**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 WHY a said it depends what you mean by goal. No evolution has no goals.
**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?**
LOL do you think evolution has stayed the same for the last 150 years.
Quote away. Evolution is about reproduction NOT survival. Of course you have to survival until you reproduce that goes with out saying, but once the genes have been passed on survival is irrelevant.
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.
No… what is best for the creature is irrelevant. Optimising reproduction is what evolution ought to do, and thats what it does do.
No, it’s a very simple concept, which you adamantly insist upon failing to grasp.
It’s pointless drivel, that does nothing for humanity.
**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.
**
Yeah ok… i don’t understand evolution says the man that thinks “
what is best for that creature is what natural selection
ought to accomplish”
**
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.**
Why on earth could two physical things not be alike??? Why not? If you wan’t to posit there is more than just a physical brain all you have to do is provide evidence, im waiting.
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 not say i KNOW it only physical, much like i don’t KNOW there is no god. There is just ZERO evidence to suggest the opposite.
**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**
Wow thanks for that overwhelming evidence. Well thats me changed my mind.
**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.**
Do you even know what an atheist is? I lack a belief in any god. And if you look at my religion you will see the answer.
"Atheism can be either the **rejection of theism,[1] **or the position that deities do not exist.[2] In the broadest sense, it is the
absence of belief in the existence of deities.[3]"
Thats me.
This all boils down to one thing. We don’t yet have a full understanding of how the mind works so you want to start adding claims based on nothing but wild speculation. If you want to posit the mind is more than just a physical thing then you need to back that claim up with evidence. Oh and saying Roger Penrose says so is not backing your claim up. Show me some peer reviewed papers that support your claim.
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?
Because i can see the results of human’s minds all around me. To quote thunderf00t… The only assumtion we need make is the universe is real and we can learn something about it. Why assume these things? Becuase of the benifits to mankind!
Oh and if you don’t think the world is real go put your theory to the test, go jump off a cliff, bet you wont… i wonder why
What does that brain evolving have to do with it? I could apply the same wishy washy nonsense to any brain. Even if a god made your brain it doesn’t mean it’s not deceiving you. Or how do you know that giant pink brain making rabbits didn’t make your brain to make you think there is a god? You don’t, but lets be honest this kind of nonsense doesn’t really get us anywhere, does it?
So you sit an ponder whether you can jump of that cliff and float to the bottom, i on the other hand will continue to educate myself and you never know, might even add my own wee pebble to the mountain of knowledge of mankind.
