Science is a tool that can be abused!

[_spotlight]

I'm trying to see how this invalidates physics and evolution.

I think he makes the mistake of thinking he is being taken seriously. I respond to him to keep him posting. His posts are hilarious. I have to be careful not to drink anything while at the computer or I may need to buy a new keyboard.

[_spotlight]

Since science limits itself to the natural world outside of the human mind

It does not so limit itself. It limits itself to whatever is observable and what ever can be inferred to exist as a result. Everything observed is by a human mind in science so it would be rather challenging to exclude that which exists inside the human mind from scientific discussion.

it must by definition be limited to a study of those things of nature and not of God

That is only because there is not so much as a definition of the word god. It is hard to study an undefined concept.

Now some believe that God is found in nature. These people dance around naked in the forest and seek Gaia. I wonder if scientist do this?

The rambler has returned.

But for me God is defined as an intellect.

Oh, gasp! Say it isn't so!

We could discuss the details but this is not important for this post.

And besides, the math involved would likely be beyond the reader's comprehension.

Now for many they think that a physical mind is needed for an intellect to exist. I am not one of these people.

And he's proud of that, folks!

So the real barrier to science is its reliance on the physical world.

It does not rely on any such definition. It relies only upon that which can be observed. If it can't be observed there is nothing to say about such a thing even so much as whether it exists.

That is silly because they have violated this principle many times.

It was never a principle to begin with but please feel free to continue making up more s**t.

I guess as long as it does not allow a god in the tent it is fine.

It would more than welcome a god in a tent. Please show us the tent with a god inside it.

Now the rules of science flow back and forth but the agenda of keeping god out is alive and working just like it did while Darwin and Hutton were finalizing their attack on religion.

Why is Ken Miller still a scientist? OMG is he daft?

So your statement does not match the reality of the history of science. And from where I sit nothing will change going into the future.

My statement was that science deals with observable evidence and if that treads into an area where the implications of the discovered evidence might have something to say about some particular concept of a god, so be it. Science is not restricted from going there if there is something to be observed and implications to be drawn from those observations whether or not that affects someone's concept of a deity or whether or not it would violate someone's claim that science must remain agnostic.

[_spotlight]

Really? Then by all means predict the thoughts in a human mind. If it is true as you say that we know enough to make that claim then by all means predict human thought. I would guess that the claims are again an overreach of science and have little to do with reality.

If you would bother to educate yourself on the subject you would not need to guess. There is nothing left to reserve to a soul that can't be created in the mind by a physical stimulation of the brain from thoughts to desires to OBEs to religious visions.

Similar to global warming.

Which is real.

And the claims made about Polar Bear populations over the last 20 years.

You might want to educate yourself.
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/ ... ns-booming

Or dinosaurs with feathers.

There were dinosaurs with feathers. The links you shared earlier on this topic were about whether or not all dinosaurs were feathered or only some evolutionary branches.

[_Maksutov]

You might want to educate yourself.
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/ ... ns-booming

I say that polar bears are not biological creatures. They are proof that we are in a Pixar simulation.

[_Franktalk]

If you would bother to educate yourself on the subject you would not need to guess. There is nothing left to reserve to a soul that can't be created in the mind by a physical stimulation of the brain from thoughts to desires to OBEs to religious visions.

I am so glad I don't live in the world you describe. Where the spark of life is ignored and the mind is made into a clock. I could never limit my mind the way you do. It is your choice to believe what you wish, I think it is a sad choice to make. You in essence have turned yourself into a deterministic robot.

[_Franktalk]

When I look around and see things like this I ponder if patterns could exist at this level. One is part of the brain and the other is part of the universe.



What do you think Spotlight?

[_Themis]

If you would bother to educate yourself on the subject you would not need to guess. There is nothing left to reserve to a soul that can't be created in the mind by a physical stimulation of the brain from thoughts to desires to OBEs to religious visions.

I am so glad I don't live in the world you describe. Where the spark of life is ignored and the mind is made into a clock. I could never limit my mind the way you do. It is your choice to believe what you wish, I think it is a sad choice to make. You in essence have turned yourself into a deterministic robot.

Where is educating oneself limiting the mind?

[_Gunnar]

Where is educating oneself limiting the mind?

Good question, Themis! I can't think of anything more self-limiting than Franktalk's "inner journey" into his own mind and thoughts while trying to exclude outside influences and observations of and about the real, physical world around him--especially observations and evidence that seem to contradict what he would rather believe. Franktalk is quite fond of the aphorism "being in the world but not of the world." The truth is that no matter what we believe or do, none of us can avoid being both in and of the world.

[_spotlight]

I am so glad I don't live in the world you describe. Where the spark of life is ignored and the mind is made into a clock. I could never limit my mind the way you do. It is your choice to believe what you wish, I think it is a sad choice to make. You in essence have turned yourself into a deterministic robot.

Is this like the TBM stating that now that you have left the church you no longer possess morals? You are smart enough to see the fallacy there I imagine. We are what we are. Changing the explanation for that reality does nothing to affect the reality itself.

If you suffer from soul-related anxiety, let me offer my first pill. To alleviate your worries, I'm going to ask you to do a little bit of thinking with me and consider the distinction between observations and their associated explanations. Take, for example, the behavior of physical objects like, say, apples. If you hold an apple in your hand and release it, it will fall to the ground (unless, of course, it is attached, supported by a table, and so forth). This is simply a fact about released apples, or similar physical objects. An important question, one that has kept history's geniuses at work, is how we can explain this fact. Here, we can see that the explanation has changed over time. Aristotle believed that released apples fall to the ground because they tend toward their natural place. In the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton dispensed with Aristotle's teleological (goal-oriented) account and argued that physical objects are subject to the goalless force of gravity, which he quantified mathematically. In the early twentieth century, the explanation changed again when Albert Einstein showed that the force described by Newton follows from the geometry of space-time.

What we see then is that while the explanation for why apples fall to the ground changes over time, the fact that apples fall to the ground does not change. Released apples fell to the ground in the time of Aristotle, Newton, and Einstein, and they will continue to do so in the future (at least as long as things don't get too ugly in the universe). Now imagine that someone were to express concern over the demise of earlier accounts of the behavior of apples. Suppose our friend Wayne, from chapter 3, worried that since Aristotle and Newton were wrong, apples, along with smartphones and all our other precious material possessions, will start flying off into the sky. This would've course be silly. The explanation for the behavior of apples may have changed, but facts about falling apples haven't. Apples do not care whether Aristotle, Newton, or Einstein is right; they will continue falling to the ground when released.

We can now transpose the analogy to human beings. An important fact about people is that we are sentient creatures capable of experiencing a broad range of psychological states. We fall in love or are moved by beautiful music; we can be jealous of our neighbors, saddened by a piece of news, or excited at the prospect of starting a new job. We can also make choices, behave morally, express our thoughts through language, create new mathematical theories, or write poetry. How can we account for the richness of our mental lives and the flexibility of our behavior? The traditional explanation used to be that this is all achieved by the immaterial soul. Recall that life itself was believed to emanate from the soul. But the explanation has changed. And so, just like people shouldn't worry that apples and smartphones will fly off into the sky because Aristotle or Newton were wrong, there are also no reasons to worry about the demise of the soul. Are people really going to stop falling in love or being moved by beautiful music just because mainstream scientists have reached the conclusion that there is no soul? Is everyone you know going to drop dead because life souls were eliminated from our scientific vocabulary? Of course not. The soul was only an explanation (or at least an attempt at one) for the fact that we are alive and have complex mental lives and flexible behavior. The explanation has changed, but the facts are here to stay.

The Soul Fallacy - Julien Musolino

[_spotlight]

When I look around and see things like this I ponder if patterns could exist at this level. One is part of the brain and the other is part of the universe.



What do you think Spotlight?

What do you think of Nightlion's apocralrock?

Mycorrhizae


A city filmed from space at night