Of life, yes, not of nature. Yes, but being the root does not necessarily mean that the cause has the same properties. Yes, I would think he is talking about the world population in general. Would they have seen the internal combustion engine as anything other than magic / miraculous etc? Yet morality is not objectively created, but is subjective, and fluid, and can thus be violated from one perspective without being a violation of nature itself, which allows such violation. I'm not sure they have the capacity for choice, and as such any view of them having morality is merely anthropomorphism. But it depends how one views morality. If one views it as the code by which one lives, then bees are probably closer to a computer program than human in that regard.
Jan I normally try to answer direct questions, but you asked too many and Sarkus has answered most, quite like I would have, so I'll discus meaning of "nature" a little instead as we (Sarkus & I) have different from your meaning. We get much of our different shades of meaning from context. You, however, seem to be more consistent - call all mater and its interactions "nature." We say "the laws of nature" when we mean that. We also use "nature" to mean conditions not much modified by man, as in a natural forest, vs. one all of the same type of trees planned in regular rows (a very common sight in Brazil, as paper pulp is a major export.) or the typical behavior creatures exhibit is "their nature." etc. I agree with Sarkus that honey bee's behavior is very much like that of a computer controlled biological machine. I.e. they really have no "choice" - what they do is part of their nature. (Here of course we are not referring to the laws of nature.) As one moves up in the level of mental capacity the element of choice enters. In man choice often at least appears to dominate, but that is far from certain, I believe. For example, my Brazilian wife and I met in Mexico and were together for less than 24 hours before separating, but each found the other so interesting that we talked until ~ 4AM of the day her tour group would leave the city early in the AM. She is a "spiritualists" - believes in some sort of re-incarnation and was certain (still is) that we have been very close to each other in a prior life. That in fact it was not "chance" that brought her and me thousands of miles to the same Mexican city on the same day but "our angels." I can't say that is false* but understand the immediate attraction to a combination of fermions and fact we had same POV about what was important in life, (helping others who thru no fault of their own are less fortunate being high on the list) and both were deeply concerned about how perception works to control us. (Me more in the sense of neural processes, her in the sense of social interactions). I. e. for her, and many, what we do is a "choice," even a "moral choice," but for me, with my agnostic POV, and what I know about brain function (especially that in many cases decision / choices are made even seconds before one is conscious of them and only assumes, falsely, that they were conscious decisions) I have my doubts that we really are that greatly different from the bees. Certainly some decisions, especially if they involve defined symbols like words or numbers are purely consciously made, but few choices are only of that nature. * At times, I lean to her POV also. For example, I was returning to LASL for my second "summer job" to again assist Neal C. who in the prior summer had taught me the basic of rock climbing. I was scheduled to arrive on a Friday but my VW broke its timing gear, and I was delayed several days. (One day spent eliminating all other possible reasons why motor would not run.) The Saturday while I was fixing it, Neal and one other man departed from a larger group of mountain climbers to cross a "rubble field." If I had arrived on Friday, I am 100% sure I would have gone with Neal, and died with him and the other man whose bodies were never recovered as buried deep under large boulders near the bottom of the slope. That is not the only time; there have been several times in my life where what initially seemed to be "very bad luck" has in fact been a great advantage for me. - That does make one, who is an agnostic wonder if it all can be chance. I have grown to accept "major set backs" as perhaps "blessing in disguise" as that is what several have turned out to be. My more rational side, takes credit for adapting to the set back and advancing by another route.
Sarkus, ... If matter is all there is, then the nature is material, and everything within that nature is also matter, meaning everything we can observe, and predict, is a composite of material nature. That includes mind, intelligence, morals, thoughts, and all the other subtle goodies we possess (until otherwise notified). Without that root, those properties would not exist, and we know they didn't decide to hitch a ride on natures back. So that potential must always remain within material nature. Why? Because material nature is all there is. It was the start, the middle, and it will be the end. Then how can there be morality, if reality is exactly how we percieve it? And if we claim to be doing the right thing by having morals, aren't those morals simply a construct of someone's idea of what is right, rather than the rawness of natural selection, which selects upon fitness. Why was Stalin, or Pol Pot wrong in their genocidal tendencies? They saw a problem and neutralised it. It hasn't slowed humanity's growth, scientific advancement is at an all time high. Some might, if it instantaneosly solved a problem for them, which may have seemed the result of a recent prayer, which in that case it could have been a miracle. If we saw someone bring a recently deceased person like a spouse, or child, back to life by chanting a mantra, wouldn't we think it was a miracle (even if skeptical)? How we process what is and isn't a miracle differs from individual to individual, or group to group. It doesn't mean you see everything as miracles. But we are consctructs of material nature, there is nothing else, so even the subjective is part and parcel of material nature. It cannot be anything else. Can it? It is ultimately nature, through it's agency of human beings who decides what is right and what is wrong. This I think is the problem with this ''naturalistic'' worldview. You constantly spend time trying to fit round pegs into square holes. jan.
But matter is not "all there is." Strange that you who believe with zero evidence, that some immaterial God exists / is real, cannot understand that non material things, for which there is very "solid" evidence, do exist right here on Earth. They can take many different embodiments but that does not change what they really and uniquely are. For example, the one I will soon give link to was first not embodied but then was embodied, but I skip over its first embodiment as that was long ago in the form of ink squiggles on paper. - Lets start with a modern embodiment: a temporal string of binary bits. When this embodied information arrives at your computer, their information will be transformed into at most a quasi-material continuous sequence of electrical voltages by a D to A converter. I say "quasi-material" as there is nothing material about a voltage field. - It can and normally does exist even in vacuum, non-materially there of course. Then that time varying voltage will cause a quite material electric current to flow thru the coil of the material device we call a "loud speaker" which will produce continuous variation in the air density contacting the loud speaker's cone. While the air is certainly material, it seems too much of a stretch to me to call this information rich stream of density variations "material." For example, if reduction of air pressure is to be called "material" then the most extreme reduction possible (vacuum) must be called "material" also but lets not get hung up on what to call sound waves (material or immaterial)* Then whose pressure variations cause vibratory movements of your ear drum, which in turn causes very minute oscillatory flows in the fluid contacting the other side of the ear drum. These flows "wiggle" some hairs that are attached to nerve cells lining the walls of the cochleae. (I skip a lot having to due with the varying locations the twisted conical shape of the cochleae and resonance effects produce to make the different Fourier components "wiggle" more vigorously different "hairs" (BTW, if memory serves me, those "hairs" are properly called cilia.) Now these frequency selective wiggling cilia cause the nerve body they are attached to launch a propagating "depolarization wave" down the nerve's axon (an inrush of Na+ ions, which make the axon interior voltage go slightly positive from its "resting potential" of ~ 70mV negative, until the "sodium pump" can drive them back out to the exterior of the axon.) When the hearer is young that may take only half a millisecond until the next depolarization wave can be launched. I.e. these waves can have higher frequency than in my case where the sodium pump is not as efficient as it was 50 years ago (or the cilia are more stiff - I'm not sure of cause of high frequency hearing loss with age). BTW, the cilia and the young person's interpretation of its component of the sound, may be up to a 20K hertz tone, but the nerve can't generate frequency greater than 2K hertz and in me only about 1.5K hertz now. I mention this factor of about 10 difference in what you perceive from the frequency of the nerve's depolarization wave to make it clear that the perceived sound frequency is NOT embodied in the depolarization wave. It is a mental creation, just like your belief in God is and we call the mental creations "thoughts." None of which are material things no more than my 1.5K hertz depolarization wave are my thought I hear a 15K hertz tone is. All thoughts are based on, but not the same as, complex patterns of neural discharges. Thoughts do exits. They have a private nonmaterial existence. There are other existing things that can have a public non material existence, which brings me (finally) to my promised example of something that does exist, sometimes with BOTH material embodiment and some times NO material embodiment, which I discussed above in somewhat disguised form to show how information can pass thru various stages - some with and some without, material embodiment. I.e. now, lifting the disguise, I was speaking of: Beethoven 9th Symphony - Movement IV - "Ode to Joy." - Enjoy it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdWyYn0E4Ys If you do hear "Ode to Joy" what has happen is amazing. Some real thing, initially not embodied has leaped thru time and space using many different embodimennts to be not embodied real thing again in another person's brain's processing of information. I believe "I" am just other information, not embodied, so I can have "free will," but that is another story, I have given links to many times. * But as a physicist, who knows considerably about how perception works, I do object to calling them "sound waves" as "sound" is a neural process, not propagating atmospheric pressure waves. So to answer that old chestnut: "If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound if no one is near to hear it? - The answer is certainly NO.
Because, we have brains to think and we have evolved compassion. It's not just someones idea of what is right, it is a whole lot of people agreeing on what is right. Because, they were insane and got into a position of power. Just because we have brains to think, we also have mental disorders. The gullible and ignorant might believe it was a miracle. Others would understand there was most likely a natural cause even if one did not present itself immediately. That is simply not true and you know it. It is your religious beliefs that attempt to fit round pegs in square holes and fail miserably in light of science.
And this rebuts the idea that life might have a goal/purpose but nature as a whole doesn't? Potential does not equate to actual. The potential for an oxygen atom to fee wet exits, but only when combined with other chemicals, and experienced through yet other. But an oxygen atom is not itself wet. So a property that exists at one level of complexity might not exist at levels below it. This does not meant that it is not all still inherently material. Who said reality is how we perceive it? We don't claim to be doing the right thing by having morals... We use the morals we have to judge the rightness of what we do. I think it's probably a combination of the two. There will be inherent understandings through our evolutionary past, based on what is best for the survival of the species. But our species has become intelligent that we can override the baser evolutionary ideas and develop more complex morals that are instilled by the society in which we live. But we can each choose our own moral code, although in doing so we must override the evolutionary driver and the societal driver if they conflict. From their own perspective they probably didn't see themselves as wrong. From others' perspective they deprived society of potential. There is also the societal moral of treating everyone as you would like to be treated... so if you support genocide you should expect to be victim of it yourself. Most of us do not override such morals, probably cannot override them, so strong they may be for us. Why does magic or a miracle have to be in response to a prayer? But his point was that significantly advanced technology would seem magical. No one said you would; you're focussing on miracles (and a specific idea of them); this is just sidetracking as you clearly understood his point. We aren't agents of nature, we are components of. We don't decide what is right and wrong for nature, we decide what is right and wrong for specific localised forms of nature (i.e. ourselves). Not at all. What do you see as the issue in what I have stated? Perhaps you are seeing square holes when in fact you misinterpreted the shape?
That is an interesting analogy. Maybe one could say that the mountain path is hard, yet the view is better than with the tunnel route.
Jan Since you have not commented or replied to my "Ode to Joy" post 2304, let me ask you flat out: Does "Ode to Joy" only exist in the 100 or so DIFFERENT material embodiments (bit string, sound waves, scratches on vinyl disks, analogue changing voltages etc, etc.) or does it (and "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer" etc.) have a non-material public, existence? Defend your answer if you think music only exists in matter, like ink marks on paper with blocks of five parallel lines , to give another of the 100+ different embodiments it does materially exist in. Also in post 2304, I note that my perception of a 15,000 hertz tone is a brain process stimulated by ~1,500 hertz neural pulses coming from cochlea nerves. I.e. there is nothing going on in the brain at 15K hertz as no nerve can fire more rapidly than ~2K hertz. Just one musical note has no embodiment of its frequency in the brain. My point being that you are wrong to say everything is material. No thought (or "qualia" such as pain) is. Qualia & thoughts have a private, non-material existence.
Billy T, What else is there? What do you mean by ''zero evidence''? You're preaching to the choir. I don't for one moment think material nature is all that exists. In fact I think it is either a stupid idea, or a devicive one. jan.
(Q), So ''evolution did it''? So your whole religion is based on the fallacy argumentum ad populum, and stupidity for not realizing the most people believe in God, and hardly anyone (including atheists) believe in ''naturalism'' in it's real form. Who say's they are insane? Psychiatrists? How do you know they're not insane? Why would it be gullible and ignorant to view a loved one come back to life from being recently dead, as a miracle, even if a natural cause was given as an explanation? And why would it not be a miracle even if a natural cause was given as an explanation? I don't regard what you believe in as science. I regard it as institutionalised religion gone bad (the worst kind), using the credibility of science to prop it up, and simultaneously bringing it into disrepute. jan.
Did I suggest otherwise? No. I questioned his qualifications for making that statement, albeit rhetorically. You're out of your depth, Rob. Crawl back into whatever hole you came out of.
Sarkus, So ''life'' is not material nature? What is it then? No it doesn't, for that, either a mind is necessary, or chance. But in the case of human beings, life, mind, consciousness..? What else can reality be? What is ''rightness''? Do the ''inherent understandings'' come about from past cultures, or evolution? In the predominent present day culture, we slaughter millions of life forms for the pleausure of our pallete. How is this a moral act in light of the fact that previous and present cultures do not do this? Is this an evolutionary process? Potential of what exactly? From someone like (Q)'s perspective they could have been creating more potential for society by ridding it of religion. What other reasons do we keep polls on religious belief? And why do people like (Q) view the dwindling numbers of religious belief, as a triumph? That so called societal moral is nothing but lip service, otherwise how is it that we support the wholesale slaughter of innocent animals (life, consciousness, tax..) for the purpose of satisfying our desires? If we are able to override this evolutionary driver, which is caused by material nature, then we can contradict nature. So why would nature contradict itself? I used that as one reason why someone would claim a miracle, and is most probably the main one. I dare say it may at first, but once understood, it will be a natural occurance. The thing with miracles isn't that they occur outside of nature, they are just different ways different ways of using it.. Walking on water may be impossible for us to do in our current state of mind, but Jesus was demonstrating that we have different states of mind which we have forgotten. I suppose this is whats is called ''supernature'', but it's 'super-ness' is such because of our ignorance. Much like the combustion engine would be to people who have never encountered technology this advanced (from their perspective). You have to create new constructs to explain your concept, which is just another way of shifting the goalposts. You may not realize it, but your whole thought process rejects the idea of anything outside of your understanding of material nature and in order to do that you have to create new ones. jan.
I haven't said that, I am merely wondering what this has to do with the arguments I made? Your separation of the two suggests an a priori assumption that they are distinct. They would be no different... they are all inherently material (either being material or caused by etc). Objective... a layer below that which we perceive, which remains unaltered from by that process of perception. What is most beneficial for the context. Mix of both, depending on how deep you want to consider the inherency. By inherent I actually mean things that are not thought about consciously. So perhaps subconscious would the been a better word. But biological evolution would have given us certain instincts, and our past cultures would have provided for deep-rooted ideas and concepts, which themselves would have evolved over time to take into account the changing environment of our understanding. Carnivores have eaten other animals since they evolved to eat meat. Omnivores evolved to eat meat and non-meat. So it would be wrong to suggest that the act of eating meat is inherently immoral. One may choose to judge it as such, however, as morals are subjective. All animals that hunt kill for the "pleasure of our palette". No animal, if given the choice, would kill an animal they didn't like they taste of. As for us slaughtering millions of life forms... we are the dominant large species on the planet, and we developed intelligence at a period of vast abundance of natural resources. It is only relatively recently that our understanding of the effect of our practices has caught up with us, and the pervading view is that things like battery-farming is immoral etc. But eating meat is still considered moral, for it is our nature, through evolution, to eat meat.
You did not answer my DIRECT question: Does "Ode to Joy" only exist in the 100 or so DIFFERENT material embodiments (bit string, sound waves, scratches on vinyl disks, analogue changing voltages etc, etc.) or does it (and "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer" etc.) have a non-material public, existence? Please do so. I answer your direct questions. If "Ode to Joy" does not have a non-material public existence, how do I recognize the difference / tell which I am hearing (between "Ode to Joy" & "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer")? Please take that as a second DIRECT question. "Evidence" is not opinion; opinion is not evidence. That God exist is only opinion. "Solid Evidence" has some "embodied form." "Testimony evidence" is first person report of an experience" "Hearsay evidence is second person repeating Testimony evidence and so frequently wrong / false that it can not be used in US Courts.) Even "Testimony evidence" is rarely fully accurate. This has been shown in controlled experiments and often when several different witnesses give "testimony evidence" they mutually contradict each other. All the bible is hearsay evidence, as it was written down by others and most of it was not in a stable form for several hundred years. Even after that, the meaning given to the most critical words in the bible is not the same meaning as when Christ lived. For example, "virgin" back then mean any young woman, not what it means today. There are many texts still surviving that prove that is the case. For example: (in English translation) stating: "The virgin and her husband worked all day in their field while her mother took care of her two children. When heavy work was to be done, her husband's brother helped. ..." Now I want to note that there is no meaning in any book. A book is just sets of different arrangements of a limited number of patterns. (In English a printed book 26 letters, 10 numerical, a dozen or so "punctuation marks" but if in Braille, only blocks of 6 potential locations for slightly raised tiny bumps in the paper.) To illustrate my point that there is no meaning in any book, imagine I hand you a book in Braille. That would stimulate in your brain so little meaning that you would be hard pressed to tell me if the book was the Bible or Moby Dick. Meaning of all words is NOT in their material form - That only stimulates Brains (and only certain brains that "know" meanings associated with the arranged patterns of "squiggles or bumps" found in the book.) I assume the typical copy of a Koran, the Baja Vita, etc. would give you no meaning but that the meaning it gives about God to others would easily illustrate that your hearsay evidence as to God's nature is very different and with no more reason to be believed in yours than in theirs, that contradicts yours.
Did what? What religion are you talking about, Jan? The belief in gods has been going on for centuries, it is only recently through education and the accessibility of knowledge and information that mankind is shedding religious beliefs. Atheism is on the rise and will be the dominant group of folks in the world, while folks like yourself will go the way of the dodo. We don't know for sure that they were insane in regards to having seen psychiatrists, but they certainly behaved as if they were insane. Because, that would go against the very definition of miracle. That is because you have no understanding of science and how it works, you have only your religious beliefs.
I don't have much to say anymore, but this thread has helped me immeasurably. So thank you to all who have contributed and shared from your own experiences, your personal journeys as it relates to your respective views on faith/spirituality, and religion. I shared my view in Quantum Quack's thread titled, 'What is your idea of God?' I wanted to put it here, since it seems to 'fit.' The 'idea' of a God, or gods...is a very personal one, and perhaps what we sometimes struggle with when explaining our ideas of a god, is that we feel we need to have someone agree with us. Agnosticism, the more I've been learning about it, is not an 'indecisive' belief, but rather one that states rather emphatically...''I don't know if there is a Creator of the universe, an all mighty and all powerful God, but I'm content in not knowing.'' We sometimes assume in these debates that the struggle is between atheists and theists, or some other such variation, but rather the real struggle is internally, within each of us. The struggle to define who God is for us, as opposed to defining him to others. It is in this realization that I've found my peace, now. I don't feel compelled to correct people as to my beliefs, or to engage in 'the struggle.' It is of no value to me, nor does it edify my life to battle people who have not yet figured out who God even is (or isn't) to them. To me, that is where the peace is honestly found. Not in finding 'God,' or thinking you may know who he/she/it is, but rather...embracing that you are content in your own ideas of God. Unfortunately, religions have done a disservice to humankind in terms of challenging that philosophy. Or perhaps that is merely a byproduct of the 'human condition,' this insatiable need we have to compete and 'win' arguments, even if we are not entirely convinced of what we are arguing about, in the end. I'm pretty much ...done with 'the struggle.' When you let go of the need to prove yourself to others, and/or disprove their beliefs...it's rather freeing. I think this is what is known as peace. But, as with much in life, there may be no peace without the struggle. But, my advice would be to not let others define your struggle. You define it, work through it, and in the end...your peace will be your own. :m:
How does one override an evolutionary driver? With another evolutionary driver. Has thus an evolutionary driver been overriden? Is there anything else but evolutionary drivers? Is there anything that is not provided by evolution?
