AB,
I am quite capable of finding reasons to contradict every one of the points you made, and no doubt you will once again show that you are capable of finding reasons to contradict my chosen contradictions.
But that’s not true is it. You’re not capable of that at all - or at least if you are you’ve never shown any inclination to do it up to now. Instead you attempt arguments that are logically false. Some of us take the time to explain to you why they’re false. Rather than deal with the problem though, you just repeat the same false arguments as if they hadn’t been falsified.
This must be because you simply can’t process reason-based argument, or you can but your
a priori religious beliefs make it impossible for you to be honest.
And so it goes on ad infinitum to add yet more posts to this ever increasing thread.
Yes, but that’s a “so it goes on” only because you won’t address the problems you give yourself. Stop doing that and you might actually learn something.
Yet in all this you stick to your belief that all these arguments and counter arguments will ultimately be derived from the consequences of predetermined physical reactions.
“Determined”, not “predetermined” remember?
Can you not…
When you begin a sentence with “can you not” it usually means you’re about to fall into one of your bigger mistakes. Let’s see shall we?
…see the absurdity of one set of predetermined physical reactions apparently arguing against another set of predetermined physical reactions?
Sure enough you did. Within our relatively narrow perception of consciousness there’s nothing absurd about that at all. That’s why our lives have meaning
to us. When you overreach into thinking there must be some sort of universal importance in the discussions our tiny, obscure, insignificant little species has then that is absurd. Shakespeare as always put it best:
“
Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
(Macbeth)
Can you not see the reality that there has to be something in control of each set of physical reactions in order to generate these consciously driven altercations? It is the conscious you arguing against the conscious me by consciously manipulating the physical machinery in our material brains. You can look upon it as little men at the controls if you like, but it makes far more sense than two machines on autopilot trying to outdo each other.
Can you not see that this is fundamentally a flawed idea that’s tells us not only that the author doesn’t “think deeply”, but barely thinks at all? If you want to assert a gap that isn’t there and fill it with a “controller” about which you have no information of any kind and that apparently functions by magic then you exit any sort of discussion between grown ups.