Time To Grow Up. There Is No Greater Purpose.

[vbj]

Nothing rules out a divine cause. That's the point. Adding a Nothing rules out a divine cause. That's the point. A divine cause is compatible with anything we can conceivably come up with, which makes it useless as a hypothesis.

We can still test if an event is random or not. If not random then at least we know someone or something is explicitly biasing the event.

 

[vbj]

Then they wouldn't be accidents, if they were intentionally caused.

Yes but you can't know that. To you it looks like an accident.

 

[vbj]

That is correct; where there is a lack of evidence, a conclusion cannot be reached.

Then these are not questions for science to answer.

 

[vbj]

We know from the law of truly large numbers that while life forming spontaneously is unlikely, all unlikely events become likely and even certain, given enough trials. There are most likely enough trials in our large universe and billions of years.

Then let's see that too. Even on a computer or something approximating the real process. Seeing is believing is not just for skeptics.

 

[vbj]

That was a interesting article.

In regards your #1 it is not surprising some christians agree with evolution and say god caused it to happen. Christians refuse to say exactly what god is, how he does anything, or what his attributes are. Besides that many things about god are contradictory as I have pointed out elsewhere. Because christians refuse to give any specifics about god it is impossible to say that he has or has not done anything. It is an empty assertion. Maybe god is guiding evolution. Maybe he cooked my dinner last night. There is no way of knowing.

In regards to number 2 you refer to an article written by a psychiatrist Thomas Verney (not a biologist nor neurologist). He has done no research on brains/minds, he simply read various research and wrote a book suggesting memories are stored partly in the body not only in the brain.

In all fairness, it should be pointed out Verney appears to be either a christian or new ager. Here he wrote an article stating that consciousness is not based on brains but has something to do with quantum mechanics. He also claims information can be sent invisibly due to something called “quantum teleportation”. “The previous distance for what's known as quantum teleportation or sending information via entangled particles, was about 140 kilometers, or 86 miles.”

A review from his book “Cordless” states “Beyond the uncertainty of the world's inhumanity, lies the fragile possibility of wisdom and perhaps even faith.”

He wrote the foreword for a book called Spirit Into Form where he said “Cherionna Menzam-Sills’s book, Spirit into Form, is based on her long experience as a craniosacral therapist and somatic prenatal and birth therapist. Cherionna takes you on a tour of important developmental stages during gestation. But in addition to that she has much to say about the larger fields of Love, Spirit, and Soul and how they are connected to the body.”

In this blog post called John J. Bonaduce PhD., Mythobiogenesis: The Cellular Origin of Myth, Religion, and Ritual he claims to be researching “…the origin of myth, religion, and ritual not only in the vastness of human history, but in the confining nucleus of a human cell.”

While none of this proves him categorically wrong he should point out in the preface of his book or article that he is a religionist who believes in souls and consciousness that exists outside of the brain (apparently based on religious reasons).

In regards to the article which is from his book “The Embodied Mind” one should remember none of this is proven, nor researched, it is simply his opinion as a psychiatrist.

In the article he states “ The mind, I conclude, is fluid and adaptable, embodied but not enskulled.” So when a person dies obviously their brain and body die and even if memories were stored in the body (other than the brain) it is still the end of the person. You said this article was a "counterexample" of my claim that "the mind can't exist without the brain". It isn't. Nowhere in the article does it say what you are claiming.

The article is too long to respond to the whole thing so I’ll just make some salient points.

Planaria are nothing like humans and even if memories could be transferred to new organisms after fission it proves nothing about humans.

This research done by NIH titled “Vertically- and horizontally-transmitted memories – the fading boundaries between regeneration and inheritance in planaria” states how memories are transmitted through fission or asexual reproduction and none of it has anything to do with souls, god , etc.

“In the broadest sense of the word, memory is what enables altering of future responses based on history. Biological memory is encoded at many levels: metabolic differences (Cameron et al., 2012; Ros et al., 2006), epigenetic factors (e.g. small RNAs, histone marks, DNA methylation and prions) (Bird, 2002; D'Urso and Brickner, 2014; Iwasaki and Paszkowski, 2014), stable bioelectrical circuit modes (Cervera et al., 2014; Law and Levin, 2015), or neuronally-encoded memories (Axmacher et al., 2006; Daoudal and Debanne, 2003; Herry and Johansen, 2014; Maren and Quirk, 2004; Zhang and Linden, 2003). A myriad of mechanisms exist to allow molecules, molecular pathways, cells, and cellular networks to transduce physiological or behavioral inputs (experiences) into stable state changes that guide future activities. In this sense, processes that ensure the persistence of different developmental fates or trajectories are also forms of memory.”

According to this it is understood how planaria can transmit memories through fission. It is nothing mysterious. Verney actually agrees with this he just claims memories are stored in parts of the body other than the brain.

I also take issue with describing planaria as having brains. Some biologists say they have ganglia (a place where several major nerves come together and connect). It is also unclear that planaria have heads. If you go outside and dig up a worm in the garden it has no head, not even really a “front end”. Planaria have a mouth, primitive eyes that do nothing other than sense light or dark (they cannot see), and the ganglia behind the eyes. Some would not call this a head. They have no circulatory nor respiratory systems. In many of the cases of fission/regeneration memories were NOT transmitted which was not mentioned in the article. The memories he is referring to that planaria pass on are extremely simple things like looking for food in response to a flash of light. Furthermore after fission, while part of the organism has no brain, it has no memories.

The human brain and peripheral nervous system is nothing like a planaria. There is a huge amount of evidence linking the mind to the brain. There is no evidence that human memories are stored anywhere except the brain nor any evidence of people having memories without a brain. In the article he discusses a 44-year-old French man who had hydrocephalus – water on the brain, and yet was functioning. This is an outlier. There have literally been 5 or 10 cases like this man in known history. These people ALL had brains, albeit smaller than normal. Almost all people with hydrocephalus have varying degrees of disability and depending on how severe it is and how it is treated the outcomes range from mild disability, to severe physical and cognitive disability, to death.

Humans do not engage in fission, regeneration, and are not asexual. There are no cases ever in history of anyone surviving without a brain, no cases in all of history of anyone having a mind with no brain, and no cases in known history of parents passing memories to their children through sexual reproduction.

Before talking about God first see if an event is random or not. If the event is random then it's pointless and uninteresting to ask if someone or something caused the outcome. If I drop a ball and it falls to the ground it's pointless and uninteresting to speculate if gravity, God, pink unicorns, or something else made the ball drop.

I'm not claiming humans can grow brains like planarians. But planarians show aspects of the mind can be seen outside of the brain. Planarians is just one example. Even evolutionists like Donald Hoffman have made arguments about cognition outside the brain, although I don't agree with his pantheistic conclusion. More interestingly, plant scientists like Monica Gagliano are looking into how plants can have rudimentary intelligence, memory and learning when they don't even have brains.

 

[bigthinker]

Then these are not questions for science to answer.

Was that unclear somehow?
They are questions to be pondered, the answers to which can be imagined.
Because there's a lack of data for proper answers.

 

[positive atheist]

Before talking about God first see if an event is random or not. If the event is random then it's pointless and uninteresting to ask if someone or something caused the outcome. If I drop a ball and it falls to the ground it's pointless and uninteresting to speculate if gravity, God, pink unicorns, or something else made the ball drop.

I'm not claiming humans can grow brains like planarians. But planarians show aspects of the mind can be seen outside of the brain. Planarians is just one example. Even evolutionists like Donald Hoffman have made arguments about cognition outside the brain, although I don't agree with his pantheistic conclusion. More interestingly, plant scientists like Monica Gagliano are looking into how plants can have rudimentary intelligence, memory and learning when they don't even have brains.

Before talking about God first see if an event is random or not.

Instead, let's talk about god first. Do you believe in god, if so which one? What religion are you? What do you believe god does or has done? What is your evidence? Convince us.

I said in post #387:

You seem to be asking a lot of questions and implying various things. Why don't you just say whatever your point is so people can judge it for themselves.

Here we are in post #445. What is your point?

 

[Temujin]

We can still test if an event is random or not. If not random then at least we know someone or something is explicitly biasing the event.

Wrong. Non random events are not necessarily caused by someone or something. The "something" may itself be a one of a chain of such events leading back to something random. Consider the weather. This is not random, though in the UK at least it can be chaotic. It's caused by the interactions of numerous complex entities from the Jetstream to ambient sea temperature. Anyone calling the weather random or accident, is a fool. But then so is anyone calling it controlled by or biased by divine intervention. We grew out of god's of the weather a very long time ago. There are no frost giants or thunder gods. We cannot prove that. Science has not done a systematic search for weather gods. Instead it has studied weather patterns and mechanisms to the pot that it can give a two day forecast with a reliability of 70% or so.

 

[vbj]

Wrong. Non random events are not necessarily caused by someone or something. The "something" may itself be a one of a chain of such events leading back to something random. Consider the weather. This is not random, though in the UK at least it can be chaotic. It's caused by the interactions of numerous complex entities from the Jetstream to ambient sea temperature. Anyone calling the weather random or accident, is a fool. But then so is anyone calling it controlled by or biased by divine intervention. We grew out of god's of the weather a very long time ago. There are no frost giants or thunder gods. We cannot prove that. Science has not done a systematic search for weather gods. Instead it has studied weather patterns and mechanisms to the pot that it can give a two day forecast with a reliability of 70% or so.

I don't have an advanced physics degree, but my understanding is true randomness occurs only at very small scales, like at the quantum level. Even coin flips, lotto ball draws, and digital random number generators are not truly random. But they are random enough for practical use because there are too many variables to account for.

Since you bring up the weather, I'm sure we can detect if the weather occurred naturally or was tampered by seeding clouds. Same thing with how humans got here if there was a way to simulate the process. We should be able to detect if the process occurred naturally as atheists claim, or was tampered as theists claim.

 

[vbj]

Instead, let's talk about god first. Do you believe in god, if so which one? What religion are you? What do you believe god does or has done? What is your evidence? Convince us.

I said in post #387:

Here we are in post #445. What is your point?

Why? You made the claims and I asked for evidence. Seems reasonable to me. That's also the answer to your next question.

 

[Whatsisface]

Yes but you can't know that. To you it looks like an accident.

Not quite. To me the only evidence we have points to us being accidental. We have no evidence anything was behind accidental chain of events.

 

[Temujin]

I don't have an advanced physics degree, but my understanding is true randomness occurs only at very small scales, like at the quantum level. Even coin flips, lotto ball draws, and digital random number generators are not truly random. But they are random enough for practical use because there are too many variables to account for.

Since you bring up the weather, I'm sure we can detect if the weather occurred naturally or was tampered by seeding clouds. Same thing with how humans got here if there was a way to simulate the process. We should be able to detect if the process occurred naturally as atheists claim, or was tampered as theists claim.

Stop telling me what we should be able to do. If you are that sure we can do it, then finance an experiment to do so. Be aware however, that there's no possible way of excluding divine influence, because it's compatible with every possible scenario. That being the case, what's the point? Your "should be able to" in practice is impossible. If the theist contention is that four billion years ago God moved a carbon atom 2mm to the right, then frankly, I'm not interested. A God so ineffable that he cannot be detected obviously, is just not worth bothering about.

 

[positive atheist]

positive atheist said:
Instead, let's talk about god first. Do you believe in god, if so which one? What religion are you? What do you believe god does or has done? What is your evidence? Convince us.

I said in post #387:

Here we are in post #445. What is your point?

Why? You made the claims and I asked for evidence. Seems reasonable to me. That's also the answer to your next question.

To be honest I am very suspicious about what your point is. You seem like a "back door theist". You come here, you're asking many questions, demanding evidence. You are clearly implying some kind of deity but when this is pointed out to you, you deny it. And while all this is going on you slip god in the back door.

I answered all your questions about my original post. Then you gave me a large amount of information and I took you at your word. It turned out nothing that you gave me was true. Thomas Verney who you offered as an expert turned out to be a theist who never actually has done any research on planaria (or anything else as far as I can tell) who believed minds exist outside of brains, and was a psychiatrist, not a neurologist nor biologist. The NIH study I linked to, I don't know if you read it, explained how planaria sometimes regrow brains with previous memories, it explained how this happens, and it didn't involve memories outside the brain, plus the 3 people who did the study were all neurobiologists who did actual research. Nothing you gave me supported any of your claims that minds exist outside of bodies.

Now you seem to want to just ignore the fact that what you offered as evidence turned out to be nothing. Now you want me to wade through another pile of evidence. I watched the 20 minute Donald Hoffman video which you suggested "[has] made arguments about cognition outside the brain,". The video has nothing to do with that. In the video he argues that human perception can't be relied upon to give us information about reality. What was the point of having me watch the video? I looked at the Monica Gagliano article. Although she claims to have evidence that plants can engage in cognition she never says how. Almost nothing she is saying is new. All of this started in the 70's with the book The Secret Life of Plants (1973) by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. I remember farmers were playing Beethoven to their crops. Then there was What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz, originally published in 2012 (I read both books when they came out). Chamovitz is much better than Gagliano and I suggest you read that book for a realistic understanding of plant intelligence. You won't like it though because it admits plants don't have minds. A review of What a Plant Knows in Audubon Magazine, July–August 2012 stated

Judiciously manipulating similes with dashes of anthropomorphism, Chamovitz introduces each of the vital human senses (all except taste) and explains its meaning for humans as contrasted with its function in plants. There are no noses or eyes as such in the plant world, but there are organs and responses that mimic our physiology. Much like how humans smell food, plants too have chemical receptors that bind to very specific gaseous chemical compounds. The author recounts how willows, attacked by caterpillars, send airborne pheromones to neighboring willows. Warned by these gaseous signals (or “smells”) of a nearby infestation, the neighbors begin manufacturing increased levels of toxic chemicals to render their leaves unpalatable to the caterpillars.

Gagliano is doing nothing but repeating work that was done decades ago but she is anthropomorphizing plants and she admits no one agrees with her and she cannot get funding and was thrown out of the university where she worked when the government refused to give her any more money to investigate wether plants can think like humans:

The university that I was at, where this work was done, they had to somehow, I would say, withstand my presence there because I had funding from the federal government. As many universities do, they take a chunk of the money that you bring in and so they're quite happy to have you no matter what you're doing. But as soon as the fellowship ran out and my funding ran out, so my entire position finished, there was absolutely nothing for me. They didn't even say, ‘oh good luck and goodbye.’ I closed the door to my office and I disappeared. And that was it…….I just applied for this big fellowship with the federal government again, because I'm hoping to be able to go back to do my work. And I just got back the comments from the reviewers. These are anonymous reviews so I don't know who the people are, but obviously, these are academics, most likely professors of some standing. One, in particular, opened the comments by saying 'it's very unlikely that plants are aware or conscious. So this entire project is meaningless.’

This woman thinks she is being treated unfairly because nobody will give her money to find out if plants have minds, if they can think, or if they have a memory of a vacation to Cape Cod 2 years ago! So here we are again, with you providing "evidence" that doesn't support the idea that minds exist outside of brains. So, again, what is your point? Are you a christian? Are you a new ager who thinks there is some kind of Universal Mind animating the universe? What religion are you? Why won't you be up front like everyone else here and simply state what you believe?

I am an atheist and believe there is no god. See how simple that is. Try it.

 

[positive atheist]

Stop telling me what we should be able to do. If you are that sure we can do it, then finance an experiment to do so. Be aware however, that there's no possible way of excluding divine influence, because it's compatible with every possible scenario. That being the case, what's the point? Your "should be able to" in practice is impossible. If the theist contention is that four billion years ago God moved a carbon atom 2mm to the right, then frankly, I'm not interested. A God so ineffable that he cannot be detected obviously, is just not worth bothering about.

Be aware however, that there's no possible way of excluding divine influence, because it's compatible with every possible scenario.

Exactly right. And you can be sure they will keep it that way. God can be retrofitted on to everything. Right now they claim god created human life. When scientists figure out it was actually X that caused human life then theists will say "God caused X to occur".

 

[stiggy wiggy]

. When scientists figure out it was actually X that caused human life then theists will say "God caused X to occur".

Yep, rendering you a sputtering mess, incapable of proving otherwise. Not to mention your miserable failure at identifying X.

 

[positive atheist]

Yep, rendering you a sputtering mess, incapable of proving otherwise. Not to mention your miserable failure at identifying X.

Yep. Any hypothesis (i.e. god) that is unfalsifiable, has a truth value that is unknown. You cannot say it is true. You cannot say it is not true.

Because the default position on any unverified proposition is disbelief, we should all disbelieve god exists.

By the way, when science does discover how life formed on earth I don't doubt you will then claim "God did that". And we are not "miserably failing" at finding how life was formed on earth. In fact things are going great. Maybe we will not know in my lifetime but sooner rather than later. I will not be surprised if we know within 100 years.

Nobel laureate Jack Szostak joined the UChicago faculty as University Professor in Chemistry in 2022 and will lead the University’s new interdisciplinary Origins of Life Initiative to coordinate research efforts into the origin of life on Earth. Scientists from several departments of the Physical Sciences Division are joining the initiative, including specialists in chemistry, astronomy, geology and geophysics.

“Right now we are getting truly unprecedented amounts of data coming in: Missions like Hayabusa and OSIRIS-REx are bringing us pieces of asteroids, which helps us understand the conditions that form planets, and NASA’s new JWST telescope is taking astounding data on the solar system and the planets around us,” said Prof. Ciesla. “I think we’re going to make huge progress on this question.”

Your god is getting squeezed into a smaller and smaller box. Soon he will disappear.

 

[stiggy wiggy]

Your god is getting squeezed into a smaller and smaller box. Soon he will disappear.

You couldn't squeeze an amoeba into 55 gallon drum.The fact is you have no clue as to what X is, i.e, how life came into existence, nor do you have anything to disprove that Good initiated it. But go ahead and gullibly swallow that "unprecedented data" is coming in. LOL

 

[JAG]

Temujin said

It also doesn't rule out that a bunny rabbit caused life on earth, it doesn't rule out that Goldilocks and the 3 Bears didn't create life on earth, it doesn't rule out that space aliens didn't create life on earth. So what? If you have evidence that god created life on earth then let's see it. If you don't have such evidence simply pointing out that exactly how life formed on earth is still unknown is no evidence whatsoever that god did it. There are several promising theories being worked on right now. Self-organization has been observed in nature and reproduced in laboratories and is now an accepted fact. We know from the law of truly large numbers that while life forming spontaneously is unlikely, all unlikely events become likely and even certain, given enough trials. There are most likely enough trials in our large universe and billions of years. God has not been seen anywhere in all this.

JAG Writes:
The Dead Old Single One Cell Suddenly Came To Life . . .

You have no Empirical Evidence that your original ancestor
was at one time a dead one-celled speck that lived in the
Primordial Slime and then later begin to pulsate with life.

Pulsate , , just a slight boom , , boom , , boom , , ,

I mean the one-celled speck was not always alive --so there
was a time when Old One-Cell was as dead as a door nail , ,

, , , but , , , ,

, , lo and behold , , ,

, , ,Old One Cell at some point became alive and it began to pulsate.

Then Time Passed.

After awhile Old One Cell, increased to the size of a pecan.

Then later on Old One Cell increased to the size of a baseball.

Then to the size of a Chicken.

A chicken , , ,

Then later on as Time Passed Old One Cell has now become a Toad Frog.
{or What Ever You Claim It Became}

But Old One Cell did not remain a Toad Frog.

On no.

Old One Cell eventually became a Chimp.

Then as time Passed a "scientific miracle" occurred , , ,

Here it comes , , ,

Old One Cell now at last has become "a Ronald Reagan"
and "a Ruth Bader Ginsburg."

And all that up there happened due to , , ,

~ natural selection
and
~ :random mutation
and
~ atoms and molecules wiggling around
and
~ chemical reactions taking place . . .

, , , and all that was produced by

~ unthinking non-intelligent Time
plus
~ unthinking non-intelligent Chance
plus
~ unthinking non-intelligent Matter , , ,

, , which produced a , ,

~ highly complex Human Brain

~ and a highly complex Human Eye, and

~ a highly complex Fully Functioning Human Body

So?

So if you believe all that up there, then you are a Great Man Of Faith
and you believe in the Religion Of Evolution.

My view is It requires MORE faith to believe in all that up there, than
it requires to believe in John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He
gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish
but have Eternal Life."

Best.


JAG

Burp


Scot me up Beamy.



[][]

 

[Whatsisface]

JAG Writes:
The Dead Old Single One Cell Suddenly Came To Life . . .

Strawman. Biology does not claim this.

You have no Empirical Evidence that your original ancestor
was at one time a dead one-celled speck that lived in the
Primordial Slime and then later begin to pulsate with life.

You have no empirical evidence Jesus rose from the dead, or God exists.

Pulsate , , just a slight boom , , boom , , boom , , ,

I mean the one-celled speck was not always alive --so there
was a time when Old One-Cell was as dead as a door nail , ,

, , , but , , , ,

, , lo and behold , , ,

, , ,Old One Cell at some point became alive and it began to pulsate.

Then Time Passed.

After awhile Old One Cell, increased to the size of a pecan.

Then later on Old One Cell increased to the size of a baseball.

Then to the size of a Chicken.

A chicken , , ,

Then later on as Time Passed Old One Cell has now become a Toad Frog.
{or What Ever You Claim It Became}

But Old One Cell did not remain a Toad Frog.

On no.

Old One Cell eventually became a Chimp.

Then as time Passed a "scientific miracle" occurred , , ,

Here it comes , , ,

Old One Cell now at last has become "a Ronald Reagan"
and "a Ruth Bader Ginsburg."

And all that up there happened due to , , ,

~ natural selection
and
~ :random mutation
and
~ atoms and molecules wiggling around
and
~ chemical reactions taking place . . .

, , , and all that was produced by

~ unthinking non-intelligent Time
plus
~ unthinking non-intelligent Chance
plus
~ unthinking non-intelligent Matter , , ,

, , which produced a , ,

~ highly complex Human Brain

~ and a highly complex Human Eye, and

~ a highly complex Fully Functioning Human Body

So?

So if you believe all that up there, then you are a Great Man Of Faith
and you believe in the Religion Of Evolution.

My view is It requires MORE faith to believe in all that up there, than
it requires to believe in John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He
gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish
but have Eternal Life."

Best.


JAG

Burp


Scot me up Beamy.



[][]

Such ignorance.

 

[bigthinker]

JAG Writes:
The Dead Old Single One Cell Suddenly Came To Life . . .

You have no Empirical Evidence that your original ancestor
was at one time a dead one-celled speck that lived in the
Primordial Slime and then later begin to pulsate with life.

Pulsate , , just a slight boom , , boom , , boom , , ,

I mean the one-celled speck was not always alive --so there
was a time when Old One-Cell was as dead as a door nail , ,

, , , but , , , ,

, , lo and behold , , ,

, , ,Old One Cell at some point became alive and it began to pulsate.

Then Time Passed.

After awhile Old One Cell, increased to the size of a pecan.

Then later on Old One Cell increased to the size of a baseball.

Then to the size of a Chicken.

A chicken , , ,

Then later on as Time Passed Old One Cell has now become a Toad Frog.
{or What Ever You Claim It Became}

But Old One Cell did not remain a Toad Frog.

On no.

Old One Cell eventually became a Chimp.

Then as time Passed a "scientific miracle" occurred , , ,

Here it comes , , ,

Old One Cell now at last has become "a Ronald Reagan"
and "a Ruth Bader Ginsburg."

And all that up there happened due to , , ,

~ natural selection
and
~ :random mutation
and
~ atoms and molecules wiggling around
and
~ chemical reactions taking place . . .

, , , and all that was produced by

~ unthinking non-intelligent Time
plus
~ unthinking non-intelligent Chance
plus
~ unthinking non-intelligent Matter , , ,

, , which produced a , ,

~ highly complex Human Brain

~ and a highly complex Human Eye, and

~ a highly complex Fully Functioning Human Body

So?

So if you believe all that up there, then you are a Great Man Of Faith
and you believe in the Religion Of Evolution.

My view is It requires MORE faith to believe in all that up there, than
it requires to believe in John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He
gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish
but have Eternal Life."

Best.


JAG

Burp


Scot me up Beamy.



[][]

It requires no faith because there's no belief involved.
Believers think they have "the Truth" but it's based on nothing.
Science doesn't claim truth but rather likelihood of true based on evidence.
Currently, with regards to the origin of life, the data is incomplete. So there are hypotheses, ideas, all tentatively held.
So far we have zero evidence of a god, alien, spaghetti monster, magic etc cause for the origin of life.
So kinda hard to connect dots where none exist.