Freethought & Rationalism Archive

theophilus · 03-13-2003, 05:33 PM

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Fiach

Quote:

Originally posted by doodad
Theo, believers are not monolithic in their beliefs or in the degree or intensity of their beliefs. I've heard your argument presented time and time again, and all I get from it is that it's some kind of a defensive tactic.

Religious belief is a subjective delusion with a brain circuit substrate. It is programmed by input from family and ambient culture. Due to variances in brain synaptic numbers and regulation, the substrate varies. Input also varies according to the particular beliefs of each parent or perhaps a local community variant. No two Christians have entirely identical beliefs. Even we atheists have differences over why we reject hypothetical invisible beings.

Quote:

But this only applies to believers, right? Unbelievers are immune to such "ambient culture" - gee, wouldn't that be secularism, now?

Unfortunately, you've proven too much here. You've demonstrated that "beliefs" of any type (even unbief) are merely "brain farts" and, thereby, nothing significant can be said about anything. Actually, your post is merely the random collocation of these brain farts and can, therefore, be ignored.

The nature of the belief in God is just this, a fantasy, or a desire, and the facts be damned. People believe in God for at least two reasons, one in hopes of gaining something from it, and one in hopes of avoiding something (the divine punishment) from it. It's a mind game, and to a certain extent I play the game. However I am reasonable in my expectations and try not to be hooked on my beliefs to the point that I make a fool of myself.

You'll have an eternity in Hell to be proud of your self-restraint.

See my post on choice in belief to follow.

See my brain fart on dlkjadlka to follow.

I really believe if the religious zealots would stay out of other
peoples' faces and would simply live and let live we'd all be better off. To me practicing religion is a bit like using alcohol or smoking tobacco in that moderate use of it is pleasurable and relatively harmless, but when you overdo it you run the risk of harming yourself and others around you.

Yes it is annoying. However in their defence I would say that I think their motives are positive.[/b]

I'm sure you meant this as a sort of commendation, but why? Good motives predicated on false beliefs are not commendable. I don't admire the Moslems for their devotion to what I hold to be a false belief. Hitler had good motives, too.

I don't think so. If they recognise that it is bollocks, they are rational enough to reject it. Read Dan Barker's Book, "Losing Faith in Faith." He is a former evangelist who saw that he was pushing rubbish and he underwent a painful transition to atheism.

Fiach

I'm always fascinated by people who write books to say they were wrong in their beliefs. Of course, they're sure what they believe now is true, so we should listen to them.

Fiach · 03-13-2003, 05:35 PM

BTW, please explain the biological basis for pride and why it should prohibit me from admitting I'm wrong. After all, my self-preservation depends on knowing the truth, doesn't it?

Theo, pride is an emotional concept. It like all cognitive, affective, conscious "mental" functions are brain based, and ergo biological. Modern SPECT imaging, electrocorticography, and other techniques have mapped various emotional states and "feelings" by lighting up the brain areas involved in the process. We also know that any of these "mental" functions can be eliminated by anaesthesia. General anaesthesia stops all conscious, cognitive, and affective mental functions. Selective inhibition can be done by putting sodium amytal into arteries on one side of the brain leaving the person conscious, for example but unable to comprehend their primary language. The centers most likely involved in Pride are in the medial temporal lobe, in the hippocampus and in the cingulate gyrus. As a practicing Neurologist (apart from my bench research), I have noted how these functions are altered by such lesions as tumours, strokes, small haemorrhages, and trauma (including surgery).

Good Day to you Theo,

Fiach

Fiach · 03-13-2003, 05:44 PM

I'm always fascinated by people who write books to say they were wrong in their beliefs. Of course, they're sure what they believe now is true, so we should listen to them.

Theo, you are well aware that Augustine of Hippo wrote about his rough and rowdy ways and his conversion to what he considered his correct belief. We all have a right to change ourselves.

A few Atheists, like Madalyn Murray's son, converted to Fundamentalism. It can happen.

However, if you attend an Atheist convention such as American Atheist, you will find a couple thousand Atheists who are ex-Christians. The majority of American Atheists are ex-christians by a large percentage. Atheistic families are not that common yet but naturally are increasing with the Atheist population stabilising and growing.

Even I was raised as a Christian as a child, but I will concede that I am not sure I ever believed the stories told to me in school. My christianity could be argued.

Yes, we should listen to them. I read Augustine and I read Dan Barker. The more we learn of both sides of the issue the better we understand what we believe.

Fiach

theophilus · 03-13-2003, 05:54 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Fiach
BTW, please explain the biological basis for pride and why it should prohibit me from admitting I'm wrong. After all, my self-preservation depends on knowing the truth, doesn't it?

Theo, pride is an emotional concept. It like all cognitive, affective, conscious "mental" functions are brain based, and ergo biological. Modern SPECT imaging, electrocorticography, and other techniques have mapped various emotional states and "feelings" by lighting up the brain areas involved in the process. We also know that any of these "mental" functions can be eliminated by anaesthesia. General anaesthesia stops all conscious, cognitive, and affective mental functions. Selective inhibition can be done by putting sodium amytal into arteries on one side of the brain leaving the person conscious, for example but unable to comprehend their primary language. The centers most likely involved in Pride are in the medial temporal lobe, in the hippocampus and in the cingulate gyrus. As a practicing Neurologist (apart from my bench research), I have noted how these functions are altered by such lesions as tumours, strokes, small haemorrhages, and trauma (including surgery).

Good Day to you Theo,

Fiach

We'll you've only pushed the issue back one level and didn't really answer my question. I didn't ask for an explanation of the biological operation of pride, I asked by the an explanation of the biological BASIS of pride.

So now that you've argued that pride and all emotions are merely "brain farts" you can explain to me how the whole conglomeration of them came into being as biological functions.

BTW, that is not at all how we understand emotions, as merely biological. There may be a biological component, but biology is not the "substance" of emotions. When we experience anger, there is a physical expression, but anger is not simply physiology. We assign values to emotions. Pride in a job well done is considered a good thing. "False" pride is considered a bad thing. If they are merely biological, how can you call either one good or bad. You can try to push this back one level and say "bad emotions are destructive," but you're just begging the question. Why should we care if they are destructive.

This is the whole problem with atheistic attempts at morality. They pretend to be pragmatic, but at some point, they assume a basic value from which the entire system derives and which cannot be justified on a materialistic worldview, e.g., why should I care if someone else's child dies?

This is why atheists cannot give a meaningful account of human experience. Love, honor, truth, generosity, selflessness; these are all merely biological predispositions, like alcoholism. They are neither praiseworth nor blameworthy.

Or else you reduce them to survival/adaptive reflexes "evolved" over countless aeons. This does not set men free from false religious beliefs; it sets him free from all meaning and significance in life.

Next time your wife (or other person) tells you she loves you, tell her it's just a biological predisposition. A brain fart.

Better yet, next time you feel like telling someone you love them, remind yourself that all emotions are just biology and save yourself the effort.

theophilus · 03-13-2003, 06:12 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Fiach
I'm always fascinated by people who write books to say they were wrong in their beliefs. Of course, they're sure what they believe now is true, so we should listen to them.

Theo, you are well aware that Augustine of Hippo wrote about his rough and rowdy ways and his conversion to what he considered his correct belief. We all have a right to change ourselves.

I'm aware that he never "evangalized" for his debauched lifestyle while he was in it. I don't think he was going around promoting debauchery as they key to a meaningful life (I guess some have). Neither did Bill Murray.

A few Atheists, like Madalyn Murray's son, converted to Fundamentalism. It can happen.

However, if you attend an Atheist convention such as American Atheist, you will find a couple thousand Atheists who are ex-Christians. The majority of American Atheists are ex-christians by a large percentage. Atheistic families are not that common yet but naturally are increasing with the Atheist population stabilising and growing.

Even I was raised as a Christian as a child, but I will concede that I am not sure I ever believed the stories told to me in school. My christianity could be argued.

I also was raised as a Christian. That is the great tragedy of contemporary Christianity; we teach children to "act" like Christians without them ever being "converted." I have had to deal with the real issues of faith and have recognized the real substance that was always there under the veneer of learned attitudes and behaviors.

Disbelief is not the only response to a real examination of faith. Many of the most profound Christians have been men (and women) who became believers after they were adults. C.S. Lewis is a notable (although perhaps overused) example. And he hardly fits the caricature of the ignorant, deluded person atheists like to use to explain theistic beliefs.

Yes, we should listen to them. I read Augustine and I read Dan Barker. The more we learn of both sides of the issue the better we understand what we believe.

Aren't you begging the question? Why "should" we listen to them? Why shouldn't I just believe whatever comes into my mind at any given moment, even if it contradicts what I believed just a moment before? Are you suggesting that there really is a "true" belief? How is that possible if all our beliefs are merely biological functions of our "brain?"

Fiach [/B]

Philosoft · 03-13-2003, 06:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by theophilus
You'll have an eternity in Hell to be proud of your self-restraint.

[Mod hat]
Theo, this kind of preaching is not welcome in the upper fora. Please limit your comments to the subject matter.
[/Mod hat]

Monk · 03-13-2003, 07:01 PM

"9-11 in New York could not have happened without religion.

The Taliban could not have been created without religion.

Iran would not have executed over 100,000 people without religion.

34 Saudi Arabian school girls would not have died in a building fire, prevented by religious police from leaving the building without headgear (in the other end of the burning building, without religion.

Writers like Salman Rushdie and many others would not have fatwas (death warrants) on them without religion.

Up to 1 million women would not have been burned or otherwise executed from 800 to 1700 CE without the Christian Religion.

The Crusades, the 30 years war (millions of casualties), the French Huguenot Wars, and perhaps the Holocaust would not have occurred without religion.

The burning of the Great Library of Alexandria would not have occurred losing much ancient knowledge, without religion.

The torture, disembowelment, and dismemberment in the killing of Hypatia, the Greek Scientist at Alexandria in 412 CE for teaching of a spherical Earth, and other ancient science as infidelism, would not have occurred with out religion.

This is just my short list. My long list would be too burdensome to post.

Fiach"

I wouldnt say religion was the sole cause of all these things,infact im fairly sure all the participants in these destructive things where going against the accepted practice of their religion or the teachings in their holy books.You could also say all these things wouldnt have occured without air :P or wouldnt have occured without every single thing in the universe being as it was.Hmm but then again if reality was different how do you know how it would turn out?.Popular beliefs have always been used as excuses to justify what some people think,that doesnt make it the religion itself.I would put ultimate blame on ignorance,delusion and attachment.

Fiach · 03-13-2003, 07:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by theophilus
We'll you've only pushed the issue back one level and didn't really answer my question. I didn't ask for an explanation of the biological operation of pride, I asked by the an explanation of the biological BASIS of pride.

So now that you've argued that pride and all emotions are merely "brain farts" you can explain to me how the whole conglomeration of them came into being as biological functions.

By Evolution of course. I hypothesise that emotions developed as coping adaptive mechansims in much more primitive animals and it worked. That is why brains that developed the programme of love, fear, grief, pride were more successful, and passed on the genetic code for that brain hardware. That and intuition developed long before primates, dogs, and cats, dolphins developed more complex reasoning circuits that gave them an advantage that they also passed on. And when they passed it on, those with more developed modules survived in larger numbers and passed on the better genes.

BTW, that is not at all how we understand emotions, as merely biological.

It is how I understand emotions. Like all mental functions they are brain based. That means there are centers and circuits as a substrate. This substrate like the entire body is structure on the DNA blue print.

There may be a biological component, but biology is not the "substance" of emotions. When we experience anger, there is a physical expression, but anger is not simply physiology. We assign values to emotions.

I think that it is all biological. Everything about us is biological. Sure the emotion expressed is a patterned physiological response to some input. Anger is felt in the limbic circuits, expressed in the Amygdala that connects to hypothalamic centers for heart rate, blood pressure to increase muscle circulation, adrenaline release for quick action (fight or flight), increased muscle tone signals (that we may experience by slight tremor. The input may be a perceived threat to you or a family member, or a rude insult. The input (stimulus) is the only external part, the rest is governed by the brain.

Pride in a job well done is considered a good thing. "False" pride is considered a bad thing. If they are merely biological, how can you call either one good or bad.

Because the emotion is pre-programmed. Once initiated, it goes through the whole series even if you find that the insult was misinterpreted, or because you took pride in something unethical. That doesn't change the physiology of the multi-synaptic response.

You can try to push this back one level and say "bad emotions are destructive," but you're just begging the question. Why should we care if they are destructive.

Evolution is not perfect. It just produces what works well enough to survive and pass on our DNA. Our emotions can be in error. Some people with frontal circuit dysfunction fail to put a lid on it. Their emotions are uninhibited and exaggerated, both pride and anger, or fear (panic attacks). Biosystems are machines that malfunction. Evolution never produces perfection. It made a spinal column for us that is identical to horses and dogs. It works better for them. For us we squeeze our intervertebral disks, herniate some of them, and as "luck" would have it, there are nerves nearby that the herniation pinches. Evolution's hast to get us bipedal to move from trees to savanahs, left us with quadriped spinal columns thus, while we can live long enough to pass on genes, 70% of us have chronic or recurrent Back Pain.

This is the whole problem with atheistic attempts at morality. They pretend to be pragmatic, but at some point, they assume a basic value from which the entire system derives and which cannot be justified on a materialistic worldview, e.g., why should I care if someone else's child dies?

But you do. And so do I. Humans evolved as a social animal. Manyof our evolved traits that are brain hardwired are not solely for an individual. We have an altruistic gene that other primates share. We have an "instinctual' (I prefer intuitive) need to protect others of our type. As males, we protect the females and young from leopards of the Pleistocene and burglars today. It was a trait that made a social group more successful. A baboon troop has adult males circling the periphery of the group with the boss in the center with the females and young. A leopard charges, and one or two of the peripheral males will stand and fight the leopard even though he loses 90% of the time. His sacrifice allows the troop to get the young and females to trees and safety. Often the other males will counter attack and kill the leopard at great risk. It is the Altruistic Gene. Its manifestation is so strong that we find it extending to our national group. Why did my greatgrandfather along with 500,000 British soldiers march in a straight line against the German trenches at the Somme in WWI? The number killed in that battle is staggering. Why did they do it? They didn't reallly know. Grandpa survived it. He told me when he was 96 years old that it was for "King and Country." He meant it was to protect his genetic groups from attacking predators. "If we don't stop them here, they will be in Suffolk next month."

This is why atheists cannot give a meaningful account of human experience. Love, honor, truth, generosity, selflessness; these are all merely biological predispositions, like alcoholism. They are neither praiseworth nor blameworthy.

I thnk I just did explain it. You have the right to think otherwise, but I am very convinced by history and my education, research, and medical practice. There is no evidence that they are anything outside of the human being him/herself. Praiseworth or blameworthy is your semantics. I call it "what works" and what "doesn't work." I accept that you chose to believe in metaphysical entities, and respect your right. I just would like to get you to respect my right to know/believe in the science data that fits so well together for me.

Or else you reduce them to survival/adaptive reflexes "evolved" over countless aeons. This does not set men free from false religious beliefs; it sets him free from all meaning and significance in life.

Religion was one of the behaviours that also evolved because it aided group/clan cohesion, order, discipline, and gave a world view or explanation that formed a frame of reference. Humans have to know why things happen. Myths serve that purpose, until science shows the actual mechanisms. All religions are false in the sense of being made up myths but they had a function. That is why the human brain has some circuits that mediate religious thought. The particular god, scriptures, are variables that are the "soft-ware" component of religion on the pre-existing hard wired circuits (see the Newsweek article I posted on another thread.)

Next time your wife (or other person) tells you she loves you, tell her it's just a biological predisposition. A brain fart.

She is well educated, masters degree level. She knows it. But it doesn't distract from our "feelings" for each other to know the underlying pathways. We never say, "just a biological" because it all is biological unless it is dead.

Better yet, next time you feel like telling someone you love them, remind yourself that all emotions are just biology and save yourself the effort.

Knowing why doesn't lessen the feeling or the intuitive behaviours. I would still stand and fight the bear to let my wife and son escape. Remember Theo we are still of the same species, Homo sapeins. I am not so different from you. Maybe our circuits are wired differently and our input was different.

Fiach

Fiach · 03-13-2003, 07:44 PM

Yes, we should listen to them. I read Augustine and I read Dan Barker. The more we learn of both sides of the issue the better we understand what we believe.

Aye.

Aren't you begging the question?

No.

Why "should" we listen to them? Why shouldn't I just believe whatever comes into my mind at any given moment, even if it contradicts what I believed just a moment before?

We should listen to them because we should understand what they are saying and believing. It isn't necessarily to believe everything you read. Here you are I are exchanging our ideas. I do it to learn more about what makes you tick. Hopefully you are trying to understand how I think as well. Realistically I am not going to covert you nor you convert me. I think we can defuse bigotry by better understanding. Especially if we can do it withour rancor.

Are you suggesting that there really is a "true" belief?

No, beliefs are opinions based on faith not scientifically proven fact. I think Mark Twain said, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." Carl Sagan said it best, "I don't want to believe, I want to know."

How is that possible if all our beliefs are merely biological functions of our "brain?"

It is not possible to have a true faith. There is no such thing. And each human brain is going to see such things differently in some way. That is why Christianity the "true faith" to many exists in 2000 different churches. Faith and Knowledge are brain based entirely. That is why even a scientist can occasionally be wrong and have his colleagues slag him over it in the journals.

Fiach

03-13-2003, 05:35 PM	#52
Fiach Banned Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Scotland, UK Posts: 602	Pride BTW, please explain the biological basis for pride and why it should prohibit me from admitting I'm wrong. After all, my self-preservation depends on knowing the truth, doesn't it? Theo, pride is an emotional concept. It like all cognitive, affective, conscious "mental" functions are brain based, and ergo biological. Modern SPECT imaging, electrocorticography, and other techniques have mapped various emotional states and "feelings" by lighting up the brain areas involved in the process. We also know that any of these "mental" functions can be eliminated by anaesthesia. General anaesthesia stops all conscious, cognitive, and affective mental functions. Selective inhibition can be done by putting sodium amytal into arteries on one side of the brain leaving the person conscious, for example but unable to comprehend their primary language. The centers most likely involved in Pride are in the medial temporal lobe, in the hippocampus and in the cingulate gyrus. As a practicing Neurologist (apart from my bench research), I have noted how these functions are altered by such lesions as tumours, strokes, small haemorrhages, and trauma (including surgery). Good Day to you Theo, Fiach

03-13-2003, 05:44 PM	#53
Fiach Banned Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Scotland, UK Posts: 602	Theo, it has worked both ways. I'm always fascinated by people who write books to say they were wrong in their beliefs. Of course, they're sure what they believe now is true, so we should listen to them. Theo, you are well aware that Augustine of Hippo wrote about his rough and rowdy ways and his conversion to what he considered his correct belief. We all have a right to change ourselves. A few Atheists, like Madalyn Murray's son, converted to Fundamentalism. It can happen. However, if you attend an Atheist convention such as American Atheist, you will find a couple thousand Atheists who are ex-Christians. The majority of American Atheists are ex-christians by a large percentage. Atheistic families are not that common yet but naturally are increasing with the Atheist population stabilising and growing. Even I was raised as a Christian as a child, but I will concede that I am not sure I ever believed the stories told to me in school. My christianity could be argued. Yes, we should listen to them. I read Augustine and I read Dan Barker. The more we learn of both sides of the issue the better we understand what we believe. Fiach

03-13-2003, 07:44 PM	#59
Fiach Banned Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Scotland, UK Posts: 602	To Theo Yes, we should listen to them. I read Augustine and I read Dan Barker. The more we learn of both sides of the issue the better we understand what we believe. Aye. Aren't you begging the question? No. Why "should" we listen to them? Why shouldn't I just believe whatever comes into my mind at any given moment, even if it contradicts what I believed just a moment before? We should listen to them because we should understand what they are saying and believing. It isn't necessarily to believe everything you read. Here you are I are exchanging our ideas. I do it to learn more about what makes you tick. Hopefully you are trying to understand how I think as well. Realistically I am not going to covert you nor you convert me. I think we can defuse bigotry by better understanding. Especially if we can do it withour rancor. Are you suggesting that there really is a "true" belief? No, beliefs are opinions based on faith not scientifically proven fact. I think Mark Twain said, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." Carl Sagan said it best, "I don't want to believe, I want to know." How is that possible if all our beliefs are merely biological functions of our "brain?" It is not possible to have a true faith. There is no such thing. And each human brain is going to see such things differently in some way. That is why Christianity the "true faith" to many exists in 2000 different churches. Faith and Knowledge are brain based entirely. That is why even a scientist can occasionally be wrong and have his colleagues slag him over it in the journals. Fiach

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03-13-2003, 07:01 PM	#57
Monk Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 11	"9-11 in New York could not have happened without religion. The Taliban could not have been created without religion. Iran would not have executed over 100,000 people without religion. 34 Saudi Arabian school girls would not have died in a building fire, prevented by religious police from leaving the building without headgear (in the other end of the burning building, without religion. Writers like Salman Rushdie and many others would not have fatwas (death warrants) on them without religion. Up to 1 million women would not have been burned or otherwise executed from 800 to 1700 CE without the Christian Religion. The Crusades, the 30 years war (millions of casualties), the French Huguenot Wars, and perhaps the Holocaust would not have occurred without religion. The burning of the Great Library of Alexandria would not have occurred losing much ancient knowledge, without religion. The torture, disembowelment, and dismemberment in the killing of Hypatia, the Greek Scientist at Alexandria in 412 CE for teaching of a spherical Earth, and other ancient science as infidelism, would not have occurred with out religion. This is just my short list. My long list would be too burdensome to post. Fiach" I wouldnt say religion was the sole cause of all these things,infact im fairly sure all the participants in these destructive things where going against the accepted practice of their religion or the teachings in their holy books.You could also say all these things wouldnt have occured without air :P or wouldnt have occured without every single thing in the universe being as it was.Hmm but then again if reality was different how do you know how it would turn out?.Popular beliefs have always been used as excuses to justify what some people think,that doesnt make it the religion itself.I would put ultimate blame on ignorance,delusion and attachment.

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