After I told you about 300 sigma you claimed in essence, "You're out to lunch" and then the same thing you've been claiming about the phenomenology of psychic experience since that time.

People trying to put forward their position while denying that of their opponent will disregard any and all contradictions to their position. You don't want there to be the supernatural, but that simply isn't the case.

Do you want to take a look-see at the 300?

"for them," yeah, they're deluded. I don't need to hear "I'm an atheist." That doesn't advance, "The denial of the deity claim."

Before they can be activated they necessarily require me to make the bald assertion, "a deity exists" so they can be instantiated as "atheists" but they're telling me a priori, "I'm an atheist."

It's the argument of a retarded child on the 4th grade playground.

Still drawing a blank here. What does my wanting anything to be or not be have to do with anything? Wanting to see a truck won't make one appear, and wanting not to see a truck won't make one disappear, so how would this be any different with a ghost, leprechaun or omnipresent deity except for the fact that they can't be detected by the senses?

The effect is detectable by our senses. It's 300 sigma. 300 standard deviations from a normal distribution. My eyes see it, my ears hear it, I am informed. It's not just the 300 sigma, I'm directing my awareness each waking moment.

I'm doing it now as I'm typing these words & sentences to you, it's an ongoing experience tangible to my every sense.

Those experiments are demonstrably unreliable, and those who've conducted them under scrutiny from the scientific community. In addition to this, neuroscientists have demonstrated more reliably that brain function happens in an absence of will prior to thoughts occurring in the brain, which furthermore happens prior to thoughts occurring in what some would propose is a non-material consciousness. It has also been demonstrated that thoughts, including sensory perception and emotion and other such "events of consciousness", can be affected by physical interference in the brain. Even if something we call "psychic" was happening with such measurable consistency, it would be firstly beyond a person's control and secondly explicable in scientific terms. It would not be supernatural--it would be natural. So, I'm not sure why you feel it's relevant to establish that something is reported to have happened with regularity under conditions which don't meet scientific standards.

Let's say I yield the 300 sigma based on you having a position that says, "It's all been invalidated." You're still stuck with our noetic subsystem of mind being evaluative and supervisory. You're still stuck with the Hard Problem of Consciousness as a believer in naturalism.

You'd still be putting forward "atheism; naturalism; epiphenomenalism; functionalism; behaviorism; intertheoretic reductionism; psychoneural identity theory; & determinism (causal; motivational; & hedonistic)" without any evidence whatsoever for me to even say, "All that has been invalidated."

Neuroscientists have done no such thing.
The human brain contains approximately 10^11 neurons, each with about 10,000 dendrites extending from them (Blinkov and Glezer, (1968) The Human Brain in Figures and Tables.) Some, the Purkinje cells, have up to 200,000 synapses. (Diagrams of them look like hedges.) The cerebral cortex is responsible for higher brain functions, including the generation of most mental state contents. It is estimated to contain 60-240 trillion (0.6-2.4X10^14) synapses (60 trillion by Shepherd (1998), The Synaptic Organization of the Brain, p.6; 150 trillion in Pakkenberg, et al. (2003), "Aging and the human neocortex"; 240 trillion by Koch (1999), Biophysics of Computation Information Processing in Single Neurons, p.87).

X-ray computer tomography (CT) cannot study the brain's soft tissue. PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans can trace tagged substances. They detect gamma rays from positron emitting radioisotopes, which damage tissues. The positrons travel a few millimeters before being annihilated to produce gamma rays. Thus, PET has millimeter resolution. To minimize radiation damage, millions of events are used as opposed to billions in CT scans. The number of events in both types of scan is woefully small compared to 100 trillion synapses. Multiphoton microscopy gives 3-D images with high spatial and temporal resolutions (Segelken (2004) "CU Laser Microscopy Technique Settles Brain Chemistry Debate, Could Aid Studies of Alzheimer's, Stroke Damage."), and can be used to study intracellular processes in living brain cells. Unfortunately, it has a small field of view and is limited to structures visible light can penetrate.

God, Science & Mind: The Irrationality of Naturalism.

This reminds me of Sam Harris claiming, as a scientist, that transcendental meditation can reveal reliably things about the inner workings of the brain or of consciousness. You can't just label something any way you want based on doctored results or gut feelings and then expect to receive decent peer reviews. And if you do receive decent peer reviews based on such methods, it's likely that there's corruption involved.

The only way to "put forth atheism" is to state that I don't believe in gods. There is nothing else attached to it.

And there's no need to copy paste a bunch of material you don't understand.

including sensory perception and emotion and other such "events of consciousness", can be affected by physical interference in the brain. — whollyrolling

Correlation is not causation.

Stating "I don't believe in gods" is not "the denial of the deity claim." They're two entirely different categories, and person experience.

Dismissing the whole of science by claiming "you don't understand it" while you aren't marking the distinctions between correlation v. causation isn't helping you score any points with the judges, in this case me.

The only way to "put forth atheism" is to state that I don't believe in gods. There is nothing else attached to it. — whollyrolling

Have no belief in any particular god?
Or
Believe that no gods exist at all?

Regardless whether it's correlation or causation, it points to the result I'm referring to, that humans have no free will, no control over brain function. But to call something "correlation" whereby a specific reaction predictably occurs every time a specific action occurs is preposterous. There's no variation to consider. At a certain point it becomes scientifically demonstrable.

What you're basically saying is that one day I could walk into my kitchen, being of sound mind, and see Death Valley where once there was a hardwood floor and some appliances.

If we don't have control over brain function then how do we have control over it? How are you making me aware of your position that we don't have control over brain function. How is your brain working it out that I need to know how you don't have any control over it?

I gave you Daniel Dennett's nonsense about exactly what you're referring to a couple of days ago.

Here, I'll post it again, notice the part in bold, his prophetic truth.

*Intentionality?*

In _The Intentional Stance,_ Daniel Dennett offers a third-person account of intentionality. He discussed the difficulties in attributing a belief to an individual by interpreting behavior and suggests:

it is quite plausible to suppose that in principle (if not yet in practice) it would be possible to confirm these simple, objective belief attributions _by finding something in the believers head_ -- by finding the beliefs themselves, in effect.... If you do believe [there is milk in the refrigerator] that's a perfectly objective fact about you, and it must come down in the end to your brain's being in some particular physical state. If we know more about the physiological psychology, we could in principle determine the facts about your brain state and determine whether or not you believe there is milk in the fridge even if you were determined to be silent or disingenuous about the topic. - Dennett (1987), p. 14.

Naturalists often wave their hands dramatically at crucial points expecting assent. In fact, Dennett's claim is quasi-fact. It is physically impossible to have detailed knowledge of brain states Dennett's supposition requires (p. 11). Even if we did, how would we identify a belief? - God, Science & Mind: The Irrationality of Naturalism by Dennis F. Polis

The part in bold is about what I wrote to you earlier how we don't have the technology to prove a belief exists in the human brain and the part right here above about how it's physically impossible to have detailed knowledge of brain states...

I don't believe either claim is based on reality. I believe one is based on egoism and assertion of dominance and the other is based on compassion and denial of intrinsic authority, neither of which is real--all claims are compulsions and serve the utility of the claimant. I tend toward claims that are based on rationality or reliable demonstration because feelings and confirmation biases seem to me to be unreliable. People need to at least convincingly attempt objectivity.



Both. You can believe in a god from one religion while having no belief in a god from another. You can also have no belief in any god or a belief in all gods.

Atheism isn't a denial that others believe in gods. It's an absence of the belief that gods exist--there's no other parameter.

God is not a god or any god, these are different and incompatible terms.

It's an absence of belief that gods exist? You're not specifying what gods you're talking about. Also, who, what, why, when, where and by what means and in what way?

You can tell me you "lack belief" but you're believing stuff that doesn't exist and there is no science for over what you're doing each moment backed by 300 sigma. I don't believe you.

I don't believe you're listening to the words I'm saying, or that you have any interest in discourse, or that you understand these incessant copy/paste excerpts. You're making reference over and over to a biased and discredited experiment by people who profess on faith that transcendental meditation is a gateway to pure knowledge.

You're excluding all of the evidence I'm presenting in two ways, by claiming I'm copying and pasting it and by claiming I don't understand it.

Juries don't buy that bullshit, you need EVIDENCE, and your belief your brain is magically telling mine it doesn't have any control is ludicrously preposterous.

You wrote, "your god nonsense is not on the same level."

God is not a god or any god, these are different and incompatible terms. In Richard Dawkins' God is Too Complex to Exist, Dick is not talking about a god or any god. Is Thor too complex to exist? Of course not.

I'm really surprised in just the last couple of weeks I've been a part of this community the argument is over whether or not "gods" exist. — Daniel Cox

I don't care.

That's one in gazillions of copouts you could have come up with.

That you're convinced of it doesn't make it evidence. Juries don't buy mysticism and they don't buy "I'm innocent" as a defense. Why are you talking about "magic" or that my brain is telling your brain something "magically"? You've lost me again, I didn't say anything about magic. You haven't presented reliable evidence drawn from a legitimate experiment.

You've presented the hocus pocus findings of religious fanatics.

Correlation is not causation. — Daniel Cox

Exactly. All neuroscience shows is that the brain is correlated with thought. They can't show that the brain is the source of thought. The example of the television has been given; the tv components are intimately correlated with the sound and vision of the film but this does not mean the tv writes the script or the music score or anything in the film. The film itself is broadcast from a remote station. The brain = mind theory is often sold on ignorance of the difference between correlation and causation.

In Richard Dawkins' God is Too Complex to Exist, Dick is not talking about a god or any god. Is Thor too complex to exist? Of course not. — Daniel Cox

Dawkins' argument is a non starter. It is based on the erroneous idea that evolution needs some kind of physical mechanism. If God knows mathematics He can be complex because mathematics is intrinsically, or naturally, complex. With math you get complexity for free.

Numbers are the most primitive processes of iteration and partition.

Start with /
Iterate //
Reiterate ///
and so on //////////////////...
Partition each step of the process /, //, ///, ////,...

Suddenly you've go numbers. If God has been contemplating mathematical truth for eternity why can't He be complex? Evolution in the mind does not need a physical mechanism because the mind can evolve purely through contemplation (of numbers, mathematics).

I saw a photograph yesterday of a bunch of people looking at the sky, I guess I should convert to whatever religion they adhered to. There are 6.5 billion people who claim to adhere to the 5 most populous world religions, I guess I should join all 5 of them just to be on the safe side, except that I can't because they all vehemently disagree with each other on some fundamental details.

That people would attest to something as a collective doesn't make it objectively true. There are thousands of anecdotes of people witnessing "miracles" or converting based on "otherworldly" experiences. There are also anecdotes of brain tumours turning people into serial killers. Billions of people have believed in "luck" and mythological creatures, ghosts and faery tales, and thousands of widely varied names, faces and personalities have been ascribed to gods or a god--accepted en masse as incontrovertible Truths. People have been documented as having witnessed mass hallucinations, having lapsed into mass hysteria. It has been documented that sound waves can cause audio and visual hallucinations, as can exposure to certain substances. Confirmation bias is powerfully influential and can operate in many minds at once. It's easy to convince people of things they desperately want to believe. Are you trying to provide evidence that humans are psychologically vulnerable?

Several people have offered generous monetary rewards for evidence of the supernatural that can be documented in real time, yet no one has come to claim them. There have been hundreds of experiments involving alleged psychics and alleged paranormal phenomena that have all come up completely empty.

All major world religions are premised on personal experience and faith that such experiences can be attributed to a god or gods. This would indicate, based on your argument, that personal experience and faith are superior to objective evidence because more than 3/4 of the human religious experience exists in opposition of evidence. In a few major religions, it is clearly stated that a quest for evidence runs contrary to faith and is therefore sinful or counterintuitive. Yet somehow, when a mysterious event occurs, some people are eager to call it Proof.

You just told me that correlation doesn't equal causation, and now you're saying the opposite. I believe what you're attempting is the "I'm rubber, you're glue" argument.

Daniel Cox
151
↪Frank Apisa
"Uncaused cause" is an argument put forward by naturalists because that's what they feel they can tackle.

"Miracles are things inspiring awe and wonder, so not all miracles violate the laws of nature. Some conform to the uniform way things work. Some do not. God is self-explaining, but not self causing. Causes make what was only potential be actual. God is always fully actual, and was never merely potential and so needs no prior cause. Peace, Dennis

I agree that many miracles are consistent with the order of nature. Some are not. God is self-explaining, not self causing. Causes make what was potential be actual. God is always fully actual, and so was never potential and in need of being actualized. Peace, Dennis"

Dfpolis is a contributor here.

Try to tackle this. — Daniel Cox

God Who?

There have been hundreds of experiments involving alleged psychics and alleged paranormal phenomena that have all come up completely empty. — whollyrolling

Uri Geller was tested in strict lab conditions and he bent strips of metal that were sealed inside glass tubes. It was also done by a number of British kids.

"The paranormal is a term that covers those weird phenomena that are seemingly beyond scientific explanation. For the past hundred years telepathy, extrasensory perception and psychokinesis have baffled researchers brave enough to fly in the face of the scientific establishment. Then came Uri Geller and in his wake others, some of them young children, to challenge orthodox science with their bewildering powers.... John Taylor, a distinguished and respected professor of mathematics, has shocked sceptics and scientists alike with his conclusions from this level-headed experimental investigation into the science of the paranormal; the open-minded will draw their own."

https://www.amazon.com/Superminds-Investigation-Paranormal-Picador-Books/dp/0330247050

Uri Geller has been debunked on several occasions. No one can bend things with their mind, and there were no "strict lab conditions" except those of excluding skeptics and marketing the man as a "real psychic" using cheap parlour tricks to try to maintain his reputation under harsh scrutiny--let's return to the "real" world, shall we?

whollyrolling
354
↪EnPassant


Uri Geller has been debunked on several occasions. No one can bend things with their mind, and there were no "strict lab conditions" except those of excluding skeptics and marketing the man as a "real psychic" using cheap parlour tricks to try to maintain his reputation under harsh scrutiny--let's return to the "real" world, shall we? — whollyrolling

Absolutely correct, Wholly.

I used to do Uri Geller TRICKS as a bartender. His tricks are not considered particularly sophisticated among the magician crowd.

That there are still people who think he can do that crap is incredible.

And this manner of discourse, in your estimation, constitutes philosophy? — EnPassant

Check out the new ignore feature which has been added to the forum. Very helpful in raising the signal to noise ratio.

Uri Geller has been debunked on several occasions. — whollyrolling

Yes, that's true apparently. But the experiments were done under strict conditions and Geller is not the only one who could do these things. It comes to mind that Geller may have been able to do this but he lost his ability and started faking out of vanity. Otherwise we must call the author of the book a liar and I don't think he is.