Materialism (championed by Darwinists) makes reason Impossible.

[Akhenaten]

Now back to this thread.

In which a person who claims that voodoo provokes his god to cause earthquakes is attempting to show that materialism makes reason impossible.

 

[DOC]

In which a person who claims that voodoo provokes his god to cause earthquakes...

Yet another strawman-- an accurate statement would be

"in which a person who reports that there is a possiblity that the God of the Bible caused the Haiti earthquake since the God of the Bible was reported to use natural disasters to punish sin and rampant Voodoo would seem to be a sin.

Back to this thread.

 

[joobz]

In which a person who claims that voodoo provokes his god to cause earthquakes is attempting to show that materialism makes reason impossible.

Hilarious and TRUE!

 

[Akhenaten]

Really? The Romans knew enough about fluid dynamics to build aqueducts.

All right, I'll grant you that the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done . . .

/Reg

 

[John Jones]

Well Christ said I will send you the Holy Spirit who will teach you all things. . . . .

No, some New Testament Authors alleged that Christ said that.

We dont have convincing Evidence That The New Testament Authors Told The Truth.

Get to work on that Evidence, will you?

 

[Akhenaten]

Yet another strawman--

You don't really know what the strawman fallacy is about at all, do you DOC.

. . . an accurate statement would be

"in which a person who reports that there is a possiblity that the God of the Bible caused the Haiti earthquake since the God of the Bible was reported to use natural disasters to punish sin and rampant Voodoo would seem to be a sin.

No prizes for second place, DOC, especially when it's such a distant second.

Back to this thread.

Has someone granted you an exclusive right to post off-topic and forgotten to tell the rest of us?

 

[Foster Zygote]

All right, I'll grant you that the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done . . .

/Reg

 

[Ignosticist]

software and mathematics: arguments against materialism?

What if Materialism, worst case, Materialism was not capable of answering any of these questions - would that be an argument against Materialism?

Take software for example, software it not material (even if it "needs" hardware to be run") how could the existence of software be used against Materialism?

Or take very abstract mathematics that have to match in the "material world", is the existence of such mathematics an argument against Materialism?

 

[Ignosticist]

I can have a conversation about driving, but I've got no idea how to build a car.

And you also (probably) have no idea how you brain does all the things it does to drive... and you still can talk about it...

On the other hand, from the perspective of someone that actually understands how to build cars, and how brains work while you drive, your conversation about cars could seem very superficial...a and perhaps wrong in many ways...

 

[Ignosticist]

Because you know about driving?

How much does he really know about it if he can not explain how the car works, or how his brain works while driving?

 

[Ignosticist]

In which a person who claims that voodoo provokes his god to cause earthquakes is attempting to show that materialism makes reason impossible.

 

[Ignosticist]

Yet another strawman-- an accurate statement would be

"in which a person who reports that there is a possiblity that the God of the Bible caused the Haiti earthquake since the God of the Bible was reported to use natural disasters to punish sin and rampant Voodoo would seem to be a sin.

Back to this thread.

Want to be accurate? lets be accurate then:

in wich a person, who reports that there is a possiblity that one of the Gods of of the Bibles caused the Haiti earthquake since the (some times loving, it depends on the denomination) Gods of the Bibles were (almost always but one can never be sure a newer denomination will not change that) reported to use natural disasters to punish sin and rampant Voodoo would seem to be a sin (even when there are countries commiting far more "sins" that suffer no "apparent" consequences (such as atheist Norway).

 

[Malerin]

I don't see how any of this contradicts my point? Of course, all this is true. There are strong parallels between consciousness and turbulence.

I was thinking about this during my kid's little league game. In fluid dynamics, there really isn't anything new when a bunch of molecules in an air or liquid start behaving a certain way. Turbulence and fluid dynamics just describe the rules they follow.

Contrast that when a certain number of neurons are arranged in the right way, with the right chemicals and electrical impulses. Now we get something new: consciousness and subjective experience. None of the individual neurons were capable of this, but together, they're capable of both.

That's also true when we combine certain elements and get new substances. Someone mentioned NaCl. True, something new emerges that isn't really like Na or Cl. However, in that case, we know exactly when the new substance is created: Na + CL. We don't have such knowledge in the case of consciousness: ?Neurons + ?Biochemicals +?arrangement +?electrical impulse= consciousness and subjective experience.

Something to think about, maybe.

 

[Malerin]

We have yet to develop the math to do so, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. We have models describing other emergent phenomena (e.g., weather patterns), and these are still horrible but we can do it. Should we still consider lightning strikes a result of Zeus?


I agree we don't have the math set up yet, but that doesn't mean it won't happen or that it isn't being developed.
Asking simpler question: How do you quantitatively describe ANY level of consciousness? Well, it turns out we can to a weak level.
That's what these papers describe.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21383615
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21512777
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21293252
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21160616

It's what Anesthesiologists do all the time. Indeed, people have used this rather simplistic quantification of consciousness to create an artificial anesthesiologist, called McSleepy.
http://io9.com/386691/meet-mcsleepy-the-worlds-first-robot-anesthesiologist

Sure, you can do some measurements of conscious activity. But I was thinking along the lines of How do I measure my subjective experience of feeling proud of my kid during a baseball game? Is it greater than my experience of a good book? Less than a faded memory of my wife and I meeting for the first time? There's no scale that can be used nor agreed upon unit of measurement. The conscious experiences just are. They defy measurement. What other materialist phenomena is like that?

 

[Slimething]

One has to wonder why you won't post the links?

I've already answered that question. I don't want to enable your lack of effort and perspicacity.

And even if they were preachers, that wouldn't affect the rationality of any argument they gave.

That's very true. Were they secular humanists, that argument would still be worthless. You are made of dumb atoms. Reconcile that.

 

[PixyMisa]

I was thinking about this during my kid's little league game. In fluid dynamics, there really isn't anything new when a bunch of molecules in an air or liquid start behaving a certain way. Turbulence and fluid dynamics just describe the rules they follow.

Right.

Contrast that when a certain number of neurons are arranged in the right way, with the right chemicals and electrical impulses. Now we get something new: consciousness and subjective experience. None of the individual neurons were capable of this, but together, they're capable of both.

None of the individual molecules in a fluid are capable of turbulence - it doesn't even make sense. But in the aggregate, they are.

Your argument is simply the selective application of the fallacy of composition.

That's also true when we combine certain elements and get new substances. Someone mentioned NaCl. True, something new emerges that isn't really like Na or Cl. However, in that case, we know exactly when the new substance is created: Na + CL. We don't have such knowledge in the case of consciousness: ?Neurons + ?Biochemicals +?arrangement +?electrical impulse= consciousness and subjective experience.

If we don't have such knowledge, how is it that you just described it?

 

[PixyMisa]

Sure, you can do some measurements of conscious activity. But I was thinking along the lines of How do I measure my subjective experience of feeling proud of my kid during a baseball game?

fMRI.

Is it greater than my experience of a good book?

Define "greater" with respect to these two experiences, or experiences in general.

Less than a faded memory of my wife and I meeting for the first time?

Define "less" with respect to these two experiences, or experiences in general.

There's no scale that can be used nor agreed upon unit of measurement.

Entirely false. You're asking questions without defining your terms - that's your failing.

The conscious experiences just are.

Wrong. They're neural processes, and can be measured.

They defy measurement.

Wrong. They're neural processes, and can be measured.

What other materialist phenomena is like that?

No material phenomenon is like that, including consciousness.

 

[lemurien]

Joobz: It's what Anesthesiologists do all the time. Indeed, people have used this rather simplistic quantification of consciousness to create an artificial anesthesiologist, called McSleepy.

We turn it on and we turn it off but none of us knows what it really is.

 

[PixyMisa]

It's self-referential information processing.

 

[joobz]

I was thinking about this during my kid's little league game. In fluid dynamics, there really isn't anything new when a bunch of molecules in an air or liquid start behaving a certain way. Turbulence and fluid dynamics just describe the rules they follow.

turbulence is an emergent property based upon fluid dynamics. It is most definitely new and different compared to laminar flow.

Contrast that when a certain number of neurons are arranged in the right way, with the right chemicals and electrical impulses. Now we get something new: consciousness and subjective experience. None of the individual neurons were capable of this, but together, they're capable of both.

That's called an emergent behavior. consciousness and subjective experience are emergent properties of neurology.

That's also true when we combine certain elements and get new substances. Someone mentioned NaCl. True, something new emerges that isn't really like Na or Cl. However, in that case, we know exactly when the new substance is created: Na + CL. We don't have such knowledge in the case of consciousness: ?Neurons + ?Biochemicals +?arrangement +?electrical impulse= consciousness and subjective experience.

So it is only different because we don't fully understand it yet?
We don't fully understand earthquakes either. We have almost no ability to predict their. Does this make earthquakes somehow magical? No, of course not. We know that earthquakes are the emergent behavior of plate tectonics and geological processes. We wouldn't pretend to think that they were magically created.