Christianity Continues Decline in America: Pew Survey Results

[LuisDantas]

The very fact that subjective experiences exist, means that consciousness exists. Those who wish to claim that consciousness do not exist are simply trying to push the problem away, and are unwilling to accept its existence as it threatens their own philosophical views.

By that token, you would have to face the fact that subjective perception is so completely conditioned by physical and physiological circunstances. What does that say about consciousness?

Sound is a perception, like color and taste. Sound has no meaning in objective reality. The speed of sound requires a human observer to hear it.

That is just not accurate, and demonstrably so. The speed of sound is measurable (and in fact determined in various media), it is actually quantifiable without even taking a lot of ingenuity.

I realize you mean the experience as opposed to the physical trigger, but unless you can address the experience by some other name or perhaps propose an alternate word for the physical trigger this will cause a lot of confusion.

 

[Orbit]

Highest GDP growth

1.North Dakota
2.Wyoming
3.W.Virginia
4.Oklahoma
5.Idaho

the two lowest are

#49 Maryland
#50 Alaska

which are #47 and #48 respectively for religiosity.

Correlation is not causation.

 

[FTNZ]

Correlation is not causation.

Sure, but it's a very interesting correlation, that if you rank all 50 states, overwhelmingly, the most religious are also the poorest and least educated. That has to mean something.

 

[Cephus]

Don't you love watching the religious desperately try to make excuses for why their silly beliefs are becoming irrelevant?

 

[Cephus]

As soon as sentience/reasoning came about. All that is required is a lack of belief in the existence of God.

Actually, that would be the first second the universe existed, since matter doesn't believe in gods either. If you want to limit the question to sentience, the very first sentient lifeform on the planet was the very first atheist since religion and religious belief hadn't been made up yet.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

Unfortunately you are so full of yourself that I don't know where to begin. Almost all the new theories of consciousness posit some kind of panpsychism. Look it up.

You've read all of the studies and have come to the conclusion that it must be some alternative dimensional issue? What exactly is it that you believe on the subject?

False again, that study which I think you are talking about linked the fMRI state when sleeping to fMRI state when viewing the pictures. I read the study even. It does nothing to show what was inside the brain, the inner subjective experience. Idiots like you believe all the science sensationalism without reading the studies.

What part of my post is bogus?

If you knew anything about the field, you would know that Chalmers, Koch, Tononi, Ramachandran, and many more are saying that some form of panspychism is true. ****, even the latest theory on consciousness which is IIT says that.

Chalmer is a naturalist and an empiricist.
Koch- After doing a bit of research is also an empiricist and naturalist. During his work he has expressed some version of panspychism but in the broadest of terms only that it is reactive.
Giulo Tononi is one of the leading and most important people in this field and he also uses empiricism. Hell he even is a pragmatic naturalist. I don't know if he is a philosophical naturalist and has attempted to quantify consciousness and has created what is the best working model of it.
Ramanchandran I hadn't heard of prior to you mentioning him. However a quick search on the internet has brought to me plenty of information. He isn't even that well known for his work on consciouness apparently and far more about different neurological disorders and phantom limb syndrome.

But here is a quote from Ramanchandran

We know that awareness is not a property of the whole brain, so the problem can be reduced to, “What particular neural circuits are involved in consciousness? And what’s so special about these circuits that they can explain consciousness?”

I suggest that a new set of brain structures evolved during hominid evolution, turning the output from more primitive sensory areas of the brain into what I call a “metarepresentation”… I believe the anatomical structures involved in creating this metarepresentation include the inferior parietal lobule, Wernicke’s language comprehension area and the anterior cingulate cortex. Find out how these structures perform their job and we will have figured out what it means to be a conscious human being.

None of the ones you have listed seem to have appealed to anything other than empiricism for their theories.

 

[leibowde84]

Actually, that would be the first second the universe existed, since matter doesn't believe in gods either. If you want to limit the question to sentience, the very first sentient lifeform on the planet was the very first atheist since religion and religious belief hadn't been made up yet.

Right ... that's what I said. And, an entity must have personhood to be considered an "atheist", as that is part of the definition.

 

[Sapiens]

No, empiricism is illogical because you can't prove subjective experiences. There are some things you have to take on faith, such as emotion, psychological states and internal experiences in general. It would be pretty contradictory for a religious person such as a Christian to claim to be an empiricist because we tend to have, or at least seek out, personal experiences of/with God, Angels and Saints. Such experiences cannot be empirically proven to have occurred while they may have subjectively occurred to the person, making it real to them, if them only.

Rather I think that you clearly demonstrate that subjective experiences are illogical and are not to be trusted.

 

[Cephus]

Right ... that's what I said. And, an entity must have personhood to be considered an "atheist", as that is part of the definition.

It's not really part of the definition. You won't find any legitimate dictionary that defines it that way. It is actually defined as: "disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods." There's no mention of personhood there.

 

[Orbit]

By the observable consequences.

Love, or at least some forms of it, can be detected and measured to some degree by the signs of confort, commitment, common goals and mutual support of people. Or you can choose instead to measure physiological effects of people on each other under varied circunstances, detect and describe patterns, experiment with distances, verbal mentions, intentional recalling of absent people. Same for friendship.

It is not all that different from studying electromagnetism (which is very much a mystery when push comes to shove, and more of an evidence of a creator god than anything in emotions or biology IMO), medicine or grammatics.

Concepts, specifically, are human creations and therefore human responsibility. There is no way of measuring their understanding other than by studying human interactions and behavior.

These are all indirect measures. None of that will communicate to someone what the experience of feeling love is like. Not everything can be quantified. Some things are qualitative.

 

[leibowde84]

It's not really part of the definition. You won't find any legitimate dictionary that defines it that way. It is actually defined as: "disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods." There's no mention of personhood there.

I don't mean the definition for "atheism", I mean the definition for "atheist". The following is from the Oxford English Dictionary:

A person who disbelieves or lacksbelief in the existence of God or gods:

Hard to argue that anything other than a human being is a "person".

 

[LuisDantas]

These are all indirect measures. None of that will communicate to someone what the experience of feeling love is like. Not everything can be quantified. Some things are qualitative.

No argument there, but I don't think that has quite so many consequences as some people seem to expect.

 

[Typist]

So what do you make of the cause of this trend?

Posts like yours demonstrate that in some quarters old religions are being replaced with new ones, a process which has been underway since the dawn of civilization.

 

[MD]

By that token, you would have to face the fact that subjective perception is so completely conditioned by physical and physiological circunstances. What does that say about consciousness?

Absolutely, they are tied together. I think that both consciousness and matter both probably come from another source, but they are distinct in their own way from each other.

That is just not accurate, and demonstrably so. The speed of sound is measurable (and in fact determined in various media), it is actually quantifiable without even taking a lot of ingenuity.

I realize you mean the experience as opposed to the physical trigger, but unless you can address the experience by some other name or perhaps propose an alternate word for the physical trigger this will cause a lot of confusion.

I don't know, I think whatever perception our ears pick up is different in different mediums. But there is no such thing as sound in physical reality. There are simply different mediums for our perception, which gives rise to sound.

 

[MD]

You've read all of the studies and have come to the conclusion that it must be some alternative dimensional issue? What exactly is it that you believe on the subject?


What part of my post is bogus?

I believe that the inner universe is as much a part of our reality as the outer universe. As such empiricism can be used to study the outer universe, but cannot be used to study the inner universe.

Chalmer is a naturalist and an empiricist.
Koch- After doing a bit of research is also an empiricist and naturalist. During his work he has expressed some version of panspychism but in the broadest of terms only that it is reactive.
Giulo Tononi is one of the leading and most important people in this field and he also uses empiricism. Hell he even is a pragmatic naturalist. I don't know if he is a philosophical naturalist and has attempted to quantify consciousness and has created what is the best working model of it.
Ramanchandran I hadn't heard of prior to you mentioning him. However a quick search on the internet has brought to me plenty of information. He isn't even that well known for his work on consciouness apparently and far more about different neurological disorders and phantom limb syndrome.

But here is a quote from Ramanchandran


None of the ones you have listed seem to have appealed to anything other than empiricism for their theories.

Chalmers came up with the Hard Problem dude, he basically started this whole thing.
Koch is a panpsychist and he has expressed this repeatedly.
Tononi is most definitely a panpsychist, or more likely an idealist. The first axiom of IIT is that consciousness exists. He has even stated this and Koch published a paper in nature stating that Tononi is an idealist. LOL!
Ramachandran is a neutral monist.
They are all scientists and use empiricism in their fields, but yet they hold philosophical positions which state that consciousness is something 'other'.

I am not denying that empiricism is necessarily to study the brain, but naturalism is not synonymous with empiricism. Get that through your head. Consciousness is a natural phenomenon which is separate from empiricism. And empiricism cannot fully explain consciousness, which is a distinct phenomenon from the brain in many ways.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Sure, but it's a very interesting correlation, that if you rank all 50 states, overwhelmingly, the most religious are also the poorest and least educated. That has to mean something.

That well-to-do people are too busy distracting themselves with material pleasures to give thanks to God? Um, we already know about that phenomenon. It's a very ancient trend and the Biblical writers knew about it. After all, there's nothing new under the sun (and guess where that came from ).

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Rather I think that you clearly demonstrate that subjective experiences are illogical and are not to be trusted.

I'm sorry, but that was that supposed to be some sort of argument? I don't see any substance there. Care to clarify?

 

[Sapiens]

I'm sorry, but that was that supposed to be some sort of argument? I don't see any substance there. Care to clarify?

No need, you already did.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

No need, you already did.

Try harder, if you're capable.

 

[Sapiens]

I am quite capable, just not interested enough in the challenge you do not provide.