Agnostics are Believers

[Questerr]

What exactly do you claim is a part of this supposed “non-physical” element?

I don't know. But I don't claim its "nothing".

 

[devildavid]

I don't know. But I don't claim it’s"nothing".

Then what does non physical mean and how would it ever be observed and objectively seen as non physical? And saying I don’t know is not an answer because you are the one who wants the non physical to be considered. Why should it be considered at all? Just because we made up the concept?

 

[watsup]

I don't know. But I don't claim its "nothing".

Again, your argumsnts have no merit because they are all based on “I don’t know”. That’s why we have science, to try to uncover the mysteries of the universe. Why even join in debate, why don’t we all just walk around saying “I don’t know”. Your claims have no more merit than a child supposing a Santa Claus. There is no indication or evidence that there is anything but the physical universe and what is in it. This is why my OP title is correct, because all that you agnostics have for your claims of “non-physical” is BELIEF. Sorry, but we reject your belief for total lack of evidence.

 

[Toggle Almendro]

A typical agnostic will claim that “there is the possibility of a God/gods/ID, but then add a qualifier such as “but the probability is extremely low” to show their lack of confidence in the actuality of such an entity.

That's not what I say.

I say that I have no idea, and neither does anyone else.

But I hope there is something meaningful in store for us after we die.

It's just a hope though. I have no idea. And neither does anyone else.

Again, your argumsnts have no merit because they are all based on “I don’t know”. That’s why we have science, to try to uncover the mysteries of the universe. Why even join in debate, why don’t we all just walk around saying “I don’t know”. Your claims have no more merit than a child supposing a Santa Claus. There is no indication or evidence that there is anything but the physical universe and what is in it. This is why my OP title is correct, because all that you agnostics have for your claims of “non-physical” is BELIEF. Sorry, but we reject your belief for total lack of evidence.

Saying that you don't know, when you in fact do not know, has quite a lot of merit.

Reject what you want. You have no evidence to support any alternative views.

 

[watsup]

I say that I have no idea, and neither does anyone else.

You have no idea of what?

Saying that you don't know, when you in fact do not know, has quite a lot of merit.

What is it that you don't know?

 

[Toggle Almendro]

You have no idea of what?
What is it that you don't know?

I was addressing the topic of the thread.

 

[Mithrae]

So there really is no point to this at all. Her recounting the experience doesn’t show naturalistic explanations to be tenuous at all. This doesn’t put a dent in the confidence that consciousness emerges only from active neural networks like brains.

If there's a 60% probability that the report of a falsifying event for a theory is true, for rational people that should put a 60% dent in their confidence in that theory.

The series of coincidences and circumstances required for your 'naturalistic explanation' - that Pam had anaesthesia awareness to begin with; that she clearly heard sounds and speech through her blocked ears and white noise/clicking earphones; that she remembered the ~50 decibel conversation and music but not the ~100 decibel clicking; that she somehow interpreted the drill sound well enough to roughly describe a tool she'd never seen; and that she misperceived the timeline of her experience relative to the surgery and specifically EEG flatline - are not impossible by any means: But proclaiming that they are not tenuous, and that you maintain complete confidence in your (utterly unevidenced) notion that consciousness is absent everywhere besides neural networks is a stance of simple dogmatism, plain and simple. Which was my fourth point earlier of course, that materialists need to be dogmatic about cases like this because it's a closed, exclusionary theory.

 

[Mithrae]

Again, your argumsnts have no merit because they are all based on “I don’t know”. That’s why we have science, to try to uncover the mysteries of the universe. Why even join in debate, why don’t we all just walk around saying “I don’t know”. Your claims have no more merit than a child supposing a Santa Claus. There is no indication or evidence that there is anything but the physical universe and what is in it. This is why my OP title is correct, because all that you agnostics have for your claims of “non-physical” is BELIEF. Sorry, but we reject your belief for total lack of evidence.

There is no indication or evidence that the physical universe is as you imagine it (quite the opposite, if anything). You're arbitrarily choosing one side or one set of metaphysical beliefs to "reject for lack of evidence" and thereby pretending that your own side, your own assumptions of an atheistic reality must somehow become valid by default. Obviously many religious folk do very much the same thing.

In the absence of evidence either way, "I don't know" really is the only honest answer. Of course as I've pointed out,
A) positioning one's confidence in a proposition around the 50% mark or anywhere else on the uncertainty scale is at least as valid and informative as positioning one's confidence at zero or one hundred percent, and
B) there are several decent reasons for favouring a quasi-theistic theory that there is some kind of consciousness behind reality as a whole, but that's still only a 60% or 70% confidence IMO, still just "I don't know but maybe..."

 

[watsup]

If there's a 60% probability that the report of a falsifying event for a theory is true, for rational people that should put a 60% dent in their confidence in that theory.

but that's still only a 60% or 70% confidence IMO,

You keep using percentages as if they actually meant something, but they don’t since youjist make them up out of while cloth rather than having any actual statistics from which to derive them. I suppose that you think it makes your claims seem more reasoned, but ot doesn’t. It totally lacks any real merit at all.

 

[watsup]

There is no indication or evidence that the physical universe is as you imagine it (quite the opposite, if anything). You're arbitrarily choosing one side or one set of metaphysical beliefs to "reject for lack of evidence" and thereby pretending that your own side, your own assumptions of an atheistic reality must somehow become valid by default. Obviously many religious folk do very much the same thing.

In the absence of evidence either way, "I don't know" really is the only honest answer. Of course as I've pointed out,
A) positioning one's confidence in a proposition around the 50% mark or anywhere else on the uncertainty scale is at least as valid and informative as positioning one's confidence at zero or one hundred percent, and
B) there are several decent reasons for favouring a quasi-theistic theory that there is some kind of consciousness behind reality as a whole, but that's still only a 60% or 70% confidence IMO, still just "I don't know but maybe..."

Your obfuscation remains intact in that I have often asked relevant questions which you then conveniently overlook in favor of yet more word salad. As fat as I can tell from your incessant rambling, you seem to believe that just because there is consciousness directly associated with the human brain, then that would indicate that there is some sort of Big Consciousness (BC), some sort of godlike item, that was also extant. Truth is, that is just a variant of the Watchmaker argument which has been effectively rebutted and refuted for a very long time. You are no different from the other religionists and theists and ID proponents in simply making stuff up and then demanding that others knock it down even though you present no objective, reality-based evidence to support your claims of an ethereal existence of some sort. Sorry, that just doesn’t work with atheists.

 

[watsup]

I was addressing the topic of the thread.

That’s fine, but you still have not answered my questions. You claim that you “have no idea”. Of what specifically have you no idea? You also say that you “don’t know”. What is it that you don’t know?

 

[soylentgreen]

There is no indication or evidence that the physical universe is as you imagine it (quite the opposite, if anything). You're arbitrarily choosing one side or one set of metaphysical beliefs to "reject for lack of evidence" and thereby pretending that your own side, your own assumptions of an atheistic reality must somehow become valid by default. Obviously many religious folk do very much the same thing.

In the absence of evidence either way, "I don't know" really is the only honest answer. Of course as I've pointed out,
A) positioning one's confidence in a proposition around the 50% mark or anywhere else on the uncertainty scale is at least as valid and informative as positioning one's confidence at zero or one hundred percent, and
B) there are several decent reasons for favouring a quasi-theistic theory that there is some kind of consciousness behind reality as a whole, but that's still only a 60% or 70% confidence IMO, still just "I don't know but maybe..."

Several??? Yet I would confidently bet that you cannot bring up even one that would qualify as decent.

 

[watsup]

In the absence of evidence either way, "I don't know" really is the only honest answer.

So yiuand the others want to be able to make up your imaginary entities or items, without the least bit of objective, reality-based evidence, and then claim that the “only honest” answer is for everyone to accept it. Sorry, not here. I would not be honest with myself if I were to accept such a farce. For further info:

Imagination, culture, influencers, and God

Superstitious humans have always done things to worship gods they believed in so that the gods would do good things for them. So the worship of gods is part and parcel of superstition. Rituals, idols, incantations, sacrifices, prayers are all part of the same human superstitions of worshipping...

debatepolitics.com

 

[Mircea]

A typical agnostic will claim that “there is the possibility of a God/gods/ID, but then add a qualifier such as “but the probability is extremely low” to show their lack of confidence in the actuality of such an entity. It reminds me of the old saying “you can’t be just a little bit pregnant”. In this case, once you acknowledge the “possibility”, no matter how slight, of a God/gods/ID, then you have assumed the mantle of “believer” every bit as much as a Tosca or a Daisy or the rest of them in here and elsewhere.
I ask the question: why should I believe in the possibility of such an outrageous concept as a God/gods/ID? Answer: as an atheist, I reject that. In addition to other reasons, almost every religionist/theist will eventually claim that because the universe and everything in it is just too complex to have come Into being on its own, then there “MUST” be a God as an explanation/“cause”. I have seen many agnostics such as DrewPaul at the present time also user that line of “reasoning”. That is a statement that has holes big enough to drive the proverbial Mack truck through, namely that said God/ID would have to be almost infinitely more complex than the universe to be able to just “create” such an almost infinitely complex entity in the first place. It boggles the mind think that “believers” such as religionists/theists and believers can actually buy into such a concept.

Nice Straw Man. Whose field did you raid to get all that straw for your Straw Man?

Your lack of intellect is why you cannot discern between Agnostics and Deists/Theists.

To Deists/Theists god-things are anthropomorphic; aware of their existence and involved in their lives in some way, shape or form because they falsely believe they are special and that Earth is somehow special and when they die they will be judged for the things they did or did not do and rewarded or punished in an afterlife in Heaven or Hell.

To Agnostics, if a god-thing would exist, it would be incomprehensible, never anthropomorphic, and it wouldn't give a damn if you exist or not because you are nothing.

Your value as a human is on a par with a speck of dust floating around out in Space.

In fact, to the Agnostic deity, if it exists, a Hydrogen atom is more valuable than any human or other life-form on Earth if for no other reason than a Hydrogen atom cannot be created or destroyed, unlike humans.

The Agnostic doesn't believe in judgment whether a god-thing exists or not because it doesn't care what you do or do not do or what you believe or don't believe.

To the Agnostic, the god thing, if it exists, could be an unconscious energy form, perhaps the very energy scientists are seeking to discover that binds everything together.

So, Agnostics are free to dither or waffle, because there's no harm in it. What will happen do them when they die? Nothing, which is why Atheists are free to totally reject any god-thing because there's no harm in it.

The x-tians are too stupid to see that. They're not smart enough to understand what they read.

There's a reason why the Yahweh-thing punishes people with death or plagues or boils or other suffering and rewards people with camels and riches in the here and now.

It's because when someone died, Yahweh was powerless. He can't touch them once they're dead or reward/punish them.

They just don't understand the evolution of theology from polytheism to henotheism to monolatry because they ain't monotheists.

 

[watsup]

Nice Straw Man. Whose field did you raid to get all that straw for your Straw Man?

Your lack of intellect is why you cannot discern between Agnostics and Deists/Theists.

To Deists/Theists god-things are anthropomorphic; aware of their existence and involved in their lives in some way, shape or form because they falsely believe they are special and that Earth is somehow special and when they die they will be judged for the things they did or did not do and rewarded or punished in an afterlife in Heaven or Hell.

To Agnostics, if a god-thing would exist, it would be incomprehensible, never anthropomorphic, and it wouldn't give a damn if you exist or not because you are nothing.

Your value as a human is on a par with a speck of dust floating around out in Space.

In fact, to the Agnostic deity, if it exists, a Hydrogen atom is more valuable than any human or other life-form on Earth if for no other reason than a Hydrogen atom cannot be created or destroyed, unlike humans.

The Agnostic doesn't believe in judgment whether a god-thing exists or not because it doesn't care what you do or do not do or what you believe or don't believe.

To the Agnostic, the god thing, if it exists, could be an unconscious energy form, perhaps the very energy scientists are seeking to discover that binds everything together.

So, Agnostics are free to dither or waffle, because there's no harm in it. What will happen do them when they die? Nothing, which is why Atheists are free to totally reject any god-thing because there's no harm in it.

The x-tians are too stupid to see that. They're not smart enough to understand what they read.

There's a reason why the Yahweh-thing punishes people with death or plagues or boils or other suffering and rewards people with camels and riches in the here and now.

It's because when someone died, Yahweh was powerless. He can't touch them once they're dead or reward/punish them.

They just don't understand the evolution of theology from polytheism to henotheism to monolatry because they ain't monotheists.

Not sure what to say since I think that those gods or god-like entities that you mention are as equally unlikely as the Christian God, except without much of the baggage. In fact, none of this is original since we have seen numerous agnostics also show arrogance towards the Christian God in order to supposedly buck up their own imaginary entity. I am mostly bored with the Christians and mostly let others respond to them and their dogma and doctrines, and your claims about them fit into that category of “bored”.
You are also like the deists and many agnostics in proposing your own supposition of a god, namely the Bigger Consciousness god for,which, like them, you have no objective, reality-based evidence than they do. And yes, the god of energy has been mentioned numerous times before in here. “There is nothing new under the B&S forum sun”.
And yes, you are like so many other agnostics in here who have claimed “don’t know” or “can’t know” as regards a god. Agnostics like to see that as the intellectual position, but I see it as nothing more than an excuse to which to hide behind because they have no evidence.
I make no excuses or apologies for having an evidence-based outlook as regards a God/gods/ID. Do you have any?

 

[Mithrae]

Several??? Yet I would confidently bet that you cannot bring up even one that would qualify as decent.

I explained my line of thinking in posts #323 and #325:

Let's pretend (for the sake of argument) that there is no evidence for a conscious reality; then if (as seems quite clear) there is also no evidence for a non-conscious reality, the two would be on exactly the same footing. Two equally broad and vague options which are mutually exclusive and cover the whole range of possibilities; the plausibility of a conscious reality would be exactly the same as the plausibility of a non-conscious reality, 50/50.

They're not actually on equal footing of course, for at least three main reasons that I've outlined so far, none of which have been coherently addressed:

1 > We know that consciousness is real - it's literally the most certain thing we possibly can know - whereas your supposed non-conscious 'material' stuff is pure speculation (whose facile 'common sense' plausibility likely derives from our societies' dualist Christian heritage, our materialist capitalist culture, and some biases from our infantile cognitive development). Extrapolating from our certainty that consciousness is real to the likelihood that reality is conscious, while far from certain, is more reasonable than a wild shot in the dark about non-conscious stuff.​

2 > Introducing this speculative non-conscious material reality means introducing the unresolved hard problem of consciousness, the question of how observable objective quantitative stuff could even in theory give rise to undetectable subjective qualitative phenomena at all; it means introducing a necessary premise of one's worldview that essentially amounts to "There was non-conscious stuff, then some magic happened and there was consciousness."​

3 > Our reality appears to be highly complex and 'finely-tuned', and there are only two observed mechanisms by which complexity can develop from simpler antecedents; biological evolution based on enduring selection of genetic variation, and conscious thought based on enduring selection of 'memetic' variation: So while the highly complex omni-god of traditional Christianity fails the parsimony test as any kind of explanation for our complex reality, extrapolating from our certainty that consciousness is real to the likelihood that reality is conscious also provides a plausible potential answer to some other enduring mysteries we face by allowing an observation-derived simple-to-complex mechanism that applies to reality as a whole (ironically, essentially taking parts of Hume's "infant deity" rhetoric quite seriously).​

I'd actually already hinted at a fourth reason also, which I didn't include above because what I'd mentioned of it in a previous post was only a fairly minor point, but on reflection is probably as important as #3 above:

4 > There are plausible though not conclusive counter-examples to the theory that brains are necessary for consciousness even in humans, such as the case of Pam Reynolds' documented experience of vivid consciousness during an operation involving clinical death and total EEG flatline. Note that while the theory of a conscious reality is perfectly compatible with brains being necessary for consciousness in humans, evidence that brain activity may not be necessary for consciousness even in humans would pretty much cripple any materialist view. Thus while we obviously don't know whether Pam's experience occurred at the same time period of her operation as the EEG flatline, a proponent of materialism would have to simply assume blindly that it could not have despite the lack of evidence supporting that assumption. In other words the idea of a non-conscious reality is a closed, exclusionary theory which makes it inherently less plausible than more open theories since it requires a more exacting set of conditions to hold in order for it to be true, which are often contrary to people's reported observations.​

 

[soylentgreen]

Let's pretend (for the sake of argument) that there is no evidence for a conscious reality; then if (as seems quite clear) there is also no evidence for a non-conscious reality, the two would be on exactly the same footing. Two equally broad and vague options which are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive; the plausibility of a conscious reality would be exactly the same as the plausibility of a non-conscious reality, 50/50.

They're not actually on equal footing of course, for at least three main reasons that I've outlined (so far), none of which have been coherently addressed:

​

1 > We know that consciousness is real - it's literally the most certain thing we possibly can know - whereas your supposed non-conscious 'material' stuff is pure speculation (whose facile 'common sense' plausibility likely derives from our societies' dualist Christian heritage, our materialist capitalist culture, and some biases from our infantile cognitive development). Extrapolating from our certainty that consciousness is real to the likelihood that reality is conscious, while far from certain, is more reasonable than a wild shot in the dark about non-conscious stuff.​

​

2 > Introducing this speculative non-conscious material reality means introducing the unresolved hard problem of consciousness, the question of how observable objective quantitative stuff could even in theory give rise to undetectable subjective qualitative phenomena at all; it means introducing a necessary premise of one's worldview that essentially amounts to "There was non-conscious stuff, then some magic happened and there was consciousness."​

​

3 > Our reality appears to be highly complex and 'finely-tuned', and there are only two observed mechanisms by which complexity can develop from simpler antecedents; biological evolution based on enduring selection of genetic variation, and conscious thought based on enduring selection of 'memetic' variation: So while the highly complex omni-god of traditional Christianity fails the parsimony test as any kind of explanation for our complex reality, extrapolating from our certainty that consciousness is real to the likelihood that reality is conscious also provides a plausible potential answer to some other enduring mysteries we face by allowing an observation-derived simple-to-complex mechanism that applies to reality as a whole (ironically, essentially taking parts of Hume's "infant deity" rhetoric quite seriously).​

Your basic premise is false. As it is based on an assumption that evidence is all that is required to verify which state exists. Where as in reality we not only do not have any evidence but not one good reason can be given for the existence of a god. In your assumption you simply give weight to a hope of evidence rather than actual evidence we could consider thereby falsely making having evidence the equal to there is no evidence.

1. Conscious is no more real than the material world. After all if you are going to go around doubting one then why give credibility to another when we could easily make up a scenario where your simply a dream someone else is having about you being conscious.

2. Remarkable !! though not unexpected. 2 is simply a repeat of 1. And again same answer if you doubt one then how can you not doubt the other. The answer to both of course is that there has yet to shown a consciousness that exists without a corporeal state. where as the material world tends to be consistent enough that everyone can agree with what they experience . If I point to a rock everybody would agree that it was a rock. If some could demonstrate that it was instead a cloud then reality and the materila world might be questionable. Where as what someone thinks or even if they a re thinking is a mystery till they tell us.

3. Really! your going to push the crap argument of fine tuning. That is simply a bias that carbon based life is the only life form, Another epic failure of an argument.

 

[soylentgreen]

I'd actually already hinted at a fourth reason also, which I didn't include above because what I'd mentioned of it in a previous post was only a fairly minor point, but on reflection is probably as important as #3 above:

4 > There are plausible though not conclusive counter-examples to the theory that brains are necessary for consciousness even in humans, such as the case of Pam Reynolds' documented experience of vivid consciousness during an operation involving clinical death and total EEG flatline. Note that while the theory of a conscious reality is perfectly compatible with brains being necessary for consciousness in humans, evidence that brain activity may not be necessary for consciousness even in humans would pretty much cripple any materialist view. Thus while we obviously don't know whether Pam's experience occurred at the same time period of her operation as the EEG flatline, a proponent of materialism would have to simply assume blindly that it could not have despite the lack of evidence supporting that assumption. In other words the idea of a non-conscious reality is a closed, exclusionary theory which makes it inherently less plausible than more open theories since it requires a more exacting set of conditions to hold in order for it to be true, which are often contrary to people's reported observations.​

You have to be kidding with this one.
Research has clearly shown high activity in the brain in near death experiences. The visions people see are merely from an over active brain coping with dying. Not some mystical experience. The fact that they visualise themselves on an operating table is nothing more than what their brain has created in an imaginary scenario.

 

[watsup]

I explained my line of thinking in posts #323 and #325:

Let's pretend (for the sake of argument) that there is no evidence for a conscious reality; then if (as seems quite clear) there is also no evidence for a non-conscious reality, the two would be on exactly the same footing. Two equally broad and vague options which are mutually exclusive and cover the whole range of possibilities; the plausibility of a conscious reality would be exactly the same as the plausibility of a non-conscious reality, 50/50.

They're not actually on equal footing of course, for at least three main reasons that I've outlined so far, none of which have been coherently addressed:

1 > We know that consciousness is real - it's literally the most certain thing we possibly can know - whereas your supposed non-conscious 'material' stuff is pure speculation (whose facile 'common sense' plausibility likely derives from our societies' dualist Christian heritage, our materialist capitalist culture, and some biases from our infantile cognitive development). Extrapolating from our certainty that consciousness is real to the likelihood that reality is conscious, while far from certain, is more reasonable than a wild shot in the dark about non-conscious stuff.​

2 > Introducing this speculative non-conscious material reality means introducing the unresolved hard problem of consciousness, the question of how observable objective quantitative stuff could even in theory give rise to undetectable subjective qualitative phenomena at all; it means introducing a necessary premise of one's worldview that essentially amounts to "There was non-conscious stuff, then some magic happened and there was consciousness."​

3 > Our reality appears to be highly complex and 'finely-tuned', and there are only two observed mechanisms by which complexity can develop from simpler antecedents; biological evolution based on enduring selection of genetic variation, and conscious thought based on enduring selection of 'memetic' variation: So while the highly complex omni-god of traditional Christianity fails the parsimony test as any kind of explanation for our complex reality, extrapolating from our certainty that consciousness is real to the likelihood that reality is conscious also provides a plausible potential answer to some other enduring mysteries we face by allowing an observation-derived simple-to-complex mechanism that applies to reality as a whole (ironically, essentially taking parts of Hume's "infant deity" rhetoric quite seriously).​

I'd actually already hinted at a fourth reason also, which I didn't include above because what I'd mentioned of it in a previous post was only a fairly minor point, but on reflection is probably as important as #3 above:

4 > There are plausible though not conclusive counter-examples to the theory that brains are necessary for consciousness even in humans, such as the case of Pam Reynolds' documented experience of vivid consciousness during an operation involving clinical death and total EEG flatline. Note that while the theory of a conscious reality is perfectly compatible with brains being necessary for consciousness in humans, evidence that brain activity may not be necessary for consciousness even in humans would pretty much cripple any materialist view. Thus while we obviously don't know whether Pam's experience occurred at the same time period of her operation as the EEG flatline, a proponent of materialism would have to simply assume blindly that it could not have despite the lack of evidence supporting that assumption. In other words the idea of a non-conscious reality is a closed, exclusionary theory which makes it inherently less plausible than more open theories since it requires a more exacting set of conditions to hold in order for it to be true, which are often contrary to people's reported observations.​

You are hilarious. You have your own little numbered narrative that you trot out when a new person enters the fray, jus like DrewPaul and many others.

 

[watsup]

> Our reality appears to be highly complex and 'finely-tuned', and there are only two observed mechanisms by which complexity can develop from simpler antecedents; biological evolution based on enduring selection of genetic variation, and conscious thought based on enduring selection of 'memetic' variation: So while the highly complex omni-god of traditional Christianity fails the parsimony test as any kind of explanation for our complex reality, extrapolating from our certainty that consciousness is real to the likelihood that reality is conscious also provides a plausible potential answer to some other enduring mysteries we face by allowing an observation-derived simple-to-complex mechanism that applies to reality as a whole (ironically, essentially taking parts of Hume's "infant deity" rhetoric quite seriously).

Thank you for proving the OP. Such superstitions! “If humans have consciousness, then there must be a Big Consciousness somewhere!”. Not a shred of evidence, just a reworking of the tired old Watchmaker argument. You should be embarrassed by such tripe, but I assume that you’re not.

 

[watsup]

Let's pretend (for the sake of argument) that there is no evidence for a conscious reality;

If by conscious reality, you mean some sort of Big Consciousness somewhere, then you don’t have to pretend. There’s not an iota of evidence for such a claim.

 

[watsup]

Extrapolating from our certainty that consciousness is real to the likelihood that reality is conscious, while far from certain, is more reasonable than a wild shot in the dark about non-conscious stuff.

That “wild shot in the dark” of which you speak is called “reality” and is the basis for all of science. How many scientists can you present who base their study on a Big Consciousness?

 

[watsup]

Introducing this speculative non-conscious material reality means introducing the unresolved hard problem of consciousness, the question of how observable objective quantitative stuff could even in theory give rise to undetectable subjective qualitative phenomena at all; it means introducing a necessary premise of one's worldview that essentially amounts to "There was non-conscious stuff, then some magic happened and there was consciousness."

Yes, of course, we understand that the consciousness of human beings is indeed still a big mystery at this pliant, which is why science continues to study it. But what you are doing is basically proving my OP by selecting a particular “mystery” and then simply overlaying an ethereal god-like resolution, in this case a higher “consciousness”. As such, you are no different in a basic sense than the primitive humans who did so when they observed an eclipse. I guess that the superstitious nature of humans will never change.

 

[Mithrae]

Your basic premise is false. As it is based on an assumption that evidence is all that is required to verify which state exists. Where as in reality we not only do not have any evidence but not one good reason can be given for the existence of a god. In your assumption you simply give weight to a hope of evidence rather than actual evidence we could consider thereby falsely making having evidence the equal to there is no evidence.

I'm not sure what you're saying here; do you think there is some kind of evidence for a non-conscious/material reality? Bear in mind that "If brains then consciousness... no brain, therefore no consciousness" as we usually see is obviously the fallacy of denying the antecedent: Even if brains were sufficient or even necessary for human consciousness (which itself is by no means proven, though can be considered a fair generalization for living humans at least), it tells us nothing beyond that since we have no way of detecting the presence or absence of amoeba consciousness, alien consciousness, AI consciousness, planetary consciousness or universal consciousness. In nigh on a decade of discussion across dozens of threads, I've never seen any (non-fallacious) evidence for a non-conscious/material reality, but maybe you'll be the first

1. Conscious is no more real than the material world. After all if you are going to go around doubting one then why give credibility to another when we could easily make up a scenario where your simply a dream someone else is having about you being conscious.

It's certainly coherent to think about scenarios in which this chair I'm sitting on or these hands I'm typing with are not even real (let alone material) things, scenarios in which I'm just a brain in a vat or an algorithm in a computer simulation. However it is not coherent to think about a scenario in which my consciousness is not real, because I cannot think about that without consciousness. I drink think therefore I am; our own consciousness is literally the most certain thing we possibly can know.

2. Remarkable !! though not unexpected. 2 is simply a repeat of 1. And again same answer if you doubt one then how can you not doubt the other. The answer to both of course is that there has yet to shown a consciousness that exists without a corporeal state. where as the material world tends to be consistent enough that everyone can agree with what they experience . If I point to a rock everybody would agree that it was a rock. If some could demonstrate that it was instead a cloud then reality and the materila world might be questionable. Where as what someone thinks or even if they a re thinking is a mystery till they tell us.

If you think that 2 is a repeat of 1 you've obviously not understood one or both of them; most likely point 2, because your reply doesn't address it all as far as I can tell... in fact if anything, you've emphasized my point by emphasizing how dissimilar consciousness and "the material world" are. As I said, on the one hand we've got observable objective quantitative stuff and on the other there's undetectable subjective qualitative phenomena; what properties do they have in common such that one might plausibly be a cause of the other? I infer that what our consciousness may have in common with our brains and the world around us is those subjective qualitative phenomena themselves, which we merely can't detect elsewhere because they're undetectable. By contrast you apparently propose that our consciousness has no properties in common with rest of reality whatsoever... hence it being simple magic that the latter could give rise to the former.

 

[Mithrae]

3. Really! your going to push the crap argument of fine tuning. That is simply a bias that carbon based life is the only life form, Another epic failure of an argument.

It may be worth spending a little more time learning about the subject first; without our particular universal constants (or something exceptionally close to them) there would be no stars and planets at all... or not even any molecular chemistry! In The God Delusion (and in an online article I've just found trying to find a transcript) Richard Dawkins apparently considers this seeming fine-tuning to be a problem on a scale vexing enough to justify invoking billions of 'other universes' as a more reasonable explanation:

"Physicists have suggested that the laws and constants of physics are too good — as if the universe were set up to favour our eventual evolution. It is as though there were, say, half a dozen dials representing the major constants of physics. Each of the dials could in principle be tuned to any of a wide range of values. Almost all of these knob-twiddlings would yield a universe in which life would be impossible. Some universes would fizzle out within the first picosecond. Others would contain no elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. In yet others, matter would never condense into stars (and you need stars in order to forge the elements of chemistry and hence life). You can estimate the very low odds against the six knobs all just happening to be correctly tuned, and conclude that a divine knob-twiddler must have been at work. But, as we have already seen, that explanation is vacuous because it begs the biggest question of all. The divine knob twiddler would himself have to have been at least as improbable as the settings of his knobs.​

​

"Again, the anthropic principle delivers its devastatingly neat solution. Physicists already have reason to suspect that our universe — everything we can see — is only one universe among perhaps billions. Some theorists postulate a multiverse of foam, where the universe we know is just one bubble. Each bubble has its own laws and constants. Our familiar laws of physics are parochial bylaws. Of all the universes in the foam, only a minority has what it takes to generate life."​

His dismissal of what he calls a "divine knob twiddler" is based on his preoccupation with the omni-God of traditional Christianity, an unchanging all-perfect being who of course is far less parsimonious than our universe itself, however apparently finely-tuned: But as I pointed out (and as Dawkins himself notes in his book), conscious thought is actually the second of only two observed simple-to-complex mechanisms we know of, so a simplistic almost mindless cosmic consciousness which evolved over aeons into a complex universe-generating consciousness would be a viable explanation, arguably more parsimonious and better-evidenced than any multiverse theory (let alone the particular variant/s required for Dawkins' purposes).

You have to be kidding with this one.
Research has clearly shown high activity in the brain in near death experiences. The visions people see are merely from an over active brain coping with dying. Not some mystical experience. The fact that they visualise themselves on an operating table is nothing more than what their brain has created in an imaginary scenario.

Pam Reynolds had her body temperature brought down to 50 °F (10 °C), her heartbeat and breathing stopped, the blood drained from her head and a total EEG flatline despite loud auditory stimulus. That's not "high brain activity" by any stretch of the imagination As I said, her reported experience is not conclusive - there is a somewhat tenuous ad hoc scenario which would account for the known facts without her having had conscious experience during that timeframe - but that's not specifically the point here: The point is one which you have just reinforced with your knee-jerk response, that in order to reject the likelihood of a conscious reality you have to have a knee-jerk dogmatic rejection of empirical reports like these without fairly evaluating or even considering the actual evidence, because you're taking a closed, exclusionary approach which denies those possibilities sight unseen.