The Debate of God.

[Daviso452]

Apparently you have discovered that evolution works in this new way which Darwin, himself, didn't seem to know about. According to Darwin, evolution causes species to pick up new traits by trying them all and letting nature decide who survives, but now you apparently have new information on evolution which happens to be counterintuitive. Oh, you're sketchy on how beings mutate themselves? That doesn't surprise me because it doesn't happen.

You couldn't pervert love to fit evolution, so your backup tactic seems to be perverting evolution to fit love.

Why did you even bother quoting me? You didn't respond to what you quoted at all.

Eh, I'll give that one to you actually. I thought I had learned that organisms were able to induce their own mutations for survival, but further research proved no such thing. I admit my wrong.

That does not discount love being a result of evolution however. Just not in the way I presented it. A mutation occurred which made the organism care for the safety of others of its kind. This lead to a higher chance of survival for the child, and thus the gene was passed on. Humans have evolved to have a different version of love, but it still stems from the original survival purpose.

There you go. Love with an evolutionary explanation. A way it helped us to survive.

 

[apophenia]

You just made a jump beyond the likes of which I have never seen.

Hey Daviso. That remark makes a nice segue into a thought I was just having, because it also makes a jump the likes of which you may never have seen ha ha
I was thinking about the word spirit after I made a post on my "Is the internet conscious yet ?" thread.

The gist of my post was about how the word may be interpreted as synonymous with consciousness, and that caused me to wonder if the god business ( the idea and the subjective experience(s) ) might be viewed as an evolved trait in the same way that you (I assume from your posts) see love -

Love in human society has various flavours each corresponding to a set of brain chemicals.
Oxytocin is secreted during the suckling of an infant for example, and is associated with mother-child bonding. (My guess is that the female praying mantis doesn't have a similar system, because they often eat their young !).
During the different stages of courtship there are different, predictable mixes of endorphins, serotonin, dopamine etc.
We agree, I think, that there is an easy to understand relationship of love in that sense to notions of evolution and neurochemical control systems.

I wonder if there is also an evolved mechanism to enhance brain function through a reward system for focussed awareness.

Also there are possible advantages in developing the capacity to consciously modulate fight/flight responses for example, and other primal responses from way back.

Is it possible that there is a 'god-spot' with 'god-hormones' in the human brain ? And that this is a neural system associated with self-correction, behaviour modification (or to use the old biblical word, repentance, which means "re-thinking") ?

Humans are capable of rewiring our behaviour, of consciously changing conditioned responses.

From an evolutionary point of view that is a huge, landmark, species-defining skill.

Actually there is some evidence that there is just that, I think. Even if you have no personal experience of 'god-hormones', there is plenty of literature about psychedelics which can be seen as evidence of such a 'circuit' ( analogous to the oxytocin bonding 'circuit' - I don't know the technical term for my use of 'circuit' if there is one )in the human brain.

For example, research using Ketamine,a dissociative psychedelic anaesthetic, has documented that 80% of adults given a dose report direct contact with either god, angels or 'more highly evolved alien lifeforms'.

It is no secret that LSD and mescaline, to name two, routinely cause mystical experiences of various flavours.

MDMA has been demonstrated to resolve severe clinical Post-tramatic Stress Disorder in a single therapist-guided session, as reported in Scientific American.

Vasopressin, a hormone involved in memory creation and recall, administered nasally, has been effective in causing instant remission of long-term amnesia. And when cocaine is used, vasopressin is secreted in the brain in large quantities. Sigmund Freud used cocaine when probing the memories of his clients, often uncovering the long-suppressed memories of abuse which led to psychosis.

These drugs work by modulating receptors in the brain. In some cases, the precise naturally occurring hormone involved has been identified, such as anandamide which is the naturally occurring modulator of the CB1 and CB2 (cannabinoid) receptors.

Certain phenethylamines have profound effects on what we call 'conscience'. I am thinking of 4bromo5dimethoxyphenethylamine (2CB, 'nexus') in particular.

Ibogaine has the peculiar effect of taking the user to the earliest childhood memories of shame, the moments where a disconnect both with the community and with the sense of personal integrity originate.

So there is plentiful evidence of brain systems associated with mystical experience, conscience (the subjective moral dimension) and behaviour modification (repentance and salvation ?).

I am suggesting that when people talk about 'religious experiences', the god-spot and the various god hormones are in play just as the love hormones accompany the experiences of courtship and parental bonding.

So perhaps god is precisely as real as love, and just as individual in its expression !

Just a thought.

Not proof of some dude creating the universe of course. You'd have to be tripping to think like that ! LOL

 

[Orias]

I see. Many people assign the term "god" as having truth behind its existence in real life. That is what I am debating against.

Let me try and restart here.

What I have learned due to my curiosity about the origin of the word God is that it dates back to the 15,000 year old Sanskrit word "Hu" which roughly translates to "call upon" "invoke" and "implore".

Of course though that is not how people use the term today, it still applies simply because people chose to invoke "God".

The truth behind existence is that it is labeled, everything labeled exists perhaps not physically but observably and even spiritually.

It takes practice to balance these two out, because as any scientist would know that an imbalance in an equation makes it flawed.

Spirituality exists because people are "spiritual", non-theist exists because they lack belief in a deity but this does not restrict their spiritual side. Nor does observation of bacteria in a lab, the conclusion should come from what is pieced back together not separated in a "lab".

Whether or not some things are detectable by the senses, they are expressed through creation and of what man attempts to fathom.

To those who say a sky daddy exists I say "Show me", to those who say a sky daddy doesn't exist I say "Why not?". Either way both sides are wrong.

 

[Prophet]

Eh, I'll give that one to you actually. I thought I had learned that organisms were able to induce their own mutations for survival, but further research proved no such thing. I admit my wrong.

That does not discount love being a result of evolution however. Just not in the way I presented it. A mutation occurred which made the organism care for the safety of others of its kind. This lead to a higher chance of survival for the child, and thus the gene was passed on. Humans have evolved to have a different version of love, but it still stems from the original survival purpose.

There you go. Love with an evolutionary explanation. A way it helped us to survive.

I think that love being a result of evolution is discounted by common sense. You repeatedly frame love as things it is not. I'll tell you exactly why love cannot be a result of evolution. Love is the drive to be selfless, and it runs completely contrary to the selfish drive to survive.

I believe you are presenting an unscientific explanation of how evolution works, while I have been presenting evolution clearly and concisely with less words. You continue to dance around the survival disadvantages faced by a selfless individual surround by complete selfishness, and casually assume they will survive to procreate enough so that they can form their own loving society while the savages outside their circle all kill each other.

This is far too casual an assumption if you care at all about finding out what is scientifically true.

 

[Quagmire]

I think that love being a result of evolution is discounted by common sense. You repeatedly frame love as things it is not. I'll tell you exactly why love cannot be a result of evolution. Love is the drive to be selfless, and it runs completely contrary to the selfish drive to survive.

I believe you are presenting an unscientific explanation of how evolution works, while I have been presenting evolution clearly and concisely with less words. You continue to dance around the survival disadvantages faced by a selfless individual surround by complete selfishness, and casually assume they will survive to procreate enough so that they can form their own loving society while the savages outside their circle all kill each other.

This is far too casual an assumption if you care at all about finding out what is scientifically true.

In other words, you don't have a rebuttal for any of that.

 

[Orias]

I think that love being a result of evolution is discounted by common sense. You repeatedly frame love as things it is not. I'll tell you exactly why love cannot be a result of evolution. Love is the drive to be selfless, and it runs completely contrary to the selfish drive to survive.

Don't you love to gratify the self? Don't you love because you would rather not have love?

Love is one of the most selfish emotions, because it is most gratifying. Love is an act of evolution, because as we continue to take in information we evolve our thoughts and way we perceive and speak. Love is unconditional as much as it can be conditioned.

Literally, its innate within us, our attachment to life, we invoke "love". Emotion and feeling, when science breaks it down it seems cruel and not right, but really when you piece it back together and see you what you, you are usually satisfied.

"Selfish" is only a bad thing when the result is a negative consequence on your behalf.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Love is the drive to be selfless, and it runs completely contrary to the selfish drive to survive.

And as I stated before, this is to confuse proximate and ultimate causation.

Sex drive is the drive to procreate. It runs "completely contrary" to this drive to have sex without intending to procreate. And yet people do it ALL the time. They even develop technology, from pills to plastic, to help.

you seek to connect the drive and the purpose. Only that's not evolution. Genetic traits, like the drive to copulate, are one among many, and they don't tell the individual "by the way, the reason you are feeling this emotion is X." A "drive to be selfless" allows individuals to ensure their genes are passed on. But it is just a drive. It can result in all sorts of behavior which does not ensure this. That is also true of THE basic drive which pushes people to ensure their genes are passed on.

 

[Daviso452]

Just to start, I realize this is a wiki article, but it does have a bit of validity, and what I found for Vasopressin was a chemical involved in the kidneys; nothing to do with the brain.

Ketamine is a hallucinatory drug; it seems likely that a god-fearing person would interpret some of these delusions as contact with God, seeing how our brain works.

You were not all to clear on what you meant by "god-spot" or "god-hormones," or what qualifies as being one.

But overall, I see the connection you are trying to make. Sounds for a good hypotheses. Now how would you go about testing it?

 

[Quagmire]

Love is the drive to be selfless,

I think you're putting the cart before the horse here: an attachment to and concern for other beings may inspire some level of selflessness, but there is no "drive" to be selfless for it's own sake in the same way that there's a drive to survive for it's own sake, ie., strictly for the sake of surviving.

and it runs completely contrary to the selfish drive to survive.

Not at all: in many scenarios these traits complement each other.

You continue to dance around the survival disadvantages faced by a selfless individual surround by complete selfishness, and casually assume they will survive to procreate enough so that they can form their own loving society while the savages outside their circle all kill each other.

First off, by the time that there actually were "savages", we had already evolved into fully-formed human beings with a complete and fully developed set of social instincts. In order to identify a "completely selfish" individual, ie., an organism with no social instincts whatsoever, you would have to go down the evolutionary scale into the reptilian neighborhood (or into politics).

That being the case, that would have to be the setting for any reasonable hypothetical scenarios attempting to explain how the emergence of social instincts may have come about.

Whatever the earliest instinctual ancestor of what we know as "love" may have been, I would say that it's safe to assume that it bore little resemblance to the kind of altruistic love you're talking about above.

Believe me, I really don't think anyone in this thread has been advocating for a scenario where one day a dinosaur was born with a slight genetic tweak that caused it to run around making sure that all the other dinosaurs were comfortable and happy and offering it's neck to any passing predators who looked hungry based on a newly developed altruistic mutation that resulted in a sudden "drive to be selfless" (although if they are, I think we should call it Coda-suarus).

I agree that that individual probably wouldn't have had too many family reunions to look forward to.

 

[apophenia]

Just to start, I realize this is a wiki article, but it does have a bit of validity, and what I found for Vasopressin was a chemical involved in the kidneys; nothing to do with the brain.

Everything I told you about vasopressin is correct. The article you read must have been very incomplete indeed if it was about vasopressin generally and didn't mention its crucial role in memory. That's symptomatic of the wiki world though I guess.

Ketamine is a hallucinatory drug; it seems likely that a god-fearing person would interpret some of these delusions as contact with God, seeing how our brain works.

No. Ketamine is a dissociative anaesthetic. Hallucination is not the correct term at all. The effects I described were not a function of being 'god-fearing', they occur across the board.

You were not all to clear on what you meant by "god-spot" or "god-hormones," or what qualifies as being one.

I thought I was quite clear. Try reading it slowly ...

But overall, I see the connection you are trying to make. Sounds for a good hypotheses. Now how would you go about testing it?

There would be citable science, but unfortunately research involving these substances is pretty much totally banned worldwide.

I have personally discussed this subject with four researchers into psychedelia (research programs before all research was banned), all of them also practicising psychiatrists, and their experience confirms that there is a tabu about these subjects which is maintained by the religious and medical communities and government agencies.

Originally the bans on psychedelic research came after military experiments indicating that decades of military conditioning could be dissolved in an hour with LSD.

So no scientific research allowed, unfortunately.

Maybe if there is ever a free enough society scientists can look into it.

 

[Prophet]

In other words, you don't have a rebuttal for any of that.

A rebuttal? For that explanation of love he just pulled off his cuff after I defeated his previous one without even having to think about it? How many times do I have to ruin his arguments to watch him come back with something just as convoluted and ill-reasoned? Isn't it obvious to anyone else here that he is just guessing and thinking out loud? I would guess you are only of the opinion that he is actually debating me because you happen to share his fundamentalist beliefs which corner him into the lie that love and morality are an illusion foisted upon us by either evolution or society, depending on which particular unscientific theory we are going with today.

He is NOT debating me. Not once does he ever consider the possible implications of morality being a real thing in his responses, implying to me that he's not even trying to understand what I am saying. He ignores my points whenever possible and calls them wrong with poor reason, and rewords his counter-intuitive theories stating them as fact with similar poor support. And you believe I owe him yet another rebuttal?

 

[apophenia]

Actually, there was some interesting research done by Dr John Lilly (on behalf of the CIA I think). He explored theological plasticity ( my words) using LSD, post-hypnotic suggestion and isolation tanks to explore the god zone.

See "The Human Biocomputer : Programming and Metaprogramming"

 

[Prophet]

I think you're putting the cart before the horse here: an attachment to and concern for other beings may inspire some level of selflessness, but there is no "drive" to be selfless for it's own sake in the same way that there's a drive to survive for it's own sake, ie., strictly for the sake of surviving.



Not at all: in many scenarios these traits complement each other.



First off, by the time that there actually were "savages", we had already evolved into fully-formed human beings with a complete and fully developed set of social instincts. In order to identify a "completely selfish" individual, ie., an organism with no social instincts whatsoever, you would have to go down the evolutionary scale into the reptilian neighborhood (or into politics).

That being the case, that would have to be the setting for any reasonable hypothetical scenarios attempting to explain how the emergence of social instincts may have come about.

Whatever the earliest instinctual ancestor of what we know as "love" may have been, I would say that it's safe to assume that it bore little resemblance to the kind of altruistic love you're talking about above.

Believe me, I really don't think anyone in this thread has been advocating for a scenario where one day a dinosaur was born with a slight genetic tweak that caused it to run around making sure that all the other dinosaurs were comfortable and happy and offering it's neck to any passing predators who looked hungry based on a newly developed altruistic mutation that resulted in a sudden "drive to be selfless" (although if they are, I think we should call it Coda-suarus).

I agree that that individual probably wouldn't have had too many family reunions to look forward to.

When some people talk about love (and/or selflessness) they characterize it as a strong attachment. It is my opinion that these people do not know what they are talking about because what they have been taught of love is actually its imposter, hypocrisy.

When beings act out love physically while continuing to be selfish underneath they are hypocrites. Jesus said to be careful to not do your acts of good to be seen by men for this reason.

"Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’"
"So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."
-Jesus on the nature of hypocrisy

Boiled down, I'm saying that the ONLY way to be selfless is "for its own sake". Otherwise, it is fake selflessness aka hypocrisy.

 

[Quagmire]

When some people talk about love (and/or selflessness) they characterize it as a strong attachment. It is my opinion that these people do not know what they are talking about because what they have been taught of love is actually its imposter, hypocrisy.

When beings act out love physically while continuing to be selfish underneath they are hypocrites. Jesus said to be careful to not do your acts of good to be seen by men for this reason.

"Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’"
"So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."
-Jesus on the nature of hypocrisy

Boiled down, I'm saying that the ONLY way to be selfless is "for its own sake". Otherwise, it is fake selflessness aka hypocrisy.

Doesn't matter: we're discussing the possible ways in which love---the ability to, the tendency towards, etc.---could be the result of evolution. Not what "real" love is, or should be, or why most of us aren't doing it right.

If you want to discuss all of that you should start a thread in the Philosophy Forum.

I'm saying that the ONLY way to be selfless is "for its own sake".

I said there was no "drive" to be selfless for it's own sake.

You were claiming there was an inherent "drive to be selfless". As I explained in my last post, there is no such drive (and I'm assuming by "drive" you mean some sort of instinctual drive. If you're not, you would need to clarify what you do mean by it).

 

[Daviso452]

I think that love being a result of evolution is discounted by common sense. You repeatedly frame love as things it is not. I'll tell you exactly why love cannot be a result of evolution. Love is the drive to be selfless, and it runs completely contrary to the selfish drive to survive.

I believe you are presenting an unscientific explanation of how evolution works, while I have been presenting evolution clearly and concisely with less words. You continue to dance around the survival disadvantages faced by a selfless individual surround by complete selfishness, and casually assume they will survive to procreate enough so that they can form their own loving society while the savages outside their circle all kill each other.

This is far too casual an assumption if you care at all about finding out what is scientifically true.

Your claims about love are just false. You are clouding your judgement with your feelings about what love is, and you are creating a bias. You are assuming love is something it is not.

You are not perfect, prophet. So you HAVE to admit that you may be wrong. The difference between you and EVERY OTHER SCIENTIST, is that they can actually back up what they say. Think of a schizophrenic. They claim there are things that aren't actually there. But who is to say they aren't there? How do we know we are right and he is not? Because we can prove they aren't. We can prove that they are just induced by a mental disorder.

Claims mean nothing without evidence. It doesn't matter what you think love is, or what you want it to be. What matters is what is true. And the only way we know to verify what is true is through a certain process of observing, analyzing, testing, and verifying. Science.

Whether you agree or disagree, this conversation is over. I would like to hear your final thoughts, but I cannot continue discussing with a person who considers personal thoughts and feelings above empirical evidence.

 

[Daviso452]

Actually, there was some interesting research done by Dr John Lilly (on behalf of the CIA I think). He explored theological plasticity ( my words) using LSD, post-hypnotic suggestion and isolation tanks to explore the god zone.

See "The Human Biocomputer : Programming and Metaprogramming"

I'm checking the wiki on this guy and "the human biocomputer," and so far I have found nothing referring to some "theology plasticity." He had done a lot of research on the brain and the different levels of consciousness, but the only levels that went beyond the body were unknown. The "meta-programming" is still part of the physical programming in the brain. That part may have confused you a bit.

 

[apophenia]

I'm checking the wiki on this guy and "the human biocomputer," and so far I have found nothing referring to some "theology plasticity." He had done a lot of research on the brain and the different levels of consciousness, but the only levels that went beyond the body were unknown. The "meta-programming" is still part of the physical programming in the brain. That part may have confused you a bit.

Jesus man. That's twice you have done a quick Wiki search and 'corrected' me without trying to understand what I said or why.

I hope you're not a school teacher !

BTW .. when I used the term 'theological plasticity' I said it was my term . Try reading the book before assuming you can correct my interpretations. I mentioned the book because it is one of the few examples of any attempt to use scientific methods to examine the mind.

You should keep a close eye on your tendency to correct and argue before you attempt to understand what was intended.

 

[Daviso452]

Jesus man. That's twice you have done a quick Wiki search and 'corrected' me without trying to understand what I said or why.

I hope you're not a school teacher !

BTW .. when I used the term 'theological plasticity' I said it was my term . Try reading the book before assuming you can correct my interpretations. I mentioned the book because it is one of the few examples of any attempt to use scientific methods to examine the mind.

You should keep a close eye on your tendency to correct and argue before you attempt to understand what was intended.

Roflmao. FYI I'm still in high school.

But I see what you're saying and I apologize. I realize that Wiki is not reliable, but generally they will give a good generalization from which is mostly based by fact. I went there and saw nothing regarding the man that said he was looking into a theological view of the mind. From the information given it seemed he had a physical-world-based view of the mind.

But again, I do realize how inaccurate it is to use a wiki and I am sorry. I may look into the book, but I must say, much has happened in the last 50 years in neuroscience since the book was written

Again, sorry for using a wiki article for an argument. I promise I won't do it again. :sarcastic

 

[apophenia]

Roflmao. FYI I'm still in high school.

But I see what you're saying and I apologize. I realize that Wiki is not reliable, but generally they will give a good generalization from which is mostly based by fact. I went there and saw nothing regarding the man that said he was looking into a theological view of the mind. From the information given it seemed he had a physical-world-based view of the mind.

But again, I do realize how inaccurate it is to use a wiki and I am sorry. I may look into the book, but I must say, much has happened in the last 50 years in neuroscience since the book was written

Again, sorry for using a wiki article for an argument. I promise I won't do it again. :sarcastic

I assumed you were probably at high school, or maybe a freshman. My remark was intended to make a point about communication style.

If you read the book (which I recommend you do) you will be in a position to make an informed comment. Try to avoid the 'instant expert' syndrome, it will radically reduce your intelligence and reputation.

 

[Prophet]

Your claims about love are just false. You are clouding your judgement with your feelings about what love is, and you are creating a bias. You are assuming love is something it is not.

In your opinion, how much strength do you add to your argument by calling my ideas false without grounds? Again, I am pointing out that every single response from you to me goes, "you're wrong, it is this instead" with no reason beyond fundamentalist beliefs and a string of non sequitur that follows from them.

Of course, I am pointing out where you are wrong as well, but I use reasoning to put your ill-gotten reason on display, as opposed to your tactic against me of bombast. I actually consider the ramifications of your mind dumps being true. From that point it is an easy task for me to construct a thought experiment on any topic which compares our ideas to see which ideas more closely model reality.

Typically, when conducting experiments, scientists run a default scenario experiment known as a control. You don't bother with this "control" step in own thought experiments. Instead, you do things like this.

A mutation occurred which made the organism care for the safety of others of its kind. This lead to a higher chance of survival for the child, and thus the gene was passed on. Humans have evolved to have a different version of love, but it still stems from the original survival purpose.

I consider the implications of your ideas being true. You skip the implications of my ideas being true. Because of this, you are infinitely more prone to fall into the trap of confirmation bias.

You are not perfect, prophet. So you HAVE to admit that you may be wrong. The difference between you and EVERY OTHER SCIENTIST, is that they can actually back up what they say. Think of a schizophrenic. They claim there are things that aren't actually there. But who is to say they aren't there? How do we know we are right and he is not? Because we can prove they aren't. We can prove that they are just induced by a mental disorder.

So, you can't verbally demonstrate that I'm wrong in any way as I've done to you in nearly every way, so your tactic now is to say that I might be wrong. This is not debate.

Claims mean nothing without evidence. It doesn't matter what you think love is, or what you want it to be. What matters is what is true. And the only way we know to verify what is true is through a certain process of observing, analyzing, testing, and verifying. Science.

I think I've clearly demonstrated that you lack actual allegiance to science or Truth. You just want to confirm all of your ideas and you're willing to be as intellectually dishonest as you need to be to accomplish this.

Whether you agree or disagree, this conversation is over. I would like to hear your final thoughts, but I cannot continue discussing with a person who considers personal thoughts and feelings above empirical evidence.

Pot meet kettle. Farewell.