very well but isn't this the Christian topic?

[torridon]

Thanks Gonnagle for this interesting read.
I particularly liked the idea that humans have as much chance of understanding consciousness as a squirrel has of understanding quantum physics. 

That's a bit defeatist.  The history of ideas is littered with acheivements that nay-sayers had said would never happen.  The average man in the Victorian street would not believe many aspects of our modern lives that we now take for granted.

[Alan Burns]

That's a bit defeatist.  The history of ideas is littered with acheivements that nay-sayers had said would never happen.  The average man in the Victorian street would not believe many aspects of our modern lives that we now take for granted.

But we have the other extreme of assuming that anything which can't be understood by human endeavours does not exist - such as free will, souls, God ...

Indeed, there is prof Dennet in Gonnagle's link who tries to show that consciousness itself must be an illusion because it can't be defined in particle physics.

[Stranger]

But we have the other extreme of assuming that anything which can't be understood by human endeavours does not exist - such as free will, souls, God ...

Whatever the limits of our understanding may be, the fact remains that it is only rational to accept as objectively real those things for which we have objective evidence or sound arguments.

Still waiting for any hint of these for your god...

Indeed, there is prof Dennet in Gonnagle's link who tries to show that consciousness itself must be an illusion because it can't be defined in particle physics.

I think you may have confused his gold and silver analogy about "explaining things away" with his views on consciousness. Yes, he doesn't think it's a "thing" but not because of particle physics (he's actually a philosopher, not a scientist). To use an analogy from one of his books (not this article) he compares it to a centre of gravity - something that is well behaved physically but not an actual "thing".

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But we have the other extreme of assuming that anything which can't be understood by human endeavours does not exist - such as free will, souls, God ...

...leprechauns, the Loch Ness Monster, unicorns, Jack Frost, the invisible pixies that hold stuff down with tiny strings so it doesn't fly off into space, monsters under the bed, and Father Christmas. And indeed anything else that may happen to pop into anyone's head - or indeed hasn't popped into someone's head but may exist nonetheless.

That's your problem here - you just assume the premise (that there actually is a suite of particular "anythings" that happen to suit you but that can't be understood by "human endeavours") and then accuse others of thinking they doesn't exist. What people actually think though is that there's no reason to think that any of these things do exist, which is a very different matter. If ever you managed a cogent definition of "souls" for example and demonstrated their existence, then most people would accept their existence. As presumably would you if I managed the same thing for, say, unicorns.

As it stands though, just making logically very bad arguments doesn't help you one jot in that effort.   

Indeed, there is prof Dennet in Gonnagle's link who tries to show that consciousness itself must be an illusion because it can't be defined in particle physics.

You misunderstand him - rather he says that consciousness as a separate "thing" is illusory but, even if you didn't, that would help you not one jot either.

Incidentally, you do know that DD is one of the more public of the so-called "new" atheists don't you?

[torridon]

But we have the other extreme of assuming that anything which can't be understood by human endeavours does not exist - such as free will, souls, God ...

There is a difference between 'hard to understand' and incomprehensible.  If something fits within a cause and effect framework obeying patterns or laws then it is comprehensible, even though comprehension might not come easily. If on the other hand there is a random element involved, then it will be conceptually incomprehensible, meaningless.  It would be impossible to truly believe in such things as are meaningless - by their own definition there can be no convincing evidence in support.

[torridon]

Indeed, there is prof Dennet in Gonnagle's link who tries to show that consciousness itself must be an illusion because it can't be defined in particle physics.

There is certainly an illusory quality to conscious experience in that we all have a false intuition of direct raw experience.

[Enki]

Did you look at the link I gave a few posts ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHUaNAxsTg

Sheldrake is a biologist who (in his own words) seems to have been excommunicated from the scientific community for his unconventional ideas about science.

And here is an interesting commentary from the Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/27/science-delusion-rupert-sheldrake-review

I admit I am unsure about his ideas on morphic resonance, but I find his points about the limitations of material science, and the need to extend the boundaries of scientific investigation are remarkably similar to my own, which I came to long before reading his work.

Perhaps you might look at Rupert Sheldrake's actual experiments to do with the paranormal, especially the ones associated with the 'psychic' dog, JayTee and his telephone telepathyy experiments. You might discover just why the scientific community generally treats him with such scepticism.

Some time ago, probably before you became a member of this Board, I remember discussing Sheldrake in some detail, and especially his relationship with Dr Chris French(a sympathetic skeptic).

Without bothering to go into it again, I do remember this internet site which deals with Sheldrake's dog experiment. You might like to read it. It's not long, and the writer's conclusions are really quite interesting.

https://barenormality.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/rupert-sheldrake-and-the-psychic-dog/