kosta50: "Not "mere" matter. Dead matter. Dead matter is not conscious of itself. It is dead."
Matchett-PI: I see you BELIEVE that is TRUE.
So, rocks are conscious. Skeletons are conscious?
Matter and Mind - The Childlike Faith of the Scientific Fundamentalist
Not even close to talking snakes and donkeys...
Proving once again that you read the Scriptures like the average run-of-the-mill fundie-literalist does. But like all narrow-minded "fundamentalists" you need to look a little further.
"..language [is the] secret key to the universe.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, ...summarized by saying that "in the beginning God created the vertical and the horizontal,"...
words are the local tools of the translating function of vertical into horizontal being, of infinite into finite, of eternity into time -- if we know how to use them. If we do not live in the uncomprehending dark.
"...the Light of the Word "shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it." Or, to put it in the slightly more orthoparadoxical terms .... "the weird light shines in the dark, but the dorks don't get it. For truly, the weirdness was spread all through the world, and yet, the world basically kept behaving as if this were just your ordinary, standard-issue cosmos."
To which kosta50 replied: "Not 'mere' matter. Dead matter. Dead matter is not conscious of itself. It is dead."
Questions for kosta: What is "live" matter? Is it conscious of itself?
Just an idle observation: Dear kosta seems to be a skeptic in the strictest sense, what David Hume called a "Pyrrhonian." In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume wrote:
The Cartesian doubt...were it ever possible to be attained by any human creature (as it plainly is not) would be entirely incurable; and no reasoning could ever bring us to a state of assurance and conviction upon any subject....
For here is the chief and most confounding objection to excessive scepticism, that no durable good can ever result from it; while it remains in its full force and vigour.... But a Pyrrhonian cannot expect, that his philosophy will have any constant influence on the mind: or if it had, that its influence would be beneficial to society. On the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge anything, that all human life must perish, were his principles universally and steadily to prevail. All discourse, all action would immediately cease; and men remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence.... Nature is always too strong for principle.... [A]ll his objections are mere amusement, and can have no other tendency than to show the whimsical condition of mankind, who must act and reason and believe....