sudly said:
Yeah, it seems life is rare in the cosmos and that it came about through chance. First off nature here on Earth is alive and capable of replication which is what I meant by fertile. Plus soils are fertile and capable of retaining water, nutrients and oxygen for plant and microbial growth and whatnot.
You were talking about mainstream christianity and certain spiritual beings being responsible for the corruption in the world along with mention of spiritual systems and intelligences and you think I'm the one who veered off topic?
I only brought that up because you mentioned an unjust creator. I pointed out that such an idea exists in world religion.
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I think physical results are determined by the laws of physics, like the path a rock takes when it rolls down a hill. Whether the information of velocity/momentum etc is known about it, the laws of physics will determine what path it takes down the hill.
But does that apply to you and your brain also and if so, why do you feel free?
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There is what exists to enable the perception of it. As in there is the human mind that can perceive and the object to be percieved.
Yes, but the mind doing the perceiving and the object perceived are together part one reality, right? We can debate the nature of that reality.
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And here you go seperating mind from perception and sensation whereas I think the mind is not disembodied.
A mind existing dependently within a physical world works when the mind exists within the human body as a result of anatomical processes.
But this is where things become unclear for me. First of all, in your view mind and body are two fundamentally different things are they not? In other words you say the mind exists within the body. Where? If I cut you open I won't find a mind anywhere. A person in deep sleep doesn't have much in the way of a mind either, but they still have a body. So what do you mean the mind is in the body?
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The brain can influence the adrenals and the adrenals can influence heart rate and blood pressure and that in turn can influence the state of mind.
Meaning the mind (brain/adrenals/heart) does have a physical interaction with the world.
But here you simply avoided the whole problem. You've defined mind as brain/adrenals/heart). I'm asking the about the mind, as in subjective conscious experience. Do you see the mind as a by product of the brain, meaning the mind really cannot influence the world? For example if you watch a movie on a movie projector, the projector can influence the movie but the images on the wall cannot influence the projector. Is that how you understand the mind?
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I would call it supported reasoning, because the alternative would say that evolution did 99% of the work to make a human and then magic did the last 1% to make us sentient. I'm happy to question how consciousness and/or sentience evolved but that they did evolve is not a necessary question as it is self evident if the theory of evolution stands to reason.
No it wouldn't. First of all I would question the assumption that "evolution did 99% and secondly I would argue that sentience comprises far more than 1% of the total work that needs to be done to produce a human being. I would argue that sentience is actually the biggest problem that needs to be overcome and without understanding anything about how and why a human being is sentient we cannot claim to understand man's origins.
Not sure where you're going with or how that analogy of your watch is related in any way.
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Then evidently you don't follow a consistent description of what evolution is.
Darwin originated the idea of evolution 150 years ago and he didn't even know what DNA was. His ideas have had 150 years of additional information added to strengthen the theory. Darwin isn't what makes the theory of evolution right, it's the plethora of evidence that has been found to date to back up the claims he's made.
There's no need to fear not being called an evolutionist but if you make it clear that you don't believe in evolution then obviously you can't be called someone who does whole heartedly believe in the theory of evolution as it stands.
There is evidence that all life on Earth evolved and has evolved for billions of years up to this day and age. Where's the evidence that evolution stopped or didn't happen in the case of human beings?
I already posted a video explaining the problems I have with the theory of evolution. I never said evolution stopped or didn't happen in the case of human beings. I simply don't believe you have a working or adequate theory of how evolution took place or the mechanisms by which it is purported to have taken place. The situation becomes even worse when you consider that no picture of the universe can be complete without an explanation for consciousness. Since your theory has no explanation for consciousness, except "it evolved, because it had to. Otherwise our theory would be wrong and we're not willing to consider that possibility", it's difficult for me to take it seriously as an explanation for life.
One point I wonder whether materialists consider is that life forms aside, even when studying the physical "non living" aspects of the universe, consciousness is still the key to everything. Why? Because take the idea of existence for example. Materialists seem to think things can just exist on their own, as though in a vacuum, with no one to affirm their existence. But that causes me to ask, what do we even mean when we say something exists? Well, it seems to me that we mean it registers in consciousness in some way, either directly or indirectly. Most materialists tend not to believe in three headed unicorns for example. Why? Because three headed unicorns aren't registering in their consciousness. They will however, readily believe in horses, because horses have appeared in their consciousness. Whenever we look for evidence for something, we look for evidence that registers in our consciousness. Evidence that we could not measure or perceive in any way, would not be considered evidence after all.
A physical universe with no sentient beings able to perceive it, would not exist by this definition. There would be no discernible difference the existence and non existence of such a universe.
That being so, how can we possibly have confidence in an explanation of the universe that leaves consciousness out of the equation? To me it seems like such an explanation would run the risk of being totally wrong because we must remember we are only studying the universe from the point of view of consciousness anyway. So if we get everything else right but we fail to take into account our point of reference (consciousness) we could easily be looking at everything else backwards or upside down and not even realize it.
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The path of the herbalist is to open ourselves to nature in an innocent and pure way. SHe in turn will open her bounty and reward us with many valuable secrets. May the earth bless you. - Michael Tierra
Edited by Peyote Road (09/21/17 05:21 AM)
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