That is not the point.
IMO. Rather than enforcing a benign evolutionary path to self-reliance combined with symbiotic relationships, it demands an attitude to obey an imaginary higher authority and is available for exploitation to the individual who uses this influence for his own profits.
I am arguing that a god is an imaginary hallucination, that can only exist by constant intellectual reinforcement.
“Worship”, “Prayer”, “Sacrifice”, “Proselytizing”, “Enforcing”!
Think on that for a moment.
Religion in humans is as dangerous as Program in AI is dangerous.
The part where God will never abandons you… that is where we part ways. God doesn’t give a damn- not about that child being molested or about the woman getting the crap beat out of her by her man, not about the homeless old lady… He or She is either all powerful and doesn’t care or doesn’t have power at all, which would make them not a god or doesn’t frigging exist.
I didn’t know you had one.
I don’t know. I never had a god that was like a security blanket. I gave lip service so I wouldn’t catch hell from my relatives.
Of course not. Otherwise, I would tell my 79 year old mother to give a rest, because she’s going to die and her soul won’t go anywhere as her body rots. That would be cruel.
Gene Roddenberry, with his hand heading towards the Enterprise to grab it. (TOS- Who Mourns for Adonis)Now that’s my kind of god. ROFL!
I did and it doesn’t hold water.
Specific agendas are constantly reinforced and can produce really really twisted results.
But you’re ignoring that inner impulse people possess that needs the mystery of life resolved by something bigger, the great watch maker, or god will do.
As a teenager I thoughtful rejected religion because of all those things you point out and that I’d noticed. But I still spent at least the next decade wondering if I was wrong about “god” and constantly tried to test that. No one preached me into continuing to examine options. Those experiences helped me to eventually fully reject the notion for god.
But, then it turns out I replaced god with the universe and evolution, “God IS Creation” became my personal go to concept, or mantra.
Then a few years back I finally landed on the appreciation of the body/brain ~ mind divide, which settled the ‘God’ question once and for all. Realizing the only place god could have come from is from within ourselves, and that’s where gods exist within the human conception, our personal struggles to understand things that are simply beyond our understanding.
It’s really simply - heck I don’t even feel guilt for my habitual use of “The good lord willing” any more. Even if the concept of “Lord”* is on that totally repulses me.
Because that’s where religions turn ugly, when their gods become Lords. All the contempt you’ve outlined for religion, I guess I have poured into the “Lord” thing.
Yet, the truth is, when I set off for a walk to the river, or a drive into town, or a flight across the country, … I’ll be there at such and such a time the good lord will’n,
because I seem to have a need to recognize (and remind myself), that nothing is for sure, until after it happens.
Yes, yes, yes. You’re referring to a real God of influence over our physical lives. I’m talking about the conception of god.
The god that doesn’t give a damned about child molesters, is the molester’s & enabler’s own gods.
I’ve told the story of when I was a toddler playing on the rug and once asked my mom “what is god?” and she responded with: “A Spect of Dust that wanted to be more.”
It was like a lightening bolt through me, one that impacted my entire world outlook, and that I believe is what gave me the armor to withstands the onslaught of religion later, simply because it so perfectly encompassed God for me and my sensibilities.
So my religion and Lutheran phase came and went, and the rest is history. And it was good, because it put me in touch with the religious experience others have.
Perhaps there’s a buried notion of God as yearning & potential in there that appeals to me.
You mean there was never anything else under it.
That’s where I was lucky, my parents were not religious at all, agnostic would best describe them, but they also felt we need to be exposed to it, but had to work it out for ourselves, so the only time I ever experience that nasty you did, was during my 6, 7th grade at Tabor Lutheran school. Not that they were abusive, it was actually a very good school, but the pressure from priest and during communion class, gave me a taste.
Regarding your mom’s soul not going anywhere, I would disagree.
Look into the mirror sometime,
how much of your mom’s soul is nestled within your heart?
I wonder,
Let’s see you started out a genuine Flat-lander,.
Then became a merchant marine,
Then wound up in the wilds of the Rockies,
Among a bunch of other very interesting stuff,
Seems to me, a desire to solve the mystery of what lies over there, is alive and well within you.
Even your conviction about math seems like it could be your determination to slay, or simply master, that mystery.
Now that I wrote that, I’m imagining that my Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide, is how I mastered the mystery. And now I find myself content with the other mysteries, they fall together into a consilient whole, internally consistent vision.
Seems to me, a desire to solve the mystery of what lies over there, is alive and well within you.
Even your conviction about math seems like it could be your determination to slay, or simply master, that mystery.
Oh I was cutting mushrooms apart when I was 6 trying to see what’s there. But for me, it is not so much mastering the sciences as it is seeking a general understanding of how things work.
I might add that after 7 years as Bookkeeper/Payroll/Insurance accountant for a multi-million dollar non-profit community service organization with 5 bank accounts, I have acquired a deep respect for mathematics and the simple elegance by which complex problems can be solved. Double-entry bookkeeping is all about symmetry and balance.
Now that I wrote that, I’m imagining that my Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide, is how I mastered the mystery. And now I find myself content with the other mysteries, they fall together into a consilient whole, internally consistent vision.
Yes, there is no need to get a degree in any scientific discipline in order to “understand” the principles of growth and variety of survival techniques in living organisms.
It appears that the mathematics of gene expression allows for an infinite variety of biological expression in reality.
AFAIK about genes, I don’t see them more as a biochemical string of variable growth codes in a dynamic environment. Not a fixed blue-print, but a set of growth commands.
A form of quorum sensing?
As to the actual copying of these command strings, I believe it is done with remarkable (mathematical) fidelity , apart from external stressors (injury) that may introduce forced changes (mutations).
And of course, the introduction of male DNA creates a whole new genetic dimension along with a variety of changes in growth instructions.
Not all DNA is compatible. Genetic blood types may be incompatible, yet there are blood types that are compatible with all other blood types. Evolution always seems to find several solutions to these complex functions, and natural selection selects for adaptability and survival to procreate.
Note that Mendel used artificially bred peas in a sterile environment. It is easy to duplicate results in such an environment. In nature a whole additional set of stressors are present that make any accurate prediction very difficult.
Can lab-grown brains become conscious?
A handful of experiments are raising questions about whether clumps of cells and disembodied brains could be sentient, and how scientists would know if they were.
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Difficult questions will be raised as models of the human brain get closer to replicating its functions, explain Nita A. Farahany, Henry T. Greely and 15 colleagues.
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Sure, the science is for later in our lives, at this early stage it’s pure discovery and absorption.
Folds within folds . . .
True dat and I have minimal bookkeeping, but my wife is an expert, still I know you mean. Although, it way back when I was creating multiplication tables for my kids, you simple grid, 1 to 10 across top and side, then fill in. I remember thinking what an amazing numbers of interesting sequence pop up. So I’m not blind to your deep appreciation. Could be a question of character, I have too much wavy gravy in my tree hugging heart, to give it more than a nod.
And it’s not pretty.
We have become Gods ourselves, lacking all wisdom and even historical perspective. That is not a good mix.
He’s still annoying, but CC, you might like #25. maybe skip the first half to where he talks about Thomas Bjorkman’s work. He basically waves a hand and wipes out the philosophy of the previous 3000 years, saying it’s either based on bad or no science, or it’s pseudo-science, or as you call it, the Abrahamic mindset.
Not sure if you’ll like where he’s going, to cognitive science, what you might call the mindscape. But he lays out several approaches to “mind” that are going on right now and says these need to be integrated in some way.
We have not become gods. We believe we have become gods. “In his image”!
In reality , we are no more important than ants, except that we can identify our own impact on earth’s environment, yet persist in illogical behaviors.
We can make the blind see and the lame walk. We can call for an angel and one will rescue us. We can slip the surly bonds of earth. We have rebuilt the tower of Babel. Moving mountains is done every day. We have shown a capacity to be more moral than the angry and capricious Gods.
We are better than the actual gods of any culture. We don’t claim prophecies or promise redemption then fail to deliver. We can’t create a universe, yet, but most gods don’t claim that. We aren’t perfect, like gods claim, but we can demonstrate their weaknesses, so perfection is not really in the definition of god.
We know it’s ourselves that create meaning, not some ultimate cosmic resolution to all time. We don’t need them
Episode 26 is directly relevant to the science discussion going on now in other threads. at 24:00 he explains what he means by metaphor, a little tedious, but hang in there, then goes on to apply that who we need to take the sciences of the mind, that are not integrating right now, learning, AI, psychology, anthropology, a couple of others, and bring together a new idea that has “multi-aptness”, that is, application to multiple questions that we are grappling with.
The fun part follows.
If you have untrustworthy input, that creates an idea that seems apt, you have a conspiracy theory. If you have very highly reliable input, but come up with an idea that doesn’t converge on the questions, you have trivial science. Dan Dennet’s deepity. If you start with something that seems to have multi-aptness, but retreat to the trivial science when you are challenged, that’s Motte and Bailey.
The beginning of this episode relates to what I’m seeing in the other threads here.
To me, science is about understanding the machinery of ourselves. As Vervaeke says, it’s the framing we create between us and “real” world that’s out there, the one we can’t access directly. It points to forces that don’t have consciousness, don’t have meaning, and we have learned that we don’t receive meaning from those forces, or any other forces, like the ancients used to believe. However, our machinery is an interpretation engine, and people throughout history have attempted to interpret the data coming in, most often being wrong about it.
The methods of science are better than speculative thinking, but that thinking goes on anyway. Each person is born without the scientific knowledge of the last 500 years. It has to be learned and integrated into the magical thinking they are born with.
What I see Write4U doing is equivocating “meaning” with universal forces and “ultimate meaning”. Religious people do this in a different way. They say God provides ultimate meaning and science takes it away. But those are two different uses of the word “meaning”, so it’s a useless statement. Write4U says science tells us the universe doesn’t have meaning and he wants to stick with science. I’m not sure if he says it, but some do say that we have proved that life is meaningless. But that isn’t the same “meaning” as what it means to a person to care for their child. Raising a child is meaningful. It doesn’t matter that the universe didn’t provide the meaning. Those two facts can exist together if you don’t conflate the different definitions of “meaning”.
A way of looking at it is by getting a proper understanding of entropy. On the billions of years scale, the star that we call the Sun is going to burn out and/or explode. The Earth where we live will go cold and possibly we will never escape it, or colonize anywhere else and all humans will be gone and no one will know our story. That’s trivially true and doesn’t mean anything. On the scale of a lifetime, during the time the Sun is still around, each one of us takes in so much information every second, we can’t process it. We use that to make our next move, call it instinct or “choosing”. It doesn’t matter, some processing is going on. We call that making meaning. Our next moment may be joyful or sad. If you can’t see a reason for wanting to be happy, I’m not sure what else to say.
During that, he makes the bold statement, " “The scientific revolution produced this scientific worldview that seems to be explaining everything except how I generate scientific explanations.”
I’m not sure I can defend this, but I can’t refute it either. It accepts there is a “problem of consciousness”, I think. It relegates philosophy that is over 150 years old to a quaint sort of rubbish bin, while simultaneously keeping science from getting too cocky.
I like it as a “waking up” moment for humanity. I can imagine some pre-human a million years ago wondering what the stars are, then going back to hunting and gathering. Now, we are in the midst of another awakening, one that is taking place planet-wide.
Well I’ve rewatched #26 from about 20:00 and am at #27 about 28:00,
But am cleaning house, doing laundry, packing, Maddy walking, etc., so don’t know if I’ll have a chance to comment much right now.
Though #27 has a good quote for Write to chew on:
17:55
whole space that’s why a cart was doomed from the beginning you can’t turn yourself into mr. Spock you can’t turn yourself into data you can’t turn yourself into an algorithmic machine that is pursuing certainty that is cognitive suicide that tells us something right away by the way because logic deductive logic is certainty it is algorithmic it works in terms of certainty an argument is valid if it is impossible for the premises to be true at the conclusion false logic works in terms of the normativity of certainty it operates algorithmically so does math . . .
=================
Here’s pie in the sky idea.
Round up some interested people and do a ZOOM viewing and discussion. Oops a fly just dove into my vision, copyright infringement.
I am getting a better grip on how I differ and why I’m bringing something very different, but much more fundamental and needed for a clearer perspective on our Meaning Crisis, because this new perspective, had implications for his academic objective and our general meaning crisis, simply because it is so utterly fundamental and supported by Earth sciences.
It doesn’t ‘challenge’ anything he’s saying, it simply informs,
with an underly “truth” - that is an irreducible observation.
Human Mind ~ Physical Reality divide
We are evolved biological thinking organisms, our consciousness is the reflection of our body communicating with itself.
Your body is the cumulative sum product of all the days of biological evolution. ~ Your mind is the cumulative sum product of all the days of your existence.
Consciousness is a biologically driven process, and it is an inactive transaction, not a one way process.
But Maddy is really pushing me, and I really shouldn’t be sitting here.
Later.
Oh as for that video I thought of a nice analogy, his video shows the budding awareness, whereas I’m not at the blooming process. No conflict.
[quote=“lausten, post:134, topic:10251”]
What I see Write4U doing is equivocating “meaning” with universal forces and “ultimate meaning”. Religious people do this in a different way. They say God provides ultimate meaning and science takes it away. But those are two different uses of the word “meaning”, so it’s a useless statement.
When I say meaning in context of purpose. Objectively, the universe has no meaning or purpose universal. It is a mathematically self-organizing dynamic geometry.
This is different from subjective meaning as experiencing the joy of creating off-spring and child rearing and marveling at watching a baby discover its fingers
With living organisms the word meaning is associated with emotion, a feeling of accomplishment.
Write4U says science tells us the universe doesn’t have meaning and he wants to stick with science. I’m not sure if he says it, but some do say that we have proved that life is meaningless. But that isn’t the same “meaning” as what it means to a person to care for their child. Raising a child is meaningful. It doesn’t matter that the universe didn’t provide the meaning. Those two facts can exist together if you don’t conflate the different definitions of “meaning”.
I agree.
A way of looking at it is by getting a proper understanding of entropy. On the billions of years scale, the star that we call the Sun is going to burn out and/or explode. The Earth where we live will go cold and possibly we will never escape it, or colonize anywhere else and all humans will be gone and no one will know our story. That’s trivially true and doesn’t mean anything. On the scale of a lifetime, during the time the Sun is still around, each one of us takes in so much information every second, we can’t process it.
We use that to make our next move, call it instinct or “choosing”. It doesn’t matter, some processing is going on. We call that making meaning. Our next moment may be joyful or sad. If you can’t see a reason for wanting to be happy, I’m not sure what else to say.
Biologoical organisms “attach” meaning" to certain behaviors. Obviously, a rock dosn not attach meaning to its existence. IMO, neither does the universe. It just is.
I think that’s right. You build on this, but in a different direction, sort of a deck, off the main structure.
As for the big quote, I liked that discussion too, but it was too complicated to get into here. The concepts he presents before that is important, that to approach a problem that’s complex, you run into “combinatorial explosion”, needing more computing power than there is in the universe to explore every possible option. This is the algorithmic (i.e. mathematical) approach. It’s not possible for humans certainly, and nothing else is doing math, so it’s just not possible. There is something we do when we think rationally that can’t be put into a formula.
So there would be no natural reason for it to have any awareness, nor kernel of consciousness, in any way, shape, or form.
It’s only when the complexity of organism is achieved,
does a need for awareness…consciousness arise.
