Atheists - how did you come to be?

[LuisDantas]

I've been extrapolating this whole time, for the last 10 pages. It's your job to show how the extrapolation I'm giving is invalidated, or come up with a different extrapolation when observing evident natural systems of law.

So you don't acknowledge any personal responsibility for the relevancy or accuracy of what you say?

Because it seems to me that if you did, then at least some of that would be in fact your own job.

And of course, if you don't want that job, if you don't care whether your extrapolations are sound or not, then anyone else might just as well disregard what you say out of expediency alone. If it is not good enough for you, why would it be good for others?

 

[Marsh]

Life is ubiquitous on the Earth, and perhaps in the universe as well for all I know. Certainly my own personal arrival is nothing extraordinary (though I am sure it was momentous to my parents and grandparents). It may well be that life arising from non-life is nothing special either. It is a little pointless in making definitive statements either way when there is only the example of one world to work with.

The loss of wonder inherent in the arrogance of learning is truly depressing. We literally educate ourselves into imbecility these days. If we can't see the wonder in even a common event like the birth of a baby then we have painted a vibrant world with shades of boring grey.

Robin, did I say I had lost all sense of wonder? No. Absolutely not! Let me set the record straight. I am fully appreciative of the magnificence of the natural world and am still in awe of the destructive power of natural forces; but as wonderful as the birth of a child is for family members there is no great mystery involved. Also, do you hold the same sense of wonder at the birth of a chimpanzee, a mouse, or a guppy? I am guessing that the reverence you exhibit diminishes as you move on down the line. And, what's with the statement, "the arrogance of learning"? Should I infer from this that you have a negative view of higher education?

What I know for certain is that at this moment in time no one knows how common, or uncommon, life is in the universe. Many conservative minded Christians with whom I’ve spoken on-line take the view that life is present only on Earth (I don’t know what your own view is). They think life is wondrous, that it was formed by a deliberate, supernatural act of creation on this world alone, in a universe that was created explicitly for our benefit. Now, in my mind, that is the height of arrogance.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

So you don't acknowledge any personal responsibility for the relevancy or accuracy of what you say?

Because it seems to me that if you did, then at least some of that would be in fact your own job.

And of course, if you don't want that job, if you don't care whether your extrapolations are sound or not, then anyone else might just as well disregard what you say out of expediency alone. If it is not good enough for you, why would it be good for others?

You lost me there. What job are you speaking of? I move around ideas, but I'm not in the business of 'claiming' them, think now as a philosopher, what man can lay claim to the truth? For be it discovered, it is ideological real-estate for the many and not the one. Now an 'extrapolation' usually refers to an a priori class of thinking, though posteriori is not out of the question, extrapolation often means constructing proportions using a priori methodology.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

I'll field some more questions if anyone has them.

 

[LuisDantas]

You lost me there. What job are you speaking of? I move around ideas, but I'm not in the business of 'claiming' them, think now as a philosopher, what man can lay claim to the truth? For be it discovered, it is ideological real-estate for the many and not the one. Now an 'extrapolation' usually refers to an a priori class of thinking, though posteriori is not out of the question, extrapolation often means constructing proportions using a priori methodology.

You said that you are offering extrapolations and that it is other people's "job" to demonstrate them wrong, didn't you? Post #204.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

You said that you are offering extrapolations and that it is other people's "job" to demonstrate them wrong, didn't you? Post #204.

Well, what are you offering in class of empirical data? If I offer empirical data, then by all means, I and everyone else should cross-examine myself. But if I carry about as the scientist, the theoretician, then the kind of feedback I'm looking for is either in the form of augmentative support or correctional dismissal - from others - having bounced the idea away from myself, hence the idea of bouncing around ideas.

 

[LuisDantas]

Maybe I wasn't clear? I'm telling you outright that I find it wrong and odd of you to make statements and expect others feel responsible for showing that they have credibility.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Maybe I wasn't clear? I'm telling you outright that I find it wrong and odd of you to make statements and expect others feel responsible for showing that they have credibility.

Maybe you're mispercieving what is going on here, to me an idea is like an object that you bounce. Whatever I said earlier, I was aiming for a way of saying that I wished to bounce these ideas off of others, and hence to do this: they would tell me what they think, and bounce the idea back with feedback. Nowhere did I claim to be the empirical pontificator that needed such verification so as to leave ego unchallenged.

 

[LuisDantas]

Well, that comes with the territory far as I am concerned, sorry.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Well, that comes with the territory far as I am concerned, sorry.

Modern man is not always a super-hero with super-ego words that need all kinds of hearing. I'm utterly disconnected from such a territory, and have no wish to enter it. Words can be said without a proportional need for psychological gratification, sometimes an idea can merely be bounced.

 

[LuisDantas]

Modern man is not always a super-hero with super-ego words that need all kinds of hearing. I'm utterly disconnected from such a territory, and have no wish to enter it. Words can be said without a proportional need for psychological gratification, sometimes an idea can merely be bounced.

That is asking for a lot of faith from us, you know.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

That is asking for a lot of faith from us, you know.

Well I mean, theoretically it can happen. An idea can be bounced with no expectations, maybe some people are so shocked by this like they just witnessed the powers of Jesus, but that's all it is. Idea, bounce, done.

 

[The Neo Nerd]

1. The universe is born from laws that need to be expressed.

Perhaps this is a linguistic error on your behalf, but the universe has no consciousness and therefore does not need anything

2. Molecular law reaches its extent.

I do not understand what you mean by this

3. It follows that biology can come into being.

Agreed

4. The evolving brain harnesses primate organisms as its vehicle.

yes some primates are conscious, however consciousness has been identified in other species

5. Consciousness is captured by correct brain chemistry.

Capturing implies that it is external to the brain which is what i am trying to get you to prove. You can not use the assertion that consciousness is external to brains to prove that consciousness is external to brains.

6. The universe gains the capacity to reflect on itself.

no discrete units within the universe have the ability to reflect on itself.

7. Billions of perspectives are generated.

Agreed

8. We are embedded in this process somehow.

Somehow?

9. When one perspective ends, we gain one anew.

Agreed, but the original one ceases to exist.

10. We live as many lives as there are for us to live, but only one at a time.

It is only provable that we live one life.

Your proof is full of holes, falacies and more unfounded assertions.

Your proof has failed.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

It is only provable that we live one life.

Your proof is full of holes, falacies and more unfounded assertions.

Your proof has failed.

Illusion springs up once thought is applied: for who has given birth to me, my mother, or the universe? If I think and suddenly realize it was not my mother, but the universe which bore me, then from whence did I really come? I prove this by thinking of it. The universe is my mother, but I know not how many times I can be born from it. The universe conjures me up where it will.

Perhaps this is a linguistic error on your behalf, but the universe has no consciousness and therefore does not need anything

Know you not - if we are its headlight, if we are what is made manifest as its thinker and realizer as the stars where made manifest as its engines.

I do not understand what you mean by this

I mean that we stand upon all law that is now extant, the extent of which must have reached a certain level before we could arise to stand upon it.

yes some primates are conscious, however consciousness has been identified in other species

Other species can harness or capture consciousness as well.

Capturing implies that it is external to the brain which is what i am trying to get you to prove. You can not use the assertion that consciousness is external to brains to prove that consciousness is external to brains.

Well, the light is external to the growing plant, internally it revolves around something external that the internal presumes to exist, the sun in that case. Now, knowledge exists all around us, outside of us. The presumption of the human brain is that there are things to learn. What we 'identify' are things that supposedly didn't lack identity before we identified them, in a sense, so just as chlorophyll captures the sun, a human brain tries to capture what a sun is.

no discrete units within the universe have the ability to reflect on itself.

We're doing it right now.

Somehow?

The process seems to be one of development. The fish swam before it walked. The monkey walked before it flew to the moon. The predicament is that something tiny that swam in the ocean eventually became something that eventually flew to a moon.

Agreed, but the original one ceases to exist.

The original one was shed for the new one, the passenger gets on the next train.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

I don't believe in anything, especially duality.

Very few people who do would dream of calling themselves atheists.

Well, I just read the passage in Descartes's "Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking the Truth in the Sciences" where the principal of "cogito ergo sum" appears. And although he appeared to be some kind of light theist, shortly after this he appears to make several dualism statements in riffing off that idea. And even if he was some kind of light theist, I think these ideas can probably be subtracted from theism.

He says: "In the next place,I attentively examined what I was and as I observed that I could suppose that I had no body, and that there was no world nor any place in which I might be; but that I could not therefore suppose that I was not; and that, on the contrary, from the very circumstance that I thought to doubt of the truth of other things, it most clearly and certainly followed that I was; while, on the other hand, if I had only ceased to think, although all the other objects which I had ever imagined had been in reality existent, I would have had no reason to believe that I existed; I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that " I," that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter, and is such, that although the latter were not, it would still continue to be all that it is."

So there you have it. Existing, thinking is something that has a feeling of being something that can be non-local to a physiological system.

 

[outhouse]

for who has given birth to me, my mother, or the universe?

Factually your mother.

Your mother exist in the universe. Anything else is twisting context into the absurd.

Other species can harness or capture consciousness as well.

Unsubstantiated rhetoric.

Start providing credible sources.

Factually no species can capture consciousness, or harness it.

Consciousness exist only in the brain at this time scientifically.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Factually your mother.

Your mother exist in the universe. Anything else is twisting context into the absurd.

Well, the womb to all life upon the land was the sea. And the earth is the mother to all that life on sea on land. And so doesn't it follow that the universe is the mother of the earth and all that lives on it?

Unsubstantiated rhetoric.

Start providing credible sources.

Factually no species can capture consciousness, or harness it.

Consciousness exist only in the brain at this time scientifically.

The access to knowledge seems to require biology to reach a certain neurological altitude. The ability to have knowledge is likened to the ability of biology, us in this case, to capture the signal which allows for the information from the senses to be encoded and stored at a greater level.

 

[outhouse]

And so doesn't it follow that the universe is the mother of the earth and all that lives on it?

I wrote my words in very clear English, what part of perverting the context don't you understand?

With that methodology you can make what ever words you choose mean anything you like.


The universe factually did not give birth to you, your mother did.

The access to knowledge seems to require biology to reach a certain neurological altitude. The ability to have knowledge is likened to the ability of biology, us in this case, to capture the signal which allows for the information from the senses to be encoded and stored at a greater level.

Not a word of this refutes anything I wrote NOR does it even address the topic at hand.

Its word salad.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

I wrote my words in very clear English, what part of perverting the context don't you understand?

I'd like to think that in the grander overarching philosophies, 'context' is an ontological barrier to be broken. 'Context,' if you want to try and get to the truth, is not necessarily the ontological bedrock of our experience as existing beings.

With that methodology you can make what ever words you choose mean anything you like.

Well, language evolves. It's there for us to us it, not for it dictate itself to us.

The universe factually did not give birth to you, your mother did.

In the bigger picture, I am built from the materials provided by the universe. The carbon, the hydrogen etc. all make up the body. These things could have been flung together from anywhere if you take a really long range view of it, but they came together here on earth, just to make me manifest.

Not a word of this refutes anything I wrote NOR does it even address the topic at hand.

Its word salad.

Consciousness to me seems to be something anything could have, if it had the right tools in their brain. Consciousness is something captured, because that is what the brain does when it thinks, when it imagines. It captures thoughts, not always knowing how it got to them, and brings them into expression.

 

[outhouse]

'Context,' if you want to try and get to the truth, is not necessarily the ontological bedrock of our experience as existing beings.

No.

You don't get to make up excuses for perverting context.

In the bigger picture

There is no bigger picture when perverting context

If you want to communicate this properly, you simply state our bodies are made up from atoms created in the explosion of stars in our universe.

Consciousness to me seems to be something anything could have,

Imagination, nothing more.

Do you understand what "provide credible sources even means? "