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Religion, Science, Scepticism, Philosophy and things metaphysical

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Wysiwyg said:
Knowing this planets evolutionary story and the nature of things is so interesting and mind opening. There is so much more known nowadays and so much more to learn. Religion is forever stuck with the stories of people who did not know.
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Yes, the facts are certainly more awe inspiring than the religious texts.

I think Hitch says it best.

 
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Value Collector said:
Yes, the facts are certainly more awe inspiring than the religious texts.

I think Hitch says it best.

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They updated their narration a bit me think.

Hitchen is no match for our Russell


 
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The usual scientific fallacy surrounding light speed and time distortion, regurgitated yet again by the unquestioning faithful.

Nice piccies though!
 
SirRumpole said:
What's your theory ?
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There were unsound conclusions drawn from failure of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Einstein's assertions regarding universal speed limits and time dilation were built upon an inccorect conclusion from that aforementioned experiment.

Time doesn't slow down with acceleration of matter, and light does require a medium in order to travel!
 
Wysiwyg said:
Knowing this planets evolutionary story and the nature of things is so interesting and mind opening. There is so much more known nowadays and so much more to learn. Religion is forever stuck with the stories of people who did not know.
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Agree with most of what you say. however... the statement about religion assume that all people with a belief are fundamentalists and read Genesis accounts as literal truth (vs that it might have been borrowed from (say) Babylonian myths such as Enuma Elish and other near eastern myths or Israelite religious imagination.
 
If not literal then it is "might have been" or rendered, paraphrased, reworded, rephrased, recast, converted, deciphered, decoded, glossed, explained, unraveled, revealed, elucidated, expounded or clarified?
 

Your god didn't create the earth in 6 days anymore than maui pulled New Zealand out of the ocean with a fishing hook, when you try and twist words, it sounds to me like you are saying "Well it wasn't a literal fishing hook, etc etc" put you bible down and move on.

If you agree that the genesis account is not a literal truth, In my opinion the whole concept of Christianity breaks down.

If there were no adam and eve, then there was no original sin, and the whole idea of jesus having to die for our sins is bunk.

You can twist the texts and try and reinterpret them as much as you like to try and make it fit into our current understanding of the universe and evolution of earth, but most of us here will see that as nothing but word games.

Your religion is fake, its claims are untrue, stop trying to twist it to try and make it stay relevant, leave the mythology as it is and let it take its place among the thousands of other creation stories. at least then they can make good camp fire stories without all the religious baggage you guys attach to them.
 
Problem: Evidence emerges that conflicts with a sacred belief.

Solution 1: invent some imaginary concept to explain away the anomalies.

Solution 2: revisit the basis for the belief with a view to reformulation and/or expulsion in light of the new evidence.

Why aren't the proponents of this "dark matter" bulldust, reexamining the formulae and questioning the universality of the purported gravitational constant?
 

I think we have been through this before, but in my view consciousness is a combination of hardware, software and data.

Hardware - your physical body, brain, neurones etc
Data - the world in which you live in and all the inputs you get from it
Software - your programming , how your brain is structured to deal with the data.

If a few of your memory chips in the hardware malfunctions then your outputs will be changed, but that doesn't mean that your software changes, so we can deduce that software is independant of hardware.

So what is the human software ? Would human clones think, act and feel the same if brought up in an identical environment ? We haven't got an answer for this yet.
 
SirRumpole said:
So what is the human software ?
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Karma (ego-based actions) which create mental imprints in the subconscious. At their most basic level, these imprints are all based in fear and desire. Ego is the belief in individuality - an extremely sticky thought virus, but one which we are probably destined to evolve beyond.

In summary, we don't exist.

[edited++]
 
The brain is definitely not the mind. The brain is the hardware, the mind is the running software.
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The "mind" is an emergent property of the physical brain, it can't exist independently of the brain.

and when you split a brain, you create a second mind.

 
Value Collector said:
The "mind" is an emergent property of the physical brain, it can't exist independently of the brain.

and when you split a brain, you create a second mind.

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That's a bit different. Initially you said they were one and the same, but they're not.

It's true that the mind cannot exist without the brain, but the brain can and does exist without the mind. Like when you're in deep sleep.
 
Gringotts Bank said:
That's a bit different. Initially you said they were one and the same, but they're not.

It's true that the mind cannot exist without the brain, but the brain can and does exist without the mind. Like when you're in deep sleep.
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No, I have constantly been saying that the mind/personality/you (what ever words you want to use), Is an emergent property of the physical brain.

I also said that your mind can be put on pause, when your brain stops functioning in a way that is conducive with producing that emergent property, e.g. when you are unconscious either drug induced, damage or part of the maintaining cycle we call deep sleep, which as you mentioned can be confused with "death" however "death" is the state where it becomes impossible to bring the consciousness back.
 
Wysiwyg said:
I wonder why other life forms haven't evolved a mind?
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what do you mean? all sorts of animals have minds (to varying degrees)


Interesting experiment here, the conclusion is that in certain situations, chimps working memory is better than humans.

Our minds have evolved to be better at certain things, but not to be better at everything.

 
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Value Collector said:
what do you mean? all sorts of animals have minds (to varying degrees)
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I am sure from my observations that you will not have the same definition of mind as I do but these are definitions of mind ...

mind
mʌɪnd/
noun
noun: mind; plural noun: minds
1.
the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.
2. a person's ability to think and reason; the intellect.

In the chimpanzee video the chimp was being rewarded for responding correctly after some degree of repetition which we don't know. Stimulus -> respopnse. No food would likely equal poor response. Food being the number one priority. However what would be an example of a thinking mind would be if the animal was brought from the wild and placed in front of the screen then performed that action.

Palm, ditch, steal, load, simulation, misdirection, switch.

I do see a higher level of intelligence there though when compared to a beche de mer. But hey, maybe a beche de mer can be trained to do things too. Especially if it involves food.
 
Additionally, if it were mind, then it would be compounding intelligence as mind does.
 
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