Posted on 02/12/2005 4:24:09 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
Statements such as this ring hollow from one who is so emotionally invested in a philosophy that no amount of reason can satisfy. I can understand why the panties would be in a wad when what is asserted as science is in truth a philosophy, and that philosophy in turn does not concur with objective reality. A misplaced faith such as this can only produce fruits of bitterness, resentment, and above all, egotism, all of which are amply demonstrated by dogmatic evolution cheerleaders who expect their philosophy to be received by one and all as unassailable fact.
Put up or shut up. Show us some evidence or stop whining like a democrat.
If you cannot, then you and I are individuals. If you can, then you and I are not individuals, but one.
Hint: the Scriptures speak of several instances of oneness where this is possible. Oneness in Him, with other believers and with a spouse - all of this is the same "mystery" (Ephesians 5, I Cor 2, John 15-17, Romans 8, Col 3:3 and I Cor 12)
I do so love a good challenge!
Stay tuned, PatrickHenry and Fester Chugabrew, you may find the response quite entertaining.
The road of rationality is a narrow one, but it gets you where you want to go. Once you step off that road, you're in the wilderness. I can't predict how those people will respond.
Here's the question I'm pressing you on: If there are two (or more) non-corporeal, non-spatiotemporal human souls, how is that they are two (or more) and not just one? If they possess no physical characteristics (or relations) at all, and no spatiotemporal locations at all, how can they be distinct?You can observe this for yourself by doing a simple thought experiment: meditate as deeply as you can and then tell me what I am thinking.
If you cannot, then you and I are individuals. If you can, then you and I are not individuals, but one.
I'll agree that we're individuals, two and not one. But, clearly, I'm over here and you're over there (spatial apartness), and we're both corporeal. What I'm asking is, how can two souls be distinguished if they're disembodied (lack corporeal characteristics and relations) and lack both spatial and temporal situatedness?
What our apartness actually might be - viewed as corporeal form - is a different and quite fascinating subject.
Meditation (for me, intense worship God) is the start, but success cannot be guaranteed.
I testify to having experienced this both voluntarily and involuntarily. I recall betty boop having also experienced the same. That's two "eyewitnesses" with established credibility on the forum.
There are other witnesses throughout Scripture and history. Another term for it is ectasy - which is testifed to by many of the Catholic saints.
And I'm confident there are others here on the forum who have experienced this ecstasy or rapture - if they would care to chime in.
I'm particularly looking for a response that predicts the correlation between brain states (drugged, damaged, diseased, etc) and behavior. I would like, for example, to see a non-physical or extra-physical explanation for the inability to form long-term memories. Please bear in mind that there is a prefectly functional physical explanation, complete with data, photographs of neural connections, specific sites of injuries, and so forth. Your explanation would need to predict some phenomenon that is not predicted by the standard brain model.
Oh well, because you seem to be short on time these days – I’ll go ahead and respond. But after this, you owe me three. I’ll take your simplest objections first:
But all of this is beside the point I was originally making. If you extend the calculation of pi exhaustively and extract a string of numbers out of that extension – it might appear to be “random” when it actually resulted from a “designed” computation of circumference divided by diameter.
But to your questions. The inception depends on the subject – biological life, the universe, the multi-verse, etc. The definition of algorithm was lifted from chapter 2 of Roger Penrose’s book The Emperor’s New Mind where he discussed the history of the matter from Persia and Greece (c 300 BC) and narrowed down to Euclid’s algorithm for finding the highest common factor of two numbers. The highest common factor is the largest single whole number that divides into each of the two numbers exactly. It is a systematic procedure which requires process, decision and recursion: divide one of the numbers by the other and take the remainder and the number just divided by and repeat until there is no remainder.
From this observation it is possible to make already several conclusions:
2) A. was able to mobilize her pseudopodia giving them the appropriate message to approach this pigment and engulf it.
3) With a certain delay which was obviously necessary to process the information related to the characteristic of the foreign body and the realization that it is indigestible follows another set of messages and the pigment was eliminated.
The second phase of the observation experiment was even more interesting because it brought to the evidence the proof of the presence of memory. We have removed the pigment from the underlying microscopic glass dip, we put there a new drop of clear water and again placed there another pigment grain of Chinese Ink. The Amoeba stretched the pseudopodium to the closest pigment but did not touch it and, in contrary pulled back from the pigment grain. Obviously it preserved the memory for the identification of the indigestible pigment !
It would be an exaggeration to speak about the mind or thinking but the period of might be 30 seconds which were passed by between the pigment taking and eliminating it; evokes the impression that the Amoeba needed a certain time to process the obtained information, i.e., it was "thinking."
Because you believe reality to be “thus-and-so” does make it truth, except to you.
Here are some other views of reality from a survey conducted by betty and me a long time ago:
To a mystic "reality" may include thought as substantive force and hence, a part of "reality"
To Plato "reality" includes constructs such as redness, chairness, numbers, geometry and pi
To Aristotle these constructs are not part of "reality" but merely language
To some physicists, "reality" is the illusion of quantum mechanics
To Christians "reality" is God's will and unknowable in its fullness.
Before we answer the remainder of your objections (which we will do on another thread) – you must agree to take my challenge as well, to prove that your position is science and not religion:
2. Prove a natural source for information in the universe and then translate it to information in biological life. This does not mean the DNA, but the communications that occur in living creatures - reduction of uncertainty of a molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state. [Shannon] It is an action, not a message – i.e. a life force Possible but unexplored causes include harmonics, a universal vacuum field, geometry which gives rise to strings – all of which have a Scriptural root, i.e. God speaking it all into being, Creator outside space/time.
3. Prove a natural source for the will to live, the want to live or struggle to survive that characterizes life. IOW, self-replication is not enough. In an embryo, if the cells simply self-replicated the result would be a tumor. In life, the cells are organized into functional molecular machines which communicate together striving as one organism to live. Why does the organism have a will to live? Why should the component machinery (cardiovascular, neural, etc.) cooperate to that end?
4. Explain how the incredibly delicate physical constants, physical laws and asymmetry between matter and anti-matter came to be so perfectly balanced. A slight change one way or the other and there would be no life, or no universe at all. Appeals to the plentitude argument (anything that can happen, has) will only work in an infinite past, i.e. to make that argument one would have to first answer challenge #1.
5. Explain why out of all the possible spatial and temporal dimensions our vision and mind are tuned to a particular selection of four coordinates – why not three or five, etc.
6. Explain how biological semiosis arose through natural means. Semiosis refers to the language or symbols of communication in biological life - the encoding and decoding. This has two sides, the language itself (DNA, RNA) and the understanding of it. Where’d it come from?
7. Explain how functional complexity arose through natural means – why and how molecular machines organized around functions to the benefit of the greater organism. Of particular interest would be the functions which would not work if a key part were missing – i.e. cardiovascular without the lungs, nervous system without the brain, etc.
8. Explain how eyes developed concurrently across phyla – i.e. vertebrates and invertebrates – and why there have been virtually no new body plans since the Cambrian Explosion. Immutable regulatory control genes is all I can think of. But why would they in particular be immutable?
9. Explain the emergence of qualia through nature – likes and dislikes, pain and pleasure, love and hate, good and evil, etc. – consciousness and the mind.
Whereas the religious who wish to forestall discussion are wont to say “God did it”, the atheists who wish to forestall discussion are wont to say “Nature did it”.
It is the same objection, the only difference being the correspondent's concepts of the Designer.
Such evidence however does not address at all the host for the mind, for consciousness - the cause for the inception or beginning.
Moreover, the amoeba evidence indicates that the will to live must exist outside the physical brain. So does the observational evidence of the behavior of collectives as a single mind - bees and ants, etc.
All of this observational evidence points to consciousness being hosted separately but integrated to the organism - a "field-like" property in the most primative level.
In terms of prediction - on first blush it is evident that it would manifest exactly what we observe in the continuum of the fossil record: life advancing ever more aggressively.
On the other hand, if the digits of Pi are random, then they will include ever possible finite length string, including ones that form images.
B | N > K
(Beverage, Nose, Keyboard)
4. Explain how the incredibly delicate physical constants, physical laws and asymmetry between matter and anti-matter came to be so perfectly balanced. A slight change one way or the other and there would be no life, or no universe at all. Appeals to the plentitude argument (anything that can happen, has) will only work in an infinite past, i.e. to make that argument one would have to first answer challenge #1.What's all this "incredibly delicate physical constants, physical laws and asymmetry between matter and anti-matter came to be so perfectly balanced" stuff? Those are all subjective evaluations. One could just as easily argue -- and from a Platonic viewpoint -- that matter, anti-matter, etc. are nothing but nasty impurities in an otherwise pristine, incorporeal Platonic universe filled with wonderful things like pi, and math, and isosceles triangles, spheres, rectangles, and all those other uncorrupted Platonic forms.
In other words, whether or not there's anything that requires explaining here depends on the presuppositions that one brings to the table. I suggest that it's those presuppositions that may be forcing the conclusions here.
Well, that seems true. I see quite a few articles the past few days prior to the private meeting. It's not that a finding of life would be a surprise anymore, but that it hasn't appeared anywhere that I see in the C/E dialogues. Maybe both or all parties choose to ignore anything not of this world until we are forced to emerge blinking into the light.
Chaitin's Omega was an attempt to accomplish a random numeric string. But as Wolfram pointed out to Chaitin, the formula causes the random effect and thus, the effect itself is only pseudorandom. Chaitin had no effective comeback for that criticism.
Theoretically, you could have a random number generator which would eventually create a string of length and content that would be equal to the digitization of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The digitization itself is a gigantic number.
It would be much easier however to simply write a program which increments a counter by one until the digitization number was reached. Of course, if you already knew this number, why would you bother?
Doctor Stochastic has written several random number generators and might be up to the challenge. The amount of time required to count up to Hamlet can be calculated for a particular processor. He might let one of his random number generators continue until it came up with the same number and figure the total time (less, of course, the amount of processor time required to make the comparison per iteration).
I would love to see the results! My guess is that the simpler approach would be the least time.
I'll agree that we're individuals, two and not one. But, clearly, I'm over here and you're over there (spatial apartness), and we're both corporeal.What you sense as spatial/temporal apartness is a manifestation of your vision and mind being limited to four dimensions, three spatial and one temporal.
Well, there's as yet no evidence that there exist more than three spatial dimensions or that there exists more than one temporal dimension. But, even if there were, how would additional dimensions of either sort answer the question I'm asking you, which is this: How can souls be told apart if, as you assert, they're not spatial or temporal or corporeal at all?
What our apartness actually might be - viewed as corporeal form - is a different and quite fascinating subject.
Again, I'm seeking an explanation of how souls can be distinct if they lack corporeal form.
What I'm asking is, how can two souls be distinguished if they're disembodied (lack corporeal characteristics and relations) and lack both spatial and temporal situatedness?This would require a spirit experiment to recognize others outside space and time, like the thought experiment we just did. But not everyone is able to rapture - or has involuntarily raptured - beyond the physical.
Don't the mods zot séances? (kidding)
Anway, ought I to conclude that you're unable to specify (in words) a principle of individuation for non-corporeal, non-spatial, non-temporal souls? Or have I just failed to discern it in your posts to me?
Best regards...
No, only in an existence of infinite universes. Present and past has nothing to do with it and would only apply to a given universe.
The astonishment at our particular set of physical constants needs to be balanced against a real counterexample before we can judge its probability.
I didn't really mean randon in your sense. I meant that the binary extention of the digits of Pi might include every possible finite length string.
...and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, and over and over....
THE UNIVERSE IS UNLIKELY. VERY UNLIKELY. DEEPLY, shockingly unlikely. [paragraph] "It's quite fantastic," says Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, waving a hand through the steam rising from his salmon-and-potato casserole....
In his newest book, Just Six Numbers, Rees argues that six numbers underlie the fundamental physical properties of the universe, and that each is the precise value needed to permit life to flourish. In laying out this premise, he joins a long, intellectually daring line of cosmologists and astrophysicists (not to mention philosophers, theologians, and logicians) stretching all the way back to Galileo, who presume to ask: Why are we here? As Rees puts it, "These six numbers constitute a recipe for the universe." He adds that if any one of the numbers were different "even to the tiniest degree, there would be no stars, no complex elements, no life."
The six numbers lurk in the universe's smallest and largest structures. To select one from the small end: The nucleus of a helium atom weighs 99.3 percent as much as the two protons and the two neutrons that fuse to make it. The remaining .7 percent is released mainly as heat. So the fuel that powers the sun--the hydrogen gas at Its core--converts .007 of its mass into energy When it fuses into helium. That number is a function Of the strength of the force that "glues" together the parts of an atomic nucleus.
So what? Consider this: If the number were only a mite smaller--.006 instead of .007--a proton could not bond to a neutron, and the universe would consist only of hydrogen. No chemistry, no life. And if it were slightly larger, just .008, fusion would be so ready and rapid that no hydrogen would have survived from the Big Bang. No solar systems, no life. The requisite number perches, precariously, preciously, between .006 and .008. And that's just one of Rees's six numbers. If you toss in the other five, life and the structure of the universe as we know it become unlikely to an absurd degree. Astronomer Hugh Ross has compared the state of affairs to "the possibility of a Boeing 747 aircraft being completely assembled as a result of a tornado striking a junkyard."
Drop all the adjectives you like and explain why they are what they are and what would happen if they were even slightly different.
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