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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Remember the last words of Aldous Huxley...
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 3, 2009 - 08:31pm PT
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And Gobee, since nothing will happen when YOU croak, you won't even be
able think about all the years of childish delusion you "wasted" as an adult.
Still believe in Santa and the Tooth Fairy too?
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Now, I'm Santa and I believe in the dentist!
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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That really was a killer moon, last night, Lynne....
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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Jaybro and All....Killer Moon is there again tonight. I'ts low and huge, framed by the two redwoods, and White, white against dark charcoal black sky.
It's great how you can trust the moon and sun to repeat their patterns and performances.
Being in the moment with moon and earth and life was time well spent tonight. Tempted by football games and other things that pull. I am not at home, But in a place that I could plug into life's seductions. Glad I got up and walked outside.
Peace all ..... being in the moment breathing. lynnie
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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You call someone who believes in God an idiot, but a fool says in his heart there is no God, and rejecting so great a salvation isn't so smart? You will just have yourself, rather small! God is Omni...
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Captain...or Skully
Social climber
Idaho, also. Sorta, kinda mostly, Yeah.
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Self Rescue, man.
I don't wanna make a production.
Why, exactly, do I want "salvation"?
Not my fault, this world.....I just showed up, & POW!
There it is. I didn't do it.
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WBraun
climber
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wes and Dr F -- Idiots think their belief IS proof.
Because you two believe there is no God that you and Dr F are idiots.
Wow!!!!! Now I've heard everything ......
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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The moon's still there.
Conversation with Grace can move thoughts into the soul. Argument for it's own sake sucks life from the same. Just throwing some heart out there. lynnie
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Some wisdom traditions consider God, consciousness, reality and truth as interchangable terms. Positing all and everything in the mode of thought is the limiting factor in all of this.
JL
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WBraun
climber
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There's an old saying .... a good horse will run at the sign of the whip.
A bad horse needs the whip just to be able to even move .....
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Hey Werner what if you have no hoarse at all...
... laryngitis perhaps...
okay, I admit, a bad pun.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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I think Einstein said it best.
"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly; that is religiousness."
The two opposite ends of the spectrum from Einstein are the atheist who looks out at our vast and beautiful universe and declares, "There is no God. Just ask me, I know everything", and the religious fundamentalist who look out at our vast and beautiful universe and says, "There is a God and I know everything there is to know about 'Him'. Just ask me".
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Largo has mentioned a few times that consciousness more or less changes the game and (I'm paraphrasing) cannot be explained by the merely mechanical (science).
As a matter of fact, consciousness, though complicated, like everything else in living organisms, clearly came about through evolution. First of all, you have to more or less agree with what consciousness is. It is NOT the soul. Most, if not all, animals have it to varying degrees. Tell me your dog does not have consciousness. Consciousness is a continuum phenomenon, and primates, particularly homo sapiens, have it to a larger degree than most animals. It's our higher or greater consciousness, not the fact that we have it at all, that places us a bit apart from other animals. And it is NOT the soul. And it is not immortal.
I'm no expert on this subject, but I know that the current thinking is that consciouness is something that more or less arises when an organism exceeds a certain number of neurological connections in the brain or they are connected in certain intimate ways. The well-known fact that man's brain capacity evolved dramatically through the Pleistocene, and that this phenomenon coincided with anthropogical evidence of culture (including religion) would seem to clearly show the relationship between the brain and consciousness, and that higher consciousness came about through evolutionary processes.
And Flanders, read Richard Dawkins - brilliant. He is well-respected in the scientific community and anything but a pseudo-scientist.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Foe Eyonkee:
Thesis: Thinking and knowledge are the product of a biological organ, the brain, and are therefore fashioned by evolution for brutely pragmatic purposes.
Refutation: This thesis can be refuted easily, since it destroys its own ontological foundation.
If we assume thinking to be a function of a biological and therefore physical system, we are forced, by this argument, to limit the capacity of thinking to the field of operability of this function within the biologically preset boundaries of the neuro-physiological system called brain. A function that grew by nature's selective evolution must inexorably be bound to the limits of the organic system within which this function is operative. The function is dependent on the system, it cannot transcend the system itself.
The term function may have several connotations[1]:
the action for which a person or thing is specially fitted or used or for which a thing exists : purpose any of a group of related actions contributing to a larger action; esp. the normal and specific contribution of a bodily part to the economy of a living organism
variable (as a quality, trait, or measurement) that depends on and varies with another, e.g. height is a function of age; also : result, e.g. illnesses that are a function of stress.
function implies a definite end or purpose that the one in question serves or a particular kind of work it is intended to perform
in physiology and psychology: performance and mode of activity of a bodily or psychic organ
in mathematics and logic: a mathematical correspondence that assigns exactly one element of one set to each element of the same or another set
functionalism: an answer to the mind-body problem. It defines mental states and properties in terms of what causes them, how they manifest themselves in behavior and how they interact with each other. (s. H. Putnam: states of consciousness are functions of the nervous system, especially of cerebral processes).
Definitions (i), (ii) and (iv) in particular contribute to the assumption that a function is embedded within a whole, a system. A function does not possess self-motivation or self-causation. It is strictly subject to natural laws and completely determined by them. Thus if thinking or knowledge is a function of a natural system, it must necessarily obey the laws of that system. This conclusion, however, is absurd: thinking would be completely determined and notions such as "free will" or "responsibility" could not be conceived reasonably. This is brute behaviorism, the human being as a machine.
If the above thetic assumption is true, why is it possible for us, to transcend these functional limits of the system in the very act of thought itself? Although we confess that most people never overcome the natural pragmatism of their thinking, we nevertheless have numerous examples of great human thinkers that excelled mediocrity and thus pragmatism by far. They were capable of extending their capacity of thinking into speculative and mystical realms. Philosophy is no means for survival. Never would a biological system have devised such a useless function. If thinking were only a product of the nature of the brain, it would never be possible within the given laws of nature to transcend the system's functionality. There is enough proof that thought CAN transcend the narrow set of functions of the brain. The reason that we can have thoughts going beyond the biological restraints of our brain, proves the immateriality and independence of our mind from matter.
Mind is not a product of matter. Neither are they functioning independently of each other. Mind is independent in so far as it does not depend ontologically on the existence of matter, but mind needs the brain to express itself through the human body and to give us an extended set of instruments for living in this world. This set of instruments, such as understanding , reason, emotions etc. are possibilities to transcend the biological nature of the human species, to go beyond the state of animality, to attain the special dignity of a homo sapiens.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Jan, that's where the opposites collide and become one. I think most of us are more mid spectrum...
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jaybro-
I agree. I also think based on my experience in Asia, that our ideas in the West of what religion/spirituality consists of, are extremely limited.
I like the idea that studying science with a sense of awe and wonder is a spiritual, if not a religious act. Likewise an atheist engaging in a humanistic donation of his or her time, or someone tending a bonsai tree several times a day, appreciating the wonders of nature by becoming familiar with every leaf, a musician creating a melody never heard before, a climber testing the limits of body and mind.
Looked at in this way, all of us are spiritual, though not necessarily religious.
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jstan
climber
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I have always tried not to think about consciousness because doing so always seems to end up as do discussions of philosophy. But try this on.
The brain is a neurological network and we know it reinforces the synapses that are critical to survival. That's what dreams and nightmares are. That is why we relive the moment we realized we could not downclimb to the last protection.
OK. So the network is primed and readied at all times for the next synapse.
It expects there to be a next synapse.
That expectation is consciousness.
Consciousness is the expectation that another moment will follow the present moment.
And that there will be another synapse.
Suppose for the moment this is correct.
Then since keeping the neural pathways ready is a strategy for survival and many creatures other than humans are so prepared (we all have heard our dogs moan in their sleep), can we not presume that, this consciousness at least, is possessed by many different creatures?
Edit:
Nice, Karl.
Very nice.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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What do you offer up as proof of your beliefs?
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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I suspect we agree on a lot of things, Jan.
I got into climbing to 'be there' ; every foot, every pitch, every Jam. I got a degree in geology to be more there and to satisfy other curiosity.
i was confirmed in the methodist church. Subsequently things I read and experienced allowed me a different view.
It's an ongoing adventure.
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