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A few years ago I was arguing with a mormon that, if he wanted some scientific theory to attack with bile, he'd have his best shot at gravity. Evolution, on the

A few years ago I was arguing with a mormon that, if he wanted some scientific theory to attack with bile, he'd have his best shot at gravity. Evolution, on the other hand, has been very well explained from all possible fronts. The problem with gravity is that, as a daily experience, it fades out into uninteresting routine (except perhaps for rocket scientists and other specialists.)

sauvage 18y ago
I've always found it extremely ironic that the religious crowd (yes, I know I'm over-generalizing) spends so much time arguing against evolution, which has nothing whatsoever to say about gods or the origins of life. But they say nothing about quantum mechanics, which not only elegantly eliminates the need for any sort of "prime mover", but blows the possibility of a god existing completely out of the water.
- gizmo 18y ago
  Color of bike-shed.
- time_management 18y ago
  How does quantum mechanics "blow the possibility of a god existing completely out of the water"? This is why I believe in God: based on some unusual personal experiences that made it difficult to reject the supernatural, I came to the conclusion at one point that, in fact, consciousness is not an illusion, and that there is no such thing as randomness, and that our course along the quantum "tree" is chosen by some being for a purpose (or purposes). This doesn't mean that we live in a deterministic world, but that we live in a physical one that is constantly taking "pushes" from a spiritual beings. This seems supernatural and unlikely, but if we believe that the spirit (consciousness) is not an illusion, then we accept that a complex physical system, the brain, can be affected by a spiritual entity, human consciousness, and so it doesn't seem implausible that there are other spiritual beings among us, doing things like rigging the seemingly "random" collisions of particles so that 10^-20000 improbabilities (life) actually happen. This, coupled with the direct experience of mystics, makes it likely that there are vastly superior spiritual beings in existence, which could be construed as gods or facets of God.
  - gizmo 18y ago
    First of all - you should disregard unusual personal experiences if you don't know of any way to repeat them. I dream. I even start halucinating when I don't sleep enough. People can even dream and halucinate under fairly ordinary circumstances. Given the tendency for people to halucinate, I see no reason to seek for supernatural explanations. "Human consciousness" doesn't need to be something metaphysical. The brain is basically a big petri dish. Chemical reactions everywhere. Our understanding of it is poor, but we're making lots of progress. We know which regions serve which purpose, and we can make people laugh or cry by sticking electrodes in somebody's head during brain surgery. We can see people enjoying music, by watching electrical activity, and we can see how brains of savants differ from ours. The more we learn, the less of a mystery the brain becomes. But we still have 95% to explain. As you make computer programs more complex you realize that sooner or later you have to start meta-programming. Only by making a program introspect itself or the system around it can you give it additional functionality. Windows Vista is a good example - it's all about processing watching other processes work. Watching memory patterns, to improve cache efficiency. Monitoring which programs are run often. Watching which clusters on the hard drive are suspiciously unresponsive. Meta. Meta meta meta. Windows Vista is conscious in the sense that it feels when programs are unresponsive, or when the system has trouble shutting down. And it will try to take measures to fix it. Isn't this just basic consciousness? Nothing spiritual about it. And when you can explain consciousness by just saying it's a function of complexity of a brain we have a pretty plausible answer. Does your cell phone have consciousness? Yes, but very little. Less than an ant, probably. How about babies? Yes, but only as much consciousness as a cat. How about a rock? Yes, about as much consciousness as a "Hello World" program. That's simply no consciousness at all. Consciousness doesn't need to be a binary switch. A spark that people get at some point. A "soul" doesn't explain anything. You probably don't agree with the way I frame my answers. So what's do you think the difference is between the capacity for introspection (think about self) and consciousness?
    - albertcardona 18y ago
      But we still have 95% to explain. More like 99.99 % to explain, but we are working on it (neuroscientist here.) As for consciousness: the ghost in the machine. That is, one can explain the machine with and without it -- the ghost is just one's perception of the other self, one's generalization and oversimplification of the other self.

sauvage 18y ago

I've always found it extremely ironic that the religious crowd (yes, I know I'm over-generalizing) spends so much time arguing against evolution, which has nothing whatsoever to say about gods or the origins of life. But they say nothing about quantum mechanics, which not only elegantly eliminates the need for any sort of "prime mover", but blows the possibility of a god existing completely out of the water.

gizmo 18y ago
Color of bike-shed.
time_management 18y ago
How does quantum mechanics "blow the possibility of a god existing completely out of the water"? This is why I believe in God: based on some unusual personal experiences that made it difficult to reject the supernatural, I came to the conclusion at one point that, in fact, consciousness is not an illusion, and that there is no such thing as randomness, and that our course along the quantum "tree" is chosen by some being for a purpose (or purposes). This doesn't mean that we live in a deterministic world, but that we live in a physical one that is constantly taking "pushes" from a spiritual beings. This seems supernatural and unlikely, but if we believe that the spirit (consciousness) is not an illusion, then we accept that a complex physical system, the brain, can be affected by a spiritual entity, human consciousness, and so it doesn't seem implausible that there are other spiritual beings among us, doing things like rigging the seemingly "random" collisions of particles so that 10^-20000 improbabilities (life) actually happen. This, coupled with the direct experience of mystics, makes it likely that there are vastly superior spiritual beings in existence, which could be construed as gods or facets of God.
- gizmo 18y ago
  First of all - you should disregard unusual personal experiences if you don't know of any way to repeat them. I dream. I even start halucinating when I don't sleep enough. People can even dream and halucinate under fairly ordinary circumstances. Given the tendency for people to halucinate, I see no reason to seek for supernatural explanations. "Human consciousness" doesn't need to be something metaphysical. The brain is basically a big petri dish. Chemical reactions everywhere. Our understanding of it is poor, but we're making lots of progress. We know which regions serve which purpose, and we can make people laugh or cry by sticking electrodes in somebody's head during brain surgery. We can see people enjoying music, by watching electrical activity, and we can see how brains of savants differ from ours. The more we learn, the less of a mystery the brain becomes. But we still have 95% to explain. As you make computer programs more complex you realize that sooner or later you have to start meta-programming. Only by making a program introspect itself or the system around it can you give it additional functionality. Windows Vista is a good example - it's all about processing watching other processes work. Watching memory patterns, to improve cache efficiency. Monitoring which programs are run often. Watching which clusters on the hard drive are suspiciously unresponsive. Meta. Meta meta meta. Windows Vista is conscious in the sense that it feels when programs are unresponsive, or when the system has trouble shutting down. And it will try to take measures to fix it. Isn't this just basic consciousness? Nothing spiritual about it. And when you can explain consciousness by just saying it's a function of complexity of a brain we have a pretty plausible answer. Does your cell phone have consciousness? Yes, but very little. Less than an ant, probably. How about babies? Yes, but only as much consciousness as a cat. How about a rock? Yes, about as much consciousness as a "Hello World" program. That's simply no consciousness at all. Consciousness doesn't need to be a binary switch. A spark that people get at some point. A "soul" doesn't explain anything. You probably don't agree with the way I frame my answers. So what's do you think the difference is between the capacity for introspection (think about self) and consciousness?
  - albertcardona 18y ago
    But we still have 95% to explain. More like 99.99 % to explain, but we are working on it (neuroscientist here.) As for consciousness: the ghost in the machine. That is, one can explain the machine with and without it -- the ghost is just one's perception of the other self, one's generalization and oversimplification of the other self.