Let me phrase it differently: science defines which laws exist by ruling out alternatives. So an experiment that yields a certain predicted outcome doesn't itself prove a law. I brought that up because while we can rule out our old theistic theories on how the world operates, we can't yet rule out other aspects of their beliefs. We just have our five senses, and with those senses we can create tools that have other senses, but there is always more that we can't detect. Prior to the microscope, we had no idea germs existed. Prior to the discovery of radio waves, we had no reason to think they existed either. Similarly, we can't rule out the possibilities of extra dimensions that intersect ours, or new forms of energy and matter. That is why science only works in negatives and probabilities. It means more than "nothing at all."

When it comes to my personal beliefs on existence (which aren't Christian), my own reasoning is that my consciousness existing just once is more improbable than my consciousness existing more than once, given that time is infinite or recursive. A once-off universe doesn't make sense to me. Also, the idea that the force of my awareness is the result of atomic matter alone is implausible. My awareness is as of yet undetectable and unmeasurable, and even finding the consciousness switch in our brains wouldn't make it any more measurable. It'd be like theorizing that your light switch generates the electricity in your light bulb. Regarding the idea of god, I don't see any reason to seperate out another being to be the cause of all existence. I much prefer the idea of the Tao, the singularity with infinite regressions, in which everything is relative rather than absolute.

I don't think atheists are bad people--I am one, after all--but I find that we don't have the same easy access to community-based support groups that our theistic neighbors do. Of course there are secular alternatives to everything religion does, they just don't come as easily or automatically.

Any kind of forceful movement creates an unhelpful backlash. The Taoist way is to let change happen naturally. Education and rising standards of living made more atheists than Dawkins and Bill Maher ever will.

In reply to this comment by demon_ix:
But you just contradicted yourself... You say in one sentence that if the LHC fails to detect the Higgs boson, it'll be proven not to exist, and then you say that "what we can't prove doesn't exist" is a false statement.

Einstein's quote is correct, but it's meaning doesn't relate to what we're talking about. The best way to counter a scientific theory is by a single example of where that theory is fallacious. If someone were to claim that all odd numbers are prime, all you would have to do in order to "prove" him false is demonstrate that his statement fails in one specific point, like the number 9.

There is a massive difference between "what we can't prove doesn't exist" and "what we can prove doesn't exist, doesn't exist". The first statement actually should be "what we can't yet prove, may exist, but may not", which in scientific terms means nothing at all.

My gripe with your comment, though, wasn't because of the science remarks, but rather over the atheist ones. I'm not sure if you noticed it yourself, but your comment is built on a premise that atheists never do any of the good things Christians do, like participating in the community and so on.

I'm not sure why Christians believe Atheists are the scum of the earth. I don't know why you believe that if I don't believe in the story of the Jewish zombie who was his own father and is coming to save you, but only if you pretend to eat his flesh, drink his blood and communicate your desires to him telepathically, that makes me a bad person. I'm really not.

And about the argument from ignorance, believing in God is an argument from ignorance. You assert a claim that something exists, even though you yourself acknowledge there is no way to prove it, and that it has to be taken on faith alone. That is the very definition of an untestable theory. Your comment was based on the claim that religion is somehow superior, when the core of religion is the deity, or God.

To conclude, I'm a little annoyed right now at work, so don't take this post as me being offensive, please. It's really not meant that way. Maybe I should have put some emoticons all over it to express that

In reply to this comment by Lodurr:
Science does in fact work through falsifiability. If the LHC doesn't end up finding a Higgs Boson, then the Higgs Boson theory in its present form will have been disproven. That is just how science and experimentation works. "What we can't prove doesn't exist" is an inherently false statement and incorrect world view because there are countless things we cannot test or prove that must exist. To quote Einstein, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

I wasn't arguing from ignorance because I wasn't asserting an untestable theory. All I said in my comment was that many religious practices have personal and societal benefits that atheists tend to undervalue because they are associated with religion. I've seen data that supports my theory.

One argument that he deconstructs is the "cells are replaced so we're not even the same body" argument. Surprisingly, he doesn't mention that brain cells have traditionally been held NOT to do so, though this may have been an abandoned argument in light of recent studies that suggest some regrowth\repair may be possible.

Cells are indeed replaced quite quickly at the periphery of our body, like the limbs, the stomach/intestine (remember that they technically face the exterior!!), but cells in mission critical organs like the brain and the heart are not repaired when they die, most of the time. Yes, in the brain cells are replaced and pathways are rewired, although with inevitable change, but the heart remains mostly the same, always beating. Thus even a minor heart problem can be crippling and irreversible. That's also why bypass surgery is sometimes the only solution when an artery attached to the heart becomes clogged (a recent study showed 40% regeneration of heart tissue over 70 years, while we thought 0% some years ago).

It's also been suggested that consciousness is all post-hoc. That everything we experience has already happened, even if it's fractions of the second later. That we "feel" like we've made decisions but really we're just experiencing the machinations of the brain's processes after the fact. This works pretty well for dualism, because then you no longer have to account for influence on the process. (However, it blows a hole through the theories of most dualists, who are arguing for a soul and the free will that accompanies it.)

If we look closely, we can see it cannot be otherwise. What you call "consciousness" here is really "conscious awareness", the intertwining of consciousness and awareness. Consciousness is intentional, though not really causal, and awareness is plainly passive. Consciousness is really like a recursive loop program, which has a variable (the object that is aimed at) which can refer to any kind of object in the world, be it the mental world or the perceptual, outside world. Consciousness cannot then be said to be responsible of the actions that follow it aiming at an object, nor can it be said strictly to be choosing what to aim at, but what we know is that this is where our illusion of freedom comes from: the selecting of objects to be aimed at intentionally. No doubt part of it is unconscious, like when you turn your head after seeing something move on your peripheral vision, but since consciousness is recursive, it must be able to change the reference of its own variable. That does not mean it has absolute freedom in choosing the new reference, in fact it can't be since we're not omnipotent, but it must have a means to do so, otherwise the very existence of self-awareness would be useless. If consciousness was strictly determined by the "outside" i.e. by external processes from elsewhere in the brain, then consciousness + awareness would not give rise to the kind of self-awareness that is evident in higher mammals. As we know, evolution does not do things for no reason, i.e. it must have a purpose, which gives an adaptation benefit. Here the adaptation benefit could be that by doing this we can reflect on some of our own thought processes and can influence their course (by "concentrating" on them, making them the aim of our intentional consciousness). It may also be that we can broaden our intentional objects to things which are not in our immediate senses/memory, i.e. imagination.

You are right though that dualism is not that easily dismissed, but it is always in the end shown to be either naïve, unfounded or plainly superfluous (i.e. useless per Ockham's razor).

wow you have shitty facebook friends. I wouldn't be able to handle that discussion. Mostly because I do not have the time required to untangle their own confusion (how do you defend the existence of something by using the belief that that something exists to do it?) It's called a recursive definition...(GNU anyone?)

The video ended at the precise moment when the fabric of space and time ripped open. This result was of course due to the infinite recursion emitted by the manufacturing of the clock of clocks, referring to itself in the analog while outputting digital data. It chortled to itself, "Take that, Large Hardron Collider."

There's a similar Flash game called Light-bot. Not quite as detailed, but still has functions, recursion, etc.

The Pirahã are fascinating for so many ways. Their language is amazing: no words for colors, no numbers past 2, it can be whistled or hummed and there is some belief that their language has no recursion (which Noam Chomsky hypothesized was the essential property that enables language). They also have no gods, no spirits, they don't believe in anything they can't actually see.

So they are breaking Chomsky's theory and they destroy the (Christian) idea that we are all born with an innate need/understanding of God. Truly a fascinating people.

>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^Sniper007:
Furthermore, these 'advancements' only last ONE GENERATION. They are NOT recursive: The children of bio genetically enhanced parents are going to have to pay for the same procedures.

Cell phones were very expensive at first but now they're relatively inexpensive (and work much better). This happens with pretty much any technology.
Also, "one generation" takes on a whole new meaning as life expectancies continue to increase. Remember when 60 was old?


The most important part of your reply is highlighted.
That we can even sit here today, and think back 10-15 years ago, that we believed 60 to be old...its the new 40.

How fast has modern medicine progressed in the past 20 years alone, to already greatly expand life expectancy to a point where it changes a moral paradigm on what we think as old...within our own lifetime.

Just think about that for a second..

That alone...isn't that a bit compelling ?

Given that technology is progressing exponentially, the next 20 years is gonna be a doozy.

>> ^Sniper007:
Furthermore, these 'advancements' only last ONE GENERATION. They are NOT recursive: The children of bio genetically enhanced parents are going to have to pay for the same procedures.


Cell phones were very expensive at first but now they're relatively inexpensive (and work much better). This happens with pretty much any technology.

Also, "one generation" takes on a whole new meaning as life expectancies continue to increase. Remember when 60 was old?

Yeah, so we don't have to worry about the economy because we'll develop ultra advanced bio genetic implants... that are... free?

Cause last time I checked, that crap is expensive. In 5-10 years, those same super smart engineers are going to be focusing all their energy on putting food on their plate, not evolving their species through unnatural methods.

Furthermore, these 'advancements' only last ONE GENERATION. They are NOT recursive: The children of bio genetically enhanced parents are going to have to pay for the same procedures. It's just not a sound business model compared to the alternative: One perfectly formed human being is free. Just screw your wife. Poof. A child.

Mainstream newspapers are often fooled by bogus stories because they're essentially playing the telephone game with other news publications, and news publications usually don't even bother to cite any sources. It's virtually indistinguishable from a rumor mill. They need to cite and recursively check and investigate sources instead of blindly parroting each other.

Recursion is a dish best served with forks.

From Wikipedia: The Droste effect is a Dutch term for a specific kind of recursive picture, one that in heraldry is termed mise en abyme. An image exhibiting the Droste effect depicts a smaller version of itself in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This smaller version then depicts an even smaller version of itself in the same place, and so on. Only in theory could this go on forever; practically, it continues only as long as the resolution of the picture allows, which is relatively short, since each iteration exponentially reduces the picture's size. It is a visual example of a strange loop, a self-referential system.

I that a for loop or recursive method?

Westy's sentence is recursive.

By the way... for a present ONLY language.. did you catch the subtitles used..
"Afterwards, he fell down"

I'm no grammar expert, but it appears there is a time based narrative in their language.

^ Yeah, but now I can't see any more re-dubbed versions of this scene. It's like we just reached the end of the recursion.