Relgion is bad - Page 2

pseudonous · 07-08-2007, 01:22 PM

Og, I gots to know. Just how much do you believe science is a religion and that self and free will are illusions? Is this just a story you've constructed to discuss your views with theists, perhaps similar to Nietzsche writing Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a sort of improved version of the bible, or do you really feel that science has provided you with all this knowledge?

I've have been reading your posts, and I should have seen the "not just" answer coming. The reason I ask is that you seem to be argueing with theists which have strange views about souls and such. I'm just not sure how literal you are being about your beliefs, and how much you may be using arguements from hard determinism and others as an enlightening tool.

Og · 07-08-2007, 03:28 PM

I am an electrical engineer who does neuroscience research. Biological organisms are deterministic entities. Processes in all cells are driven by mass action (law of averages). The brain is a massively complex and massively adaptive generalized computation unit with storage, recall, and parallel processing of high bandwidth sensory inputs.

This is what is there for anyone to observe. My work is in a field that is a product of the realization that this is the nature of neural networks. The biological funding organizations are driving engineers into biology as much as they can.

This is not some philosophical argument with a proof. It's a demonstrable result of observations of neural networks and over a century of behavioral neurobiology (most of it has occurred in the last 20 years as genetic tools have developed).

The western theists that view their god as an entity that judges you and is separate from creation are actually and totally wrong. Period. There is no argument on this topic and there is no uncertainty. We are expressions of our environment in the same way that the moon has craters from external impacts. We are a complex process that has arisen from simple underlying components organized on a massive scale over massive periods of time.

We do not have the ability to be an effect without a cause. We can not choose in an ultimate sense of the word. Our neural network is constantly adapting to its environment. Different sensory experiences have different weights in how they effect the structure of your network.

If you want to call that hard determinism, that's fine. I honestly don't care what kind of label the chatty philosophers want to put on it. Engineering mathematics describes the way the universe works. This is what I'm referring to.

Islam, Judaism, Christianity... All of the gods they claim to be literally true can not be. As soon as the deity becomes something separate from the creation and as soon as we have a choice in some cosmic sense, we are entering a realm of illusions that the mind has.

I'm not nietzsche (I actually haven't read any of him) nor am I schopenhauer or any other number of philosophers on the topic. I prefer to avoid speculation and stick with the evidence obtained from cellular and molecular neurobiology.

sisterX · 07-08-2007, 05:22 PM

Og, what is your definition of a god, and why do you call yourself agnostic rather than atheist?

moorehurst · 07-08-2007, 05:35 PM

For once I am with SisterX. Comrade Og looks at very very small things and has a very very big brain but just because he states an absolute does not mean he is right.

Science explains how the universe works, I agree, bully for science, big up for science. But it doesn't explain why because the why bit is unexplainable. That is one of the things makes me an agnostic. SisterX has an explanation in her religious booky thing. I still don't see Og's proof.

duck · 07-08-2007, 05:41 PM

Moorehurst, the general consensus seems to me that the proof is where each of us chooses to find it. The idea of spiritual proof is so ephemeral that we each find a place that comfort leads us.

Does that make any sense?

Og · 07-08-2007, 05:56 PM

Quote:

Og, what is your definition of a god, and why do you call yourself agnostic rather than atheist?

I think it's clear that Yaweh/Allah is a false notion based on an illusion. You can dispute that all you want. Biochemistry, computation, behavioral neurobiology, cellular neurophysiology, and other fields are all very well understood realms of science that describe the behavior of every component of your brain. There is no room in these sciences for some entity to act as a effect without a cause.

Just realizing that yaweh/allah are illusions that many humans use does not make one atheist. Atheist where those deities are concerned, sure, but not in general.

I'm agnostic just as all scientists are. Science never says what something IS. It says what something is not. It works like a sculptor crafting a form from a rock. The scientific method takes what is not true and removes it by proving it false. It removes the probable and whatever remains, must be the truth (to paraphrase Holmes).

It just happens that yaweh/allah happen to be in the realm of what is not true. I don't consider this to be atheist. I consider it to be a part of the agnostic process. Central to the western god premise is that they judge each of us for what we choose to do as free agents. We are not free agents in a cosmic sense, so these "gods" can not be "Gods" in a cosmic sense.

Atheist with respect to yaweh/allah/etc, sure... But I don't take a hard line stance to any notion unless it doesn't jive with repeatable and independently confirmed observation.

Brains are complex computation units. Soul is a null word. One man's magic is another man's engineering.

moorehurst · 07-08-2007, 06:06 PM

Og, what do you think will happen to you after you die? What, according to your learned scientific knowledge, do you think will happen to the thinking part of you (the part that says "I am Og, hear me roar")?

pseudonous · 07-08-2007, 06:59 PM

I agree we can not choose in the "ultimate" sense of the word. However, most people do not use free will in that sense. Most people have never believed they could jump of a cliff and fly. I also understand that the brain operates according to the laws of chemistry and I think most everyone else does as well. Still, I have free will in the sense that I am free to do as I will. To put it another way, free will is the capacity to consciously choose how to obtain what you desire. I see no scientific evidence that this free will does not exist.

Og · 07-08-2007, 07:03 PM

Here's my perspective. What I am is a confluence of events. It is much like tornado in my avatar. Winds come together in a complex fashion and create a complex pattern of weather that creates a funnel.

Right now, cells and macromolecules and such have come together in a complex and self sustaining pattern that is me. They come together by external forces and self assembly and form a generalized computer that is my brain. The computation unit receives filtered information from the world around it and slowly adapts and responds in prescribed ways to a vast amount of high resolution inputs (10s of millions of sensory cells transducing signals from the outside world to neural representations in your brain).

But just as there is no ultimately relevant boundary between the tornado and the clouds from which it is produced, there is no ultimately relevant boundary between what I consider me and the rest of the world. I am an expression of the universe and my environment is an expression of me. Think of 2 cells in your body. Is there a real distinction between them? If so, what is it? A cell membrane? Why should that matter? It's 4 nanometers of lipids (oils) that form a semi-continuous shell. But molecules can pass through it in complex ways. There's no reason to call a cell an independent entity.. It is an expression of its environment.. it IS the environment.

To answer your question, I believe that when I die that my sensory organs will dissociate and degrade and the neural connections in my brain that make me be what I consider me will stop their active processes due to lack of nutrients and they will die. My senses will stop working and my brain will stop functioning and my body will decay.

The essence of free will as myth is also in "self as myth"... What I am is a confluence of events. Every word I type or hand I hold or person I speak to or whatever is part of the "effect" of what I call me. These effects propagate just like a wave in a pond. They are part of my environment and part of me.

When I die, the boundary beneath my skin will cease to be a computation unit with active sensory systems and memory. But so what? What's the rational of the boundary between you and me.

One neuron in my brain is connected to another by complex patterns of chemical or electrical signals. You and I are connected by the same thing. The photons from your monitor strike your eye and fire your brain neurons and are integrated into complex representations of language.

Just because my skin doesn't enfold your neurons doesn't mean that we are part of some separate process. The notion of an individual is not something with an ultimate meaning. All things are expressions of all other things. As an apple tree apples or the ocean waves, the universe "peoples." Each of us are expressions of the entire realm of nature.

Thinking that there is some beginning and end to what we are is part of the life we live, but its also part of the fundamental illusion that is encapsulated in the garden of eden story. By obtaining this consciousness (the fruit of the tree), we are cast into the realm of pairs of opposites (such as life/death). These are ultimately illusions. Certainly there is a difference between before you die and after you die, but the only difference is an organization of energy.

Does that answer your question? There is no me (as an individual that is ultimately separate from anything else), so the question of what happens to "me" after "I" die is kind of moot. Death is just a part of a confluence of events in the same way that "I" am.

I don't believe that I will experience anything since experience is entirely sensory and neural in nature. I believe it will be a dissociation.. something akin to the nirvana concept or the atman... undifferentiated consciousness. One with all things.

I don't see how it could be any other way.

Og · 07-08-2007, 07:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pseudonous

I agree we can not choose in the "ultimate" sense of the word. However, most people do not use free will in that sense. Most people have never believed they could jump of a cliff and fly. I also understand that the brain operates according to the laws of chemistry and I think most everyone else does as well. Still, I have free will in the sense that I am free to do as I will. To put it another way, free will is the capacity to consciously choose how to obtain what you desire. I see no scientific evidence that this free will does not exist.

You are confusing freedom of action with freedom of will. They are different things. When I speak of freedom of will I speak of creating an effect without a cause. Each one of your actions is the product of a quasi-deterministic biochemical cascade inside your skull and elsewhere.

Free will (as I'm using it) says that you can somehow make a decision about two or more options that is not determined by your entire history up to that point. This is not the case. When presented with multiple options, you make a "choice" that is based on reasons... Can you change those reasons? no. The reasons are a representation of elements of your development that make your brain respond in given ways in given situations. Even if you "Feel" that you could have chosen differently, the fact is that neurons were connected in complex patterns, the two options were fed into your processor and the computation unit (your brain) output the one option that was the result of the computation of your brain on those two choices you had.

Saying that we have free will is like saying that the moon can somehow choose to orbit the earth or that your muscle can choose to not respond to a stimulus from the nerve that innervates it.

Certainly your brain selects amongst options, but the selection process can not be free in any ultimate sense.

Thus the conclusion that the gods (yaweh/allah for example) who deal out ultimate punishment based on your choices (i.e. to be good or evil or to follow their will) can not be real entities. The notion that you have some sort of ultimate choice is false.. So the notion of punishing an entity can only be seen as a tool to manipulate an entity towards a certain course of action if the entity is under the impression that it has will in the first place.

The God of the west is not real other than within our minds.