That’s not too close to what I said. I said that by your own assertions - that your mind is nothing but a physical thing
Nope, i said there is no empirical evidence to suggest otherwise.
You are playing a very, very silly logical game here. WHY you believe that the mind is strictly physical has nothing at all to do with the ramifications of that belief! You know, the ones you clearly refuse to honestly consider.
that evolved by a process that has no goal in mind
Depends what you mean by goal? If you are trying to imply evolution is random then you are wrong.
You twisted my words to make them say what you wanted to - turning this into a discussion about evolution!
Darwin and most of his ardent followers insist that EVOLUTION HAS NO END GOAL IN SIGHT. To say otherwise is to say it is Guided - obviously.
I did not say, nor did I mean, that it is “random”. While mutations are random, natural selection, of course and very pointedly, is not.
Your sophistry and immature refusal to engage is evident here again.
So - do YOU believe that evolution has no end goals in sight - or do you believe in theistic evolution, actually?
that is driven only by self-preservation
Wrong again. Self-preservation has nothing to do with evolution.
Ha!
Are you now telling us that natural selection is not related to whether an organism survives to replicate itself? Would you like me to quote the very basics of Darwin for you?
**that there is no basis for believing, as you do, that it is something capable of finding and recognizes truth about anything! **
You don’t think that understanding surroundings would give an animal a survial advantage???
Yes, of course it obviously would. But that is not the point. In fact, that’s just the point - believing
what is best for that creature is what natural selection
ought to accomplish with regard to the mind. That is an entirely different matter from what is actually
true! That is just what we are trying to point out to you.
**If this is false, then what assurance do you have that what your brain is telling you - about God or anything else - is TRUE? **
Ah are we going on to a bit of the old rene descartes here? I love this guff
.
No, it’s a very simple concept, which you adamantly insist upon failing to grasp.
Why should that clump of neurons that evolved just to keep your ancestors eating and mating be able to do that? Are you sure you understand the question?
Maybe you should study some real science, might help you out with the above.
You are the one who appears to not understand the basics of the neo-Darwin formalization. Or, rather, you desperately wish others not to so that you can make an irrelevant point.
As was also pointed out, such a material brain could not possibly “know” any abstract concept. Since, according to you, every thought you have is NOTHING but a pattern of specific, physical neurons firing, no two brains are even capable of considering the same abstract concept!
No two brains can’t consider the same concept, are you sure about that???
Two minds most assuredly
can - because the mind obviously isn’t what you assert it to be.
**
Tell me, how does your brain represent pi (the concept, not the number)? Or “truth” for that matter? Clearly, what your brain thinks they are can’t even be identical to any other brain’s representation!**
Why on earth not? Patterns are almost universal in societies. If you walk into a math class and ask what pi is i bet almost everyone would answer 3.14.
Again, you are missing the point, perhaps intentionally.
If your mind is nothing but a collection of neurons and their interactions - physical, particular things - then no two brains are obviously alike. There is no basis at all to assert that two such disparate brains could represent an abstract concept identically - as a matter of fact, there’s no evidence or reason to believe that a single such brain could understand any abstract concept.
Anyway heres your main failing. I dont need to know that answer to any of the above, and that does nothing for the god position. All that does is leave us at “we don’t know” and we don’t know does NOT = “god did it”. If you want to posit a soul then YOU need to back your claim with evidence, and you still have not given me one shread.
Where are you even getting “soul” from? I did not assert in this conversation that the soul exists. I did assert that it is illogical for you to claim both that your mind is nothing but a physical thing that evolved via natural selection and that it is capable of discerning truth from error with certainty.
I did implicitly assert that the mind is
not solely physical but, no, I didn’t provide evidence for that. We still haven’t moved past stage 1 - your refusal to admit that your base position is illogical.
As a teaser, though, here is some of the very strong evidence that the Mind
cannot be strictly physical:
- The eminent theoretical physicist Roger Penrose used Godel’s Theorem (a logic theorem) to demonstrate exactly this - that the mind cannot be analogous to a physical computer of any kind.
- The classical (Copenhagen) interpretation of quantum mechanics asserts that the mind - an observer - cannot be a physical thing! The entire theory of quantum mechanics cannot work unless this is the case. The only counters to this have been alternative interpretations that involve postulates far more wild, numerous, and unobservable than the simple tenet that the Mind is not physical
I suspect you have no familiarity with either item.
Atheism is not a belief system? You don’t believe there’s no God? Which is it?
I don’t BELIEVE there is NO god. Happy?
What do you believe? You argue vociferously that there is no God, or very very likely no God.
But then again, if you don’t believe there’s no God, you’re not an atheist, so you should probably stop confusing people by stating so.
f you mean philosophy, i have no interest in the subject. When it comes to understnad the cosmos its not fit to be mentioned in the same breath as science. Nor is religion for that matter.
Logic and philosophy are not quite the same thing (although you’re clearly engaging in philosophy, incidentally). I would encourage you to be interested in the basics of logic and rational reasoning so as to avoid adopting logically contradictory positions.
Now, do you think perhaps you could answer our very basic question: If you believe your Mind, your entire ‘you’, is nothing but a blob of matter that evolved via natural selection, why do you have ANY confidence in anything it tells you? Why?
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