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Author Topic: Atheism/Religion Discussion  (Read 183155 times)

MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #30 on: July 19, 2012, 12:41:03 am »

We also cannot be said to reliably know anything if we do not assume that we exist. Making assumptions is bad, but in this instance we have no choice but to make the assumption that we are real or else nothing follows.
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Quote from: Thomas Paine
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
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RedWarrior0

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #31 on: July 19, 2012, 12:41:41 am »

Obviously plants have feelings of their own so we must live off of milk and honey. Unless you can name something else that solely exists to be food.
You also can't undervalue or undermine the fact that science works. Even if the reality we perceive is fundamentally wrong, our understanding of this wrong reality has proven to provide a lot of nifty applications and benefits.
Even though it's (possibly) wrong, at least it's consistent?
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kaijyuu

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #32 on: July 19, 2012, 12:43:02 am »

Yeah, I'm totally on the side of "if this is fake, so be it, I'm gonna try to enjoy it." In my mind, life is about experience, and thus our experiences being "real" or "fake" is irrelevant. We experienced them regardless.




Though I suppose my point was, don't hate on unfounded assumptions. "Belief" isn't a horrible thing that should be avoided, unless you're a hardcore solipsist that denies all this stuff. Belief is fine, even in stuff like religion, so long as you don't force it down people's throats.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2012, 12:46:25 am by kaijyuu »
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Quote from: Chesterton
For, in order that men should resist injustice, something more is necessary than that they should think injustice unpleasant. They must think injustice absurd; above all, they must think it startling. They must retain the violence of a virgin astonishment. When the pessimist looks at any infamy, it is to him, after all, only a repetition of the infamy of existence. But the optimist sees injustice as something discordant and unexpected, and it stings him into action.

Phantom of The Library

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #33 on: July 19, 2012, 12:44:17 am »

I'm not going to say anything about my own views on the subject, but here's a few bits of food for thought and discussion:


What is the definition of a soul we're using here? 

A metaphysical entity that controls the body from outside the physical plane?
The very essence of a person's being? 
Their emotions and personality given form? 
A power source for the mind to run on? 
An ethereal copy of oneself that ascends to a higher plane upon death? 
Life force?





Do you think every living thing has a soul? Do plants? Does it require a brain?
Last I heard, tentative research shows that plants do have brains of a form in their root system.





Quote
I'm sure we could go all science with it and say something along the lines of, 'Its all brain chemistry and cell position in the CNS', but I don't think that fully explains it.
Allow me to tell you the tale of Phineas Gage. Phineas was a railroad foreman, a favored and efficient one. One day, dear Phineas ended up having his skull impaled by a tamping iron, destroying his left frontal lobe.

Despite this, Phineas survived his injury, but there were consequences. He became prone to unjustified anger and impatience, and was no longer efficient at his job or favored by his fellows. Many of them described him as having become a different person.

Why? Because the mind is a projection created by the brain, and if the brain is damaged, the mind is damaged to fit. There's nothing supernatural about any of it.

What if the brain were a conduit for the soul/mind and specific parts are specialized receivers and if damaged prevent proper reception?  That would explain the personality change just as well.
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Bauglir

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #34 on: July 19, 2012, 12:46:07 am »

I mean, I would wonder what difference it would make if "souls" as a concept were emergent properties of complex arrangements of neurons. Would they be any less souls if we knew what they came from, or does being a soul require persistence after death or something like that?
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In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #35 on: July 19, 2012, 12:46:34 am »

What if the brain were a conduit for the soul/mind and specific parts are specialized receivers and if damaged prevent proper reception?  That would explain the personality change just as well.
What if space is actually a giant mandelbrot curtain put up by our genetically modified alien ancestors so we aren't driven mad by the true visage of the universe and can die out in relative peace?

There's no reason to "what if" this stuff unless you have some reason to assume it.
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Quote from: Thomas Paine
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
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MrWiggles

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #36 on: July 19, 2012, 12:46:49 am »

Science has proof, and also pokes a bunch of holes in the whole god thing,
Few things here:

1) Science has poked holes in specific religions, but not "the whole god thing." Religion isn't just Christianity.
Once you understanding the short comings of a religion it can be applied to other religions too. As a broad example; any religion with a creation myth takes a particular dent right there. And religion which describe the working the earth contrary to actual understanding.
Quote
2) This point is rather pedantic rather than supporting any specific argument, but... Science actually has zero of of what you would probably call proof. There is no absolute certainty in science, just "within reasonable doubt." Everything you learn via experimentation could be a fluke. The chances of that can be utterly miniscule (my computer merely running supports many scientific theories to a ridiculous degree), but the possibility always exists. (however, don't trust anyone who uses this as a reason to decry science, because denying inductive reasoning is plain nutty. Like I said, this is a pedantic point)
Science is inherently error correcting, and doesnt need to be absolutely correct or have absolute knowledge to make progress.

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Reudh

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #37 on: July 19, 2012, 12:47:09 am »

Science has proof, and also pokes a bunch of holes in the whole god thing, but humans and animals seem to have souls.
Elaborate.


Well, you've seen roadkill. How is it that each individual piece of roadkill was once a living breathing animal that had its own quirks and habits and likes and dislikes? Same question for a graveyard of dead humans. How can they all be so different? I'm sure we could go all science with it and say something along the lines of, 'Its all brain chemistry and cell position in the CNS', but I don't think that fully explains it.

Quirks in chemical alignment. When you try to put tens of trillions of bits of information together, it can sometimes get a bit weird. Things change.

Not only that, but everything alive is genetically coded to have a slight variation on the parent, in addition to mutation. What are the three things that promote evolution?

- Mutation
- Hereditability
- Variation

Mutation as you no doubt know is a slight change in genetic code from the parent, so that the offspring is more than just a mix of the two. Some mutations are beneficial, like being tall, or stronger, or more disease resistant. Some are not, like Huntingdon's disease. Mutation keeps our species and all other species on the boil.

Hereditability allows us to take genetic material from our parents. It, like mutation, can be positive and negative. My red hair is a hereditary trait; both of my parents carry the mutant MCR1 gene and so I was born a red head. Both of my parents have the genetics for it; it was expressed in me. I acquired my mother's side strong bones, balancing my father's side's weak bones. I acquired my father's side's strong joints, balancing my mother's side's weak joints. I acquired a middling height, (179cm / 5'11"), almost exactly halfway between each parent (152 cm / 4'11.75" and 197 cm / 6'6").

Variation allows us to further be different from our parents. It is expected that we lean one way or another with our hereditability, leaning toward our mother or our father genetically, or a further off ancestor. Me with my red hair, northern dutch looks (small eyes, round cheeks, strong and lean build) look like neither parent, but I take after my father's side (my father's father is north dutch by descent. dad's half north dutch, half south dutch (olive skin, dark hair). My brother takes after the south dutch half, so he looks like dad. My sister is a half-half variation of the south-dutch looking females of my father's family and the celtic looks of my mother's.

Those three factors allow us to have differences.



As for your suggestion that we seem to have souls, that is true, in that a soul is a specialised set of cell networks firing electricity at each other in an unimaginably complex way. It irritates me to have something labelled inaccurately when a more accurate (if more boring and less mystical) label can be applied.


Fakedit: Ninja'd x 16.

MrWiggles

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #38 on: July 19, 2012, 12:48:39 am »

Obviously plants have feelings of their own so we must live off of milk and honey. Unless you can name something else that solely exists to be food.
You also can't undervalue or undermine the fact that science works. Even if the reality we perceive is fundamentally wrong, our understanding of this wrong reality has proven to provide a lot of nifty applications and benefits.
Even though it's (possibly) wrong, at least it's consistent?
In the premise that we're incapable of determining it to be wrong, then it doesn't matter. As long as its internally consistent, and our models prove to have explanatory power and provide application we're good.
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Hanslanda

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #39 on: July 19, 2012, 12:49:43 am »

I'm not prepared for this discussion guys. I'm going to sit it out after this to avoid getting too stressed out and possibly morphing into a troll.
It's cool. Think and come back if you so desire :) Thinking is good.


I'll be lurking, but I'm don't have my beliefs in order. Its a jumbled mess of maybes and 'I kinda think's. :)
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kaijyuu

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #40 on: July 19, 2012, 12:54:03 am »

Quote
There's no reason to "what if" this stuff unless you have some reason to assume it.
There's plenty of reason to "what if". Here and elsewhere. That there are other possibilities is important... if we didn't look for them, we might not find actually existent evidence. One does not need a reason to ask questions and make hypotheses.




Re: souls. This is what trips me up most of all. What is consciousness? Why do I "see" and "feel"? Is it a soul, or does everything of sufficient sophistication "see" and "feel"? If the latter, what's the turning point? Could a computer? Could a complex system like an ecosystem or economy?
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Quote from: Chesterton
For, in order that men should resist injustice, something more is necessary than that they should think injustice unpleasant. They must think injustice absurd; above all, they must think it startling. They must retain the violence of a virgin astonishment. When the pessimist looks at any infamy, it is to him, after all, only a repetition of the infamy of existence. But the optimist sees injustice as something discordant and unexpected, and it stings him into action.

MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #41 on: July 19, 2012, 12:58:40 am »

Re: souls. This is what trips me up most of all. What is consciousness? Why do I "see" and "feel"? Is it a soul, or does everything of sufficient sophistication "see" and "feel"? If the latter, what's the turning point? Could a computer? Could a complex system like an ecosystem or economy?
You see and feel because seeing and feeling are advantageous to the continued survival of our particular chain of life, and so systems for sight and tactile sense were naturally selected from random mutation over the course of millions of years.

A decent analogy is that consciousness is the software to your brain's hardware. The programs on your computer are not exactly physically "there" in the direct sense, but are a product of the machine's operation.
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Quote from: Thomas Paine
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
Quote
No Gods, No Masters.

Reudh

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #42 on: July 19, 2012, 12:59:02 am »

Can a computer "feel"?

Inasmuch as its programming allows it to feel.

We only feel as much as our self-programming allows us to feel. If we elected to keep our eyes shut all the time, we would lose sight.

It is similar with computers. They cannot feel due to lack of programmed behaviour; we as animals feel because we program ourselves to use this behaviour as it helps us with survival.

What would we happen if we were able to program a sufficiently complex AI and equipped it with all the sensory input we have, and an ability to express itself?

Does it then have a soul, as it is aware and able to interact?

Is a soul as simple as the ability to be self-aware?

MrWiggles

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #43 on: July 19, 2012, 01:01:05 am »

Quote
There's no reason to "what if" this stuff unless you have some reason to assume it.
There's plenty of reason to "what if". Here and elsewhere. That there are other possibilities is important... if we didn't look for them, we might not find actually existent evidence. One does not need a reason to ask questions and make hypotheses.
You can can create an infinite number of scenarios, but that not exactly productive. Empiricism does make some vast assumptions, but thats not a reason to simple disengage from it. Its productive and useful. Its assumption also seem to be holding true. There no reason to interject multitude of unlikely explanation when you derive to an explanation thats conforms to a useful model.
 
Quote
Re: souls. This is what trips me up most of all. What is consciousness? Why do I "see" and "feel"? Is it a soul, or does everything of sufficient sophistication "see" and "feel"? If the latter, what's the turning point? Could a computer? Could a complex system like an ecosystem or economy?
Does it matter? There no separation between the physical brain and the conscience. There are direct correction between brain activity and our conscience. So even if their is a soul, its not a separate entity of us, but probably a descriptor of the process of a conscience.

And if it a purely physical, then other physical objects could have them as well.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2012, 01:05:34 am by MrWiggles »
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Reudh

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Re: Atheism/Theology Discussion
« Reply #44 on: July 19, 2012, 01:04:07 am »

Quote
Re: souls. This is what trips me up most of all. What is consciousness? Why do I "see" and "feel"? Is it a soul, or does everything of sufficient sophistication "see" and "feel"? If the latter, what's the turning point? Could a computer? Could a complex system like an ecosystem or economy?
Does it matter? There no separation between the physical brain and the conscience. There are direct correction between brain activity and our conscience. So even if their is a soul, its not a separate entity of us, but probably a descriptor of the process of a conscience.

And if it a purely physical, then other physical objects could have them as well.
[/quote]

The physical brain is the physical manifestation of our thoughts and "soul". The analogy that the mind is to the brain as the software is to the hardware is quite apt.

Without the hardware, the software cannot exist. The hardware can exist without the software but not do much. Together they make a whole.
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