Thanks for the feedback. I appreciated the nice jabs at me at the end. I might be an egotist. I've tried to make that claim, but my therapist keeps telling me I'm not. Either way, I could talk all night about myself...get it? lol Anyway, thanks for the response. I do appreciate the insight.

I agree with all of that.

Meh, depends what the atheist says, people are unique in too many ways to be making these kind of generalisations. Fact is, we've all been ignorant about the existence of God, allowing theism to fly blind for too long, this forum is testament to the problems that causes, and it is, unfortunately, not a laughing matter in many ways. 

Yeah, you're generalising, but I've put my two cents in anyway. I think it bears asking why theism and atheism are in this debate at all and I'm glad you did, for the record.

1.  Well since I was a theist for 30 years, believe me, you're being defensive when you debate declared Atheists.  The people you are talking about "saving" are people that have never heard of christ, not those that have already heard and rejected the idea of.

2.  If god can do ANYTHING but still made a reality where the VAST majority of humans will rot in hell for all eternity...well he is malevolent.  To think otherwise is to rationalize absurd reasoning.

3.  I agree god is not a human like us.  The tooth fairy isn't a human like us either.  They are both a myth.

4.  You are equating to not believing in god to be the same as believing that god doesn't exist.  Small wording difference, huge actual difference in reality.

5a. You debate because your only true god is illogical, unethical, extremely inept at salvation, and would basically be fired for incompetence.

5b. Further, you are not a simpleton but still think like a simpleton because of your indoctrination.  Meaning that you believe in ridiculous statements with no facts to back it up but with a lot of logic to prove otherwise.

 I think the theists you are talking about get defensive because they want to save your soul from helfire.  Personally, I just let other people live their lives as rationally as they know how.  If they want to discuss religion with me, then I discuss it.  Otherwise I mostly stay out of other people's lives.

Quite simply, we have a great deal of emotional investment in the whole theism bit. It (generally) works for us, we like it, and most of us have lived with it for a long time. I imagine that, as you go back through history, religious people have been less and less defensive. However, history has taught us that our respective gods rarely bother to stand up for themselves. This makes us a bit edgy, as it were.

I consider it to be similar to talking about a person's mother. Granted, it goes without saying that no one's mother is perfect, but you would find, I believe, if you examined the general populace, that most of us would get a bit defensive, were our mothers openly insulted or criticized. We form attachments to our religious beliefs, it seems.

You don't have to be a child to act like one. But thanks for further demonstrating the whole "defensive" bit.

*grins*  You truly do not like me, do you?  LosingStreak was much more aggressive in his reply to your statement yet you do not deem it necessary to respond to him.

A troll makes statements only to inflame people's emotion.  I'm not here to do that.  I'm here to rationally debate.

I posit that theists do, as a rule, act like children when someone tells them that god does not exist.

They stop listening, they run away, or they get very angry and cannot defend their beliefs.  So they resort to screaming and leveling unprovable threats of hellfire.  I see all of these qualities as being as a child.

While there are a few theists that do not do this, they are the EXTREME minority.  

Do you think otherwise?  How so?

Or am I just being a troll? 

What would you call a reality where you either MUST accept god or burn in hell for all eternity? That IS slavery. Do what I say or...well not only die, dieing is too fucking easy. After you die you will languish in torment for an eternity. You will plead to die.

WTF are you talking about? Christianity is NOT slavery? How? You are free to go about your business if you choose not to subscribe? Hell fucking no, you will burn for an eternity.

Do you know what is funny? You just referred to me as "you atheist". I was raised in church, my grandfather was a deacon, my mother plays piano for a baptist church three times a week, I was baptized when I was 7, I argued on gods side in my 20's, I was raised to think atheist=communist=satanist.

My "dogmatic" ass is going completely against not only what I was raised to believe but to put on the mantle of supposedly "pure evil". Yet I have three daughters I have yet to molest or slaughter. How odd of me.

You just did it. That "fire burns quite well without any effort from you" burns for me to roast in doesn't it? Where am I going when I die, tr1nity? Am I going to that fire that burns without your effort?

It should not seem so amazing that many will be thrown into the lake of fire. What is amazing is that any of us should be saved at all.

I suppose the only thing for an ad hoc would be an analogy.

 Heh, what's so good about 'christianity'? Seriously. If I had only the choice between 1. indulging obsessive hate and prejudice, submitting to the will of liars and theives, engaging in genocidal war and 2. atheism I'd have signed up for 2 long ago, I promise you. But how about you? Which is good of those two, you think?

Your arbitrary 'christian' line between good and bad doesn't impress God upon me one jot.

Since when have 'christians' had personal freedom to choose between good and bad, is that how your church is, is it? Nobody in your church has a heavy conscience? You're conflating your christian church with goodness. Prove your claim. 

When slavery was still all the rage, there were some slave owners that treated there slaves very well, no mistreatment, good living quarters, excellent food, etc. But if a slave ran away they would still be whipped or even executed.

Slavery is still Slavery no matter how much icing you put on it. You would say that the slaves still had free will insofar as staying or going, but free will means there is no such catch in place.

I suppose suspected witches had free will as well, if they confessed to being a witch they would be burned at the stake. If they did not confess they would be tortured until they did confess. They had free will, they could of freely chosen the easy way out by being burned at the stake and not having to go through the multiple rounds of torture.

Remember it is ok not to be a Christian and it is ok to have a lack of belief in Gods.

Hear, hear. 

I hate when Theists like that show up.

They come in here preaching fire and birm stone and make a big mess, and who has to clean it up? I do.

These are preciously the kind of comments that hurt Theism. 

I was just responding to the posts offered. A reason was brought up for one person being an atheist and I offered my rebuttals to that reasoning. How could perfection that maintains itself by the removal of imperfection be considered imperfect?

Now I have a little work to do here and I will post when I am finished. A few questions have been asked that will take me some time and effort to respond to. Stay tuned.

Rational,

Please leave it to the Moderators to denounce trolls.  Thanks.

You know, I was perusing over this brief response and started to wonder on something.  Now being raised baptist this statement does not surprise me in the slightest.  Ten years ago I probably would have nodded my head at this statement.

Now though, I'm starting to see something of the...evilness of religion.  This isn't the first part of unintentional evil I've noticed in religion, just a new aspect.

Why do christians find it amazing that any humans should be spared from an eternity in agonizing pain?  Even the christians that are really good people?

Religion beats into you that you are a worthless, evil, self-serving, little piece of shit.  And only through god's grace are you worth anything.

Anyone read about that woman that was held captive for like 9 years or something?  The guy beat her, raped her, tied her up, made her sleep in a box.  But even would let her walk into town occasionally alone.  Or even make a phone call from time to time.

How did he control her so well?  He did the same fucking thing as religion.  He pounded into her that she was a worthless piece of shit, and without him she was nothing.  He fed her lies after lies, saying that he "bought" her in an underground slave ring, and even had a deed on her life.  If she ran away the other members of the slave ring would kill her.  (This should be ringing alarms about how christianity uses hell).  Are not christians taught that their salvation has been "bought" with Jesus' sacrifice?  Can not god know everything thing you do, everything you think, and then punish you for it?

Then I sit at someone's desk at work fixing their computer and I read little Christian sayings, "Without you god I can't do anything..."

And I just think, "holy, fucking shit..."

Ah, free will. I love it!

Which is it, free will or "god has a plan for all of us"? They are completely antithetical, you know? Shit, I guess you don't.

Trinity,

I was agreeing with you on point 3, it's where I've been standing for a while. I'll ignore your irreducible complexity arguments for as long as you maintain the special plead to ignore point 3 wherever it contradicts the ID/creationist theoretical framework.

On the other hand, what is right about the supernatural proposition you've claimed is the only accurate supernatural proposition? You haven't said, nor have you fleshed out the details of that proposition beyond the implication of a "God mind" (of which there most definitely is explicit representation in other supernatural beliefs). 

 Additionally, I'm looking forward to your answer to my question re the logical composition of christian church and goodness.  

Firtly, thank you for responding. I don't normally get many responses, and it is good to have one's argumentation tested from time to time. At any rate, the bulk of your objections seemed to miss the point of the issue at hand, especially the main objection that I can never formally "prove" that emergent properties primarily arise from certain systems. WHilst this is true, the issue at hand, remeber was that the primary complaint I was dealing with was the insistence that naturalism could not account for certain properties. Obviously, I cannot formally prove relationships between entities, as Eloise pointed out, but empirical evidence can estbalish strong correlations, backed up by philosophical arguments which give credence to the suggestion that certain synergistic properties (Z) arise from substrates (X and Y etc). I am open to revising this proposition, but saying "X' cannot be disproved, is unhelpful and lacks substance as an argument. Much in the same way that we can establish an extremely strong correlation between the underlying substance of DNA, the emergent property of complex pathways of DNA, such that a final emergent result of this is the development of complex, emergent biological systems where there is a reciprocal, complex functioning interaction between DNA and protein and the other underlying functions of biological life. In the same way, there is reasonable reason to believe that the mind arises from a complex web of neuronal networks functioning reciprocally and emergently. So too that single exon of DNA is rather unhelpful by itself unless within a complex web of DNA-protein-regulatory node interaction, simarily, whilst neurons by themselves do not do much by themselves, 10 billion of them in self-organizing plastic complexity supplemented by a further 90 billion glial cells produces something quite irrecognizable from the individual neuron. That was my main point, many objections to materialism focus only on reductionism. At any rate, the correlation here is extremely strong, quite possibly as strong as that between DNA and biological organisms. And whilst I cannot absolutely prove the nature of the order of the functions, compiling empirical events, supplementd by philosophical arguments which undermine the plausability of contradistinctive positions, produce a strong set of points which need answering.

Even if you don't use it, this particular argument is used all the time, which is why it was necessary for me to flip it around. It's called the argument from despair. I am not trying to discuss what is "the meaning of life", or any soch associated discussion, rather, merely pointing out that the assertion that such ideas have any link to the metaphysical assertion of supernaturalism is unclarified.

Furthermore, most of your arguments seem to be from the perspective of Design. THis paper has nothing to do with the idea of Design, and you obviously misunderstand my article. When I say "supernaturalism accounting for a certain function" I am referring to the existence of such thing for example, like "beauty". These are called ad consequentiam arguments, or arguments from despair, of similiar vein to John Keates, who argued that NEwton destroyed the rainbow by explaining it. BY saying "Supernaturalism cannot account for these" I am not referring in any way whatosever to a posteriori arguments for God. IN fact, I am not referring to God at all, I am referring to the idea that there exists an immaterial, ethereal realm. Your main misunderstaning regarding my analogy (especially the Mozart analogy) seemed to be that I was arguing primarily against God. Whilst this is true for the latter part of the piece, that analogy, the analogy pertaining the brain and mind, the analogy pertaining to the car, in fact, all of the analogies, have nothing whatsoever to do with God or Design, and everything to do with the dichotomy between naturalism, the belief that all that exists is physical or derived from physical, and supernaturalism, the belief that some things are generated by "immaterial", by which I mean, properties and substance with no material basis. I tackle design in other papers, and when I say "accounting for it", I refer to specifically things like how the injection of an ethereal substance into the equation gives rise to certian abstract properties. Obviously, the two have no relation to each other. But you are severely confused. You are arguing against something which I was not arguing for, and you are arguing pertaining to a proposition which is not covered in my essay. In short, I was focusing on refuting the argument from despair, whilst you were focusing on promoting the argument from design. WHich suggests you did not grasp the main point of my arguments around which those particular analogies were constructed. yes, I realize the arguments I am refuting are ridiculous arguments, but that is the point. MAny people make them.

You're shooting yourself in the foot. The whole point of the article was to demonstrate the theistic God steals properties from the natural world. In your entire piece you brought nothing to the table that would refute that proposition, you just commited special pleading by asserting his exemption, it would be rather like saying that this goldfish is a goldfish, however, it is not, in fact, a goldfish.

The fact of the matter is that certain observations about the world do change the probability of GOd existing or not. This is the very foundation of a posteriori argument. It goes both ways, in that case, which is to say that no observation of the natural world could raise the probability of whether or not God exists. Which of course, is not true, the issue of whether or not God exists is anteceded by teh foundation of epistemology, our experience. What I'm trying to bring to the table is the proposition that certain observations decrease the probability in question because they would indicate that certain attributes by which we describe the entity in question would necessitate certain preexisting functions that necessitate natural functions. It does no good to sidestep this issue by appealling to God's transcendantalism, since the coherency of such propositions are the very issues under consideration.

Yes, I know all of this. Please look up "thought experiment" in the dictionary. The thought experiment is not my own. It belongs to David Chalmers, and the issue under consideration is whether or not if someone died of unnatural causes and was immedaitely replaced by a clone which had exactly the same properties and therefore exactly the same memeories and such, and would he be indistinguishable from Dave.

At any rate, the Swampwan issue is tertiary to the qualia issue, which you ignored, for which my purpose was the demonstration that Chalmer's thought experiment begs the question. The main thrust of this particular point was the fallacy of composition associated with the extant nature of matter. My issue was that conscious beings require a highly ordered structure of neurons to produce the functions of sensory equipment and memory formation and processing functions such that there can be a being having an experience, and that this system perishes upon organic death of the brain.

Huh? No. You haven't actually "answered" anything in my article. The main the thrust of my article was establishing that the nature of the mind (an attribute which we project onto God) necessitates certain attributes which punches a hole through the concept of the theistic God. You didn't like the emotional arguments, because you don't use them! But other people do use them.

Furthermore, your assertion, the argument from design, is false, very false, certainly not the only empirically observable phenomenon capable of creating complex structures. This diverges into a wholly different argument, of course, but I am a molecular biologist, who studies evolution and as luck would have it I can testify with a good deal of certainty that we can be extremely sure that biological life arose from a highly complex self-organizing process associated with the reproductive nature of biological systems, that system being evolution. FOr further discussion on the matter, please refer to my pieces on evolution, where as luck would have it, I happen to study these particular pheonomenon and hence can testify to the power of the theory.

At any rate, this is not the issue under consideration. The "justification" for God being Design in this sense misses the point of the argument I was making, the argument I was making was that the injection of the supernatural as a response to the argument from despair

I am aware of that, but you're missing the point of the analogy. The point of the analogy was to show one cannot amputate

a) A property from the thing of which it is a property

b) An emergence from the subsystem

Whilst the relationship between the mind and brain is orders of magnitude more complex, this particular function remians the same. The mind cannot be amputated from the brain for reasons I justifeid (albeit that most of this justifaction was inserted after you posted your response, my apolgies). Now, the reason the mind cannot be amputated from the brain is for a reason already covered, that being that amputation can only refer to substace, not property. And I think we can both agree that abstract properties of entities are emergent systems. This does not mean they are running around in some extant mind, merely that . I usually refer people to this article:

A Materialist Account for Abstractions - or - How Theists Misplace the Universe.

Note that I made nearly identical points which you ignored.

Now, on this matter, it is true by definition that an emergent property cannot be amputated from the system from whence it emerges. This is the concept of synergy. Consider a simple analogy. In molecular biology, we often study evolution of centromere regions in the chromosome by working with something called centomeric heterochromatin, where the structure of heterochromatin, is such that, in comparison to euchromatin ,its x10 folding sequece means it has a much higher resistance to gene expression, we can array Gene-node pathways on microarrays and then insertthe expressed genes into different regions of euchromatin and heterochromatin. The cells have mechanisms to ensure that their genomes are not overtaken by transposon elements which are necessary part of evolution. They do this by organizing regions into heterochromatin such that they halt the spread of retrotransposons. Now, with repeat-induced silencing, we can silence a whole GRNP network when the insertion of individual genes would not work.

DNA packaged into hetero often consists of short, repeated sequences not conding for protein, such as those of mammalian centromers. Euchromatin is rich in genes and other single-copy DNA sequences. This is not absolute, the trend suggests that some types of repeated DNA may be a signal for heterochromatin formation. Several hundred tandem copies of genes have been artificially introduced into germ lines of organisms, these arrays are often silenced and can sometimes be observed forming hetero under a microscope, when these genes are introduced singly, they are actively expressed as euchromatin

To speak of the emergent property being a seperate ontological category from the substrate in question would rather be like saying that I can isolate the property of heterochromatin, which is only a synergistic response to large scale gene pathways, into a thing unto itself. It isn't. It's a reciprocal function and a property of heterochromatin as a resistance to parastic elements of the genome that crop up because of evolution.

Now, the issue at hand is that the mind cannot be reifcated, as already covered, or thing-ized. "Reception" is a function that can only apply to entity, not property. Radio waves are things unto themselves, not properties of the radio recieving them. The mind does not work like that, the mind is a process the brain runs, and it can be shown that it is impossible to turn the mind into a thing, a thing that can hence be considered seperate from the brain. I cannot filter property from substance, similiarly, I cannot turn property into substance. This is the Cartesian error. Obviously, the proposition that the "mind" is recieved from some "supermind" is simply a worthless and unhelpful proposition which does nothing to solve the issue at hand. The chunk of essay inserted after your response will be posted below.

This is not entirely true. This was the problem with the qualia experiment. It is unhelpful to speak of a mind being recieved from another mind. Firstly, this is similar to the Homunculus fallacy, Consider in Philosophy of Mind the Homunculus Argument, which is a listed logical fallacy and an “answer” to the mind-brain problem (what translates objective physical events into subjective mental ones?) In the Homunculus fallacy, there is a “little man” reviewing the sense data rather like one would view a TV screen. That is what the word means, it means “little man”. Now, obviously this creates the regress fallacy. It makes no sense whatsoever to say there is another conscious agent viewing the sense data, because this is the very issue under consideration! We end up with an “infinite regress” of little men inside each other’s heads viewing the images each one receives. That is why the fallacy solves nothing. It cannot solve the problem of consciousness because its premise requires it to invoke consciousness. It is a question begging exercise. On the other hand, it makes no sense to say that one of the Homunculi does not need another Homunculus inside it, because this again, is the very issue under consideration!

Obviously, this particular argument is not precisely the same, but we can see how the idea that the brain "recieves" the mind is problematic. If we can show that the mind is a necessary, not a thing, but rather a process/property/emergent result, of a preexisting system, that raises issues for the existence of God, which is a mind without a body (defined by Swinburne)

Second, there are arguments which can be constructed to show that the mind is necessarily a property and process, not a thing unto itself, and these do not necessitate that we know what a "non-receptor" mind looks like. They will be detailed below.

You can't be serious. Did you read the piece on axiomatic identity? The point was that God has no identity because in terms of identity property, God is undescribed, eliminated from the universe of discourse. Furthermore, you are clearly sidestepping the issue at hand, which was that the injection of God creates an ad ignorantium proposition because a posteriori arguments take the following form:

X

If ~Y, ~X

Y

Nonsense, this is circular reasoning. I'm starting from the proposition that a mind requires a brain, which I have established.Specifically, the theist helpfully (for the purpose of the exercise) claims God to be a supernatural and incorporeal entity yet holds these specific attributes. To me, this reads somewhat like claiming that you have a magnet without a magnetic field. If we don’t have the physical entity, what do we have left over? This was the prior issue raised in the piece on the axiom iof identity. I need not assume that God does not exist to begin my premises, f course, the theist balks at this quantifiable categorization of an entity supposedly beyond nature and exempt from empirical considerations. This special pleading fallacy is dealt with below. Perhaps the analogy “a magnet without a magnetic field” is invalid. Perhaps “a magnet without a magnet” is better. To exist is to exist as something, and that something is itself. This is the axiom of identity and not even God can break in, as that would be absurd, as I have already established in my essay on Negative Theology. it becomes necessary to swiftly overturn theistic mischief of attempting to escape through the self-contrived loophole of God being exempt from naturalist considerations, because he is supernatural. This is little more than a fortiori for my position. The whole question under consideration is whether God has attributes specifically implying naturalism! The reassertion that God is “supernatural” is not a valid defense to this.

That was justified. This is true by definition. It becomes necessary to demonstrate that a certian function is emergent, but once we can, that it is not a seperate ontological category becomes true by definition (refer back to todangst's paper) because by definition, property cannot be amputated from substance. That would be meaningless. There is a reason we cannot speak of "whole body amputation". There is nothing to amputate.

Don't be ridiculous, this is circular reasoning again. The point I made was that if any of those porpositions are true, then a prerequiste for consciousness is imputed that God lacks. I did articulate precisely that the mind a) could not be reificated and b) hence could not be characterized as recieved from a super-mind and c) has certain requisites which the God entity as defined lacks

That was justified, but if you want it justified from a neuroscience standpoint, we can do it like this. The mind is emergent, but to some blurry degree, can be broken into components, albeit not modularly. This is characteristic of all emergent systems. We can consider this in numerous ways from a neuroscience standpoint. One was is via interagency:

The science of consciousness is all about unity of the lobes of the brain, and can be demonstrated likewise. We can establish that conscious control over the physical body and even over intention, whatever it may be, requires interagency, which is to say that it requires that the lobes of the brain are in proper communication. Let us take a case study to examine this. Imagine that you lose control of your hand. This does not mean it dies, but bizarrely, it appears to be acting of its own accord, without your volition. I am referring to what modern neuroscientists called apraxia, a situation which results in a longitudinal divide along the corpus callosum in epilepsy patients, which causes the dominant hand of the patient to undergo involuntary movement and uncontrollable motor functions. The hand might undo buttons, light cigarettes, even strike objects without the users control. However, combined magnetoencephelogram scanning and neurophenomenology conducted after Penfield died in 1976 have revealed that this very rare form of epillepsy apraxia is caused by the damage caused to the medial lobes by the incision along the major axis of the brain. There are different brain functions associated with voluntary movement, the cerebellum for proprioception, the grid neuron array for mechanoperception, Acetylocholin-based Somatic and visceral motor neurons which run up the body's planar axis through the center of the spinal cord and into the Sensory Somatic Cortex. The incision along the brain's long axis severs the connection between the lobes controlling movement, with the result that different areas of the brain may at different times be able to command the hand in different ways, but since they are not connected, conscious control over it is lost. Actually, apraxia is often used to make the neurophysiological distinction between intention of execution otherwise known as Executive function (Anterior Cingulate Cortex), and actual execution. In other words, we can show that the self loses control of the hand due to apraxia due to a division along the major long axis of the brain, and although the kinesthetic sensation is there, the sensation of conscious control over the hand is not. For this reason, most neurophysiologists consider that at the supramolecular level, there is an electrophysiological event which translates intent into action. The general area which does this has been pinpointed by fMRI as the medial fronal lobe. Recently, neuroimaging has revealed the area of the brain responsible for decisional inhibition to be in the parietaloccipatal system. The damage or destruction of this system results in the loss of executive functional inhibition, with the result that the subject may lose conscious control over many physiological functions. But since the area of the brain responsible for action is located on the other lobe of the brain, the result of an incision along the corpus callosum will be in rare cases the loss of ability for interagency neurological control over such functions, with apraxia, with the result that a conscious self loses control for periods of time over the limb in question unless treated. The very fact that it can be treated in a neurological fashion hence indicates that you are dead wrong. Since the brain is a contralateral control system, which means that damage to the posterior medial lobe results in involuntary movement in the opposite function, the same for the parietal-occipatal system, since the corpus callosum is the link between these two areas and the subcortical synaptogenesis which develops when basic motor skills do, the exertation of control over the movement is partitioned into four areas. In other words, we are seeing exactly what we expect to see with an epillepsy patient experiencing apraxia under IET stimulation.

The other way is via consideration of the nature of the mind, albeit not Tripartate, that it can be somewhat divided vertically. We can consider two things in this regard. One of them is "transcendatal experience", and the other is rather less pleasent, LEsch-Nyhan syndrome:

the experience I describe involves mechanisms which neuroscientists already understand, since the LeDoux and Greenfield models. I will explain it to you in greater detail, but the experience you describe, about the loss of sense of self, and the sense of time, and this explosive experience, is actually caused by a very specific neural correlate. I will explain it to you later. It has to do with the synaptogenesis overturn rate, and the associated action and inverse tug-of-war between the electrolytics of neurons and the transmitters which are involved in molecular ligand with receptors embedded in dendrites in the gap with the axon (the synaptic cleft), many things can cause this, including extreme overproduction of this molecule:

Serotonin, a critical neurotransmitter which can aid the junction of action potentials in reasonable levels, or impair conduction at very high levels due to its adverse affect on the ability of neurons to pump potassium out of the channels (effectively de-electrolyzing the neuron)

However, it can also be caused by drugs which perform a function called transmitter masking, since the associated inability of transmitters to perform the receptor interaction due to the imposter effect of opiates (or in the case of lithium, ions) means that the neurons become more resistant to synaptogenesis.

The point is, the experience I describe is well understood by neurophysiologists, albeit imperfectly understood. It is also correlated with Tripartate theory, albeit a newer model of it, associated with the idea of the Id restrained by the ego restrained by the superego (with correlates in the stem, pons medullas, amygdala, and cerebral cortex respectively) where conscious awarness and an associated structured logical world are functionally computed by the cortex, and the extreme over-production of neurotransmitters of functional masking drugs have an effect where the synaptic overturn rate is so high that the brain cannot comprehend the notion of logical abstraction and hence the experience you describe is generated. A wide variety of drugs can do this (either by functional masking or transmitter stimulating) including opiates, tryptamines, dopamine, serotonin (in high levels) and certain (unidentified) neural peptides. The neural effects of the experience due to the inability of logical abstraction include the loss of sense of self, time, memory, logical sequentiality of the world. This is why I sarcastically remarked to a friend that I really would not call the experience "transcendental", rather, from my training in physiology, I would call it "tripping".

Consider a similiar case study: The same function you refer to of the loss of the restraint of the Ego can be contradistinctivelly considered by a rather less pleasant experience: Lesch-Nyhan's syndrome. Lesch-Nyhan causes a mutation in the primitive second-tier of the brain, at the brain-stem, where locomotive signals are fired. There are two distinct effects of signal-crossing in the midbrain. The first is that a Lesch-Nyhan child is spastic and assumes an odd “fencer” position, as appearing with one leg diagonally bent and the opposite arm crooked backwards. The second effect is that the midbrain is deranged and the insane signal-firing causes it to “cross” signals with the neocortex. The effects are ghastly. In a fight between the primitive brain and the conscious neocortex, the primitive brain always wins, it has simply been there for a longer course of evolutionary history, it is more ingrained, it overrides the higher functions. Hence, the deranged vertical dividing of the Lesch-Nyhan brain causes the sufferer, during bouts or “attacks” when the signal firing goes berserk, to attack the people around him (always him, girls, having two X chromosomes, cannot get Lesch-Nyhan), and causes intense writhing and seizure-like convulsions. The most brutal effect of this is autocannibalism, the thrashing of the facial muscles causes the boy to eat away their own face, they will often rip out their own palate with their teeth and most of their lip flesh as well. For their own protection, they often have their teeth extracted.

The point is, my point that the mind is emergent, a complex result of a complex set of interactions between complex sets of neurons, peptides, channels, transmitters and sense data, as opposed to being recieved by some sort of supermind (this is proposiotionally unhelpful), whislt I can never absolutely prove the relationship, I can establish strong correlations supplementing my position. As we shall soon see, there are also philosophical arguments which can poke holes in the "receptor" idea. My overall conclusion, in general, is that it is quite impossible to rheificate, amputate, seperate, the mind from the physical body and the world the physical body inhabits, for which there is good evidence. SOme of these propostions, I shall argue, are synthetic. At any rate, this suggests that Feuerbach was correct, that we create God in the image we wish, because we give a "being" without a body attributes that require not only a body, but a world for the body to experience.

That was not the subject of that paper, I had already proved it here:

On Negative Theology and its Linguistic Implications For the Coherency of Certain Theological Concepts

Category error. You've obviously missed the whole point of the article, and made a special pleading fallacy to substantiate that missing of the point.

Now you've just torqued my definition of "system". You know exactly what I mean, and I won't even bother to go through it again.

How amusing coming from someone refusing to acknowledge the main thrust of the article itself, on the other hand, if you want a very precise account of biological evolution and how it builds such structures, then you will find in that same compilation I have already provided such.

Your assertion that my assertion was an assertion was to miss the main point of the article, which, obviously, was that establishing the necessity of the reciprocal function of the mind-brain relationship punches a hole through the concept of God. THe ontological principle can be applied here, since we are speaking of entities (Actually, not quite, God, having no identity, which was something justified in a prior article, has no entity).

Now, a final piece was inserted after your reading, but whilst you seem to have repeatedly accused me of making unsubstantiated assertions, this invariably is because you did not actually read or respond to the justifications in question. Some of these were contained in the piece inserted after your "refutation",but most were not.

If we consider my prior explanations of property dualism, it becomes necessary as an antecedant to my central thesis to explain certain positions regarding the relationship between naturalism and philosophy of mind in my view, which I can and will defend. It becomes necessary to consider two notions, those of consciousness and the mind. Both of these will recieve adequate empirical treatment in another piece pertaining to neuroscience. However, now for the purpose of diverting this paper to a Philosophy of Mind discourse, I wish to discuss them and their implications for the opposing positions of naturalism and supernaturalism, bearing in mind my prior points pertaining to the "Cartesian error" and the fallacy of reification which can be associated with supernaturalism.

Descartes and Leibniz came up with the "Identity of Indescribles", an ontological principle stating that objects X and Y are identical if all of their properties are, and thus it was different to speak of Descartes and "Descartes body", because of the their difference in property.

But the identity of indescernibles can be reduced to the absurd in many ways, and the Cartesian error is confuse property with substance. That is, if by Descartes we mean Descartes mind then it would be similar to arguing a dualism between water and wetness. Whilst physicalism is often conflated with the Identity of Mind Theory, non-reductive physicalism is a very important step forward in Philosophy of Mind because it recognized that physicalism does not necessary postulate no distinction between mind and brain. They have different properties, but are not the same entity. This is a critical break from the Identity of Indescernibles, because it recognizes what Descartes did not: Mental things are not entities unto themselves. This is the Cartesian error, since mental entities have different properties from the physical, they are considered wholly extant.

In reality, any proposition which attempts to explain these functions as the result of ethereal confusion without identity is not helpful, in fact it is completely absurd. Any requisites we find would immediately cut the legs out from under a proposition. If there were any properties of consciousness that were bound to naturalism the position is eliminated by reductio ad absurdum. Fortunately, there are such properties. Consciosuness requires sense organs as a requisite. WIthout sense organs, there is nothing to experience, and without experience, there is no consciousness. This is discussed in vastly greater depth in my central thesis. An entity can have experience but not consciousness, yet this relationship is not reciprocal. So, by extension we can conclude that consciousness has a neurologically complex brain as a requisite, and it is not helpful to the discussion to call it an entity per se, because this makes a fallacy of reification. There is a reason why Philosophers of Mind overwhelmingly reject the hypothesis in question, especially given its similarity to the hated qualia notion.

Invariably, the conflation between property and substance is found in theistic argument as well, confusing substratum with emergentism. It is necessary for theism to postulate consciousness and mental events as external, or seperate, from the physical such that they can speak of "God's mind" despite not being able tp speak of "God's body", since God has no body (again, consult the chapter on the Axiom of Identity for further reducing of this to absurd). Yet the error here is identical to Descartes. Calling consciousness substratum breaks down because we can consider the prerequisites as bottom-up, not top-down, so consciousness requires certain prerequisites which exist as substratum which give rise to property. I cannot have wetness without liquid. "Wetness" does not exist as a thing unto itself. Similarily, I cannot have consciousness without preexisting attributes. Consciousness is not a substrate. In fact, speaking of consciousness as a substrate is deeply, deeply unsatisfying, roughly as unsatisfying as Chalmer's qualia. For an obvious reason: It solves nothing. We want to know how the subjective experience arises, do we not? This is the most pressing question we can formulate. For a while I contemplated becoming a neuroscientist until I switched to molecular biology.

As I will argue here and in my presentation on neuroscience, it is necessary to consider consciousness an emergent property of the brain, even if not equivocant to the brain per se. For one, consciousness is a bottom-up process, which means that it is generated by structures which are not conscious per se, but can arise by the coalescance of these non-conscios structures into an emergent whole. Atoms are not conscious, neurons are not conscious, but brains do appear to generate some sort of being which is conscious. Furthermore, the degree to which this being is conscious depends on the complexity of the neuronal netowrks. But consciousness is not generally reciprocal. I can speak of worms having some primitive version of "thoughts", but it is dubious to suggest they have consciousness. Furthermore, consciousness is in an ontogenic continuum, that means it develops as the human foetus develops. If consciousness does depend on experience, then by definition experience of something, where that "something" is non-consious, ie the external world, is necessary, which would indicate the top-down nature of consciousness. I cannot speak of consciosuness without experience, and memory as well (as per the Greenfield model). Emergence not substratum. If we take this idea and run with it, since consciousness has experience of non-consciousness as a prerequisite, consciousness is extrinsic. That means that instead of being a property of the conscious entity per se, it is a property that is associated with the interaction between the entity and the non-conscious world. When we think about it, this is obvious. Consciousness is not external, however. If I am born with no sense input whatsoever, the congential defects associated with all external and introperceptive senses, will I be born conscious? No. There is nothing to be conscious of. The brain will unravel quickly with no immediate input (see my paper on neuronal networks for a further discussion). Two cloned brains will not be having the same consciousness because they cannot, by definition, be experiencing the same thing. I cannot be in your body, unless part of my body necessary for consciousness (my brain) was somehow transplanted into your body without a brain. But I cannot be amputated from my body (and when I say "my body" I mean my brain as well), just as you can't either. The reasons for this are those I have just cited. Consciousness is necessarily extrinsic and emergent, with prerequisites that arise from non-conscious entities (there is a difference between "non" and "un" in this case), which requires expereince of an external world, which hence cannot be conscious by definition, cannot be amputated from the body (there is no such thing as a "whole body amputation" because there is nothing to amputate). The reason it cannot be amputated is for those just discussed. It is not a thing.

Considering this property dualism idea, where mental events are emergent properties of physical events such that they become lower ontological status, albeit not wholly reducible to neural actions themselves (requires neuronal networks) would punch a hole straight through the concept of the theistic God, which is the central drive of my thesis, to continue my argument that the mind, and the consciousness of the mind, are emergent properties, and cannot be reificated to suit a metaphysical notion that we project our attributes of consciousness onto "God".

As I said before, consciousness is discernable. I am having my conscious experience. Not someone or something elses. Furthermore, someone else or something cannot have my conscious experience. The paperweight on my desk is not having my conscious experience, nor are other people, or that tree outside.

On this particular issue, I am fortunate to have the strong arm of most of contemporary Western Philosophy behind me. The nature of consciousness, whilst very poorly understood, is at least clarified by the fact that we can discern some salient facts about its prerequisites.

Now, as per the driving point of my thesis, if consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, not an extant substratum, , then this punches a whole in two concepts simultaneously, killing two birds with a single shotgun shell:

a) The traditionally religious dualistic idea. There is God, and God has a mind, but not a body. That's impossible.

b) The unusual inversion of monoism, where consciousness is the ultimate substrate. That's impossible. Consciousness has requisites which this cannot fulfill. Furthermore, consciousness has not identity because it is not an entity. Just as Quine said one cannot have an entity without an identity, so too, if what we are describing is not an an entity, but a property, then it doesn't have identity, but rather, is an attribute of something which is an entity hence has identity. So, the fundamental linchpin of this argument is that the postulation of the theistic God would necessarily require one to make an error of conflation between property and substance. Just as I cannot amputate "wetness" from water, so too I cannot amputate the "mind" from the "brain". The mind is not a thing unto itself, indeed, the mind is not a 'thing" at all, and such talk is inherently unhelpful. The consequences of this for the theistic postulation are truly irrevocable, because the theistic position necessitates the transcription of emergent properties onto fundamental substratum.

b) is the fundamental confusion over dualism and monoism, whereby we speak of property dualism versus substance dualism (the latter is Cartesian). Is the mind the same thing as the brain? No. Does that mean that the mind is extant and dualistic? Hell no. Is the brain absolutely necessary by definition for a mind the same way that a tired person is necessary for tiredness? Hell yes. When I say the mind is not the same thing as the brain, I mean that in the same sense that The positon of consciousness being some sort of underlying substance is particularly unhelpful when it comes to solving the problem of consciousness, because it generates a rhetoric tautology. Consciousness is consciousness. Yes, well, that's great. So, what is consciousness? Ironically, the theist answer to this is an unhelpful as is possible to be, since they invoke consciousness as the answer to the issue at hand.

Consciousness is defined by change. Consciousness is directly alterable, changeable, fluid and continuum,erception is NOT an underlying entity because it is extrinsic. That is why it is completely individual to single entities, in other words, therefore, consciousness is discernable, we can speak of certain things being conscious, and others not. Furthermore, the experience of consciosness emerges from the interaction of brain and sense data. This is why my conscsiouness is different from that of you, or your friend, and my experience different from a bat, and furthermore, it is meaningless to speak of consciousness as remaining the same for an entity between any moments t1 and t2. Consciousness is defined by change, and the most obvious change is the most universal: People die.

What can we conclude from all this? Not a great deal without the supplementing neuroscience piece (which can be read in my compilation), but even without delving into the complexities of action potentials, neurons and networks, transmitters and ion channels, we can conclude, at least from a philosophical standpoint, some points:

1) The mind and its associated consciousness are not substance, they emerge as a result of a complex brain, although we aren't entirely sure how (I discuss possible models in the technical piece).

2) Since they are extrinsic, by which I mean that "thoughts" are not actually "properties" of neuronal networks per se, rather like weight is not a property per se of you, but depend on the world line of the conscious being in question, it follows logically that such considerations are bottom-up constructs, which is to say that just as we cannot amputate eletricity from electrons, so too we cannot amputate your mind from either your body. This is covered in much greater detail in my central thesis

3) We cannot amputate consciousness and the mind from the body because they aren't things unto themselves. That was the principle error of the Ontological Principle of Identity of Indescrernibles, and the error is forced to be made in order to accomate the theistic God, which makes it inherently absurd.

4) The extrinsic nature of consciousness applies to the whole world line. Consciousness is defined by change, your consciousness at t(1) was not the same as it was at t(2), because your experience at t(1) was not the same as at t(2). Nor was your mind. As you are reading this, entire patterns of neuronal networks in your brains are shifting and overturning. The brain is surely the most fluid organ in terms of its plasticity, and this plasticity is born out in the functioning mind (vast details are provided on this in the technical piece). This applies to spatial experience as well. Two cloned brains won't have the same consciousness, since they won't have the same experience, and that will have a proportional effect on the physiological brain. In other words, consciousness, as a property of the complex brain, which exists in a continuum fashion, is not a fixed property whatsoever. That we cannot amputate consciousness from the body, so too we cannot amputate it from the external world either (discussed in much greater detail in the technical piece). Invariably, we are forced to confront the fact that this would effectively render the theistic God, outside time and cause and effect, outside an external world to experience, a mangled concept, because it treats a conscious mind as if it were possible to exist as a free-floating entity in the atemporal void. This is gibberish. We can start building the requisites for consciousness from the ground up. First is temporal substrate, it is meaningless to speak of thoughts and such without temporal sequentiality, and since consciousness is fluid and ever-changing, extremely plastic and extrinsic by definition, such would be inherently absurd. Second is an external world, it is meaningless to speak of experience with nothing to experience, third is non-conscious matter to form an object which will exude the properties in question and form the emergent whole (the brain). Fourth is ontogenic development, consciousness develops from non-consciousness, not vice-versa (the latter proposition has been reduced to the absurd, but aside from that, it is simply unhelpful to the issue at hand).

So, this is a brief synopsis of some of my positions pertaining to certian Philosophy of Mind issues. I will defend property dualism as opposed to radical eliminativism, as I will emergentism, but am still a staunch physicalist. Furthermore, I believe that considering the nature of the conscious mind from a perspective of its prerequisites (as I have done) punches a hole through the theistic God, which makes postulations regardinng the nature of consciousness antithetical to my above suggestions. As you see, I have not clarified my position on consciousness above. All I have done is eliminate absurd propositions on the matter, like the theistic ones. At any rate, whilst I do not claim to have "The Answer", I find the topic to be perfectly open to discussion, despite the mystery surrounding it, and have opened such discussion in my neuroscience piece. These two pieces combined provide a principle driving force for my central thesis in which I present a controversial position:

Talk of the Existence of the Theistic God commits a Category Error.

Now,

As Paul Drayper put it:

"Consciousness and personality are highly dependent on the brain. Nothing mental happens without something physical happening." Now Michael Tooley, a philosopher at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has stated five lines of evidence in support of this claim. Let me summarize just briefly that evidence. First, when an individuals brain is directly stimulated and put into a certain physical state, this causes the person to have a corresponding experience. Second, certain injuries to the brain make it impossible for a person to have any mental states at all. Third, other injuries to the brain destroy various mental capacities. Which capacity is destroyed is tied directly to the particular region of the brain that was damaged. Fourth, when we examine the mental capacities of animals, they become more complex as their brains become more complex. And fifth, within any given species, the development of mental capacities is correlated with the development of neurons in the brain. Thus, the conclusion that, "Nothing mental happens without something physical happening," seems inescapable.

But if nothing mental happens without something physical happening, that strongly implies that the mind cannot exist independently of physical arrangements of matter. In other words, we do not have a soul. And this is exactly what we would expect if naturalism is true. But if theism is true, then our minds should not depend on our brains for their existence; we should have souls. Also, if theism is true, then God is a disembodied mind; Gods mind is not in any sense dependent on physical arrangements of matter. But if nothing mental happens without something physical happening, that is evidence against both the existence of souls and the existence of any being who is supposed to have a disembodied mind, including God. Therefore, the physical nature of minds is unlikely if theism is true, but what we would expect if naturalism is true.”

Now, we can conclude that the nature of consciousness would indicate that it is fluid, emergent, and extrinsic. I, personally, prefer this model of interaction:

It is generally the bottom one I prefer, but at any rate, the issue at hand here is the nature of the mind, and I can justify, as you will note, my propositon that we can establish certian attributes and prerequistes for the mind, and that these raise problems for your conceptions. Certianly, you would be in rather a quagmire if the above model applied to mental-physical events. How could God have thoughts? How could you have thoughts upon your death?

At any rate, the functional interplay between neuronal networks and mental events, regardless of which way one arranges their reciprocality, is definitely there, such that the requistes for building a conscious mind come from non-conscious things, the synergistic result of their workings produces the mind as a whole. IN neuroscience we call this interagency functioning, without which, the functioning mind...well, would not be functioning. At any rate, the prerequsites for consciousness would imply that the nature of the mind is contradistinctive to the theistic proposition. Because the only way their propositon could make sense is to make a fallacy of reification and to amputate the mind from the external world, and call it extant. But it isn't extant, in fact, it is the very opposite, because it is fluid by nature. Invariably, when we consider philosophy of mind, Cartesian materialism is reduced to the absurd, and the theistic proposition about God's mind is taken down with it. This would invalidate your argument from design even if I didn't have to go through evolutionary processes, because it is circular reasoning: COnsicousness, hence consciousness. Speaking of the God entity, saying that the mind is recieved from a supermind, is reduced to the absurd because of the Cartesian error, but also because it is an infinite regress, a worthless proposition that generates a rhetoric tautology. Your propositional solution to the nature of the mind and consciousness, and the required postulations to substantiate this ridiculous notion of the theistic God, a body iwthout a mind, are absurd.

You can't accuse me of making a slew of unjustifed assertions if you aren't going to read the justifications for the propositions, or respond to them. You must concede that if I can establish these prerequisties of the mind of non-concious ubstratum, process, fluidiity, organic machinery, neuronal networks, an interaction between non-conscious systems and emergent conscious ones for the existence of the latter, then I have successfully punched a hole in both your concept of God and your concept of life after death. It is meaingless to speak of life after death for the reasons I already spoke of in the essay, albeit that these were covering a different argument, the same response can still apply in this case.

But this is not the issue under consideration. The issue under consideration is that the supernaturalist misunderstands naturalism and physicalism and insists that abstract property cannot be accounted for via physical systems. This is ridiculous. THe other issue under consideration was that the invocation of supernatural substance does not seem to have any relevance to how the abstraction question arises, and the main thrust of this argument was that it would be making the error of conflation, whilst simultaneously setting up a meaningless dichotomy, for which their own solution does not adress the issue at hand. "Design", the argument employed above, misses the issue at hand because it has nothing to do with what we are talking about. The invocation of an amaterial ethereal existence without any clarified ontological status is propositionally worthless.

 yeah ronin-dog, what is with them theists ?

I just don't get it ? Hey I try .... 

, while I got no big problem with that atheistic Jesus philosophy,

Jesus ? What is there to really disagree with ?

He say I am god , Ye are gods, this is heaven, yup , me too .... thanks atheist jesus !

? ? ?  

Actually the "hangman" as you so lovingly call your god, goes beyond mere exicution. Not only does he send desease and plauge that the living suffer from while alive, those who dont bow to him are not only exicuted but sent to hell to be tortured forever without end.(according to your book)

Hell is not a "stop" it is revenge from a petty tyrant who crys like a baby when people dont pay him attention. Problem is not that he actually exists|(he doesnt), the problem is people actually believing he exists. I dont, nor will I ever worship tyrants, fictional or real.