Physical evidence for any sort of religious belief

[tar]

Jan 11, 2010 3:23:16 GMT Kyrisch said:

You can even take it one step further, however. TAR and Kyrisch do not, essentially, exist. Our bodies exist but they have no discrete boundaries. You cannot say for certain what is part of you and what isn't. The true boundaries of our existence are one and the same with the boundaries of the physical universe.

Kyrisch,

I believe this is where we have different takes on the issue. And knowing that you want a clear definition, I provided it, but you did not accept it.

To try and make my take, more clear to you, I would like to challenge your statement that the true boundaries of our existence are the boundaries of the physical universe. While it may be true that the physical universe has a boundry (which may not be the case), neither you, nor I, have ever experience it. So its boundries, are not really knowable or pertinent to the discussion of "our" existence.

We exist on a particular size scale, and a particular time scale, that is determined by our physical body/brain/heart combo. We exist in a particular place, at a particular time, which is also determined by our physical, body/brain/heart combo.

You have one vantage point. You have a "here and now" which is different than my "here and now". And I dare say, that your here and now, is even different than, the here and now, that the Kyrisch organism considered here and now, yesterday morning when you were in the bathroom.

You are intricately entwined with the world around you. As you suggest. But only you experience your "here and now." It belongs to no other entity. That is you. Where and when your here and now is, that is Kyrisch.

Now, since you are aware of a string of here and nows, that always has corresponded with the location of the Kyrisch organism, your body/brain/heart combo, we can safely assume that that was you then, and this is you now.

You can remember past "here and nows" that you have had. You can imagine other people's and entity's, "here and nows", but you have, at any moment, only one here, and only one now.

That is you.

I have such a here and now thing going on, myself.

That is me.

And the thing that explains it, the thing that creates the experience, is our body/brain/heart combo.

It is who and what we are.

It is different than the universe.

It is existence, from the perspective of a person.

That is what "I" is.

We exist.

Regards, TAR

[limbicloser]

A very nice opening, I would also agree to. I would have wished for a better description of, or working definition of, the term 'religious' here, however. I too, as it seems to be being used, use religion and religious in a general, emotional element of brain manner, and reserve religious belief-system for the older (and some newer) systems of theology with doctrine and order.

If we were to talk about religious belief-systems' offered evidences for the particular deity (or deities) they describe/prescribe in their data bases, then we would, of course, as ydoaPs has correctly pointed out, have to look at the data bases.

Jan 11, 2010 3:23:16 GMT Kyrisch said:

An excellent post, really. But (and I know a semantical argument can be made against this, but bear with me) it is a work of philosophy, not religion.

I find this observation to be valid here, so far, in this thread. With that, there is no declaimation, however, in that we have a term which appears (to me, at least) to yet be floating.

I would, nevertheless, like to take up one point which I find as weak, tar, and look it over some.

Jan 10, 2010 6:33:24 GMT tar said:

From this vantage point, Moses was not telling a lie... he was sharing an insight.

While I feel I can understand, and appreciate, the angle (or approach) you are taking, and thus coming from, I'm not convinced that it holds enough pragmatic application. (and this matter, I will admit up front, is largely me)

The priority of inquiry would lead us to the understanding that the story of Moses, is simply a fable, thus, not an external reality of nature (or a 'having once occurred in natural history externally). By 'external,' I quite specifically mean that which is not a reality of nature due to the fact that it is brain build/state. This leader model, Moses, which exactly like the tribal god-model YHWH, had been developed over time through a process of 'evolutionary' (not THAT evolutionary) growth. The likelihood of the character's ever having been a real person, the events ever having been real events (to a degree...some are more surely valid recalls) is so small that by all practical means, we can write them off as never having existed.

So, our application here, would be to understand that the creators of that story had been sharing an 'insight.' The value of that insight had been relative to their world (as highlighted in above posts), yet that, in no way demands that we hold it as having value relative to our world. Additionally, only by going through a process likened to what ydoaPs has pointed out (with some perhaps very slight adjustments, in some area of concern added) can we find evidence against a given belief-system's described god-model, or related histories.

I understand--to whatever degree I may be correct--however, that such was not the intent with this thread. I feel that you are talking about 'the propensity to acknowledge through cognition, the emotional aspect of awe, grandeur, and reverence for, towards, and of, any object of what is spotlighted on our stage in the theater of consciousness.' (to use Dr. Baars' metaphor)

I would very strongly suggest, at the same time (and again, please be prepared, everyone, because I am sure to harp on this time and again) that we drop the capital from the word 'god,' so as to correct for a popular misusage. The capital form had been brought in via the King James Version based adoption of Jewish superstition, leading to removal of YHWH (except in four places only). Therefore, the word came to operate as a proper noun, which, originally, it had not been, and ought not be--seeing that Christendom no longer need rule the world.

I hold much of your presentation, tar, which I pretty much like, to be that of us projecting our 'emergent' (if you will, for ease of communication) emotions gained through various means over evolutionary time (that evolutionary), towards nature at large. For that reason, I no longer use the word 'god,' nor 'deity,' as these are theistic, and do point back to databased tenets which the older religious belief-systems had created, and which are not external realities of our world.

[tar]

limbicloser,

Nice post.

I would however take a few points in a slightly different direction.

For instance, the thought that the world no longer need be ruled by Christendom.
Granted, the political aspects of European Imperialism (Christian), or Islamic rule, or any religion, that wishes to dominate the world, in the name of their god is antithetical to the pragmatic, scientifically based secular culture that has emerged in most of the "Western" countries in the world. And movements that have downplayed the Paternal structure of society, that is so evident in the bible and koran have also contributed to the undermining of the authority of such religions. But here I would like to fold in another point in your post.

"I too, as it seems to be being used, use religion and religious in a general, emotional element of brain manner, and reserve religious belief-system for the older (and some newer) systems of theology with doctrine and order."

The worldview that I hold, combines the emotional element, with the doctrine and order. The evolution of our existential underpinnings, depends on the insights of Moses, and Jesus, and Mohammed, and Buddah, and Confucius, as well as Plato and Galileo, Darwin, Marx and Kant and Mill, Sagan, and all the other great minds whose insights touched a real chord in their followers, and infused the people around them, and the institutions they built with their ideas.

Such I think human "religious" thoughts are made of. It is the ideas that human kind institutionalize, establish and maintain, that set the stage for, provide the underpinnings for, the ideas that are entertained by the current generation and the next.

To attempt to clarify my use of the word "religious", I would like to point out, that those of us in the secular camp, still have this "authority" in which we believe, that is not a real entity. We talk of objective truth, the scientific community, what "WE" know to be true, as if it is a real entity, with objective authority, that we should listen to, because it knows best. It is a real entity, only in the sense that we who believe in it, believe in it. And this common belief, actually makes the entity operational. The collective knowledge and wisdom of a race, thought of as a real entity from which one can receive, and to which one can give. Institutions are built around it. The ideas and rules of Scientific Method are established and maintained. It, in my estimation, for the purposes of defining "religion", becomes a religion. It becomes a camp, in which one can profess belonging, and a yardstick, with which to measure the "unbelievers", the followers, the preists, and the righteous.

Today, although the "most evolved" of us seculars reject the god of the Bible, and everlasting life through Christ and so on, we have replaced the needs, with other concepts. We believe in this "objective truth" thing, and hope to find, through science, a way to build a machine that will house our conciousness indefinitely.

Thus I combine the "feelings" with the institutions. And submit the notion that it is natural that we have religion. That we all have it, and we feel that our "worldview", our belief system, is the true and correct one, and others just don't get it. While all the time realizing, that much, if not all of, what we believe, no matter what it is that we do believe, is a continuation of the insights and ideas, that other humans have expressed, established and maintained.

In this, I think it worthwhile, to embrace the insights of Moses and Mohammed and the rest, as groundwork for anything and everything about human society that followed. And that includes the most "unreligious" aspects of secular thought.

Politics of course are tied in there. There are 6 to 8 billion different wills currently on this planet. Quite a neat trick, a clever insight, for the Monotheists to come up with the idea that we should all serve one god.

And a thought that even the atheistic humanists, still entertain. If you think about it.

Regards, TAR

[tar]

P.S.

I would bet that most of us, no matter what our religion or professed lack of one is, probably follow at least 6, 7 or 8 of the commandments Moses brought down from the mount.

[Kyrisch]

Feb 1, 2010 5:28:37 GMT tar said:

To try and make my take, more clear to you, I would like to challenge your statement that the true boundaries of our existence are the boundaries of the physical universe. While it may be true that the physical universe has a boundry (which may not be the case), neither you, nor I, have ever experience it. So its boundries, are not really knowable or pertinent to the discussion of "our" existence.

You keep trying to define existence based on our sensory input. You say that our unique perspectives cause us to exist discretely from each other, but our different sensory input is just a sexed up version of being in two different places. You can make the same argument that two atoms have different 'perspectives' but that does not personify them as separate conscious entities.

Also, you claim that the boundaries of the physical universe cannot be contained in our 'self' because we have never 'experienced' them, but we have similarly never experienced any part of us that isn't wired into our higher nervous system, which, among many things, includes: the dead skin on our posterior, the actual firing of neurons that causes the concept of experience to emerge in the first place, unconscious reflexes (if 'you' didn't just jerk your knee, who did?), unconscious corrections to your balance as you run/walk/jump (if you're not keeping yourself upright, who is?), et cetera. It is clear that many things are part of our selves that we do not actively experience. They are passively included, and so my concept of a continuous nonboundary that extends to the edges of the physical universe still stands.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

You can inspect the dead skin from your rump. You can't do that with the boundry of the physical universe.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

This is irrelevant. That photons don't bounce against the boundary of the universe has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

But you are suggesting that there is no boundary between you and the extent of the physical universe. There are several. One simple one, that you don't agree with, is the outside of your skin. This boundry delineates the Kyrisch organism from the clothes he wears, and the chair he sits upon, the shoes he wears and the ground he walks on. You are not your clothes or your shoes or your chair or your front yard. You are the human organism called Kyrisch, by yourself, others, the political organisation you are a member of, and so on. Any other human organism would recognize you as a separate unique human organism from the unique human organism that is him/her.

But more than this, is the separation in space and time that removes one individual human organism from the boundry of space and time. You have some direct affiliation to the skin falling off your rump. You have no affiliation to the edge of the universe, except for the photons arriving at your location, from there, now.

Cause and effect wise, you have no control over the edge. From a godlike perspective, the edge you would experience now (by photon arrival) , has already occurred some 13.7 plus billion years ago, and those photons are just reporting an image of the edge, then, and have nothing what so ever to do with what is going on at the edge, 13.7 billion years later. You are thusly isolated from even the edge of our own galaxy. The now, that one edge of our galaxy reports, is offset, in cosmic, godlike view, time, by probably 30 to 50 billion years. That is, what we see of the close edge might be a 30,000 year old event, and what we see at the far end might be a 70,000 year old event.

We, even if you call we, the Earths viewpoint, are isolated by space and time from the edge of even our own galaxy. I would suggest there are more than a few boundries, demarkation lines, and ways we are separated from the edge of the universe. Plently more than would be required to state that TAR is different than, and separated from, the rest of the universe. And in any case, plenty more than separate TAR from the skin cells falling off his rump.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

The reason that your placement of the boundary at our skin is unacceptable because it is completely arbitrary. Why there? It is dead, after all. And then what about the food and air you eat and breathe that eventually becomes a part of you? At what point does that actually become a part of what you consider you? And the perspective thing is absolute rubbish, seeing as every single atom has a "different perspective" from every single other and in no way contributes to a sense of self but instead just correlates with an alternate coordinate in fourspace.

Seriously, I'm just repeating myself at this point.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

You might be repeating yourself, but you therefore are failing to alter your view appropriately.
The outside of our skin is an appropriate demarkation, not an arbitrary one. It is where our pattern stops. The pattern encoded in our genes is in our skin cells. The fact that they die, does not change this. And where we have been, can be found out, by DNA testing of the skin cells that fell off our rump. Arbitrary might be my suggestion that the air we breath is part of us, as soon as it is inside our mouth and lungs, but perhaps you would agree with a slightly different demarkation... that when our bodies incorporate a molecule into the structure, or modify the molecule for energy, or combine molecules into a purposeful organic compound, or use a molecule as part of a process that yields useful energy...THEN it is a part of us.


Just lost a good paragraph to some flaky keyboard issue. Bothers the hell out of me when that happens cause I feel like I already said it and am on to the next thing... and I haven't.

More another time.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

But why? Your choices are patently arbitrary. It's no more sensical than the Christian view of life beginning at conception, or the Jewish view of life beginning at birth. In fact, both are equally arbitrary. Life, like your perceived 'self' is not a discrete quality or entity. Your body has a continuous and seamless relationship with its environment, just as "life" (where conception/birth is concerned) is essentially perennial, changing 'seasons' between somatic cells and gametes.

And that is, in fact, a perfect example of my own to expound the futility of your attempts to define the concept of self. While two points, one inside your body and one outside, are obviously living/nonliving, there is no natural delineation between the two. So, just as it is possible to isolate two points in the course of a pregnancy and make a sound judgment of viable versus nonviable, the question of when the fetus becomes an unborn child is unanswerable, if not purely semantical.

from reply #15

I am repeating myself because you failed to address the point the last time I brought it up. Also, I do not mean to nitpick, but it is necessary because the point is precisely that no generalization can properly account for what you are trying to.

Our pattern certainly does not stop at our skin. If you look at any part of the world, there is human-environment interaction. Now these interactions may not be chemical processes, but they are physical processes that are undeniably a result of humans incorporating outside elements into useful structures and organic compounds.

Now if you want to talk from a strictly biological sense, I can bring up the existence of chimaeras -- people with multiple genomes in the same body, superorganisms like ant colonies wherein an individual organism while distinguishable can hardly be said to be individual, or portuguese men-of-war whose individual organisms are hardly distinguishable.

So it seems to be a scale thing. On a large enough scale, portuguese men-of-war and ant colonies appear to behave as single organisms. So do humans. But if you zoom in, each individual cell in one's body would appear the act the same way (and each individual cell has a slightly different genome, even). So how are your demarcations not ambiguous?

[tar]

Kryrish,

If you were studying an ant colony and learned to recognize a certain ant by his bent antena and called him Jim, you could unamiguosly demark his form and presence from the other ants in his colony, regardless of his "cellular" role in the colony organism.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

Just because he has a physical difference (...he is unique) does not mean he is individual. You can identify a single cell in your body which has a different copy of a gene due to mutation and call him "Jim" but it would hardly show that that single cell is an individual.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

Well sure it is an individual. An individual cell, separate and distinct from the cell next to it. That is my whole point. There is this cell and then there is that cell. They are two separate and distinct entities. The fact that they have the same DNA or are in the same body, or have the same form and structure and shape and function does not change the fact that they are separate entities.

There is you, and there is me. Two separate and distinct human beings. The fact that we might work at the same company, or live in the same town, or be the same race or belong to the same science foundation or country or philosophical group, or army, or be lifeforms on the Planet Earth, does not change the fact that you are you and I am me.

Every entity is made up of smaller entities, and every entity is part of a greater entity. The only places that would not be true are at the very bottom and the very top, which may or may not be findable.

And although we may both be components of that which is larger and both be made up of similar smaller components, there is an important distinction, to be made. The larger thing we both are part of is the same thing for both of us. The smaller things that make me up are DIFFERENT things than the smaller things that make you up. My foot is my foot. It is not the foot that is on the end of your leg. The cells that make up my foot have my DNA and the cells that make up your foot, have your DNA. My foot cells have my mitochondria, your foot cells have yours.

Even if (which I know is impossible) there is another exact TAR somewhere in the universe, with identical cells in identical positions, every axion and synapse in his brain, the exact length and position and connections as in mine (which is impossible because his experiences, the things that grew his memory and brain structure could not exactly mirror mine, since he would not be able to look at the stars from the same vantage point, nor type to Kyrisch on the computer,) even if, this was possible (which it is not,) he would be him, and I would be me, with different cells in our bodies, made of different atoms. We would be separate entities, separate individuals, both able to be seen, one in one direction and one in the opposite direction by a third party, half way inbetween in time and space, with big enough lenses to focus us both, at the appropriate future universal time, that would have allowed the light reflected off of me and the light reflected off of him to reach that third, midway observer.

That third observer would know we both TARs existed in a past universal time, and I was the one from the Milky Way Galaxy and the other was the one from the Osighaogh Galaxy. We were different and distinct TARs, made up of indentical stuff, but different identical stuff, that existed in completely different places. Different entities entirely.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

The compartmentalization of 'individuals' at each level is contrived. The relationship between the all-encompassing and the truly fundamental is a continuous, not hierarchal one. In this way, individualism of the kind you are trying to get at is merely a side effect of the way we try to make sense of the world, but which does not actual exist therein. At each 'level' there may be marked differences, but there are marked differences between species even though the concept of species is actually not distinct, but entirely continuous. The fact that people cannot fathom one 'kind' of animal evolving into another 'kind' is a symptom of the psychological predisposition that simply does not truthfully reflect reality.