Who here believes in "Scientism"?

[RestlessSoul]

On the contrary, I agree with your central proposition ─ the only way in which the supernatural and its entities are known to exist is as concepts, ideas, things imagined, in individual brains. So there are as many gods as there are concepts of those gods, but none of them has objective existence.

Experience of the divine is subjective, sure. Though the search for God, and for unity in and with God, is often undertaken collectively.

The fact that spiritual experiences are not material does not mean they are unreal, incidentally. Such experiences have tangible effects on the lives of those who have them.

 

[Audie]

Demanding that you be shown that which you can discover for yourself if you did but try, doesn’t cut much ice either. You have mistaken the transient illusion for the enduring truth, but you could still find the Great Reality within yourself, if you only cared to search for it. You have been told many times that the Kingdom of God is within you; perhaps you are too invested in the illusion, or perhaps you are afraid to look beyond it?

You found.... The Great Reality"?

It was like....inside you?

 

[Audie]

Satisfactory demonstration is believing. It's not a silly way to think ─ ask the people who brought you the Higgs boson in 2012.

No it doesn't. Instead it explores, describes, and seeks to explain those cognitive mechanisms; and it's getting better at this all the time. Our mapping of the brain and understanding the functions of its parts and their interrelation with each other is something we've steadily got better at since the development of better tools in the 1990s.

The AI people don't have quite that problem, but they can learn a lot from our understanding of how the brain actually works.

There's nothing foolish about the demand, Show me. The old expression 'buy a pig in a poke' shows the wisdom of checking the basics.

On the contrary, I've actually looked into the question, as I mentioned >here<. I'm skeptical, but not blind.

No. I don't. As that link shows.


What 'game' and how do you say I 'rigged' it, precisely?

Some of us are wearied with people who just
make things up to throw in as arguments.

 

[PureX]

Experience of the divine is subjective, sure. Though the search for God, and for unity in and with God, is often undertaken collectively.

The fact that spiritual experiences are not material does not mean they are unreal, incidentally. Such experiences have tangible effects on the lives of those who have them.

Every idea we have is equally "unreal" (imagined) according to the materialists ... including materialism. So the more they use this objection against the idea of God, the more they discredit their own materialist world view. Somehow this never occurs to them, however.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Science most certainly CAN investigate the ice cream preferences on the population, and the various reasons why individuals might decide that one particular flavor is the best. But none of that will ever determine what is the BEST flavor, since that is purely a subjective opinion. In this case expecting the scientific method to answer this question is just plain silly.

Enh. I think the real issue is that the statement is vague.

If we asked "what do you mean by 'best'?" (and then drilled down further with a few rounds of "and what do you mean by that?"), we'd probably get to something measurable and objective, IMO.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Some of us are wearied with people who just
make things up to throw in as arguments.

Relentless negativity is wearisome too, I find.

 

[blü 2]

Experience of the divine is subjective, sure. Though the search for God, and for unity in and with God, is often undertaken collectively.

The fact that spiritual experiences are not material does not mean they are unreal, incidentally. Such experiences have tangible effects on the lives of those who have them.

They actually occur as brain states and sequences of brain states, sure, though one should be careful to distinguish the sketch pad from the emotion-associated picture/concept drawn on it. But no brain, no supernatural ─ just stories about it.

 

[Audie]

Relentless negativity is wearisome too, I find.

So one should sometimes let the things
you make up get a pass?
No prob., most of them aren't worth a glance.

 

[Nakosis]

Experience of the divine is subjective, sure. Though the search for God, and for unity in and with God, is often undertaken collectively.

The fact that spiritual experiences are not material does not mean they are unreal, incidentally. Such experiences have tangible effects on the lives of those who have them.

Spiritual experiences are material. Every thought you think, even reading this post changes the structure of your brain. Sometimes this change is temporary. Sometimes more permanent. If you mentally get thinking the same or similar thought that strengthens that structure making it more permanent.

Sure "spiritual" experience have tangible on those who experience them. The more often you have them the more your brain becomes structured to experience them. The more you believe, the more your brain becomes structured for belief.

The opposite is true as well, the more you use reason and logic in your thinking the more your brain becomes structured for that as well.

Your brain has over time structured itself for belief in the supernatural. Whatever you experience, think, feel is done via the physical structure of your brain which in doing this, changes its physical structure.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Every idea we have is equally "unreal" (imagined) according to the materialists ... including materialism. So the more they use this objection against the idea of God, the more they discredit their own materialist world view. Somehow this never occurs to them, however.

So long as we don’t question the axioms and assumptions upon which our own world view is built, it’s easy enough for any of us to build an impregnable intellectual edifice. But as you say, those who do this are frequently incapable of recognising it. In the end, even bedrock stands on shifting sand (isn’t Manhattan starting to sink btw?)

 

[Audie]

So long as we don’t question the axioms and assumptions upon which our own world view is built, it’s easy enough for any of us to build an impregnable intellectual edifice. But as you say, those who do this are frequently incapable of recognising it. In the end, even bedrock stands on shifting sand (isn’t Manhattan starting to sink btw?)

Manhattan is not sinking.
A person who would believe that would
believe anything.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Manhattan is not sinking.
A person who would believe that would
believe anything.

New York City Is Slowly Sinking Under Its Own Weight

 

[RestlessSoul]

Manhattan is not sinking.
A person who would believe that would
believe anything.

New York City is sinking due to weight of its skyscrapers, new research finds

 

[RestlessSoul]

They actually occur as brain states and sequences of brain states, sure, though one should be careful to distinguish the sketch pad from the emotion-associated picture/concept drawn on it. But no brain, no supernatural ─ just stories about it.

Cognitive functions correlate to brain states. That they are reducible to activity in the brain is an article of faith upon which your world view is predicated. In any case, we are talking about spiritual experiences, and the spiritual is distinct from the mental, as the mental is distinct from the physical; though all three are intimately entwined in human experience. We are mind, body and spirit; ignore or deny any of these, and we create imbalance within ourselves. We are out of step with the world, when we insist the world dances only to our one dimensional, materialist tune.

 

[blü 2]

Cognitive functions correlate to brain states. That they are reducible to activity in the brain is an article of faith upon which your world view is predicated.

No brain, no cognitive functions, is a good place to start the discussion.

How do you say cognitive functions exist, if not as brain states and processes? Please be specific so that any impartial onlooker can test the correctness of your answer.

We are mind, body and spirit

We are brain / body. Spirit, in the sense of a supernatural element or soul, exists only as a concept / thing imagined in an individual brain. Not the slightest examinable evidence suggests otherwise.

 

[PureX]

No brain, no cognitive functions, is a good place to start the discussion.

So, no cause, no result, right?

How do you say cognitive functions exist, if not as brain states and processes? Please be specific so that any impartial onlooker can test the correctness of your answer.

Then if the cause exists, so must the result. Right? You say the brain exists, but the cognitive results of it's existing do not. But that doesn't make sense. Especially when your saying it, is itself, the cognitive result of a brain existing. So does your claim then not exist?

We are brain / body. Spirit, in the sense of a supernatural element or soul, exists only as a concept / thing imagined in an individual brain. Not the slightest examinable evidence suggests otherwise.

What's with the "only" designation. Are there greater and lesser degrees of existence, now? Do ideas almost, or sort of exist while the brains that generate them surely exist? This is getting a bit absurd, don't you think?

Evidence is an idea generated in the brain, so according to you, it is of some lesser significance in regard to existence, which is also an idea generated in the brain and so is then of lesser existential significance, as well. But wait, significance is also an idea generated by the brain, and so it too must be of less existential significance than ... huh?

 

[Audie]

New York City Is Slowly Sinking Under Its Own Weight

Of course.

And also of course not knowing
NYC, you don't know that the skyscrapers
are in two clusters on Manhattan, because
thats where bedrock is at or very near the
surface.

About 25% of Manhattan is " reclaimed" land,
Ie manmade.

Everyone knows that will ompress, and that
bedrock wont. Or we would hope everyone does.

Manhattan as a whole is not " sinking uuless one is
amused by word games such as that rising water equals sinking, or that a small per ent represents the whole.

Or in your case, facile grasp of a complex issue, gleaned from a pop article by some reporter.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

No brain, no cognitive functions, is a good place to start the discussion.

How do you say cognitive functions exist, if not as brain states and processes? Please be specific so that any impartial onlooker can test the correctness of your answer.


We are brain / body. Spirit, in the sense of a supernatural element or soul, exists only as a concept / thing imagined in an individual brain. Not the slightest examinable evidence suggests otherwise.

I don't have a subjective brain, because I am in objective reality and that is objectively true. But that you use words as correct and good, which I can't observe objectively, tells me that you are deluded.
In fact I can observe objectively as per testing that you are bad and incorrect , because you use subjective words, but I am not that because I am objective as I am in objective reality and everything I claim is based on objective observations and testing. That is how objectively special I am and that is with objective rational reasoning and that is an objective fact.

 

[cladking]

You essentially don't mean anything except some connotation of woo you find agreeable.

Whereas when I say 'awake', you know exactly what I mean, since it's part of your experience. It's true that we don't have a perfect description of how the brain moves from unconscious to conscious when you wake up, but medical science's enquiries into the question are making progress. For example I found this snippet with a quick net search ─

One of the major systems in the brain that wakes you up is called the reticular activating system, or RAS. The RAS is a part of your brain located just above your spinal column. It’s about two inches long and the width of a pencil. The RAS acts like a gatekeeper or filter for your brain, making sure it doesn’t have to deal with more information than it can handle.The RAS can sense important information and create neurochemicals that wake up other parts of the brain. It also keeps you awake throughout the day.If you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, the RAS senses that signal from your body and flips a switch to wake your brain up – just like a light switch. Signals coming from outside of your body, like the sound of an alarm clock or a parent waking you up, can also flip on your RAS.Once the RAS switch turns on, it can take some time for your whole brain and body to wake up. This is because it takes a few minutes to clear all the “sleepy” neurochemicals from your brain, which is why you may feel groggy when an alarm clock wakes you up.
There have also been articles on how anesthesia works, but I didn't find them with that search. However, nothing stops you from doing your own homework except of course yourself.

I didn't say "awake" has no meaning. I said awake as a synonym for conscious is unnecessary. It has meaning as in the sentence "one of those consciousnesses is awake".

Not until you answer my questions satisfactorily, it doesn't. Until you do that, your "life=consciousness" remains pure gobbledygook.

Start by telling me in what sense a virus is 'conscious'. Then tell me in what sense the grape is conscious. Then tell me why there aren't trillions of consciousnesses in your body, one per cell.

ROFL.

Your body does contain billions upon billions of consciousnesses but your brain isn't one of them. We each have organisms that live upon and within us that each cooperate to keep us healthy and alive as well many that are invaders and will usually be attacked by our immune system or come to our awareness and be flicked, swatted, or crushed out of existence.

It is the individual which is conscious not its individual parts. There are structures within more complex organisms which possess a low level of consciousness (such as ganglia) but we are rarely aware of these because the medulla screens their input. Nobody needs a leg that thinks for itself. ...but they do.

 

[blü 2]

So, no cause, no result, right?

At this level, that fits the definition of an effect. At quantum levels we've had to redefine 'cause' of course.

Then if the cause exists, so must the result.

Only within a specific context ─ in the classical sense, you can't have a cause if there's no effect and vice versa.

Right? You say the brain exists, but the cognitive results of it's existing do not.

No, they exist as physical brain states and processes.

What's with the "only" designation. Are there greater and lesser degrees of existence, now?

Supernatural entities exist as concepts in an individual brain. A rough analogy might be a unicorn drawn on a sketch pad.

Do ideas almost, or sort of exist while the brains that generate them surely exist?

If by 'idea' you mean a particular brain state / process, then when they exist they exist in that form. The word 'idea' has other uses, of course.

But you still haven't told me the manner in which you think supernatural things exist, and how we can test your answer.