Is science overrated?

[Swami]

I am often told that science is the greatest tool for knowledge. Then I notice that scientists admit not having a consensus when it comes to the origin of the Universe, origin of life, origin of consciousness, and if there is life after death.

Why can't scientists answer these questions?

Please feel free to provide any book references that provide clarity on these topics. Thank you. Cheers

[TSGracchus]

[Replying to post 79 by William]

William: 'It may be that because you haven't had NDE or OBE is the reason you don't see how those can't be explained through scientism."

I don't know about "scientism" but neuroscientists have induced both out of body experiences and near death experiences by stimulating areas of the brain.

[Divine Insight]

So in other words, a process that can't see, think, or know what it was doing created a "highly complex system" which allows us to "see, think, and know what we are doing".

This is unscientific, illogical, and naturally impossible.

In other words, if a God that can see, think and know what it is doing exists, then it must have been designed and created by something beyond itself that could see, think, and know what it was doing.

You see, this so-called "logic" of yours doesn't work for a God either.

If you claim that only complex living things can exist if they are purposefully designed, then the very idea that a complex God could exist without having been designed becomes equally problematic.

So you haven't gotten anywhere. You're right back at square one with the very same problem for your imaginary God. All you've done is push your problem back one more level without solving it.

A naturalist solves the problem once and for all and recognizes that complexity can emerge on its own without any need for a designer.

So a naturalist actually solves the problem while all you do is sweep it under the carpet marked "Magical God that defies logic!". And then you try to claim that this is a "logical" solution to the problem.

How can you not see the futility in that argument?

[For_The_Kingdom]

In other words, if a God that can see, think and know what it is doing exists, then it must have been designed and created by something beyond itself that could see, think, and know what it was doing.

Text book example of a non sequitur.

You see, this so-called "logic" of yours doesn't work for a God either.

But it does. You are basically asking for the cause of an uncaused cause.

Makes no sense.

If you claim that only complex living things can exist if they are purposefully designed, then the very idea that a complex God could exist without having been designed becomes equally problematic.

Um, that is false. I am claiming that only complex living things which BEGAN to exist requires a cause which is even more complex than the living thing which began to exist.

After all, the subject of the hour has been consciousness, which we all know/agree BEGAN to exist at some point in the finite past.

So you haven't gotten anywhere. You're right back at square one with the very same problem for your imaginary God. All you've done is push your problem back one more level without solving it.

This is the conclusion of a faulty premise^. When you start off with fallacious premises, the conclusion as a result of the faulty premise will also be faulty.

Your objection is fallacious, is what I am trying to say.

A naturalist solves the problem once and for all and recognizes that complexity can emerge on its own without any need for a designer.

Empty assertion.

So a naturalist actually solves the problem while all you do is sweep it under the carpet marked "Magical God that defies logic!". And then you try to claim that this is a "logical" solution to the problem.

How can you not see the futility in that argument?

Please explain the origins of sentient life, language, and the universe...using science. I will wait.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 78 by For_The_Kingdom]

No, consciousness CORRELATES with the brain system. All you can demonstrate from a scientific perspective is a correlation between the mind/brain (body)..but what you can't demonstrate or show is where the consciousness came from.

My point is that the brain is a system that, via the actions of its components (neurons, memory, etc.), can produce functions and outputs that are far more complex than the individual parts themselves. People have published papers on this kind of thing for many decades, for example:

https://academic.oup.com/icb/article/55/1/146/616527

My argument is from the point of view that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain and nothing more, based on the obvious correlations that you mention, but also because of the lack of another, more plausible, explanation. So consciousness "comes from" the normal functioning of the brain once it has reached a level of development to carry out the necessary physical functions.

In humans, the neural tube forms at about day 16 from egg fertilization. By the end of the first trimester, cells of the neural tube have differentiated between brain cells (which transform into recognizable brain structures) and nerve cells, and the cerebral cortex starts to form. By the end of the second trimester the brain has mostly developed, although it has not reached full size yet, and the fetus can experience sound, taste and smells, react to sensor inputs, and control its movement. Sometime during this period the fetus could be said to become conscious, depending on how you define that word. It has some awareness of its surroundings, and when actually born the little creature is clearly capable of using all of its sensory inputs and starts the process of learning.

The process is a known series of developments from neural tube to fully-formed brain, and consciousness arrives only when the brain has reached the point of physical development where it can carry out its functions.. There is no evidence that consciousness just suddenly appears in the fetus by a supernatural being or process. It appears only when the fully-functioning brain has physically developed.

Right, it is complicated..it is so complicated that a mindless/blind process was able to create this complicated system, from SCRATCH.

I would sure love to have me a truckload of "scratch" ... it seems that virtually anything can be made from it. But no scratch is needed to make a conscious brain. Just a fertilized human egg, time, nutrients and the environment of the womb. It starts with formation of the neural tube and ends with a fully-formed, conscious brain. We know a great deal about how the process works (a good read is the book Life Unfolding: How the Body Creates Itself, Jamie Davis, Oxford University Press, 2014).

So what came first; the womb, or the brain matter that formed in the womb? This is a chicken & egg problem in more ways than one.

This one is easy ... the womb came first. The brain does not come along until a fertilized egg makes its way to the womb, the neural tube is formed, and 4-5 months later you have a brain mostly formed. So the brain & egg problem is not a conundrum.

I am asking you to form a functional, conscious brain from scratch..because if you go back far enough in time, you will get to a point at which there was no brain, no consciousness, and no life, PERIOD.

See above. Whether a human female egg is considered "life" or not is a big debate for another thread (probably in another section), but in your sequence above it certainly has no brain, and no consciousness. Consciousness arrives only when the brain is fully formed, and that correlation is far too great IMO to write off the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain and nothing else.

Which is even more of a problem for a mindless/blind process. My point exactly. The more complex you get, the more intelligent design is necessary.

No ... a more complex system typically means more components and/or more integrated components, all acting together to create the complex result. The brain consists of some 100 billion neurons and 5-10x that many glial cells. These are all active and interacting to produce the complex functions of the brain, and that is a tremendous number of components. There are so many of them and so many possible combinations for their interactions that we don't understand all the details yet. It is thought that exascale computing will be needed to start to model these processes in any detail. But this does not imply that intelligent design (as I assume you are using it ... to mean a supernatural being of some sort) is required. It just means a tremendous amount of complexity is possible due to the tremendous number of interacting components.

So what are you saying? That consciousness originated from the brain of a baby? Babies need to be tended to, right? They can't reproduce...they can't eat without assistance, and they know absolutely NOTHING. The baby wouldn't even have a chance to grow in order to reproduce...yet, so much reproduction was going on. Nonsense.

Not sure where that came from. But yes, I am saying that consciousness originates within the brain of a baby at some point during its development (see comments above). The fact that a baby knows "nothing" yet (which I'd argue with ... it knows that if it cries it will get attention), has to be tended to, can't reproduce, etc. has nothing at all to do with whether or not is has consciousness or when that developed.

When I think of an object (a football), there is nothing about the chemicals in my brain that says "football". The neurons don't look like a football. The electrons doesn't look like a football. Yet, the image of a football is clearly visible in my brain.

Right ... you get the mental image of a football because you have seen a football before. Think of a woffenbueler and tell me what mental image you get. If you didn't already have the image of a football stored in your memory, you wouldn't produce that mental image when you think of a football. But this whole mental image thing was discussed at length in another thread recently.

You need to explain the ORIGINS of thoughts. Just because they correlate doesn't mean that one comes from the other. Not only is this false, but it is naturally impossible.

Thoughts originate in the brain, via the interactions of neurons, memory elements, etc. How is this "naturally impossible"? The fact that thoughts do not originate if the brain is damaged to the point that it doesn't work, certainly shows the correlation, but your argument seems to be that this correlation is not only not sufficient, but can be discarded outright. How? You have no other explanation that doesn't involve hand waving about an intelligent designer.

If the brain came first, how long was it sitting there waiting for all of the right sensors to get into place to allow it to think?

About 4-5 months from egg fertilization.

Nonsense. The only logical explanation for this is that the brain/consciousness was created simultaneously, just as the Bible said it did.

Nonsense indeed!

This is unscientific, illogical, and naturally impossible.

Really? A bold assertion you're making there. We know too much about the steps from fertilized egg to fully-formed brain to accept this conclusion.

[William]

[Replying to post 81 by Divine Insight]

The problem with your argument here is that the argument you are arguing against speaks to the specific stuff of physical universe and beginning and you conflate that with the idea of a creator of that beginning.

This is the argument;

So in other words, a process that can't see, think, or know what it was doing created a "highly complex system" which allows us to "see, think, and know what we are doing".

This is unscientific, illogical, and naturally impossible.

Your argument against that is to conflate.

In other words, if a God that can see, think and know what it is doing exists, then it must have been designed and created by something beyond itself that could see, think, and know what it was doing.

You see, this so-called "logic" of yours doesn't work for a God either.

Simply put, you are conflating the creator with the creation. We grasp what 'works' for the universe, inasmuch as we are able to from within the universe.

We cannot apply the same principle being argued here with a creator of said universe...we do not know.

What we can ascertain through logic is that even if the creator of this universe was created (which is a fair enough argument) we cannot apply the same through the idea of infinite regress.

By all means argue that a GOD who created this universe could have been created itself - obviously by another creator-GOD but the buck has to stop there. The First Source, infinite, eternal and always ever having existed.

At least with that idea we can explain existence and consciousness within existence without resorting to the magical thinking 'it just happened', 'appeared out of nowhere' or the equally illogical reasoning of infinite regress.

I touched on this idea in a reply to another post you made in the "Supreme Irony?" thread in post#49

[William]

[Replying to post 82 by For_The_Kingdom]

After all, the subject of the hour has been consciousness, which we all know/agree BEGAN to exist at some point in the finite past.

Not all of us agree with this. The creator is consciousness.

Which is to say - and was said in post #49 to which you replied that you did not understand what I was saying


GOD = Consciousness which is eternal. Thus consciousness never had a beginning.

In relation to 'the finite past' wherein consciousness has created a platform through which it can experience having a beginning - through the form of the universe as well as the forms within the universe - this does not mean that the consciousness now experiencing a beginning didn't have another alternate existence as an eternal being without a beginning, before it created something which could give it a genuine experience of what it is like to have a beginning.

[William]

[Replying to post 80 by TSGracchus]

'It may be that because you haven't had NDE or OBE is the reason you don't see how those can't be explained through scientism."

I don't know about "scientism"...

Scientism takes what scientist have discovered using science, and put their particular spin on it in order to argue against theism

...but neuroscientists have induced both out of body experiences and near death experiences by stimulating areas of the brain.

For those who have experienced OBEs/NDEs the materialistic explanation simply doesn't hold water because it is like telling someone they are "this" when they KNOW through experience they are "that"...and there are no scientific studies which have faithfully replicated those experiences simply by stimulating certain areas of the brain.

Certainly nothing I have ever read on the subject has shown that what is being done so far replicates actual NDEs OBEs...and the studies done appear to be token - unlike the studies being done related to NDEs which have been going on for over 5 decades.

Feel free to example one of these studies you mention and together let us examine it in the light of the thousands of reports re NDEs and let us see if indeed these 'induced' experiences are anything like the real thing. Without true replication, it isn't science.

[For_The_Kingdom]

Not all of us agree with this. The creator is consciousness. Which is to say - and was said in post #49 to which you replied that you did not understand what I was saying


GOD = Consciousness which is eternal. Thus consciousness never had a beginning.

I agree. I was referring to consciousness on earth.

In relation to 'the finite past' wherein consciousness has created a platform through which it can experience having a beginning - through the form of the universe as well as the forms within the universe - this does not mean that the consciousness now experiencing a beginning didn't have another alternate existence as an eternal being without a beginning, before it created something which could give it a genuine experience of what it is like to have a beginning.

I don't follow.

[William]

[Replying to post 87 by For_The_Kingdom]

GOD = Consciousness which is eternal. Thus consciousness never had a beginning.

I agree.

Then that can represent the premise from which logical argument can be source re this question of consciousness.

I was referring to consciousness on earth.

Consciousness wherever it is, has to derive from the premise, otherwise where does any GOD get consciousness from? In this case - related to consciousness on Earth.

In relation to 'the finite past' wherein consciousness has created a platform through which it can experience having a beginning - through the form of the universe as well as the forms within the universe - this does not mean that the consciousness now experiencing a beginning didn't have another alternate existence as an eternal being without a beginning, before it created something which could give it a genuine experience of what it is like to have a beginning.

I don't follow.

I suspect that this is because you follow another type of reasoning which, when examined closely, shows those examining it closely, that the reasoning is not logical.

The reasoning you follow (please correct me if I am mistaken) is that the [premise] GOD = Consciousness which is eternal created a finite universe. How did the Consciousness which is eternal create the consciousness on earth which you believe is not eternal? What did GOD use to create this finite consciousness?

[DeMotts]

[Replying to For_The_Kingdom]

For_The_Kingdom - just wondering what your explanation is for why we see varying degrees of complexity in consciousness that correspond to brain structure and size.

The neocortex is the most recent area of the brain to evolve in mammals and is involved in higher-order brain functions such as sensory perception, cognition, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning and language. Humans have a large neocortex as a percentage of total brain matter when compared with other mammals, and a high neocortex ratio is thought to correlate with a number of social variables such as group size and the complexity of social mating behaviors. More primitive and less social animals lack a neocortex entirely.

Given that we can observe a wide variety of animals and compare complexity of brains between species, doesn't it seem reasonable that the distinguishing factor between our levels of consciousness is the complexity of our brains? A chimpanzee can recognize itself in a mirror, but a lizard cannot. We can speculate about our existence but a chimp cannot. Surely this has more to do with a greater variance in cortical architecture and density than some sort of metaphysical explanation. When we can observe different complexities of extant brains, correlate them to different behaviours and even chart their separations on an evolutionary tree - your explanation that the human brain is so complex it must have been spontaneously formed falls apart.

The human brain appears very clearly to be a legacy system originating in more primitive animals - otherwise why would the neocortex be located on top and around the amygdala and basal ganglia - the parts of the brain needed for more common functions present in primitive animals? Why would an intelligent designer structure a brain so inefficiently and to appear as though each successive portion has been "layered on"?