Why are you an Atheist? - Catholic Answers Live - 12Nov2018

[HarryStotle]

That’s the great thing about the brain. It has the ability to rewire itself by increasing the communication pathways of processes that we practice over and over again. There’s a story of a stroke victim that lost his ability to walk. But his daughter worked with him from being able to learn how to feed himself, to crawling, to finally being able to walk with a cane. At his death, they performed an autopsy and the brain area that was in charge of his motor functions was still indicated as damaged. His brain rewired itself around that damaged area.

This supports my point actually. If the brain has this inherent ability to rewire itself, that ability need not depend upon consciousness, merely on feedback from the environment.

This means animal brains could develop and rewire in response to their environment completely absent any consciousness. There is no need for the consciousness hypothesis, then.

Consciousness cannot be an ability to react to the environment precisely because brains being rewired needn’t depend upon consciousness, i.e., it isn’t consciousness that produces rewiring of the brain, it is the interplay between the brain and the environment that causes the rewiring. Consciousness could be completely left out of the process without the process itself being affected.

That is, unless consciousness is an added feature with some brains – namely human brains – that mediates between the environment and the brain rewiring. Consciousness is, then, not explained by the interplay between the environment and the brain, but rather needs to be explained in terms of the role it plays.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

It isn’t an obvious task since you would need to explain why some complex biochemical processes ought to be valued and sustained while others need not be.

Our actions is what we demonstrate as what we value. Its not any more complicated than that. We need to eat, so we hunt and gather food. We need to procreate, so we look for partners. We need safety from the environment and are social creatures, so we treat our partners with respect so they can have a safe predictive environment with reduced stress levels, etc. All this has a natural explanation. Even if it doesn’t have an explanation that we have discovered yet, the true response is still, “We don’t know”. You are not allowed to just invent a magical realm with magical beings to solve all your unknown problems in this reality because you can not demonstrate that your imagined idea is actually part of reality at all.

Merely because some aspects of human life are explained by a simplistic model does not mean every aspect of human life can be.

The natural explanation that you claim explains everything about human life might be sufficient to explain your understanding of what human life involves, but that does not mean it actually explains all aspects.

If, in your view, human life is nothing but eating and procreating, then your attempt to explain away all the facets of human life you cannot seem to comprehend makes sense.

An ant just needs to preoccupy itself with food gathering, tunneling and procreating, I suppose. And if you believe human beings are nothing but sophisticated ants, then you can smugly dismiss all other conceptions of what it means to be human.

You could, I also suppose, live out your entire human life with that understanding, but that doesn’t mean you have actually explained the reality or possibility of what it means to be human. What you have done is merely discounted all possibilities except the one you are inclined to accept.

Some of us might aspire to a more complete or full grasp of the reality of being human, while some, like yourself, don’t seem very interested.

Seems to me that whether I am “allowed” to invent what you call a “magical realm” isn’t for you to decide. Just as it isn’t up to me to say you are “not allowed” to hold what might be a limited or stymied view of human existence.

It is more a matter of presenting the respective cases and letting people decide for themselves which is more compelling. Clearly, you are compelled to accept a bare bones view of human life. Certainly, you are “allowed” to do so. And merely because you are unable or unwilling to see past those bones, does not mean others are “not allowed” to see things differently.

I get that an ant may think of physics or chemistry or mathematics as an “invented magical realm” since these cannot be carried about, tunneled into, deposited or devoured, but that is not to deny their reality, magical though they may seem.

 

[RealisticCatholic]

So then you implicitly accept God’s existence.

Admitting that there is at least one conditioned reality, like a cat, who does not have existence in itself (but instead depends on other realities for its existence) ultimately results in there needing to be one, and only one, unconditioned reality.

See link for why this unconditioned reality is best understood as what classical theists mean by “God.”

 

[Damian]

So do better at communicating the point you are getting at.

 

[vz71]

Love is a term we use to…

unfortunately, you do not get to make up definitions.
Were it so, you could readily lay claim to there being no God, with God defined as whatever you wish…which appears to be what you are doing.

There is a great deal of literature devoted to defining for us what exactly the emotion is. One thing many have in common is the determination that it is not physically quantifiable. The emotion exists outside of our physical reality.
Belief in it is agreement that there is a reality that we cannot measure…that is not testable.

Okay, sorry but you’re just wrong here. Our labels and corresponding actions of whatever emotional state we are in is what we use to communicate that to each other. We all seem to experience these emotional states, as well as animals too. Then, once we were able to perform brain scans, we were able to map these brain states and verify that these brain states are universal to people regardless of culture and race.

Please show the specific test to show how much love someone may have for another. And try not to confuse the brain firing for the emotion…they are not the same.

Sorry but just a cursory google search will educate you on this topic. Just google, “brain scans that indicate emotional states”.

You are confusing a brain scan for an emotion.
I am uncertain internet research can help you here.
The frown on my face may indicate irritation, but there is no way to test what the person is actually feeling.

I do not envy your position.
You wish to claim there is no God for lack of a testable criteria.
BUT…
You are human. You are just as slave to emotion as the next guy, and that experience must remind you each time that there are aspects of us that are simply not testable.
I can get angry at the PC, but no one else can experience it for me. No one else can test me and tell me what exactly I felt or the intensity thereof.
I likewise love my wife. And there is no test that can be done to indicate how much.
These emotions are simply not part of the physical world.
They may manifest physical symptoms, but the emotion itself is an experience outside of the physical.

The author of a book shows another aspect that puts a wrench to your argument.
Before the book is written, where is it? It is created in the mind of the writer. Again, untestable in our physical world. There is no machine you can hook up to the writer and say: “Yep, there is the book he will write.” It all exists in imagination.

The human condition provides us with all of the emotions and all of the creative imagination necessary to know without a doubt that being unable to test scientifically does not really say anything.

You say we should not believe in God, that our faith is simply some kind of excuse for one thing or another…and you back it all with the idea that it is not testable.
But every emotion you have; every creative thought, Indeed every time you kiss your wife, shows you the reality that is beyond what we can test.

 

[goout]

Damian:

So I conclude she loves me for this action she took.

So you are taking evidence and concluding something that cannot be proven in our reality?

This looks like faith to me.
You cannot know at all what she feels.
There is no test in our reality that would tell us what emotions are at play.
There is only anecdote.

I would caution you here.
You are so critical of those that have faith in God for a lack of testable evidence.
Yet continue to use words and phrases that indicate yourself to have a great deal of belief in things that cannot be tested.

I do not believe you have thought through your position completely.

Yes this is the whole thread right here. There is a huge and obvious inconsistency that goes un-addressed.

 

[HarryStotle]

So do better at communicating the point you are getting at.

The shortcomings of language.

 

[Damian]

Just being aware of or conscious of something does not mean nor imply an ability to do anything about that something or to respond to it.

Observing people responding to external stimulus that they’ve interacted with is evidence of people having “an ability to do anything about that something or respond to it.” correct?

Your problem is a lack of precision that leads you to assume a great deal regarding what can be concluded by your assumption.

So clarify the difference instead of just responding with this.
Its like I’m pointing at a shoe and calling it a shoe, and you’re just responding with, “It’s not a shoe.” Okay, that doesn’t tell me what you think it is and why.

 

[Damian]

This supports my point actually. If the brain has this inherent ability to rewire itself, that ability need not depend upon consciousness, merely on feedback from the environment.

I believe what we are talking about with reference to consciousness is what we are aware of for analyzing (name removed by moderator)ut from the environment and what we are unconscious to. The brain seems to move that analytical process from conscious to unconscious processes based on how often it has to run that analysis. All our bodily maintenance is maintained unconsciously since it has to run this all the time anyways and if we could consciously control it, then we’d probably kill ourselves by mistake. But trained skills like playing piano or speaking is an example of a process that the brain had to rewire itself through chemical processes based on constant (name removed by moderator)ut from its environment to where the process of deciding what to do becomes unconscious. When we are learning another language, we have to consciously think about what we are going to say, and then, after time of practice, the biochemistry of the brain based on that constant environmental feedback rewires the brain to make that language ability become unconscious. But the process of analyzing the situation is still all the same, just at the beginning of learning a new skill its a conscious process and then becomes an unconscious background program we have. That’s why children that grow up in high stress environments are hard to maintain because their “Fight or Flight” pathways are soo ingrained in dealing with the stress of reality that they actually can’t turn it off and relax like other people can. That program is always running.

This means animal brains could develop and rewire in response to their environment completely absent any consciousness. There is no need for the consciousness hypothesis, then.

I’m using consciousness as the descriptor of short term memory tasks moving into long term unconscious programming. Consciousness and Unconsciousness of our programming is just a statement of what level of “programming” the brain is at based on a changing environment. Like if you leave the village at the north end for 5 years and then the food crops are moved to the south end. You will have to make a conscious correction to stop unconsciously walking out of the village to the north until you reprogram the brain based on that new changing environment. that’s all I’m talking about for conscious or unconscious.
Consciousness is basically short term memory of topics the brain is still working out, daily fears and flights, daily (name removed by moderator)uts from reality, etc.
Is that what you are talking about?

 

[Damian]

Merely because some aspects of human life are explained by a simplistic model does not mean every aspect of human life can be.

All or nothing response huh? What specifically are you interested in pointing out here instead of just stating that its not “everything”. What is the rest of “everything” that you are concerned about specifically?

The natural explanation that you claim explains everything about human life might

No, again, I repeat for the, how many times now?, that the only thing you can use as a reason for explaining something about reality is something that has been demonstrated to be part of reality. That something that you’ve actually found in reality. Every imagined, internally logically consistent theory, is not allowed to even be an option to use for explaining problems we find in reality because you haven’t demonstrated that to actually be part of reality yet. Reference my Einstein gravity wave story for example. Mathematically, logically internally consistent, but we were not justified in believing those waves were actually part of reality until we found them in 2015. Only then could we use gravity waves as an explanation for questions in reality. Not a moment before. We were justified in looking for them though based on the internally logically consistent model though, but not justified in believing that they are actually part of reality or to use them as the answer to any question or problem we had about reality.

If, in your view, human life is nothing but eating and procreating, then your attempt to explain away all the facets of human life you cannot seem to comprehend makes sense.

Like what?

You could, I also suppose, live out your entire human life with that understanding, but that doesn’t mean you have actually explained the reality or possibility of what it means to be human. What you have done is merely discounted all possibilities except the one you are inclined to accept.

I’ve removed all other assumptions about reality that reality has not demonstrated to actually be there yet. I have not removed these assumptions that we shouldn’t look for them, but they are not allowed to be a solution to our problems until we actually find them in reality.

My goal is to have my internal model of reality match actual reality as accurately as possible. So I can have internal logically consistent reasons to search for answers to questions I have about reality still, but I’m not justified in updating my internal model of reality until I actually find those answers in reality. Reality has to demonstrate that those solutions are actually part of reality first before I’ll update my internal model.

 

[Damian]

I agree, but analogies help though. That’s why I give the Einstein gravity wave story to describe “justified beliefs” about reality.

 

[Damian]

So then you implicitly accept God’s existence.

just as much as I accept the idea of thanos based on the internally logically consistent story of the Avenger’s series too.

Sure, the process makes people justified to look for that entity of a deity, but no one is justified in updating their internal model of reality to what reality actually demonstrates though because reality has yet to demonstrate that there is a deity at all. This is because we are always found, again and again, to be logically correct and still factually wrong when we test our internally logically consistent model against what reality actually demonstrates. This is born out by all the failed medical tests out there.
I’m fine with people looking for a deity, but not fine with people claiming that they actually found it when they can’t demonstrate that claim.

 

[Damian]

unfortunately, you do not get to make up definitions.

Fine, I’ll use what ever term you want for the concept I’m talking about since you’re talking about love that is different from what I’m talking about it seems. What term should I use then so that we are talking about the same concept. Don’t care what term you want to use, just as long as we are communicating the same idea.

The emotion exists outside of our physical reality.

Can you demonstrate this at all other than asserting it? I can demonstrate brain states, I can demonstrate biochemistry of brain states, I can demonstrate drug induced brain states, for example.

Belief in it is agreement that there is a reality that we cannot measure

Sure but it’s not justified belief to me until you can demonstrate your claim in reality some way. I can at least demonstrate the expression we label as “love” is what we are talking about and the brain state of that emotion of love and the brain state of someone not experiencing love is in a different brain state.

You wish to claim there is no God for lack of a testable criteria.

No I directly assert it, I don’t wish or hope that is the case. It is the case.

You are just as slave to emotion as the next guy, and that experience must remind you each time that there are aspects of us that are simply not testable.

Yes I completely agree that there are aspects of reality we can’t investigate yet. So the honest answer to how something happened is, “We don’t know, yet.” Not to assert your leading idea is actually truth or fact of reality when you can’t demonstrate your leading idea is anything more than just an idea to investigate.

I likewise love my wife. And there is no test that can be done to indicate how much.

But there are tests we can do to verify that you actually do though. As to how much, we can test that by what you are willing to risk to maintain that as well.

I can get angry at the PC, but no one else can experience it for me.

Yes you are the detector for your experience of life, just like my thermometer is its own detector for temperature verse any other thermometer.

 

[Damian]

These emotions are simply not part of the physical world.

The only evidence we have access to indicates otherwise.

They may manifest physical symptoms, but the emotion itself is an experience outside of the physical.

No its not according to what reality demonstrates so far.

It is created in the mind of the writer.

Just like the tunnels in a termite hive are in the mind of the termites as well.

There is no machine you can hook up to the writer and say: “Yep, there is the book he will write.” It all exists in imagination.

Because the machine hasn’t development this ability yet the way biological organisms have through evolution. That’s like arguing that brakes on a car can’t fly like a bird can. They don’t have that ability.

you back it all with the idea that it is not testable.

Such as?

 

[vz71]

Yes I completely agree that there are aspects of reality we can’t investigate yet. So the honest answer to how something happened is, “We don’t know, yet.” Not to assert your leading idea is actually truth or fact of reality when you can’t demonstrate your leading idea is anything more than just an idea to investigate.

This is demonstratively false.
You assert positively that there is no God, claiming we cannot test for God.
But given your statement here, the only honest answer you can give is that you do not know if there is a God.
So which should I believe…
The you that claims that there is no God…or the one that claims that line of reason is dishonest?

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Just being aware of or conscious of something does not mean nor imply an ability to do anything about that something or to respond to it.

Observing people responding to external stimulus that they’ve interacted with is evidence of people having “an ability to do anything about that something or respond to it.” correct?

Sorry, but merely observing people responding to an external stimulus, by itself, does NOT imply consciousness.

Your hidden premise is that the only consciousness that you are familiar with is your own, so when you observe “people” who are ostensibly similar to you responding to stimulus in a manner similar to the way you might, you might plausibly infer consciousness is at work, somehow, via inductive reasoning, but that isn’t anything like defining or explaining what consciousness is, exactly.

Google “philosophical zombie” or “p-zombie” and “David Chalmers”.

Your claim isn’t anything like a proof, and neither does it mean consciousness just is the response or the capacity to respond to any stimulus.

Your entire argument is premised upon you possessing consciousness and the similarity of those other potentially conscious “people” to you and to the way you would respond.

And then to generalize beyond that to animals exhibiting response implying consciousness is a great and tenuous overreach of logic.

Ergo, it isn’t anything at all like you pointing at a shoe and calling it a shoe.

It is you having nothing like an adequate conceptualization of consciousness and then pointing at a physical human shape and saying “consciousness.”

And relative to your God claim, it is also like you pointing at the material universe and saying, “No God!”

Not the same thing in either case.

 

[HarryStotle]

Consciousness is basically short term memory of topics the brain is still working out, daily fears and flights, daily (name removed by moderator)uts from reality, etc.
Is that what you are talking about?

Swapping out information currently being processed to long or short term memory and responding to (name removed by moderator)uts are what CPUs in computers do all of the time. That isn’t consciousness by a long shot. It is information processing. Hardly the same thing.

The “hard problem” of consciousness is that neuropsychology has yet to identify any mental faculties or processes that explain or are involved in consciousness. Current thinking from the best philosophers of mind is that we are not even close to explaining consciousness. That is why it is called a “hard” problem.

Ergo, consciousness is not reducible to responding to stimuli, unless you are just trying to ignore consciousness altogether by pretending it isn’t a real phenomenon.

 

[Benny44]

Hi, The concept of consciousness has always fascinated me. The fact that it is a reality, yet immaterial, not measurable in a scientific sense puts in the metaphysical plane. I lift my arm due to muscle contraction and that due to an impulse from the brain - yet the free will decision and impetus causing that impulse only exists in the realm of ……???
Every item in our universe is made of nothing as physics has revealed - all matter is energy, mass is due to the Higgs field reaction to the frequency of that energy and the sum total of energy + and - is zero. One digs a hole and ends up with a pile of dirt and a hole - put them together and back to nothing - so I guess we are all just like figments of consciousness.
If the kid next door says he will throw a stone through my front window Friday afternoon and a stone duly arrives at that time - it is reasonable to suspect he did it.
The public miracle at Fatima Oct 13th 1917 was predicted well before the day and 70 - 100 thousand people witnessed the most outrageous supernatural event - impossible to deny.
Any investigation into Joan of Arc leaves one the choice of accepting the supernatural of not being able to handle the truth.
Near death experiences, miracles, personal testimonies of supernatural experiences, existence of evil and virtue etc; leaves no reasonable doubt of a spiritual dimension to human existence and to reject that is being a closed shop to reality.

 

[HarryStotle]

vz71:

It is created in the mind of the writer.

Just like the tunnels in a termite hive are in the mind of the termites as well.

You may as well claim that tunnels or rooms in a video game are “in the mind of the computer” as well.

Yeah, no. What is in the computer are alphanumeric codes stored as binary format on a drive or memory which when reconstructed by a device directed by a processor creates certain pixels on a screen. The tunnels are in the mind of the player. Not anywhere else.

What is in the “mind” of a termite is hardly the same thing as what is in your mind when you think “tunnel.”

Inside Science

“The new work shows that a rather simple behavioral algorithm where termites only need access to locally available information can lead to this kind of architecture – no need for a central coordinator or an explicit blueprint in the individual,” said study co-author Christian Jost, a biological modeler at the University of Toulouse in France.

 

[HarryStotle]

So do better at communicating the point you are getting at.

Okay, let’s try to make the point very explicit.

1. You claim God (anything like super-nature) does not exist because the material causal order is sufficient to explain itself. Therefore, all that we can know exists is matter that just happens to be causally ordered as a matter of brute fact. No need for any God or conscious and intentional agent to bring the material cosmos about and organize it or give it purpose,
2. You claim consciousness (aka personhood) just is the interaction between neuro-physical brain chemistry and the environment. There is nothing like a subject or person that supersedes, superintends, or transcend brain activity. Consciousness just is reducible to the interaction between the environment and the neurochemical reactions taking place in the human brain.
3. So, given the parallel between 2) and 1) your conclusion would have to be that just as God does not exist as an autonomous person/Being in 1), no actual person or conscious subject (as commonly understood) exists in 2).
4. Your atheism regarding the person of God in 1) would appear to entail a lack of belief in the existence of human persons in 2), in order to be logically consistent. You have no need for a God hypothesis with regard to the physical universe because the universe is sufficient unto itself explanatorily speaking. Therefore, you likewise have no need for a human person hypothesis in 2) because the causal interaction between the brain and the environment is explanatorily sufficient. This implies the non-existence of persons in 2) just as 1) implies the non-existence of God

Therefore, when you say you “love” your spouse what you really mean is that you don’t believe in the existence of an actual person that you love because there is no abiding person there to love. You merely mean by “love” that, within your immediate environment, your brain chemistry interacting with the brain chemistry/environment of your ”spouse" (not to be taken as implying anything more than the agglomeration of sophisticated biochemistry in a bag of skin you refer to as your “spouse”) produces an affective change in your brain chemistry.

The terms within which you speak of “loving” your spouse aren’t those which most human beings would understand, but something quite different. Something quite hollow, in fact.

I hope you have made it clear to your spouse what you mean by “love” and that your meaning of the word isn’t meant to imply anything about his/her actual existence as a person, at least not in the way most human beings would understand that word.

Atheism meet apersonism.