More information is required here.  Parkinson's doesnt just afflict a hand.   That aside, you're picking out the one coincidental? occurrence in which prayer seemingly did what it was supposed to do, and are neglecting to factor in the thousands of unanswered prayers your family no doubt offers up on a weekly basis.   

 Again, you need to provide more details here.  What did you feel exactly, when you were subject to an "overpowering" feeling of evil?  Apart from that, what is the question? 

No prayers are answered,  because you are directing them towards an entity that doesnt exist.  As Kevin McHale once said, if the Celtics played 5 monkeys on unicycles enough times, eventually the monkeys would win one. 

Not much to say here.  Yes, as being a card-carrying member of the atheist's club requires only that you lack the belief in a god/gods, you will find that our positions on other topics pretty much run the gamut.

Experience is overrated.  Who exactly has had the experience of having to make the call on whether to launch an atomic bomb on a country?  Point out which member of any branch of US government has "experience" in dealing with terrorist groups that attack innocent people on US ground.  It's not Palin's inexperience that should bother you, it's her complete lack of an original thought and her inability to consider the merits of any positions contrary to her own that should bother you.

Load up the bazookas, I primed him/her for you with the equivalent of a dollar store water pistol

Ok can we have the medical charts for this one, really this should be some major news here Parkinson HEALED, no trace of it left, i mean seriously this should be some major news, even his doctors should have records of this miracle.

So evil as in you wanted to murder the person and had an intense hatred towards them wishing that their entire family would be killed by your own hands and strangle him/her with the entrails of their mother? Or evil as in you where angry at them because this was a strained (what do you mean by this? A heated argument? Insults traded? If so, anger can be a normal reaction to a "Strained" conversation....oh and this is vague you do know that right?)

Sure you could these are all vague without any evidence besides personal experience. Which to me gives me the bullshit alarm to go off.

Life is completely complex, however complexity does not mean supernatural, god or any other fantasy is actually real.

Your right it should be the one that makes the better choices, and so far besides rhetoric coming from Palin and a daft idea (lets get sanctions against Russia)....sure the one country that probably won't hesitate to start a war with the US and is an ally with China that with Japan have %47 percent of the US debt in their hands and could at a moments notice demand their money back and take it out of the US to completely bankrupt the US (ok Japan probably would not do this but China sure can screw the US) Yes you in the US vote for religious moron's that can't even get their kids some basic sex education (condoms and the pills people can keep pregnancies and STD's away), and not for the one that has shown better judgment than republicans have so far.

Go right ahead, your so much better at this.

I'm going to take these one at a time, mainly because I'm writing something else right now and just need a break at the moment.

First, there's an inherent assumption in your first sentence.  You've implied that there is necessarily a difference between "how it all works at a cellular level" and "spiritual things."  What is your reasoning for assuming that an injured hand, or Parkinson's disease, cannot be cured by "how it works at a cellular level"?  You've decided, before the discussion starts, that some things are physical and some are spiritual.

Here's an essay that you should read: 'Supernatural' (and 'immaterial') are broken concepts  I'm going to explain it in small detail here, but it's worth reading the whole thing.  Essentially, supernatural, spiritual, and all similar words are empty of meaning.  If we are to say what a thing is, we must do just that -- say what it is.  These words say what a thing is not!  What is supernatural?  It's that which is above nature, right?  Or maybe outside of ntaure?  Both of these mean the same thing:  "Not natural."

From here, we get into a nasty loop.  Nature is all that we can verify as existing, right?  Matter, energy, space, time.  If supernatural is none of these things, then what is it?  It's what God is, right?  Ok.. what is god?  Supernatural.

You see?  these words don't actually mean anything.  They're just placeholders for other words that don't mean anything.  When we say something is spiritual, we're saying exactly the same thing.  Spiritual means "not physical."  Well, what is it, then?  Spiritual means not physical means spiritual.  This is called a circular argument, and as you can see, it's not really worth much.

Consider it in another context.  Suppose I want to give you twenty thousand bliffpthegs.  Do you want them?  Before you say yes or no, I'll tell you that bliffpthegs are not elephants.  Now do you want them?

When you think of it in simple terms that don't have emotional meaning, you can see that defining something as "not something else" is meaningless.

You might protest at this time that we can define things negatively.  Suppose I tell you that I've got a box, and it contains a pen, a comb, and a lock of hair.  Next, I tell you that I'm thinking of an object, and it's not a lock of hair or a comb.  You know, through a process of elimination, that I'm talking about a pen.

Unfortunately, this is not the same thing.  By giving you a list of choices, I have created a universe of discourse.  That is, I've given you a list of all the possible things that could be in the box.  Once that's accomplished, it's easy to eliminate all but one, and have one left over.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way for supernatural.  There simply is no universe of discourse because the only available words for supernatural indicate only that it is not in the set of natural things.  It doesn't tell us what set it is in.  We're right back where we started.  Supernatural = God = Supernatural, ad nauseum.  This doesn't tell us anything.  All of these words are just placeholders for "not natural."

So, already, there are two errors in critical thinking.  First, you've assumed the existence of that which you want to prove.  Consider that the healing of a hand only proves that a hand has been healed.  It says nothing of the agent of healing.  There is a much worse problem here.  Suppose for a second that the supernatural exists.  That is, things which are beyond science, since science is the study of all things natural.  That means that literally anything is possible.  Maybe there is no god as you believe, but there is a malevolent entity that gets off on getting people to believe ridiculous myths, and has been variously inflicting religions on the different people of the world since we were smart enough to understand them!  Maybe this entity took a particular interest in reinforcing your belief of Christianity and healed somebody's hand in front of you.  Maybe he's got a map of your brain, and knows exactly how to manipulate your emotions to his own amusement.

Can you prove that this entity is any less likely than your god?  Consider that religion has been around a LOT longer than Christianity, and my theory takes that into account.  Your god only came to global significance in the last few hundred years.  Before that, it was only prevalent in Europe and North Africa.  My theory of a malevolent being inflicting false religions on man is much more consistent with the facts.  In fact, the strength of your convictions, and those of your family, actually PROVE my point!  You're so blinded by this being that you actually see a silly little Jewish God as controlling all of life, when the story is obviously ludicrous.  Your god story has only been believed by maybe 1/1000th of all the people who have ever lived!  Only a malevolent god could convince an otherwise rational person of such an absurdity.

On to the Parkinson's.  I'd like to point out that Parkinson's disease is extremely difficult to diagnose.  There are currently no blood or laboratory tests that accurately narrow a diagnosis down to PD.  The diagnosis is usually based on a medical history and neurological exam.  The symptoms of PD are not unique to it, nor are they consistent within a sample of patients.  While there is no cure for it, remission does occur in a small percentage of cases.

With all of that in mind, let me ask you these pointed questions.  Knowing that some diseases go into remission, are you prepared to say that every instance of disease remission is the direct hand of god?  If so, then how do you account for the various breakthroughs in medical science which are beginning to explain the nuts and bolts biological reasons behind the body's ability to heal itself?  Are they wrong?  Is God simply causing the body to do what the body does naturally?  That's not much of a god, if you ask me.

Furthermore, have you considered for a moment how many people have Parkinson's disease?  The occurrence of the disease is about 100-120 in 100,000 Caucasians.  The 2007 population of the United States was 301,100,000, give or take a hundred thousand.   Approximately 73% of Americans are Caucasians.  Some simple math gives us 361,200 people in the U.S. alone suffering from Parkinson's disease.  I did a google search for the phrase "healed of parkinson's disease" and came up with 124 hits.  Approximately 80 of them were not pertinent, leaving approximately 44 pages claiming that someone they know was healed of parkinson's disease by a supernatural agent.  (Not all of them claimed it was Jesus!)

A little more math.  Approximately 85% of Americans profess belief in God.  So, we can, with some certainty, propose that 307,020 people with Parkinson's are believers.  Assuming that all 44 internet cases were legit, that means that God has a rate of 0.0014% for healing people with Parkinson's disease.  (That's not even taking into account the fact that many nonbelievers have people praying for them all the time.  Don't you know a couple of people who offer up prayers for me from time to time?)  The remission rate is significantly higher than that.  Granted, I'm making the assumption that anyone healed by a god in the age of the internet would mention it.  Seems like a big deal.

Speaking of a big deal, someone earlier mentioned that if someone really was healed of Parkinson's, it ought to be a really big deal, right?  Where are the scientific papers?  Where are the conferences being held?  Parkinson's is incurable.  It only goes into remission sometimes.  I happen to recall enough specifics about the person you're referring to that I was able to look up very exact names, places, and pretty exact years.   Not one science journal mentions anything about it.

What I'm getting around to is something called confirmation bias.  People really like to believe that things are personally relevant to them, so they often mistake random occurrences for purposeful events.  Certainly there is someone alive who has won a lottery by using their first child's birthdate.  That's because probably one out of four people who play the lottery use their first child's birthdate when they play the lottery, and LOTS of people play the lottery.  Eventually, somebody had to win.  Even so, you find a story about this very thing happening, and I'll bet you a hundred bucks the winner will either thank God or her astrologer for helping her pick the right numbers.

Another way to look at it is to flip it around.  If ten million people play the lottery, and two million of them use a relative's birthday, and one wins, that means that one million nine hundred ninetynine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine people did NOT win with their relative's birthday.  However, if in the last twenty years, there have been fifty people who have won with relative's birthdays, we might at first glance be fooled into believing that there was some significance to it. 

Similarly, have you considered the three hundred thousand people or so alive right now who are going to die with Parkinson's disease?  Now, think about this in broader terms.  There are lots of diseases, and lots of people get them.  Hundreds and hundreds of them, surrounding you at any given moment.  Some are minor, some are major.  What are the odds that at some point in your life, somebody, with some disease or another, is going to go into remission?

Actually... they're pretty good.

Now, consider two more pieces to the puzzle.  Everyone you know is a Christian.  It would be hard for you to find one of your acquaintances with a disease who ISN'T being prayed for pretty much constantly.  In other words, if any of your friends have a disease that goes into remission, it's going to coincide with somebody praying for them.  Suppose the hand or the Parkinson's had gotten better when nobody was in the room.  Do you think it would have been hard to find somebody that prayed for it that very same hour?  If not that, the same day?  The same week?  Any success is going to be linked to the nearest prayer, and since you don't know anybody that doesn't get prayed for, it's a virtual guarantee that IF you see it happen, there would be a connection to prayer.

Last thing, then I'll put the bazooka away.  What do people like to do when they catch a big fish?  They like to cut the thing up, put it in the freezer, and then tell everybody it was five pounds heavier than it was.  When something neat happens to us, we tend to exaggerate it.  That's just human nature.  We like a good story.  Now, consider that everybody at your church would think it was really, really cool if somebody got a miracle from god.  Supposing that something relatively good happened, can you imagine that there might be a tendency to exaggerate the story for effect?  After all, it's still telling the truth... God did heal you, right?  You're just making the story more exciting so that more people will hear about the glory of god!

I mean, suppose you woke up one night, had some sort of coughing fit or something, and then realized that you weren't shaking.  While you slept, your PD had gone into remission, but since you woke up suddenly, you didn't get to see the gradually subsiding shake.  All you saw was the near absence of a shake when you woke up.  Now, have you ever woken with a start?  Of course.  Everybody does.  Still, how easy would it be to embellish that story a little bit and make it a sharp feeling of God's glory that woke you up?  I mean, it wouldn't even have to be a conscious lie.  When we wake up suddenly, we're groggy.  Time does weird things.  It wouldn't be hard to notice the lack of shake and then get a huge endorphin rush at the realization that the disease might be gone.  Since you're a Christian, you'd immediately attribute it to god, and then you'd really get a kick!  You just won the God Lottery!  Everybody at church is gonna love you.  You're going to be a first hand witness for the glory of god!

Yeah... I can find a lot of ways to explain those kind of events.  I know they aren't as comforting as your explanations, but they sure do make a lot more sense.  Curiously, there's a lot of comfort in the knowledge that good, bad, and neutral happens to everybody, and it's nothing personal.  You should try it on for size sometime.

I'll take it all at once, SCIENCE ....

How can I be mad when you've somehow bitched at me AND made the point I was trying to make?  You're so cuddly for a sith lord!

The pill CANNOT protect against STDs. watch yourself there - only contraception that provides a complete physical barrier is effective against all STDs (except love).

Coming onto the OP's account of a hand being healed through prayer, I would like to ask him/her why, when these supposed miracles are being referred to all the time (it seems a lot of Christians on these boards have a friend/relative who has been healed or cured by god) has there never EVER been a case of an amputee being healed? People who can't walk, but have their legs still, BAM cured. People with a degenerative disease - BAM cured, Cancer? No problem - BAM cured. But anyone who has actually lost a limb will never be cured. Should they bother praying? Is limb regrowth too much for god to cope with? or are amputees simply more evil people who don't deserve to ever have their prayers answered?

How can any christian who believes in healing answer this without making their god sound like a total hypocrite?

Ian

Oh, children...  don't make me stop the car!

Ok... answering a couple quick questions:  I don't think KEWK is necessary.  It looks like most of the barbs are being traded between us atheists.  I doubt this lurker will post.  It's kind of a delicate situation.  I mainly posted this to give an idea of what a lot of different atheists would say.  I think sometimes hearing something from somebody you don't know is easier than hearing it from somebody you do know. 

Ian, I don't think you should take too much offense at the reaction to the condom statement.  You see, among (I'd guess) 98% of the regular readers here, condom information is a lot like info on the danger of cigarettes.  We all know.  I mean... really... most of us could teach a class on some kind of science topic or other without having to crack a book.  This isn't the same audience you get from youtube or myspace.  This is about the fourth thread in the last month where somebody has been loose (pun intended) with condom talk and has gotten a mini lecture from somebody concerned about STDs.

For the record -- We all know what viruses are.  We know that the pill is a hormone therapy, not a physical barrier.  We know.  We know.  We know.  To anybody reading this who thinks we might not know.... WE KNOW.  It's pretty simple stuff.  Viruses are what we call, "very small." 

I'm also a big fan of everybody using both condoms and the pill.  Babies aren't unwanted as much as diseases, but sometimes it's a pretty close race. 

Firstly, I'd like to say I like what you are doing here Hamby. I don't know if it's a friend, a family member, or a co-worker of yours that we are adressing here, but it is clear that it is someone you care about, and have respect for, regardless of the fact that you think he/she is fundementally wrong about some very important things (might I venture a guess and say, I think we are dealing with a "she" here? That's what my gut is telling me anyway).

I think everyone should reserve the right to not like someone, but I also think that a person is being quite simply irrational if they think they can do anything useful in talking to someone they don't like. The real crazies out there, and they are out there, I simply do not bother with. Not because I don't think their minds can't be changed (well I think a few minds can't), but because I know that I am not the person to do it.

Because if you really dislike someone you are unlikely to provide them with anything but anger and indignation. I think some people here have a tendency to loose sight of who they are talking to, and I think it is a lesson to be learned for all of us that it is the genuine emotional investment in a person that makes you most likely to bring them over to your way of thinking.

Because, as much as I know many here can't help but cringe at the thought, it is the emotional argument that works in far and away the most cases, especially as it pertains to religion, because it is almost inveriably an emotional argument that has led people to theism in the first place.

So on that note, to our lurker, I would like to say:

Hamby's example of confirmation bias is important to consider, because prayer is not harmful in and of itself, but to rely on prayer in the most dire of circumstances can lead to terrible disappointment. Consider this:

I am a happy and fulfilled person, who has experienced few setbacks, and many victories in my life. I am loved by many, liked by more, and hated by no-one I know of. I live in a rich, safe and thoroughly atheistic nation (Denmark), and so, I have never prayed for anything, or ever been prayed for to my knowledge.

Now, I live alone, and as a consequence I am alone with myself and my thoughts alot of the time. And at times, when I become particularly contemplative in my alone-ness (because it's not loneliness; when I'm lonely, I invite friends over), I will meditate, talk to myself, smile for myself, and comfort myself. All of this is both healthy for my own mental stability, and a great source of thoughts and realisations that makes me wiser as time goes on.

Now consider for a moment what prayer is. Is it not reasonable to say, that in many ways, what I sometimes do when I'm alone is in many ways an atheist's way of praying? And since I reap the same benefits from it that a person praying does, how is that the acceptance of God's existence can be contigent on this? Make no mistake, I consider the idea of God utterly prepostous. I harbour no feelings of respect for any of the God-concepts that humans have conjoured up over the years, and I will often denegrate the character of the Biblical God on these boards, so if there really was such a God, he can't possibly care what I think about him, because I live a happy and fulfilled life, I love, and am loved in abundance.

Now, as to the insident with the feeling of "evil" coming over you, it sounds like a perfectly plausible situation to me. The only difference between your view of the situation and mine is the words we choose to use to describe it. Indeed we might even use the same words, and just interpret them differently.

If you were to say: "A deamon was present among us during that conversation", I might very well agree with you, but whereas you might mean that an evil spirit, a thinking, individual entity that comes from hell, was, in some immatterial form literally present, I would mean it simply as a metaphor. I would say that anger, fear, irritation and aggression was present in one or more of the individuals that were in that conversation, which made everyone ill at ease, and that would be the only "deamon", the only "evil" to be found there.

You are right: the world is complex. People have wildly differing oppinions on what is true and what is false, what is moral and what is immoral. If you genuially want to understand other people, to help them, and to help yourself, to "heal the world", as it were, the best thing you can do (in my oppinion) is to make a genuine attempt at understanding what humans are.

And, in my humble oppinion, what helps you do that best, is to understand yourself, and what brings you to believe the things you believe.

Hamby and I are on completely the same page, when we say that the best way to understand human nature is to understand that we are animals. Now, a dog is not the same as a fly, a fly is not the same as a giraff, and a giraff is not the same as a homo sapiens, so indeed there is no need to think that we are the same as other animals in all respects.

But what has helped me most in my life to make me happy, calm, and (I hope) just and loving, is my recognition of why I feel the way I feel.

Most importantly, it is important for me to understand why I get scared and why I get horny. These, in my oppinion, are the two most powerful forces in human behavior. I will ellaborate on my thoughts on this if prompted.

But for now, I will just tell you a little annecdote. My sister has recently had a third daughter, and it was my intense pleasure to see her for the first time the other day (my sister lives across the country, so it is a special treat when I get to see her and my nieces).

Now as I sat with this tiny little "miracle" in my arms I took a deep breath and smelled the top of her head. She had that wonderful "new baby smell" and I was immediately filled with... What would you guess?

It was an overpowering sense, feeling, realisation of being an animal. I had probably been reading one too many of Hamby's many wonderful posts on these boards, because the feeling of primitive protectiveness, a joy at having this little new member of my "pack" here with me, not to mention the rare, conscious awareness of my sense of smell, such an important smell for all animals, but so often a sense that we humans are not very conscious of, all combined into making me feel so very much in touch with what I am!.

I might be inclined to call it a profound spiritual experience, but that's just my typical poetic, romantic way of expressing myself. I'm a real softy...

P.S: It is interesting to note, by the way, that my sister is adopted (From Equador). We share no genes whatsoever. I am a blue-eyed, ginger caucasian, while my sister, and her three daughters have jet-black hair, and dark-brown, almost black eyes. But there is no doubt in my mind that my profound feelings for her "cubs" has everything to do with my feeling that they are my pack

*Edit: Yikes! Sorry guys... That's a big one, that... Man I can rant, can't I?*

Hi Hamby. Thanks for your kind words, first of all.

My sister was adobted at the age of one, and actually, she is my older sister.

You see my mother had some sort of condition that makes her extra sick during pregnancy: morning sickness is more than just mornings and lasts throughout the pregnancy. This got incrementally worse after each pregnancy (I've got two older brothers 39, and 37 respectively). When they tried a third time she had an abortion (I'm still not sure wether it was a voluntary abortion, or wether she aborted naturally. I wasn't there at the time after all), and so they decided to adopt.

The process of adoption takes so long however, that when my sister finally arrived my brothers were so much older than her that they decided to try one last time, to give her a "playmate", so to speak. So I was born a year after my sister had arrived here, making her two years older than me. She just turned 30, by the way, and I just turned 28 yesterday (on the 22.).

And yes, I find this subject very fascinating.

Another annecdote comes to mind.

I come from a very close-nit family. The kids I spent the most time with during my childhood were my siblings and my cousins, as my (farther's side of the) family had get-together's all the time with my farther's three brother's and their children. My three female cousins aren't exactly like sisters to me, but it's pretty close.

So when I once had a conversation at a party with some friends about the concept of old flames, affairs and "fuck-buddies", and one girl mentioned that she had had an on-going affair with her cousin, that she only met at her very rare family-gatherings, and every time they would have a weekend affair, I was completely thrown off.

I could not in any way imagine how one could possibly have a sexual affair with ones cousin, and to be honest I think I came across to the rest of the party as rather grossed out, and somewhat judgemental.

So she, and the others, argued to me, as I explained my own family structure, that it sounded like my childhood experiences with my female cousins put me in a very different position than the girl at the party. And the whole thing calmed down. She was, when all's said and done, acting perfectly natural in being attracted to a guy that she had no inate sense of familiarity with.

And, just for the record, she did say that they had never considered taking it any further than the affair, precisely because they were cousins.

So even though noone at the party, including myself, had any training in evolutionary psychology, we all arrived at the conclution that it was quite natural for her to be attracted to her cousin: effectively a stranger, and for me to not even be able to consider it about my cousins: effectively my sisters.

I think the feeling of unsettlement is broader than just misunderstanding the math.  Nickolaj is not in the norm when he finds out that his "transcendental" excperience at holding his adopted sister's baby is a product of math.  Most people really don't want to hear about the science behind such feelings, as it gives them a vague sense of insignificance.  I mean, hell, if that beautiful experience is nothing but ones and zeros run through an evolutionary computer, we might as well all bash the baby's head in and go about looting TVs, right?

That's obviously nonsense, but I think I have a good way of explaining why.  I am very well trained in music.  Very well.  With a little brushup since it's been a few years, I could give you a Schenkerian reduction of Berlioz's Symphanie Fantastique, or I could give you a note by note breakdown of Miles Davis' treatment of the blues scale in every song on Kind of Blue.  I can play most pop songs after a single hearing.  I can read music better than most.  I've written, produced, recorded, orchestrated, engineered, and toured.  I've played everything from jazz to metal to country to Chopin to Shoenberg.  I know enough about acoustics to intelligently discuss any tonal system, not just western twelve tone, if only I understand the relationships between the scales.

More importantly to this discussion, one of the things I'm really good at is playing songs I don't know.  I can sit in with a band, and simply because I understand music theory really well, I can accurately guess what to play next many more times than not.  I've been told that you can't often tell whether I know a song or not because I get it all right anyway.

Now... just to make a point... music is nothing more than little waves of air hitting my ear.  That's it.  A good acoustic engineer can reduce Beethoven down to nothing but graphs and formulas, each of which can be exactly reproduced by a sophisticated enough computer.  There's nothing special about it.  It's just 1s and 0s  -- just like humans are just products of genes.

So....

What's the point of all that bragging?  Simple.  Do I enjoy music less than someone who doesn't understand it?  Do I find Beethoven's Ninth to be nothing but notes bouncing off of each other in space?  Far from it.  I still tear up when the chorus first enters in the last movement.  I'm still swept away by turning off all the lights and listening to Kind of Blue all the way through.  I still have a geek fit when I get to hear King Crimson on a great surround sound system.  All of those feelings that anybody else has when listening to music?  I have them -- except -- I know all about the music that causes me to have them.  I have MORE of an experience than other people.

It's the same with humans.  When something very emotional happens, I experience the emotions just like anybody else.  The thing is, I know why I'm having the emotions.  This comes in particularly handy because with understanding comes power.  I don't have to blindly accept what I feel because I understand it.   Like music, where I can listen or play, humans who understand humans can passively bounce through life, or they can actively take control of their own life.  Understanding the theory gives control.  It doesn't demand that we use it, but the option is there.  I can listen passively to Beethoven, or I can listen actively, trying to absorb every theoretical nuance, or... if I want, I can play Beethoven.

So there it is.  Humans are animals, and we do come from blind math, but how amazing is it to understand the processes and actually be in control of my life?  I can tell you this -- it's a lot better than trusting a God who heals 0.0014% of Parkinson's patients on a whim.

I only care about unsettlement as it influences an unwillingness to accept facts.  I'm right with you on this, but I also think that all the teaching in the world won't benefit an unwilling student. 

DG, wasn't it you that wrote that xlint essay regarding awe inspiring science, and if I remember correctly, also attacked the new age movement? If so, is a link available to it? I spent an hour looking for it a short while back.

Nay Hamby .... but xlint recent reading, and that's what reminded me again of it. It was maybe a year ago .... quite sure from DG. A good one ....

What I suppose I'd like to get at with the "emotional argument" thing I was saying earlier, is that once the misunderstanding that DG points out is in place in a person they will find the idea of humans being "meat robots" uncomfortable, even revolting.

And I feel it is important, for me personally, to adress the fact that even though this is exactly how I feel about what I truly am, this in no way makes me uncomfortable.

I am not a scientist, not by trade, nor by nature. I study the humanities, and language, litterature, and art are my main areas of interest.

Like I said, I am a romantic, no two ways about it, a real softy, that likes the poetic expression of life.

But because I also have a scientific understanding of the world, and because I live in a society where that is the norm, my romantic streak simply fits the "meat robot" view of the world.

Point in case, one of my favorite movies at the moment is Pixar's "Wall-E". I went to see it with my 7 year old niece, and I was very touched by the story.

Why is this? Well, it's a sweet little story, but what particularly appealed to me was that the movie is, in essence, about a robot that falls in love.

I like this concept very much, because I find it totally plausible that robots can fall in love, if ever we are able to produce robots sofisticated enough to develop sentience.

Now, part of why this appeals to me, and to my 7 year old niece, is of course just the human tendency to anthropomorphisize in-animate objects. Pixar's first movie after all, was about a lamp-mother and a lamp-baby, which was also a sweet little movie, even though lamps don't actually posess sentience.

But I still find it interesting that somewhere, underneath the surface of a simple children's story about a sweet little robot, there lies the idea that sentience is "merely" the product of a sufficiently complicated brain, but that the emotions of said brain are no less important or valuable to the owner of that brain because of it.

So I want to emotionally appeal to people who have fallen victim to the misunderstanding that life is meaningless if we are "just" the product of chemistry, by saying that I think life is absolutely wonderful, and they have no reason to think that the beauty of life is contingent on the existence of a "soul".