Overwhelming evidence for Design?

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tonyrey said:
The purposeful nature of life cannot be explained by physical events.
If biology, chemistry, and physics explain life it is purposeless because physical events per se are not purposeful.
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Biology, chemistry, and physics explain the how (mechanism), not the why (purpose). A monetary donation to charity is easily explained as a financial transaction involving transfer of funds from one bank account to another. That’s the how. Tax deduction aside, love is the why for a donation to charity. Similarly, God’s love is the why for creation.

God’s love may also serve as the boundary conditions for physics: it’s as good an explanation as any theory of quantum gravity so far for the most fundamental forces and particles in physics: the mass of the electron, the spins of different elementary particles, the strength of the strong force, weak force, and gravity, etc. With just a few tweaks to those constants, you could have all the matter in the universe decaying before complex molecules could form, or all the matter in the universe collapsing in on itself, or atoms flying apart. Also, in the first femtoseconds after the Big Bang, the random quantum fluctuations in vacuum energy made it so that there is now a lot more matter than antimatter… all of it could have been annhilated had that fluctuation been just a quadrillionth of a quntillionth of a second off. Physics can’t explain that… yet (I hope it does, but I don’t think it’ll shake my faith). But even as it is, incomplete, it does a remarkably good job of everything after the first millionths of second after the Big Bang, pretty much up to the point that the physics have to be described as “chemistry” and “biology.”

So purposeless? I don’t see that. In the beginning was the Word and the Word set the boundary conditions for physics in our universe. And on earth, life emerged as soon as it could after the meteoric bombardment that marked the first billion years of earth history stopped. That’s love.
If consciousness is a physical phenomenon it too is purposeless.
Click to expand...
Do you feel purposeless? To say that consciousness is a physical phenomenon takes nothing away from the totality of what it means to be human! Be careful not to be a dualist about the soul. The CCC 362-368 are really key here. It describes the soul as signifying the “spiritual principle” of a human. It says “the unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body” and says that a “living, human body” is “spirit and matter, in man …] not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.”

So there’s really nothing science can do that threatens what a soul is. It’s the soul expressed in matter that makes us who we are. The soul itself doesn’t have to be part of cognition to be part of humanity.
Physicalism is an inadequate explanation of reality.
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True, but we can’t measure spiritual phenomena. Science is based on measurement, and testing theories against measurement. So far, it’s done a bang-up job in explaining just about every phenomenon, from gravity to genetic inheritance to why we observe so many galaxies in the night sky.

Physical phenomenon explain the how of reality. God gives us the why (and may be involved in setting the boundary conditions for the physics on which the entire universe has operated since before the Big Bang). “Boundary conditions” are utterly key in physics… they’re the most fundamental thing, and all the math depends on properly specifying boundary conditions. That our universe’s boundary conditions were geared toward producing life in all its forms is a major sign of love to me.
The mind is conscious but the mind cannot be produced by the brain because all our thoughts and decisions would have physical causes - which implies we are neither rational nor responsible for our behaviour.
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I don’t see that. Your thoughts and feelings reside in your brain, but also shape the brain. We can see that the brain is altered when a traumatic brain injury, stroke, disease, or age affects it… “he’s just not the same person anymore” is a sad indicator of the physicality of our consciousness. The help that people with clinical depression or bipolar disorder get from taking drugs is another more positive reminder. But learning, meditation, and mastery of a skill makes your brain change, so it’s not just a one-way street. However, all of that takes place in your brain, but it’s based on interacting with the outside world. You’re still you. You’re still responsible for your behavior. You can make rational arguments and control your choices based on ethics and reason. Yet you still make mistakes. That’s just an observation of people.
A more reasonable explanation is that our brain is the instrument with which our mind communicates, receives information and controls physical events. If the brain is seriously damaged we are no longer able to have any contact with the world but we still exist as conscious persons. 🙂
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I’m not sure we do exist as conscious persons. We exist as souls, but I can’t say that a soul is conscious. St. Thomas Aquinas noted that the soul’s capacity to sense the world is mediated by the sense organs. In modern times, we have strong evidence that consciousness is based on physical phenomena. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a soul. Your soul is your “you-ness,” at its most essential. It doesn’t necessarily need to be conscious… and that’s how God knows us so well.

I’m looking forward to the resurrection, when I’ll get my resurrected body, Inshallah. Just like Christ’s resurrected body. That’ll be coooooool.

Many blessings,
-Chad
 
tonyrey said:
1.What produces consciousness?
  1. How does it produces consciousness?
  2. Are persons merely collections of particles?
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I think once something is on the playing board with respects to chance, its only an opportunity which means time, location and opportunity, for that something to come about…will in fact “happen” if it is consistent with representing circumstance which includes all .

So what I’m saying is that arguments such as …ridiculous odds for man in the universe are the same as airplanes crashing and all pieces somehow are distributed in a suitable way…all those arguments…

I’m maintaining for now are backwards and a result of improper understanding in random-probability…

This is the position I’m in.
 
oval said:
I think once something is on the playing board with respects to chance, its only an opportunity which means time, location and opportunity, for that something to come about…will in fact “happen” if it is consistent with representing circumstance which includes all .

So what I’m saying is that arguments such as …ridiculous odds for man in the universe are the same as airplanes crashing and all pieces somehow are distributed in a suitable way…all those arguments…

I’m maintaining for now are backwards and a result of improper understanding in random-probability…

This is the position I’m in.
Click to expand...
It is not a question of one single outcome but a series of many hierarchical, co-ordinated events which consistently lead to purposeful activity.

The questions remain:

1.What produces consciousness?
  1. How does it produces consciousness?
  2. Are persons merely collections of particles?
 
fnr said:
The purposeful nature of life cannot be explained by physical
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I specified that physical events** per se** are not purposeful - and therefore not a sufficient explanation of life.🙂
If consciousness is a physical phenomenon it too is purposeless
Click to expand...
.
Do you feel purposeless? To say that consciousness is a physical phenomenon takes nothing away from the totality of what it means to be human! Be careful not to be a dualist about the soul. The CCC 362-368 are really key here. It describes the soul as signifying the “spiritual principle” of a human. It says “the unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body” and says that a “living, human body” is “spirit and matter, in man …] not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.”

So there’s really nothing science can do that threatens what a soul is. It’s the soul expressed in matter that makes us who we are. The soul itself doesn’t have to be part of cognition to be part of humanity.
Click to expand...

If consciousness is a physical phenomenon then rationality and free will are also physical phenomena. If the soul plays no part in cognition what part does it play in a person’s life in this world?The unity of soul and body are an illusion - or the soul is at least totally passive.
Physicalism is an inadequate explanation of reality.
Click to expand...
True, but we can’t measure spiritual phenomena. Science is based on measurement, and testing theories against measurement. So far, it’s done a bang-up job in explaining just about every phenomenon, from gravity to genetic inheritance to why we observe so many galaxies in the night sky.

Physical phenomenon explain the how of reality. God gives us the why (and may be involved in setting the boundary conditions for the physics on which the entire universe has operated since before the Big Bang). “Boundary conditions” are utterly key in physics… they’re the most fundamental thing, and all the math depends on properly specifying boundary conditions. That our universe’s boundary conditions were geared toward producing life in all its forms is a major sign of love to me.
Click to expand...

I agree but the Christian God is not simply a passive observer but an active, loving Father who intervenes and directs the course of events rather than leaving** everything** to the blind laws of nature.
Otherwise Providence is an illusion.
The mind is conscious but the mind cannot be produced by the brain because all our thoughts and decisions would have physical causes - which implies we are neither rational nor responsible for our behaviour.
Click to expand...
I don’t see that. Your thoughts and feelings reside in your brain, but also shape the brain.
Click to expand...

In that case we are programmed biological machines without a mind or will of our own.
We can see that the brain is altered when a traumatic brain injury, stroke, disease, or age affects it… “he’s just not the same person anymore” is a sad indicator of the physicality of our consciousness.
Click to expand...
The brain is altered but the person is the same person. We are not morally responsible (or in extreme cases responsible in any other way) for any change in our behaviour if the brain is affected by physical events. Therefore moral responsibility cannot be attributed to blind causes.
The help that people with clinical depression or bipolar disorder get from taking drugs is another more positive reminder. But learning, meditation, and mastery of a skill makes your brain change, so it’s not just a one-way street. However, all of that takes place in your brain, but it’s based on interacting with the outside world. You’re still you. You’re still responsible for your behavior. You can make rational arguments and control your choices based on ethics and reason. Yet you still make mistakes. That’s just an observation of people.
Click to expand...
Interaction presupposes two factors. The occurrence of mistakes presupposes the existence of rational activity.
A more reasonable explanation is that our brain is the instrument with which our mind communicates, receives information and controls physical events. If the brain is seriously damaged we are no longer able to have any contact with the world but we still exist as conscious persons
Click to expand...
.
I’m not sure we do exist as conscious persons. We exist as souls, but I can’t say that a soul is conscious. St. Thomas Aquinas noted that the soul’s capacity to sense the world is mediated by the sense organs. In modern times, we have strong evidence that consciousness is based on physical phenomena. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a soul. Your soul is your “you-ness,” at its most essential. It doesn’t necessarily need to be conscious… and that’s how God knows us so well.
Click to expand...

The fact that spiritual beings such as angels are conscious implies that consciousness does not have a physical basis.
I’m looking forward to the resurrection, when I’ll get my resurrected body, Inshallah. Just like Christ’s resurrected body. That’ll be coooooool.
Click to expand...
So am I. There would be no point in giving us a body if it is of limited value.
Many blessings.
Click to expand...
God bless you. 🙂
Click to expand...
 
fnr said:
Biology, chemistry, and physics explain the how (mechanism), not the why (purpose). A monetary donation to charity is easily explained as a financial transaction involving transfer of funds from one bank account to another. That’s the how. Tax deduction aside, love is the why for a donation to charity. Similarly, God’s love is the why for creation.

God’s love may also serve as the boundary conditions for physics: it’s as good an explanation as any theory of quantum gravity so far for the most fundamental forces and particles in physics: the mass of the electron, the spins of different elementary particles, the strength of the strong force, weak force, and gravity, etc. With just a few tweaks to those constants, you could have all the matter in the universe decaying before complex molecules could form, or all the matter in the universe collapsing in on itself, or atoms flying apart. Also, in the first femtoseconds after the Big Bang, the random quantum fluctuations in vacuum energy made it so that there is now a lot more matter than antimatter… all of it could have been annhilated had that fluctuation been just a quadrillionth of a quntillionth of a second off. Physics can’t explain that… yet (I hope it does, but I don’t think it’ll shake my faith). But even as it is, incomplete, it does a remarkably good job of everything after the first millionths of second after the Big Bang, pretty much up to the point that the physics have to be described as “chemistry” and “biology.”

So purposeless? I don’t see that. In the beginning was the Word and the Word set the boundary conditions for physics in our universe. And on earth, life emerged as soon as it could after the meteoric bombardment that marked the first billion years of earth history stopped. That’s love.

Do you feel purposeless? To say that consciousness is a physical phenomenon takes nothing away from the totality of what it means to be human! Be careful not to be a dualist about the soul. The CCC 362-368 are really key here. It describes the soul as signifying the “spiritual principle” of a human. It says “the unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body” and says that a “living, human body” is “spirit and matter, in man …] not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.”

So there’s really nothing science can do that threatens what a soul is. It’s the soul expressed in matter that makes us who we are. The soul itself doesn’t have to be part of cognition to be part of humanity.

True, but we can’t measure spiritual phenomena. Science is based on measurement, and testing theories against measurement. So far, it’s done a bang-up job in explaining just about every phenomenon, from gravity to genetic inheritance to why we observe so many galaxies in the night sky.

Physical phenomenon explain the how of reality. God gives us the why (and may be involved in setting the boundary conditions for the physics on which the entire universe has operated since before the Big Bang). “Boundary conditions” are utterly key in physics… they’re the most fundamental thing, and all the math depends on properly specifying boundary conditions. That our universe’s boundary conditions were geared toward producing life in all its forms is a major sign of love to me.

I don’t see that. Your thoughts and feelings reside in your brain, but also shape the brain. We can see that the brain is altered when a traumatic brain injury, stroke, disease, or age affects it… “he’s just not the same person anymore” is a sad indicator of the physicality of our consciousness. The help that people with clinical depression or bipolar disorder get from taking drugs is another more positive reminder. But learning, meditation, and mastery of a skill makes your brain change, so it’s not just a one-way street. However, all of that takes place in your brain, but it’s based on interacting with the outside world. You’re still you. You’re still responsible for your behavior. You can make rational arguments and control your choices based on ethics and reason. Yet you still make mistakes. That’s just an observation of people.

I’m not sure we do exist as conscious persons. We exist as souls, but I can’t say that a soul is conscious. St. Thomas Aquinas noted that the soul’s capacity to sense the world is mediated by the sense organs. In modern times, we have strong evidence that consciousness is based on physical phenomena. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a soul. Your soul is your “you-ness,” at its most essential. It doesn’t necessarily need to be conscious… and that’s how God knows us so well.

I’m looking forward to the resurrection, when I’ll get my resurrected body, Inshallah. Just like Christ’s resurrected body. That’ll be coooooool.

Many blessings,
-Chad
Click to expand...
I am stunned that finally I’m reading an idea that has joined the dots exactly how I have “bumbled” my way to translating things, appreciated…It seems reasonable that the exact nature or properties in the mechanism, within the assembly of boundaries themselves, really in a way or challenge would be another huge topic insofar as interaction and awareness is concerned in the operations of the system. It would seem the Quantum-aware connection would answer a few questions…

If a great big bear looks at a rabbit, the rabbit doesn’t move, he turns for a moment and we have a quantum rabbit 👍 …( I have a few ideas but just thought of the rabbit idea, for now.)
 
tonyrey said:
  1. Your question presupposes that consciousness is produced.
  2. There is no verifiable evidence that consciousness is produced.
  3. Therefore there is no reason to suppose that consciousness is a product.
  4. Your question presupposes that consciousness can be explained by human beings.
  5. There is no verifiable evidence that consciousness can be explained by human beings.
  6. There is no verifiable evidence that fundamental reality can be explained by human beings.
  7. There is verifiable evidence that consciousness is a reality that has not been explained.
  8. Without consciousness nothing can be explained.
  9. Without consciousness it is impossible to be rational.
  10. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that consciousness and rationality are fundamental realities.
  11. There is verifiable evidence that consciousness and rationality are only associated with persons.
  12. Therefore the most economical and cogent explanation of consciousness and rationality is that they are fundamental realities associated with one personal fundamental reality.
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Supplement:
  1. There is no verifiable evidence that consciousness has been explained!
 
I don’t know if putting concrete limitations on reason which is reflective in its base fundamental nature, is a wise idea.
 
oval said:
I don’t know if putting concrete limitations on reason which is reflective in its base fundamental nature, is a wise idea.
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Reason per se is not limited but the human power of reason is certainly limited.
 
Geesh…you guys are so over my head I wouldn’t even know how to respond. I guess my only response would be, how do you explain the question of does a falling tree in the forest make a noise if no one is around to hear it? I never quite got that one… 🤷
 
Sister_Terese said:
Geesh…you guys are so over my head I wouldn’t even know how to respond. I guess my only response would be, how do you explain the question of does a falling tree in the forest make a noise if no one is around to hear it? I never quite got that one… 🤷
Click to expand...
This has to do with philosophical explorations which deal with the subject of consciousness. Its an effort to claim a qualitative in the world.

A term is introduced called qualia. …If a person is placed in a room painted red, the experience in awareness will be effected by the red in the room.

The red in the paint which exists regardless, is said to cause this particular notion of awareness. With this example, the suggestion is the notion of awareness functions by an association of “what it is like” in order to have a conscious thought.

So the red is seen, a qualia of real red from the paint is perceived and forms the conscious thought. The suggestion is our awareness is an experience of qualia in the world…sound , color, perception. ( the sensation of color cannot be accounted for in the scientists picture re light-waves)

If this is so, argues some thought…then when the tree makes a boom, or the color red in the room… cause’s the conscious thought which “happens” by a translation in “what it is like” …suggests that the experience in our awareness is an experience which is communicated by an experience( the qualia) we simply get "what it is like, a copy .So the boom and the color qualia which travels into our mind is already an experience and therefore…the outstanding question is who is experiencing all the qualia …An experiencer is required is the suggestion…enter a conscious world or God figure.

Did my best here, I read a super discussion a year and a half ago for something to do between an adamant theist with a career in the field of science and a gent preparing a thesis in philosophy who also had a degree in physic’s…They both pretty much were solid with respects to agreeing that the world is a conscious world. The interesting would be the idea that conscious thought emerges primarily out of the unconscious …This is up for grabs on correction, feel free to fire away. These area’s are really not the path I find myself thinking about too much, partly because of the amount of work thats been done, and the lack in capability to bring numbers and facts into the equation…but it is very interesting .
 
Sister_Terese said:
Geesh…you guys are so over my head I wouldn’t even know how to respond. I guess my only response would be, how do you explain the question of does a falling tree in the forest make a noise if no one is around to hear it? I never quite got that one… 🤷
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Sorry!

I guess what we’re really discussing is something wrapped up in jargon. When you see something red, you experience “redness.” That redness you see is “subjective,” not “objective.” In other words, you’re the subject of the experience, the “I” in “I see red.” Red can be explained in objective terms that are not dependent on who’s seeing it. In other words, the color red is defined by a particular wavelength of light that, upon hitting our eyes, the brain recognized as “red.” So objectively, we can describe red as being defined by light of a particular wavelength. That definition doesn’t rely on any particular observer to be the subject of the statement, “I see red.”

However, there’s something lacking about saying that the color red can be described by a wavelength of light. We can tell a computer to identify every beam of light its camera sees within a certain range of wavelength as red, but the computer doesn’t really “get” what it means for a human to see red (even though the computer would be correct). The problem of qualia that oval describes is that you can’t describe the experience of seeing red to someone who is blind since birth. The experience of seeing red is SUBJECTIVE. Therefore, the consciousness of seeing red is also subjective.

In this way, we can describe the debate we’re having. Some people feel that the subjective experience of seeing red can’t be reduced to a set of descriptions, so therefore consciousness of seeing red must not be able to be reduced to something “just physical,” like the neurons in our brains. All a neuron does is receive stimulus at one end, and when a certain stimulus occurs, the neuron shoots a spark of electricity to its other end. When the spark of electricity reaches the other end of the neuron, the “tail end” of the neuron releases a chemical called a neurotransmitter. The neurotransmitter then stimulates the next neuron down the line, and the process repeats itself. Neurons are be linked together in complex networks in our brain, and can respond to particular stimuli. For example, a neuron on a web of neurons might spark only when it received (name removed by moderator)ut from two other neurons. In that manner, neural networks can work in pretty complex ways.

In this picture of a neuron, the nucleus is the “front end,” the dendrites are the stimulus receivers (in the form of neurotransmitters), the axon is the part that carries the electrical spark, and the terminal buttons are where neurotransmitters are sent to the next neuron down the line.


On top of that, when we exercise our brains in certain ways, the parts of our brains involved in that activity rewrite to better handle that activity. That’s where the phenomenon of “muscle memory” occurs. Practicing an instrument, a martial art, a prayer, a language… These all make our brains rewire themselves, and that’s how learning is encoded in the physical brain. New neurons grow alongside the ones that get frequently used. As one example of this, brain scans of London cab drivers show that the part of the brain involved in understanding directions are actually enlarged!

Still, all this brain rewring doesn’t explain what it means to see red. Some people think that our experience of redness is “beyond the physical” composition of our brains. However, it could just be that our brains are designed so that our consciousness “emerges” from the neurons, creating an experience of consciousness that transcends the neural coding of information.

I personally believe that all our cognition occurs in the physical brain, but that God designed the universe to make sure we would evolve like this. I also believe that our souls are real, but that we can’t assume that they have a consciousness separate from our bodies. I think the soul is what God imprinted on us at conception, and defines who we are on the deepest possible level. But to me, the soul doesn’t need to be part of my brain.
 
fnr said:
Sorry!

I guess what we’re really discussing is something wrapped up in jargon. When you see something red, you experience “redness.” That redness you see is “subjective,” not “objective.” In other words, you’re the subject of the experience, the “I” in “I see red.” Red can be explained in objective terms that are not dependent on who’s seeing it. In other words, the color red is defined by a particular wavelength of light that, upon hitting our eyes, the brain recognized as “red.” So objectively, we can describe red as being defined by light of a particular wavelength. That definition doesn’t rely on any particular observer to be the subject of the statement, “I see red.”

However, there’s something lacking about saying that the color red can be described by a wavelength of light. We can tell a computer to identify every beam of light its camera sees within a certain range of wavelength as red, but the computer doesn’t really “get” what it means for a human to see red (even though the computer would be correct). The problem of qualia that oval describes is that you can’t describe the experience of seeing red to someone who is blind since birth. The experience of seeing red is SUBJECTIVE. Therefore, the consciousness of seeing red is also subjective.

In this way, we can describe the debate we’re having. Some people feel that the subjective experience of seeing red can’t be reduced to a set of descriptions, so therefore consciousness of seeing red must not be able to be reduced to something “just physical,” like the neurons in our brains. All a neuron does is receive stimulus at one end, and when a certain stimulus occurs, the neuron shoots a spark of electricity to its other end. When the spark of electricity reaches the other end of the neuron, the “tail end” of the neuron releases a chemical called a neurotransmitter. The neurotransmitter then stimulates the next neuron down the line, and the process repeats itself. Neurons are be linked together in complex networks in our brain, and can respond to particular stimuli. For example, a neuron on a web of neurons might spark only when it received (name removed by moderator)ut from two other neurons. In that manner, neural networks can work in pretty complex ways.

In this picture of a neuron, the nucleus is the “front end,” the dendrites are the stimulus receivers (in the form of neurotransmitters), the axon is the part that carries the electrical spark, and the terminal buttons are where neurotransmitters are sent to the next neuron down the line.
http://employees.csbsju.edu/hjakubowski/classes/ch331/signaltrans/neuron3a.gif

On top of that, when we exercise our brains in certain ways, the parts of our brains involved in that activity rewrite to better handle that activity. That’s where the phenomenon of “muscle memory” occurs. Practicing an instrument, a martial art, a prayer, a language… These all make our brains rewire themselves, and that’s how learning is encoded in the physical brain. New neurons grow alongside the ones that get frequently used. As one example of this, brain scans of London cab drivers show that the part of the brain involved in understanding directions are actually enlarged!

Still, all this brain rewring doesn’t explain what it means to see red. Some people think that our experience of redness is “beyond the physical” composition of our brains. However, it could just be that our brains are designed so that our consciousness “emerges” from the neurons, creating an experience of consciousness that transcends the neural coding of information.

I personally believe that all our cognition occurs in the physical brain, but that God designed the universe to make sure we would evolve like this. I also believe that our souls are real, but that we can’t assume that they have a consciousness separate from our bodies. I think the soul is what God imprinted on us at conception, and defines who we are on the deepest possible level. But to me, the soul doesn’t need to be part of my brain.
Click to expand...
…I used the words “sensation” and individual experience in the red room to avoid words like subjective and objective because they get confusing for some people… the idea of the experiencer in above, apart from man seems to be missing.
 
Sister_Terese said:
Geesh…you guys are so over my head I wouldn’t even know how to respond. I guess my only response would be, how do you explain the question of does a falling tree in the forest make a noise if no one is around to hear it? I never quite got that one… 🤷
Click to expand...
The question is nonsensical because noises do not have to be heard in order to occur. They are physical events with the same causes and the same effects regardless of anything else.
 
tonyrey said:
The question is nonsensical because noises do not have to be heard in order to occur. They are physical events with the same causes and the same effects regardless of anything else.
Click to expand...
Oh boy. Can’t wait to talk Schrodinger’s Cat!
 
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