God is not only possible but plausible
Offline In this essay, I am testing an idea about God, that I may use in other forums uses, and am running it by everyone to work out the details and get feedback. This is mainly my ideas from other topics condensed into one.
Since Einstien's famous E=mc^2 equation, modern physics has been turned upside down. This principle has opened up new doors in the pyramid of knowledge, and shown that matter is nothing but an illusion. What we percieve of a proton or electron is no more at high energies. In fact, in dealing with high energy particle physics, electron volts (ev) are used to denote the mass of the particle. One ev is 1.6x10^-17 Joules. This shows that matter and energy are interchangable in relation to it's constant of inertia (a.k.a mass). As you know energy (light for example) travels in waves. Well, an electron does the same thing, this is shown in electron diffraction:
(image from wikipedia).
Basically due to the Heinsenburg uncertainty principle, electrons travel in waves of probability known as De-Broglie waves. Like light, these waves can interact in either constructive or destructive interference. It is this basis that also allows quantum tunneling. That is for an electron to spontaniously tunnell through a barrier. This is the nail in the coffin of classical physics being applied to high energy/quantum problems. These quantum effects cannot be explained using the classical 'the electron is just a charged particle sphere' theory. Instead, it shows that matter is merely an illusion, that what we percieve as an electron is not quite a charged sphere of a defined magnetic spin or angular momentum. It is so much more.
However, these particles still obey the laws of physics. However, recent theories in physics reveal a whole new perspective. The multiverse theory holds that there may be an infinite number of other universes. Each with it's own laws of physics, each with it's own potiental. The multiverse is the ultimate poster child for infinite potiental. What is not possible in one universe is possible in another. Things that don't happen in our universe, happens in another. There is potiental for different forms of life, for higher technology that this universe could only dream of.
Speaking of life, the theory of evolution is taking dominance in the field of biology. Every crediable biologist is singing there praise for it and rushing to find out more, to make more discoveries. There is an incrediable amount of life on this planet. Countless number of species and sub-species, all are evolving into better life forms better suited for their enviroment. They are evolving to get the most out of their enviroment.
(image from wikipedia)
This is a bit odd isn't it? Particle physics, multiverse theory and evolution in an essay about God? Many people think that these principles condratict God, that no God is required to make these come to life. Why would God use evolution to put us here? Why the Bigbang? Why have an infinite number of universes, some may not even have life?
The simple answer is because God experiences the universe as much as you do. That there is an infinite consciousness expanding to all the universes, and that our brains are merely a filter. Much like a slide that is inserted into a projector, the brain limits the infinite consciousness into finite experience. Our brains may have infinite potiental, people have read books once and memorized them. The world record for the most digits of pi memorized is over 22,000!
The matter in the universe is merely an illusion, used to bring us experiences. That evolution is taking it's course to insure that we get the most out of our enviroment and to bring different experiences to this infinite consciousness.
But how can potiental be turned into experience? Imagine a projector. Turn it on and a white light will be on the screen. However, this white light alone is useless. Only potiental. Anybody who flashed white light through a prism knows that white light is many colours. This is the concept of 'creation from subtraction'. Now insert a slide, of say a red car. Now the white light turns the infinite potiental into the finitely real. The red car appears on the screen because it filters out the colours that are not red. It creates the red by subtracting the non-red.
So why would God, want to create us? If he is indeed infinite what's the point? Why create things?
As Dr. Haisch puts it in the book 'The God Theory'
'Imagine having a billion dollars in you bank account. Would this give you pleasure or satisfaction if you could never spend a penny of it?........He(God) gets to act out and live out his ideas, his fantasies. He gets to spend his billion dollars.'
The God Theory pages 15-16
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Offline This is known as reductionism. Like saying one of Bach's musical works is nothing but vibrations of piano strings.
You're looking at matter and energy as if there needs to be something more to make it a miracle. But matter/energy itself is the answer - it is what we are. We are connected to the entire universe, we are star stuff that have become sentient. I really don't know what could be more wonderous than that.
Pineapple: It's the exact same thing that I mentioned in your other thread (regarding the same subject) about the "quantum consciousness" folks. The fact that you don't feel like you belong to the one particular group of people (of many) that I mentioned may be vulnerable to it, doesn't mean it's not what you're doing.
If you go back over this thread, you may also notice just how much of your argument hinges on your complete avoidance of many points made.
If your god is truely not super-natural, then it would imply that your case can be tested and/or falsified, or at the very least presented with sober and lucid logic that anyone can see, if not agree to (however grudgingly).
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Offline See above. Matter is nothing but quantum effects, until a consciousness experiences them
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Online
This is why we need consciousness. If we didn't, then we would be just a bunch of chemical reactions and nothing more.
We like conciousness because we assing importance to it in respect to our awarness of it. But it is not a seperate entity outside our own brains. Yes, I hate to burst your bubble, but we are just a bunch of chemical reactions.
We have evovled. But that evolution does not make us more important than a cockroach or alligator or dart frog. We are merely one stage of evolution in a species that will continue to evolve and like most species will eventially give way to something else or die out like the dinosour.
We are important, to oursleves, which makes us no different than any other species.
I hassard to guess that we wont last as long as other species because of our evolution. We havent evolved to leave our egos at the door. Other species have egos to, but even with our own evolved awarness seem to only manage to act like lions and wolves competing to be the alpha male. We do still today, and to say we dont, to me is ignorant and makes humanity just as dumb and deserving of extinction as a doh doh bird.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
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Offline The god described in this thread is petty, indeed.
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Online I have to make a distiction in my last post to make something clear.
When I say, "If this is the best the species can do then we diserve our own self induced extinction".
We see other speicies, say for example army ants expand and over extend to the point where the colony dies out. That is what is so frustrating to me. We are still stuck in tribalism that we cant see that as a species we can extend the ride. Somehow we cant keep our egotistical ego's in check long enough to extend it.
The ride will end, no doubt. But if we as a species are going to assing ourselves to the top of the chain then we need to act like it and not let ideology, govermental or religious labels get in the way. To me, we act no differently as a species than rival lions killing the cubs they didnt father. I do have an ego and I'd like to think we are above that, but in the current state of the world, I just dont see it.
I see so much potential in humans wasted on ideology, politics and religion over most of the time amounts to "I am going to piss on this bush because it is mine".
I'd like to think humans are capable of more than that. I do see the potential. I just dont know if we have it in us to avoid our own self distruction.
I wont give up hope though. I only have one ride and knowing that this is it, I hope that I can leave the word more skeptical and more introspective and more reasoned than when I was born.
We dont have to be army ants out to conquer other colonies. We dont have to be lions pissing on every bush or killing the babies of loins not of ours. We dont have to kill or defend over magical fictional beings based on ancient superstion. While I understand why it is still a part of humanity today. I'd like to think we'd evolve beyond artificial clubs or invisable passifiers and get on with helping each other.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
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Offline Quote:Wait... doesn't your entire case depend on reductionism? How can you simultaneously hold this point while denouncing reductionism? It's exactly what you're doing when you talk about matter being illusory.This is known as reductionism. Like saying one of Bach's musical works is nothing but vibrations of piano strings.
Not really. What I am saying is that once consciousness experiences thse illusions it is no longer reductionism but so much more.
Quote:Indeed, and suggesting that it's fundamental nature at a quantum level has any sort of relevance to the macro level is absurd. The fact that matter looks totally different when viewed at the quantum level doesn't mean much of anything unless you're trying to figure out some quantum equation.You're looking at matter and energy as if there needs to be something more to make it a miracle. But matter/energy itself is the answer - it is what we are. We are connected to the entire universe, we are star stuff that have become sentient. I really don't know what could be more wonderous than that.
Without sub-atomic particles, there are no atomic particles and hence no matter. nothing.
Pineapple: It's the exact same thing that I mentioned in your other thread (regarding the same subject) about the "quantum consciousness" folks. The fact that you don't feel like you belong to the one particular group of people (of many) that I mentioned may be vulnerable to it, doesn't mean it's not what you're doing.
What thread was that?
If you go back over this thread, you may also notice just how much of your argument hinges on your complete avoidance of many points made.
I am trying to respond to all points in this thread.
If your god is truely not super-natural, then it would imply that your case can be tested and/or falsified, or at the very least presented with sober and lucid logic that anyone can see, if not agree to (however grudgingly).
The particle physics can be tested and/or falsified.
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Offline Cpt_pineapple wrote:See above. Matter is nothing but quantum effects, until a consciousness experiences them
I think I see what you mean now, but I disagree. You seem to be saying that the higher levels of complexity that matter exists in is meaningless to talk about before it is attended to by some conscious agent. You would describe a rock hitting another rock as two collections of quantum 'objects' interacting in some way that is based upon the rules of QM, and that our conscious awareness, being unaware of the smaller activity, only abstracts from a larger point of view and misses the details.
Thus, the interactions we see at the super-atomic scale is not a true representation of what's really going on. And so the concept of matter that we have formed over the millions of years of evolution and experience with the world is simply not correct, and the world does not operate the way we perceive.
That seems to be a somewhat fair description, but I would not call this description an illusion of matter, but rather a misapprehension of it. The activity of matter at the macrophysical scale is still real, just not complete. The interactions of a rock and another rock is different than the interaction between an electron and a proton (or whatever) because of the cumulative effect of many quantum probabilities changing the nature of interactions; interactions of many 'particles' is different than the interaction of a few.
Exactly. The QM events by themselves are useless. But put together form the matter.
Quote:Okay, I think I get it now. You're saying that matter appears to be an illusion because we have a better understanding of it that is vastly different than what we are use to.
I don't think that's what I'm saying, but maybe...language....
I'm saying that matter can be viewed from different perspectives, and if we compare the macrophysical perspective to the quantum perspective (if such a thing is even sensical), the distinction makes it look like we've always seen matter incorrectly. I'm saying that both the traditional, Newtonian, view of matter and the quantum are both valid for their own level of complexity. That is how it seems to me, anyway.
Okay, I see what you mean now.
Quote:My answer is this: An illusion fools the brain, much like a coin in the bottom of a bucket of water will appear distorted because the water distorts the light waves. The water doesn't physically distort the coin, it just appears that it does. Just like matter isn't just made of protons and electrons, it just appears that it is. That is the illusion. These are packets of energy that we percieve as solid matter because the illusion distorts our view of it.Understood. I would simply respond by saying that the coin is made up of protins and electrons, which themselves are made up of quarks, which may be made up of 11 dimensional super strings....
Thus, coins may be made up of super strings, but there are categories of interaction between those two levels that legitimately exist in some way even without conscious attention. Sure, the concepts don't exist before we think about them, but the referents do.
And I'm aware of the idea in QM about how when something is not observed, it does not really exist in some fashion. I think that's a little bit of a silly word game, and would concede it only under some very specific semantic games.
Yes the referents exist, but like I said they are useless without conscious.
Quote:Again, I note that without conscioussness, reductionism is valid. But with consciousness, reduction is missing the experience.But isn't it the conscious agent that does the reduction? I would say that without consciousness, reduction does not even make sense. Reductionism is a way that the intelligent conscious mind parses different levels of complexity in the world and identifies certain levels based upon observed patterns of interaction.
I do not miss the experience by reducing, I am simply experiencing the object at multimple levels (not at the same time, but in succession) when reducing. I can think of the apple, the cells that compose it, the molecules that compose the cells, and down further. At each stage I am conscious of the different levels and can identify various types of activity that occurs at each level.
I am not missing any experience, I am expanding experience by reducing.
That is the purpose of matter: to bring experiences. Like you said about the apple, it is just a climp of cells under you taste it. Then it turns into an experience.
Quote:To use your magic eye analogy, what brings the most experience? The first picture of squiggly lines or the experience of the picture hidden behind those lines?They both bring different experiences. I think the most experience is being able to see both and compare them. It is a kind of meta-experience or an abstraction. By comparing two experiences we are capable of conceiving of new things that result of comparing the two conscious states. This is one thing Hume talks about, but in a slightly different way.
That is the purpose. To get the most experiences out of everything.
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Offline todangst wrote:Aren't you holding AI up to a standard that's too high?
Does a chimpanzee need to take over the world to illustrate it has self awareness?
Planet of the Apes? Anyway, my point is humans have a higher level of consciousness.
I don't deny this. My point is that there is clearly a continuum of consciousness. Most humans are self aware. We have good reason to believe that some chimps are as well. Perhaps some whales are too.
When we move down the continuum, we have no clear evidence of self awareness of this sort, but it would be folly to deny that our pets: cats, dogs, lack any sort of self awareness at all.
And so on...
The A.I lacks this ability.
They lack the self awareness of humans. But I never claimed they possessed this in the first place.
The A.I on the otherhand is limited by it's programing.
So are human brains.
I'll steal this from another thread:
Chaoslord writes:
(A)s Dennett explains, a mind is a virtual machine running on a Von Neumann Turing Machine. He makes the analogy of a computer can carry out various algorithms without any additional software. It has its own structure. Now, when we add Window's, we are running, in essence, a machine over another machine. This is analogous to the relationship between the mind and brain. The mind is a machine (like Windows) running on another machine (the brain). Are they distinct? Not really, the mind is a part of the brain. As Dennett eluded to, someday it will be possible to copy your mind onto a hard-drive and run your mind on another brain.
Well, if all cells digested themselves, we wouldn't be having this conversation would we?
All you are saying is that it is necessary that cells have some sort of rudimentary awareness!
Yes I am.
Then our positions converge here.
Quote:Oh and auto-immune disease is when the cell isn't aware. It cannot tell the difference between your cells and intruders.
Yes. You could also mess with the DNA of a fly until it did spend some time cleaning the eye of other flies, but to take from your above comments, such flies would not prosper, whereas those with a rudimentary sense of self would prosper.
So in effect, you've strengthened my point by showing that self awareness has clear survival benefits.
Bingo. What good is creating experiences if you are not there to experience it?
Well, I don't see it that way, it's not a matter of saying it would be a waste otherwise, self awareness is simply a bare fact of existence, in fact, it is the one undeniable entity.
God uses the 'trial and error' approach from evolution. To get the most out of the enviroment.
Why would an omnipotent being worry about getting anything?
Evolution isn't trial and error in the sense the term is usually employed - i.e. it's not learning. There's 'no one' to learn from the 'trials and errors', instead, beings simply die.
So why would a god rely on contrivance to seek a goal? Furthermore, given the power, would use a barbaric method to 'learn' or 'teach'? Evolution says: those with the best fit win, the others die a painful death. They starve, they are destroyed.
It's built on competition for food and on bloody encounters both intra and interspecies. Some species wipe out others. Man alone may well have wiped out most of the large animals on our planent when primitives first began to use fire to burn down unwanted forests...
It's a horrific, bloody mess, filled with pain. And you want to hold that a god created it, on purpose?
But that IS what we are! Matter/energy with a high level of self awareness.
You remind me of a joke.
A man climbs to the roof of his home to avoid a flood. Being a theist, he prays to god to save him. Moments later, a boat appears.
The man says: I prayed to god to save me, so you can go help others.
An hour later, a makeshift raft appears.
Again, the man says: I prayed to god to save me, so you can go help others.
Finally, with the storm waters approaching the roof of his house, a helicopter appears.
Again, the man says: I prayed to god to save me, so you can go help others.
Finally, the waters overtake him, and he drowns.
He appears in heaven, and god greets him.
"God, I must admit that I am happy to be here, but why didn't you save me?!"
What do you mean, god says... I sent the boat, I sent the raft....
You're looking at matter and energy as if there needs to be something more to make it a miracle. But matter/energy itself is the answer - it is what we are. We are connected to the entire universe, we are star stuff that have become sentient. I really don't know what could be more wonderous than that.
Yes, I know that we are star dust and I see a hint of Pantheism in this statement.
I think my conjectures here have been pantheistic. As I said above, the next door over from atheism is pantheism, this works both ways. I have no problem entertaining pantheistic ideas, I just think that in the end, you should simply remove the term 'god' as it has no value added utility.
You are right, we are from the universe. We are here to experience the universe. And again you are right, nothing can be more wonderous than coming from the universe.
I am glad we agree on this.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
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Offline Cpt_pineapple wrote:todangst wrote:Aren't you holding AI up to a standard that's too high?
Does a chimpanzee need to take over the world to illustrate it has self awareness?
Planet of the Apes? Anyway, my point is humans have a higher level of consciousness.
I don't deny this. My point is that there is clearly a continuum of consciousness. Most humans are self aware. We have good reason to believe that some chimps are as well. Perhaps some whales are too.
When we move down the continuum, we have no clear evidence of self awareness of this sort, but it would be folly to deny that our pets: cats, dogs, lack any sort of self awareness at all.
And so on...
I somewhat address this in the essay. The limiting of the infinite consciousness.
Quote:The A.I lacks this ability.
They lack the self awareness of humans. But I never claimed they possessed this in the first place.
Okay then.
Quote:The A.I on the otherhand is limited by it's programing.
So are human brains.
I'll steal this from another thread:
Chaoslord writes:
(A)s Dennett explains, a mind is a virtual machine running on a Von Neumann Turing Machine. He makes the analogy of a computer can carry out various algorithms without any additional software. It has its own structure. Now, when we add Window's, we are running, in essence, a machine over another machine. This is analogous to the relationship between the mind and brain. The mind is a machine (like Windows) running on another machine (the brain). Are they distinct? Not really, the mind is a part of the brain. As Dennett eluded to, someday it will be possible to copy your mind onto a hard-drive and run your mind on another brain.
The copying of the mind sounds intriguing. Will it be memories? Or will it be an exact copy? Will the copy share the same likes and dislikes?
This reminds me of fraternal twins (or whatever you call when the twins come from the same embryo). Even if they are seperated at birth will they be exactly alike? Will they have the same taste in music? The same occupation? The same tastes for food? etc...
To me, this begs the question: Do we have any control or is the mind controlling us?
Quote:Oh and auto-immune disease is when the cell isn't aware. It cannot tell the difference between your cells and intruders.
Yes. You could also mess with the DNA of a fly until it did spend some time cleaning the eye of other flies, but to take from your above comments, such flies would not prosper, whereas those with a rudimentary sense of self would prosper.
So in effect, you've strengthened my point by showing that self awareness has clear survival benefits.
Bingo. What good is creating experiences if you are not there to experience it?
Well, I don't see it that way, it's not a matter of saying it would be a waste otherwise, self awareness is simply a bare fact of existence, in fact, it is the one undeniable entity.
Yes, it is quite undeniable. I think this is what causes us to question our purpose
Quote:God uses the 'trial and error' approach from evolution. To get the most out of the enviroment.
Why would an omnipotent being worry about getting anything?
Evolution isn't trial and error in the sense the term is usually employed - i.e. it's not learning. There's 'no one' to learn from the 'trials and errors', instead, beings simply die.
So why would a god rely on contrivance to seek a goal? Furthermore, given the power, would use a barbaric method to 'learn' or 'teach'? Evolution says: those with the best fit win, the others die a painful death. They starve, they are destroyed.
It's built on competition for food and on bloody encounters both intra and interspecies. Some species wipe out others. Man alone may well have wiped out most of the large animals on our planent when primitives first began to use fire to burn down unwanted forests...
It's a horrific, bloody mess, filled with pain. And you want to hold that a god created it, on purpose?
What I am saying is that God lets the laws of nature run it's course to bring different experiences. Evolution also says: The enviroment determines what traits survive. So I do not think I am over reaching when I say that the purpose of evolution is to get the most out of the enviroment.
As for the barbaric method of evolution. At first glance it may seem like a bloody mess, but it has it's purpose. It's purpose is to bring the life that is best suited for it's enviroment. So why would God wipe out so many species? Because of the infinite conscious, he experiences the universe through us. In a way, it is self punishment. However, like I said it serves the greater purpose.
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Offline todangst wrote:My point is that there is clearly a continuum of consciousness. Most humans are self aware. We have good reason to believe that some chimps are as well. Perhaps some whales are too.
When we move down the continuum, we have no clear evidence of self awareness of this sort, but it would be folly to deny that our pets: cats, dogs, lack any sort of self awareness at all.
And so on...
I somewhat address this in the essay. The limiting of the infinite consciousness.
Ok, but I don't know what "infinite consciousness" could mean.
The copying of the mind sounds intriguing. Will it be memories? Or will it be an exact copy? Will the copy share the same likes and dislikes?
It would be 'you'. After all, to a materialist, you are your central nervous system. So if you copy your CNS to another medium, why wouldn't it be 'you'?
One intriguing philosophical question would be: would the self awareness it experienced be 'you, meaning - your experience as you currently experience it' or merely a copy. I'd say that, unfortunately, that it would be the latter.
But if not, what would it mean to have 'you' in two places at once.
Dennet tried to deal with that question, but his analogy was backwards... he argued that since there were cases of multiple personalities in one body, the idea of two identical "yous" in two bodies was not so odd...
But I don't know...
This reminds me of fraternal twins (or whatever you call when the twins come from the same embryo).
I use the term monozygotic (and dyzygotic) makes it easier to remember.
Even if they are seperated at birth will they be exactly alike? Will they have the same taste in music? The same occupation? The same tastes for food? etc...
Same exact DNA, but not the same exact body. I mean that in two senses.
1) Literally two bodies
2) and 'different bodies' in that there would be minor differences in physiology between them.
So you already have differences... then you add in the differences in development and then in environmental infuences (which are never identical, unless you treat each person precisely the same, which is impossible)
But that said, they do tend to be alike. In fact, have you read the reports of identical twins separated at birth? There's not many cases like that, of course, but the few that exist were stunning: they identical twins had very similar lives.
To me, this begs the question: Do we have any control or is the mind controlling us?
Well, if we are our minds, there's no dilemma.
Well, I don't see it that way, it's not a matter of saying it would be a waste otherwise, self awareness is simply a bare fact of existence, in fact, it is the one undeniable entity.
Yes, it is quite undeniable. I think this is what causes us to question our purpose
An interesting observation.
It's a horrific, bloody mess, filled with pain. And you want to hold that a god created it, on purpose?
What I am saying is that God lets the laws of nature run it's course to bring different experiences.
But seeing as every parameter of existence that influences any outcome is contingent upon this same 'god', I don't see the point.
You as a person can let nature take its course...but how could a god who is perfectly responsible for nature itself, let it 'take its course"?
Imagine you could control every aspect of an outcome. Would you really be letting 'nature take its course"?
Do you see the problem.
I deal with this issue here:
http://www.rationalresponders.com/god_the_ironworker_and_why_the_freewill_defense_fails_version_2_0
Here's an excerpt:
Imagine you want to stress test a pieceof metal that is going to be used in a building. You need it to bear up a certain weight, or it will prove to be unsafe for construction.
So you stress test it..., because you don't know what load it can bear. You apply a chosen amount of weight per square inch that you hold to be required to keep the building up, and if the metal cracks, you realize you need a better metal.
Now, imagine god is making the building. Let's tune in and watch:
God the Iron Worker 
One day, god decides to make a building. He decides that the metal must be able to bear 2000 pounds per square inch. (He decides this based on fiat, of course, as god can never do anything out of necessity, as he is unlimited in what he does. )
One day, god decides to make a building. He decides that the metal must be able to bear 2000 pounds per square inch. (He decides this based on fiat, of course, as god can never do anything out of necessity, as he is unlimited in what he does. )
So he makes a metal. This metal can bear 1900 pounds per square inch. He then tests the metal, and it shatters. "No good", he says, and makes another, this time, able to bear 1900 pounds per square inch.
He tests it again. It shatters. "Damn" he says, "No good again." God conjures up another piece. This one can bear 1900 pounds per square inch.....
He tests yet another 1900 pounds per square inch beam. What do you know? It shatters!. "Damn" he says, "No good again." God conjures up another piece. This one can bear 1900 pounds per square inch.....
Getting the point yet? Can you really imagine this as a role for the most intelligent being?
An omnipotent, omniscient metal worker need not test the metal, for perfect metal worker is responsible for the fact that the metal passes or fails the test in the first place. This simple exercise helps us grasp that an omnipotent, omniscient creator must, necessarily, be perfectly responsible for every aspect of existence that in turn must dictate every outcome.
Evolution also says: The enviroment determines what traits survive. So I do not think I am over reaching when I say that the purpose of evolution is to get the most out of the enviroment.
But purpose implies sentience, and this therefore leads you right back to my question above. I'll repost it here:
Evolution isn't trial and error in the sense the term is usually employed - i.e. it's not learning. There's 'no one' to learn from the 'trials and errors', instead, beings simply die.
So why would a god rely on contrivance to seek a goal? Furthermore, given the power, would use a barbaric method to 'learn' or 'teach'? Evolution says: those with the best fit win, the others die a painful death. They starve, they are destroyed.
It's built on competition for food and on bloody encounters both intra and interspecies. Some species wipe out others. Man alone may well have wiped out most of the large animals on our planent when primitives first began to use fire to burn down unwanted forests...
It's a horrific, bloody mess, filled with pain. And you want to hold that a god created it, on purpose?
As for the barbaric method of evolution. At first glance it may seem like a bloody mess, but it has it's purpose.
You are using 'purpose' to solve the problem as to why evolution is so barbaric, but the very question before you is why a 'god' would use evolution to meet a purpose!
So you can't just beg the question here.
And even if there is a purpose to evolution, that does not change the fact that evolution is blind, unpredictable and bloody. I can't see how any sentient being would rely on it as a contrivance, particularly a god that is normally defined as omnpotent and therefore necessarily beyond requiring any contrivance by definition.
It's purpose is to bring the life that is best suited for it's enviroment.
Why would you need a 'purpose' for this when this is already the outcome in a (blind/unguided) model of evolution? In fact, evolution, as properly defined, needs no guiding force. It merely relies on the laws of physics.
So why would God wipe out so many species? Because of the infinite conscious, he experiences the universe through us. In a way, it is self punishment.
So 'god' kills entire species all the time, in order to punish himself?
Your god sounds like an angry goth who needs therapy.
However, like I said it serves the greater purpose.
This appears to be a special plead fallacy.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
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Offline todangst, I can address all of your concerns in one answer:
God does not know the future. He is limited by the laws of the universe. It is 'creation from subtraction'
Haisch uses the analogy of a projector. I don't have the book on me, but I can summerize the argument:
Imagine a projector. Turn it on and a white light will be on the screen. However, this white light alone is useless. Only potiental. Anybody who flashed white light through a prism knows that white light is many colours. This is the concept of 'creation from subtraction'. Now insert a slide, of say a red car. Now the white light turns the infinite potiental into the finitely real. The red car appears on the screen because it filters out the colours that are not red. It creates the red by subtracting the non-red.
So this addresses your points of God's ompinotence. He limits the potiental. This is why I mentioned the multiverse. Collectivly it has infinite potiental, but our universe is merely a slide in the projector. The universe takes away from the infinite potiental, thus limiting it.
As, for God's omniscientence. It doesn't exist. He is blind to the future. All that is known is the possible outcomes. Just like evolution is blind to the future and only produces species that can get the most out of the enviroment.
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Offline What do you mean by "possible outcomes"? Are you referring to the uncertainties implied by quantum mechanics?
If I am wrong on any point (including, but not limited to, spelling, grammar, and the question of God's existence), please correct me as quickly as possible.
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Offline What do you mean by "possible outcomes"? Are you referring to the uncertainties implied by quantum mechanics?
I mean outcomes as in evolution could have taken a very different course.
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Offline I added the part about the projector into the essay.
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Offline God does not know the future. He is limited by the laws of the universe.
how can god be limited by the laws of the universe? didn't he create the universe??? therefore he created the laws of the universe, therefore their his laws to bend and break at will. how do you know god is blind to the future? where are you getting this inside information??? other than out of your ass?
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Offline Cpt_pineapple wrote:God does not know the future. He is limited by the laws of the universe.
how can god be limited by the laws of the universe? didn't he create the universe??? therefore he created the laws of the universe, therefore their his laws to bend and break at will. how do you know god is blind to the future? where are you getting this inside information??? other than out of your ass?
Did you read the rest of the post?
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Offline todangst, I can address all of your concerns in one answer:
God does not know the future. He is limited by the laws of the universe. It is 'creation from subtraction'
Haisch uses the analogy of a projector. I don't have the book on me, but I can summerize the argument:
Imagine a projector. Turn it on and a white light will be on the screen. However, this white light alone is useless. Only potiental. Anybody who flashed white light through a prism knows that white light is many colours. This is the concept of 'creation from subtraction'. Now insert a slide, of say a red car. Now the white light turns the infinite potiental into the finitely real. The red car appears on the screen because it filters out the colours that are not red. It creates the red by subtracting the non-red.
So this addresses your points of God's ompinotence. He limits the potiental. This is why I mentioned the multiverse. Collectivly it has infinite potiental, but our universe is merely a slide in the projector. The universe takes away from the infinite potiental, thus limiting it.
As, for God's omniscientence. It doesn't exist. He is blind to the future. All that is known is the possible outcomes. Just like evolution is blind to the future and only produces species that can get the most out of the enviroment.
If you want to call this hypothetical being god, then by all means do so. It, however, does not look like the 'god' of most theologies, and thus creates some confusion in using the term that doesn't look like the referent of the same term used by others.
Further, I see no reason at all to postulate that there is any being that exists which does these things. I don't know why it's necessary or even plausible that this being exists. The concept can be as clear as you can make it, it might even be sensical. These facts won't make it exist, however.
Shaun
I'll fight for a person's right to speak so long as that person will, in return, fight to allow me to challenge their opinions and ridicule them as the content of their ideas merit.
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Offline So this addresses your points of God's ompinotence. He limits the potiental. This is why I mentioned the multiverse. Collectivly it has infinite potiental, but our universe is merely a slide in the projector. The universe takes away from the infinite potiental, thus limiting it.
Multiverse theory doesn't require a God to create the various universes. They occur as a natural result of collapsing quantum states. So neither you, nor any of us, have any need for that hypothesis.
As a side point, if we needed any futher proof that God is man-made, here it is. Do you actually consider this navel-gazing to be any form of discovery, Pineapple? Why should any of us consider these musings to point to anything real? God is like a projecter, huh? I think the old version of God as a big angry guy in the sky was more exciting and had exactly the same amount of support from evidence.
As, for God's omniscientence. It doesn't exist. He is blind to the future. All that is known is the possible outcomes. Just like evolution is blind to the future and only produces species that can get the most out of the enviroment.
If God has 100% knowledge of the past, he has 100% knowledge of the present, minus some infintesimal errors for subatomic quantum effects. Since the present is constantly passing into the past, God's perfect knowledge of the past will allow him to update and correct for those errors in real time, meaning that he is only off of perfect knowledge of the present by a Planck-time interval.
Given this awesome degree of computational power, it should be child's play for God to generate a simulation of the future of any localized space in the universe (like, say, our solar system) with a very small degree of error out to millennia in the future, at least. After all, you have to compare the amount of information in the near-future of our solar system with the amount of information in the past of the entire universe. If God focussed down to a single species, again, it would be ridiculously easy for him to model its entire evolutionary history from any point in the past.
So God does know the future and would have known that giving humans free will would create evil.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
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Offline person132 wrote:What do you mean by "possible outcomes"? Are you referring to the uncertainties implied by quantum mechanics?
I mean outcomes as in evolution could have taken a very different course.
Assuming God's omnipotence, He could run the laws of the universe forward in time (with complete accuraccy, since he is omnipotent with regards to both the current state of the universe and the laws of the universe) and thus know exactly what course evolution would take. He must know the future state af the universe at all times unless he is bound by quantum uncertainties (or other uncertainties that we have no knowledge of).
If I am wrong on any point (including, but not limited to, spelling, grammar, and the question of God's existence), please correct me as quickly as possible.
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Offline Cpt_pineapple wrote:So this addresses your points of God's ompinotence. He limits the potiental. This is why I mentioned the multiverse. Collectivly it has infinite potiental, but our universe is merely a slide in the projector. The universe takes away from the infinite potiental, thus limiting it.
Multiverse theory doesn't require a God to create the various universes. They occur as a natural result of collapsing quantum states. So neither you, nor any of us, have any need for that hypothesis.
As a side point, if we needed any futher proof that God is man-made, here it is. Do you actually consider this navel-gazing to be any form of discovery, Pineapple? Why should any of us consider these musings to point to anything real? God is like a projecter, huh? I think the old version of God as a big angry guy in the sky was more exciting and had exactly the same amount of support from evidence.
Cpt_pineapple wrote:As, for God's omniscientence. It doesn't exist. He is blind to the future. All that is known is the possible outcomes. Just like evolution is blind to the future and only produces species that can get the most out of the enviroment.
If God has 100% knowledge of the past, he has 100% knowledge of the present, minus some infintesimal errors for subatomic quantum effects. Since the present is constantly passing into the past, God's perfect knowledge of the past will allow him to update and correct for those errors in real time, meaning that he is only off of perfect knowledge of the present by a Planck-time interval.
Given this awesome degree of computational power, it should be child's play for God to generate a simulation of the future of any localized space in the universe (like, say, our solar system) with a very small degree of error out to millennia in the future, at least. After all, you have to compare the amount of information in the near-future of our solar system with the amount of information in the past of the entire universe. If God focussed down to a single species, again, it would be ridiculously easy for him to model its entire evolutionary history from any point in the past.
So God does know the future and would have known that giving humans free will would create evil.
All I can say is that is something doesn't work in one universe, it may work in another. God is blind to the future. He can't run 'simulations' in other parts of the universe, because he is limited by the laws of the universe.
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Offline Cpt_pineapple wrote:person132 wrote:What do you mean by "possible outcomes"? Are you referring to the uncertainties implied by quantum mechanics?
I mean outcomes as in evolution could have taken a very different course.
Assuming God's omnipotence, He could run the laws of the universe forward in time (with complete accuraccy, since he is omnipotent with regards to both the current state of the universe and the laws of the universe) and thus know exactly what course evolution would take. He must know the future state af the universe at all times unless he is bound by quantum uncertainties (or other uncertainties that we have no knowledge of).
No, he can't go forward in time.
Perhaps I didn't make this concept clear enough. I will try to write another essay to explain my points more clearly. It will be about the infinite conscuousness and why he cannot do these 'simulations' or go into the future. I will write it after I have done more research on the subject, so I don't know how long that will be.
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All I can say is that is something doesn't work in one universe, it may work in another. God is blind to the future. He can't run 'simulations' in other parts of the universe, because he is limited by the laws of the universe.
You'll have to excuse me if I'm overly ignorant; But isn't the spacetime continuum supposed to exist in such a way that all of the events, past and future, essentially already exist? Thus, anything that was able to perceive the 4 dimensions of space-time would know every event in time in the same way that I can look at a picture (but even better)?
So, if god is bound to the three dimensions of space, but is inside of time, then is that thing really "god"?
Thoughts?
I'll fight for a person's right to speak so long as that person will, in return, fight to allow me to challenge their opinions and ridicule them as the content of their ideas merit.
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Offline Cpt_pineapple wrote:
All I can say is that is something doesn't work in one universe, it may work in another. God is blind to the future. He can't run 'simulations' in other parts of the universe, because he is limited by the laws of the universe.
You'll have to excuse me if I'm overly ignorant; But isn't the spacetime continuum supposed to exist in such a way that all of the events, past and future, essentially already exist? Thus, anything that was able to perceive the 4 dimensions of space-time would know every event in time in the same way that I can look at a picture (but even better)?
So, if god is bound to the three dimensions of space, but is inside of time, then is that thing really "god"?
Thoughts?
I could be wrong, but I think you are refering to the Everett interputation. These are parallel universes, in which every possibility is played out. I believe the Copenhagen interputation is the most accepted.
Your last point got me thinking. Then I realized that space is finite but boundless. That space is constantly expanding. So in essence God is not bound by space itself. The universe is not just 3 dimensions, M-theory predicts 11 curled up dimensions, but we only percieve 3. So in essence God is not confined to 3 dimensions of space.
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Offline Cpt_pineapple wrote:
All I can say is that is something doesn't work in one universe, it may work in another. God is blind to the future. He can't run 'simulations' in other parts of the universe, because he is limited by the laws of the universe.
You'll have to excuse me if I'm overly ignorant; But isn't the spacetime continuum supposed to exist in such a way that all of the events, past and future, essentially already exist?
Yeah that's near enough right Shaun. The essence of continuum is that everything is relative to it's next point. Many worlds kind of suggests each quantum event point belongs to a unique continuum, of events preserving each possible state. In that sense the whole continuum is defined unto itself shifting through the polarity of a discrete entity, so if you take our movement through time, the speed of time is relative to mass and velocity it slows down when either of those things are large so then you can assume that when space is curved the continuum of time is pulled with it and it is one system acting together. A space time continuum acting together means that the mass itself is a relative too.. then you get the famous equation... but beyond that you also see that the next point in mass (in space-time) is also a determined relativity to the point you're at in the existing continuum, or, there's no 'empty' time in a continuum of energy-mass-related events.
The many worlds theory does sidestep the issue of no empty time by having extensive branches of probability, but not completely because of the nature of probability where repetition is inevitable in a limited set of variables. Such limits contain outcomes in a continuum of worlds which is defined unto itself also.
Thus, anything that was able to perceive the 4 dimensions of space-time would know every event in time in the same way that I can look at a picture (but even better)?
No I don't think that would do it at all. (this is possibly related to the reason you and I have disagreed in the past on the nature of consciouness) the better functions for many worlds are statistical intervals and modulo. That is, you would have to be able to deduce relationally from the picture to know the picture, this is more complex than looking at it, it involves comparitive sensing of cross relative data points in each section of the picture, and standing back from the picture to see it in context as well, The crux of uncertainty. How can you do both at once?
There is only one way that I can understand would work and that is being in the picture itself, so that your observation of self gives you one data point, and your observation from within the picture gives you the other. To this end the only plausible God (in terms of omniscience) is pantheistic.
So, if god is bound to the three dimensions of space, but is inside of time, then is that thing really "god"?
Thoughts?
Well for me it makes it far more possible to be all knowing 'be' within time. But there is a lot more to it than that which would make it 'god' for me, inclusivist modes of consciousness, for example.
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That depends pretty much entirely on our future agreed definition of self. The self is a state in union, the essential equivalency of a multiverse. If we personify self we, by extension, personify the mulitiverse in the same definition. If we reduce our definition of a self, likewise, to the concept of a state, then the multiverse is spinoza's god and there is nothing changed by the invoking of the word God. This is why I say, it doesn't matter, what matters is which is the best definition for us, the one that will further our experience as humanity.
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Well, we appear to be converging towards an agreement, which is unusual for discourse between atheists and theists on this site. I agree that what matters most is the utility of the definitions we use.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
First, I never said God was supernatural. I did say in my essay the God is limited by the universe's laws of physics.
At the risk of rehashing pretty much every Theist's argument, my answer is: To give everything a purpose.
Then you've left theism behind and entered Spinozian pantheism. Interesting that this thread features what I consider to be two pantheists.... but I bet you both reject the claim.
Anyway, I actually did follow your claim that 'god is natural, and I do deal with your argument above. I just went ahead and attacked a supernatural definition because I feel you must actually revert to that definition!
Let me repeat my above argument here and further explicate upon it:
1) "gods' are unnecessary in a multiverse
2) "god" is a broken term, ontologically bankrupt, unless we steal from naturalism.
Which returns us to point 1!
What I mean by this is, if argue that "god is supernatural" and hold to to multiverse theory, then you have a serious contradiction on your hands. You must go back to step 1. But as I've already discussed above going back to step one and a natural or 'supranatural' god leaves you with a god with nothing to do. There's nothing that needs creating, existence is eternal. There's no need for divine guidance, or intent to create pocket universes...they are necessary events.
So reducing your god to an aspect of existence renders your god pointless. There's no role for 'him'; nothing for 'him' to do. The law of parsimony says: get rid of him, along with the fairies once needed to open up flowers in the morning, and the brownies needed to explain morning dew.
The sole way out of the dilemma, to my eyes, is Spinozian pantheism. To say 'god is the universe, i.e. the laws of nature'.
But this is not a satisfying god to anyone other than a philosopher.
I fail to see why everything needs a purpose. A pebble rolls down a hill on an unihabited planet in another galaxy. Do we need a purpose?
I also fail to see why being given a purpose is desirable.
Anyway, thank you for a pleasant discussion.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
A bit of both, actually
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
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I'm not sure anyone has said that such a being couldn't do such a thing.
Rather, the objections have stemmed from the fact that most of us see your view as needlessly complicating things - that a deity does not appear necessary in the view you have presented.
For one who understands science as you seem to, I find it hard to understand why you don't share the same objection.
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
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Actually, no to that. I'm definitely of Pantheist persuasion. I've probably studied far too much mythology, spirituality and theology to say anything wholly unambiguous about my position. But Pantheism is definitely one of the few most appropriate titles.
I'm under the impression Cpt Pineapple would readily identify as Pantheist too.
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A Bach piece is just a series of frequencies. It is a physical pattern with no significance until it reaches a brain (or something like a brain) that can "hear" the pattern. In our brains, the pattern invokes certain emotional and intellectual chords and thus gains meaning there.
I am particular to Bach. I love his canons and I love a good fugue. But outside of my or someone else's hearing a Bach piece played, the sound sthemselves are mere physical patterns that transmit in the air.
So, what's wrong with reductionism? Just because things can be reduced doesn't mean that when they aren't reduced they don't have meaning our beauty to us.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that quantum effects give us the ability to perceive. Now, if you are making reference to the idea that consciousness is ultimately a quantum process, as some have hypothesized, I will not agree. I am not a proponent of Jaegwon Kim's supervenience, for example, or Francis cricks essays about consciousness and quantum theory. I am more prone to agree with the concept of emergent properties; the point you were not clear on before, elucidated below, will expand on that. Your picture analogy seems to be apt enough to make the point for me.
OK, I'll try.
If you had never seen any colors (say because you were born and raised in a room with only black and white paint, and you were an albino or something), then how could you know what seeing the color red was like?
Similarly, if you had been born in a universe where consciousness arose while seeing things at a quantum level, how would you understand what a rock was like (as we see a rock with our super-atomic perception)?
We are born in a universe where we perceive the world larger than the atomic/molecular level and also below the cosmological level (without technology, that is). This is what Dawkins called the "middle world," and what I was calling the macrophysical world in my last post. This is true because the actual thing responsible for our conscious awareness--the brain and it's many lobes--is active at this level. It is able to take data in that behaves like stuff that is at the level of biological life, and not electrons and galaxy clusters. As a result our brains perceive the world around us working by certain rules, derived empirically and inductively, that we use to make sense of the world. Hence Newton.
However, when we develop the ability to see how the world works on the sub-atomic level, we find that those rules do not work on all levels. At the very small, our descriptions of the behavior of matter must use different terms and concept in order to describe it appropriately. But the words we use are still appropriate to describe what we see without the use of the tools. Matter is tangible, particle-like, etc, it simply is not merely such.
If we saw things at the quantum level, we would be having trouble conceiving of solid objects that don't have collapsing probability waves, rather than the other way around. Our concepts are completely dependent on what we have experience with. So when we see matter on a different level than we are used to, it looks like matter is an illusion because we are forced to concede that matter no longer has all the same attributes as all of the terms we employed to describe it or previously allowed it.
Calling matter an illusion because it is fundamentally different than we've historically perceived it is akin to saying that I'm an illusion because you get to know me better and find out something about my personal psychology that you didn't know before. Matter is simply better understood and a new and improved definition for matter emerges (cf. Saul Kripke's "emergent definitions" ).
Once again, what's wrong with reduction? Again, saying that the picture is made of pixels doesn't mean that an image does not exist that I can perceive. It simply means that if all I am paying attention to are a few pixels, the image is outside of my perception currently. It's kind of like those "magic eye" pictures or a picture with two images that you can switch between. Your consciousness can only pay attention to one at a time, but both are there.
If you like. I found the reading interesting, but ultimately find process philosophy lacking.
Shaun
I'll fight for a person's right to speak so long as that person will, in return, fight to allow me to challenge their opinions and ridicule them as the content of their ideas merit.
All you have done is taken the correct explanation of what we really are and what our consciousness really is and attach the pejorative words "automaton" and "zombie" to it. The theory that consciousness is no more than a neural network in our heads fits all the observed facts and has made successful predictions. The only thing the theory does not do is satisfy our egos that tell us that we must be something bigger and better than what we are. But that is no reason to discard the theory.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
Any logic will tell you that a philisophical zombie is impossible. I'm sorry I wasn't clear enough to say that I don't beleive in zombies. But since Cpt_pineapple seems to ascribe some sort of mystical significance to "consciousness", whatever that is, I thought that it might be interesting to see his answer to the question of whether a zombie could exist.
If I am wrong on any point (including, but not limited to, spelling, grammar, and the question of God's existence), please correct me as quickly as possible.
This is my point. Experiences require a conscious mind. So in essence Bach's work is a bunch of vibrations until a conscioussness experiences them.
See above. Matter is nothing but quantum effects, until a consciousness experiences them
I am not sure what you mean by this, please explain.
Okay, I think I get it now. You're saying that matter appears to be an illusion because we have a better understanding of it that is vastly different than what we are use to.
My answer is this: An illusion fools the brain, much like a coin in the bottom of a bucket of water will appear distorted because the water distorts the light waves. The water doesn't physically distort the coin, it just appears that it does. Just like matter isn't just made of protons and electrons, it just appears that it is. That is the illusion. These are packets of energy that we percieve as solid matter because the illusion distorts our view of it.
Again, I note that without conscioussness, reductionism is valid. But with consciousness, reduction is missing the experience.
To use your magic eye analogy, what brings the most experience? The first picture of squiggly lines or the experience of the picture hidden behind those lines?
Yes a 'zombie' can exist. They are called A.Is. Artifical Intellegence.
If this is true then God is the biggest asshole who ever existed. Wait a minute...I'm having Old Testament flash backs!!
"A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven." -- former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien
Ah. OK
That's my feel as well....
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
Thank you, I'll put away my sharp implements.... Zombie talk usually leads to qualia, and that usually leads to absurdities bordering on pataphysics.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
You still haven't told me why it needs a creator. Is matter a conscious being that deliberately fools human beings?
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Thanks for dealing with this, Shaun. I consider the argument against reductionism little more than an appeal to wonder.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
aren't you just begging the question that AI has no self awareness, in any sense, at all?
In a rudimentary sense, all life exhibits a crude form of self awareness.
A cell 'knows' not to digest itself. It can differeniate between 'inside' and 'outside'
You don't see flies spending much of their time cleaning the eyes of other flies.
A cat or dog knows 'you' from 'me', you're the one with the food, he's the one with the hunger.
You can balk that I am overextending the concept of self awareness, but I'd counter that reductionism would require that each precusor level of human existence contain all the elements required for the emergence of human self awareness, and that this fact leads to the necessity of accepting a 'continuum' of 'self awareness' from the meager abilities of a cell to avoid digesting itself, to the meta-meta-meta-perspectives humans are able to generate.
Philosophical zombies are bad philosophy.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
No, matter is not conscious. What I am trying to say is that God creates the universe, from matter, an illusion. Haisch links this to the Zero Point Energy Field (This is from the fact that there is no such thing as 'nothing' in physics. Many believe that the ZPEF is eternal, and is behind quantum flucuations).
In essence the ZPEF has infinite potiental. However, God limits it, to what we percieve as the universe. However, to experience this illusion requires the consciousness. In essence, we fool ourselves to thinking matter is 'real'
C'mon man, if farting an Italian sports car out of your rear end isn't one hell of an illusion, I don't know what is. Not even even eating Taco Bell can make one do that.
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
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Yes, I would classify myself as a Pantheist.
The only 'awareness' an AI has is the ones programmed into it. If it does not have an algorithm of self awareness, no self awareness.
My point was A.Is cannot think for themselves. If they could:
Well, if all cells digested themselves, we wouldn't be having this conversation would we?
Oh and auto-immune disease is when the cell isn't aware. It cannot tell the difference between your cells and intruders.
This is why we need consciousness. If we didn't, then we would be just a bunch of chemical reactions and nothing more.
You realize that the next door over is atheism, right?
Well then, there you go....
Aren't you holding AI up to a standard that's too high?
Does a chimpanzee need to take over the world to illustrate it has self awareness?
All you are saying is that it is necessary that cells have some sort of rudimentary awareness!
Yes. You could also mess with the DNA of a fly until it did spend some time cleaning the eye of other flies, but to take from your above comments, such flies would not prosper, whereas those with a rudimentary sense of self would prosper.
So in effect, you've strengthened my point by showing that self awareness has clear survival benefits.
But that IS what we are! Matter/energy with a high level of self awareness.
You remind me of a joke.
A man climbs to the roof of his home to avoid a flood. Being a theist, he prays to god to save him. Moments later, a boat appears.
The man says: I prayed to god to save me, so you can go help others.
An hour later, a makeshift raft appears.
Again, the man says: I prayed to god to save me, so you can go help others.
Finally, with the storm waters approaching the roof of his house, a helicopter appears.
Again, the man says: I prayed to god to save me, so you can go help others.
Finally, the waters overtake him, and he drowns.
He appears in heaven, and god greets him.
"God, I must admit that I am happy to be here, but why didn't you save me?!"
What do you mean, god says... I sent the boat, I sent the raft....
You're looking at matter and energy as if there needs to be something more to make it a miracle. But matter/energy itself is the answer - it is what we are. We are connected to the entire universe, we are star stuff that have become sentient. I really don't know what could be more wonderous than that.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
Perhaps. As atheists tell Theists, "I simply believe in one less God."
Planet of the Apes? Anyway, my point is humans have a higher level of consciousness.
The A.I lacks this ability. Chimp have complex problem solving skills. If it wants food it will figure out how to get it, it will find a way. For example, one species (forget which one) feeds on termites It uses a stick pokes it in a hole and termites cling to it and the chimp eats the termites.
The A.I on the otherhand is limited by it's programing. It cannot 'think outside the box' so to speak. If the solution is not in it's algorithm it's fucked.
Yes I am.
Bingo. What good is creating experiences if you are not there to experience it? God uses the 'trial and error' approach from evolution. To get the most out of the enviroment.
Yes, I know that we are star dust and I see a hint of Pantheism in this statement. You are right, we are from the universe. We are here to experience the universe. And again you are right, nothing can be more wonderous than coming from the universe.
Please don't redefine "zombie". A zombie is, in all material aspects, a human. Could such an arrangement of atoms exist without being conscious?
If I am wrong on any point (including, but not limited to, spelling, grammar, and the question of God's existence), please correct me as quickly as possible.
I think I see what you mean now, but I disagree. You seem to be saying that the higher levels of complexity that matter exists in is meaningless to talk about before it is attended to by some conscious agent. You would describe a rock hitting another rock as two collections of quantum 'objects' interacting in some way that is based upon the rules of QM, and that our conscious awareness, being unaware of the smaller activity, only abstracts from a larger point of view and misses the details.
Thus, the interactions we see at the super-atomic scale is not a true representation of what's really going on. And so the concept of matter that we have formed over the millions of years of evolution and experience with the world is simply not correct, and the world does not operate the way we perceive.
That seems to be a somewhat fair description, but I would not call this description an illusion of matter, but rather a misapprehension of it. The activity of matter at the macrophysical scale is still real, just not complete. The interactions of a rock and another rock is different than the interaction between an electron and a proton (or whatever) because of the cumulative effect of many quantum probabilities changing the nature of interactions; interactions of many 'particles' is different than the interaction of a few.
I don't think that's what I'm saying, but maybe...language....
I'm saying that matter can be viewed from different perspectives, and if we compare the macrophysical perspective to the quantum perspective (if such a thing is even sensical), the distinction makes it look like we've always seen matter incorrectly. I'm saying that both the traditional, Newtonian, view of matter and the quantum are both valid for their own level of complexity. That is how it seems to me, anyway.
Understood. I would simply respond by saying that the coin is made up of protins and electrons, which themselves are made up of quarks, which may be made up of 11 dimensional super strings....
Thus, coins may be made up of super strings, but there are categories of interaction between those two levels that legitimately exist in some way even without conscious attention. Sure, the concepts don't exist before we think about them, but the referents do.
And I'm aware of the idea in QM about how when something is not observed, it does not really exist in some fashion. I think that's a little bit of a silly word game, and would concede it only under some very specific semantic games.
But isn't it the conscious agent that does the reduction? I would say that without consciousness, reduction does not even make sense. Reductionism is a way that the intelligent conscious mind parses different levels of complexity in the world and identifies certain levels based upon observed patterns of interaction.
I do not miss the experience by reducing, I am simply experiencing the object at multimple levels (not at the same time, but in succession) when reducing. I can think of the apple, the cells that compose it, the molecules that compose the cells, and down further. At each stage I am conscious of the different levels and can identify various types of activity that occurs at each level.
I am not missing any experience, I am expanding experience by reducing.
They both bring different experiences. I think the most experience is being able to see both and compare them. It is a kind of meta-experience or an abstraction. By comparing two experiences we are capable of conceiving of new things that result of comparing the two conscious states. This is one thing Hume talks about, but in a slightly different way.
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Concerning pantheism.
I've always viewed pantheism as being fundamentally indistinguishable from atheism. Panentheism I've viewed as fundamentally indistinguishable from theism. If the universe is God, why call it god when we have a name already ('universe'
?
I guess it's ultimately unimportant, but I used to call myself a pantheist until I realized that I was just using the word god because I was conditioned to think about god existing. In fact, I've never believed in god, and had always been calling nature by another name.
Shaun
I'll fight for a person's right to speak so long as that person will, in return, fight to allow me to challenge their opinions and ridicule them as the content of their ideas merit.