Freedomain Radio

For a bit more advanced ideas on this topic I suggest Julian Jaynes theory of 'Bicameralism'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

 

This theory is probably the most interesting and accurate as to how the concept of 'gods' originated and evolved in early mankind. I highly recommend his book on his theory, 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'.

I am saying that we must have subconscious memories from before we met our parents, that's all.

We cast our own shadows on the screen of life, but it's not a dead screen. The screen is alive, and responds to our projections. To say that life is alive sounds dumb, but our minds do have a tendency to conceptualize life and in that way put up an un-alive image of life. So that's why I want to point out the obvious.

So I'm not saying that God is an answer, but that we humans' knack of relating to an enormous variety of things includes relating to the experience of being alive. And that this knack is one likely source of human ideas of God. And then there are layers, millennia of layered theological thought, superstitions, reasonings stacked high on top of anyone's original experiences and irrationality goes to town, has gone to town, and hey, irrationality is always going to be a risk with this species. Hard to picture it otherwise.

Thanks so much for the Jaynes link, Ricky. I hadn't read about his theory before and found it very interesting. 

Its not "subconscious memories".  Its just the way our brain evolves to raise the chance of us breeding.  Just study evolution some more and every one of your silly statements will be explained.

 

 I'm not seeing curiosity.  Which of her statements are silly and why?

Old Whig:

 I'm not seeing curiosity.  Which of her statements are silly and why?

 

I am saying that we must have subconscious memories from before we met our parents, that's all.

Is a lie which is stated as a fact.  If someone wasn't offended by this falsehood a person could laugh at it.

 

 

 

We cast our own shadows on the screen of life, but it's not a dead screen. The screen is alive, and responds to our projections. To say that life is alive sounds dumb, but our minds do have a tendency to conceptualize life and in that way put up an un-alive image of life.

That is completely subjective and I'm able to disagree with the whole thing.

 

 

So that's why I want to point out the obvious.

The things stated as obvious are in fact, false.  Either from the stance of science or subjective points of view they are wrong.  Stating things which are not true as facts is a great way to get the stupid public to follow you, priest have been doing it for longer than any of us know. 

 

 

So I'm not saying that God is an answer, but that we humans' knack of relating to an enormous variety of things includes relating to the experience of being alive. And that this knack is one likely source of human ideas of God.

This person wasn't there when someone thought up the idea of god and if you notice they are using the "G"od which points to one of the newer god that has been created.  Because the repeated use of the "G"od it shows the writer is not even thinking about this objectively.  Because we were raised in a civilization saturated with religious beliefs and morals its going to take a great deal of studying to become detached from our current ideals unless we are able to do a test. It would be easy to raise a group of people from birth without any religious influence at all to see the type of culture and beliefs that would form. Its not that easy but its very do able.

 

And then there are layers, millennia of layered theological thought, superstitions, reasonings stacked high on top of anyone's original experiences and irrationality goes to town, has gone to town, and hey, irrationality is always going to be a risk with this species. Hard to picture it otherwise. 

 That is because its in our living memory which gets passed to other living people.  If we were ever to stop the chain the theological thought, superstitions, etc would come to an end.

 

 

 

 I guess I had assumed that Testudiness was referring to experiences in the womb, which we do have and do form us.  The womb is not nearly as sound proof, I don't think, as your fingers in your ears.  I disagree with what she says about literally seeing much that would affect our development but  "a lie which is stated as a fact" strikes me as too strong a way to put it.  Lloyd deMause talks about fetuses either making "friends" with the placenta or finding it to be an enemy - they've been filmed, via ultrasound, snuggling up to it and/or using it as a pillow, or fighting with it.  He uses that evidence to explain artists who create monsters.  And priests who have visions of demons, stories of vampires, etc.

Having read that in one of his books, I didn't find Testudiness' speculations strange at all.

[edit] I don't know if it's from experience talking to her or extrapolation, but you're right that she does seem to want to cling to some mystical something.  I just tend to think that poetry and art are valuable and wonderful things and I enjoy them when I read them in her posts.

Well, I'm going to reappear in this aborted thread one last time, not to respond to Stonegaol's gratuitous name-calling, but to defend my identity against my defender (or at least apologist) Old Whig, who refers to me as a "her" . . . for the official record, Testudines is a male named Scot. Granted, I have the round cheeks and big hair . . . and maybe the colourful blue sweater in my thumbnail is a contributor to the female impression, or maybe the intuitive nature of my posts. I suppose other than having a pair and thinking of scoring with the females when sexually aroused, I would be a female, but such, I do aver, is not the case.

 Urk!  Sorry about that!

When people state subjective and wrong information as facts increasing misinformation I will happily call the person a lier to hopefully help prevent others from being fooled by the person's falsehoods. 

gdw:

As we know matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted, it follows that matter and energy was NEVER created.  Then why do some seem so resistant to accept this as something that makes "sense?"

I am thinking it comes from our own birth.  That is, we, as individuals, had a beginning.  We feel like we were "created" by our parents.  We see this reflected in all living things.  They are birthed into being.  As such, we anthropomorphize EVERYTHING.  Non-living matter included.  We assume that as we had a "beginning," why then not everything else.

So, we ask, if we were "created" by our parents, and they their parents, who started it all?  Who created the non living things?  So, the Abrahamic version of a god is no different than Zeus, created by us to answer where lightening comes from.

 

Of course the fallacy here is that we may begin in our current form at birth, but we do not begin to exist, as far as our matter goes.  We are simply converted matter that our parents consumed, and as we grow we are simply converted matter that we have consumed.  So we have always existed, jut not in out current state, and our matter will continue to exist after our death, just in a decayed form, then eventually absorbed into plants, eaten by animals, etc.

Sorry for being a latecomer to this - I didn't read all the replies. If someone has already said the following, please disregard.

Here is a relevant and recent post from PZ Myers: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/04/sunday_sacrilege_that_other_th.php#more

I am not so sure about matter and energy not being able to be created or destroyed under any circumstances... Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't there certain extreme circumstances where this can happen? At any rate, if it is true, the interesting question, to me, becomes, why just this amount of matter and energy? What determined that the universe would have the particular amount that it does, no more, no less?

At any rate, if we are simply converted matter, then we have not always existed. We *are* particular arrangements of matter, not the matter itself. Your body replaces most of the matter that was once 'you' every so often, yet you are still you. If that matter gets rearranged in a not so pleasant way, you will cease to be. The particular organization of matter is now defunct. Matter remains matter. It doesn't gain some special 'you' property when it is part of your body. Many particles in your body may have been in Socrates' body.

What I am saying is that even if matter, even the matter that makes up our bodies, has always existed, it does not follow that we therefore have always existed, just in a different form. For it is the current form of this matter that IS us. To say 'different form' is to say 'not us'.

eulercircles:

I am not so sure about matter and energy not being able to be created or destroyed under any circumstances... Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't there certain extreme circumstances where this can happen? At any rate, if it is true, the interesting question, to me, becomes, why just this amount of matter and energy? What determined that the universe would have the particular amount that it does, no more, no less?

It has cases when matter is destroyed or energy is created but it goes back and forth.  You can't forget Energy = Mass * speed of light squared.

Stonegoal:

It has cases when matter is destroyed or energy is created but it goes back and forth.  You can't forget Energy = Mass * speed of light squared.

Ah, yes. I am not completely up to speed on cosmology, but I do find it fascinating. What about vacuum fluctuations, though? I thought that quantum theory described certain probabilites where a particle might spontaneously come into being with no prior cause... ? There are those who think quantum theory, or at least certain aspects of it, are conceptual dead ends. I really don't understand any of it and have been looking for books that explain it non-mathematically...

Thanks for the correction.

I have heard of quantum theory and seen some videos of it.  I have not seen the direct effect of such science so I do not put belief in it.  Why should I believe in something which I do not see the cause and effects of?  Unless the information can be used by me somehow I do not wish to learn it.  Enjoyment is a form of use.

I require information on cause and effect for me to assume any information is true.  If I see neither Cause or Effect, believing such a thing better not take my resources.(sorry I'm thinking about the ideas people are forcing onto me about Climate Change)

eulercircles:

gdw:

As we know matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted, it follows that matter and energy was NEVER created.  Then why do some seem so resistant to accept this as something that makes "sense?"

I am thinking it comes from our own birth.  That is, we, as individuals, had a beginning.  We feel like we were "created" by our parents.  We see this reflected in all living things.  They are birthed into being.  As such, we anthropomorphize EVERYTHING.  Non-living matter included.  We assume that as we had a "beginning," why then not everything else.

So, we ask, if we were "created" by our parents, and they their parents, who started it all?  Who created the non living things?  So, the Abrahamic version of a god is no different than Zeus, created by us to answer where lightening comes from.

 

Of course the fallacy here is that we may begin in our current form at birth, but we do not begin to exist, as far as our matter goes.  We are simply converted matter that our parents consumed, and as we grow we are simply converted matter that we have consumed.  So we have always existed, jut not in out current state, and our matter will continue to exist after our death, just in a decayed form, then eventually absorbed into plants, eaten by animals, etc.

Sorry for being a latecomer to this - I didn't read all the replies. If someone has already said the following, please disregard.

Here is a relevant and recent post from PZ Myers: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/04/sunday_sacrilege_that_other_th.php#more

I am not so sure about matter and energy not being able to be created or destroyed under any circumstances... Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't there certain extreme circumstances where this can happen? At any rate, if it is true, the interesting question, to me, becomes, why just this amount of matter and energy? What determined that the universe would have the particular amount that it does, no more, no less?

At any rate, if we are simply converted matter, then we have not always existed. We *are* particular arrangements of matter, not the matter itself. Your body replaces most of the matter that was once 'you' every so often, yet you are still you. If that matter gets rearranged in a not so pleasant way, you will cease to be. The particular organization of matter is now defunct. Matter remains matter. It doesn't gain some special 'you' property when it is part of your body. Many particles in your body may have been in Socrates' body.

What I am saying is that even if matter, even the matter that makes up our bodies, has always existed, it does not follow that we therefore have always existed, just in a different form. For it is the current form of this matter that IS us. To say 'different form' is to say 'not us'.

Of course our matter changes, and you really just reitterated what I said about not being here in our "current forms."

We are not more than the sum of our parts, as much as we wish to think we are.

gdw:

Of course our matter changes, and you really just reitterated what I said about not being here in our "current forms."

We are not more than the sum of our parts, as much as we wish to think we are.

Actually, what I was saying is more along these lines: How is it 'our matter'? Matter is just matter. If we ARE our current forms, then if that form ceases to be, then we cease to be.

And we very much are more than the sum of our parts - we have form and functionality, which though they are forever tied to the underlying substrate of matter, are not the matter itself.

If we are not, then I am afraid your view would commit you to saying that the matter that makes up your body, right now, has a special 'you' property that belongs to it, since it is now part of your body, and that no other matter has. Otherwise, how could 'you' still exist if you decompose and your matter disperses elsewhere? Or, if every particle in your body was originally 'someone else', then you wouldn't really be you - you'd be a lot of other people all rolled into one!