Drinking a cup of tea can add plausible evidence God exists

[mendacium remedium]

...nnnnope, still atheist.

Your argument boils down to an argument from ignorance: "I don't know what a feeling is and how it works. | Therefore, it must be an essence that is a soul!" No. The red line indicates the position of where the conversation should have ended, but of course you are kinda dumb and go past that.

All arguments from ignorance are of the form, "I don't know what it is; therefore, it must be this other thing." If you don't know what it is, you don't know that it is that other thing! It is bizarre that anyone who pretends to be a reasonable thinker would state this.

This proves that the title is as ridiculous as it sounds. Or maybe we should add, "... but only if you're stupid," to the end.

Man, i was hoping to convert the masses with this thread, and especially their cheif-woman! You have foiled my plan.
 


My argument is not "hey jimmy, i can't understand this, therefore it must be a God".
My argument is that we are creatures who have immeasurably precise designation and placement of atoms. If we also designed a robot with a cpu this time with amazing complexity, could it 'feel'?

I think the answer is no. I can understand responding to stimuli, how the nervous system works, how it all occurs...but the 'raw' agony of touching a flame? However precisely designed i am, there is may be another element here which definitely escapes understanding.

[mendacium remedium]

I can understand atoms designed together to prove conciousness, the problem is however, what part of us 'feels' that raw emotion?

Like i have said, we can get robots to respond to stimuli, react, but will a robot -however complex- ever be able to have that 'raw' feeling of pain?

If so, exactly what 'part' of it is going to 'experience' this? What is that 'raw' emotion?


Reading replies, we can deduce how it is caused, why it's useful, perhaps a belief of how it came to be, but not what it actually is.

If anything, your question of what it is, is rather obvious: a feeling is a pattern of brain activity. If I stimulate your brain, you will 'feel' it, although not as a brain-zappy sensation — your brain is numb. If I zap your somatosensory cortex, you will feel one of many feelings in your body indistinguishable from the 'real thing.' If I zap your brain in a certain pattern about your limbic system, you will feel rage, happiness, or even an orgasm indistinguishable from the real mccoys. Thus, there is no need for the qualia of feeling.

That's how i will be 'caused' to feel, but what exactly is 'feeling'.

Nervous system with collisions and movements of neurotransmitters across synapses/other functions --->

Somehow the 'raw' agony of pain? How does the collision of atoms, even though they can be detected, evoke a complex response, ever lead to 'feeling'.

[Hakurei Reimu]

My argument is not "hey jimmy, i can't understand this, therefore it must be a God".
My argument is that we are creatures who have immeasurably precise designation and placement of atoms. If we also designed a robot with a cpu this time with amazing complexity, could it 'feel'?

I think the answer is no. I can understand responding to stimuli, how the nervous system works, how it all occurs...but the 'raw' agony of touching a flame? However precisely designed i am, there is may be another element here which definitely escapes understanding.

No, that's an argument from ignorance. You are trying to fill in your lack of knowledge of how 'feelings' work and what they are with the conviction that it must be of some nature. Like going as far as saying that a computer CAN'T 'feel' the way you do, no matter how sublty its programmed. Really? You don't know anything about feelings and yet you're going to make some grand pronouncement about its nature? What an arrogant prick you are.

That's how i will be 'caused' to feel, but what exactly is 'feeling'.

The 'cause' and the 'feeling' are the same, from different points of view. They are duals to each other.

Nervous system with collisions and movements of neurotransmitters across synapses/other functions --->

Precisely. Nothing. There's nothing demonstratably separate in terms of phenomena to fill in the other side, and thus an explanation is unnecessary.

[leo]

 

[FrankDK]

> I can understand atoms designed together to prove conciousness, the problem is however, what part of us 'feels' that raw emotion?

Feelings are an illusion.

Picture our ancestors, as far back as you wish.  Some things reduced the probability of living to reproduce, others increased that probability.  Putting one's hand in a fire, and many other things we label "painful," reduced that probability.  The individuals in the community who had an aversion to the things that reduced the probability of surviving and reproducing had more offspring.  Their genes became more wide-spread in their community.  Those who had no aversion to the experiences which reduced the probability of surviving and reproducing had fewer offspring; their genes became rarer.

Today, we call the aversion to experiences that reduce the probability of surviving and getting our genes into the next generation "pain."  Pain is an illusion, created by the brain, to make it more likely that we will avoid experiences which reduce the probability of surviving and getting our genes into the next generation.

All emotions: love, territoriality, anger, fear, etc., are there because they helped our ancestors survive and reproduce.  That's all.

That, by the way, is what I meant when I wrote "evolution."

Frank

[Krisyork2008]

Excellent post Frank.

[Poison Tree]

What do you mean be "'raw'"? Is the opposite cooked emotions or processed emotions? By "'raw' agony" are you asking about the source? I don't know what modifying these words with "'raw'" is intended to portray.

[Colanth]

I can understand responding to stimuli, how the nervous system works, how it all occurs...but the 'raw' agony of touching a flame? However precisely designed i am, there is may be another element here which definitely escapes understanding.

Or, to rephrase, It escapes my understanding, therefore there must be another element.  Which is just a restatement of "I can't explain it, therefore God."

You specifically state it as the argument from ignorance, then claim that it's not.  But that's all it is.  "We don't understand it" is as valid an explanation as the refutation of the lightning god by the explanation of static electricity.  That you don't understand something, that no one understands it, that no one may ever understand it - isn't the slightest shred of evidence of any "other element".

[Davka]

...nnnnope, still atheist.

Your argument boils down to an argument from ignorance: "I don't know what a feeling is and how it works. | Therefore, it must be an essence that is a soul!" No. The red line indicates the position of where the conversation should have ended, but of course you are kinda dumb and go past that.

All arguments from ignorance are of the form, "I don't know what it is; therefore, it must be this other thing." If you don't know what it is, you don't know that it is that other thing! It is bizarre that anyone who pretends to be a reasonable thinker would state this.

This proves that the title is as ridiculous as it sounds. Or maybe we should add, "... but only if you're stupid," to the end.

Man, i was hoping to convert the masses with this thread, and especially their cheif-woman! You have foiled my plan.
 


My argument is not "hey jimmy, i can't understand this, therefore it must be a God".
My argument is that we are creatures who have immeasurably precise designation and placement of atoms. If we also designed a robot with a cpu this time with amazing complexity, could it 'feel'?

I think the answer is no. I can understand responding to stimuli, how the nervous system works, how it all occurs...but the 'raw' agony of touching a flame? However precisely designed i am, there is may be another element here which definitely escapes understanding.

I believe that you may be unaware of just how complex the human brain actually is. We humans on planet Earth only just recently passed the point at which the total computing power of every single computer in the world combined equals the computing power of a single human brain. Add to this the fact that the human brain stores data in a "holographic" manner, and you have a level of complexity that we cannot really comprehend.

What's meant by "holographic" memory is that a specific memory is not stored in a specific neuron or set of neurons, but is rather distributed throughout the brain in such a way that the information would still exist if part of the brain were removed. Every part of the brain contains a 'fuzzy' image of the information contained by the whole. It's a kind of computing that we haven't even gotten close to designing. There are over 200 billion neurons in your brain, and each neuron is connected to between 5,000 and 20,000 other neurons. And the impulses that travel between neurons are regulated by dozens of different factors, which can be arranged in hundreds of different ways. Our brains aren't running on a string of ones and zeros like a computer, they are instead running on a myriad of different types of electro-chemical impulses, more like an alphabet or a language than simple binary.

That consciousness should be an emergent property of such unbelievable complexity is hardly surprising.

The question "what am I" is far more complex than the simplistic answer "you are a meat computer." You're more than that, and yet less. You are a by-product of complexity. You are a process which is dependent on a meat-computer to run, because no other computer could possibly run such a process.

What this means is that consciousness is amazing, breathtaking, and mind-boggling. What it doesn't mean is "therefore God."

[FrankDK]

> What's meant by "holographic" memory is that a specific memory is not stored in a specific neuron or set of neurons, but is rather distributed throughout the brain

Here's a neat proof of that:

Sign your name on a piece of paper.  Then sign it on a white board or wall in much larger letters.  The two signatures look essentially the same, and a handwriting expert would identify them as the same.  But the muscles that are recruited for the small signature, and therefore the motor neurons involved, are completely different from those used in the large signature.  Yet both sets of neurons know how to sign your name, even the first time you write it large, when those neurons have never done the task before.

Frank

[Savior2006]

Some of you may me startled by the title, but it is indeed true. And i specify below exactly why. The sure-fire way to convince me to become an atheist (something i will never rule out, although deism would be my preferred standard option) would be to refute the below.

From my own blog , so this is not copy-pasted(in case someone runs a search).
http://scientificphilosopher.wordpress. ... rstand-it/


One of the most puzzling aspects of trying to fully understand our brain is that of human consciousness .We speak , we think, we feel, we understand, we strategize – and much of this is shared with animals. The remarkably puzzling thing is, what part in us exactly 'feels' the pain?

Some can rightly assert that the stimulus is detected by a sense organs receptor, and by a nervous pathway travels to the brain where it processes everything, and then produces a response (the brain is by-passed in a reflex response). This explanation would be an accurate explanation had the question been titled "how do we detect our environment". This simply explains how our body detects and processes stimuli, but it does not explain what part 'feels' any of it.

Consider a mildly warm tea cup. Perhaps you are sitting on your sofa on a lazy sunday morning, sipping tea – or coffee – and the mild warm sensation of the gently flowing down your throat can be felt.  We can easily explain how the warm tea is detected. We can explain what part of the brain it is processed. However, what is the 'raw' feeling of warm tea being swallowed?

If you touch a fire, the reflex response and what happens on the basic cellular level can be understood, but that's simply neurotransmitters being transmitted across synapses. Exactly what is the 'raw' feeling of the agony one gets when they touch a flame? How can seemingly unconscious atoms simply being transmitted translate to a 'feeling' of raw pain?

If we designed a robot to have a complex CPU, to be able to respond, understand, think of it's own accord, no matter how complex this CPU was, would it ever be able to feel? Would the electrons flitting across it's circuit boards ever translate to that 'raw' feeling we humans possess ?

My conclusion: There is something else, something more, an essence that simply can not be due to natural process's(it can be evoked by natural processes but itself is an external force or reality that enables us to 'feel'. We have dissected the brain, analysed it, have volumes of books on the nervous system, and yet, i thoroughly doubt there ever will be an answer to this.

I love this argument.


Moron: What is responsible for the feeling you get when you feel pain.
Me: Uh.....the brain?
Moron: But what is responsible for the RAW feeling.
Me: The brain?
Moron: I know but what is responsible for the RAW, RAW, RAW feeling.....
Me: Dear God shut up.

[Thumpalumpacus]

God of the Gaps, and non sequitur.

If you're interested in the nature of human consciousness, I'd suggest reading some Nicholas Humphrey.

Can you direct me to which book? I'll take a look at it.

http://www.humphrey.org.uk/

[Jason78]

Blah blah blah, argument from incredulity, blah blah blah.

You can't reconcile qualia with sensory input, therefore gods!

You'll have to do better than that mendacium remedium.

This is one of those non-sequiturs we were talking about the other day.

[Jason78]

Since even simple animals experience pain, it can't relate to high-level consciousness.  Therefore, it must be simply neurons acting in a specific way.  

Even single celled organisms withdraw from painful stimuli.

[DunkleSeele]

[spoil:63y4ht9f]Some of you may me startled by the title, but it is indeed true. And i specify below exactly why. The sure-fire way to convince me to become an atheist (something i will never rule out, although deism would be my preferred standard option) would be to refute the below.

From my own blog , so this is not copy-pasted(in case someone runs a search).
http://scientificphilosopher.wordpress. ... rstand-it/


One of the most puzzling aspects of trying to fully understand our brain is that of human consciousness .We speak , we think, we feel, we understand, we strategize – and much of this is shared with animals. The remarkably puzzling thing is, what part in us exactly 'feels' the pain?

Some can rightly assert that the stimulus is detected by a sense organs receptor, and by a nervous pathway travels to the brain where it processes everything, and then produces a response (the brain is by-passed in a reflex response). This explanation would be an accurate explanation had the question been titled "how do we detect our environment". This simply explains how our body detects and processes stimuli, but it does not explain what part 'feels' any of it.

Consider a mildly warm tea cup. Perhaps you are sitting on your sofa on a lazy sunday morning, sipping tea – or coffee – and the mild warm sensation of the gently flowing down your throat can be felt.  We can easily explain how the warm tea is detected. We can explain what part of the brain it is processed. However, what is the 'raw' feeling of warm tea being swallowed?

If you touch a fire, the reflex response and what happens on the basic cellular level can be understood, but that's simply neurotransmitters being transmitted across synapses. Exactly what is the 'raw' feeling of the agony one gets when they touch a flame? How can seemingly unconscious atoms simply being transmitted translate to a 'feeling' of raw pain?

If we designed a robot to have a complex CPU, to be able to respond, understand, think of it's own accord, no matter how complex this CPU was, would it ever be able to feel? Would the electrons flitting across it's circuit boards ever translate to that 'raw' feeling we humans possess ?

My conclusion: There is something else, something more, an essence that simply can not be due to natural process's(it can be evoked by natural processes but itself is an external force or reality that enables us to 'feel'. We have dissected the brain, analysed it, have volumes of books on the nervous system, and yet, i thoroughly doubt there ever will be an answer to this.[/spoil:63y4ht9f]