But seriously . . . atheism?

[Braddogg]

Caleb, has conciousness without form ever been observed?  In other words, how do you know that conciousness can EXIST without matter?

I make this argument because I believe that it is the only argument that explains how we can have a perception of the past.  If our "memories" were just stored chemical information, then when we recall, we should experience the information as a present experience.  But we do not.  We experience it as a past experience.  Memory, (a function of consciousness,) thus seems independent of time, at least to some extent.

(emp. mine)

I don't follow.  Perhaps a mirror would be a good analogy for what might happen (and since it's your theory, you probably have a better way of explaining it; I'm just giving you my thoughts as a place for you to start): At first glance, a reflection seems real.  Indeed, very young children cannot distinguish between a reflection and a real figure.  Yet, as adults, we notice incongruities in reflections that help us distinguish between a reflection and a real figure -- lettering on a t-shirt might be different, jewelry usually worn on the left hand might appear on the right, etc.  And our mind processes these incongruities and determines what is real.  Perhaps memories work the same way.  With intense memories (flashbacks), it is sometimes hard to distinguish truth from the memory.  This seems to be especially true with the emotions attatched to memories.  Perhaps as part of the chemical makeup of memories there is a "timestamp" the conciousness can use.  Not knowing much of anything about neuroscience, this is all rampant speculation.  People like Sam Harris (I'm working through The End of Faith) seem to think that the relatively unexplored world of neuroscience will CONFIRM atheism.

[adamwruth]

Are you an "agnostic" to the proposition "There is an invisible elephant on your head"?  That is, would you say "There might or there might not be, but I doubt it", or would you say "You're a crazy bastard, get out of my house"?

I would say, "Your'e a crazy bastard", but for other reasons 

Seriously, though, if you told me that there was an elephant there and I could in no way verify it, then yes, I would be agnostic.  It may be there or it may not, but I have no way of knowing and it affects my life in no way.  How I treated you for saying it, though, is irrelevant.  That has everything to do with my respect of you, and nothing to do with the provability of your belief.  Agnostacism treats all unprovable things identically, but I don't have to treat those who hold them identically.

Or how about if I pointed to a 10-year-old and said "Adam, go meet your daddy"?

That is, in my frame of reference, demonstrably false (unless the boy's name was "your daddy", sounds celtic), so nothing I can be agnostic about.  My agnosticism is not a form of nihilism, like it is for some people.

[Braddogg]

Are you an "agnostic" to the proposition "There is an invisible elephant on your head"?  That is, would you say "There might or there might not be, but I doubt it", or would you say "You're a crazy bastard, get out of my house"?

I would say, "Your'e a crazy bastard", but for other reasons 

Seriously, though, if you told me that there was an elephant there and I could in no way verify it, then yes, I would be agnostic.  It may be there or it may not, but I have no way of knowing and it affects my life in no way.  How I treated you for saying it, though, is irrelevant.  That has everything to do with my respect of you, and nothing to do with the provability of your belief.  Agnostacism treats all unprovable things identically, but I don't have to treat those who hold them identically.

Or how about if I pointed to a 10-year-old and said "Adam, go meet your daddy"?

That is, in my frame of reference, demonstrably false (unless the boy's name was "your daddy", sounds celtic), so nothing I can be agnostic about.  My agnosticism is not a form of nihilism, like it is for some people.

I appreciate your response.  What if I said that the 10-year-old hit puberty early, was sent from the past using alien technology, existed in another dimension, etc.?

[adamwruth]

Or how about if I pointed to a 10-year-old and said "Adam, go meet your daddy"?

That is, in my frame of reference, demonstrably false (unless the boy's name was "your daddy", sounds celtic), so nothing I can be agnostic about.  My agnosticism is not a form of nihilism, like it is for some people.

I appreciate your response.  What if I said that the 10-year-old hit puberty early, was sent from the past using alien technology, existed in another dimension, etc.?

I understand the rhetorical device you're using here.  You bring up something that on its face sounds completely ridiculous which would then elicit a response from me such as "of course I cannot believe that."  Which you would then parlay into an example of how I should feel the same way about god.  It's like Dawkins's flying spaghetti monster.  While I admit it has aesthetic appeal, it in fact just a distraction.  Because in your example I cannot prove you wrong and must therefore be agnostic about it as well.  But I would expect that if you had no evidence of your own then we would need to agree that we are at an impasse. 

This leads to an interesting point, though.  I could say that I believe you are wrong, but that claim would have as much evidenciary support as your claim that he was sent from the past (which is none).  For either of us to claim we are correct would require some form of knowledge that neither of us posess.  That knowledge could be termed faith. 

This is where I differ with many atheists (not all, mind you).  They profess a belief that there is no god, but that belief has no more basis in evidence than the theists's with whom they disagree.  They are both coming from a position of "faith", yet only the theists admit it. 

[Caleb]

Caleb, has conciousness without form ever been observed?  In other words, how do you know that conciousness can EXIST without matter?

???  Let me turn the question back around on you:  Has form without consciousness ever been observed?  You have direct experience of one individual, and one individual only:  Braddogg.  As for caleb, or adamwruth, or the electrons in your computer screen ... you don't know.  You don't have insider knowledge, because you are not caleb and you are not adamwruth and you are not an electron in a computer screen.  But in the one place where you do have true knowledge, yourself, you find experience and consciousness.  As for the rest, you can only speculate.

So I turn the question back around on you and ask how you know that matter can exist without consciousness? 

Indeed, very young children cannot distinguish between a reflection and a real figure.  Yet, as adults, we notice incongruities in reflections that help us distinguish between a reflection and a real figure -- lettering on a t-shirt might be different, jewelry usually worn on the left hand might appear on the right, etc.  And our mind processes these incongruities and determines what is real.  Perhaps memories work the same way.

If memory is a high level skill, learned by a developed brain, it seems curious that small children and animals have developed it.  Interestingly, even bacteria have developed it.

Perhaps as part of the chemical makeup of memories there is a "timestamp" the conciousness can use.  Not knowing much of anything about neuroscience, this is all rampant speculation.

Agreed.  I would think that a good observation of consciousness and mind would involve a study of those creatures that exhibit high level consciousness but do not have the same biological framework as we do.  This would enable us to see the differences and learn what parts are attributable to the human brain itself, and what parts are unique to consciousness itself. It would seem that since many of the same functions are carried out by single-celled organisms, it would seem to me that they would have different biological apparatus, and hence it's probably better to think of the brain as a tool of consciousness than vice-versa.

People like Sam Harris (I'm working through The End of Faith) seem to think that the relatively unexplored world of neuroscience will CONFIRM atheism.

Others think that it will confirm theism.  I know Mormons that think that archeology will confirm the Book of Mormon.  A firm conviction prior to an examination of the data and evidence indicates a bias due to a reliance on faith rather than reason.

[eques]

I've said it before:  extraordinary evidence requires extraordinary claims.  That extraordinary evidence is this:  I "live and move and have my being." (Acts 17:28)  Taking only time, space, matter, and energy into account, I cannot account for this evidence!  You must remember that for whatever else God is, he is also an explanation.

Setting everything else aside, isn't that backwards?  Evidence doesn't require claims--evidence just is.  Claims, however, require evidence.  If you make an extraordinary claim, you need some extraordinary evidence to back it up.

Perhaps we would like to have an explanation for a given phenomenon, so the claims surrounding that phenomenon must be backed up by evidence.

I'm not really sure how the bible quotation fits into this.

Atheistic naturalists like to assume that the universe is composed of four things:  Space, Time, Matter, and Energy (which I shall subsequently refer to as "the Big Four".)  The problem is, (as I have shown earlier) that there are philosophical and scientific reasons to reject the concept that the Big Four are eternal.

I dunno... I've grown to be content with, "I don't know."  It makes me uncomfortable to assign an answer to a question that I can't back up.  It might be the case that, until we know better, the "Big Four" are eternal.

However, I should rather like to point out that Energy and Matter are two sides of the same coin, as as Space and Time.  Perhaps they are all facets of the same "thing," whatever that is, but I don't think we know enough to prove or disprove such a claim.

Philosophical reason:  Time cannot be infinite, because it faces a philosophical problem (known since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers) called "crossing the infinite."  Let me illustrate:  If someone told you to "count to infinity", you could begin by counting, "1, 2, 3 ..." as time went on you would get higher, "1,364,365 - 1,364,366 - 1,364,367 ..." but although you could count forever, you could not count to forever.  In other words, you would never reach the point at which you had finished counting to infinity - you would never "cross the infinite."  The significance of infinity is such that by definition an eternity can never be actualized, because you can always count one higher.  But if time had always been here, then that would mean that an eternity of time had elapsed in order to arrive at the present moment.  This would involve actualizing an infinity of second (or years, or days or months, for that matter.)  That is to say, an infinite number of years would have already had to have passed.

"Infinity" is a mathematical concept, and there are "countable" infinities and "uncountable" infinities.  As far as anyone can observe at this time, we are non-infinite--we are finite.

I don't follow how being unable to count "past infinity" (impossible by definition of infinity) necessarily leads to the impossibility of time being infinite.  It seems that some scientific evidence indicates a "starting point" for the universe, but that only speaks to the development of the universe as we know it.  It does not speak to what happened before that, though that is certainly something we're curious about.

Can science help us out?  Well, let's see what my good old friend Stephen Hawking has to say:  "This means that even if there were events before the big bang, one could not use them to determine what would happen afterward, because predictability would break down at the big bang.  Correspondingly, if, as is the case, we know only what has happened since the big bang, we could not determine what happened beforehand.  As far as we are concerned, events before the big bang can have no consequences, so they should not form part of a scientific model of the universe.  We should therefore cut them out of the model and say that time had a beginning at the big bang." [emphasis mine] In other words, not only does science not have the answer, science will never have the answer because the answer is scientifically unknowable!

I don't see where Hawking is saying anything like that.  Now, it may well be that we may never know what happened before the Big Bang no matter how scientifically advanced we become.  But the thing is, we don't even know what we don't know yet.  Neither you nor I have any idea what the world will be like in twenty-four hours, much less ten years or ten thousand years from now.  In twenty-four hours, the world probably won't change much, but look back over ten years and see if you would even begin to guess the technologies we have today.

And even if Hawking is saying that the events prior to the Big Bang are scientifically unknowable, it's entirely possible that Hawking is dead wrong.

Hawking drew up a hypothesis about black holes... he hypothesized that information was being destroyed as it approached the black hole.  This threw other scientists into a tizzy, because that was not supposed to happen in the real universe.  As time went by and more study went into the phenomenon, it turned out that Hawking wasn't very close to the truth.  Information wasn't lost, it was merely transformed, as it happens.  Hawking, though respected, got it wrong.

After all, he's only human.

If then, the Big Four had a beginning, then they also had a cause.  And since no thing can cause itself, that cause must have been something other than the Big Four (ie, the cause was neither space, time, matter, or energy.)

Are we at a brick wall? Is the answer outside of our knowledge?

I contend that it is not outside of our knowledge.  There is, in fact, something in our experience that is outside of the Big Four (you might dispute with me on this one, but I am to show that it is reasonable to believe that it is, in fact, outside of the Big Four).

That "something" is consciousness.  Mind.

[Hollywood Squares]
I disagree.
[/Hollywood Squares]

The traditional belief in atheistic circles is that mind is an emergent property of biological matter.  But that cannot explain many facets of consciousness.  For my purposes at the moment, I want to demonstrate that it cannot explain a single facet of consciousness as it relates to my argument:  namely that consciousness appears to exist independent of space and particularly time.

I make this argument because I believe that it is the only argument that explains how we can have a perception of the past.  If our "memories" were just stored chemical information, then when we recall, we should experience the information as a present experience.  But we do not.  We experience it as a past experience.  Memory, (a function of consciousness,) thus seems independent of time, at least to some extent.

Pardon my skepticism, but are you that well-versed with the workings of neuroscience and cognition that you can state the above with certainty?  How is it exactly that we shouldn't be able to differentiate between present experience and memory recall if it's based on stored chemical information?

Memory is very time-dependent.  There's not really one thing called "memory"--there's short-term memory and long-term memory, to name two.  Recent memories are often stronger than older memories.  There are a number of memory disorders, and if short-term memory is severely affected, it can restrict the individual from remembering anything (though the long-term memory may still operate on some level).

Also, there are many cases in which memory recall is a lot like experiencing it as a present experience.  These are usually trauma cases or some other situation where the memory has a very strong trigger of some kind.

I think that the evidence that memory is significantly impacted by the physical brain is much stronger than what you presented above as evidence for memory being independent of time somehow.

Scientific data in the 20th century (particularly quantum physics) is also strongly suggestive of the contention that mind exerts a causal effect on matter, as observation (another facet of consciousness) seems able to collapse the wave function. This is also unexplainable in terms of consciousness as an emergent property of matter.

Mind, then, presents itself as a reasonable explanation for the cause of existence. 

The following article addresses the use of quantum uncertainty in the hands of "quantum mystics":

Quantum Physics Quackery (Skeptical Inquirer January 1997)

Now, I know you're not claiming that the human mind controls the universe, but your claim isn't far from that.  It's not the human mind you're concerned with--it's some Other Mind, an Overmind (not related to Zerg!), or God's mind--whatever mind it is that could have possibly caused existence.

The claim falls flat in that actual quantum physics studied by actual quantum physicists does not require consciousness for the effects described above to take place.

So, is there Something that Caused the "Big Four"?  Maybe.  We don't know what that is, and we may never know.  But it is fundamentally an unknown, and "Mind" doesn't make for a sufficient answer.

[FTL_Ian]

This is where I differ with many atheists (not all, mind you).  They profess a belief that there is no god, but that belief has no more basis in evidence than the theists's with whom they disagree.  They are both coming from a position of "faith", yet only the theists admit it. 

Absurd.  God is a man made concept.  Without others' suggestions, no one would believe in god, because they would never have heard of the idea!

When someone makes a ludicrous claim like:

"There's a supreme being in heaven, and his name is God"

You're saying that as soon as I encounter this concept I immediately become faithful if I don't believe the claim?

[eques]

Indeed, very young children cannot distinguish between a reflection and a real figure.  Yet, as adults, we notice incongruities in reflections that help us distinguish between a reflection and a real figure -- lettering on a t-shirt might be different, jewelry usually worn on the left hand might appear on the right, etc.  And our mind processes these incongruities and determines what is real.  Perhaps memories work the same way.

If memory is a high level skill, learned by a developed brain, it seems curious that small children and animals have developed it.  Interestingly, even bacteria have developed it.

There are different kinds of memory, and differing levels of ability within those kinds depending on brain size, organization, and developmental status.  This is to be expected and is not an anomaly.  I don't know what the extent of bacterial memory is (the article I was able to find on short notice was overly gushy and didn't communicate to me what was meant by "memory").

Perhaps as part of the chemical makeup of memories there is a "timestamp" the conciousness can use.  Not knowing much of anything about neuroscience, this is all rampant speculation.

Agreed.  I would think that a good observation of consciousness and mind would involve a study of those creatures that exhibit high level consciousness but do not have the same biological framework as we do.  This would enable us to see the differences and learn what parts are attributable to the human brain itself, and what parts are unique to consciousness itself. It would seem that since many of the same functions are carried out by single-celled organisms, it would seem to me that they would have different biological apparatus, and hence it's probably better to think of the brain as a tool of consciousness than vice-versa.

I don't know that I would say that "consciousness is a tool of the brain."  That just doesn't make any sense.  I'm not sure that what you said makes much sense, either, except in the case where "consciousness" is external to the brain, in which case I continue to disagree.

People like Sam Harris (I'm working through The End of Faith) seem to think that the relatively unexplored world of neuroscience will CONFIRM atheism.

Others think that it will confirm theism.  I know Mormons that think that archeology will confirm the Book of Mormon.  A firm conviction prior to an examination of the data and evidence indicates a bias due to a reliance on faith rather than reason.

It's going to confirm what people want it to confirm, really.  I think that it's going to make it more difficult for theists to appeal to mystery regarding the brain, but the exploration of the world of neuroscience will probably change a net zero of minds.

[adamwruth]

You're saying that as soon as I encounter this concept I immediately become faithful if I don't believe the claim?

I'm not saying that at all.  As I said before, there's a difference between saying that you "don't believe something" and you "believe something is false".  One is a lack of belief, the other is a statement of belief.  A belief that something is false, without proof to show it's false, must contain faith or something like it.  Something must fill the gap between proof and belief. 

When an atheist says "there is no god", I must wonder how he knows that?  What is there to back that up other than a lack of evidence to show there is a god?  The person is making a statement of god's non-existence.  An atheist who says, "I dont' believe there is a god" is making a statement about his belief, but that belief is independent of the reality or non-reality of god.

And that's why I call myself an agnostic, I find it's more clarifying of my beliefs (or lack thereof).  I can say that I don't believe there's a god, but I can't say that I believe there is no god.  On the flip side, I can also say that I don't believe there is not a god.  I don't believe anything.  I only accept that which can be proved, whatever the topic is, god or science.

[Braddogg]

Caleb, has conciousness without form ever been observed?  In other words, how do you know that conciousness can EXIST without matter?

???  Let me turn the question back around on you:  Has form without consciousness ever been observed? You have direct experience of one individual, and one individual only:  Braddogg.  As for caleb, or adamwruth, or the electrons in your computer screen ... you don't know.  You don't have insider knowledge, because you are not caleb and you are not adamwruth and you are not an electron in a computer screen.  But in the one place where you do have true knowledge, yourself, you find experience and consciousness.  As for the rest, you can only speculate.

So I turn the question back around on you and ask how you know that matter can exist without consciousness? 

That reeks of sophistry.  You are, essentially, saying that a rock could have conciousness, but I could just not notice it?  Is there even an argument for the existence of conciousness without form in what you're saying?

Indeed, very young children cannot distinguish between a reflection and a real figure.  Yet, as adults, we notice incongruities in reflections that help us distinguish between a reflection and a real figure -- lettering on a t-shirt might be different, jewelry usually worn on the left hand might appear on the right, etc.  And our mind processes these incongruities and determines what is real.  Perhaps memories work the same way.

If memory is a high level skill, learned by a developed brain, it seems curious that small children and animals have developed it.  Interestingly, even bacteria have developed it.

Eques took the words out of my fingers.

People like Sam Harris (I'm working through The End of Faith) seem to think that the relatively unexplored world of neuroscience will CONFIRM atheism.

Others think that it will confirm theism.  I know Mormons that think that archeology will confirm the Book of Mormon.  A firm conviction prior to an examination of the data and evidence indicates a bias due to a reliance on faith rather than reason.

What does that say about you?   

Has there been a case where scientific progress has confirmed the previously held notion about God?  I mean, for example, the understanding of the discharge of electricity ended the idea that lightening and thunder were the result of a god getting angry.  Perhaps it's pattern recognition that leads Sam Harris to be optimistic about scientific progress proving his understanding of reality, in a very general sense.

[Minsk]

And that's why I call myself an agnostic, I find it's more clarifying of my beliefs (or lack thereof).  I can say that I don't believe there's a god, but I can't say that I believe there is no god.  On the flip side, I can also say that I don't believe there is not a god.  I don't believe anything.  I only accept that which can be proved, whatever the topic is, god or science.

Actually, I think the distinction between atheist and agnostic comes down to the definition of "know". An consistent atheist "knows" something if all reasonable evidence points that way and it is consistent with observed reality, but could be proven wrong later. An consistent agnostic "knows" nothing, because anything could be proven wrong later. Interestingly enough both live their lives exactly the same way: as if the world behaves according to rules derived from observable reality. (Mind you, so do theists, except for things imposed by their priests/books of choice)

On the grounds that I know I won't sink through the pavement on the way to work and wind up having tea with dwarves in the middle of the earth, I'm going to call myself an atheist. And if I wind up down there, I'll take two sugar and a side of crow.

[adamwruth]

Actually, I think the distinction between atheist and agnostic comes down to the definition of "know". An consistent atheist "knows" something if all reasonable evidence points that way and it is consistent with observed reality, but could be proven wrong later. An consistent agnostic "knows" nothing, because anything could be proven wrong later.

You make a good point about it being a sematics issue, but I think your definition of an agnostic is a bit off the mark, at least for me. 

It's not that nothing can be known because everything can be ultimately be disproven, it's that some things can't be known by their very nature.  Negative propositions being one of them.  You can know that you won't fall through to the center of the earth while walking to work because you've done it before and it has never happened.  That's knowledge based upon experience.  However, with claims of god's existence, it's a bit different.  If someone claims that god is an invisible elephant over my head, I have no experience upon which to agree or disagree.  I have never seen this god, nor have I ever seen a god in another form.  I have nothing anywhere in my life I can draw upon to come to any conclusion.  I can certainly think it's unlikely, but that's not based on any direct evidence.  If, however, this person said that the invisible elephant god will make anyone able to fly if they flap their arms hard enough, we have something else.  I have never been able to fly, nor has anyone else ever been shown to fly.  This is experiential evidence that shows this person's concept of their elephant god to be wrong, which makes it very unlikely that the god exists at all.

Certainly specific, testable claims about the nature of god can be disproven.  However, this doesn't disprove entirely the concept of a god in some form might exist.  I'm reminded of a lesson in mathematics on dimensions.  In it, we imagined a world that was two dimensional called flatland.  In this land, the people didn't understand our world of three dimensions.  It wasn't just that it was hard to explain, it was literally impossible to explain, their reality had no way of coping.  Imagine being a pencil pushed through their world, it would look like a small circle that grew and magically tranformed into a hexagon.  The pencil, sadly, would be completely unable to explain its nature to the flatlanders, what was ordinary to it was extraordinary to them.  I imagine that it's possible for such a world to exist outside ours, one that we cannot comprehend.  If so, it cannot be known to us, it could never be proven nor disproven, unless we were somehow changed to become compatible with it, when we would no longer be able to explain it to others.  But that's just idle speculation, really.

If there is a god, I imagine it'd be something like that, something we can't know.  I think it's a safe bet that god as generally defined by religion doesn't exist.  Certainly the gods of the various religions are for the most part incompatible with each other. 

Wow, it must be getting late, I get really chatty.

[eques]

Actually, I think the distinction between atheist and agnostic comes down to the definition of "know". An consistent atheist "knows" something if all reasonable evidence points that way and it is consistent with observed reality, but could be proven wrong later. An consistent agnostic "knows" nothing, because anything could be proven wrong later.

You make a good point about it being a sematics issue, but I think your definition of an agnostic is a bit off the mark, at least for me. 

It's not that nothing can be known because everything can be ultimately be disproven, it's that some things can't be known by their very nature.  Negative propositions being one of them.  You can know that you won't fall through to the center of the earth while walking to work because you've done it before and it has never happened.  That's knowledge based upon experience.  However, with claims of god's existence, it's a bit different.  If someone claims that god is an invisible elephant over my head, I have no experience upon which to agree or disagree.  I have never seen this god, nor have I ever seen a god in another form.  I have nothing anywhere in my life I can draw upon to come to any conclusion.  I can certainly think it's unlikely, but that's not based on any direct evidence.  If, however, this person said that the invisible elephant god will make anyone able to fly if they flap their arms hard enough, we have something else.  I have never been able to fly, nor has anyone else ever been shown to fly.  This is experiential evidence that shows this person's concept of their elephant god to be wrong, which makes it very unlikely that the god exists at all.

Why are you picking on Ganesha? ???

The way I put it, I have no belief in God... and there are moments (when I get a-hoppin') when I actively disbelieve in God.  My language is still riddled with "Oh my God"s and "Jesus Christ!"s, and occasionally I try to not say these things... it's a habit.  I managed to move away from "bless you" to using "gesundheit" (I think I mentioned this in another thread), merely as a form of politeness.

Certainly specific, testable claims about the nature of god can be disproven.  However, this doesn't disprove entirely the concept of a god in some form might exist.  I'm reminded of a lesson in mathematics on dimensions.  In it, we imagined a world that was two dimensional called flatland.  In this land, the people didn't understand our world of three dimensions.  It wasn't just that it was hard to explain, it was literally impossible to explain, their reality had no way of coping.  Imagine being a pencil pushed through their world, it would look like a small circle that grew and magically tranformed into a hexagon.  The pencil, sadly, would be completely unable to explain its nature to the flatlanders, what was ordinary to it was extraordinary to them.  I imagine that it's possible for such a world to exist outside ours, one that we cannot comprehend.  If so, it cannot be known to us, it could never be proven nor disproven, unless we were somehow changed to become compatible with it, when we would no longer be able to explain it to others.  But that's just idle speculation, really.

I think that if the Flatlanders were to have enough experience with interacting with the 3-dimensional world, they may be able to form concepts and theories that would make attempts to explain these things.

A pencil attempting to explain itself to Flatlanders would most probably have difficulty, but the pencil can use what the Flatlanders already know in order to help illustrate the larger reality.  Whether this would work would probably depend on how receptive each particular flatlander is to the idea of another spatial dimension.  It's like how children today take to technology as quickly as it takes for them to walk and talk while the elderly struggle in comprehending cell phones, computers, navigational GPS, etc., etc.

The big difference between the pencil in Flatland and god in the real world is that the pencil in Flatland is directly observed as a morphing shape.  It may be unexplainable at first according to Flatlander standards, but I don't think it's ultimately incomprehensible.  Using this analogy, there isn't a coherent description of god, much less one that has been observed to interact with this world.  If higher dimensional beings somehow exist, that's great, but that's not god, either.

If the Flatlanders ascribed the observed morphing shape as "an accident of god," however, they would be wrong.

I'm guessing the analogy probably won't go much further here... in any case, I'm hungry.  It's time for breakfast.

[Caleb]

It seems that some scientific evidence indicates a "starting point" for the universe

Since you concede this, I won't reiterate my points. You didn't understand my philosophical reason, eques, and you didn't like the quotation by Hawking and said that he might be wrong, but for all that, you do concede my point, (which is essentially that the universe and everything in it (space, time, matter and energy, etc) most likely has a "starting point" or a beginning.  Can you see how that requires something beyond just the Big Four, since nothing can cause itself?  You may be content not to know, but if there is an explanation, I personally want to know what it is.  You see, I'm not content to say as you do:

I've grown to be content with, "I don't know."

particularly when I do know that there is another aspect of existence (consciousness) that remains unexplained.  If I have two unexplained pieces (as I do in materialism, because materialism cannot address either existence or consciousness) then wouldn't a more elegant worldview be one that explains both?

Now, if these two pieces cannot fit together, then I'm not advocating blindly asserting that they do.  But should a love of truth not motivate us to try to find the answer, and not resolve ourselves to defeat?  I don't know about you, but if the mysteries of life and consciousness must be resigned to eternal mystery, I find that personally very frustrating.

Before I go on to the rest of your points, I would urge you to reexamine the philosophical reason time must have a beginning.  It's easy to say "infinity is a mathematical concept".  But if I owed you a thousand dollars, it wouldn't do for me to tell you that "1000 is a mathematical concept."  The fact remains that time is measured in units that can be counted, and that to arrive at this present moment, an infinite number of units of time must have passed.  Does this "prove" God?  No.  But since it is impossible to actualize an infinity, it proves that time must have had a beginning.  Meditate on it a little bit.  Try to think about how many years must have passed to arrive at the present moment, and I trust that you will eventually grasp the concept.

Pardon my skepticism, but are you that well-versed with the workings of neuroscience and cognition that you can state the above with certainty?

Let me quote Rand, here:  "Check your premises."  Your question about whether I am well-versed enough with neuroscience to make a claim reveals an unstated premise:  that you believe that the brain is the source of consciousness.  I do not.  So it matters little to me how well versed an individual is in neuroscience.

I tried to suggest a study that would be helpful, but I think maybe I didn't phrase it right.  We know that single-celled organisms exhibit consciousness.  Thus consciousness exhibited itself prior to the evolution of the brain.  The relation between the mind and the brain, therefore, is one where the brain evolved to support consciousness.  Not that the secret of consciousness is in the brain.  Because other animals don't have brains, and they still are conscious.  And our little amoeba friend doesn't even have neurons, and he's still conscious. 

It's a little like the eye:  The eye evolved to process light.  But you can study the human eye all you want, but you won't find the secrets of light inside the eye, because the eye is only a tool for making light useful to humans.  The brain is the same way:  study neuroscience all you want ... it won't lead to an understanding of consciousness because consciousness is not unique to the brain.  All a study of neuroscience can do is tell us how the brain processes certain types of information, just like a study of the eye tells us how the eye processes light.  But you won't learn the secrets of consciousness by studying the brain.

As for your article on quantum physics, I wouldn't call myself "a quantum mystic", not in the sense of Chopra et al.  I am a Christian.  But I do think that your article misinterpreted some of the data of quantum.  For instance, it stated as follows:

When a measurement is made, and its position is then known with greater accuracy, the wave function is said to "collapse,"

This interpretation is certainly not Copenhagen! The orthodox view is not that "when a measurement is made, and its position is then known with greater accuracy, the wave function is said to collapse." Rather, Copenhagen asserts that the particle has no position until an observation is made!  Your article also notes this:

Quantum mechanics is thought, even by many physicists, to be suffused with mysteries and paradoxes.

This is an understatement in the extreme.  Incredibly well respected Quantum physicists have taken the lead in showing just how radically the science must alter our worldview, and such prominent physicists as David Bohm, Fred Alan Wolf, and the late great Alfred North Whitehead have written revolutionary books on the meaning of quantum.  No doubt the good folks as CSICOP would love to call these men "quantum quacks", if it wasn't for the fact that they are (or were) the leading scientists in their field.

Now on to braddogg:

That reeks of sophistry.  You are, essentially, saying that a rock could have conciousness, but I could just not notice it?  Is there even an argument for the existence of conciousness without form in what you're saying?

No sophistry intended.  I am presenting to you an alternative worldview:  panexperientialism as opposed to materialism. I didn't intend to insinuate that a rock could have consciousness, because I would distinguish between actual individuals and aggregate individuals (like a rock), but panexperientialism is, I believe, a much more viable worldview than materialism. http://panexperientialism.blogspot.com/

What does that say about you?   

Probably the same thing, although I admit to faith, whereas atheists don't.   

Has there been a case where scientific progress has confirmed the previously held notion about God?  I mean, for example, the understanding of the discharge of electricity ended the idea that lightening and thunder were the result of a god getting angry.

yes.  For instance, the concept of the big bang confirmed the theistic notion that the universe had a beginning.  Unfortunately, the materialistic worldview prevailing in scientific circles prevented most from accepting the Big Bang until the evidence became overwhelming. And even later, some tried to revive the previous theories, because they found the Big Bang unpalatable.

[eques]

It seems that some scientific evidence indicates a "starting point" for the universe

Since you concede this, I won't reiterate my points. You didn't understand my philosophical reason, eques, and you didn't like the quotation by Hawking and said that he might be wrong, but for all that, you do concede my point, (which is essentially that the universe and everything in it (space, time, matter and energy, etc) most likely has a "starting point" or a beginning.  Can you see how that requires something beyond just the Big Four, since nothing can cause itself?  You may be content not to know, but if there is an explanation, I personally want to know what it is.  You see, I'm not content to say as you do:

I've grown to be content with, "I don't know."

particularly when I do know that there is another aspect of existence (consciousness) that remains unexplained.  If I have two unexplained pieces (as I do in materialism, because materialism cannot address either existence or consciousness) then wouldn't a more elegant worldview be one that explains both?

Let me attempt to clarify my statement that the scientific evidence seems to indicate a "beginning."  There appears to be a point before which matter, energy, time, and space do not have the properties that they do now.  It boggles my mind to think that there is some sort of reality where time does not exist--the best I can do is to think of it as being able to see the whole "line" at once.  In such a reality, there would be no "before" or "after" unless there were some sort of "metatime," but then that just evades the question by pushing the "unknown" back.

If a dimension existed that was not dependent upon time, then there is no "before."  It's definitely some sort of paradox that time exists within non-time, or whatever that means.  Time may not even be a separate dimension at all, but seeing as how time interacts with matter in relativistic terms, there seems that there must be some sort of link.

Now, if these two pieces cannot fit together, then I'm not advocating blindly asserting that they do.  But should a love of truth not motivate us to try to find the answer, and not resolve ourselves to defeat?  I don't know about you, but if the mysteries of life and consciousness must be resigned to eternal mystery, I find that personally very frustrating.

I hope this doesn't come off as a reversal, but I'm not saying at all that we shouldn't be curious.  My contentedness with "I don't know" is based on the fact that I really, truly, and seriously do not know.  Incredulously (on my part), I have a hard time seeing how anybody can say that they do.

The problem is that even though you consider your worldview as elegant (because all the pieces "fit?"), it includes an appeal to the greatest show-stopper of them all: god.  Once you invoke god, you can't go past it.

Before I go on to the rest of your points, I would urge you to reexamine the philosophical reason time must have a beginning.  It's easy to say "infinity is a mathematical concept".  But if I owed you a thousand dollars, it wouldn't do for me to tell you that "1000 is a mathematical concept."  The fact remains that time is measured in units that can be counted, and that to arrive at this present moment, an infinite number of units of time must have passed.  Does this "prove" God?  No.  But since it is impossible to actualize an infinity, it proves that time must have had a beginning.  Meditate on it a little bit.  Try to think about how many years must have passed to arrive at the present moment, and I trust that you will eventually grasp the concept.

I don't necessarily think that time is strictly infinite--as I said before, it seems like there's a "point zero" to the universe in terms of the passage of time.  I do think, however, that it is entirely possible for time to have been transformed from something entirely unrecognizeable into what we perceive now.  As to what caused that transformation, that's where I will say, "I don't know," but shy away from invoking god for the reasons I mentioned above.

Hence, infinity is still a mathematical concept.  The number 1000 is also a mathematical concept, but $1000 represents a specific value (setting aside the question of whether USD actually have any value ).  You couldn't give me $100 and call our debt settled, since $100 < $1000.

There are some situations in which infinity resolves to something actual, at least in mathematics.  The function f(x) = 1/x approaches 0 as x approaches infinity.  Of course, x will never actually equal infinity, so 1/x will never actually equal 0.  Likewise, as x approaches 0 for x>0, the function approaches positive infinity.  The function never actually equals infinity, and f(0) is undefined.

There is a real-world example that approaches the result of that mathematical function: the half-life.  For a given isotope, its half-life is the amount of time it takes for the original mass of the isotope to decrease in half.  This is a statistical measure, of course.  Even though radioactive decay is random, half-lives are representative of "large" quantities.

A given sample of a radioactive isotope would eventually break down entirely.  Now, an atom either is or isn't that isotope, and it cannot be predicted when that atom will decay, but as time goes to infinity, that isotope will eventually break down.

Pardon my skepticism, but are you that well-versed with the workings of neuroscience and cognition that you can state the above with certainty?

Let me quote Rand, here:  "Check your premises."  Your question about whether I am well-versed enough with neuroscience to make a claim reveals an unstated premise:  that you believe that the brain is the source of consciousness.  I do not.  So it matters little to me how well versed an individual is in neuroscience.

Actually, I think it has everything to do with it.  You're claiming that the source of consciousness is something other than the brain.  That is a rather extraordinary claim, and would require extraordinary evidence.

What I would like to know is, why is it that matter, in and of itself, cannot be the source of consciousness?  From the human brain down on to microbes, why can matter not be the source?

I tried to suggest a study that would be helpful, but I think maybe I didn't phrase it right.  We know that single-celled organisms exhibit consciousness.  Thus consciousness exhibited itself prior to the evolution of the brain.  The relation between the mind and the brain, therefore, is one where the brain evolved to support consciousness.  Not that the secret of consciousness is in the brain.  Because other animals don't have brains, and they still are conscious.  And our little amoeba friend doesn't even have neurons, and he's still conscious. 

Normally, saying that an entity has consciousness involves much more than simple memory.  "Consciousness" is loaded with many concepts.  I would hardly call a bacterium "conscious" merely because it demonstrates the ability to remember things!

Would you call a computer a conscious entity because it has the ability to retain data?  In fact, the computer is far better at memory storage and recall than human beings.

I maintain that the "memory" as observed in bacteria is a little bit different than what we experience as "memory."  There are some similarities, but they stop when you begin to examine what those memories actually are.

It actually makes sense that a bacterium would have some sort of temporal decision-making process, even if it was hard-wired.  If bacteria react to an attractant by swimming toward it, it would have to be able to tell the difference between "less attractant" and "more attractant" over time.

In this sense, the results of the experiment aren't really all that surprising, though it would certainly make us wonder, "hey, how does that actually work?"  The scientist who says that the bacterium is plugged into the "noosphere" probably won't win the Nobel Prize for microbiology.

It's a little like the eye:  The eye evolved to process light.  But you can study the human eye all you want, but you won't find the secrets of light inside the eye, because the eye is only a tool for making light useful to humans.  The brain is the same way:  study neuroscience all you want ... it won't lead to an understanding of consciousness because consciousness is not unique to the brain.  All a study of neuroscience can do is tell us how the brain processes certain types of information, just like a study of the eye tells us how the eye processes light.  But you won't learn the secrets of consciousness by studying the brain.

The analogy is weak, because nobody is saying that light comes from the eye.  There are verifiable sources of light, and the existence of the eye indicates that it is an evolutionary response to an external stimulus.

However, there are no verifiable sources of consciousness external to life itself.

I really have to wonder, is the concept that consciousness might be entirely based on matter repugnant to you in some way?  Why do you rule that out as a possibility?  Or does it in fact exist as a possibility, but you don't really want to think about it?

As for your article on quantum physics, I wouldn't call myself "a quantum mystic", not in the sense of Chopra et al.  I am a Christian.

You wouldn't call yourself one, but I think that I was.    It's entirely unsurprising to me that Christianity would adopt some of the New Age rationalizations of the universe, as Christianity has a history of borrowing rather heavily from other religions.

  But I do think that your article misinterpreted some of the data of quantum.  For instance, it stated as follows:

When a measurement is made, and its position is then known with greater accuracy, the wave function is said to "collapse,"

This interpretation is certainly not Copenhagen! The orthodox view is not that "when a measurement is made, and its position is then known with greater accuracy, the wave function is said to collapse." Rather, Copenhagen asserts that the particle has no position until an observation is made! 

Copenhagen interpretation: Consequences

I'm not saying you're wrong and that wikipedia's entirely right... but I don't really see your interpretation in there.  Maybe you can help me find it.

Your article also notes this:

Quantum mechanics is thought, even by many physicists, to be suffused with mysteries and paradoxes.

This is an understatement in the extreme.  Incredibly well respected Quantum physicists have taken the lead in showing just how radically the science must alter our worldview, and such prominent physicists as David Bohm, Fred Alan Wolf, and the late great Alfred North Whitehead have written revolutionary books on the meaning of quantum.  No doubt the good folks as CSICOP would love to call these men "quantum quacks", if it wasn't for the fact that they are (or were) the leading scientists in their field.

Is it the case that Bohm, Wolf, and Whitehead are making claims that consciousness drives the creation of the universe, and that the primary driving force of all reality is Mind?  That is why I posted the link to that article.

From what little I understand, quantum physics is pretty heady stuff, and the interactions of subatomic particles are under constant study and only barely beginning to be understood.  I am simply unsatisfied with "god" as the answer.