Zombrex wrote: » I don't know why you are surprised? The point made to you before (a few times) is that all evidence supports the idea that the consciousness and mind are a product of the brain, based on the examination of personality and mental ability when the brain is damaged. While it would be fascinating if the brain used photons on a small scale for communication, there is nothing being proposed that is any more radical from a physics point of view than radio waves.
nagirrac wrote: » Most neuroscientists and as far as I can tell all atheists believe that conscious awareness (not unconscious brain activity) is a by product of the brain and serves no purpose. This is what I disagree with.
robp wrote: » The quote was "Most historians believe it ...." , I am starting think it is your own statement. The U-turn is based on what he wrote in the God Delusion. You will see Dawkins admit this error in his debate with Prof John Lennox on the Youtube video posted by the Samuel Zwemer Theological Seminary.
Zombrex wrote: » I'll deal with two birds with one stone here -“It is even possible to mount a serious, though not widely supported, historical case that Jesus never lived at all, as has been done by, among others Professor G. A. Wells of the University of London in a number of books, including Did Jesus Exist? Although Jesus probably existed.”Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p.122
MrPudding wrote: » Highlighted the important bit. That is what rational people do, admit they made a mistake. To criticise someone for admitting to and correcting a mistake is a little silly. MrP
Virgil° wrote: » Ouch, falls at the first hurdle.
robp wrote: » You clearly missed the point when Dawkins said "...maybe I *shutter* I *shutter*I alluded to the possibility that some historians think Jesus never existed, I take that back. Jesus existed." at 13.03 mins. Correcting mistakes is good but being economical with the truth in the first place is not
nagirrac wrote: » Zombrex, what you consistently miss in my posts is that I agree that human consciousness comes from the brain. However, you missed the important point I am making. Most neuroscientists and as far as I can tell all atheists believe that conscious awareness (not unconscious brain activity) is a by product of the brain and serves no purpose. This is what I disagree with.
nagirrac wrote: » I posted the following on the "Fear of Death" thread and it is highly relevant to the discussion. If indeed the brain is a radio/transmitter as the evidence is now starting to suggest (something that was being dismissed up to recently), this opens up completely new areas of understanding.
nagirrac wrote: » It is not just the fact that the brain may produce an information field localized in an EM field but does this information field interact with a larger information field that permeates the whole universe (the mind of God).
nagirrac wrote: » Read chapter 9 of Susan Pockett's hypothesis from the website I referenced below, is it something that should be rejected out of hand or might the evidence just now be supporting it? If so, what an exciting time to be alive.
nagirrac wrote: » What's significant about the paper on neural activity I posted earlier (the CalTech paper) is that it demonstrates that neurons generate an EM field by firing together (neural synchrony) and also respond to an EM field which causes them to fire together. The proposal is that this is the mechanism of high level communication within the brain. Keep in mind up to now it was thought that EM fields produced by the brain were just a by product and had no function, in much the same way that conscious awareness is regarded by most neuroscientists as a by product of unconscious neural activity and serves no purpose. The biggest argument against all this "serves no purpose" talk is evolution. If every aspect of our highly complex biological system, including our brains, has been retained and improved upon over millenia by natural selection, why would something like conscious awareness be retained if it has no function?
nagirrac wrote: » As far as a link to the afterlife, well obviously that's highly speculative. However, if conscious awareness is in fact information localised in an EM field as McFadden suggests, perhaps there some as yet to be discovered mechanism for such fields to be linked to the broader EM field that permeates the whole universe.
Zombrex wrote: » Who says consciousness "serves no purpose"? I'm not even sure what that means.
nagirrac wrote: » All learning starts with conscious awareness and then becomes unconscious, e.g. crawling, walking, driving, playing an instrument, etc.
Jernal wrote: » Is that true, have I misunderstood you or have you just worded this badly:P? I think many animals without brains as complex as us learn to walk and do other stuff. They don't really have what we could consider to be conscious awareness - and in the case of some strands of Christianity and other religious beliefs : a soul.
Jernal wrote: » Interestingly, there's little to suggest dogs are self aware in the sense of a conscious person "myself" - sorry can't think of a way to word it better.
nagirrac wrote: » We can't seem to get on the same page zombrex.
nagirrac wrote: » First of all this particular discussion has nothing to do with the paranormal.
nagirrac wrote: » The majority neuroscience opinion on the subjective experience of consciousness is that it is an epiphenomenon of the unconscious neural activity in the brain i.e. it is like the whistle of a steam engine, appears to be a thing but actually does nothing and may even be an illusion.
Zombrex wrote: » Well that is because you are on the page of crazy nonsense you made up because it sounds cool, nagirrac.
Zombrex wrote: » The idea of "free will" also comes up against the same problem.
Ken bryan wrote: » Nothing defines Man and our Purpose like the word WHY . For it this word that Unites us with a greater form of intellect . Ie God more than any other . As it does not apply to any other species . As we know they are here for us . But were are here for God . Surrival of the fittest is common trait of all life . But only man can choose to alter change this trait . No other animal can do this . Socialism could only of came from man . As it goes against darwinsm . It is this trait that make,s man so unique . Thus there has to be a reason for it . Why is answered through the answers given by religion .
nagirrac wrote: » ..and right on cue, the ad hominum attacks and outright dishonesty begin. I have never posted anything on this or any other forum that I just "made up". Everything I post that you describe as "made up", whether it is here or on the A&A forum, is based on current scientific research.
nagirrac wrote: » Where I speculate myself based on that research, I always identify that as speculation.
nagirrac wrote: » It's what makes debate with people with this fear literally impossible.
nagirrac wrote: » The interpretation problem is generally because the word or phrase has many meanings and needs context for a specific meaning. "Free will" has multiple meanings, but free will in the context of the mind-body problem is well defined. Philosophers have debated it of millenia and in the past 50 years neuroscience has added its 2c. The basic question is are all decisions predetermined by nature and nurture, or do "you", as in your conscious awareness, have decision making ability.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » On another note, I'm curious Zombrex - you say that the evidence for Jesus is so weak that historians would not bat an eyelid if tomorrow it was somehow determined that the Jesus recorded in the ancient manuscripts known as the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of John and the various epistles collated into what we called the NT did not exist. How do you know this?
Fanny Cradock wrote: » You have already assured us that we can't really know what to think when you say you have a friend called Bill who works in IT. Why should we take your word when you presume to speak for 10,000's of people? You wouldn't be over-egging the pudding now would you.
Zombrex wrote: » Because none of them are contemporary, none of them were written by him, none of them were written by anyone who probably met him, there is no verification from non-Christian sources etc etc. Or to put it another way, if a small cult of Jews around 30AD had decided some how (and lets be honest, cults decide a lot more crazy things) that their messiah had come but he wasn't based on someone that actually had existed, stories were collated from other stories at the time, by the time this message had got to Paul and the writers of the gospels they would have been none the wiser. I'm not saying that is what happened, but it is certainly considered historically plausible. Or to put it another way, there is nothing that stops that in the historical record. There are no Roman birth certs that have to be forged, or Roman newspaper articles that have to be fake for this story to be the case. The only thing that has to change is that the information given to the second-gen Christians is not based on reality. But then that isn't a stretch when the information given to second-gen Christians describes people come back from the dead, is it And before you say it is far fetched, just remember you believe that Paul met the resurrected Jesus and hold everything Paul says about Christianity to be the divinely inspired truth. I could describe that to someone who had never heard of Christians and they might scoff, saying don't be ridiculous no one would actually believe a guy who couldn't have met Jesus but had a "vision" on a road some where. But you guys do.
Zombrex wrote: » Well you don't have to take my word for it. You can study the methods and standards used in historical study. I learned them during Leaving Cert history and from discussions with history students at college. But then, just like science, you will be faced with methods that don't fit neatly into the Christian narrative that all of the Bible is well supported from a secular point of view. Up to you.
Ken bryan wrote: » Surrival of the fittest is common trait of all life . But only man can choose to alter change this trait . No other animal can do this . Socialism could only of came from man . As it goes against darwinsm . It is this trait that make,s man so unique . Thus there has to be a reason for it .
Fanny Cradock wrote: » I reject your claim that there are no eyewitness accounts nor any extra-biblical sources that mention Jesus. I've give plenty of reading and video/ audio suggestions that similarly reject your claims. (See Bauckham, Wright, Ehrman, Dickson and Blomberg to mention a few.)
Fanny Cradock wrote: » If your understanding of history comes from your Leaving Cert days (what, 15 years ago) and conversations you had with history students in college then perhaps you simply aren't qualified to be speaking from authority.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » However, all of this is utterly irrelevant to my question. It is you who is missing the point, Zombrex. (Oh, that felt good!) You claimed that historians would not bat an eyelid if tomorrow Jesus was shown not to have existed. You also told us that Bill your IT buddy may or may not exist and we can really know either way. So how then can you know the reactions of 100,000's of people to findings that have never been made?
Fanny Cradock wrote: » But actual history doesn't fit nicely into any particular method or technique. There are always ragged edges to history and Biblical history is no different.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » Finally, you are trying to smuggle in an unsupported distinction between Biblical history and "secular history" (whatever that is).
Fanny Cradock wrote: » The people I've mentioned are doing history (and doing it better than you or me). Some of them just so happen to be Christians.
Zombrex wrote: » Can you point out which of them say there are eye witness testimony to Jesus and non-Christian sources for Jesus?
Zombrex wrote: » Because of the fact that I used the word "historians". I didn't say people would not bat an eyelid if tomorrow Jesus was shown to not exist. I'm sure there are lots of people who would. Historians, by definition, follow the standard practices of historical study. In the same way that you can say a scientist, by virtue of actually being a scientist, would understand that one cannot prove anything in science (where as a lay person might not understand that), you can also assume that historians, by virtue of being historians, would understand what can and cannot be supported in historical study.
Zombrex wrote: » Correct, which makes it even odder that some people consider it completely infallible and the divine inspired word of God, doesn't it.
Zombrex wrote: » And Christians believe that the Bible is infallible. Now do they believe that because that is what history tells them and it shapes their religious beliefs?
Zombrex wrote: » Or do they believe that because their religion tells them that and it shapes their historical study?
Zombrex wrote: » Or put it like this, how seriously do you consider, as a Christian, that some of the authors of the Bible either were lying or made mistakes in what they recorded?
Fanny Cradock wrote: » For those interested I would add another resource to the the list I gave in a previous post. This would be Cold Case Christianity by Jim Wallace, a cold case detective. (I thought they only had them in ghastly shows like CSI). As an atheist he decided to investigate the Jesus story as if it were a cold case. It's quite a unique angle to take on the debate.
