Stamp out anti-science in US politics

[Razgovory]

There is a spiritual world? Prove it.

Only after you prove the existence of love, hatred, friendship, envy...

Mammilary nuclei, antherior thalamic nuclei, cingulate gyrus, enterorhinal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus....

Now where's the spiritual world?

The Hippopotamus proves the existence of Envy?  Does the eyeball prove the existence of Bigfoot?

[Oexmelin]

You are obfuscating. You did not ready my reply nor have you attempted to deal with it in any way. Experiences we have of the material world cannot be analogous to experiences of the spiritual world when the issue up for discussion is the existence of a non-material spiritual world.

I have not addressed the rest of your question because I think it is fruitless to address it in such manner. I don't think the distinction between "material" and "non-material" becomes useful in such debates, because so many things we value, and should value, are not "material", yet are neither untrue nor impotent.

Let's twist it in a different thing, just to push you further: do you think free will exists? What about consciousness? Or are they just "words" we put on material things?

[Fate]

There is a spiritual world? Prove it.

Only after you prove the existence of love, hatred, friendship, envy...

Mammilary nuclei, antherior thalamic nuclei, cingulate gyrus, enterorhinal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus....

Now where's the spiritual world?

The Hippopotamus proves the existence of Envy?  Does the eyeball prove the existence of Bigfoot?

A fMRI study of those areas as the subject experiences said emotion, perhaps...

[Razgovory]

That's not a complete thought.

[Viking]

Good, now I can go get my morales from a person who thinks that stoning adulturesses is wrong in and of itself rather than stoning is ok as long as the men doing the stoning are not hypocrites.

I never recall insisting you do.  Are you seriously this concrete?

I was using it as an example of Jesus' obvious immorality. Jesus didn't oppose the stoning of the woman, he argued that the men who had visited whores themselves could not morally take part in the execution (presumably under the threat of exposing some of the mob in public as adulterers).

I am this concrete. Reality is real and reality has consequences.

[Fate]

That's not a complete thought.

I don't think you can find bigfoot in an eyeball. You can find emotion within the limbic system. fMRI can demonstrate this existence.

[Razgovory]

That's not a complete thought.

I don't think you can find bigfoot in an eyeball. You can find emotion within the limbic system.

You found envy in a limbic system?  What did it look like?  Was it really green?

[Valmy]

I was using it as an example of Jesus' obvious immorality. Jesus didn't oppose the stoning of the woman, he argued that the men who had visited whores themselves could not morally take part in the execution (presumably under the threat of exposing some of the mob in public as adulterers).

I am this concrete. Reality is real and reality has consequences.

Well then I guess that explains why you seem to have no idea what I am talking about when it seems obvious to me.

But in any case all sorts of things that do not exist in a phyiscal or material sense have consequences and are considered 'real'.  That is what is so amazing about humans how we just create shit out of our words and thoughts and eventually it seems as real as any material object.  Or at least I think that is pretty amazing.

[Viking]

You are obfuscating. You did not ready my reply nor have you attempted to deal with it in any way. Experiences we have of the material world cannot be analogous to experiences of the spiritual world when the issue up for discussion is the existence of a non-material spiritual world.

I have not addressed the rest of your question because I think it is fruitless to address it in such manner. I don't think the distinction between "material" and "non-material" becomes useful in such debates, because so many things we value, and should value, are not "material", yet are neither untrue nor impotent.

Let's twist it in a different thing, just to push you further: do you think free will exists? What about consciousness? Or are they just "words" we put on material things?

I'd suggest it would be fruitless for you because you can't. I think the distinction is important because THAT IS WHAT WE ARE DISCUSSING. Claiming some moral justification for action or behavior based on spiritual reasons depends on the existence of the spiritual world at all and it's nature.

Now you are confusing moral and spiritual issues with ethical issues. Ethics and morality exist and can exist in the purely material world. You don't need a god to have morals. Divine Command Morality is immoral from my point of view.

But, to your questions. Are we fully determined. I don't know. I seem to have free will and will operate under that assumption. As long as there is no prospect of "psycho history" being a science it doesn't matter having free will and not knowing what you are determined to do seem to be indistinguishable.

What is consciousness. It's an evolved artifact of our brain which permits our body to do things that we could not do without it. Though, this is just an opinion of mine, science is still ongoing. 

[Fate]

That's not a complete thought.

I don't think you can find bigfoot in an eyeball. You can find emotion within the limbic system.

You found envy in a limbic system?  What did it look like?  Was it really green?

The neuronal cell bodies tend to be shades of off-white while the axonal tracts are white. On fMRI metabolically active areas tend to be red.

[Viking]

I was using it as an example of Jesus' obvious immorality. Jesus didn't oppose the stoning of the woman, he argued that the men who had visited whores themselves could not morally take part in the execution (presumably under the threat of exposing some of the mob in public as adulterers).

I am this concrete. Reality is real and reality has consequences.

Well then I guess that explains why you seem to have no idea what I am talking about when it seems obvious to me.

But in any case all sorts of things that do not exist in a phyiscal or material sense have consequences and are considered 'real'.  That is what is so amazing about humans how we just create shit out of our words and thoughts and eventually it seems as real as any material object.  Or at least I think that is pretty amazing.

Our thoughts and emotions are material. They exist in the electric currents of our brains. If I rewire your brain your personality changes and you thoughts change. What is not material is ghosts, gods and devils, heaven and hell etc. etc. No information (or books) has come from a non-material source to give us morality or truth or goodness or whatever. We invented that stuff ourselves.

You seem to include ethics, morality, emotion and sentiment in the spiritual world. We know these "things" (artifacts of the mind to be technical) are material. We can look at the brain and see what is happening in the brain and we have a 1-1 relationship between brain activity and the above mentioned emotions. God or Saints or Ghosts or Devils or whatever are not mediating these emotions.

[Viking]

That's not a complete thought.

I don't think you can find bigfoot in an eyeball. You can find emotion within the limbic system.

You found envy in a limbic system?  What did it look like?  Was it really green?

The neuronal cell bodies tend to be shades of off-white while the axonal tracts are white. On fMRI metabolically active areas tend to be red.

I want to point out that in fMRI images colours are chosen by the operators of the equipment, not colour intrinsic to the nature of the activity.

[Valmy]

Our thoughts and emotions are material. They exist in the electric currents of our brains. If I rewire your brain your personality changes and you thoughts change. What is not material is ghosts, gods and devils, heaven and hell etc. etc. No information (or books) has come from a non-material source to give us morality or truth or goodness or whatever. We invented that stuff ourselves.

You seem to include ethics, morality, emotion and sentiment in the spiritual world. We know these "things" (artifacts of the mind to be technical) are material. We can look at the brain and see what is happening in the brain and we have a 1-1 relationship between brain activity and the above mentioned emotions. God or Saints or Ghosts or Devils or whatever are not mediating these emotions.

I am not exactly sure how anything you say contradicts or disproves what I am saying.

Except I find the concept that because certain emotions have brain waves associated with them, that is what they materially are.  As in if somebody asked me 'what is envy' I could just whip out some brain scans and have them go 'ah gotcha' like I could if they asked me what a rock is and I showed them a picture of a rock.  Besides if that is the case why wouldn't thinking about a devil produce those brain waves and that therefore be a devil and therefore devils materially exist?

[Viking]

I am not exactly sure how anything you say contradicts or disproves what I am saying.

Except I find the concept that because certain emotions have brain waves associated with them, that is what they materially are.  As in if somebody asked me 'what is envy' I could just whip out some brain scans and have them go 'ah gotcha' like I could if they asked me what a rock is and I showed them a picture of a rock.

Envy is not a printout of a brain scan. The brain scan shows the activity in a brain of a person who is behaving in a manner which most people would consider to be typical of envy. It's not the same thing.

[Razgovory]

That's not a complete thought.

I don't think you can find bigfoot in an eyeball. You can find emotion within the limbic system.

You found envy in a limbic system?  What did it look like?  Was it really green?

The neuronal cell bodies tend to be shades of off-white while the axonal tracts are white. On fMRI metabolically active areas tend to be red.

So you found the parts that felt envy, not actual envy?  Just as my eyeball sees what what I think is a bigfoot, as opposed to bigfoot actually being in my eye.