I could go on for hundreds of pages to explain why I believe what I believe, but the basics are pretty easy to explain. I believe we today now understand the laws behind the physics of daily life. I don't mean there are no questions that remain unanswered. I don't mean that every detail is understood. I know that there are serious questions remaining about the physics in the really small subatomic levels and in the really large galaxy-sized levels.

But in everyday life, physics is pretty well understood and has been mostly since Newton and Einstein. See these articles for more details and a summary:

http://blogs.discovermagazine....mpletely-understood/
http://blogs.discovermagazine....mpletely-understood/
http://blogs.discovermagazine....10/01/one-last-stab/

Then take that one step further. All the stuff typically talked about in this forum contradicts those basic laws. Some here simply make absurd claims, ignoring all the laws, using the Bible as their "evidence" and often source of such stuff. Others (like bluelamp) attempt to explain such things as channeling or survival of consciousness beyond death with complicated fringe science talk, which I usually find incomprehensible to start with but certainly even if valid on some level in theory would contradict our basic understanding of the physics of everyday life.

Read this next article for a more thorough explanation, by the same author of the first ones above:

http://blogs.discovermagazine....-the-soul/#more-6819

Reading these articles together explains my view better than I've been able to explain it myself. I can't quote much here by the imposed quoting stipulations, but here's one piece of the last one, discussing the Dirac equation:

quote:

If you believe in an immaterial soul that interacts with our bodies, you need to believe that this equation is not right, even at everyday energies. There needs to be a new term (at minimum) on the right, representing how the soul interacts with electrons. (If that term doesn’t exist, electrons will just go on their way as if there weren’t any soul at all, and then what’s the point?) So any respectable scientist who took this idea seriously would be asking — what form does that interaction take?

...

Nobody ever asks these questions out loud, possibly because of how silly they sound. Once you start asking them, the choice you are faced with becomes clear: either overthrow everything we think we have learned about modern physics, or distrust the stew of religious accounts/unreliable testimony/wishful thinking that makes people believe in the possibility of life after death. It’s not a difficult decision, as scientific theory-choice goes.

We don’t choose theories in a vacuum. We are allowed — indeed, required — to ask how claims about how the world works fit in with other things we know about how the world works.
...

Presumably amino acids and proteins don’t have souls that persist after death. What about viruses or bacteria? Where upon the chain of evolution from our monocellular ancestors to today did organisms stop being described purely as atoms interacting through gravity and electromagnetism, and develop an immaterial immortal soul?

There’s no reason to be agnostic about ideas that are dramatically incompatible with everything we know about modern science. Once we get over any reluctance to face reality on this issue, we can get down to the much more interesting questions of how human beings and consciousness really work.

It's like saying the moon is made of green cheese. We don't have absolute positive proof that it is not. There may be a lot of green cheese in the unexplored areas of the moon, hidden on the dark side of the moon. I can't prove 100% that it isn't so. But it's obvious to all of us that it's not so, isn't it--because if it were so much of what we know to be true about the universe and the moon would be false, and we couldn't be that far off--we have too much evidence from so many angles that we know the science of everyday life in its broad strokes.

For the same reason, I don't believe in ESP, prophecy, remote viewing, speaking with the dead, ghosts, angels, fairies, the immortal soul, reincarnation, channeling, appearances by Jesus to any living person, appearances of Mary in toast, wood, dust on a window pane, or cloud formations. The list of what I don't believe in is endless. (For clarity, of course, it's not that I don't believe some people say they can speak to the dead--only that they really aren't doing that. There are plenty of people who are honestly deluded about such things, as well as hypocrites, charlatans, and frauds who pretend to have such abilities and powers. Channelers exist in the sense people say and think they are channeling; but channeling itself does not exist. It can't exist.)

Jeff

In other words, base scientific conclusions on consistently observed patterns in the evidence, and not on whether you like or dislike the conclusion.

Or as a fairly well known scientist put it:

quote:

"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."

R P Feynman

Henry

From Wikipedia's brane cosmology article:

quote:

The Randall-Sundrum (RS1 and RS2; see 5 dimensional warped geometry theory for a nontechnical explanation of RS1), pre-big bang, ekpyrotic and cyclic scenarios are particular models of brane cosmology which have attracted a considerable amount of attention. The ekpyrotic theory hypothesizes that the origin of the observable universe occurred when two parallel branes collided.

Obviously the ingredients of consciousness have to be in those branes before the big bang and obviously science has no idea in what way consciousness is in those branes because it has no idea how consciousness is in a human brain.

If you like the Penrose-Hameroff model which uses vacuum connections for consciousness then one would think the extra vacuum connections allowed by brane cosmology would allow "higher" consciousness.

Until mainstream science can even remotely describe consciousness, they are kind of incompetent for answering any question related to consciousness on either end of the channel.

-- John G.

Funny, I thought scientists had a pretty good idea of some of the mechanisms of consciousness, even if not all the details. Neural networks with attached memory would be part of it. Trying to associate brane cosmology with consciousness strikes me as a rather large stretch.

Henry

quote:

Originally posted by Henry J:
Funny, I thought scientists had a pretty good idea of some of the mechanisms of consciousness, even if not all the details. Neural networks with attached memory would be part of it. Trying to associate brane cosmology with consciousness strikes me as a rather large stretch.

Henry, the idea is that awareness as in what anesthesia gets rid of is not at all understood. One of Hameroff's abstracts:

quote:

Anesthetic gas molecules are recognized to act by van der Waals (London dispersion) forces in hydrophobic pockets of select brain proteins to ablate consciousness. Enigmatic features of consciousness have defied conventional neurophysiological explanations and prompted suggestions for supplemental occurrence of macroscopic quantum coherent states and quantum computation in the brain. Are these feasible? During conscious (non-anesthetic) conditions, endogenous Van der Waals London dispersion forces occur among non-polar amino acid groups in hydrophobic pockets of neural proteins and help regulate their conformation/function. London forces are weak instantaneous couplings between pairs of electron induced dipoles (e.g. between adjacent non-polar amino acid groups), and are quantum mechanical effects capable of supporting quantum superposition/computation and macroscopic quantum coherence. Quantum effects mediated by endogenous London forces in hydrophobic pockets of select neural proteins may be necessary for consciousness. The mechanism of anesthetics may be to inhibit (by exogenous London forces) the necessary quantum states.

So the idea is consciousness is a superposition. Makes sense since this would give you lots of bits, a complicated single thought, compared to the zig or zag choice made by single particles. In Cosmology models with a decoherence (I like Paola Zizzi's) the big bang itself would be a single self aware thought (very short self awareness however).

If you think of massless particles like photons being able to do quantum transactions from brane to brane like matter particles, you get a whole different kind of self aware branes and this would be the one related to channeling.

-- John G.

This awareness as superposition model also allows immortality since the worldline would keep going on forever, it may spend much of it as a single particle zig or zag not aware being but eventually it runs into a large superposition again and thus awareness.

-- John G.

quote:

...the idea is that awareness as in what anesthesia gets rid of is not at all understood.—Bluelamp

London dispersion forces are weak van der Waals attractions between molecules with induced polarities. Hameroff proposes anesthetics cause unconsciousness by interacting with hydrophobic regions of brain and neural proteins.
Seán

ALL,

Jeff I am sure you are familiar with the writings of Paul Kurtz. Others who have read the material you presented might also be interested in this piece.

Paul Kurtz

As Skipper Don used to put it, "Comments Welcome."

Glenn,
     There is reason to suspect Paul Kurtz is softening with age and has lost the fire and fury native to the atheistic cause.
Seán

Well, I wasn't going to discuss it, but since you published that, Sean, I should point out that Paul Kurtz was kicked out of the organizations that he founded; even the locks were changed so he couldn't get into his own office. He's a brilliant man who did excellent work over the years for free. He contributed not only his wisdom but his money, giving millions of his own money to the organizations he founded. It's sad that his views came to not be accepted by the boards running the organizations he founded. For more details,

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10...s.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Kurtz will turn 85 years old this year. He's lived an admirable life, but he had/has trouble giving up control.

There are good points made by both sides in the controversy. The issues are complex.

Jeff

Jeff,
     I am thinking Kurtz' benign indifference to religion, as displayed in the link Glenn offered, would quell religious fervor more effectively than militant attacks. Apathy has always been the best tool for quenching ardor; reason only fans the flames.
Seán

Sean, the problem is that public atheists are a small group. Kurtz wants an academic approach, more of a think-tank about humanistic ideas. His opponents feel a stronger approach is better, to make the case more forcefully. I think there's plenty of room for both sides to work together, but Kurtz was the founder of many of the organizations and apparently could not give up that authority. At age 84, he wasn't too flexible I guess. It's not surprising.

I hope I have a tenth as much energy and intelligence left if I ever get to his age.

Of course, the "world as we know it" is going to be gone by July 1 according to Sela, so I shouldn't be worrying about that.

Jeff

quote:

... the "world as we know it" is going to be gone by July 1...

Jeff,
     I really don't expect July 1 will be significant. I predict the ending will arrive on August 2, unless our warring representatives agree to raise the ceiling of indebtedness in a timely way. Let's not be disturbed; has Congress ever failed us?
Seán

Sean et al,

It is one thing to debate on a board such as this whether God exists and his/her/its nature if so.

It is another thing to say that a school is mandated to teach that mankind was created from scratch 6000 years ago. And to hell with science since only atheists believe in evolution. That is part of the reason for the militancy among some otherwise "academic" types.

Glenn,
     I maintain that militancy against any set belief inspires counteraction and thus is self-defeating. My conviction here comes from a personal experience, which I will relate to you. The story is a short one, actually, but I will drag it out as much as possible:
     My childhood was spent in sparsely populated ranching country, devoid of any churches. Some families were Protestant by profession and some were baptized Catholics; religious practice was largely limited to an interdenominational barbecue and rodeo on most Easter Sundays. It ended with a square-dance after dark, where my grandpa played the fiddle. Tolerance abounded.
     In the absence of religious focus, the community was brought together by a consolidated country school comprised of approximately forty pupils and a triumvirate of teachers. The youngest one of those—I'll call him Mr. Blister—was my eighth-grade science teacher. Either he'd had a college course that taught about paleontology and evolution or he had read the writings of H. G. Wells, who was big news at the time. In any case he really spilled the scientific beans.
     I thought nothing of it, but word somehow reached all parents who quickly came together spouting flames of fury, so distasteful was the implication that they might have sprung from monkeys. There was talk of tar and feathers for the quaking Mr. Blister, but they settled for his instant resignation. With the excitement over, peace was soon restored and one could hardly tell the people were religious.
Seán

Great that it seemed peaceful again, but that left them with their kids being deprived of an education, due to deliberate and malicious sabotage of the educational process by their parents.