Searching for GOD...

[Alan Burns]

AB,

A bizarre piece of casuistry (why wouldn’t “god” just magic it all to happen as he planned anyway?) but in any case you’ve missed the point.

Your argument for “god” goes like this:

1. People exist.

2. The number of evolutionary events that must have occurred for people to exist is unfathomably vast…

3. …so unfathomably vast that it beggars belief that they could have happened just so without guidance.

4. Therefore there was guidance.

5. Therefore God.

This argument only works though when you also install a designer god at the outset to intend people to be the outcome. In other words, you’re using your premise “god” to justify your outcome, which is also “god”. You’re starting and ending with the same thing, and that’s called circular reasoning:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning#:~:text=Circular%20reasoning%20(Latin%3A%20circulus%20in,are%20trying%20to%20end%20with.

Do you understand your mistake now?

The argument is entirely based on the unlikely probability that the unfathomable complexity of the human mind could have emerged from random, unguided, purposeless forces.  How is this circular reasoning?

[Alan Burns]

That's interesting.
You have never mentioned up until now this "part of the brain that communicates with the soul".
I suppose that means that all of your physical functions eg what you are seeing, hearing, tasting...everything physical, must first be processed via this "part of the brain"?
Is it all channeled through as raw data or is there some pre-channeling processing going on?

The end recipient of the data which exists in your material brain is the single entity of awareness which is you.  I do not know exactly how all these separate bits of data get channelled into a single entity of awareness, but I do know that there is no material model for generating a single entity of awareness from many discrete reactions.

[Outrider]

The argument is entirely based on the unlikely probability that the unfathomable complexity of the human mind could have emerged from random, unguided, purposeless forces.

Instead you posit a greater intelligence that emerged spontaneously and fully realised, and has magic? Given billions of chances for each evolutionary step each year, and billions of years, how 'unlikely' does any individual step have to be to not result in conscious life?

O.

[Sebastian Toe]

The end recipient of the data which exists in your material brain is the single entity of awareness which is you.  I do not know exactly how all these separate bits of data get channelled into a single entity of awareness, but I do know that there is no material model for generating a single entity of awareness from many discrete reactions.

You are the guy claiming that a hypnotist must be blocking the  "part of the brain that communicates with the soul".
Have you even thought this through?
How could that possibly be done?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

The argument is entirely based on the unlikely probability that the unfathomable complexity of the human mind could have emerged from random, unguided, purposeless forces.  How is this circular reasoning?

No it isn’t. The argument is actually entirely based on two propositions, namely:

1. That humans were so unlikely to have appeared by chance that there must have been a god to guide the process; AND

2. That god wanted humans to exist all along.
 
In other words, your opening premise to do the designing (“god”) and your conclusion to do the guiding (also “god”) are the same thing.

And that’s called circular reasoning.

Now consider instead our deck of cards. I’ve already told you how fantastically unlikely any given sequence of 52 cards will be. You don’t though also claim that when the cards are dealt there must therefore have been a guiding agency to make them come out that way. Why not? Because in that case you don’t also insert ab initio an agency who intended them to come out that way.

This in essence is where you keep going wrong. Work instead on the basis of a universe that neither knows nor cares what life might emerge and there’s nothing especially remarkable about the fact that humans exist. All we can say about that perhaps is “lucky us”, just as, say, a lottery ticket winner may say “lucky me” with no implication that Camelot wanted him to be the winner all along.

Short version: you cannot use the premise “god” to justify the conclusion “god”.

Is the problem clear now?

[Alan Burns]

Instead you posit a greater intelligence that emerged spontaneously and fully realised, and has magic? Given billions of chances for each evolutionary step each year, and billions of years, how 'unlikely' does any individual step have to be to not result in conscious life?

O.

Until you define how conscious awareness can be generated from material entities you cannot presume the likeliness of it coming into existence no matter how many billions of steps are involved.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Until you define how conscious awareness can be generated from material entities you cannot presume the likeliness of it coming into existence no matter how many billions of steps are involved.

That’s just wrong. The only verifiable explanatory models we have so far for observed phenomena have been material ones. Whether we have a full, a partial or an absent material explanatory model for consciousness gives us no more reason just to declare it to be therefore non-material than the Norse people’s absence of a material explanation for thunder justified their belief in Thor.

This isn’t an especially difficult point, so you really should have grasped it by now.

If nonetheless you want to stick with your declaration that it’s “impossible” for consciousness to be material, then – as ever – the burden of proof remain with you to justify your claim.   

[Sebastian Toe]

Until you define how conscious awareness can be generated from material entities you cannot presume the likeliness of it coming into existence no matter how many billions of steps are involved.

Until you can define how a soul can come into being without invoking magic then we can reasonably presume that they are unlikely to exist. It's logic

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Until you can define how a soul can come into being without invoking magic then we can reasonably presume that they are unlikely to exist. It's logic

Because there is an explanatory gap here which only the stupid or the wicked ignore, ANY proposed explanation is a de facto" hey presto" here.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

That’s just wrong. The only verifiable explanatory models we have so far for observed phenomena have been material ones. Whether we have a full, a partial or an absent material explanatory model for consciousness gives us no more reason just to declare it to be therefore non-material than the Norse people’s absence of a material explanation for thunder justified their belief in Thor.

This isn’t an especially difficult point, so you really should have grasped it by now.

If nonetheless you want to stick with your declaration that it’s “impossible” for consciousness to be material, then – as ever – the burden of proof remain with you to justify your claim.

Scientists have come nowhere near to replicating an entity of self awareness by material means.  Because they have no idea of how self awareness can be generated from material reactions.   

[Gordon]

Scientists have come nowhere near to replicating an entity of self awareness by material means.  Because they have no idea of how self awareness can be generated from material reactions.

You seem to be conflating evolution with manufacturing, again, and you should surely have learned by now that what you term 'awareness' is itself a material process, since it depends on bits of stuff located inside our skulls.

[Outrider]

Until you define how conscious awareness can be generated from material entities you cannot presume the likeliness of it coming into existence no matter how many billions of steps are involved.

Actually, that's exactly the limit of what you can do. In the absence of any evidence of anything non-material even existing, let alone having an impact on human consciousness, you have to presume that it's a result entirely of material effects. You can't prove that it is, of course, but you can presume, and you can operate as though that were the case because you have evidenced that the material exists, you have evidence that human consciousness exists, and you have evidence that the two interact. You have, by contrast, no evidence for anything else, no evidence of any element of the material effects that demonstrably correlate with consciousness being somehow inexplicable or requiring currently unevidenced stimuli, and no explanatory mechanism for how this notional non-material 'stuff' would operate, interact with material or be investigated with any reliability.

You are attempting to squeeze 'therefore God' out of 'we don't have a complete scientific explanation' when the most you can get out of an incomplete explanation is 'we therefore don't know'.

O.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Scientists have come nowhere near to replicating an entity of self awareness by material means.  Because they have no idea of how self awareness can be generated from material reactions.

Whether or not that’s true, what point do you think you’re making here?

To have a point you’d have to build a logical path from “scientists can’t do X”, to “X is therefore non-material”. There is no such path though – “scientists can’t do X” tells you nothing at all about whether the phenomenon “X” is therefore non-material, just that scientists can’t replicate it.

So what though?       

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Because there is an explanatory gap here which only the stupid or the wicked ignore, ANY proposed explanation is a de facto" hey presto" here.

No it isn’t. In science “proposed explanations” are called hypotheses, which propose tentative explanations about phenomena but must also in principle at least be falsifiable and testable. Generally they’re expressed as “if…then” statements that summarise the idea and its ability to be supported or refuted by observation and experimentation.

“Hey presto” on the other hand is just an “it’s magic innit” type statement, which tends to be the domain of the religious. 

https://www.britannica.com/science/scientific-hypothesis

[Outrider]

Scientists have come nowhere near to replicating an entity of self awareness by material means.

Given the degree to which we struggle to define consciousness, we have no idea how far away, say, artificial intelligences might currently be, we have no idea whether AI operating on the new quantum computing hardware that's being developed might represent a sufficient leap.

Because they have no idea of how self awareness can be generated from material reactions.

Actually, they have a poorly defined idea that it might be emergent from a sufficiently complex processing capacity with multiple feedback processes, but that requires rigorous testing to confirm. By contrast, you don't have any idea of how self awareness can be generated from non-material stuff, nor any evidence of this non-material stuff, nor any evidence that there is any sort of interaction between the demonstrable material and your notional non-material nor, indeed, even any kind of exploratory means or mechanism by which your claims of non-material could be investigated or assessed.

O.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Outy,

...By contrast, you don't have any idea of how self awareness can be generated from non-material stuff, nor any evidence of this non-material stuff, nor any evidence that there is any sort of interaction between the demonstrable material and your notional non-material nor, indeed, even any kind of exploratory means or mechanism by which your claims of non-material could be investigated or assessed.

Yes, but apart from all that...? 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

No it isn’t. In science “proposed explanations” are called hypotheses, which propose tentative explanations about phenomena but must also in principle at least be falsifiable and testable. Generally they’re expressed as “if…then” statements that summarise the idea and its ability to be supported or refuted by observation and experimentation.

“Hey presto” on the other hand is just an “it’s magic innit” type statement, which tends to be the domain of the religious. 

https://www.britannica.com/science/scientific-hypothesis

The explanatory gap I would move is too wide at present for a satisfactory hypothesis.

Certainly eliminationists like yourself and Dennett don't see the need for one  anyway.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

The explanatory gap I would move is too wide at present for a satisfactory hypothesis.

You can “move” whatever you like, but as AB’s basic declaration is that consciousness must be non-material the explanation we have for why there’s no good reason to think he’s right about that is fine: he’d have to establish a priori that there even is a “non-material”; he’d have to establish how anyone would investigate such a thing; he’d have to find a sound reason to exclude consciousness from the possibility of being material etc.

Just pointing to the absence of knowledge we have so far about consciousness (“scientists can’t replicate…” etc) doesn’t do any of that.         

Certainly eliminationists like yourself and Dennett don't see the need for one  anyway.

I have no idea what you meant by “eliminationists” and nor I suspect have you, and in any case the need for “one” what?

[Outrider]

The explanatory gap I would move is too wide at present for a satisfactory hypothesis.

Which still leaves us, at worst, at 'we don't know' against a backdrop of the demonstrable success of science and the huge steaming pile of diddly-squat in support of the magic hypoth-nonsense.

Certainly eliminationists like yourself and Dennett don't see the need for one  anyway.

Eliminationist? Is this some school of philosophy, or are you rebranding your 'antitheist' boogeyman into an allegation of genocide advocacy?

O.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Which still leaves us, at worst, at 'we don't know' against a backdrop of the demonstrable success of science and the huge steaming pile of diddly-squat in support of the magic hypoth-nonsense.

[qutoe]Certainly eliminationists like yourself and Dennett don't see the need for one  anyway.

Eliminationist? Is this some school of philosophy, or are you rebranding your 'antitheist' boogeyman into an allegation of genocide advocacy?

O.

Eliminationism means making the actual thing in question redundant, often by referring to it as an illusion.

You will see it in action when reductionism is denied on the grounds that there was nothing to reduce.

Reductionism doesn't need to be eliminative but some operators don't like to be identified doing the reductionism they are so obviously and stinkingly nvolved in

[Gordon]

But, Vlad, if a claim is incoherent and/or fallacious then it can be 'eliminated' as in the claim not being a serious proposition.

For example, the other day Alan mentioned something along the lines of a 'part of the brain that the soul connects to/interacts with' - since he can't clarify that claim citing support from neurology experts or explain how the soul/brain interaction happens/works then I'm happy to 'eliminate' his notion.

Would you agree with my assessment? 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

But, Vlad, if a claim is incoherent and/or fallacious then it can be 'eliminated' as in the claim not being a serious proposition.

For example, the other day Alan mentioned something along the lines of a 'part of the brain that the soul connects to/interacts with' - since he can't clarify that claim citing support from neurology experts or explain how the soul/brain interaction happens/works then I'm happy to 'eliminate' his notion.

Would you agree with my assessment?

Non sequitur to my point.

[Gordon]

Not really,Vlad.

You said "Eliminationism means making the actual thing in question redundant, often by referring to it as an illusion.", and I'd say that applies to Alan's illusory notions about souls interacting with brains, about which he can say nothing meaningful -  therefore, we can just eliminate this idea as being theo-bollocks of the first order.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Not really,Vlad.

You said "Eliminationism means making the actual thing in question redundant, often by referring to it as an illusion.", and I'd say that applies to Alan's illusory notions about souls interacting with brains, about which he can say nothing meaningful -  therefore, we can just eliminate this idea as being theo-bollocks of the first order.

If Alan has said or suggested that the self or consciousness are illusions then he is guilty of eliminationism.

I can't see that he has and your second post just reinforces the non relevance of your first

[Gordon]

If Alan has said or suggested that the self or consciousness are illusions then he is guilty of eliminationism.

He hasn't, but then nobody else has either, albeit what this 'self' might be is unclear to me - so be careful with all that straw, Vlad.

I can't see that he has and your second post just reinforces the non relevance of your first

See above.