Back to basics: Give me an argument as to why a god exists

[FaerieStories]

Hi, I'm new here and I see a lot of active topics on specific concepts where users are already heavily engaged in debate, making it a little hard for me to join in. So to test the waters a little (and to help me decide whether or not to stick around here), let's go back to basics and have a debate about the most fundamental question at hand here: does a god exist?

As a non-believer, I have yet to discover any convincing reason as to why I should believe in a god. So, if a Theist would like to get the ball rolling by giving me a reason why god exists, that would be great.

(PS: unrelated question: what is the general breakdown of belief/non-belief on these forums? Is it an even mix of believers and non-believers, or is there- as tends to happen on the internet- a larger proportion of atheists to Theists?).

[JohnPaul]

Its a consensus built on a mountain of evidence, experiments, and case studies. Your trite dismissal of such a colossal amount of evidence in such a matter puts you in the same crowd as flat earthers and creationists. The latest evolution in the tree of religious science-deniers. But i don't suppose you accuse round earthers and evolutionists of "reductionism", do you?

All this evidence shows is that the brain is an instrument of the mind. It is reductionist to then conclude that that is all that is going on. I do not deny science, but I do not worship at the feet of scientists who make conclusions that go beyond the evidence. This isn't the first time science has made this mistake.

Its also "interesting" to note how you trumpeted the scientific consensus until it came into conflict with your religious beliefs. That is, the problem seems to be that you have a particular conclusion in mind and are searching to support it.

This is exactly the mistake these scientists are making. They assume that the human being is nothing more than neuro-transmitters and chemical reactions. So they announce that "brain" and "mind" are one and the same. Not all scientists have made this error and have been vocal in their disagreement.

I find scientism just as distasteful as fundamentalism. I see them as branches from the same tree. In my opinion, they appeal to the same mentality: the desire for absolute certainty and the comfort-level this provides.

The brain could be compared to a Television Receiver. A TV set is a physical device which transforms the very weak electromagnetic waves received by the antenna into sound waves and pictures on a screen. This sound and picture output is entirely produced within the electronics of the TV set itself, and is in no way physically similar to the electromagnetic waves, which serve only to control the process.

Fred Allen Wolf describes in his book the quantum processes within an enzyme molecule which control the "firing" of neuron cells within the brain. The electrical and chemical processes of the brain then express our "thoughts" within the physical world, while the mind could be operating at a completely invisible and undetected quantum level.

[Goat]

Its a consensus built on a mountain of evidence, experiments, and case studies. Your trite dismissal of such a colossal amount of evidence in such a matter puts you in the same crowd as flat earthers and creationists. The latest evolution in the tree of religious science-deniers. But i don't suppose you accuse round earthers and evolutionists of "reductionism", do you?

All this evidence shows is that the brain is an instrument of the mind. It is reductionist to then conclude that that is all that is going on. I do not deny science, but I do not worship at the feet of scientists who make conclusions that go beyond the evidence. This isn't the first time science has made this mistake.

That's fine to make that claim, but what actual EVIDENCE do you have. While science might make mistakes, I find that people who make claims without objective evidence make mistakes too. Do you have anything beyond a subjective experience that could be summed up as 'a warm fuzzy feeling'?Can you show that your experience is more than just an emotional reaction?

What evidence that you can show that the mind is MORE than the brain. Curious minds want to know.

[Mithrae]

Its a consensus built on a mountain of evidence, experiments, and case studies. Your trite dismissal of such a colossal amount of evidence in such a matter puts you in the same crowd as flat earthers and creationists. The latest evolution in the tree of religious science-deniers. But i don't suppose you accuse round earthers and evolutionists of "reductionism", do you?

All this evidence shows is that the brain is an instrument of the mind. It is reductionist to then conclude that that is all that is going on. I do not deny science, but I do not worship at the feet of scientists who make conclusions that go beyond the evidence. This isn't the first time science has made this mistake.

That's fine to make that claim, but what actual EVIDENCE do you have. While science might make mistakes, I find that people who make claims without objective evidence make mistakes too. Do you have anything beyond a subjective experience that could be summed up as 'a warm fuzzy feeling'?Can you show that your experience is more than just an emotional reaction?

What evidence that you can show that the mind is MORE than the brain. Curious minds want to know.

Out of curiousity, I decided I'd track down all the evidence that those with whom Kayky is disagreeing have presented in the thread:

• Mithrae: If we are not wholly justified in presuming that the presence of similar complex organic structures implies the presence of similar mental phenomena, we are entirely unjustified in presuming that the absense of such structures implies the absense of mental phenomena. That does require an assumption, namely that mental phenomena can only be associated with the right types of complex organic structures
  FaerieStories: I disagree. We know that whatever the mind and consciousness actually is- it is a product of the brain. It is not an 'assumption' that rocks are not conscious because we know that rocks do not actually possess anything that we know to produce consciousness.
  
  
  Kayky: There is no scientific consensus on the relationship between the "brain" and the "mind." Your reductionist bias that the human mind is merely the firing of neurons in the brain cannot be justified with any current evidence.
  FaerieStories: Wrong. We know very well that what we describe as the mind is a process of the brain. In fact- we can do better than that- we can even tell you which parts of the mind are found in which parts of the brain- spatial memory, for example, in the hippocampus.
  
  
  Kayky: The following is a list of scientists who took part in a debate on this subject on a website called "Closer to the Truth.". Notice the difference of opinion among the participants. . . .
  Dr. David Chalmers is co-director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. Dave believes that correlations between brain states and mental events do not prove that brain causes mind.
  FaerieStories: I have no idea then what these people are referring to, but there is certainly a consensus among the psychological community that certain attributes of what we call the mind- such as memory- can be found in certain areas of the brain. If this is not the scientific community agreeing that the brain contains the mind, I am not sure what is.
  
  
  FaerieStories: By the way- to clarify- the assumption is simply that consciousness as we know it is experienced by others in the same way it is for us. That's the assumption. But we can certainly see the products of consciousness happening in others' brains so must assume that it is.
  
  
  Kayky: My point is that there is no consensus as yet. You probably agree with the skeptic at the top of the list. That's fine. But nothing has been proven at this point.
  Scourge99: Actually the consensus by mainstream brain scientists IS that the mind is produced (either partially or fully) by the brain. You simply can't make sense of the evidence such as drug therapy, addiction, brain surgery, and brain damage without concluding that at least in some part the mind is produced by the brain.
  
  
  Kayky: It is a consensus based on reductionism, nothing more.
  Scourge99: Its a consensus built on a mountain of evidence, experiments, and case studies. Your trite dismissal of such a colossal amount of evidence in such a matter puts you in the same crowd as flat earthers and creationists. The latest evolution in the tree of religious science-deniers. But i don't suppose you accuse round earthers and evolutionists of "reductionism", do you?
  
  
  Filthy Tugboat: What is the other option? The mind is produced by the Kidney? As far as I'm aware the mind being a product/function of the brain is simply the natural conclusion, the same way the nervous system is utilized as a function of the brain to produce movement. It is the only logical conclusion available. The only thing that I've ever seen proposed is that the mind is supernatural and is not apart of nor does it reside in any physical form. It somehow has control over the physical body but exists not as a part of that body.

I might have missed something but what I'm seeing there are plenty of assertions, both about the mind/brain relationship and about an alleged scientific consensus on the matter, a bit of an ad hominem by Scourge and possible self-contradiction by FaerieStories, and some physicalist reductionism by Filthy Tugboat. FaerieStories made reference to correlations observed between brain regions and mental faculties, and asserted that these faculties are therefore 'in' or caused by the brain. The purple comments by Scourge seem to be the second best of the discussion, saying that evidence is indeed out there and even hinting at its nature, and noting that there is no consensus that the mind is wholly caused by the brain. (Perhaps a two-way mind/brain relationship is what FaerieStories also was implying rather than contradicting himself.) But if I had to give a prize, honestly folks it'd have to go to Kayky who acknowledged valid differences of opinion, cited some expert authority for views similar to her own and explained why she believes the alternative conclusion to be unjustified.

I wonder why Goat isn't demanding evidence from those who so far haven't even cited any sources for their claims, let alone provided evidence?



Edit: My own thoughts on the matter were in my last post:

But whereas earlier you said that consciousness or the mind is a product of the brain, now you're saying that we see products of consciousness happening in the brain. That might not be a direct contradiction - there could be a two-way relationship between the mind and brain? - but I think it's more likely that you're not distinguishing between your conclusion and your argument. I don't know much about it, but from what I gather what we see happening in others' brains through various imaging techniques are things like changes in blood flow and magnetic fields. We don't see consciousness, we can't know that those things cause consciousness - though as Scourge has suggested, there's plenty of evidence for the connection between the brain and various behaviours we associate with consciousness - and you're arguing in circles and perhaps counter-productively by describing those things as the products of consciousness. . . .

Above the atomic level, it seems strange if not absurd to suggest that this remarkably different quality of consciousness could arise from non-conscious components. The rest of our bodies, like trees, machines and the moon, could be viewed in strictly mechanical terms of behaviour, reducible to the properties of component molecules. Suggesting that consciousness is a particular exception to this would be a significant claim indeed - and in fact I have not yet found any other case at all where a whole has characteristics objectively, qualitatively different from its parts. It could be suggested that consciousness is a strictly subjective phenomenon, but we're still left with the problem of either brains being uniquely capable of producing subjective experience (which would be an objective capacity) or the probability that this supposed uniqueness merely derives from our perspective.


In short I think there's significant problems with imagining some fundamentally different kind of stuff which is the mind, but equally significant problems with attempts to reduce mental phenomena like experience, joy, imagination and so on to any kind of 'physical' stuff (whatever that's meant to mean).

[Filthy Tugboat]

Its a consensus built on a mountain of evidence, experiments, and case studies. Your trite dismissal of such a colossal amount of evidence in such a matter puts you in the same crowd as flat earthers and creationists. The latest evolution in the tree of religious science-deniers. But i don't suppose you accuse round earthers and evolutionists of "reductionism", do you?

All this evidence shows is that the brain is an instrument of the mind. It is reductionist to then conclude that that is all that is going on. I do not deny science, but I do not worship at the feet of scientists who make conclusions that go beyond the evidence. This isn't the first time science has made this mistake.

That's fine to make that claim, but what actual EVIDENCE do you have. While science might make mistakes, I find that people who make claims without objective evidence make mistakes too. Do you have anything beyond a subjective experience that could be summed up as 'a warm fuzzy feeling'?Can you show that your experience is more than just an emotional reaction?

What evidence that you can show that the mind is MORE than the brain. Curious minds want to know.

Out of curiousity, I decided I'd track down all the evidence that those with whom Kayky is disagreeing have presented in the thread:

• Mithrae: If we are not wholly justified in presuming that the presence of similar complex organic structures implies the presence of similar mental phenomena, we are entirely unjustified in presuming that the absense of such structures implies the absense of mental phenomena. That does require an assumption, namely that mental phenomena can only be associated with the right types of complex organic structures
  FaerieStories: I disagree. We know that whatever the mind and consciousness actually is- it is a product of the brain. It is not an 'assumption' that rocks are not conscious because we know that rocks do not actually possess anything that we know to produce consciousness.
  
  
  Kayky: There is no scientific consensus on the relationship between the "brain" and the "mind." Your reductionist bias that the human mind is merely the firing of neurons in the brain cannot be justified with any current evidence.
  FaerieStories: Wrong. We know very well that what we describe as the mind is a process of the brain. In fact- we can do better than that- we can even tell you which parts of the mind are found in which parts of the brain- spatial memory, for example, in the hippocampus.
  
  
  Kayky: The following is a list of scientists who took part in a debate on this subject on a website called "Closer to the Truth.". Notice the difference of opinion among the participants. . . .
  Dr. David Chalmers is co-director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. Dave believes that correlations between brain states and mental events do not prove that brain causes mind.
  FaerieStories: I have no idea then what these people are referring to, but there is certainly a consensus among the psychological community that certain attributes of what we call the mind- such as memory- can be found in certain areas of the brain. If this is not the scientific community agreeing that the brain contains the mind, I am not sure what is.
  
  
  FaerieStories: By the way- to clarify- the assumption is simply that consciousness as we know it is experienced by others in the same way it is for us. That's the assumption. But we can certainly see the products of consciousness happening in others' brains so must assume that it is.
  
  
  Kayky: My point is that there is no consensus as yet. You probably agree with the skeptic at the top of the list. That's fine. But nothing has been proven at this point.
  Scourge99: Actually the consensus by mainstream brain scientists IS that the mind is produced (either partially or fully) by the brain. You simply can't make sense of the evidence such as drug therapy, addiction, brain surgery, and brain damage without concluding that at least in some part the mind is produced by the brain.
  
  
  Kayky: It is a consensus based on reductionism, nothing more.
  Scourge99: Its a consensus built on a mountain of evidence, experiments, and case studies. Your trite dismissal of such a colossal amount of evidence in such a matter puts you in the same crowd as flat earthers and creationists. The latest evolution in the tree of religious science-deniers. But i don't suppose you accuse round earthers and evolutionists of "reductionism", do you?
  
  
  Filthy Tugboat: What is the other option? The mind is produced by the Kidney? As far as I'm aware the mind being a product/function of the brain is simply the natural conclusion, the same way the nervous system is utilized as a function of the brain to produce movement. It is the only logical conclusion available. The only thing that I've ever seen proposed is that the mind is supernatural and is not apart of nor does it reside in any physical form. It somehow has control over the physical body but exists not as a part of that body.

I might have missed something but what I'm seeing there are plenty of assertions, both about the mind/brain relationship and about an alleged scientific consensus on the matter, a bit of an ad hominem by Scourge and possible self-contradiction by FaerieStories, and some physicalist reductionism by Filthy Tugboat. FaerieStories made reference to correlations observed between brain regions and mental faculties, and asserted that these faculties are therefore 'in' or caused by the brain. The purple comments by Scourge seem to be the second best of the discussion, saying that evidence is indeed out there and even hinting at its nature, and noting that there is no consensus that the mind is wholly caused by the brain. (Perhaps a two-way mind/brain relationship is what FaerieStories also was implying rather than contradicting himself.) But if I had to give a prize, honestly folks it'd have to go to Kayky who acknowledged valid differences of opinion, cited some expert authority for views similar to her own and explained why she believes the alternative conclusion to be unjustified.

I wonder why Goat isn't demanding evidence from those who so far haven't even cited any sources for their claims, let alone provided evidence?

I simply asked for another option, is there another possible source of consciousness? As of yet, consciousness has not been discovered to exist in any organism without a brain. The state of the brain drastically effects the consciousness of that person (drug therapy, hormones, etc...). I am by no means saying, that the mind is scientifically proven or even supported to exist as a function of or in conjunction with the brain. I'm merely requesting any other theory that even remotely explains the phenomena as well as the theory that the brain and the mind have some form of dependent relationship. Please explain how my position that the mind is dependent upon the brain is a form of physicalist reductionism?

Edit: My own thoughts on the matter were in my last post:

But whereas earlier you said that consciousness or the mind is a product of the brain, now you're saying that we see products of consciousness happening in the brain. That might not be a direct contradiction - there could be a two-way relationship between the mind and brain? - but I think it's more likely that you're not distinguishing between your conclusion and your argument. I don't know much about it, but from what I gather what we see happening in others' brains through various imaging techniques are things like changes in blood flow and magnetic fields. We don't see consciousness, we can't know that those things cause consciousness - though as Scourge has suggested, there's plenty of evidence for the connection between the brain and various behaviours we associate with consciousness - and you're arguing in circles and perhaps counter-productively by describing those things as the products of consciousness. . . .

Above the atomic level, it seems strange if not absurd to suggest that this remarkably different quality of consciousness could arise from non-conscious components. The rest of our bodies, like trees, machines and the moon, could be viewed in strictly mechanical terms of behaviour, reducible to the properties of component molecules. Suggesting that consciousness is a particular exception to this would be a significant claim indeed - and in fact I have not yet found any other case at all where a whole has characteristics objectively, qualitatively different from its parts. It could be suggested that consciousness is a strictly subjective phenomenon, but we're still left with the problem of either brains being uniquely capable of producing subjective experience (which would be an objective capacity) or the probability that this supposed uniqueness merely derives from our perspective.


In short I think there's significant problems with imagining some fundamentally different kind of stuff which is the mind, but equally significant problems with attempts to reduce mental phenomena like experience, joy, imagination and so on to any kind of 'physical' stuff (whatever that's meant to mean).

I'll say it again, is there another option? Without ignoring the relationship to brain size and function in other organisms with their conscious capacity, how can the mind be explained separate from the brain? It appears that humans are far more capable at problem solving (and various other conscious capabilities) than many organisms with much smaller brains. Then there is, as has already been stated, the effects on consciousness that changing the brain causes (drugs, brain damage, hormones, etc...). Acknowledging a direct link between the brain and the mind adequately explains this phenomena, even if not fully or even mostly understood. Without knowing for a fact that the physical make up of the brain produces consciousness, there is nothing that i am aware of that contradicts that theory and there is plenty of reasons for me to believe it.

So, as I stated above, I am not making a case for a scientific basis for the conclusion I've reached. I'm merely trying to see what else could explain the phenomena of consciousness better than it's dependency on the brain? If the supernatural is invoked, I would really have to query how conclusions regarding the supernatural can be reached with any kind of certainty or confidence.

[kayky]

This is a synopsis of an article on this very subject. It is too long to post here. I would love to supply a link if someone would tell me how to do it.


Empirical Challenges to Conventional Mind-Brain Theory
Edward F. Kelly
Emily Williams Kelly
Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences University of Virginia
210 Tenth St. NE
Charlottesville, VA USA 22902 ek8bvirginia.edu ewc2rvirginia.edu
434-924-2281
434-924-1710 (fax)
Synopsis: Despite many significant accomplishments, mainstream scientific psychology has not provided a satisfactory theory of mind, or solved the mind-body problem, and physicalist accounts of the mind are approaching their limits without fully accounting for its properties. The computational theory of mind has collapsed, forcing physicalism to retreat into what necessarily constitutes its final frontier, the unique biology of the brain, but this biological naturalism seems destined to fare little better. Some critical properties of human mental life can already be recognized as irreconcilable in principle with physical operations of the brain, and others appear likely to prove so as well.

[scourge99]

This is a synopsis of an article on this very subject. It is too long to post here. I would love to supply a link if someone would tell me how to do it.


Empirical Challenges to Conventional Mind-Brain Theory
Edward F. Kelly
Emily Williams Kelly
Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences University of Virginia
210 Tenth St. NE
Charlottesville, VA USA 22902 ek8bvirginia.edu ewc2rvirginia.edu
434-924-2281
434-924-1710 (fax)
Synopsis: Despite many significant accomplishments, mainstream scientific psychology has not provided a satisfactory theory of mind, or solved the mind-body problem, and physicalist accounts of the mind are approaching their limits without fully accounting for its properties. The computational theory of mind has collapsed, forcing physicalism to retreat into what necessarily constitutes its final frontier, the unique biology of the brain, but this biological naturalism seems destined to fare little better. Some critical properties of human mental life can already be recognized as irreconcilable in principle with physical operations of the brain, and others appear likely to prove so as well.

So what? There are also "scientists" who believe in a flat earth and reject evolution for creationism.

One thing to notice is that they admit in their article that they are part of the fringe in the 3rd paragraph of the main article.

Even more comical is in this paper they put forth psychic powers and near-death experiences as "proof" despite the fact that both phenomenon have been well studied and found to be nothing like the "woo woo" they claim.

This article just seems like a plug for their book: Irreducible Mind.

[kayky]

I really don't think the University of Virginia would hire such "scientists," do you? My point is that there is no consensus among scientists on this subject. Your response is to simply dismiss the views of scientists that do not support your own personal belief as if their existence is irrelevant to the question. But it's their very existence that proves my point about consensus. I find your approach disingenuous at best.

[kayky]

The following are the opening paragraphs of an article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I realize that Stanford is not an Ivy League school like the University of Virginia, but I've heard they've got a pretty good reputation.


First published Mon Jul 25, 2011
Cognition is embodied when it is deeply dependent upon features of the physical body of an agent, that is, when aspects of the agent's body beyond the brain play a significant causal or physically constitutive role in cognitive processing.

In general, dominant views in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science have considered the body as peripheral to understanding the nature of mind and cognition. Proponents of embodied cognitive science view this as a serious mistake. Sometimes the nature of the dependence of cognition on the body is quite unexpected, and suggests new ways of conceptualizing and exploring the mechanics of cognitive processing.

Embodied cognitive science encompasses a loose-knit family of research programs in the cognitive sciences that often share a commitment to critiquing and even replacing traditional approaches to cognition and cognitive processing. Empirical research on embodied cognition has exploded in the past 10 years. As the bibliography for this article attests, the various bodies of work that will be discussed represent a serious alternative to the investigation of cognitive phenomena.

Relatively recent work on the embodiment of cognition provides much food for thought for empirically-informed philosophers of mind. This is in part because of the rich range of phenomena that embodied cognitive science has studied. But it is also in part because those phenomena are often thought to challenge dominant views of the mind, such as the computational and representational theories of mind, at the heart of traditional cognitive science. And they have sometimes been taken to undermine standard positions in the philosophy of mind, such as the idea that the mind is identical to, or even realized in, the brain.

[kayky]

The following is an abstract of a lecture given by Sir John Eccles, a Nobel Prize winning neuropsysiologist. I can't say for sure, but I bet he doesn't believe in a flat earth.


The Human Psyche
John C. Eccles
Summary
Table of Contents
Abstract

The main theme of John Eccless lecture is to demonstrate the wide explanatory power of dualist-interactionism in contrast to the inadequacy of all varieties of the materialist theories of mind. There is critical discussion in the first chapter on the materialist hypotheses of the relationship of the self-conscious mind to the brain. The subsequent chapters further the strong dualist-interactionism developed in Eccless previous work, The Self and Its Brain, exploring the relations to a wide variety of phenomenon relating to self-consciousness. The final four chapters demonstrate that dualist-interactionism offers valuable insights into the higher levels of human experience, which cannot be accommodated to the materialist theories of the mind. Eccless exploration of the brain-mind relationship is based on the scientific study of the brain, both its structure and its physiological performance. Overall, his theme develops more philosophical overtones in relation to such topics as creativity, altruism, pseudaltruism, aggression and values. Finally, considerations regarding the purpose and meaning of self-conscious life lead to the pinnacle in the unifying concepts of the human psyche and its status in relation to God.
J. Douglas Mastin
University of Edinburgh

[scourge99]

I really don't think the University of Virginia would hire such "scientists," do you?

The authors are smart people who have great accomplishments in many different areas of research. That they are fractally wrong or misguided on this area doesn't change the many important contributions and expertise they have in other areas.


As i said to EduChris on discussing another fringe theory from a couple if scientists:
It doesn't matter how many Nobel prizes or books you have written, one's reputation or past accomplishments doesn't make one's ideas any more or less valid. Especially in the scientific community. One's ideas stand on their own merit alone.
Isaac Newton, who was probably an even greater scientist than the inestimable Stapp, Schwartz, and friends, wasted much of his later years on mysticism, too: from alchemy and the quest for the Philosophers Stone, to arcane Biblical hermeneutics, extracting prophecies of the end of the world from numerological analyses of Revelation. While his mechanics and optics have stood the test of time, that nonsense has not. That his mathematics and physics are useful and powerful does not imply that he was correct in his calculation that the world will end before 2060 AD; similarly, Stapps and Schwartzs success does not imply that their unsupported fantasies of minds flitting about unfettered by brains is reasonable.

My point is that there is no consensus among scientists on this subject.

Yes there is. That consensus is admitted to in both the paper and their book by these scientists.

That there is a consensus doesn't mean that every single scientist believes the same. There is always some number who disagree. Just look at evolution-deniers and flat earthers.

Your response is to simply dismiss the views of scientists that do not support your own personal belief as if their existence is irrelevant to the question.

I did not dismiss what they said. I and others have looked at their arguments and found them wrong or lacking.