Leto Atreides II wrote:A Thing of Eternity wrote:Exactly. You can't just say, "well neither of us have been proved right or wrong, so we both have an equal liklihood of being right". You ask how is your assumption any different from mine? It is as different as different gets.
Here's an example:
I believe we are living in the Matrix (I don't really). I would like to see proof that this is not the case, I don't think there is any.
So by your logic, or at least the logic you've laid out so far - the above statement is a valid belief. There is no way to disprove it, just as there is no way to definitively disprove any kind of creator, but that doesn't make it valid, or make it a 50/50 situation that we might be in the real world, or might be in a simulation.
In that example, 'living in the Matrix' would at least have to make theoretical sense. And in a sense, we are living 'in the matrix', if by matrix one refers to the legal world of corporate identities.
It makes perfect theoretical sense. Someone or something at some point decided it would be benificial to them in some way (maybe as a joke?) to place all human beings in a computer simulation of reality. We have no way to tell whether our reality is real, or whether it is a perfect simulation of reality.
That belief cannot be disproven, and by your logic below (we'll call it "logic") it is as valid as your belief that there are some "extra" energies/forces involved in our consciousness, dispite the fact that we both know that dispite the fact that we cannot disprove that we live in a simulation, we all should agree that it's far fetched and ridiculous.
Now, in arguments, the onus to provide proof is upon the claimant. But if I claim there are souls, and you claim there are none, and neither of us can provide proof, then the onus is on both of us. And since these are theories, not established facts, then there is no final proof either way yet, and we are simply stuck with our differing theories.
Yeah, Chig said it pretty clearly, you obviously don't understand how this works. You're making a claim, our only claim is that your claim has no evidence. I think you're confused here into thinking that us saying "nothing more than the physical brain is required to create consciousness" is a claim on par with your claim.
To refer to my example above, your claim is far-fetched (extremely), and is on par with the claim that we're all living in a computer simulation. Our claim is on par with "well, I can't disprove that we live in a simulation, but it's one of the most far fetched, unlikely, unnecessary ideas I can think of".
Because our statement is grounded in reality and yours is off in never-never-land, the onus of proof falls on you.
A Thing of Eternity wrote:Your assumption that we have supernatural souls is not something I can disprove. Even when we eventually proove that the brain does account for all of "consciousness" people will still hang onto their belief in a soul. But that doesn't make it EQUALLY valid to assuming a simpler more scientific explanation.
Supernatural is perhaps a strong term to use here; I am thinking more in terms of a sublime natural energy.
I just stumbled across a book which may reflect my theory on the matter:
http://www.amazon.com/Self-Aware-Univer ... 0874777984" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Amazon.com lets you read some of the pages, and so far it looks like this Amit Goswami fellow has ideas very similar to mine. He also looks like he's better at expressing them than I. I just might pick up this book so I can read it in its entirety.
I haven't read this particular book, but I glanced over what was there, I've seen stuff like this many times, it's not a far cry from supernaturalism, and I can't take it seriously. It's the same old junk we saw from the old religions phrased in ways that sound pleasant to the new "scientific" ear. Again, not having read this particular book, these "conciousness creates the material world" charlatans place the same self-loving importance on humans as all the old religions did.
It's not that some of these people don't occasionally make a valid point, it's just that these concepts are just one more baby step away from our old security blanket of religion. Sadly the steps remain very small, as the vast majority of people simply can't cope with the idea that we're here alone.
"Natural Sublime Energy" is about 1 tiny fraction of a joke more valid than "Supernatural Sublime Energy", the only difference is that the wording has been changed to sound more plausible. Both are unnecessary, both are un-measurable by current methods. It's just semantics at this point, and once a debate degenerates down to someone having to resort to weak semantics I generally grow bored.