1. Is Science Killing the Soul?

Comment #180426 by JerryD385 on May 14, 2008 at 9:57 pm

JD Cherry-

From what I understand, subjective experience as "what it is like to be (blank)" is, according to Dennett, completely open to empirical study in principle. He has stated that if a team of future neuroscientists were to study every aspect of his brain from moment to moment, they would know more about what it is like to be him then he would. (I think this was in one of his interviews).

If you (and Pinker) mean by subjective experience is an inner movie where all your thoughts are on display for you (and no one else) to see, then I agree. No scientist could buy tickets to that Cartesian theater.

I was just concerned that Pinker considered consciousness (or anything, for that matter) to be an epiphenomenon

2. Is Science Killing the Soul?

Comment #180399 by JerryD385 on May 14, 2008 at 7:43 pm

Great discussion between two of my favorite scientists. However, there was something that stuck out like a sore thumb for me:

Some philosophers, such as Dan Dennett, argue that that isn't a scientific problem and may not even be a coherent question -- since, by definition, pure subjective experience has no observable consequences, we're wasting our time talking about it.

"no observable consequences?" Is Pinker saying that Dennett considers subjective experience to be an epiphenomenon (the concept which Dennett abhors)?

3. Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear

Comment #179167 by JerryD385 on May 12, 2008 at 8:04 pm

"If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

AfraidToDie - this quote from Einstein should help you understand what he meant by his own "religious" beliefs

4. Exploding black holes could expose hidden dimensions

Comment #122623 by JerryD385 on February 5, 2008 at 4:54 pm

What an exciting time to be alive, when a potential grand unifying theory could be proved...err, I mean failed to be falsified.

5. What Religion's Blind Stranglehold on America Is Doing to Our Democracy

Comment #113472 by JerryD385 on January 19, 2008 at 4:50 pm

Wow. First post pleasantly surprises me. Somehow the idea of 'majority rule' has been hammered into us since grade school, making it immoral to even question if democracy is really the ideal. Good to see dogma being called out in all its forms

6. The Four Horsemen: on Christmas

Comment #99908 by JerryD385 on December 17, 2007 at 7:57 pm

I think Ill wait until the 2-disk unrated DVD is released, like any nerd worth his salt

7. An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

Comment #96590 by JerryD385 on December 10, 2007 at 6:30 pm

Atheism is not a philosophy

Atheism is not a world view.

It is a CONSEQUENCE of many different philosophies and world views, the ones championed by Prof. Dawkins being reason and empirical science.

Marxism may have failed due to the metaphysics of Dialectal materialism, or because of a top down communist system with a planned economy. It most certainly did not fail because the state mandated its people turn its collective backs on Yahweh.

Marxism does not follow from atheism, but atheism from Marxism. Goes to show that one does not have to be rational to be an atheist, but when one holds reason as the highest standard, atheism is a frequent side effect.

People like Father Morris and Pope Benedict No16 benefit from medicine, technology, expanded ethics and global communication due to reason and free thought, yet want us to go back to the darkness of faith to solve our problems

Sorry, but no one lives as long as these two do on faith alone, and not putting hope in science, technology, or any "material" solutions is not only completely stupid, it's hypocritical.

8. This Friday: Debate between Dan Dennett and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #91869 by JerryD385 on November 29, 2007 at 1:30 pm

On one hand, I fear that we will have a repeat of what happened with Shermer and Hitchens (Too nice or too belligerent).

On the other hand, Dennett is quick with metaphor and good at bringing philosophical arguments to the laypersons level. His discussion with Robert Wright on Epiphenominalism is a great example of this (See it at meaningoflife.tv ) Hopefully we get his quick wit and salient metaphors to counter the ridiculous "fallacy of the enlightenment" charge. As a Dennett fan, I can't wait to see this!

9. Allan Gregg interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #88048 by JerryD385 on November 14, 2007 at 10:18 am

Bonzai:

I agree with everything you stated except for a few points.

- Whether or not the nature of space and time are well understood outside of their descriptive mathematics is irrelevant to the study of consciousness. We may not understand how it works, but we can most certainly IDENTIFY consciousness and study it empirically. All consciousness we know of operates at this "middle world" level, and a linear model of time in 3-space works fine for biology. Any discussion of what other types of consciousness would be like are from inductive reasoning.

- Dennett's discussions of consciousness are based on empirical findings from AI, Cognitive and Neural Science. He is not merely chin wagging with word games. At this point it seems that any mathematical description of consciousness would involve an unsightly jungle of differential equations that could only be tackled by a super computer. We are not going to get a pretty looking simple t-shirt equation for it (not that you implied that, but I have heard physicists and mathematicians argue it to be the case)

10. Allan Gregg interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #88031 by JerryD385 on November 14, 2007 at 7:38 am

A few comments on this interesting spinoza v peterK et al

1. Spinoza, you state that the claim of "God created all that exists" is a straw man, and that any theist will tell you that their god only brought creation (the natural, observable universe) into being. Even if you have met theists who make this claim, this is a deist god. A theist god is not just some first cause intelligent designer. Theist gods live in a supernatural realm that they created (eg first line of the Bible or the first few lines of the Nicene creed). They really are the creator of ALL things.

2. Any coherent definition of consciousness must be distributed in time and space(see Dennett). Thus any concept of a consciousness outside of space and time is contradictory, for anything outside time must be stagnant and anything outside space must be homogeneous.

3. Whether dualist or monist, any consciousness cannot be conscious of itself, but rather conscious of what it was (back to the "must exist in time" point). Thus some other thing must exist for the consciousness to be aware of, even if it is merely a record of the consciousness and its actions. Even if it could, however, it would have no content viable for 'internal dialogue', so we are back to an incoherent concept

11. Leslie Orgel, 80; chemist was father of the RNA world theory of the origin of life

Comment #83900 by JerryD385 on October 31, 2007 at 3:33 pm

I would have never heard of Leslie Orgel if it were not for Daniel Dennett often repeating "Orgels Second rule"

12. Are the 'New Atheists' avoiding the 'real arguments'?

Comment #83897 by JerryD385 on October 31, 2007 at 3:28 pm

After speaking to many American Roman Catholics (as I was raised as one), most of them don't even think about what the Nicene creed means (most of it). It gives them a nice warm feeling, chanting it every week with 100 or so other people. Inquire what they (the moderates, mind you) really believe about God, and you get that watered down garbage about eternal and infinite consciousness pervading our spiritual blah blah blah.

Its a smoke screen, and I am reminded of the linguistic diarrhea that is post modernist writing (Dawkins "Post modernism Disrobed" being a great article, by the way)

13. Science owes its origins to Christianity or Religion

Comment #82420 by JerryD385 on October 26, 2007 at 9:34 am

Saying that Science owes its origins to religion is like saying that vaccines owe its origins to small pox.

Skepticism, reason, and free inquiry were reactions against dogma, faith, and special revelation, not extensions from it.

14. Arguments From Design, First Cause, Something Rather Than Nothing, Fundamental Constants

Comment #82334 by JerryD385 on October 26, 2007 at 5:12 am

As steve99 said,

The problem is far worse than talking about different types of substrate. If the cosmological constant was not very fine-tuned indeed, the early universe would undergo phenomenal accelerated expansion that would prevent any structure at all from forming.

Alright, I shall certainly concede that this is a mystery/ problem for science. It seems to be a rephrasing of the "why is there something rather than nothing" or "why is there structure rather than no structure." But, like Bonzai and Quine keep pointing out, we shouldn't take their "God is the default" BS seriously.

We have to get people out of their human centric thinking, or this whole "15 billion years of the universe was made just for our measly 150,000 year existence" will never end. Its still the Pangloss argument, because even if you need to explain why we have a nose, saying they were made to support glasses is fallacious and ridiculous. So perhaps the best response IS ridicule. Something like "We may not know, but COME ON, your not even CLOSE!"

15. Arguments From Design, First Cause, Something Rather Than Nothing, Fundamental Constants

Comment #81998 by JerryD385 on October 25, 2007 at 2:09 pm

Bonzai,

Well I think the point is why the universe permits life to form in the first place.

From our current understanding of how life formed, it was replication that was 'permitted'. Does this replication actually require nucleic and amino
acids, or were these just the substances that happened to stumble upon replication first (if they really were first)

It is assumed that life (not as we know it, but complex self sustaining replicators) needs certain conditions (H2O, Goldilocks zone, atoms, etc etc.). Yet Darwinian natural selection is a substrate neutral algorithm. Maybe I'm just ignorant on the cutting edge physics, but do we really know what substrate would form if any of these initial conditions (fine tunings of the strong force and such) were changed in any degree,or do we only know that they will not form the universe as we know it? If not atoms, then what?

I say that our assumptions of 'what could be' are failures of imagination as well as the relative infancy of quantum mechanics. Conway's game of life (look it up, great fun to be had) shows us that even when one knows the initial conditions and rules, surprising patterns will emerge. I have a hunch that if or when physicists can model different 'initial conditions' and play Yahweh the knob-twiddler, some unexpected things will emerge.

Again, if I am ignorant to this and these computer models have already been done, please tell me. I just wanna learn!

16. A Rational Universe Implies a Creator, Science points towards Theism

Comment #81895 by JerryD385 on October 25, 2007 at 11:17 am

Our brains evolved simulations of our "middle world"* to better act in it (Dennetts Popperian and Gregorian creatures). Rationality is a cobbled together simulation of the universe. The universe is not a simulation of rationality or intelligence.

Intelligence, while amazing and all that, is a mere shadow of the real world, a toy model, and it is our human-centric chauvinism that places it higher than reality.


*I believe Dawkins used this term to explain why we are intuitive about physics (somewhat) at our level, but on the level of quantum particles or the speed of light, our intuition breaks down. Expose people like D'sousa to five minutes of quantum physics or reletivity, and you will hear something like, "see, the universe is mysterious and irrational, therefor God." The True-Believer(tm) sees God no matter what.

17. That's not MY God or Religion you're criticising

Comment #81797 by JerryD385 on October 25, 2007 at 7:42 am

Have them redefine their version of god over and over until they have defined him out of existence (the "God is merely human compassion" crap).

Then, reiterate what they believe in without the word 'god'.

Then say, "You, my friend, are an atheist".

18. Science and Religion BOTH make faith claims

Comment #81756 by JerryD385 on October 25, 2007 at 6:16 am

You cant exchange 'belief' and 'faith'.

Do we play peek-a-boo with babies because they lack 'faith'? No. We do it because they lack the concept of object permanence. They don't have that 'belief' about the world yet.

Beliefs are ideas about the world, whether they correspond to reality or not

Faith is maintaining those ideas IN SPITE OF the fact that they don't correspond to what your senses tell you about the world.

We should stop letting the faith heads interchange the two

19. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!

Comment #81751 by JerryD385 on October 25, 2007 at 6:05 am

One line rebuttle:

"They were all men of faith."

Of course, we then have to get into the whole 'oh so atheism is a faith hohoho' crap, so make sure you get them to admit faith is belief in without or in spite of evidence or reason

20. You can't prove that you love someone, so don't expect proof of God

Comment #81731 by JerryD385 on October 25, 2007 at 5:31 am

Jesus loves you.

He just can't prove it.

21. Arguments Against Evolution

Comment #81729 by JerryD385 on October 25, 2007 at 5:27 am

To a creationist:
Hawks and eagles can see up to eight times farther away than us. So I ask you: what good it 1/8th of an eye?

22. Arguments From Design, First Cause, Something Rather Than Nothing, Fundamental Constants

Comment #81723 by JerryD385 on October 25, 2007 at 5:18 am

Like in comment 6, the "fine tuning" argument can be likened to Pangloss in Voltaire's Candidate. You dont have to mention the character, just the ideas.

"Oh, the universe is fine tuned to support life? I suppose you think our legs are fine tuned to fit in our pants, or our nose is fine tuned to support our glasses, or our hands fine tuned for gloves."

Life adapts to the conditions of the universe, NOT the other way around.

*edit* I don't mean to bring up Gould and Lewitons' argument that adaptionist stances are "Panglossian", which I think misinterprets Voltaire's intent.

23. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #81202 by JerryD385 on October 24, 2007 at 12:06 pm

Again, D'Douza uses half truths and made up statistics to "debate". These deceitful tactics are akin to those of creationists. While I think ripping their arguments to sheds in print is a useful method, engaging in debates with these con-men are doing atheists no good.

As Dawkins never gives credibility to creationists by engaging them in public debate, people like Hitchens and Shermer should have avoided these liars and continued debating the murkies like McGrath. While those murkies may be irrational and wrong, I can at least believe they honestly believe what they say. D'Souza is obviously being deliberately deceitful and should not be given the time of day. It only gives him more clout and power ("Ive gone toe to toe with Hitchens, therefore I'm legit")