Five Reasons to Reject Belief in Gods

[blackout]

1. Minds depend on physical brains. Religions depend on belief in souls--essentially minds that can exist independently of bodies. But experience tells us that minds depend on brain activity to function properly.

Experience also tells us that no matter how excellent,
how brilliant,
the mind and imagination of a craftsman is
if his machinery is broken
things will not come out right.
If his processor is broken,
Vision and intent will not 'translate' correctly.
(inner design >> outer world & outer design >> inner world)

This says more about broken machinery,
than it does about the mind/inner vision/intent/'heart'
of the craftsman to whom it belongs.

 

[Copernicus]

Experience also tells us that no matter how excellent,
how brilliant,
the mind and imagination of a craftsman is
if his machinery is broken
things will not come out right.
If his processor is broken,
Vision and intent will not 'translate' correctly.

This says more about broken machinery,
than it does about the mind/inner vision/intent/'heart'
of the craftsman to whom it belongs.

This endorses the idea that things will come out right if the machinery is not broken. Do you have reason to conclude that it is?

 

[Copernicus]

There are two problems (one of which you are feigning not to exist).

OK, but I wish you would say which it is that you think I'm feigning not to exist.

1. There is no valid third party control information ever available. For example you believe there is sun and as evidence you say that others also see the sun. However, evidence of sun existing and others existing both come from you.

And I hope from you, too. I am not much into solipsism.

I am not saying that third party validation is useless. I am saying that third party validation of consciousness is useless, since conciousness alone makes everything aware. I will repeat the question "How the knower is known?" or "Who will know the knower?"

Assuming that others exist, we can ask them about their mental states, compare those states with our own, and correlate them with equipment that detects brain activity. I don't see a real problem here, unless you simply decide that your senses are not ever to be trusted.

2. All third party observations you are mentioning here are waking state observations that have no relevance to actual dream state or actual deep sleep state.

Really? How so? We are conscious and aware of our surroundings in a waking state. We can observe others who appear to lack consciousness, and we can perform experiments to test hypotheses. We were talking about consciousness, after all, and we all know what that is from direct experience.

Throughout exististence consciousness is inseparable. That one brain may cease functioning is similar to a leaf falling off a tree.

Maybe so, but that is the nature of consciousness. It is a very personal experience no matter how much we might wish otherwise. The best that we can do is to empathize with others, but empathy is still a personal experience.

 

[blackout]

This endorses the idea that things will come out right if the machinery is not broken. Do you have reason to conclude that it is?

Well I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "come out right",
but
Certainly the mind of an excellent craftsman
operating through excellent 'machinery'
will have a very high chance of "REALizing"
his Inner Vision. Of manifesting Outwardly
the greater works of her Image'ination.
Bringing Inner Vision, Intent and In(ner)'Spiration
Into Being- Physically - for others to "enjoy/work/use/master/understand/relate to"
(according to the nature of the expressed creation)

 

[atanu]

OK, but I wish you would say which it is that you think I'm feigning not to exist.


And I hope from you, too. I am not much into solipsism.

Assuming that others exist, we can ask them about their mental states, compare those states with our own, and correlate them with equipment that detects brain activity. I don't see a real problem here, unless you simply decide that your senses are not ever to be trusted.

Really? How so? We are conscious and aware of our surroundings in a waking state. We can observe others who appear to lack consciousness, and we can perform experiments to test hypotheses. We were talking about consciousness, after all, and we all know what that is from direct experience.

Maybe so, but that is the nature of consciousness. It is a very personal experience no matter how much we might wish otherwise. The best that we can do is to empathize with others, but empathy is still a personal experience.

All what you say does not give a single evidence that any brain is known in absence of consciousness. We know that a seed sprouts in a field only and three different kinds of bodies: in sleep, in dream, and in waking, sprout different produce. There is no evidence of any kind of inanimate matter exhibiting intelligence, including in a dead body. While an instrument is required to variegate homogeneous consciousness, the consciousness itself is self evident, which requires no third party validation. Brains come and go but existence is synonymous with consciousness.

On the other hand, there are scientific evidences, some of which have been cited above and which you are not willing to consider, that human will can alter the states of brain consciously.


But, I am realising that our definitions/understanding of consciousness versus manifest awareness (product) needs to be defined first.

 

[PolyHedral]

All what you say does not give a single evidence that any brain is known in absence of consciousness.

I know that you exist if you're unconscious, and you'd know that my body existed if I was unconscious. Isn't that what you mean? ("I" doesn't exist when I'm not conscious, since I can't be considering myself.)

There is no evidence of any kind of inanimate matter exhibiting intelligence, including in a dead body.

No, there has been no signs, other than the brain, of consciousness in inanimate matter. This is very different from intelligence. Computers can do supremely intelligent things, like play the stock market a thousand times faster and better than the best humans. Or play a completely unbeatable game of checkers. Or win Jeopardy.

On the other hand, there are scientific evidences, some of which have been cited above and which you are not willing to consider, that human will can alter the states of brain consciously.

I did consider them, and I agree with you. The will alone can alter the state of the brain. However, that doesn't mean the will does not depend on the state of the brain to function.

 

[atanu]

Fire is not an emergent property of wood, but it is an emergent property of the interaction between the wood and oxygen over a specified period of time. Without those ingredients, the fire could not exist. Similarly, without a brain, a mind cannot exist.

Mind does exist in dreams without a brain. As long as a field (body -- subtle or gross) is there, the thinking mind, which is nothing but working of consciousness, creates a universe of similar nature as the field itself. In dream the body is made of light and the universe is also similar. In waking, the body is gross and universe is also similar. I agree that the representation of the world depends first on a representation of "I" -- that is pure awareness and cannot be grasped in palm. But that ungraspable consciousness is more closer proof than an apple on a palm.

Without the ingredients you speak of, energy exists. The thinking mind depends on the field (body) but the consciousness that SEES the field exists independent of the field. Just as a seed exists independent of a field. For sprouting into a tree, a field is required.

 

[atanu]

You are asking a lot of questions that science has very good answers for. I am not sure why you are asking the questions, but you seem to think that the answers would establish a point that you wish to make. Could you provide answers and make that point? It might help me to understand what your reasoning is about these matters.

A lot of scientific research has been done to investigate these matters. The placebo effect has been proven to work. It strengthens the immune system, among other things. Consciousness therefore clearly does play an indirect role in curing some illnesses. We also know that brain activity correlates with consciousness. How does any of this lead you to a different conclusion from the one I have reached--that all mental activity depends on a working brain?

Science has observations that certain activities/moods are characterized by preponderance of certain chemicals or certain other signature. That says nothing about the experience and the experiencer.

That more ice creams are sold in summer is not the proof that summer is the root cause of ice cream sale.

On the other hand, typically you just refuse to accept valid scientific evidence that consciousness can control mental activities and this phenomenon of mind over matter is used beneficially by many. You also typically brush away the evidences as placebo -- whatever that means. But you cannot explain why placebo effect happens at all.

Repeat

Research on meditation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Meditation Associated With Increased Grey Matter In The Brain
The Science of Meditation | Psychology Today
Brain scans show meditation changes minds, increases attention (June 25, 2007)
Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice
TIME Magazine: The Science of Meditation
Clinical Proof Meditation Works | The Canyon - Malibu, California

Yoga decreases kyphosis in senior women and men wi... [J Am Geriatr Soc. 2009] - PubMed result
Yoga May Help Fight Depression
Yoga Shows Potential to Ward Off Certain Diseases | LiveScience
Yoga Calms Tsunami Survivors | Connect

I don't keep coming back to that metaphor, and I do not understand why you do.

You do. You say that awareness is due to brain. And then you say people use emergent awareness to control brain activities. Just like characters emergent on a cinema screen arguining intelligently of the story line.

 

[atanu]

We get tired, and we fall asleep.

Chemicals get tired and sleep? Why chemical actions should continue unabated? What does 'we' mean at all. We are products of chemical reactions, as per some thoughts.

So, there is someone who gets tired? What is that?

Where does consciousness go when we are under general anesthesia? Every time I have had it, I have woken up with the feeling that no time had passed and with no memory of the operation.

Nice question. Where does consciousness go when we are under general anesthesia? Where does consciousness go when we are deep asleep?

Suppose you put black veil over your eyes and you do not see anything. Where have then the brain and its chemicals gone?

I lost consciousness because of drugs that physically changed the state of my brain.

Thus "I" and my awareness of the world are two distinct things. Whether you see the world or not, you exist as "I" and that is consciousness devoid of its other machines.

In deep sleep we do not see and know anything since the functioning of machines have been withdrawn in "I". The products of the senses and mental thinking do not now cover the "I", which is homogeneous consciousness and exists in deep sleep in its original form.

Yogis and meditators consciously switch on this mode of sleepful waking, with mind alive.

In deep sleep, a man exists blissfully. The same man may see a nightmare in dream and shriek. The same man wakes up and worries about the various problems. Has the man changed? All these phenomenon are effects are built over the man himself by the actions of the mind-sense functions (subtle mind-sense in dream and gross mind-sense in waking). The phenomena of the states are superimposed on the man and the man is mistaken for the phenomena.

 

[atanu]

Where does consciousness go when we are under general anesthesia? Every time I have had it, I have woken up with the feeling that no time had passed and with no memory of the operation.

Nice question. Suppose you put black veil over your eyes and you do not see anything. Where have then the brain and its chemicals gone?

 

[atanu]

I can only speak for myself.

I don't keep coming back to that metaphor, and I do not understand why you do.

What? How can you even speak for your "I"? "I" and the physical descriptions are emergent from structures and their dynamics of special matter called brain, as per you.

From truths about structure and dynamics, one can deduce only further truths about structure and dynamics.

But truths about consciousness are not truths about structure and dynamics.

That is why I repeat that characters emergent from a movie screen cannot know the movie.

 

[atanu]

What? How can you even speak for your "I"? "I" and the physical descriptions are emergent from structures and their dynamics of special matter called brain, as per you.
From truths about structure and dynamics, one can deduce only further truths about structure and dynamics.
But truths about consciousness are not truths about structure and dynamics.
That is why I repeat that characters emergent from a movie screen cannot know the movie.

A materialist is of the view that there is nothing in the vicinity of consciousness that needs explaining over and above explaining the various functions --- in short they seem to hold that explaining the functions explains everything.

Thus, it is held both that conscious states are representational states, representing things in the world, and that we can explain representation in functional terms. This argument is ambiguity on the notion of representation itself.

There is a notion of functional representation, on which P is represented when a system responds to P and/or produces behavior appropriate for P. In this sense, explaining functioning may explain representation, but explaining representation does not explain consciousness.

The case of consciousness is unique, precisely because there is something else, phenomenal experience, that needs explaining. There is the experience and the experiencer that you cannot represent notionally and let that notion argue about other representations.

The base case is not known and yet recursions are built on that. It is like saying a mirror sees its image on a facing mirror and so on..............Kowing the truth of the base case, is an impossiblity given the assumption that intelligence is an effect. How can an effect understand the cause?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Mind does exist in dreams without a brain.

Exactly when have you ever dreamt without a brain?

 

[atanu]

And I hope from you, too. I am not much into solipsism.

No. I am not into solipsism.

You cannot prove that 'an evidence that you know' and a 'third party witness for the same evidence' are both not in your mind.

OTOH, your premise is that there is no common consciousness underlying all observations/all minds. So, your assumption leads to solipsism.

I say, based on scripture, reflection of sleep and dream states, experience of meditation and its effects, and based on LIbet experiment that the SEER/Knower is deeper than the phenomenal awareness of the world of ours that arise due to functioning of instruments of mind that we assume to be the first/primary intelligence.

The phenomenal awareness arising out of functions of senses that is erroneously ascribed as 'intelligence' has no means to know the deep seer/knower, except in meditation of oneness, since who or what can know the knower? Can the effect (the awareness of the world) know the knower of the world.

In short, i know myself through my senses, from image in mirror, from eyes of others -- all from a distance. I do not know myself from the centre, however.

 

[atanu]

Exactly when have you ever dreamt without a brain?

Kindly try to answer that in the dream.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Kindly try to answer that in the dream.

That's no answer.

Are you saying that you don't have a brain when you're sleeping? That's demonstrably false.

Are you saying that the other "minds" you encounter in your dreams don't have brains? I'd say that's false as well: they occupy your brain. Also, I wouldn't say that they're "minds" at all.

 

[atanu]

That's no answer.

Are you saying that you don't have a brain when you're sleeping? That's demonstrably false.

Dear Penguin

Yes, demonstrably false from the perspective of a waking consciousness, consisting of world made of representations. But the dream world of representation is different. The dream hunger cannot be met with a waking time bread and a waking time hunger cannot be met by a dream bread.

I request you to ponder and not reject right away.

 

[Willamena]

That's no answer.

Are you saying that you don't have a brain when you're sleeping? That's demonstrably false.

What proof of the "real world" can there possibly be while you're in the Matrix?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

What proof of the "real world" can there possibly be while you're in the Matrix?

Existence and consciousness. The "brain in a vat" is still a brain.

 

[PolyHedral]

Existence and consciousness. The "brain in a vat" is still a brain.

Or at least, the mind on the brain in the vat is still a mind, even if the brain is just a computer.