Are you an Atheist/Believer?

[Neeranam]

I'm sure many bats don't believe in the moon as they have never seen it. Other bats believe as they have other senses that feel the moon.

Different creatures have different senses and members of the same species can have senses that vary.

Those humans who haven't seen or experienced God are lack some kind of sense. 6th sense perhaps?

There are 'worlds' beyond what most of us can perceive and we can never prove them just as one bat cannot prove to another that there is no moon. The bats that go on about there being no moon are wasting their time. They should try to develop their missing sense and experience the joy of the moon.

Maybe some of our lives are so small that there is no room for any joy in them

Or no room for our egos and joy. Ego deflation is necessary IMHO, to gain humility, in order to experience the joy of 'soul consciousness', "God consciousness", "enlightenment", "awareness" or whatever you want to call that experience that makes everything else seem mundane and insignificant.

Sadly, atheists are lacking humility.

[Nayet]

I'm sure many bats don't believe in the moon as they have never seen it. Other bats believe as they have other senses that feel the moon.

Different creatures have different senses and members of the same species can have senses that vary.

Those humans who haven't seen or experienced God are lack some kind of sense. 6th sense perhaps?

Maybe you are right that some people - like myself - are missing the sensory faculties required to experience God, but whose fault is that? I did not engineer my own brain.

[sirineou]

I'm sure many bats don't believe in the moon as they have never seen it. Other bats believe as they have other senses that feel the moon.

Different creatures have different senses and members of the same species can have senses that vary.

Those humans who haven't seen or experienced God are lack some kind of sense. 6th sense perhaps?

There are 'worlds' beyond what most of us can perceive and we can never prove them just as one bat cannot prove to another that there is a moon. The bats that go on about there being no moon are wasting their time. They should try to develop their missing sense and experience the joy of the moon. Instead of trying to boost their egos by insisting that they who are senseless are in some way more intelligent than the bats with more senses.

All bats are totally unaware of Uranus, like we as a species are totally unaware of something.

Hog wash

Now we left the Gaps and moved on to extra sensory abilities

this sounds kind of batty to my self.

say nothing else this is certainly entertaining

Sorry I try to be respectful but really...................

Edited January 20, 2014 by sirineou

[notmyself]

[StreetCowboy]

I don't feel the need to convince other people that they are wrong in their beliefs. I am happy with my beliefs, others can have theirs. As I understand it, the absence of God does not reward atheists for their conversions.

SC

[Neeranam]

I'm sure many bats don't believe in the moon as they have never seen it. Other bats believe as they have other senses that feel the moon.

Different creatures have different senses and members of the same species can have senses that vary.

Those humans who haven't seen or experienced God are lack some kind of sense. 6th sense perhaps?

There are 'worlds' beyond what most of us can perceive and we can never prove them just as one bat cannot prove to another that there is a moon. The bats that go on about there being no moon are wasting their time. They should try to develop their missing sense and experience the joy of the moon. Instead of trying to boost their egos by insisting that they who are senseless are in some way more intelligent than the bats with more senses.

All bats are totally unaware of Uranus, like we as a species are totally unaware of something.

Hog wash

Now we left the Gaps and moved on to extra sensory abilities

this sounds kind of batty to my self.

say nothing else this is certainly entertaining

Sorry I try to be respectful but really...................

Sorry, you've lost me - what gaps?

Here's what an expert says about the moon

Does the moon exist if there are no sentient beings to look at it?

In my last True/Slant post I explained why it is that quantum effects do not apply to the macro world because of the size difference between sub-atomic particles and (say) chemical reactions inside the neurons in your head, concluding:

During the debate Deepak claimed that the moon is nothing more than a soup of teaming quantum uncertainty. No. Subatomic particles may be altered when they are observed, but the moon is there even if no one looks at it.

Deepak wrote a thoughtful response to this blog (on his Blackberry while running on a treadmill with his agile thumbs no less!):

When you see an object, the moon being the example you chose, your eyes are not really seeing the moon. Your eyes are responding to photons that follow all the rules of wave-particle duality. The electro-chemical reaction in your rods and cones sends an electrical current to your brain, an action potential that goes to your occipital cortex where it is registered as a particular intensity and pattern of electrical firings in your synaptic networks. No image entered your eyes, no image enters your neural networks. Yet you see the moon in your consciousness. There was no moon till it was an experience in your consciousness. Your brain is not registering pictures of the moon. It is sensing a digital on-off code of photons or waves of electricity (same thing) The collapse of wave function that creates the moon is in your consciousness (that has no location because its non local) The moon exists in consciousnessno consciousness, no moonjust a sluggishly expanding wave function in a superposition of possibilities. All happens within consciousness and nowhere else. In fact, the sluggishly expanding possibility wave function is also within consciousness. The same principle applies to any macro object including your own body. Thats why I said on Larry King that you are not in your body, the body is in you. You are not in the world, the world is in you. You are not in your mind (thoughts are possibility waves till experienced in consciousness) the mind is in you. This you of course is not a person. It is what Stuart Hameroff (whom you quoted in your blog as generating heat but not lightalas they are the same thinglight and heat:)) says in an upcoming interview: I think a fundamental field of protoconscious experience has been embedded all alongsince the big bangin the (quantum realm) and that biology evolved and adapted in order to access it and maximize the qualities and potentials implicit within itthis could be the basic fabric of the universe. Take care.

Shermer:

I agree with nearly everything you say here, except that the moon would exist even if there were no humans to observe it. If all life on earth were instantly eradicated by a rogue asteroid, the moon would continue on its merry way about what would be left of the shattered earth. In fact, even if there were no life anywhere in the cosmos, all those galaxies of stars would still be there. Do you disagree with that position? That reality exists separate from us observers? Otherwise, wouldnt that just be solipsism?

Deepak:

I disagree. Lets take a simpler example. Lets say your looking at a rose, a beautiful red one. What does it look like to a honey bee? The honey bee has no receptors for the usual wave lengths of light that you and I sense. It responds to ultraviolet so I dont know what the experience of a rose to a honey bee but it has some experience, it is drawn to the flower and in fact makes honey out of it. What about a bat who can perhaps sense it as the echo of ultrasound. I dont know what that experience is like either because Im not a bat. What about a chameleon whose eyeballs swivel on 2 different axes? I cant even remotely imagine what that object looks like to a chameleon. There are innumerable species who because of the nature of their sensory apparatus have a different experience of that rose. The senses do not see a rose. They register electricity! The neurons do not see a rose, they sense ionic shifts. What is the real look of the rose? There is no such thing! It depends on whose looking and also the instruments of observationin this case the instrument of observation is the nervous system. (Of course thats where you and I differ because you say you are your nervous system and I say you are the user of your nervous system.) Who is looking? A non-material observer. What is it looking at? It is looking at possibility waves that collapse as space time events in its own consciousness. That non-local observer is a single observer in all these different observations. Schroedinger: Consciousness is a singular that has no plural. You are the eyes of the universe looking at itself as a rose or the moon! Rumi: Let the waters settle and you will see stars and the moon mirrored in your own being. Every sentient biological entity is a singular consciousness looking at itself as a particular object. The observer and observed are the same being. The history of the cosmos is a history that is conceived in a particular way as if we were there or other biological organisms were there to observe it. But just as you cannot have an electrical current without a +ve and -ve terminal in place, you cant have an object unless there is consciousness and a collapse of wave function to create that experience. There is now also a field called time symmetric quantum mechanics that says that information from the future fills in the indeterminacies of the present. In other words the universe evolves teleologically.

Okay, Deepak, I think I understand the core of our disagreement: you are placing epistemology over ontologyhow we know reality over reality itself. I think this is a result of your metaphysics and the worldview with which you begin. Since I privilege ontology over epistemologyreality over how we know realitymy conclusions will inevitably be different from your own.

On Larry King you stated: There are traditions that say the in-body experience is a socially induced collective hallucination. We do not exist in the body. The body exists in us. We do not exist in the world. The world exists in us. I wrote in my True/Slant blog that I didnt understand this. Now I think I do after reading you more carefully. For you, the first-person I perspective is primary. As in your example with the rose, without rods and cones to transduce the photons of light bouncing off the rose into neuronal action potentials that register in a visual cortex, there is no rose. Of course, I could just as easily argue that without the rose there would be no photons to transduce into action potentials to register on a visual cortex.

Sowhich is the right perspective: reality first or I/self first? Reality takes precedence over self. Why? Here is one answer. Look at this photograph of the 36-inch Crossley reflecting telescope at the Lick Observatory, which I visited the day before our Caltech debate. It was through this telescope that the mysterious spiral nebulae were first imaged well enough for astronomers to conclude that they represent island universes (galaxies) far away from our own galaxy, and are not developing solar systems within the Milky Way. But the imaged nebulae did not register on anyones retina (or visual cortex): it was imaged on a spectrographic platea machine, not a brain. And those photons would register in that machine even if every human on earth disappeared that night.

[Neeranam]

What arrogance. And isn't arrogance the antonym of humility?

[StreetCowboy]

I might feel a little foolish if I had devoted a lifetime of piety in the hope of the everlasting, only to find there was nothing but ashes and dust,

My neighbour might feel more than foolish, faced with eternal fire and brimstone. When it comes to risk versus rewards, you need to be pretty certain to make it worth your while.

SC

[notmyself]

What arrogance. And isn't arrogance the antonym of humility?

It could be said by a theist or an atheist. Interesting to note you did not see this..... humility? lol

[Neeranam]

What arrogance. And isn't arrogance the antonym of humility?

It could be said by a theist or an atheist. Interesting to note you did not see this..... humility? lol

I think any rational person would see the pretentious professor Dennet, the atheist word on the photo and put 1 and 1 together to get 2.

[notmyself]

I might feel a little foolish if I had devoted a lifetime of piety in the hope of the everlasting, only to find there was nothing but ashes and dust,

My neighbour might feel more than foolish, faced with eternal fire and brimstone. When it comes to risk versus rewards, you need to be pretty certain to make it worth your while.

SC

Am I certain no god exists? No, of cause not because that would be foolish. Am I certain that that no reasonable argument has been put forward to believe one does exist? Yes. How can I be so sure that a reasonable argument has not been put forward you may well ask. Had one been put forward then belief would not require faith.

An example (kind of?) of this is alternative medicine. When it is shown to work it is not called alternative medicine any more, it is called medicine.

[StreetCowboy]

What arrogance. And isn't arrogance the antonym of humility?

It could be said by a theist or an atheist. Interesting to note you did not see this..... humility? lol

I thought you were a self-avowed atheist. Or were you presenting it as an example of how a theist might ridicule an atheist?

In my experience, most atheists don't devote their lives to the cause, since they effectively have none, and perhaps, in the views of theists, just fritter their lives away, with not even a folly to show for it

SC

[notmyself]

What arrogance. And isn't arrogance the antonym of humility?

It could be said by a theist or an atheist. Interesting to note you did not see this..... humility? lol

I think any rational person would see the pretentious professor Dennet, the atheist word on the photo and put 1 and 1 together to get 2.

Except the answer is not 2 is it... Theists and atheists could say exactly the same thing but some just jump to a conclusion without even thinking as you did. Immediate offence (arrogance) without even considering what the words say. This is sadly prolific in general but certainly more so for the religious. Just scroll down the list of T & C's and click 'I accept' without reading it.

[Nayet]

I might feel a little foolish if I had devoted a lifetime of piety in the hope of the everlasting, only to find there was nothing but ashes and dust,

My neighbour might feel more than foolish, faced with eternal fire and brimstone. When it comes to risk versus rewards, you need to be pretty certain to make it worth your while.

SC

God supposedly cares about belief, not professed belief. If me saying I believe in God while keeping my fingers crossed behind my back makes God happy, fine. But I can't change the fact that I perceive belief in God to be deeply irrational and am therefore utterly unable to adopt belief in said God, no matter what threats of eternal damnation my fallible fellow humans hurl at me.

[notmyself]

What arrogance. And isn't arrogance the antonym of humility?

It could be said by a theist or an atheist. Interesting to note you did not see this..... humility? lol

I thought you were a self-avowed atheist. Or were you presenting it as an example of how a theist might ridicule an atheist?

In my experience, most atheists don't devote their lives to the cause, since they effectively have none, and perhaps, in the views of theists, just fritter their lives away, with not even a folly to show for it

SC

Sorry SC, explained more in the post under your own.

This particular phrase by DD often comes up when theists talk about humility. It usually demonstrates the hypocrisy of those who claim to have it (humility).

[notmyself]

God supposedly cares about belief, not professed belief.

The all knowing god of Abraham may not be the sharpest tool in the box so could be fooled by false piety. After Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge and hid their nakedness he was unable to find them. It's in the Bible.

[StreetCowboy]

...

Sorry SC, explained more in the post under your own.

This particular phrase by DD often comes up when theists talk about humility. It usually demonstrates the hypocrisy of those who claim to have it (humility).

I suppose that's why I only comment in the most general way about people's beliefs. If you make it personal, the best that you can hope for is to make them defensive and reinforce their opinions. Or so I believe, and I have not seen any evidence on this thread to suggest otherwise

SC

[notmyself]

...

Sorry SC, explained more in the post under your own.

This particular phrase by DD often comes up when theists talk about humility. It usually demonstrates the hypocrisy of those who claim to have it (humility).

I suppose that's why I only comment in the most general way about people's beliefs. If you make it personal, the best that you can hope for is to make them defensive and reinforce their opinions. Or so I believe, and I have not seen any evidence on this thread to suggest otherwise

SC

True enough and this thread is about theism and atheism rather than about a particular flavour of theism and associated rejection of that flavour.

Friend of mine made a series of vids a few years back and are worth a look at if this particular subject is of interest in a general way.

[sirineou]

I'm sure many bats don't believe in the moon as they have never seen it. Other bats believe as they have other senses that feel the moon.

Different creatures have different senses and members of the same species can have senses that vary.

Those humans who haven't seen or experienced God are lack some kind of sense. 6th sense perhaps?

There are 'worlds' beyond what most of us can perceive and we can never prove them just as one bat cannot prove to another that there is a moon. The bats that go on about there being no moon are wasting their time. They should try to develop their missing sense and experience the joy of the moon. Instead of trying to boost their egos by insisting that they who are senseless are in some way more intelligent than the bats with more senses.

All bats are totally unaware of Uranus, like we as a species are totally unaware of something.

Hog wash

Now we left the Gaps and moved on to extra sensory abilities

this sounds kind of batty to my self.

say nothing else this is certainly entertaining

Sorry I try to be respectful but really...................

Sorry, you've lost me - what gaps?

Here's what an expert says about the moon

Does the moon exist if there are no sentient beings to look at it?

In my last True/Slant post I explained why it is that quantum effects do not apply to the macro world because of the size difference between sub-atomic particles and (say) chemical reactions inside the neurons in your head, concluding:

During the debate Deepak claimed that the moon is nothing more than a soup of teaming quantum uncertainty. No. Subatomic particles may be altered when they are observed, but the moon is there even if no one looks at it.

Deepak wrote a thoughtful response to this blog (on his Blackberry while running on a treadmill with his agile thumbs no less!):

When you see an object, the moon being the example you chose, your eyes are not really seeing the moon. Your eyes are responding to photons that follow all the rules of wave-particle duality. The electro-chemical reaction in your rods and cones sends an electrical current to your brain, an action potential that goes to your occipital cortex where it is registered as a particular intensity and pattern of electrical firings in your synaptic networks. No image entered your eyes, no image enters your neural networks. Yet you see the moon in your consciousness. There was no moon till it was an experience in your consciousness. Your brain is not registering pictures of the moon. It is sensing a digital on-off code of photons or waves of electricity (same thing) The collapse of wave function that creates the moon is in your consciousness (that has no location because its non local) The moon exists in consciousnessno consciousness, no moonjust a sluggishly expanding wave function in a superposition of possibilities. All happens within consciousness and nowhere else. In fact, the sluggishly expanding possibility wave function is also within consciousness. The same principle applies to any macro object including your own body. Thats why I said on Larry King that you are not in your body, the body is in you. You are not in the world, the world is in you. You are not in your mind (thoughts are possibility waves till experienced in consciousness) the mind is in you. This you of course is not a person. It is what Stuart Hameroff (whom you quoted in your blog as generating heat but not lightalas they are the same thinglight and heat:)) says in an upcoming interview: I think a fundamental field of protoconscious experience has been embedded all alongsince the big bangin the (quantum realm) and that biology evolved and adapted in order to access it and maximize the qualities and potentials implicit within itthis could be the basic fabric of the universe. Take care.

Shermer:

I agree with nearly everything you say here, except that the moon would exist even if there were no humans to observe it. If all life on earth were instantly eradicated by a rogue asteroid, the moon would continue on its merry way about what would be left of the shattered earth. In fact, even if there were no life anywhere in the cosmos, all those galaxies of stars would still be there. Do you disagree with that position? That reality exists separate from us observers? Otherwise, wouldnt that just be solipsism?

Deepak:

I disagree. Lets take a simpler example. Lets say your looking at a rose, a beautiful red one. What does it look like to a honey bee? The honey bee has no receptors for the usual wave lengths of light that you and I sense. It responds to ultraviolet so I dont know what the experience of a rose to a honey bee but it has some experience, it is drawn to the flower and in fact makes honey out of it. What about a bat who can perhaps sense it as the echo of ultrasound. I dont know what that experience is like either because Im not a bat. What about a chameleon whose eyeballs swivel on 2 different axes? I cant even remotely imagine what that object looks like to a chameleon. There are innumerable species who because of the nature of their sensory apparatus have a different experience of that rose. The senses do not see a rose. They register electricity! The neurons do not see a rose, they sense ionic shifts. What is the real look of the rose? There is no such thing! It depends on whose looking and also the instruments of observationin this case the instrument of observation is the nervous system. (Of course thats where you and I differ because you say you are your nervous system and I say you are the user of your nervous system.) Who is looking? A non-material observer. What is it looking at? It is looking at possibility waves that collapse as space time events in its own consciousness. That non-local observer is a single observer in all these different observations. Schroedinger: Consciousness is a singular that has no plural. You are the eyes of the universe looking at itself as a rose or the moon! Rumi: Let the waters settle and you will see stars and the moon mirrored in your own being. Every sentient biological entity is a singular consciousness looking at itself as a particular object. The observer and observed are the same being. The history of the cosmos is a history that is conceived in a particular way as if we were there or other biological organisms were there to observe it. But just as you cannot have an electrical current without a +ve and -ve terminal in place, you cant have an object unless there is consciousness and a collapse of wave function to create that experience. There is now also a field called time symmetric quantum mechanics that says that information from the future fills in the indeterminacies of the present. In other words the universe evolves teleologically.

Okay, Deepak, I think I understand the core of our disagreement: you are placing epistemology over ontologyhow we know reality over reality itself. I think this is a result of your metaphysics and the worldview with which you begin. Since I privilege ontology over epistemologyreality over how we know realitymy conclusions will inevitably be different from your own.

On Larry King you stated: There are traditions that say the in-body experience is a socially induced collective hallucination. We do not exist in the body. The body exists in us. We do not exist in the world. The world exists in us. I wrote in my True/Slant blog that I didnt understand this. Now I think I do after reading you more carefully. For you, the first-person I perspective is primary. As in your example with the rose, without rods and cones to transduce the photons of light bouncing off the rose into neuronal action potentials that register in a visual cortex, there is no rose. Of course, I could just as easily argue that without the rose there would be no photons to transduce into action potentials to register on a visual cortex.

Sowhich is the right perspective: reality first or I/self first? Reality takes precedence over self. Why? Here is one answer. Look at this photograph of the 36-inch Crossley reflecting telescope at the Lick Observatory, which I visited the day before our Caltech debate. It was through this telescope that the mysterious spiral nebulae were first imaged well enough for astronomers to conclude that they represent island universes (galaxies) far away from our own galaxy, and are not developing solar systems within the Milky Way. But the imaged nebulae did not register on anyones retina (or visual cortex): it was imaged on a spectrographic platea machine, not a brain. And those photons would register in that machine even if every human on earth disappeared that night.

Gaps

The God of the gaps, existing with in the gap of our understanding, then when that gap is filled with knowledge,

moving to a different gap in our knowledge

Now it is extrasensory perception, what next?

Deepak really?

The Moon, existed long before, never mind humans to observe it, but before biology and will exist long after we are gone

Human hubris,

God created a universe with 10 to the power of 11 of galaxies, and an estimated 10 to the power 24 stars with who knows how many zeroes after the 10 planets, most hostile to our existence,

and at the edge of an insignificant Galaxy, on a small planet , orbiting around an unremarkable sun, he created humans in his Image , simply so that they can observe it ,and by virtue of their observation validate his creation.

And with all that Universe at his disposal what does he do, he frets over over the thoughts that he himself put in our heads. Is worried about our sexual positions, engages in real state deals with specific nationalities in the middle east

You got to be kidding me.

Really?? are you kidding me? as John MacEnroe used to say "You can not be serious"

[Neeranam]

Except the answer is not 2 is it... Theists and atheists could say exactly the same thing but some just jump to a conclusion without even thinking as you did. Immediate offence (arrogance) without even considering what the words say. This is sadly prolific in general but certainly more so for the religious. Just scroll down the list of T & C's and click 'I accept' without reading it.

I'm surprised that you, an atheist, are acting so irrationally. Bloody obvious what your photo and quote are saying.

BTW, I am not religious. I am not offended. I just find you and your desperation rather sad.

What are the motives of your posting here?

[Neeranam]

I'm sure many bats don't believe in the moon as they have never seen it. Other bats believe as they have other senses that feel the moon.

Different creatures have different senses and members of the same species can have senses that vary.

Those humans who haven't seen or experienced God are lack some kind of sense. 6th sense perhaps?

There are 'worlds' beyond what most of us can perceive and we can never prove them just as one bat cannot prove to another that there is a moon. The bats that go on about there being no moon are wasting their time. They should try to develop their missing sense and experience the joy of the moon. Instead of trying to boost their egos by insisting that they who are senseless are in some way more intelligent than the bats with more senses.

All bats are totally unaware of Uranus, like we as a species are totally unaware of something.

Hog wash

Now we left the Gaps and moved on to extra sensory abilities

this sounds kind of batty to my self.

say nothing else this is certainly entertaining

Sorry I try to be respectful but really...................

Sorry, you've lost me - what gaps?

Here's what an expert says about the moon

Does the moon exist if there are no sentient beings to look at it?

In my last True/Slant post I explained why it is that quantum effects do not apply to the macro world because of the size difference between sub-atomic particles and (say) chemical reactions inside the neurons in your head, concluding:

During the debate Deepak claimed that the moon is nothing more than a soup of teaming quantum uncertainty. No. Subatomic particles may be altered when they are observed, but the moon is there even if no one looks at it.

Deepak wrote a thoughtful response to this blog (on his Blackberry while running on a treadmill with his agile thumbs no less!):

When you see an object, the moon being the example you chose, your eyes are not really seeing the moon. Your eyes are responding to photons that follow all the rules of wave-particle duality. The electro-chemical reaction in your rods and cones sends an electrical current to your brain, an action potential that goes to your occipital cortex where it is registered as a particular intensity and pattern of electrical firings in your synaptic networks. No image entered your eyes, no image enters your neural networks. Yet you see the moon in your consciousness. There was no moon till it was an experience in your consciousness. Your brain is not registering pictures of the moon. It is sensing a digital on-off code of photons or waves of electricity (same thing) The collapse of wave function that creates the moon is in your consciousness (that has no location because its non local) The moon exists in consciousnessno consciousness, no moonjust a sluggishly expanding wave function in a superposition of possibilities. All happens within consciousness and nowhere else. In fact, the sluggishly expanding possibility wave function is also within consciousness. The same principle applies to any macro object including your own body. Thats why I said on Larry King that you are not in your body, the body is in you. You are not in the world, the world is in you. You are not in your mind (thoughts are possibility waves till experienced in consciousness) the mind is in you. This you of course is not a person. It is what Stuart Hameroff (whom you quoted in your blog as generating heat but not lightalas they are the same thinglight and heat:)) says in an upcoming interview: I think a fundamental field of protoconscious experience has been embedded all alongsince the big bangin the (quantum realm) and that biology evolved and adapted in order to access it and maximize the qualities and potentials implicit within itthis could be the basic fabric of the universe. Take care.

Shermer:

I agree with nearly everything you say here, except that the moon would exist even if there were no humans to observe it. If all life on earth were instantly eradicated by a rogue asteroid, the moon would continue on its merry way about what would be left of the shattered earth. In fact, even if there were no life anywhere in the cosmos, all those galaxies of stars would still be there. Do you disagree with that position? That reality exists separate from us observers? Otherwise, wouldnt that just be solipsism?

Deepak:

I disagree. Lets take a simpler example. Lets say your looking at a rose, a beautiful red one. What does it look like to a honey bee? The honey bee has no receptors for the usual wave lengths of light that you and I sense. It responds to ultraviolet so I dont know what the experience of a rose to a honey bee but it has some experience, it is drawn to the flower and in fact makes honey out of it. What about a bat who can perhaps sense it as the echo of ultrasound. I dont know what that experience is like either because Im not a bat. What about a chameleon whose eyeballs swivel on 2 different axes? I cant even remotely imagine what that object looks like to a chameleon. There are innumerable species who because of the nature of their sensory apparatus have a different experience of that rose. The senses do not see a rose. They register electricity! The neurons do not see a rose, they sense ionic shifts. What is the real look of the rose? There is no such thing! It depends on whose looking and also the instruments of observationin this case the instrument of observation is the nervous system. (Of course thats where you and I differ because you say you are your nervous system and I say you are the user of your nervous system.) Who is looking? A non-material observer. What is it looking at? It is looking at possibility waves that collapse as space time events in its own consciousness. That non-local observer is a single observer in all these different observations. Schroedinger: Consciousness is a singular that has no plural. You are the eyes of the universe looking at itself as a rose or the moon! Rumi: Let the waters settle and you will see stars and the moon mirrored in your own being. Every sentient biological entity is a singular consciousness looking at itself as a particular object. The observer and observed are the same being. The history of the cosmos is a history that is conceived in a particular way as if we were there or other biological organisms were there to observe it. But just as you cannot have an electrical current without a +ve and -ve terminal in place, you cant have an object unless there is consciousness and a collapse of wave function to create that experience. There is now also a field called time symmetric quantum mechanics that says that information from the future fills in the indeterminacies of the present. In other words the universe evolves teleologically.

Okay, Deepak, I think I understand the core of our disagreement: you are placing epistemology over ontologyhow we know reality over reality itself. I think this is a result of your metaphysics and the worldview with which you begin. Since I privilege ontology over epistemologyreality over how we know realitymy conclusions will inevitably be different from your own.

On Larry King you stated: There are traditions that say the in-body experience is a socially induced collective hallucination. We do not exist in the body. The body exists in us. We do not exist in the world. The world exists in us. I wrote in my True/Slant blog that I didnt understand this. Now I think I do after reading you more carefully. For you, the first-person I perspective is primary. As in your example with the rose, without rods and cones to transduce the photons of light bouncing off the rose into neuronal action potentials that register in a visual cortex, there is no rose. Of course, I could just as easily argue that without the rose there would be no photons to transduce into action potentials to register on a visual cortex.

Sowhich is the right perspective: reality first or I/self first? Reality takes precedence over self. Why? Here is one answer. Look at this photograph of the 36-inch Crossley reflecting telescope at the Lick Observatory, which I visited the day before our Caltech debate. It was through this telescope that the mysterious spiral nebulae were first imaged well enough for astronomers to conclude that they represent island universes (galaxies) far away from our own galaxy, and are not developing solar systems within the Milky Way. But the imaged nebulae did not register on anyones retina (or visual cortex): it was imaged on a spectrographic platea machine, not a brain. And those photons would register in that machine even if every human on earth disappeared that night.

Gaps

The God of the gaps, existing with in the gap of our understanding, then when that gap is filled with knowledge,

moving to a different gap in our knowledge

Now it is extrasensory perception, what next?

Deepak really?

The Moon, existed long before, never mind humans to observe it, but before biology and will exist long after we are gone

Human hubris,

God created a universe with 10 to the power of 11 of galaxies, and an estimated 10 to the power 24 stars with who knows how many zeroes after the 10 planets, most hostile to our existence,

and at the edge of an insignificant Galaxy, on a small planet , orbiting around an unremarkable sun, he created humans in his Image , simply so that they can observe it ,and by virtue of their observation validate his creation.

And with all that Universe at his disposal what does he do, he frets over over the thoughts that he himself put in our heads. Is worried about our sexual positions, engages in real state deals with specific nationalities in the middle east

You got to be kidding me.

Really?? are you kidding me? as John MacEnroe used to say "You can not be serious"

Please tell me your credentials and what makes you think you are more intelligent than Deepak Chopra

[notmyself]

What are the motives of your posting here?

Lifelong personal interest in irrational belief among our species. Worth every second as there have been a number of very will put arguments so far. I also do charity work related to this subject and some of the answers help me to be more effective in what I do.

Your motive?

[StreetCowboy]

What are the motives of your posting here?

Lifelong personal interest in irrational belief among our species. Worth every second as there have been a number of very will put arguments so far. I also do charity work related to this subject and some of the answers help me to be more effective in what I do.

Your motive?

I hope that by questioning people's beliefs, they can strengthen them with more sensible arguments.

In some cases, perhaps they might reconsider their beliefs, but I have more faith in Scotland winning the World Cup

SC

[Neeranam]

What are the motives of your posting here?

Lifelong personal interest in irrational belief among our species. Worth every second as there have been a number of very will put arguments so far. I also do charity work related to this subject and some of the answers help me to be more effective in what I do.

Your motive?

Lifelong personal interest in all beliefs too.

No clear motive, but I enjoy debating with atheists and religious people, maybe some wishful thinking that I could help them see the light.

Actually my father was studying to be a minister until he saw the light.

It irritates me to see atheists so unhappy, closed minded and ignorant.

[Neeranam]

What are the motives of your posting here?

Lifelong personal interest in irrational belief among our species. Worth every second as there have been a number of very will put arguments so far. I also do charity work related to this subject and some of the answers help me to be more effective in what I do.

Your motive?

I hope that by questioning people's beliefs, they can strengthen them with more sensible arguments.

In some cases, perhaps they might reconsider their beliefs, but I have more faith in Scotland winning the World Cup

SC

They're not in the World Cup, are they?

[StreetCowboy]

What are the motives of your posting here?

Lifelong personal interest in irrational belief among our species. Worth every second as there have been a number of very will put arguments so far. I also do charity work related to this subject and some of the answers help me to be more effective in what I do.

Your motive?

Lifelong personal interest in all beliefs too.

No clear motive, but I enjoy debating with atheists and religious people, maybe some wishful thinking that I could help them see the light.

Actually my father was studying to be a minister until he saw the light.

It irritates me to see atheists so unhappy, closed minded and ignorant.

Who else would you want to see unhappy, close-minded and ignorant? Somebody has to excel in those departments

[notmyself]

It irritates me to see atheists so unhappy, closed minded and ignorant.

I have no idea what you mean by that.

[notmyself]

They're not in the World Cup, are they?

Stop being so closed minded.

[StreetCowboy]

What are the motives of your posting here?

Lifelong personal interest in irrational belief among our species. Worth every second as there have been a number of very will put arguments so far. I also do charity work related to this subject and some of the answers help me to be more effective in what I do.

Your motive?

I hope that by questioning people's beliefs, they can strengthen them with more sensible arguments.

In some cases, perhaps they might reconsider their beliefs, but I have more faith in Scotland winning the World Cup

SC

They're not in the World Cup, are they?

Not the FIFA one in Brazil, no. I don't think we should limit our dreams.

SC

[StreetCowboy]

What are the motives of your posting here?

Lifelong personal interest in irrational belief among our species. Worth every second as there have been a number of very will put arguments so far. I also do charity work related to this subject and some of the answers help me to be more effective in what I do.

Your motive?

I hope that by questioning people's beliefs, they can strengthen them with more sensible arguments.

In some cases, perhaps they might reconsider their beliefs, but I have more faith in Scotland winning the World Cup

SC

They're not in the World Cup, are they?

Not the FIFA one in Brazil, no. I don't think we should limit our dreams.

SC