You need a mathematical theory explaining the pattern of neural activity that creates consciousness or you have an assumption. Period.TexasScientist said:Doc Holliday said:You have no proof that consciousness arises from the brain. Show me the math.TexasScientist said:A dog has a limited ability to analyze a simple problem and resolve it for the desired outcome. A chimp, or a monkey can do the same, as many other animals. Do you believe they have the same supernatural abilities that you have? Clearly brain development and advancement is a factor that sets species apart from one another.BusyTarpDuster2017 said:If there is any mental impairment or lack of understanding, it is on your part for your failure to understand the logical implications of your thinking.TexasScientist said:Everyone (who is not mentally impaired) has the ability to analyze and make decisions base upon what they have learned.BusyTarpDuster2017 said:If it is just a biologic function of physics, then any assumption, evaluation, or decision you make is still the determined result of physics. Your whole learned frame of reference is the product of deterministic physics, you had no choice in the matter. Anything that stems from this learned frame of reference, likewise, is strictly determined by physics alone.TexasScientist said:It's a biologic function of physics.BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Do you believe that your thoughts and actions coming from your brain is due to choice/free will, or is it due to physics?TexasScientist said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Science does NOT tell us that consciousness and subjective experience are ONLY biochemical processes. Science has absolutely no explanation for how atoms and molecules can form subjective experience.TexasScientist said:.... Science tells us that cognition is a neurological process that develops, beginning with conception and ending with death. Science tells us when the brain dies, all cognition ends. Science tells us hallucinations and dreams are biochemical processes. I have to repeat what science tells us, because I can't change the truth to fit religious attempts to alter reality. Where would we be if Galileo had scrapped his views, quit repeating, and embraced Church censorship? Religion stands in opposition to understanding and embracing reality, until it has no choice but to modify its religious views in the face of science. It has no choice but to reinterpret its beliefs to fill the remaining and evershrinking gap.BusyTarpDuster2017 said:I didn't say that throughout history, science and people's understanding of Christianity didn't conflict. I am saying that science is not at odds with Christianity. If you disagree, then by all means, give us science that conflicts with or debunks Christianity. You've been challenged with this before multiple times, and you failed each time. So let's make it another, just so you'll go away for a while - then come back, recycling your same old failed arguments, hoping no one remembers your previous failure. Wash, rinse, repeat.Quote:
You can't be serious. Scientists throughout history were hampered by their ignorance and presuppositions of gods, or a god to account for what they could not understand. They were persecuted by the religious institutions of power for the scientific revelations they uncovered, until it was abundantly clear science was true and religious belief was false. Faced with the evidence of reality, religious institutions, in order to remain credible, had to modify how they interpreted their religious doctrine. Otherwise, they couldn't to maintain the faith, influence, and power religion held over their culture. When you get down to the basic purposes of control and sway over people, there is no real fundamental difference in the various religions, including Christianity. And yes, science is at odds with every religious doctrine. People don't crawl out of their graves, or caskets at funerals. Virgins don't give birth, with or without relations with a god. Burning bushes don't talk. People don't ascend into space, speak in tongues. The sun doesn't stand still, etc. The universe is more than 6,000 years old (something even the Catholic Church had to recognize). Consciousness is a biological and physical function of the brain. Scientific observation and testing confirm it. We don't have to understand every aspect and nuance of the consciousness to know this.
"Religion stands in opposition to understanding and embracing reality.." - you've repeated this over and over. Lay out exactly what you've proven to be "reality" that I or other Christians have been standing in opposition to.
You're the one claiming a reality outside of what we can know through scientific understanding. Demonstrate it. Let's see you supernaturally move a mountain. Science says you can't, religion says you can.
If you believe it is all physics, then how do you know that what you're believing right now is truth, and not just what you were determined to believe via physics?
If you believe that it is choice/free will, then how are you moving the atoms and molecules in your brain according to your will? If you can move atoms and molecules, then why would it be impossible to move a mountain?
We obviously have the ability to make assumptions, evaluations and decisions within the context of our learned frame of reference.
Decision making is a contained a neuro-biological process. Explain to me with examples of how you've supernaturally moved a mountain.
If this is the case, then why do you care about those who believe in religion? They had no choice but to believe it, physics determined it. In your grand scheme of things, their belief in religion is not "wrong" because there is no such thing as "wrong" in determinism.
In addition, since your thinking is similarly dispositioned, there is no basis on which to claim your perceptions accurately reflect ultimate reality and truth. Your "objectivity" and "empiricism" are determined only by physics, and so any reasoning derived from these is only confirming the learned frame of reference from which they themselves are derived....a learned frame of reference that itself is also derived only from physics. In essence, you are claiming that physical reality is ultimate truth and reality....because of physics. Circular logic, a fallacy.
People's beliefs are based upon what they have learned, regardless of its accuracy or veracity. They have the ability to change those fallacious beliefs when presented with accurate information, once they can overcome the hurdle of recognizing their beliefs and knowledge were based upon error, and inaccuracies.
Your premises and reasoning are flawed by your reductionist desire to oversimplify complexity, in an attempt to make a point, that shows you don't understand physics, and science.
If everyone has the ability to analizye and make decisions based on what they learned, and then CHANGE them based on their perception of "correctness" and "error" - are they doing this freely, or is it merely the inevitable result of unguided physics? You can not have it both ways. Either you can guide the biology and physics in your brain, or you can't. If you say we CAN guide the biology and physics, then you are invoking the supernatural. If you say we CAN'T, then whatever a person ends up thinking, whether "right" or "wrong" in your view, or whether or not they can "change" their thinking to conform to whatever is "right" or "wrong" in your view, is merely the end result of the pathway that was determined by physics alone. If all there is is physics, then it couldn't be any other way.
You say that everyone "who is not mentally impaired" has the ability to analyze, learn, and make decisions. Serious question - how do you know that YOU aren't mentally impaired to a degree? Mentally impaired people are only that way because it was the end result of physics, right? So how can you assume that the physics that resulted in you, landed in all the right ways for you to have the ability to accurately perceive truth and reality?
Clearly we have an advanced brain in comparison to other animals. Whether it is through a species unique evolutionary development, or through individual development, physical impairment from trauma or disease, the brain is where cognition occurs in all species. Consciousness and cognition are physical biological processes, as any other biological function. Because of our evolutionary advanced state, we have the most advanced ability to reason and make choices. Some more than others (autism for example). Consciousness depends upon brain activity. You didn't have consciousness until your brain was sufficiently developed after conception. There is no evidence that consciousness and cognition can extend beyond and without brain activity. We don't have to understand all of the details and intricacies to make that observation.
What if the brain picks up consciousness like an antenna and has an effect on it?
You don't even know if what you're conscious experience is revealing to you is fundamental reality. Space and time itself very well could be a useful fiction brought on by natural selection so that we have utility because fundamental reality is too complex to handle.
You click on a folder on your computer screen and put it into the trash. You couldn't toggle millions of voltages in a second to make that happen. Reality very well may be similar. We know for a fact that we can only perceive a very small piece of the color spectrum, so why wouldn't that mechanism extend to all of reality?
The math on evolutionary game theory shows there's a zero percent chance that our consciousness reveals fundamental reality. That theory has never been debunked.Math isn't required. We have observation. Show me the math for the supernatural.Quote:
You have no proof that consciousness arises from the brain. Show me the math.What ifs? What if you only exist in a computer simulation, and when the simulation ends you end? All you have is science fiction.Quote:
What if the brain picks up consciousness like an antenna and has an effect on it?Quote:
You don't even know if what you're conscious experience is revealing to you is fundamental reality. Space and time itself very well could be a useful fiction brought on by natural selection so that we have utility because fundamental reality is too complex to handle.
Where is your evidence for this other than your own science fiction. Clearly we don't understand everything, but what knowledge we have acquired through science has never suggested or pointed to supernatural mysticism to explain anything. Science is in the business to unravel complexity. Assigning complexity of what we have not unraveled or may be unable to unravel, to a supernatural answer is nothing more than plugging in a god of the gaps answer.What? What we can't see we know about through other scientific investigation. We know it's there through scientific investigation, even if we can't see it with our eyes. If your idea of the supernatural is true, then you should be able to see those other electromatic magnetic waves in the color spectrum.Quote:
You click on a folder on your computer screen and put it into the trash. You couldn't toggle millions of voltages in a second to make that happen. Reality very well may be similar. We know for a fact that we can only perceive a very small piece of the color spectrum, so why wouldn't that mechanism extend to all of reality?
Math games are simply that, math games. In and of themselves, they prove nothing. Our consciousness is a biological component of the whole that gives us the physical ability to investigate and understand reality. We're not required to understand or even be able to understand every aspect of reality.Quote:
The math on evolutionary game theory shows there's a zero percent chance that our consciousness reveals fundamental reality. That theory has never been debunked.
You can't make the leap that the brain produces consciousness by simply saying it influences it. Either you don't understand the concepts I'm talking about or you're dogmatic in your approach to science.
If your view is that space and time are fundamental reality, you have to explain the cosmogony of it. You are making a leap of faith if you just assume its fundamental because you have NOTHING to provide proof.
Can you answer where the singularity that lead to the big bang came from? How did it originate and why did it take that particular form and produce 3d spacetime instead of something else?
