So, Sree, you think secularists are “a product of brain activity, (…) just a fancy robot, a fake human being, with an ape-like body”. And, apparently, you think religious people are “real human beings”. And you think that empathy is not accessible to secularists (because secularism has not been around as long as religion).
Empathy preceded religiosity by a long shot in the development of many species on Earth, including humans.
And secular humanists are as much human, and typically more broadly humane, than the religious.
Tim: And secular humanists are as much human, and typically more broadly humane, than the religious.
Well, that's what you want to believe in: secular humanism is better than religious humanism. The best form of humanism is found in Nature: maternal instinct. We take it for granted. There is no ideology guiding the mother in her bonding with offspring. This awe-inspiring phenomenon - one organism protecting another - didn't come with the Big Bang of secularism. No way.
Sree: The best form of humanism is found in Nature: maternal instinct. We take it for granted. There is no ideology guiding the mother in her bonding with offspring. This awe-inspiring phenomenon – one organism protecting another – didn’t come with the Big Bang of secularism. No way.
Oh, way....read the definition of secularism. You'll find that the best form of secularism is found in Nature, the teacher of all moral behaviors.
Secularism
Secularism, as defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary,[1] is the "indifference to, or rejection or exclusion of, religion and religious considerations".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism
Indifference to religions or religious considerations is the status quo of Natural interactions. Nature, cruel as it may be, it is not prejudicial by reason of a belief system. Natural selection is a completely impersonal mathematical function of survival long enough to procreate.
Write4U: Oh, way….read the definition of secularism. You’ll find that the best form of secularism is found in Nature, the teacher of all moral behaviors.
Put away all definitions of secularism and humanism if you want to think critically. No crutches. I would say the same to a Christian. Don't quote the Bible, stand on your own goddam feet and speak for yourself if you can actually live what you say.
Nature, from which springs human nature, is a mystery. Just because we can write a math equation to predict how fast a rock fall or when the next eclipse of the sun is going to be doesn’t mean you know anything about the mystery itself. Perhaps, you are content with your knowledge. I am not. I don’t understand why we are going to Mars when 200,000 kids had to be shipped out on the Orphan Train. Are you a little smug about your brand of humanism?
Maternal instinct is no big mystery, as much as you might want it to be, Sree. Any social organism that includes parents with instinctive behaviors that make it more likely that their offspring will survive to be able to reproduce, will likely pass that on to subsequent generations. Iow, Darwinian Evolution.
Everything is a mystery to me, Tim; everything that is not man-made, that is. Mind you, a baby is not man-made. Let’s be clear about that. Just because you can do it doesn’t make it science.
Sree said: Oh, there are a lot of things I don’t understand, Lausten. I am not God
Apparently you do understand that God is an supernatural motivated intelligence who understands everything. And pray tell, where did you gain that extraordinary insight?
Write4U: Apparently you do understand that God is an supernatural motivated intelligence who understands everything. And pray tell, where did you gain that extraordinary insight?
You said what God is well. I couldn't have said it better. Where did you gain that insight? I probably got it the way you did.
Tim: So, Sree, you think secularists are “a product of brain activity, (…) just a fancy robot, a fake human being, with an ape-like body”.
I think secularists, putting all their faith in science, are folks who believe they are products of brain activity emanating from an organ within the skull of an ape-like body that has evolved through time. I don't know how this is possible since Bob said that time is an artifact of the memory.
Anyway, this topic is about death stripped of religious superstition. Since you believe you are not created by God but by the brain, then it make sense for Mriana to contend that she did not exist before her brain started up after the birth of her body and that she ceases to exist when her brain dies along with her body. I used the term “fake human being” because brain activity is consciousness and consciousness has no physical properties. The body has physical properties. Therefore, if you are a product of the brain and don’t have physical properties, then you can’t be real. This is what I meant by “fake human being”.
Critical thinking is hard for me and I have to live with unknowns. The human being is like a TV movie. The religious man wants to find out and try to trace the TV cable to an outlet but can’t find any. So, he solves the mystery by concluding that it must be God. You trace the cable and find it connected to your brain. You call it science. No mystery.
After critical inquiry with you guys, I am getting more confused. Is my body an object with physical properties or is it an artifact of the memory?
Sree said: I think secularists, putting all their faith in science, are folks who believe they are products of brain activity emanating from an organ within the skull of an ape-like body that has evolved through time. I don’t know how this is possible since Bob said that time is an artifact of the memory.
No, we have genetic evidence that humans and other great apes have a common ancestor. I gave you irrefutable evidence of the fusion of chromosome 2, causing the mutation which produced a macro-evolution into Homo Sentiens (smart ape). The rest of our DNA is nearly identical to all other apes except for some cosmetic differences, such as a slight adjustment in pelvic orientation, loss of hair, and a smaller jaw bone due to a change in diet, but which also accommodated the growth of a larger, more complex brain.
Note that all apes already have an opposing thumb, an evolved physical advantage for manipulating objects. All apes are already relatively smarter than other mammals. They are tool users. Not much difference between using a rock to crack a nut and to attach a stick to a rock to crack a nut or a skull.
The question of human origins is settled science. Accept it, it won’t change your soul, if you believe in that…
Sree, There should be a full time fact checker, assigned to your posts. You said “I used the term “fake human being” because brain activity is consciousness and consciousness has no physical properties.”
So you say in the SAME sentence that brain activity is Consciousness AND that Consciousness has no physical properties. BRAIN ACTIVITY IS A PHYSICAL PROPERTY. So please stop making these nonsense self contradictory statements.
Everything you do, think, say has physical properties. (In some cases, as in thinking, the physical manifestation is the relatively covert neurological correlates that always accompany thought.)
Your body is physical. Your consciousness is also physical, just not, typically, observable. Also, your consciousness (and hence, also your self awareness) comes and goes. It emerges with the neurological correlates firing off and it goes away with the absence of neurological correlates firing.
Do you like pearls? Because I sense that I am casting pearls before you that you will simply trample in to the muck.
Sree, Seriously, I am an atheist. I am certain (CLOSE ENOUGH) that NOTHING supernatural exists. There is NO afterlife. You and I will be among the no longer existent. So your questions are non applicable.
If you profess secularism, you shouldn’t make wild claims. “You” and “I”, as one-of-a-kind personalities, will vanish with the death of their respective bodies. However, life, as this wondrous existence that is manifesting as me, is something else. I don’t believe it comes from the brain. Like a skeptical scientist, I reject this conclusion and want to investigate this mystery further.
The religious do not hold the copyright on wild claims. There are so many nonreligious belief systems which are, mentally, at least, exactly like religious belief systems. These days conservatism is treated as a religious-like belief system by many, which is how we got the MAGA bomber and MAGA shooter and all the other MAGA domestic terrorists.
We are all human beings. By what logic is this particular group held to a higher standard than all others? And Tim didn’t actually make any wild claims at all. He started his statements with “I am certain…” He was professing what he believed, not an absolute truth. Since is belief is common among atheists it certainly is not a “wild claim” for an atheist to profess that belief.
To be clear, I was screwing with you a little in the above paragraph. I was pointing out that it wasn’t a claim, it was an expression of belief, but then I was screwing with you too. And it was meant to be in fun, not to “make fun”.
Sree: However, life, as this wondrous existence that is manifesting as me, is something else. I don’t believe it comes from the brain. Like a skeptical scientist, I reject this conclusion and want to investigate this mystery further.
Who has proposed that life comes from the brain? You are the one proposing that life originated from a supernatural motivated brain. Stop projecting your beliefs on others.
Abiogenesis is no mystery at all . If only you would muster the courage to become informed, you might be able you make your arguments with a semblance of logic, your smart enough. You just want to remain ignorant by choice.
I have posted this before but it bears representation of an excellent lecture on origins by Robert Hazen and esteemed scientist, at the Carnegie Institute for Science. (start at 25:19)
Sree said, “…“You” and “I”, as one-of-a-kind personalities, will vanish with the death of their respective bodies. However, life, as this wondrous existence that is manifesting as me, is something else. I don’t believe it comes from the brain…”
TimB replies: Who said life comes from the brain? Uh, nobody. I say that (our consciousness) our awareness of our life and anything else we are aware of is primarily a product of our neurology. It is physically existent in the neurological correlates of every consciousness behavior.
Our “spark of” “life” is something else, entirely. It relies largely on our complete functioning body within a habitable environment. It particularly seems to rely on breathing.
Yet, it is still not some ethereal mystery, as you would wish it to be. Organisms live while they can. When some part breaks down sufficiently, the organism no longer lives. Breathing stops, life stops.
If one has a little bitty brain are they just little bit alive? Like being a little bit pregnant.
Is the single celled paramecium alive or not? It has no brain at all. It has a few microtubules that give it motility.
How about the slime-mold which can solve mazes and copy entire highway systems what took human civil engineers years to construct. Oh, and it has a sense of time! It is a compound single cellular organism without a brain
Slime Mold
Plasmodial slime molds, like Physarum shown here, are basically enormous single cells with thousands of nuclei. They are formed when individual flagellated cells swarm together and fuse. The result is one large bag of cytoplasm with many diploid nuclei. These "giant cells" have been extremely useful in studies of cytoplasmic streaming (the movement of cell contents) because it is possible to see this happening even under relatively low magnification. In addition, the large size of the slime mold "cell" makes them easier to manipulate than most cells.
Note the term flagellated. That again suggests the presence of microtubules in each individual cell.
A second group, the cellular slime molds, spend most of their lives as separate single-celled amoeboid protists, but upon the release of a chemical signal, the individual cells aggregate into a great swarm. Cellular slime molds are thus of great interest to cell and developmental biologists, because they provide a comparatively simple and easily manipulated system for understanding how cells interact to generate a multicellular organism. There are two groups of cellular slime molds, the Dictyostelida and the Acrasida, which may not be closely related to each other.
It appears that he presence of microtubules is always associated with “motive”, even if this motive is unconscious.
IMO, these are the intermediate steps from purely chemical reaction of bio-chemical patterns, evolving toward conscious motivation along with the evolution of sensory abilities.
No mystery or magic, just a gradual self-organization from simple patterns into more complex patterns with refined and extended abilities.
