951. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #64274 by phil rimmer on August 19, 2007 at 8:23 am

I am pleased to see this thread has moved on from DG's fascinating but esoteric philosophical musings to something far more recognizable, the dogma-lite God of Love we find predominating in the UK. And thanks to Paul for stepping up to the plate on this one. Understanding the well spring(s) of morality seems to be crucial (sic) to understanding the motivation of a great many churchgoers in this country.

Having spent a lot of time (for me, that is) recently in a variety of churches, courtesy of Boys Brigade, Brownies, schools etc. I must say that morality figured far higher in the scheme of the proceedings than the "life eternal". Indeed, amongst my religious friends, achieving goodness is a more pressing problem than achieving consolation. I found a similar attitude when visiting San Francisco recently. Consolation / salvation is a personal matter, moral behaviour very much a public one.

That said, I find it staggering that (even) someone like Paul could wonder

What do you say to the atheists who think that people in poorer countries simply don't count, or don't count as much?

What do you say to a christian who thinks the same? I've met a fair few racist christians who variously believe that they should take care of their own, or at best should convert and save the savages, so that god may then step in and do his bit. I fully accept this is not the dominant view in the UK (or northern California) but….what do you say? Where is the well spring of crystal clear water, the unambiguous word unclouded by murk and contradiction, that says exactly what to do??

Is the well spring not filtered through the accumulating layers of historical experience? The Enlightenment? The science that shows us the immediacy of our brotherhood and our collective stewardship of our pale blue dot of a home?

Extending empathy beyond the confines of family and tribe is something we humans have achieved for ourselves. Rising above the scared, petty twitching of our (god given?) amygdala, we have joined forces with our neighbours to better survive what fate may throw at us.

What do I say?

Seeking fellowship between all peoples I hope will be my bequest to my children's children. What's yours? (Then falls off bar stool.)

952. The Out Campaign: Interview with Josh Timonen

Comment #64023 by phil rimmer on August 17, 2007 at 10:29 am

Josh,

Forget that you've ruined my social life by keeping me glued to the screen when I should be down the pub. Forget that you've ruined my friends lives as they too got hooked and now blame me for it. Find solace in fact that you have done something quite marvelous in this site.

I thank you from the bottom of my liver....

953. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #63864 by phil rimmer on August 16, 2007 at 1:07 pm

Paul, can a proposition (for action, let us say) be more moral than another, similar proposition? Have you ever changed your mind about which is the preferred of two such propositions?

We live in the same world, fed by the same cultural insights, and make similar moral decisions. We just explain them differently.....

954. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #63851 by phil rimmer on August 16, 2007 at 12:31 pm

So I am in the right department to discuss my beliefs and to listen, respond and respect the beliefs of other posters here.

No one here wants your RESPECT for their beliefs. What a weird idea! They want coherent challenges, rational arguments, evidence....SOMETHING substantial.

955. Good luck, Dawkins!

Comment #63842 by phil rimmer on August 16, 2007 at 11:58 am

I lie to my kids all the time (in jest only I must add). Po-faced, I tell them interesting stuff that I swear is true. Astonished at first, they'd finally twig that I'm playing a joke on them. Now they try and catch ME out, which they manage frustratingly often.

The lesson they've learned is that grownups are adept at lying and also that grownups are gullible. In other words, grownups can lie and ,unwittingly, pass on lies.

One of the few attempts I make at explicit moral teaching is about the value of truth (somehow ideas of love and kindness took root quite naturally). An attempt at truth, I say, is the very best we can do for all the unknown others who have likewise contributed to the common good of our lives. Anything else is a betrayal.

I wish I had thought of that myself, but it came from my older, much smarter brother.

956. Atheist 'Metaphysics' and Religious Equivocation

Comment #62365 by phil rimmer on August 9, 2007 at 12:16 pm

Dr B.

NOMA might work for deism. But posit a God who intervenes, and NOMA doesn't work.

That is SO neat. Thankyou.

957. Atheist 'Metaphysics' and Religious Equivocation

Comment #62364 by phil rimmer on August 9, 2007 at 12:14 pm

56. Comment #62233 by steve99

My qualia differentiation comment was related to the the subjective experience of red and blue by a single individual. I don't believe there is any rational way that your and my qualia could for instance be compared or swapped. Our brains at every level are non-congruent. Extracting neuron or nerve data from one and plugging it into the other begs the question of quite where to put it, which particular neuron or nerve.

We know only the cultural equivalence of the experience. (Incidentally, Russian people don't have a single word for blue. They have two. It also seems they have an ability to discern more shades of blue than we do.)

My point is precisely that comparison of qualia is fatuous and reveals nothing except in the resultant compare and contrast activity of the underlying neurology and culture. It is what the qualia have in common, the Astonishing Experience of consciousness, that is the fascination.

Treating qualia is differentiatable (?) above and beyond their differentiation by neurology and culture demands the addition of information from some other (spooky) source.

958. Atheist 'Metaphysics' and Religious Equivocation

Comment #62193 by phil rimmer on August 8, 2007 at 4:50 pm

Two points-

1.)Subjective experience isn't knowledge of any kind. Its data.

Its a crazy admixture of sensory inputs, memories and noise, folded back in on itself until an emotionally derived level of saliency is achieved and the resulting conscious experience jumps to the fore or just dribbles away.

Self knowledge is derived from this data with careful and protracted introspection. At its most useful it becomes shareable with others. I understand the (all too often)chaotic and conflicting data provided by my subjective experience all the better by talking and listening to other people.

2.) As a monist I use the term qualia a lot. I sometimes use the term "Astonishing Experience" to underline the unique nature of our waking, subjective experience. What I dislike about the term qualia is its implication of differentness from qualium (?!) to qualium. Differentiation in the experience of the redness of red and the blueness of blue is fully accounted for in the differing firing rates of the various cone receptors in the eye etc.

Dennett's description of the "Cartesian Theatre" of the mind rightly ridicules the idea of the data of subjective conscious experience being brought together in a single place to be "seen" by the mind's eye, not least because it merely pushes the problem back to the hypothetical mind's eye (homunculus etc.). However, one thing Dennet's idea does do, if we imagine it to be a movie theatre, is to show how the Astonishing Experience, though inexplicable per se, is nevertheless in need of no complexity or extra information from outside of the natural world to explain the varieties and differentness of all our experiences.

In my Cartesian Movie Theatre metaphor all the qualities and information contained in our experiences are contained in the (real world) jumbled beam of light from the projector. It means nothing to our conscious selves in that condition until it hits the simple smooth white surface of the screen and then suddenly the jumble gloriously coheres into the vivid, astonishing experience.

I am a monist precisely because all the information put into the projector beam and all my emotional response to it is real-world and explicable by neuro-scientists. If some aspect of the differentiation of my experiences could only be accounted for by a distortion or some added component of the "cohering surface", then I would be a dualist. That I have no idea how to explain the "cohering surface" means that Dennett, Domasio and Ramachandran will still be able to sell me books on the Hard Problem for years to come.

959. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #61954 by phil rimmer on August 7, 2007 at 2:47 pm

DG, why don't I see it your way?

Your universe, a perfect construct by a perfect being, you say contains a sufficiency of clues (inconsistent first and third person data, for instance) to allow us to infer the truth behind reality and thus come to comprehend the existence of our creator. Free will must exist, so too, evil, if we as individuals (individual spirits, that is) are to grow closer to god through our everyday travails.

Does my inability to see these truths condemn me to a lesser existence in some way? Less fulfilled, less virtuous, not as close to god?

Is there actually a statistical process at work here? We are all individuals (individual spirits) with different levels of achievement, after all, thanks to having free will. A good average is a good result for "him", perhaps?

Is there an end to the process? (Come on, Rimmer. Don't dawdle, boy. Last again I see.)

Why has "he" given me duff clues that points directly away from "him"? Or is that just the luck of the draw, or rather, the luck of the very particular nature of my very own free will?

Seems like I'm stuffed, whatever.

And if I'm not stuffed, if my existence is of equal value to all others, what's the bloomin' point??


PS Don't give me that arrogant stuff you just gave Dr.B. on how you can see it and we can't...

The advantage I have is access to more knowledge.

Some people here probably have access to more knowledge than you and still think you're wrong. Post a better answer.

960. New age therapies cause 'retreat from reason'

Comment #61727 by phil rimmer on August 6, 2007 at 2:10 pm

106. Comment #61708 by robzrob

Josh MUST post your Melanie Philips article. She's a bright cookie, but if she can screw up so badly on what current science thinking is AND she can't see why "intelligent design" is a useless hypothesis, then she's in dire need of the best riposte the brains here can muster.

961. New age therapies cause 'retreat from reason'

Comment #61724 by phil rimmer on August 6, 2007 at 2:01 pm

I go on holiday for a week and look what happens; I suddenly acquire an avatar...

962. Susan Blackmore interviews Dan Dennett

Comment #58354 by phil rimmer on July 24, 2007 at 3:16 pm

I must recommend Happy Hominid's Ramachandran link

http://download.guardian.co.uk/sys-audio/Guardian/Science/2007/07/23/ScienceExtra_Rama.mp3

Ramachandran is much more rumbustious and in a hurry. Lots of value here. But his views on the zero conscious experience of animals might now be a little out of date, given the latest observations of corvids (crows) able to distinguish between the knowledge state of one bird and that of another. In short they seem to have a theory of mind, rather more sophisticated than Ramachandran's bird behaviour example.

963. Susan Blackmore interviews Dan Dennett

Comment #58347 by phil rimmer on July 24, 2007 at 2:58 pm

Dennett works extremely slowly in laying out his ideas. I view him rather as an Ent. This interview was a rather too human-scaled in length to do him justice.

"Consciousness explained" didn't explain, but "Freedom evolves" did get closer.

Dennett at least has the common human decency to appreciate the company of scientists above that of philosophers, which makes him OK in my book.

However, a much better job of evoking the very texture and quality of conscious experience is performed by neurologist Antonio Domasio, who creates a model of the mind, from the neuronal level up which I find very persuasive. He argues strongly for a mind whose nature is rooted in the intense physicality of body-sourced signals. I found his descriptions very satisfying. Afterwards, I became terrified at the idea of ever becoming a disembodied spirit. A truly dismal prospect.

"Looking for Spinoza" was the most useful for me.

964. In defense of dangerous ideas

Comment #58213 by phil rimmer on July 24, 2007 at 3:26 am

So, perhaps..

"Should homosexual acts be made illegal because they spread disease so effectively?"?

Banning homosexuality isn't feasible unless we want to bundle them with Bonzai's disabled and euthanize them all....

This question has all sorts of sneaky aspects related to heterosexual behaviour, issues of fidelity and marriage etc. etc.

Or, how about...

"Should people with gratuitously obscene surnames be made to change them by deedpole?" :)

965. In defense of dangerous ideas

Comment #58202 by phil rimmer on July 24, 2007 at 2:25 am

Last week we were discussing whether evolution demanded that the disabled be euthanized, it was an stimulating and fun debate.

But should you get a research grant to follow it up?

966. In defense of dangerous ideas

Comment #58199 by phil rimmer on July 24, 2007 at 2:18 am

28. Comment #58181 by alovrin

I agree that many of Pinker's questions are not as well formulated or even as transgressive as they could be. I issue a challenge to all to produce better questions to illustrate Pinker's thesis.

Some of Pinker's questions are only transgressive because of their phrasing (presuming one outcome rather than its converse, for instance).

I think it would be a useful excercise as I think a lot of the meat of the discussion to be had centres on what are valid questions in the first place and what is transgressive and to whom.

967. In defense of dangerous ideas

Comment #58196 by phil rimmer on July 24, 2007 at 1:57 am

Steve,

Why not propose an alternative question regarding homosexuality by way of illustration? Something repellant but feasible. Those of us annoyed by Pinker's lack of quality control can mentally cut and paste your proposal? :)

968. Susan Blackmore interviews Dan Dennett

Comment #58130 by phil rimmer on July 23, 2007 at 3:25 pm

I dearly wish these two would debate the utility of consciousness. Blackmore proposes the conscious experience may well be a mere spurious artifact of a memeplex evolved for other ends. I suspect Dennet would view this as "zombic".

969. Face to faith

Comment #58106 by phil rimmer on July 23, 2007 at 1:55 pm

41. Comment #57946 by Corylus

Nailed it!

970. Face to faith

Comment #58103 by phil rimmer on July 23, 2007 at 1:35 pm

The problem with a sociological analysis of religion is the fact of sociologists. To a man (and woman) they are riddled with the postmodern idea of the "equivalence of narratives". No idea must think itself above any other. This is all based upon the "modern" insight that society has "evolved" and therefore all artifacts of the society are equally natural and are, therefore, of equal value.

They've mastered Darwin, but are still stuck in the 1950s. Once they get to 1976 and Dawkins (The Selfish Gene and Meme) and realize that evolution serves the replicator and not the host they may become a little more like twenty first century scientists.

(Of course, I exaggerate, but only a little.....)

971. Response to the God Delusion

Comment #58096 by phil rimmer on July 23, 2007 at 11:52 am

Got to the Beckham bit. He was trying to make a joke. It died on its feet.

Why is it that religites can't do humor? I've just come from the Marcus Brigstocke thread and tried to figure out why the audience thought that so funny.

Humor works when it reveals a (suppressed) truth.

972. Can the rest of us have our planet back?

Comment #58091 by phil rimmer on July 23, 2007 at 11:19 am

Just caught this on Beeb listen again. The cheer at the end was thrilling to hear.

Marcus has excelled himself this time. It is truly a pity we scousers will have to put him to death for his blasphemy against us.

973. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57951 by phil rimmer on July 22, 2007 at 3:20 pm

1587. Comment #57909 by Downunder

Why do you say "If god wants us to believe......"?

Apologies. In an attempt to be brief I also tend to be cryptic. I am an atheist as far as it is respectable to be. (There always has to be a scintilla of doubt.)

"If god wants us to believe.."etc.is me putting words into Dianelos's mouth. I am paraphrasing Dianelos's god's wishes that we believe the various evidences available to indicate his (god's) existence.

To be utterly clear, though the idea is intriguing, I take it to be essentially bollocks.

believing may help others but not me.

Me neither.

we may or may not believe in a God but we can still do our bit to make it a nicer world for all.

Absolutely.

974. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57866 by phil rimmer on July 21, 2007 at 6:03 pm

1562. Comment #57713 by _J_

I genuinely missed that piece of his arguments and now I see they (the arguments) are, in a sense, complete I find them all the more claustrophobic.

My whole life has been a discovery of the untrustworthiness of first person data. A litany of examples of this is possible, including some that make me delight in the very fact, but two instances must suffice here.

For a while I taught photography and print making at a college. The myriad ways in which the mind and the eyes lie becomes a serious challenge in truly representing subjective experience in photography.

The stunning obviousness that we would evolve to make Type 1 mistakes (seeing things that aren't there) rather than Type 2 mistakes (failing to see things that are there) explains to me so much about human nature, credulousness, creativity, and crying wolf. This explains why we became effective problem solvers as individuals, divining subtle (read distant) causes and seemingly foretelling the future better than competing species. But it also explains why we became even more effective once we came together in larger groups and could better assess the quality of individual data.

If god wants us to believe the evidence of our eyes (rather than disbelieve or mistrust it) AND believe the evidence of our collective minds (as we do) so that we may see the mismatch and achieve the revelation of his supreme existence, then he has gone about it in a farcical and possibly malicious manner, at least for me, and seemingly for most others here. This is not a good beginning for such a plan.

Either we're stupid enough to believe the evidence of our subjective experience entirely and therefore likely to be too stupid to assess electron interference patterns or we're clever enough to know the mind plays tricks and therefore, also likely to understand the physics of single electrons with a path choice. (I wasn't, for instance, in the least phased discovering "Feynman diagrams" incorporated time reversed events. Having lived with this stuff for decades, it seems entirely natural (sic) that the fabric of the universe might be subjectively screwy but entirely tractable.)

A bientot

975. Religion beat became a test of faith

Comment #57857 by phil rimmer on July 21, 2007 at 4:49 pm

It seems there are two faiths in his life. One of them is dying on its feet. The other still holds strong....his faith in journalism, that is, his need to be a witness to and for truth.

This is brave stuff to write.

976. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57706 by phil rimmer on July 20, 2007 at 4:29 pm

Dianelos

Came the bloomin' dawn!!

So S/He took care that that mechanical experiential environment be not compatible with the hypothesis that a mechanical reality produces it

How have I missed this part of your argument? You've probably repeated it many, many times but my eyes pummeled by acres of print probably just slithered over it. Now I understand your claim to completeness in idealistic theism.

Don't get me wrong. I still think your ideas are pants. Elegant pants, quite dapper in fact and they probably suit you down to the ground. But you wouldn't catch me dead in them. They're way too small, their fabrics kinda dull and they don't reward close scrutiny.

Pithiness, Mr.G!

977. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57606 by phil rimmer on July 20, 2007 at 6:50 am

Paul,

"Moral Deadweight" !!!

Honestly, sometimes in need a good hard smack. I meant something entirely moral bur perhaps a little bit behind the curve.

Apologies

978. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57597 by phil rimmer on July 20, 2007 at 5:04 am

Dianelos,

How do you know your version of idealistic theism is complete? Why should we not presume god is trying to show us something more?

979. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57595 by phil rimmer on July 20, 2007 at 4:56 am

1527. Comment #57425 by PaulEmecz
1528. Comment #57427 by PaulEmecz

SHOULD?
Imperative?
Categorical Imperative?
Moral Authority?

Boy, you sure NEED to be told, don't you? For me that puts you at risk of being one of the Moral Deadweights.

Through a steady and continual process of self-enlightenment we have come to appreciate the insidious nature and extent of the harms that we can do others. So the very simple innate principles of not wishing to do harm to others become ever more sophisticated (and moral!) in their application.

For the Roman Catholic Church the view that its existence, in the eyes of its flock, as a Rock to which they may safely cling, would have been an Imperative. And surely one sanctioned by God.

In history, child abuse was endemic. (It has been argued that the uniquely long, human gap between the ages of physical competence and sexual maturity meant children could be exploited to our species advantage). As late as the 1970s even, some intellectuals (childless(?),Germaine Greer) argued that the sexual exploitation of children might be OK under some circumstances.

Only very recently, with the abused prepared to recount the extent of their destroyed lives, have we come to move abuse much, much higher up the ladder of moral seriousness.

The Roman Catholic Church, clinging to its old Imperatives got this balance very, very wrong.

980. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57587 by phil rimmer on July 20, 2007 at 3:44 am

1535. Comment #57571 by Dianelos Georgoudis

God first observes which choice we make and then gives us the corresponding experience when we observe the screen

And this is a simpler answer? A fuller answer? Or an answer that gives you the chance to stop asking why?

So I'll ask it. Why should god screw around with our perceptions of reality like this? Why should he give us spurious experiences like this? Why should we not presume god is trying to show us something? Wouldn't it be a great way for god to dole out difficult and complex information by waiting until we'd got sophisticated enough to look for such phenomena?

Why, oh why, has your "why" muscle shriveled up and died?

If you promise to keep asking why, I promise not to complain that we call our scientists, Priest Physicists. Priest Biochemists etc.

981. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57225 by phil rimmer on July 18, 2007 at 3:30 pm

1497. Comment #57224 by Dr Benway

Bugger!

Good point, Dr B.

(Takes off coat and sits down again.)

982. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #57223 by phil rimmer on July 18, 2007 at 3:21 pm

1484. Comment #57161 by _J_

Cracking!

Now can we all go home?

983. Town Hall Seattle: God Is Not Great

Comment #57215 by phil rimmer on July 18, 2007 at 3:04 pm

In a few years time Hitch will be doing this stuff in comedy clubs up and down the land. I can just see him on a dark stage picked out by a single spotlight. He's perched on a bar stool, with long pauses in his delivery as he takes a drag from his cigarette, glass at the ready on the little table beside him.

I think he'd love it.

984. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #56888 by phil rimmer on July 17, 2007 at 4:45 pm

Comment #56880 by PaulEmecz

why this misconception becomes a problem is because people can talk about evolution in language that suggests an intention or purpose.

Enhanced reproductive viability?


Yes, yes, yes. Genetic evolution works in a cleverer and more subtle way than most people bother to explain. But your lead-in is to a duff straw-man. I don't find people use evolution as an explanation for the development of a moral code except as the first half of an argument that always concludes with the above. Its just that the above bit is always the same in every discussion and doesn't get repeated every time.

If I were to get picky, I'd complain about your careful avoidance of the process played by cultural evolution in the formation of moral codes. Every atheist always traditionally argued from this alone until fairly recently, when animal behaviourists felt brave enough to start to reporting proto-moral behaviours in a wide range of social animals. This is now fairly reasonably seen as a primitive template for subsequent cultural sophistication.

As individuals (rather than scientists) we may well look at this and judge it good, because we can imagine less moral societies where we as individuals would be less happy. Happy is good. (Its a neurotransmitter thing.)

985. Muslim heads stuck firmly in the sand

Comment #56875 by phil rimmer on July 17, 2007 at 3:27 pm

This man's plan is the best news I've heard on this site yet.

Any journey begins with the first step. Its best that most of his fellow travelers (and he) don't know their likely ultimate destination.


I've always thought religions are bit like those sweaters your nan would knit for you for christmas. There was always a little bit of loose thread that you couldn't resist pulling...and pulling...

986. Muslim heads stuck firmly in the sand

Comment #56868 by phil rimmer on July 17, 2007 at 3:20 pm

You could, of course, drop the religion that teaches these things. Treat god as an iron age idea that is out of it's time and live among the other people of the world with reason and understanding.

I was going to comment on this but I've got to go. I've just seen a pig out of the window. Its circling over the house opposite.....

987. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #56849 by phil rimmer on July 17, 2007 at 1:23 pm

_J_

No worries. I'll do as you suggest. It sounds simple enough. Even I should manage it.

Now, back to that manuscript!

Cheers.

988. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #56837 by phil rimmer on July 17, 2007 at 12:48 pm

_J_

Can I be really cheeky? You've done all the hard work of compiling this thread in a word doc, correct? If you managed to succeed, could I ask you to email it to me? (philrimmer@gmail.com)

By way of payment I offer here and now to forward it to others if they wish to email me, saving you from similar begging posts.


Fabulous Arcadia quote BTW.

989. LA Church 'agrees abuse pay deal'

Comment #56413 by phil rimmer on July 15, 2007 at 4:46 pm

Gt.Teapot.

I sort of agree, but..., on another thread here, someone was arguing that religion might help improve the morals of the religious. This pretty well blows that out of the water. And the point is not the wickedness of the individual abusive priests, its the active and considered complicity of those who covered it up.

I think it is an indictment of the moral absolutism and conservatism in the (Catholic)church that child abuse was not considered important. They just didn't keep up with the rest of us in improving their moral values, as we became aware of the terrible and permanent harm abuse can cause to a developing mind.

This is an argument about the innate potential immorality of dogma based institutions in positions of trust.

990. An Atheist Responds

Comment #56365 by phil rimmer on July 15, 2007 at 9:58 am

I don't believe for an instant that the religious are better behaved as a result of their religion. The religious have their own mind games they play to "get through" the committing of an "indiscretion". "We are already fallen...to err is human. (The christian) god is forgiving."

Look at all the fallen and disgraced American religious leaders. Back on top. The error of their ways a new source of rueful authority. The Roman Catholic church would sell indulgences, for pity's sake.

More moral by far to have to question your morals on a daily basis, and revise accordingly. Have I the right to deprive this person of happiness because of their sexual disposition? Invade this country? Deny this procedure?

I have argued successfully with some religious people that their innate morality preceded their choice (or acceptance) of religion. That they are the more moral because of it.

We all have a moral supervisor, its called our conscience.

991. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #56337 by phil rimmer on July 15, 2007 at 6:19 am

The real problem with Dianelos and all other religiously inclined philosophical synthesists is that they screw-up the search for god, the moment they put forward their theistic philosophy as useful in anyway. Somehow, there is a lightness of touch, a genuine tentativeness, which is missing from their theistic formulations. This is because their search is not for "Truth" but a search for a personal truth, a truth by which they can live their lives. Were these ideas passed on as intellectual fancies, then no harm would be done. But they aren't.

My beef is this; the moment you fill a Gap with god you have reduced the space for anything else and because of the personal emotional buy-in of the god-bit he's a bugger to get out again, if the gap size needs to change because of new knowledge. Sticky, sticky meme.

I loved this thread because it made me realize that there was only one Gap I was really troubled/fascinated by and that was the subjective experience of consciousness. (The one True Gap?) I can't even imagine the vocabulary that could be used to finally close that gap, and therefore can't imagine it being closed. However, I find, now that actual hard research is being done into the problem, explanations are being formulated for the actual qualities and texture of the experience. Information is pouring into the gap from the side of naturalism. (I still hate the term! I would prefer something along the lines of "relating to those aspects of experience that are collectively testable".)

Claiming that there are any discernable qualities and texture of experience that come from the supernatural (collectively un-testable) side and can fill the gap is, for me, intellectual fly-tipping.

Dianelos's God, subjectively divined (sic), whilst a substantially improved and slimmed down New Testament God (a god of Love and Niceness, that is) is still unsurprisingly riddled with (anthropic!) qualities.

(For what its worth, my subjective divinations lead me to a god so slimmed down I'll have to refer to it as "o!". "o!" is the flat white surface of the movie screen in our head. (see post 1238. Comment #55296). Please treat the idea with all the lightness or contempt you wish.)

Go looking for God and you'll find a god. Better to just go looking.

992. Richard Dawkins Replies to David Sloan Wilson

Comment #56042 by phil rimmer on July 13, 2007 at 1:20 pm

Bizzaro,

The implication is obvious, undeniable, and totally rational. If you tell me that the God I have given my life to serve does not exist (in no uncertain terms), then what is the only reasonable conclusion? That I am leading a "life of futility" perhaps?

The problem is not that you believe in God, its that that is not the totality of what you have to say to us about him (Him!! You see thats presuming too much already.). If you were to have faith in that single thing alone and question absolutely everything else we would not act like the veritable hornets nest.

You see, from reading a few of your posts it seems to me you have absolutely no sense of what constitutes good data. Grist for our rational mill. You come here completely empty handed. No data. Nothing. Other religious posters have, if only from introspection, so, why not you?.....

993. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55864 by phil rimmer on July 12, 2007 at 5:01 pm

1356. Comment #55852 by USA_Limey

If Dianelos Georgoudis, with all his patience, and intelligence cannot be swayed what hope for the millions of the poor and uneducated which must endure generation after generation of continued slavish indoctrination?

This has, in the end, been rather depressing I feel.

But not for me. Coming late to the party, and mostly watching from the sidelines, I have got a huge amount out of it.

The debate centered on what for me was the last possible refuge of god, the experience of consciousness. I am now perfectly clear that any attempt to insert god into this particular gap leads immediately to a process of confabulation. This stupid act defeats utterly the possibility of discovery. All that remains is a fatuous consolidation of random fabrications.

I am now convinced more than ever that even in the hands of a very intelligent person the concept of god yields nothing of any use to my life whatsoever.

I am thankful to DG for making me appreciate the Gap. I rush to it to enjoy the thrill of it whilst seeking to halve its size and halve it again, as I'm sure we will.

Who made me realize this? All the great minds here...

I guess, at the end of it, it depends on how comfortable you are with unanswered questions. Some anxious people can't bear the tension they pose.

994. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55601 by phil rimmer on July 11, 2007 at 4:32 pm

Monty Hall for the Teapot.

On two out of three occasions you will choose the wrong door initially. Monty will never choose the door with the car, you have to guess it, right? On those two occasions the door not selected by you or Monty will be the one with the car. On the one occasion you do select the door with the car first, the door selected by neither of you will be a dud. Hence you have a higher chance of getting the car if you always change your mind.

995. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55598 by phil rimmer on July 11, 2007 at 4:23 pm

Biggest clue...

Whats the formula for the circumference of a circle, given its radius?

996. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55593 by phil rimmer on July 11, 2007 at 3:58 pm

The Monty Hall problem gets me every time. Its such a struggle to explain it to myself. It never seems to become obvious.

Its amazing we're capable of rational thought at all.

Much simpler to comprehend, but still able to catch out even maths students on occasions is the Steel Band Round the Earth Problem. This tight fitting steel band lies snug to the ground all the way around the planet. Now it needs to be lengthened by a metre to raise it a little above the ground. How far will the band be raised? Most people think a few microns or so given the tens of thousands of kilometres of the band's length.

When you get the answer, after a little deliberation, at least the mental model of it will stay with you forever.

997. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #55296 by phil rimmer on July 10, 2007 at 1:26 pm

Dianelos, much as I appreciate your responses to my questions, given your prodigious feat of intellectual plate-juggling here, I am somewhat frustrated by your responses. I find that they fail to engage with the meat of my modest inquiries. The fault is probably mine. No matter.

I'm going to try something different today. I am going to try and describe the experience of consciousness. See if my metaphors ring any bells with you.

For me the one (and only) miracle of existence is the Astonishing Experience of Consciousness. The astonishing experience of seeing a movie for the first time must capture a vestige of it. You sit in the dark and a whirr of machinery organizes a flow of (optical) energy. This flux, when looked at, as it catches the motes of dust in the air around you, seems like a great meaningless jumble, an incoherent morass of information. It carries on passed you then it hits something, and the meaningless jumble suddenly snaps into coherent, gorgeous life. The light has hit a plain white surface. The surface, of itself is meaningless. It carries no information. All the qualities of the experience, the fine texture of it, reside in the energy from the machine. But those qualities, that texture, all of it remain unrealised until it hits the surface and coheres.

Dianelos, for me, you take a plain white surface, (yes the most remarkable, wonderful, plain white surface in all of existence), and smear it with all manner of attributes, for reasons I still find unfathomable.

I am not ungrateful for your splendid efforts in this thread. You have stimulated the best discussion yet on this site and you have made me marvel all over again about the screen,….the plain…white…surface…Perfect!

I'll watch for a bit.

Thanks.

(Thanks too to Steve99, J, Dr.B. .et al. for brightening my days)

998. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54943 by phil rimmer on July 9, 2007 at 11:59 am

1156. Comment #54879 by Dianelos Georgoudis

But free will does not exist in reality, according to your understanding. So if we experience that it exists it is some kind of illusion.

But, I am under no illusion, am I? You're the one with the illusion. And I truly believe you and I have the same mental experiences. Do you distrust all the useful memes that mankind has created for itself? Is money not valuable? Are justice and democracy not useful? Constructs all, not illusions! And, there are always alternatives and some people live by them.

You try to create absolutes based on other peoples' sloppy thinking.

Metaphysical responsibility grew seamlessly out of simple responsibility. I am responsible for my actions. I cause them. No-one owns them except me. If that action were the slaying of a particular tax inspector (to pick a crime purely at random) I would be subject to the requirements of civil society and be prevented from re-offending by incarceration. Depending on the society (say Sweden or Texas) I would be encouraged to behave better through training and therapy or executed to make the populace feel better. No metaphysics involved.

Now, society discovered the immense power of abstract ideas long ago. By taking the idea of being responsible for each individual action into a more generalised form, society discovered that it could discuss actions that had not yet occurred, and create moral pressure in advance of misbehaviour. So, now, I will be responsible for all the "actions" I might commit. Acting responsibly is to act in a way that I am mindful of (i.e. think often about) my behaviour and its impact on others and its consequences. Society encourages this action to make its function better. We are all trained this way and, blow me, it works!

Am I depressed that money, responsibility, justice, love, free will are all human constructs?
No. They are all wonderful! We should treasure all these amazing mind tools we have created, even money….(if it weren't for the bloody tax inspectors….)

999. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54685 by phil rimmer on July 8, 2007 at 1:17 pm

1105. Comment #54434 by Dianelos Georgoudis

if personal will does not exist then, according to naturalism, a person's actions can be fully explained by the previous state of the physical universe (plus maybe some randomness).

Yes, but I said free will EFFECTIVELY exists. In no current, practical sense is the future state of our mind predictable except in some limited sense, though theoretically it is predictable. The amazing thing is that humans have succeeded as much as they have by developing the singular skill of foreseeing the future behaviour of things and people. Spookily, they can predict with statistical usefulness, under certain circumstances, the (free-) willful acts of others.

So, by adopting the the concept of free will we have engineered a society of individuals that seems attractive to us, to whit, individuals possessing the attributes of responsibility and an enhanced (even foolhardy)impression of themselves as agents of change. The concept both stimulates the creative ability of the individual and holds her to account for too much independence of thought, a nice balance.

Your Spiritual free will requires an actual transfer of information from the spirit world to work. To direct the flow of thoughts in your brain your spirit self must somehow stop some thoughts and initiate others. The spirit self must transfer the direction to be followed. Or are you suggesting the something other???

1000. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #54155 by phil rimmer on July 5, 2007 at 5:39 pm

1064. Comment #53990 by Dr Benway

Too right! The subjective "I" is a slippery changeable beast, but of course we play a trick with ourselves in conferring on it a single and consistent identity.

A colleague who suffered a schizophrenic episode like Evelyn Waugh's, worked with scary intensity to explain the fleetingly remembered flaky older self to his slowly restored more rational self. Endlessly fussing with papers written throughout the period he quietly dropped them once they became too weird.


I personally believe our "I" is our self model, used in simulations of possible futures. The model is tiny with possibly no more than 5 elements in it at any one time. These are changed in the light of circumstance. (I am one cool dude. I am a sexual athlete...I can at least put her shelves up.) Our obsessive concern with maintaining an effective self-model lies at the heart of our subjective experience of self.