How many GODS do you have?

[Baruch]

I find it interesting that the single most important indicator of one's religious beliefs is geography.  Look at a map that uses colors for the concentrations of the major religions of the world.  The map is not a brown because the various religions are found all over the place; no, it is multicolored because the various religions are found in their parts of the world.   Our beliefs are based more on the luck of the draw where you were born--not because one religion is better than another.

More than that.  Geography determines language/culture.  But not personality type.  In so far as a person is free to develop, they will deviate from their parents and community.  A secondary effect, but there.

[Unbeliever]

Actually, I think the human species is called homo sapiens sapiens - wise wise man. To distinguish us from other subspecies, like homo sapiens neanderthalensis.

Maybe not so wise as all that, though.

[Baruch]

Actually, I think the human species is called homo sapiens sapiens - wise wise man. To distinguish us from other subspecies, like homo sapiens neanderthalensis.

Maybe not so wise as all that, though.

Disputed position of Neanderthal vs Us.  But in one version, you are right.  Definitely not doubly wise.

[Arik]

So, I looked in the mirror.

What I saw is:
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Mammalia
Order:Primates
Suborder:Haplorhini
Infraorder:Simiiformes
Family:Hominidae
Subfamily:Homininae
Tribe:   Hominini
Genus:   Homo
Species:   H. sapiens

Just like the other 7.5 billion on planet earth. Maybe a bit higher intelligence than the average, with a heck of a lot of damn luck to be born in one of the most advanced societies in the world (albeit, with way too many theists trying their hardest to set us back to the Dark Ages). All evidence points to my existence, along with those other 7.5 billion, being of completely natural origin.

Nope, no evidence of being a god (although my girlfriend has yelled "god" from time to time in bed).

Congratulation SM.






You are almost on the right track my friend.

Please do not give up.

Let the evolution process to go ahead without any stoppage and you will get there.
Once you dump in the garbage the idea that man is the peak of evolution you will surely understand that God is the peak and obviously you will be able to see God when you stand in front of the mirror so these Animalia, Chordata and all the rest will only belong to your past where evolution was at the beginning.

OK?

[Arik]

More than that.  Geography determines language/culture.  But not personality type.  In so far as a person is free to develop, they will deviate from their parents and community.  A secondary effect, but there.

Right.

As you say.......... as a person is free to develop...........

Unfortunately if you born in a close society where you can not disagree very much at all you may have your head chopped up.

[Baruch]

Right.

As you say.......... as a person is free to develop...........

Unfortunately if you born in a close society where you can not disagree very much at all you may have your head chopped up.

But with secular political utopia, that will all be solved by Monday ...

[Sal1981]

Disputed position of Neanderthal vs Us.  But in one version, you are right.  Definitely not doubly wise.

I thought the reigning hypothesis was that we were a chimera of neanderthals and homo sapiens, called homo sapiens sapiens.

[Simon Moon]

Congratulation SM.

Let the evolution process to go ahead without any stoppage and you will get there.

The evolutionary process occurs in populations, not on individuals. I, just like you and every other homo sapien sapien on the planet, are done with the evolutionary process. Our offspring, and their offspring, and so on, are not done, AS A SPECIES, evolving.

Unless you have some other, nonstandard definition of the evolutionary process. If so, please define it.

Once you dump in the garbage the idea that man is the peak of evolution you will surely understand that God is the peak and obviously you will be able to see God when you stand in front of the mirror so these Animalia, Chordata and all the rest will only belong to your past where evolution was at the beginning.

OK?

I NEVER stated that man is the peak of the evolutionary process. I would never say that, because it is a misunderstanding of the evolutionary process.

There is no "peak" of the evolutionary process. Evolution is only concerned with survival and reproductive success. Organisms that  continue having reproductive and survival success, continue to survive as a species. There is no end goal, with some sort of ultimate being as the result. It is quite possible, that homo sapiens sapiens, is a dead end species, and we may go extinct in the near future ("near" when compared to the geological timeline of billions of years). Just like 99% of all species before us.

[Arik]

The evolutionary process occurs in populations, not on individuals. I, just like you and every other homo sapien sapien on the planet, are done with the evolutionary process. Our offspring, and their offspring, and so on, are not done, AS A SPECIES, evolving.

Oh, my God SM.......

What a disaster..........

You say...........not on individuals............

Who told you that?
Certainly not Darwin which was mainly interested in studying animals and by the way animals unlike humans are driven by mother nature instinct not by free will like us.
Can't you get the notion that Darwin never made any serious study about human consciousness?
He studied fossils, craniums and other bodies parts but about consciousness which is the driving force of evolution in man next to nothing so how on earth can you say that evolution does not occurs in individual?

In 1859 Darwin said..........“light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history”.......
That clearly show that Darwin knew next to nothing about how evolution works on humans during his life.

Unless you have some other, nonstandard definition of the evolutionary process. If so, please define it.

Evolution is the product of mother nature in animals and plants and a product of different type of works in humans thanks to their free will.
There is a huge difference of how it works among the two species which is something that neither you nor Darwin never ponder about so this evolution process need to be distinguished before you ask for the definition of the evolutionary process.

Just read above where I do distinguish among the two.

I NEVER stated that man is the peak of the evolutionary process. I would never say that, because it is a misunderstanding of the evolutionary process.

What suppose to be the difference between not saying and instead say that when we die is all over?
Isn't clear enough that according to Atheists we get nowhere once we die so it isn't quite the same as to say that our evolution end up with our humanity?

There is no "peak" of the evolutionary process. Evolution is only concerned with survival and reproductive success. Organisms that  continue having reproductive and survival success, continue to survive as a species. There is no end goal, with some sort of ultimate being as the result. It is quite possible, that homo sapiens sapiens, is a dead end species, and we may go extinct in the near future ("near" when compared to the geological timeline of billions of years). Just like 99% of all species before us.

Guessing after guessing after guessing.

Who told you that............evolution is only concerned with survival and reproductive success..................

And who told you that the death of the body equal to no survival?
Have you ever seen a dead consciousness?
Obviously not so if you never seen one how can you claim that creatures do not survive to go on towards a peak?

[Hakurei Reimu]

In the end, it's all just shallowness. In the end, it's just assertions after assertions. In the end, it's all simplistic thinking.

(I've shuffled around parts of your response.)

Arik, you think that NDEs form at the time that the person remembers them being about â€" that if the person has a memory of a NDE with him in cardiac arrest, then the memory has to be formed at that time. Simplistic thinking, and contradicted by evidence from psychology. The entire satanic panic scare, with "recovered memories", is known to have come about from false memories about childhood abuse and rituals being planted during therapy sessions in adulthood. Memories don't come with timestamps. If counterfeit memories of one's childhood can have their origins in events decades later, then why is it so difficult to believe that NDEs ostensibly about a time when their brain couldn't be working can too have their actual origin in a time mere hours later when full blood flow is restored and the brain begins sorting itself out? False memories about a time prior to their actual formation is a known phenomenon. We know that it happens. We've even induced false memories in experiments. I don't need any woo to explain NDEs; this explains everything we can actually observe about NDEs, including that they never seem to see the out-of-sight cards we hid.

Human memory is terrible. It shows itself to be such every time we have tested it under controlled conditions. It is bizarre to think that it will suddenly become reliable when we enter regimes when we cannot verify it.

Everything and everyone are real and fully verifiable.

No they aren't. NDEs are only known after the fact, after which all the details of the episode are only remembered and all the psychology of faulty memory attaches. If the details of an NDE cannot be verified using a reliable source (like a CCTV recording), then the fact that they remember some detail is not actually indicative of anything.

Hospitals in most cases keep the record of that person who was declared brain dead and lived to recount his-her experience.

This is a lie, because the actual diagnosis of "brain death" is confirmed later, sometimes after days of testing and observation. It's not simply a single flatline on an EEG. That's simplistic thinking. You have to show an extended period of no electrical activity in the brain to be declared brain dead, sometimes confirmed with a wide battery of different tests, and we have no instance of someone coming back from such a deep abyss.

Simplistic thinking also plagues your thinking about karatekas and hooked gurus. The defects in the former can be summed up with the simple observation that you can break someone's nose without breaking your own fist, when of course they're made of much the same stuff. Mechanics is more complicated than "stone beats fist." As for the hooked gurus, the body is very good at keeping blood where it belongs. It's also very good at healing superficial injuries. These gurus make very specific injuries to themselves; you will not see a single one stick a hook through their abdominal wall and rip through their rectus adominia (the "6-pack") to demonstrate their craft, and there's probably a good reason for that. Biofeedback doesn't take that long to learn, and given that biofeedback is being explored and (at this point) may be clinically used to treat chronic pain, the notion that it won't be able to blot out the pain of a couple of hooks in your skin is not credible.

Your problem is...

No. YOUR problem is that you assert a lot but don't do nearly enough to justify it. I am telling you a lot about what it would take to actually convince me of what you say, but instead of going out and getting the kind of evidence that I require to be convinced, you instead bull right ahead and present the same old bad evidence you've done since the start of this thread. You can pile up as much bad evidence as you want in front of me, but it won't stop being bad evidence because of its volume.

I told you exactly what I needed to consider those hooked gurus to having extraordinary powers, which was a medical examination to verify that what you claim about them are actually medically impossible, but you never did it. And no, I'm not going to consider it a serious proposition until you present me evidence that indicates that there is something TO be serious about.

I don't need anything more than the vaguarities of human memory to explain NDEs, and as such, NDEs do not "clearly" show that there's a master mind that should be our only attachment. And nothing I appeal to is an ad hoc explanation either: we've induced all the needed components in experiments. We've implanted false details into memories of an incident experienced by a large group of people, and changed each and every one of those accounts to include those false details. We have implanted false childhood memories into adults. Certainty and clarity of a memory is not correlated to their accuracy. And so on, and because NDEs are explainable by material means, Occam's razor demands that I cut out the unevidenced elements including woo.

The rest are merely "just so" stories. Like the following:

As I already said in previous post the consequences of been able to see our previous lives would be detrimental.
Just imaging if in the previous life you were hanged for killing some people.
If that memory would carry on in this life you could not be at peace with yourself and your life would be a misery.
The same would happen to someone who were very good in previous lives.
That thought would make you think that you done enough so now in this life you don't have to do much at all.

This is a simplistic, "just so" answer. Why would your life be misery just because in a past life you killed another? It didn't seem to bother you last time around. Or if it did, it's something you can get past, just like almost every soldier fighting in every war ever. The human mind is nothing if not adaptable. Some trauma might need a reset (PTSD), but being able to remember your past lives and correlate them to your fortune in successive lives seems to me a useful thing.

You're presenting me a telos to forgetting, but the telos doesn't make sense.

Or what about this?

A smart person doesn't really need to know why he-she got problems.
He-She will do what is necessary to sort out the problem and if the problems are to big to be sorted out then he-she should ask for help to the very entity that run the universal dimension.

How can you keep from acquiring bad karma if you don't know what causes bad karma? How can you acquire good karma if you don't know what causes good karma? The fact that we don't choose correctly the first time, every time, is strong indication that such things would have to be learned. And if such things existed, I would be very surprised if good and bad karma always line up with what we consider good and bad deeds. Until you can point a karma meter at someone and observe the rise of good karma with a good deed, "getting good karma" means nothing more than doing good deeds.

Wherever you born is dictated by your good or bad karma.
You can not chose so if you born in the slum or in the golden cot that is due to your bad or good karma that you created in previous lives.

Something which you can't observe/measure. You still can't predict who gets the good fortune and who gets the shaft. Until you can point a karma meter at me and measure my good and bad karma, you are using nonsense to justify nonsense. It's a "just so" story.

Here's another "just so" story, that I'm closed minded:

In a court room and in science obviously you need physical evidence so what?
Does that means that what is not physical is a load of rubbish just because physical science is unable to understand it?

You suppose that but for the presence of an immaterial consciousness, the brain would be silent and dead, and it is under the direction of a consciousness that a living body is guided towards action. That by definition is a physical effect. You've already given up the fight that what you are talking about is a physical effect, and if a phenomenon has some physical effects, it likely has others.

To know something you also got to be interested in that thing.
As far as your interest in this thing is zero than is quite obvious that for the time been your chances to understand are very very slim.

You have given no evidence that there is anything to be interested in. In fact, you've given no indication that you understand any of what you speak of.

You seem to think that I don't accept your "just so" stories because I'm somehow prejudiced against them because they're woo. Not so. I reject them because it's obvious that you haven't thought about them deeply enough. Like your "consciousness evolution" malarkey. I reject it not because it's not biological evolution, but rather you've given me NOTHING. You've given no mechanism of how it works to improve consciousness, why it selects out this avenue of improvement and not another, or what the mechanism is acting on in consciousness to improve it. I can use my understanding of biological evolution to look at a biological scenario and say, "Oh, yeah. It would do that." I can't do similarly with your "consciousness evolution." Instead, I just get vague assurances that it leads to an ill-defined improvement in consciousness â€" a "just so" story.

If education would be a solution then we shouldn't have any problem in those places where education is a reality.

Nirvana fallacy.

Look in your country where education is possible.
You got more warmongers, gun lovers,materialism and hatred than in places where there is no education.

FAIL AGAIN HAKU.

Wrong. We see their equivalents everywhere. It's bizarre to expect gun lovers in cultures without guns, but every human tribe has created weapons. Chieftains throughout history have used said weapons to increase their personal wealth. Career soldiers have existed in every large society, and hatred has been expressed by every culture. As to having more of these than in the past, you made that up.

When I was younger I did study some Latin so I do know where many of the English words originate from.
In this context you have very little to teach anyone.

Fail again Haku.

I'm not here to teach you. You have shown remarkable ability to employ that protective sloped forehead of yours. What I've shown is that you don't have anything to teach anyone. You didn't demonstrate what you wished to, that any of what you proposed as elemental was actually an elemental part of the universe, rather than emergent from other things. Hence, this is actually your failure.

Life without consciousness is not possible because everything is made of energy and energy and consciousness are the two sides of the same sheet.

Because you say so.

That doesn't mean that a very rudimentary form of consciousness must have the same awareness as we humans have.

You have not demonstrated any rudimentary consciousness at all. Demonstrate they do, and then you get to say that they have rudimentary consciousness not the same as humans.

So, do you have anything at all, other than your bad evidence of NDEs, karatekas, or hooked gurus to present, or your "just so" stories without any grounding in anything we can measure?

[Hydra009]

Element.
6)..........one of the substances, usually earth, water, air, and fire, formerly regarded as constituting the material universe.

Did you get your science education from Avatar the Last Airbender?

[Simon Moon]

In the end, it's all just shallowness. In the end, it's just assertions after assertions. In the end, it's all simplistic thinking.

Yep.

Arik is a poster child for muddled thinking.

Arik, you think that NDEs form at the time that the person remembers them being about â€" that if the person has a memory of a NDE with him in cardiac arrest, then the memory has to be formed at that time. Simplistic thinking, and contradicted by evidence from psychology.

Indeed.

Human memory is not like replaying videos in their entirety. We build our memories on the fly, while retelling old stories.

What almost assuredly happens after an NDE, is that the mind is so confused and disoriented by the crises it just went through, and the missing time, it creates a memory after the fact.

[Unbeliever]

You'll never convince Arik of that. He's made up his mind (or someone made it up for him) and he will never admit he might not be right (or that his mentor may not be right).

[Mike Cl]

You'll never convince Arik of that. He's made up his mind (or someone made it up for him) and he will never admit he might not be right (or that his mentor may not be right).

Which is why reasoning with a theist, especially one as thick headed as Arik, will never work.

[Unbeliever]

Yeah, total waste of time and energy. I still wonder why they come here to try to convince us that their world view makes more sense than does ours'. If thay had any actual arguments instead of just argument by assertion it might be more interesting, at least.