God - just a neuro-physiological ailment?

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Cris, Jul 30, 2003.

  1. Mucker Great View! Registered Senior Member

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    ConsequentAtheist, this seems to be subjective methodology anyway.
    Or maybe the person is 'activating God'.

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    Last edited: Jul 31, 2003
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  3. Crystal Registered Senior Member

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    Yeah 'cuzz of course an omniscient and omnipotent God requires activation and all.

    Genius put himself into a whole

    An all powerfull God could not be activated because if there was so ability it had that required activation then it couldn't have performed that ability while not activated and thus it would NOT be all powerful.

    Idiots, I swear - you make it to easy to look good!
     
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  5. Zero Banned Banned

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    No theists here yet? LOL how pathetic

    How about if I join the theist side in the fray? It'd be fun to pretend to be a theist.

    *ahem*

    How do we know if this world isn't just a play of God's consciousness?

    What if all existence was created, and managed (i.e., evolution happened, but only because God wanted it to, and he guided every single step of the way) by the Omnipotent God?

    What if everything that ever happened were the will of God, including your unbelieving doubt and even maybe the "God organ" within the brain?


    Bleh, I'm done. From now on, my "theistic voice" will be noted by tomato colored letters.
     
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  7. EvilPoet I am what I am Registered Senior Member

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    'activating God'

    "The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight - that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether." -Daniel Dennett [Darwin's Dangerous Idea
     
  8. grover Registered Senior Member

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    You atheists are so sure of yourselves. Just one question though, how does the mind come from the brain? Because it is self-evident we will all admit we have a mind. Because it is also self-evident we will also all admit that the mind (as opposed to the brain) is not physical. So, how does the brain create the mind?
     
  9. EvilPoet I am what I am Registered Senior Member

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    "The human brain is made of many parts. Each has a specific function: to turn sounds into speech; to process colour; to register fear; to recognize a face or distinguish a fish from a fruit. But this is no static collection of components: each brain is unique, ever-changing and exquisitely sensitive to its environment. Its modules are interdependent and interactive and their functions are not rigidly fixed: sometimes one bit will take over the job of another, or fail, owing to some genetic or environmental hiccup, to work at all. Brain activity is controlled by currents and chemicals and mysterious oscillations; it may even be subject to quantum effects that distort time. The whole is bound together in a dynamic system of systems that does millions of different things in parallel. It is probably so complex that it will never succeed in comprehending itself. Yet it never ceases to try." -Rita Carter, Mapping The Mind
     
  10. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,884
    Irony: returning to religious philosophy as basis for speculation and quasi-analogy

    Grover

    On Crowley's "Naples Arrangement": The Naples Arrangement is part of the philosophical discourse included in Master Therion's (Crowley) Book of Thoth, the companion to his Thoth Tarot Deck.

    (1) The Naples Arrangement: Interpretive review of the Naples Arrangement. While I might nitpick the web author's interpretations of a couple of the points, the column of information on the left is more important. Points 1 - 6 are properly metaphysical, points 7 - 10 and the "Triple Veils" are relatively religious. Points 1 - 6 are the important ones, but you cannot treat them in a literalist context; Crowley was insane.

    (2) excerpt: Book of Thoth: This is pretty much the segment I was trying to avoid transcribing. Woo-hoo! This is the segment examined by reference #1 above.

    (3) "The Formula of the Cup of Babalon", by Frater Osiris: There's nothing really significant in here, but there is an application of the Naples Arrangement in the interpretation:
    As you can see, the Naples Arrangement is somewhat flexible. Though exacting study of various occult philosophies can provide a "dictionary definition" of Crowley, or an encyclopedic summary, it's still intended to be intuitive. (It had to be in order to be a sacred principle yet remain malleable to Crowley's ego.)

    But in the end, all I'm after with this is that Crowley provides a reasonable analogy for the development of self-awareness. The actual physical processes and the evolution of associations at the dawn of self-awareness are presently beyond reach. The former we may eventually attain; it seems a matter of science, and of refinement of measurement standards in accord with new technology. The latter, however ... I think it's lost to the ages. Quite obviously, we can do little more than speculate at this point.

    :m:,
    Tiassa

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  11. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    grover,

    A particular pattern of neural connections can be used to represent a memory, or a thought, much like a pattern of bits can be used to represent information in a computer.

    The bit pattern is very physical, e.g. it is a set of varying voltages. In the brain the neural connections are also very physical.

    The mind is implemented by physical structures.
     
  12. grover Registered Senior Member

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    715
    Cris,

    What you're talking about part is particular mental functions. What I'm talking about is the thing which is aware of those things which is mind, which is immaterial. So my question is simple: How does the brain(material) creat the mind (immaterial)? Furthermore, everything you have ever perceived is a mental function. You have never seen a tree, you have seen a recreation of that tree by your brain. So, how can you say that simply because visions can be shown to have a correlation in the brain that they aren't real when the exact same thing can be said about everything else you have ever perceived. Put another way, seeing as everything we perceive is recreated by our brains how do we know that visions are not a recreation of an external reality the same way a tree is a recreation of an external reality?
     
  13. Angelus Daughter Of House Ravenhearte Registered Senior Member

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    The mind is not immaterial. Every thought you have is reflected in some chemical reaction and physical rewiring.
     
  14. grover Registered Senior Member

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    715
    Once again, when you talk about thought you are talking about a particular mental function which mind is aware of. I have no problem admitting that thought, memory, language have some basis in the physical brain. On the other hand, it is self evident that mind is immaterial, it has no taste, size, shape, smell, no characteristics of a physical thing. Bite the bullet and admit it's not physical.
     
  15. Angelus Daughter Of House Ravenhearte Registered Senior Member

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    From how you define it I'm not sure I believe this "mind" even exists.
     
  16. grover Registered Senior Member

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    Well if it "helps" it's the same thing as "awareness" or consciousness. And if you're not sure it exists then I'm not sure that you exist.
     
  17. Angelus Daughter Of House Ravenhearte Registered Senior Member

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    431
    That's good. Cause I'm not sure I exist either.
     
  18. invisibleone Registered Senior Member

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    121
    let the world be the world! let it play it's own game! let it dance with itself. . .
     
  19. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    Grover,

    Ok but the mental functions are what comprise the mind.

    There is nothing immaterial about the patterns that comprise neural networks.

    The mind is the brain. There is no such thing as something immaterial. Perhaps you mean self-awareness

    Self-awareness is a gestalt experience that occurs beyond a particular threshold of escalating complexity and interaction.

    OK but that is how the brain/mind operates.

    But that is how we see. You are trying to imply a level of abstraction that doesn’t exist and is unnecessary.

    Because real objects are only detected through our senses.

    If it was external then it would have to enter through our senses, otherwise it is a self-created delusion.
     
  20. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,884
    Grover

    Grover
    It's a matter of comparisons. One must identify the self as opposed to others. The rest seems to be either an extension of the living impulse or a necessary complication thereof. Remember: happiness and security are mere electrochemical states in the brain. You can feel them as falsely in relation to circumstances as you can fear their lack.
    Which is part of the reason why many sages claim "reality" to be illusory. Beyond even paradigm and presumption is the fact you've pointed out. That's not the actual tree our brain is reading but an image cast on sensors.

    An interesting consideration comes from Ibn Sina. Summarized by Armstrong, it goes approximately as follows:
    In addition to viewing the reproduction, we are also operating according to a hidden criterion which compels us to view composites. There are a number of reasons for this, relevance being in no way the least.
    At such a level, reality is somewhat conventional. While there are proper metaphysical considerations about the illusory nature of reality, it is fair enough to say in a relevant and functional context that the tree can be agreed on to exist as stimulus for the brain event of perception. The localized brain event referred to in the article has no detectable real stimulus. It's not like the eye is seeing and defining a reproduction of God for the brain to process. The brain itself seems to be generating the signal. And the brain seems to be great at receiving and filtering information. When it generates from its own, though ... well ... the results aren't as bright. Many perceive something wrong in the world between humans. Every attempt to generate a solution from within has resulted in zero real progress at best. Sure, we're playing with nicer toys these days, but humanity hasn't changed much.
    In the metaphysical there is no way to know. In the practical, it's fair enough to say that if Joe falls over, thinks he's talking to God on a sunny island in the south seas, and had a nice flight home on the back of a hoopoe bird ... well ... I'm pretty sure that I can correctly advise the paramedics as they come to check his condition that he never left the room.

    There are metaphysical possibilities to beat the band, but it depends on how metaphysical one wishes to be. Look at me .... people barely understand me most days in this forum, and even I generally concede the practical reality of the temporal Universe around me. What, where, when, or how is the reality seen in the brain? What makes it any different from the waking-sleep seizures I had that replaced the picture of Saturn on my wall with Orson the Pig from US Acres while the buzzing in my skull left me looking for my friend Drill (see Bradbury's Zero Hour for reference)? Or perhaps the morning that I took a shower, got dressed, and ate breakfast before shaking off the bizarre condition of thinking I'm a character in a book. Strangely, my mother didn't notice, even though I was talking about people who weren't real. However, I promise that thirty-eyed, feathered, fire-shooting pseudo-dragons with the power to violate time-space cannot, within my empirical Universe, be said to exist in reality.

    - Armstrong, Karen. A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. New York: Knopf, 1994.

    :m:,
    Tiassa

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