h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

But doesn't that approach basically say I can't prove X doesn't exist (proof of negative warning) therefore I must accept that it might exist? Hence you get Russell's teapot and the flying spaghetti monster.
Not a particularly satisfactory argument to me.

No, it's not - but it is all we have.

In the pagan groups where I discuss such things, the only way we deal with what we call UPG (unsubstantiated personal gnosis) is to post the stuff into the open and see if it is somethig which has been shared by others - not ideal, but at least it's something.

Anything too wacky that gets the WTF response is treated with extreme caution LOL

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But there is no scientific measure of inspiration, and yet the phenomenon is quite well attested, isn't it?

Belief in deity comes in the same ball-park, IMO.

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Jez

Jbird,

I'm not arguing that there is no such thing as mind, just as I'm not suggesting there is no such thing as software or music. I'm saying that these are simply functions of material stuff - emergent properties if you like - and therefore constrained by the same physical laws as the material stuff.

'Aboutness' in this respect is merely a bit of a red herring. Clearly what something is 'about' depends on the observer and most things are not 'about' anything except themselves. That it requires a mind to decide if an object or thought is about something - to be an observer - does not elevate the mind to some special non-physical status. It simply gives the mind a property that other things do not have; in the same way that light has properties that sound does not have. Visual illusions are an interesting way of exploring how human minds work but this is precisely the same as saying 'how human brains process information'.

Living things are different to inanimate objects merely as a result of their observable properties; just as fire is different to, say, wood. When a living thing dies we may say it has 'lost its life' but this does not prove that life itself has some independent existence. When a fire is extinguished we do not generally suggest there is some spiritual aspect to fire which has 'gone to a better place' simply because oxygen has stopped reacting with hydrocarbons. That we accept a semantic duality between living and inanimate (or burning and extinguished) things does not prove there is a physical duality.

Wherein does "the rules governing the operation of software or the production of music are still firmly rooted in and dependent upon those which govern all material objects" suggest that material objects cannot have beliefs? Any more than "computer processors are made of silicon" suggests that computers cannot process information and make decisions based on complex data? We attribute 'belief' to a human mind because that is what we call it when we modify our behaviour (output) in response to external forces (input) and internal beliefs (memory). We don't attribute 'belief' to a thermostat when it turns the heating up (output) because it 'believes' the temperature has fallen (input) compared to its switch setting (memory) but it is not such a very different thing.

The human mind is quite clearly a function of the human brain. Physical alterations to the brain - mechanical, chemical or electrical interference - can all alter the mind in ways noticeable to the user as well as to observers. Certainly the mind is an impressive piece of software and it is of a much higher order than the processing power of a thermostat but beyond that it is not intrinsically special.

F

Jez

(Reply to posting 26436)

(I'm mich2ael, by the way)

Please read all of this, because it answers your question...

In the Bible, God's ways are described as being 'beyond searching out', and 'as high above man's ways as the heavens are above the earth'. Nevertheless there are two attributes of Almighty God that we can discern through his revelation of himself in the bible.

The first, and most uncomfortable is God's holiness. God is totally 'other' from us and hates sin: "your iniquities have separated you from your God"-Isaiah59:2. "Be sure of this, the wicked will not go unpunished"-Proverbs11:21. "For the wages of sin is death"-Romans6:23

On the other hand God is described as being full of grace(unconditional love) and mercy: "The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love"-Psalm103:8. "God is love" 1John4:8

The bible tells us that God's mercy and justice met at the cross of Christ: "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us"-Romans5:8.

By understanding that God is a God of both perfect justice and boundless mercy we can understand Jesus' final words on the cross: "It is finished"...literally translated: "The price is paid in full".

So, in answer to your question (at long last): God Almighty, the great King above all gods, OF HIS OWN FREE WILL, chose to love sinners like you and me, by dying in our place on the cross.

Suck on that for a while Jez, I'm going away for a few days.

mich2ael

Anyone can invent fairy stories but it is the " More clever than most" who think they can brain wash everyone else into believing what they believe.

Why would some so called devine being want a load of miscreants living on earth to continually be bowing and scraping before him?

With the so called power he has and the masses who praise him every Sunday, why then does he allow floods to drown people and fires that create havoc on earth, and wars to cuase so much misery?

I can understand people pleading to Thor to shut his cake hole cos they can't get to sleep and have to be up early in the morning!

And let us hear it for Early who has to contend wi' the early morning rushes. :0)

Mich2ael

If this means that the Christian God has free will, and the bible says that we are created in his image, does this mean that humans have free will?

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Jez

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PS, sorry about using Michael, I assumed th eonly reason you had a 2 in there was that someone else already had the nick michael.

Same as I am only the Original Jez because the bbc lost my access to the Jez account (also me) when they changed their systems and I could never find the way back into it.

Tom

Pleading with Thor would get you laughed at. By Thor.

He likes his people to stand, not grovel, and to share beer and sing songs rather than plead.

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If you need to sleep through a thunder storm, use earplugs

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Jez

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Indeed. And any competent scientist would admit as much. But this doesn't mean that we have no clue as to where an explanation is most likely to lie. And substance dualism isn't it.

If the mind and the brain interact in an information preserving way there must be moments when one maps onto the other in a rule governed way - rules that in these instances must be the same on *both* sides of the divide.

Noggin

Hi Fathom. I think we're mostly in agreement here. I'm essentially a functionalist (too?), but I got here in a cosmological context. Even if life and minds can't exist without matter/energy, for all we know and observe locally; the originator/cause of this little lot has, by definition, to be something other than the above. The best I can do in accordance with Occam's thingy is that this originator is a *person*; another category beyond 'mere' mind.

Gotta log off for a moment,

J

Hi Noggin.

"If the mind and the brain interact in an information preserving way there must be moments when one maps onto the other in a rule governed way - rules that in these instances must be the same on *both* sides of the divide."

Why shouldn't mind and brain stand in a set-subset relation when it comes to mapping one onto the other. I suspect you will plead Noether's theorem - but is it limited to the same number of dimensions, or a certain (small?) number of them? I'm thinking of how we can map 3 dimensions onto 2 and even vice versa. For example, we could map a disc onto a bowl by mapping distance from the centre onto height. An informationally redundant exercise perhaps, but I find the idea kinda intriguing.

What then could we conclude about brains and minds - hey yes, persons too?

J

bit delayed Jez, but a response nonetheless!

"No, it's not - but it is all we have."
No, it isn't all we have. There is another way. And that way is to only go with those things which have the highest probability. This doesn't exclude other options, and indeed they may develop further into being the more probably answer. But until that happens there is no reason to go with them other personal inclination. That way I can do what you are doing, which is not completely writting off anything, but at the same time I have a measure by which I can prioritise, or order, the available options. And leave room for any I have not thought of.

"In the pagan groups where I discuss such things, the only way we deal with what we call UPG (unsubstantiated personal gnosis) is to post the stuff into the open and see if it is somethig which has been shared by others - not ideal, but at least it's something."
Theological peer review? It'll never catch on!

"Anything too wacky that gets the WTF response is treated with extreme caution LOL"
And here we go back to the first para of my response. What or who decides whether something is 'too wacky' - or even what 'wacky' is. The problem here is it is purely subjective. To one group the idea is wacky, to another it isn't. Unless you can bring in some sort of appeal to an objective benchmark you cannot have any hope of progressing since it is all down to 'well, thats *my* reality' type meaningless statements.
With an appeal to an objective benchmark, a standard has been raised against which ideas and theories can be measured. And everyone can have the same standard. And since it includes replicability they can even check up on other peoples measurements.

"But there is no scientific measure of inspiration, and yet the phenomenon is quite well attested, isn't it?"
Inspiration is just one of many emotions or non-physical constructs which are being investigated using the scientific method. There are theoretical models for it. But the research is at an early stage as yet (as with so much in the realm of psychiatry/psychology).
One problem often encountered is actually tieing down what 'inspiration' is. And lots of people have different answers, so the prevalance could be hiding a multitude of differences and different processes but we just label it with one word and assume others know what we mean. There could 1, 10, 1000 different actual discrete issues to be investigated here.

"Belief in deity comes in the same ball-park, IMO."
Not sure I follow. Do you mean that you believe in inspiration in the same way you believe in whatever deities you have chosen? Or are you simply saying that here is one thing which we don't have a scientific model of but is generally accepted so why not this other idea as well?

The obvious response to that final point is that equally we might apply the idea that neither of them exist, they are just concepts we have erroneously formed due to misinterpretation of the data and lack of relevant knowledge. Indeed, there is no reason (taking the two as a discreet problem and not extending outwards) why one could not be found to have some physical basis and the other not, thereby breaking the equivalence you posit.

Hi Mich2ael

Sorry to have been absent for a week or so but glandular fever is a bit of an attention grabber... but I'm feeling a bit brighter now so let us have at it shall we?

"Well, the Bible is a collection of history, poetry, inspired writings which culminate in the person of Jesus Christ."

History, as in the collected oral histories of a palestinian tribe? That goes fine with me. As with all oral histories they tend to change with the times and the memories of those that tell them so no guarantee of any accuracy there. But as stories go they don't paint a very pleasant picture of the Hebrews. They were a bunch of genocidal nutters by their own account.

Poetry, yes, we have the Psalms and the Song of Solomon (good earthy stuff that one eh? nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

"The Bible attests that Creation happened at the command of God...he spoke and the universe came into being...there may have been a big bang... the Bible doesn't give much detail!"

No, not much detail, but it does place this big bang only about 6,000 years ago. There are man made structures on earth older than that.

"Man, who was supposed to be the pinnacle of God's creation, messed things up pretty much as soon as he arrived by going his own way, not God's. Not much has changed then!"

I note that you didn't mention that this merciful, loving god then killed almost every living thing. A complete holocaust that included every child and infant on the planet.

"The Old Testament contains loads of prophetic writings pointing to the Christ, who was born in very humble cicumstances, and was to be the Redeemer of fallen mankind."

His 'humble circumstances' are certainly up for scrutiny. His father was of the direct jewish royal line, the gospels are quite contradictory about the nativity and even if we accept he was the son of a carpenter that was a respected middle class artisan position. No dung eating peasant our boy.

"At the age of approx 30, Christ began to preach: "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near". The kingdom of heaven, or kingdom of God, was the theme of his preaching and works. His teachings were radical and extraordinary. His works speak for themselves: "I do these things that you might believe"."

He may have been a bit radical, certainly enough for the established priesthood to be a bit nervous about him. But so was Lenin, Ghandi and De Valera. Each tried to deliver their people from oppression but none were the son of a God.

The strange thing is that the meticulously bureaucratic Romans never produced a single word about this dire threat to Judaea, and we have very good records for that period as Tiberius was an epic paranoid and demanded regular reports from his provincial Governors whom he saw as threats to his rule.

"His crucifixion and subsequent resurrection are central aspects of the bible's message."

And totally unsupported by archaeology or independent historical records. I can do the pathology of the crucifixion with you if you wish?

"Christ also speaks of a world growing increasingly troubled as time reaches its conclusion!"

This world is no more or less troubled than it was in his own times.

"Interestingly, in the book of Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says things like: "Blessed are the poor..."

Possibly his best speech and the most reported. Perhaps you should listed to the evangelicals that focus on jesus's opinions on the mosaic law, homosexuality sin etc.

"My own experience of coming to believe in Christ reflects some of these sentiments. When I'd reached my late teens I had reached the end of myself...I was poor in spirit if anyone was......snip... I've witnessed and experienced since."

I'm glad that you have found a spirituality that has helped you through. I do wonder though what has brought you into this bear pit?

"But I believe that what I have experienced is the grace and love of God. Of course its still a choice whether or not to believe; I continue to be convinced of the truth of the gospel of Christ."

Good for you

Blessings,
Matholwch .

Welcome back, Math.

Are you well now, or merely better?

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Jez

Hi Jez

I can amble about slowly and reach a keyboard, but have to rest in between jobs for my dear lady.

Glandular fever is a beggar. Luckily I've had it before so it's a lot less deadly than the first time (three weeks in bed).

Blessings,
Matholwch .

Don't rush back to work - or you'll be back in bed before you can say Druid Fluid...

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Jez

Jez

You can call me michael if you want! I was just being pedantic.

em yes, humans have free will (he says, hoping he's not walked into a trap!).

mich2ael

Mich2ael

I was going to lead you into the Pelagian heresy debate, but since you have started to be nicer, I won't

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Jez

http://www.seanmultimedia.com/Pie_Pelagius_Defense_Of_The_Freedom_Of_The_Will.html

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Jez

Hi Matholwch

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Certainly the New Testament documents were written down a very short while after the events as historical documents go.

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Not very pleasant!...yeah, there was a lot of scary stuff going on.


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he he

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Not much detail regarding how long it took either...the days obviously weren't days as we know them because the sun didn't turn up until day 4. The account of creation is not a scientific thesis.

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Ezekiel 22:30 "I looked for a man among them who would stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none"
Time and time again we see God 'desperately' warning people and sending prophets to turn people from their sin so that he would not have to punish or destroy them. Sometimes a man or woman of God would go to extraordinary lengths to intercede on behalf of sinners and God is described as changing his mind. One look at Jesus life and death tells us as clear as day: " 'I take no pleasure in the death of anyone,' declares the Sovereign Lord.' Repent and live' " Ezekiel 18:32.

<<'humble circumstances'>>

Humble when you consider what he left behind!! For a royal birth (The bible describes Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords) a stable was a suprisingly humble place to begin his life.

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Indeed.

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Tiberias would not, I think, have recognised Jesus as a threat. Although a king, his ministry was not political,nor was it directed to the politically powerful, nor is his kingdom an earthly kingdom. Jesus resisted attempts by his followers to assume an earthly kingdom...even they, at that time, did not have the faith to understand what he was about.
There are non-biblical historical reports of one 'Jesus who went around doing good and healing the sick'.

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The bible is full of eye-witness accounts of these very events. How independent must they be? And archeology won't find remains in a tomb which was surplus to requirements and therefore unused!


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Yes, I'm beginning to wonder myself...I thought a few well chosen words would convert the lot of you and then it was going to be off to the next conversation forum...he he

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Its good news for whoever believes...

Bless you mate

mich2ael

Hi Jez

I've checked out the link to Pelagius info. He wasn't such a bad bloke was he?

mich2ael