Posts by Coded Logic

58

Mind Body Dualism

by Coded Logic in

i've never found dualism - the idea that the mind and the brain are two different substances with the mind being "immaterial" or "non-material" - a valid manner in which to address consciousness or any mysteries relating to it.

to show the reasons why i think it's bad metaphysics i'll use analogous reasoning to make a case for my newly made up "mystic essence".. for hundreds of years scientists have studied plants and animals all across the world.

but they still can't explain where ecosystems come from.

Coded Logic

SBF,

I'm really not sure why you're bringing up reductionism. Especially when my OP specifically addressed emergent properties. It's the complete opposite of reductionism. In order to understand any complex system we have to be aware that there may be properties of the whole which do not exist as properties of the parts.

Materialism isn't just what things are made up of either. Its also how things behave in a system. How things interact. How things change over time.

Identity is transient. Who I was ten years ago is not who I am now. And who I am now is not who I will be in ten years from now. Things never stay the same. This is one of the fundamentals of physical reality. It's really odd how you consistently try and pigeonhole materialism into static or isolated explanations. It's the complete opposite.

Brain states can be compared to other brain states. Just as ideas can be compared to other ideas. And just because you can use "personhood" to describe one particular aspect of a human and "physicality" to describe another doesn't mean those two descriptors aren't compatible or related.

58

Mind Body Dualism

by Coded Logic in

i've never found dualism - the idea that the mind and the brain are two different substances with the mind being "immaterial" or "non-material" - a valid manner in which to address consciousness or any mysteries relating to it.

to show the reasons why i think it's bad metaphysics i'll use analogous reasoning to make a case for my newly made up "mystic essence".. for hundreds of years scientists have studied plants and animals all across the world.

but they still can't explain where ecosystems come from.

Coded Logic

Crofty is correct. My position is not "materialism is all there is". Rather, my position is the sum total of physical reality is what we're currently justified in believing. Anything beyond that has yet to be established and can't be used as an explanation for anything else.

58

Mind Body Dualism

by Coded Logic in

i've never found dualism - the idea that the mind and the brain are two different substances with the mind being "immaterial" or "non-material" - a valid manner in which to address consciousness or any mysteries relating to it.

to show the reasons why i think it's bad metaphysics i'll use analogous reasoning to make a case for my newly made up "mystic essence".. for hundreds of years scientists have studied plants and animals all across the world.

but they still can't explain where ecosystems come from.

Coded Logic

The idea that "nothing exists except matter" does not itself consist of matter.

Are you putting forth the position that ideas are not made of matter? If so, can you give me an example of an idea existing without a physical medium (brains, books, hard drives, etc.)?

58

Mind Body Dualism

by Coded Logic in

i've never found dualism - the idea that the mind and the brain are two different substances with the mind being "immaterial" or "non-material" - a valid manner in which to address consciousness or any mysteries relating to it.

to show the reasons why i think it's bad metaphysics i'll use analogous reasoning to make a case for my newly made up "mystic essence".. for hundreds of years scientists have studied plants and animals all across the world.

but they still can't explain where ecosystems come from.

Coded Logic

I've never found Dualism - the idea that the mind and the brain are two different substances with the mind being "immaterial" or "non-material" - a valid manner in which to address consciousness or any mysteries relating to it. To show the reasons why I think it's bad metaphysics I'll use analogous reasoning to make a case for my newly made up "mystic essence".

For hundreds of years scientists have studied plants and animals all across the world. But they still can't explain where ecosystems come from. They don't even know what ecosystems are. And there are several immaterial properties that ecosystems have that cannot be explained by the biology of plants and animals. For example; cooperation, coordination, interdependence and decomposition. A material world view cannot account for the existence of any of these things nor can it explain ecosystems so the best explanation is Mystic Essence.

I suppose anyone reading this will intuitively understand my argument is absurd. But let's take a moment and explore why it's absurd.

While the first sentence is certainly true the second one is not. We actually do know where ecosystems come from. They come from the interactions of plants and animals within an environment. The same is true of consciousness - we do know where it comes from. It comes from the electrochemical reactions of a physical brain.

The third sentence is also not true. We actually do know what ecosystems are. They are an emergent hierarchy of complex biological systems becoming more than the sum of any of their organisms. The same is true of consciousness. The whole brain has properties which none of it's individual neurons of pathways do.

The fourth and fifth sentence make the category error of claiming cooperation, coordination, interdependence and decomposition are immaterial - which they're not. They're conceptual. There's a huge difference. The same category error is often made when talking about thoughts, feelings, and reason.

And the last sentence is just an empty claim. It in no way explains how Mystic Essence can account for ecosystems nor does it show that Mystic Essence actually exists. The same is true of of those who try to use an "immaterial soul" to explain consciousness. It's not an explanation nor is it something that's been shown to exist. It's just a vacuous placeholder instead of a real answer.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

Coded Logic

Well I don't necessarily think that "love" and "suffering" are irreconcilable. However, I do think that someone who is capable of preventing unnecessary suffering but fails to do so cannot be called "loving" in any meaningful sense of the word.

If a father can stop his son from drowning but instead chooses to sit on the shore and watch his boy die - I feel safe in saying that's not a very loving father.

The problem is made even worse for Christians as the Bible often has God being the one who is performing the unloving actions. Not only is God not saving his kids - he's the one who flooded them in the first place with the express intention of drowning them.

What can we really say about such "love"? Are we to believe that the best possible way for an all powerful being to effect positive change is to wipe out almost all of humanity along with most of the biosphere? Or that, later on, the best possible way to protect the Israelites was to kill ALL the Amalekites including the women and their children?

Wouldn't an all powerful God be able to achieve his goals without killing a single person? Much less killing thousands/millions/billions of innocent women and children?

If a creator doesn't care about the well being of its sentient creatures - then why worship it? Why call it God?

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

Coded Logic

SBF,

I suppose I should start by asking you if you know the difference between analytic and synthetic distinctions? It's worth taking a moment to look up as it directly relates to the question you raise about why Theologians and Scientists are not in the same boat when it comes to their claims.

Claims made by Theists about God fall into the former category. They make synthetic claims and then break their own definitions.

For example, Christians say God can't intervene because doing so would violate our free will - but all their holy texts are about God's interventions. God doesn't like what man is doing to the planet - so he intervenes and causes a flood. God doesn't like them building a tower - so he confuses the language and scatters them across the surface of the earth. God doesn't like the fire Aaron's sons use to light their incense to offer him - so he burns them alive. God doesn't like what Paul is doing - so he gives him a roadside conversion on the way to Damascus. Etc. All of these are inconsistent with the excuse Christians make about free will and God not intervening.

Another example is Christians claim God has perfect justice and they also say he is merciful. Well, which is it? These are diametrically opposed propositions. To go before a judge and ask for mercy is to literally ask for a suspension of justice. If the judge were to grant you mercy he would - by definition - not be exercising justice. The same is true of God. He cannot exercise mercy if he has perfect justice.

Christians are making Analytic propositions about God (propositions that are true by virtue of their meaning). Whereas scientists are making Synthetic propositions about reality (propositions that are true by how their meaning relates to the world).

Me saying "I know a bachelor who is married" is self refuting. However, a scientists saying, "I don't yet know how to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics" is not self refuting.

Capiche?

12

Reply to Bugbear: Why I believe in the Bible

by Saved_JW in

[some words i corrected for spelling & grammer] .

"i have been studying the bible for almost 20 years....after graduating in history and science comparing to the the bible, i have have come to to the conclusion that the bible cannot give you any reason to believe in it at all.

so i wonder, why do you use the bible as facit to your believes?

Coded Logic

You said the bible cannot give you ANY REASON to believe it, well the bible says that the Earth is a circle, do you not believe that?

Well no, of course we don't believe that. Because the Earth is not a circle. It's a sphere. These are two very different things. And had the writer of the book of Isaiah wished to communicate this he would used the Hebrew word for sphere in that scripture (Isaiah 40:22) instead of the word circle. But he doesn't. And we know he knew the word for sphere because he uses it (Isaiah 22:18).

I've also never understood why apologist cite this as something special or divinely informative. In 300 BC the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes used two shadows to not only prove the earth was a sphere - but he also predicted the diameter of the earth with an impressive degree of accuracy. And if a man in antiquity could do that then surely a divinely inspired book could, at the very least, use the correct word to describe the shape of our planet! Not to mention that apologists don't take "four pillars of the earth" or "cornerstone of the earth" literally. Apologist just cherry pick the parts of the Bible they think sound scientific and then ignore the rest that is demonstrably false. It's annoyingly dishonest.

More tangible reasons for my belief in scripture comes down to: The messianic prophecies of Jesus in the Old Testament, scripture being firmly rooted in history as supported by archeology and textual transmission

There is no archeological evidence for the existence of Jesus. Much less any prophecy made about him.

I also never understood why Christians try to claim this as evidence. It would be like me saying the Harry Potter novels are "fulfilled prophecy" because the predictions made in the first book are "fulfilled" in the fourth book. If we want to claim that something is a "fulfilled prophecy" then there are some very basic criteria we have to meet:

1.) We have to establish the prophecy was made BEFORE the event.
2.) We have to establish the event actually takes place.
3.) The event has to be specific enough to be falsifiable.
4.) The event must not be normative of something that readers of the prophecy could intentionally carry out.

For example, criteria number one would not be met if I handed you a cocktail napkin on which I had scrawled "On Sept 11, 2001 terrorist will bring down the WTC". Unless I had some way of proving I had written the words prior to 9/11 you wouldn't believe me when I said I had actually predicted the future.

The same is true of the Bible. The earliest version we have of the Old Testament is the Dead Sea Scrolls - which are dated to around 200 BC. So nothing before that can be established as prophecy. Because it's written several hundred years AFTER the supposed prophecies about people like Artaxerxes of Persia, Alexander the Great, King Belshazzar, etc. who were all long dead.

Also, all of the "prophecies" about Jesus are problematic because of the second criteria. That is to say, we can't be established he did anything the prophecies said he would do. There are no contemporary writings about him and no archeological evidence about his life or deeds. We don't even know if a Jesus of Nazareth was even a real person at all.

The third criteria is problematic for most Biblical prophecies. No time frame is given for when the prophecies will be fulfilled and most of the prophecies are so vague there are multiple ways to interpret them. And if a prophecy is interpreted post hoc to match later events - then it's not a prophecy. It's pin the tail on whatever we think fits. People do this with Nostradamus all the time. They try to retroactively figure out what he had predicted by looking at events between the time of his writings and now. The same is true of the Bible.

And the fourth criteria is problematic for a lot of the things Jesus said. Wars are normative - it's not a prophecy to say wars will happen in the future. The same is true of disease, earthquakes, and famines. It would be like me saying, "I predict that tomorrow the sun will rise" - it's not a prophecy to predict things that regularly occur.

72

What Is The Watchtower's Biggest Problem?

by minimus in

jw
friends

the organization has many problems.

certain doctrines are problematic.

the men who run the organizaion have issues.

Coded Logic

They think they have access to an infallible source of knowledge and think they are better than everyone else because of it. They claim to know things they can't possibly know, they claim to have abilities they don't actually have, and they claim to have an importance which is completely unsubstantiated.

11

Help to build a "Guide to Your New Faith"

by Defianttruth in

i have seen many people ask the question, "if its not the truth what else is there?

" i imagine that most people want to remain in a christian faith so i want to build a matrix for one to use as a guide in finding a new church if he or she feels a need to worship.

i personally don't attend any church and i will keep my personal beliefs to myself.

Coded Logic

There's too much to see, too much to learn, too much to know, and too much to experience to waste a single second caught up in the dogma of another church or religion. Pursue the knowable. Pursue what can actually be established as true. Pursue worthwhile activities that can make THIS world a better place.

There is no shortcut to knowledge. If you want to know what's true you're going to have to get out there and find it. You're going to have to do hard intellectual work.

But it's work that is rewarding and worthwhile and can make you a better person. If you want to be spiritual - if you want to understand your place in the universe - then perhaps the best way for you to do that is by understanding something about the world we live in.

11

Survey

by Reborn93 in

i was recommended to this forum by a member of jw recovery.

i am a former jw studying a psychology degree in the uk.

i am conducting a survey looking at former and current jehovah's witnesses and their beliefs.