Assume that you have a little lego soldier that you've built, and it happens to be self-aware (with an inner life, consciousness, whatever you want to call it). You snap it apart. Consciousness is gone. You put it back together. Has a consciousness again.
The question to ask is if it is the same one, or a different one.
To the lego soldier, this is a very important question - will he exist again after he dies?
>>Put the emphasis anywhere you like, he answered your question. My eyes affect my brain because they are connected to it. My eyes do not affect your brain because there is no means or reason for them to do so.
No, you're still missing the point. Why did you end up being you, instead of me?
The results have been reported numerous times in the last decade. Obama himself didn't give much to charity until he fell under the public spotlight, and Biden still doesn't.
Sorry, let me re-phrase. *Yes*, that's what these people are claiming. But no, the notion that consciousness doesn't exist because we can't explain it scientifically seems to be a rather contradictory one, because we all (presumably) are experiencing it right now as we read this.
>>Well, from what I understand it, neuroscience is in the process of showing that our folk concept of consciousness is an illusion "stiched" together by various parts of our brains. Is that what these people were claiming?
No.
Well, Dan Dennett is claiming this, but his multiple-drafts theory isn't supported by science at all.
Neuroscience can tell us quite a bit about the mechanics of the brain, and what sorts of conscious experience the different parts of the brain can create, but has absolutely no knowledge about the phenomenon of consciousness itself. It seems that if intelligent robots from another world, possessing no inner life themselves, were to probe our brains and learn everything about it, they'd have no notion that we experienced what we call consciousness. There's no theory at all in science that explains it.
The only explanation that I think might prove out to be true is that consciousness needs an expanded theory of physics to explain.
As I said, the evidence that we've all gone from nonexistence to existence. The claim that after we die (transitioning back to non-existence) is "it" has the only evidence we possess to the contrary.
>>Your sentence sounds like nonsense to me.
Philosophy very often does. "Why do I exist?" seems like an absurd question to ask, and yet it's rather profound, and the answer not especially easy to answer.
>>Not really. Been under a general? That seems a reasonable data point for "nothingness" of the "I".
>>The neurons which make contribute to "me" are attached to my eyes, and vice versa? Doesn't seem particularly arbitrary to me, unless you happen to be claiming that the "you" and "I" are something more than, and independent (to a large degree) of the brain
Not at all. It seems pretty reasonable that the brain and mind are strongly connected, though precisely how might never be determined.
No, I'm not talking about why you are seeing out of your eyes, but why you are seeing out of your eyes, and not me.
>>totally. I guess it will be even more successful than the total boycott of Modern Warfare 2 for lack of dedicated servers. That certainly showed them!
Well... I didn't buy MW2, for that reason. Maybe if they'd have made an extra billion dollars or so Activision wouldn't have fired Zampanella and Lombardi, or whatever their names are. Or... nah. They'd have just screwed them out of more money.
Explain to me why "you" are looking out of your eyes and "I" am looking out of mine. There's no real reason, it seems completely arbitrary, and yet there it is - unarguably so.
As I said, you can black box the entire bit. You don't need to understand it, or even define it. The simple fact of the matter was that before you were born, you didn't exist, and now you do. Atheism has a very hard time dealing with this issue, along with related issues of why there is anything at all.
>>I don't quite know what you mean by "nonexistence now", but it certainly sounds like you're strawman'ing things.
Nope. If you really feel like digging through Slashdot archives, you can find plenty of people claiming that they don't exist, that consciousness is just an illusion, and therefore they have no problems claiming that death is nonexistence.
>>the easy way out of the "life after death" thing is simply the lack of evidence supporting it
Which is precisely my point. There's only one real data point we have to work with, and that's us transitioning from non-existence to existence when we were born. Therefore the burden of proof is on the atheist to claim that, contrary to the evidence, that after we die this process could never happen again.
>>the minds reliance upon the brain
Note that I'm not claiming anything along the lines of us being us, merely that after you die you might wake up and find yourself looking out of the eyes of a newborn with no knowledge of your previous life, or in heaven, or whatever. Just that the notion that nothingness "is it" seems to fly in the face of our own personal experience otherwise.
Presumably there's no consciousness inside of a lego block. If there was, then you'd have a right to assume that the next time that you build a lego block that it might be the same one, or maybe a different one.
Nice, adding me as a foe. I thought it was only supposed to be dogmatic Christians that get infuriated when someone challenges their tightly-held beliefs? Nice to see atheists can get pissy about it as well.
None of what I said was particularly controversial, though my original post was naturally flippant, what with responding to a guy talking about zombie Jesus and all.
>>Wow, wish I had that possibility at my work, except they don't take kindly to sitting doing nothing for the the 4 hours left in the day.
If you have a good boss, who knows how to manage techies, he'll understand. Techies are much more goal oriented than hours oriented. A buddy of mine works for Microsoft, and most of the people in his division do some or all from their work at home.
I decided that I'd rather just work for myself, and have been loving it.
>>I mean, geez, man, you could at least explain yourself a little.
When responding to someone talking about Zombie Jesus? There's very little point.
Here's a very brief argument (paraphrasing Edward Abbey, of all people): 1) We didn't exist before we were born. 2) We exist now. 3) Whatever that process is of transitioning from nothingness to existence, we'll call that I(). We'll treat it as a black-box process, with no explanation needed or given. 4) We've all experienced I(); none of us have not. 5) When we die, we apparently transition back into nothingness.
I think the above statements are pretty unarguable. Maybe you'll argue that we don't exist at all; that seems to be the only way atheists escape from the argument.
6) Therefore, given that we've all transitioned from nothingness to existence, the evidence is on the side of again transitioning from nothingness to existence after we die. 7) Therefore either reincarnation or Christianity must be true.
I feel Christianity is a better option, and there's reasons for that, but you might disagree.
>>There is no implication of nonexistence. That's something you made up in your head.
Nonexistence of self, is what I said. In fact, I said atheists tend to talk about us just being meaningless (well, meaningful to us, I suppose) collections of atoms, but they don't think there's anything more to it than that.
Or rather, that there's nothing peering out of your eyes, which is absurd, since we're all obviously doing it.
>>Just like humanists do, without the fear / motivation of hell or god / gods? I completely agree! http://www.kiva.org/community
Which goes right back to my point that even though they all say they do, the data shows they don't as much as religious people, even though they're much better off overall.
Arguments like that that reveal the person has no real clear conception of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments.
Also, of history, given there's no recorded case of someone stoning their kids for being disobedient, but I digress. Actually, not much of a digression, since people like Dawkins are apparently convinced this sort of thing went on all the time.
I could explain how law in OT times is different from the conception of law that we have these days, and of the difference between moral and ritual law, and how they apply differently to Christians, and how this stance is consistent, and has been consistent for 2000 years, but it's 2AM, and I don't really feel like it.
>>The most logical conclusion from these two bits of information is that ethics is a mixture of nature and nuture, and that we impose our ethics on shaping religion, and choosing the parts of the religion that we wish to believe in based on our ethics. Rather than the other way round.
Given that Dawkins (and Hitchens) has very little understanding of religion, for all his writings on the subject, it's best to not believe in his strawmen and use them to draw conclusions. There's a reason why even the most fundamentalist Christians don't stone people (Hint: the answer is in the New Testament).
Kreeft had a better take on the issue - given that ethics of religions everywhere are kinda sorta the same (they're not, actually), and also given that secular societies also have codes of ethics, you can actually see the difference of the elevation of ethics in the one society over the other, as if believing in God results in a higher level of ethics. This is summarizing it very very briefly, but essentially his argument is that anyone can be ethical when it is in their self interest to do so (I won't hit you because I don't want you to hit me; I won't steal your car because I don't want to go to jail), but only through religion do you see the higher levels of ethical behavior, using the example of giving the jacket off your back to a thief that just robbed you (which were documented cases from both a Catholic church in the middle ages, and a Hindu guy writing around the same time).
If you look at modern society, for all the avaunted Atheist claims of being just as moral as the next guy, they give tremendously less of their time and money to helping others, even though they typically tend to be much better off than the average Christian.
>>Holy batman, that's an impressive strawman. You should take it to the burning man festival, it'll impress everyone there.
Again, summarizing the results of years of conversations in philosophy with educated atheists. If it sounds absurd to you, it's because I'm not framing their argument the way they would ("we're just collections of atoms, nothing special about us") in order to highlight the absurdity of it.
As I said, it's their only way out on the whole life after death thing. In order to prove our nonexistence after death, they imply nonexistence now.
Indeed. So instead I got offered a nice job at Proctor and Gamble for the work I did for them on this project. The private sector is kind of cool that way.
Whether it's better or not, just because you really want to believe something doesn't make it true.
As Neitzsche said, "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
Christians believe in something that might be true. Atheists believe in something that is obviously untrue (the non-existence of self). I'm not saying you believe in this, but this turns out to be the only consistent stance that atheists fall into when they start talking about the afterlife. They do this to avoid the unavoidable consequence that based on the fact that we exist, and didn't exist before we were born, the evidence is actually on the side of religious people of various stripes that we'll exist again after we die.
I'm summarizing years of arguments here, not saying that you believe in whatever, since I obviously don't know what you believe.
Slashdot Mirror
Assume that you have a little lego soldier that you've built, and it happens to be self-aware (with an inner life, consciousness, whatever you want to call it). You snap it apart. Consciousness is gone. You put it back together. Has a consciousness again.
The question to ask is if it is the same one, or a different one.
To the lego soldier, this is a very important question - will he exist again after he dies?
>>Put the emphasis anywhere you like, he answered your question. My eyes affect my brain because they are connected to it. My eyes do not affect your brain because there is no means or reason for them to do so.
No, you're still missing the point. Why did you end up being you, instead of me?
The results have been reported numerous times in the last decade. Obama himself didn't give much to charity until he fell under the public spotlight, and Biden still doesn't.
I work on contract basis now, which means when I get work done, I send in an invoice and am done with it. Billing hourly is soul-killing.
Sorry, let me re-phrase. *Yes*, that's what these people are claiming. But no, the notion that consciousness doesn't exist because we can't explain it scientifically seems to be a rather contradictory one, because we all (presumably) are experiencing it right now as we read this.
>>Well, from what I understand it, neuroscience is in the process of showing that our folk concept of consciousness is an illusion "stiched" together by various parts of our brains. Is that what these people were claiming?
No.
Well, Dan Dennett is claiming this, but his multiple-drafts theory isn't supported by science at all.
Neuroscience can tell us quite a bit about the mechanics of the brain, and what sorts of conscious experience the different parts of the brain can create, but has absolutely no knowledge about the phenomenon of consciousness itself. It seems that if intelligent robots from another world, possessing no inner life themselves, were to probe our brains and learn everything about it, they'd have no notion that we experienced what we call consciousness. There's no theory at all in science that explains it.
The only explanation that I think might prove out to be true is that consciousness needs an expanded theory of physics to explain.
>>What evidence, though?
As I said, the evidence that we've all gone from nonexistence to existence. The claim that after we die (transitioning back to non-existence) is "it" has the only evidence we possess to the contrary.
>>Your sentence sounds like nonsense to me.
Philosophy very often does. "Why do I exist?" seems like an absurd question to ask, and yet it's rather profound, and the answer not especially easy to answer.
>>Not really. Been under a general? That seems a reasonable data point for "nothingness" of the "I".
And the re-emergence!
>>The neurons which make contribute to "me" are attached to my eyes, and vice versa? Doesn't seem particularly arbitrary to me, unless you happen to be claiming that the "you" and "I" are something more than, and independent (to a large degree) of the brain
Not at all. It seems pretty reasonable that the brain and mind are strongly connected, though precisely how might never be determined.
No, I'm not talking about why you are seeing out of your eyes, but why you are seeing out of your eyes, and not me.
>>totally. I guess it will be even more successful than the total boycott of Modern Warfare 2 for lack of dedicated servers. That certainly showed them!
Well... I didn't buy MW2, for that reason. Maybe if they'd have made an extra billion dollars or so Activision wouldn't have fired Zampanella and Lombardi, or whatever their names are. Or... nah. They'd have just screwed them out of more money.
Explain to me why "you" are looking out of your eyes and "I" am looking out of mine. There's no real reason, it seems completely arbitrary, and yet there it is - unarguably so.
As I said, you can black box the entire bit. You don't need to understand it, or even define it. The simple fact of the matter was that before you were born, you didn't exist, and now you do. Atheism has a very hard time dealing with this issue, along with related issues of why there is anything at all.
Souls? Whatever it is that's peering out of your eyes. You don't need to define it, since you are experiencing it right now.
>>I don't quite know what you mean by "nonexistence now", but it certainly sounds like you're strawman'ing things.
Nope. If you really feel like digging through Slashdot archives, you can find plenty of people claiming that they don't exist, that consciousness is just an illusion, and therefore they have no problems claiming that death is nonexistence.
>>the easy way out of the "life after death" thing is simply the lack of evidence supporting it
Which is precisely my point. There's only one real data point we have to work with, and that's us transitioning from non-existence to existence when we were born. Therefore the burden of proof is on the atheist to claim that, contrary to the evidence, that after we die this process could never happen again.
>>the minds reliance upon the brain
Note that I'm not claiming anything along the lines of us being us, merely that after you die you might wake up and find yourself looking out of the eyes of a newborn with no knowledge of your previous life, or in heaven, or whatever. Just that the notion that nothingness "is it" seems to fly in the face of our own personal experience otherwise.
Presumably there's no consciousness inside of a lego block. If there was, then you'd have a right to assume that the next time that you build a lego block that it might be the same one, or maybe a different one.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=charitable+donations+by+atheists
Nice, adding me as a foe. I thought it was only supposed to be dogmatic Christians that get infuriated when someone challenges their tightly-held beliefs? Nice to see atheists can get pissy about it as well.
None of what I said was particularly controversial, though my original post was naturally flippant, what with responding to a guy talking about zombie Jesus and all.
>>Wow, wish I had that possibility at my work, except they don't take kindly to sitting doing nothing for the the 4 hours left in the day.
If you have a good boss, who knows how to manage techies, he'll understand. Techies are much more goal oriented than hours oriented. A buddy of mine works for Microsoft, and most of the people in his division do some or all from their work at home.
I decided that I'd rather just work for myself, and have been loving it.
>>I mean, geez, man, you could at least explain yourself a little.
When responding to someone talking about Zombie Jesus? There's very little point.
Here's a very brief argument (paraphrasing Edward Abbey, of all people):
1) We didn't exist before we were born.
2) We exist now.
3) Whatever that process is of transitioning from nothingness to existence, we'll call that I(). We'll treat it as a black-box process, with no explanation needed or given.
4) We've all experienced I(); none of us have not.
5) When we die, we apparently transition back into nothingness.
I think the above statements are pretty unarguable. Maybe you'll argue that we don't exist at all; that seems to be the only way atheists escape from the argument.
6) Therefore, given that we've all transitioned from nothingness to existence, the evidence is on the side of again transitioning from nothingness to existence after we die.
7) Therefore either reincarnation or Christianity must be true.
I feel Christianity is a better option, and there's reasons for that, but you might disagree.
>>There is no implication of nonexistence. That's something you made up in your head.
Nonexistence of self, is what I said. In fact, I said atheists tend to talk about us just being meaningless (well, meaningful to us, I suppose) collections of atoms, but they don't think there's anything more to it than that.
Or rather, that there's nothing peering out of your eyes, which is absurd, since we're all obviously doing it.
>>What evidence? Religious fables?
No, nothing more complicated than the fact that we didn't exist before we were born, and exist now.
>>Just like humanists do, without the fear / motivation of hell or god / gods? I completely agree! http://www.kiva.org/community
Which goes right back to my point that even though they all say they do, the data shows they don't as much as religious people, even though they're much better off overall.
Exactly.
Arguments like that that reveal the person has no real clear conception of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments.
Also, of history, given there's no recorded case of someone stoning their kids for being disobedient, but I digress. Actually, not much of a digression, since people like Dawkins are apparently convinced this sort of thing went on all the time.
I could explain how law in OT times is different from the conception of law that we have these days, and of the difference between moral and ritual law, and how they apply differently to Christians, and how this stance is consistent, and has been consistent for 2000 years, but it's 2AM, and I don't really feel like it.
>>Even if that's true - citation? - that could well be because Christians use their time and money to 'help' people see things their way...
Ah yes, the famous "nefarious motive to helping people" theory.
Oddly enough, it is possible for people to help each other just out of the goodness of their hearts.
>>The most logical conclusion from these two bits of information is that ethics is a mixture of nature and nuture, and that we impose our ethics on shaping religion, and choosing the parts of the religion that we wish to believe in based on our ethics. Rather than the other way round.
Given that Dawkins (and Hitchens) has very little understanding of religion, for all his writings on the subject, it's best to not believe in his strawmen and use them to draw conclusions. There's a reason why even the most fundamentalist Christians don't stone people (Hint: the answer is in the New Testament).
Kreeft had a better take on the issue - given that ethics of religions everywhere are kinda sorta the same (they're not, actually), and also given that secular societies also have codes of ethics, you can actually see the difference of the elevation of ethics in the one society over the other, as if believing in God results in a higher level of ethics. This is summarizing it very very briefly, but essentially his argument is that anyone can be ethical when it is in their self interest to do so (I won't hit you because I don't want you to hit me; I won't steal your car because I don't want to go to jail), but only through religion do you see the higher levels of ethical behavior, using the example of giving the jacket off your back to a thief that just robbed you (which were documented cases from both a Catholic church in the middle ages, and a Hindu guy writing around the same time).
If you look at modern society, for all the avaunted Atheist claims of being just as moral as the next guy, they give tremendously less of their time and money to helping others, even though they typically tend to be much better off than the average Christian.
>>Holy batman, that's an impressive strawman. You should take it to the burning man festival, it'll impress everyone there.
Again, summarizing the results of years of conversations in philosophy with educated atheists. If it sounds absurd to you, it's because I'm not framing their argument the way they would ("we're just collections of atoms, nothing special about us") in order to highlight the absurdity of it.
As I said, it's their only way out on the whole life after death thing. In order to prove our nonexistence after death, they imply nonexistence now.
>>That would be a capital offense in Washington..
Indeed. So instead I got offered a nice job at Proctor and Gamble for the work I did for them on this project. The private sector is kind of cool that way.
Turns out the job was in Ohio, though. :/
Christians believe in something that might be true. Atheists believe in something that is obviously untrue (the non-existence of self). I'm not saying you believe in this, but this turns out to be the only consistent stance that atheists fall into when they start talking about the afterlife. They do this to avoid the unavoidable consequence that based on the fact that we exist, and didn't exist before we were born, the evidence is actually on the side of religious people of various stripes that we'll exist again after we die.
I'm summarizing years of arguments here, not saying that you believe in whatever, since I obviously don't know what you believe.