The burden of proof is on believers to prove God exists (according to atheist philosphers)

[Aloysium]

. . . Can neural impulses explain our beliefs, values, principles, choices, decisions, emotions and power of self-control?

Neural activity is required to exist as a person in time and space; a person who perceives, thinks, feels and acts. If I were to I have a frontal lobotomy, I would have great difficulty planning and carrying out those plans. If and when my motor and speech centres stroke out I will have difficulty moving the contralateral side of my body and speaking coherently.

But, we exist as a unity of body and mind. There is a unique person whom we identify as “me”, who sees and hears, who understands and feels pleasure and pain and who acts based on choices. I agree with the point your rhetorical question is addressing. No amount of biochemical knowledge will explain the human traits you describe above. They are of a different order. An understanding of the workings of our material constituents, will not reach that dimension that contains them, the spiritual. The wholeness that is a human being, the meaning of our existence, the moral order that defines our actions cannot be grasped using explanations that pertain to physical processes.

 

[Peter_Plato]

You’ll be asking why there are so many monkeys next.

Nope. Just wondering how a “few thousand” of them would show up all at once – based upon the assumptions of SET.

Oh, I am certain God has the power to carry out such a feat, but not so sure when SET constraints are imposed upon biology and biology is all you have as an operating assumption.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I didn’t need to investigate any and every claim made by any given Christian to come to the conclusion that the claims are based on false assumptions. Although I have pretty much done so.

I didn’t need to debate all matters theological with scores of Christians over very many years to come to the same conclusion. Although I have.

I didn’t need to have spent my hard earned money on books by Christians which attempt to prove the unprovable to come to the same conclusion. Although I am the poorer financially for having done so.

I didn’t need to spend many years attending church and being taught by some quite intelligent people about God and the path I needed to take to ensure my salvation to come to the same conclusion. Although I did.

I didn’t need to examine the different interpretations that various denominations have on Christianity or to investigate the different interpretations that people from the same denominations have to come to the same conclusion. But I did.

I didn’t need to spend any time studying the biological and psychological aspects of evolution to come to the same conclusion. But my book shelves are stacked with works from very many experts in those fields.

I haven’t needed to spend a lot of time thinking about how the world works, how I fit into it, what the meaning is of family and friends, what the definition is of a life lived well, how I can be a good person and what that means in the first instance. Although I have.

The reasons why people believe in God and why they become Christians and why they end up in a particular denomination are not, as you might expect me to say, many and varied. They are actually quite limited and all quite straightforward and I have no need nor indeed inclination to refute why someone does believe.

What I need to do, and I have done, and have spend a considerable amount of time doing, is to decide whether their reasons are applicable to me.

They are not.

Not that I want to break apart your well-constructed ideological fortress. I am sure you have worked very hard to create the safe space in your head within which you now live full time, but let me give you my “testimony” – seeing as you so edifyingly gave yours.

Back in my last days of high school in the very late sixties, taking trips, as a famous songwriter once said, “without leaving the farm” was a daily occurrence. It was all fun and dissipation until one day I was plunged into an “altered state” that I have never forgotten. It didn’t last for one day or a few, but for the rest of my life. At first it was utterly terrifying because I was faced with the intense realization that everything I knew or thought was not only untrue but radically false and misconceived.

Call it a “cloud of unknowing” if you wish, but the reality of what truly is suddenly pierced my dark world and showed it up for what it was. I knew instantly that I knew nothing. I didn’t know myself, I didn’t know the people around me and I knew nothing about nothing AND I KNEW it to the deepest marrow in my bones.

So the question – one I have grappled with ever since – is how did I know that when I spent no time learning it, no time discussing it, no time exploring it, but it came upon me like a ton of bricks completely flattening not only my world but everything I had ever thought about it?

Sure, we can spend a whole lot of time, energy and resources constructing ideas and beliefs about the world to make sense of it – and I have tried to do so many, many times since – but in the end the realization always breaks through my cobbled-together facade that what is – the Truth – will simply reduce all of that to straw.

I guess where we see things differently is that you believe that you, within your capacities to think or discover for yourself, can build for yourself a conceptual framework from which to look out at the world and make sense of it. On the other hand, I have no such illusion. What truly is, Being Itself, far exceeds my capacity to know AND, in fact, in an instant can reduce all my profoundest and deepest thinking on any subject to a pile of ash and rubble.

I have faith in the Logos, the I AM, the Christ, precisely because HE and not me is why I am here to begin with. I had no capacity to bring me about in the world, but HE did. I can try to understand better the Truth that grounds all existence and with God’s grace and permission I will encounter Truth more fully, but not by my own efforts and knowledge, nor relying solely on myself because all that I construct eventually is revealed as pure vanity.

God Is Who Is. That is about all I need to know. In an instant he can reveal and create more than I can ever imagine or conceive.

 

[inocente]

15th November -

Think about it. Is the Christian world better or worse off because people (philosophers, really) like Socrates, Aristotle, Justin Martyr, Origen, Boethius, Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Kierkegaard, CS Lewis, Elizabeth Anscombe and countless others spent time and energy attempting to explicate Christian or theistic beliefs so those outside the belief system could try to understand it? I say far, far better off.

You would have to make the case that all of these should have just stuck to hill-farming or some such, and let God do all the explaining and redeeming.

30th November -

Sure, we can spend a whole lot of time, energy and resources constructing ideas and beliefs about the world to make sense of it – and I have tried to do so many, many times since – but in the end the realization always breaks through my cobbled-together facade that what is – the Truth – will simply reduce all of that to straw.

Glad we got there in the end.

 

[Peter_Plato]

15th November -

30th November -
Glad we got there in the end.

Not sure we completely align on where “there” gets us, though. That would mean there still appears to be some straw mixed in with at least one of our versions of “there.” Which, in itself, is not such a bad thing. Even straw has its proper place – i.e., has utility in keeping sentient beasts alive if they are starving and for making bricks to construct shelters against the storms.

 

[ffg]

I didn’t need to investigate any and every claim made by any given Christian to come to the conclusion that the claims are based on false assumptions. Although I have pretty much done so.

I didn’t need to debate all matters theological with scores of Christians over very many years to come to the same conclusion. Although I have.

I didn’t need to have spent my hard earned money on books by Christians which attempt to prove the unprovable to come to the same conclusion. Although I am the poorer financially for having done so.

I didn’t need to spend many years attending church and being taught by some quite intelligent people about God and the path I needed to take to ensure my salvation to come to the same conclusion. Although I did.

I didn’t need to examine the different interpretations that various denominations have on Christianity or to investigate the different interpretations that people from the same denominations have to come to the same conclusion. But I did.

I didn’t need to spend any time studying the biological and psychological aspects of evolution to come to the same conclusion. But my book shelves are stacked with works from very many experts in those fields.

I haven’t needed to spend a lot of time thinking about how the world works, how I fit into it, what the meaning is of family and friends, what the definition is of a life lived well, how I can be a good person and what that means in the first instance. Although I have.

The reasons why people believe in God and why they become Christians and why they end up in a particular denomination are not, as you might expect me to say, many and varied. They are actually quite limited and all quite straightforward and I have no need nor indeed inclination to refute why someone does believe.

What I need to do, and I have done, and have spend a considerable amount of time doing, is to decide whether their reasons are applicable to me.

They are not.

I agree with you, other people’s reasons are not applicable to you, they are not applicable to me either.

I’d put all my money on that my reasons are not anybody else’s reasons. Nobody else has lived my life.

So the curiosity is - why do you think other people’s reasons need to be applicable to you, for you to act in a certain direction?

You as an individual, in the family of Human’s are not going to have the same reasons for many things because no two people are living the same life.

Even if you conclude the exact same answer as anybody else.

Nobody can know, what they don’t know, so how can someone even understand a ‘reason’ for a conclusion of that which they don’t know?

Obviously further, apply that reason to themselves?

Nobody expects you to apply someone else’s reasons to you.

Even God’s not holding a clipboard with a check happy pen.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

An understanding of the workings of our material constituents, will not reach that dimension that contains them, the spiritual. The wholeness that is a human being, the meaning of our existence, the moral order that defines our actions cannot be grasped using explanations that pertain to physical processes.

Indeed, scientism fails to explain even itself.

 

[Glassjester]

You don’t need to study anything at all to realise that you had one distant ancestor that was female and another that was male.

You need some basic maths to realise that one distant female ancestor is the most recent common ancestor to everyone that is alive today and is equally so for the male.

And you need to study a reasonable amount of genetics to realise that the male common ancestor and the female common ancestor almost certainly lived at different times and in different places and were emphatically not our unique ancestors.

That is, we aren’t uniquely dcended from either one. Just like younare not descended uniquely from one of your great great grandparents - there were 16 of them all chipping in a slice of genetic material.

Yes, I understand.

But the fact remains that every human on Earth does descend from a common male ancestor and a common female ancestor.

I believe you asked earlier in the thread, if there was a list of verses that are to be interpreted literally versus allegorically. That may have been another user, come to think of it.

That is, in large part, what the Church is for. If you want to know what is considered essential to the faith, and incontrovertible - read the catechism.

The rest, in terms of interpretation, is up to debate.

 

[tonyrey]

Can neural impulses explain our beliefs, values, principles, choices, decisions, emotions and power of self-control?

I agree with you - with the proviso that my question wasn’t intended to be rhetorical! There are reductive materialists who believe neural impulses can in principle account for all our mental activity because they equate the mind with the brain. In their view nothing exists but material objects, exemplified in their view that physics can produce a theory of everything - including itself no doubt! :ehh:

 

[tonyrey]

I notice that you put a ‘confused’ emoticon after that question. I could point to enough information on the matter that would take you the rest of the year to read and reduce the amount of confusion that you might be experiencing.

I am again nonplussed in having people argue against things about which they admit they have no understanding.

In case you were still unsure, the answer to your question is ‘Yes’. And please don’t expect me to spend my rather valuable time in explaining it all to you. It’s something you are going to have to investigate yourself.

Your response amounts to another ad hominem because it implies that I - and others no doubt - are incapable of understanding your explanation. It would be more to the point to present a brief summary of the information “lesser mortals” are supposed to find incomprehensible. Otherwise your post will amount to an evasion of the issue…

The point I made to Cheiron is also relevant:

You are assuming a person consists solely of a body without taking the mind into account. Are all aspects of our mind evident in DNA? NeoDarwinism is an unsubstantiated theory which is self-destructive like all other brands of materialism. Is there nothing that distinguishes us from the great apes apart from our physical aspects?

 

[Aloysium]

I agree with you - with the proviso that my question wasn’t intended to be rhetorical! There are reductive materialists who believe neural impulses can in principle account for all our mental activity because they equate the mind with the brain. In their view nothing exists but material objects, exemplified in their view that physics can produce a theory of everything - including itself no doubt! :ehh:

I think physics is tending more towards the realization that none of its findings exist without the presence of a rational mind, which not only is required to make sense of nature, but actually transforms what is being observed by its act of searching.

 

[tonyrey]

I think physics is tending more towards the realization that none of its findings exist without the presence of a rational mind, which not only is required to make sense of nature, but actually transforms what is being observed by its act of searching.

Yet the rational mind disappears entirely in full-blooded versions of reductive materialism which regard persons as no more than higher mammals…

 

[CHRISTINE77]

Yet the rational mind disappears entirely in full-blooded versions of reductive materialism which regard persons as no more than higher mammals…

Or even worse, just a random bunch of irrational atoms!

 

[Bradski]

Nope. Just wondering how a “few thousand” of them would show up all at once – based upon the assumptions of SET.

Oh, I am certain God has the power to carry out such a feat, but not so sure when SET constraints are imposed upon biology and biology is all you have as an operating assumption.

I’m not sure, but maybe you think you need a breeding pair to start off a new species. Which is not the case. In fact, the minimum number you need to sustain any given group without the risk of genetic problems developing because of inter-breeding is reckoned to be 160. And you would have to artificially control breeding with a number as low as that.

Imagine if you had a group of say 2000 individuals that were separated from other members of the same species. Let’s say climatic conditions encouraged this large group to move to a different area. Whatever conditions applied in the new area would affect the new group. If there were creatures that used the cover of darkness to hunt them, then those with better night vision would survive on average longer than those without. The ones with poor night vision (purely the luck of the roll of the genetic dice) would be removed from the gene pool. There would be an overall improvement in the night vision over time.

Add a couple of millions of years, rinse and repeat and if conditions were suitably different, then you have a group that is significantly different to the originals. Keep going and you end up with a different species.

Groups evolve. Individuals don’t.

 

[Bradski]

It would be more to the point to present a brief summary of the information “lesser mortals” are supposed to find incomprehensible.

See the post above.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

I’m not sure, but maybe you think you need a breeding pair to start off a new species. Which is not the case. In fact, the minimum number you need to sustain any given group without the risk of genetic problems developing because of inter-breeding is reckoned to be 160. And you would have to artificially control breeding with a number as low as that.

Imagine if you had a group of say 2000 individuals that were separated from other members of the same species. Let’s say climatic conditions encouraged this large group to move to a different area. Whatever conditions applied in the new area would affect the new group. If there were creatures that used the cover of darkness to hunt them, then those with better night vision would survive on average longer than those without. The ones with poor night vision (purely the luck of the roll of the genetic dice) would be removed from the gene pool. There would be an overall improvement in the night vision over time.

Add a couple of millions of years, rinse and repeat and if conditions were suitably different, then you have a group that is significantly different to the originals. Keep going and you end up with a different species.

Groups evolve. Individuals don’t.

That’s funny. I thought evolution is based on mutation, which is usually a very detrimental thing. Why would random mutations have some sort of purpose?

Also what does your answer have to do with needing more than two individuals to start a bunch of random mutations?

 

[Bradski]

But the fact remains that every human on Earth does descend from a common male ancestor and a common female ancestor.

That’s not correct. There wasn’t a single male ancestor. It’s like saying that you and your children and their children are descended from a common male ancestor, being your great great grandfather. You are descended from 16 individual people, not one specific one.

And the Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) is not a specific person. It changes as different genealogical lines die out and becomes more recent. So there never was one person who could be called Mitochondrial Eve in any case.

 

[Bradski]

That’s funny. I thought evolution is based on mutation…

Partly.

…which is usually a very detrimental thing.

Not necessarily.

Why would random mutations have some sort of purpose?

They don’t.

Also what does your answer have to do with needing more than two individuals to start a bunch of random mutations?

I’m calling a close on this. It’s a banned subject and although we are not arguing about it, I am treading a very fine line. If I mention something in passing and you don’t understand it, then check with Mr. Google.

 

[Bradski]

I agree with you, other people’s reasons are not applicable to you, they are not applicable to me either.

After investigation I have discovered that they are not, but most of them, from a Christian’s point of view, should be.

If you think that they are all inapplicable, then there are no reasons that you can suggest for me to become a Christian.

I’m sure you’ll come up with some.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

Partly.

Not necessarily.

They don’t.

I’m calling a close on this. It’s a banned subject and although we are not arguing about it, I am treading a very fine line. If I mention something in passing and you don’t understand it, then check with Mr. Google.

Well, thanks for nothing!