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MH2
climber
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Jan says
there is a non material component to the human experience.
Would it be okay to rephrase that as, "There are parts of the human experience that are not understood."
?
Or are you convinced of a "non-material" component?
I've read studies of 'near-death' experiences, too, and found nothing weirder in them than the human brain itself.
I've had a few personal experiences that were uncanny, but hardly material for hidden worlds.
There are certainly areas where science is misused. It only answers well-defined questions, usually of a yes-or-no type. It has been pushed into areas where it doesn't work and human consciousness may well be one of those areas.
Thanks for the great exposition on humanoid evolution.
Thanks to Ed, too. Now if you could only explain A. Khrennikov maybe I would see what Largo is getting at....
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 10, 2009 - 01:04am PT
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On my ride home I thought maybe JL is worried about a deterministic theory of consciousness that one could fear arising from a classical (rather than quantum mechanical) description of "the machine" of the brain.
One needn't fear this, the answer lies in statistical mechanics and classical non-linear systems. We learn that the huge number of participating atoms provide a reasonable variation that is essentially unpredictable, certainly uncalculable. And besides, we also know that there are some systems whose non-linear behavior requires that the system initial conditions must be known to a degree which is not possible, thus the time evolution of the system is not calculable.
These variations and uncertainties allow plenty of room for "free will" even in a deterministic system.
I believe that much has been done in the last decade or so that it is difficult to reject the "reductionist" approach to consciousness with as much vehemence (and with equally little justification) as JL has in several posts.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 10, 2009 - 01:25am PT
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"I know from my DNA that I had ancestors. The paleontologist can only hope that his fossils had descendants."
Which seems the classic scientific refutation - evidence trumping theory. A witty comeback, too.
There is sometimes reputed to be an element of ethnocentrism in Han (Chinese) culture, perhaps more so than in others.
It is hard to believe that a separate species of Homo X could have evolved in east Asia since perhaps 150,000 BCE, but that the 'species' would still be fully able interbreed with individuals from other human 'species', and bear fertile offspring.
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Oct 10, 2009 - 08:53am PT
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Edit: "Science picks no favorites...
Jesus does!"
The sun shines on us all, and good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people.
The only people god chose to reveal Himself to were the Jewish, but after Jesus came and died on the cross, God is the God for the whole world and all people who BELIEVE IN HIM.
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Oct 10, 2009 - 11:19am PT
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John Donne
Meditation 17
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 10, 2009 - 11:46am PT
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as is stated at the end of A Small Package of Value Will Come To You, Shortly off of the "Bathing At Baxter's" album, the Jefferson Airplane re-wrote Donne's line...
(with slight reverb)
"No man is an island,
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND!"
-pause-
"...he's a peninsula..."
with much giggling ensuing...
I always like that one better than the original.
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Oct 10, 2009 - 11:52am PT
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Well the endgame is how or Whom, made everything that IS?
No creator, just happened or by God?
And how can we really know for sure, how it was made?
We just see the side effects, pretty good though!
I didn't make up the Bible and how it said it happened.
Everything I've read in it, rings true, and is bigger then me, when I try to live by it's ways,
I have to change, and I can't do it on my own. God gives us the grace through Christ, that we don't have to carry that burden, he did. But somehow you do live a better way, that pleases Him.
So in the end for me, I'll thank God!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 10, 2009 - 11:56am PT
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Gobee - if everything in the Bible that you apply to your life makes it better, why would it matter whether or not it was written by God... given the moral lessons there (at least the good ones) separated from a deity, why wouldn't they be just as good?
Why couldn't you conduct your life, morally, without a supreme being?
I think the answer is that you could.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 10, 2009 - 12:03pm PT
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Ed Hartouni wants to run the linear accelerator without consulting his boss nor anyone else.
All the parts to an automobile will be laid out on the factory floor and miraculously, just by chance, the parts assemble themselves without any higher intelligence, the creators of the parts, engineers, workers, installers, etc etc.
Even the robots were programmed originally by a higher intelligence.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 10, 2009 - 12:15pm PT
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yes Werner, it is true, that in some cosmic sense the parts of the automobile are assembled by beings that were assembled through the laws of nature governing the physical universe, only... and have done so without design help from a supernatural authority.
Pretty fricking amazing, I agree...
...that's how I see it.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 10, 2009 - 12:23pm PT
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Yes, for the materialist the higher authority is death. Time & Death is supreme to the materialist.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 10, 2009 - 12:24pm PT
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Werner, my question to Gobee goes to you, to, and respectfully...
wouldn't you choose to conduct yourself in the manner of the Vedas even without the supernatural, if what you had was only the natural?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 10, 2009 - 12:26pm PT
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time, perhaps, but there is birth and death
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Oct 10, 2009 - 12:33pm PT
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I'm not the smartest kid on the block, not even close. I have a brain that God gave me and I use it!
God IS God, and that doesn't threaten Him that we can think, He wants us to!
I know that Jesus is the way, and everyone who doesn't, is wrong! But I would never kill anyone because they don't believe! I Don't think that I'm better then anyone else either, God is love!
There is a lot of good books out there, but only one GOD!
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 10, 2009 - 12:34pm PT
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There's bonafide absolute truth that the Supreme being exists beyond all doubts.
It can be tested in a scientific process. It is beyond the scope of this forum to just present futile arguments based on the limited senses.
You can argue for and against forever and never understand thru the speculative ascending process.
The manufacturer of the automobile (creator) said to tighten the bolt to 25 pounds per square inch, and you speculate we don't even need the bolt.
Even the American Indian acknowledged the Supreme being.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 10, 2009 - 12:40pm PT
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Dr. F
certainly we are connected, but to continue the pop nature of my commentary on Donne, Jimi wrote in If 6 Were 9
"I'm the one who dies when it's time for me to die,
so let me live my life the way I want to"
which illustrates what it is that also makes us individual. These two forces, the individual and the collective, can be powerful poles, certainly in our contemporary politics it is almost the defining dialectic.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 10, 2009 - 12:41pm PT
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Werner and Gobee, neither of you answered my question...
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Oct 10, 2009 - 12:46pm PT
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I think you mean Abraham.
I think God was testing Abe's heart for God!
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 10, 2009 - 12:54pm PT
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"wouldn't you choose to conduct yourself in the manner of the Vedas even without the supernatural, if what you had was only the natural?"
The Vedas and the natural are one and the same. But if you only have knowledge up to the gross physical material nature then you would have to conduct your life even according to it's rules and regulations.
Still you are bound. Bondage is eternal. Whether spiritual or material.
In the material world you are bound by nature, otherwise you would ultimately be free from death. So Time and death are superior to the living entity.
The soul by it's true constitutional position is not the gross physical body. It transmigrates from body to body according to it's desires and consciousness.
Even in the spiritual world there is pain. It has to be because this material world is a direct reflection of the real truth.
The only difference is pain in the spiritual world is blissful.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 10, 2009 - 12:58pm PT
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Dr. F - you are connected through your past with the rest of humanity, if by no other bound then that of the accident of your birth. That conveys much of what you are, and is dependent on the community.
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