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T The God Helmet shows us that when artificially stimulated our brain detects the presence of God. It is fooled. But when there is no artificial stimulation or other cause and it then detects the presence of God, how could it possibly be fooled?
Deep meditaion can do the same thing, and it fooled you, didn't it?
Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insurmountable obstacle..... The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die. If you claim that some form of consciousness persists beyond death, what particles is that consciousness made of? What forces are holding it together? How does it interact with ordinary matter?
Deep meditaion can do the same thing, and it fooled you, didn't it?
You are suggesting that by meditating I generated the same kind of EM field configurations that are used in the God Helmet? Sorry . . . I have no such ability. The source was not me.
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Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insurmountable obstacle..... The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die.
This is wrong for two reasons . . . one, the information stored in our brains is only needed for interactions on this plane of existence as a physical being. It is not required as a Spirit (pure energy). Two, there is no need to violate any physical laws.
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If you claim that some form of consciousness persists beyond death, what particles is that consciousness made of? What forces are holding it together? How does it interact with ordinary matter?
My current conjecture is that consciousness is some composite of dark energy and dark matter . . . the exact composition being unknown. The conjecture involves certain congruent facts. Consciousness, dark energy and dark matter are not directly measurable phenomena but they have detectable effects on what we can measure. All three are unaffected by and unrelated to the other known forces, except for gravity. Gravity is the one possibly unifying force for all three. The gravity from dark matter is responsible for the formation of galaxies; Dark energy is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe against gravity; and consciousness seems to be a product of quantum gravity effects within the brain (Penrose's micro-tubules, or some such). If we knew all the details it would be published in peer-reviewed journals.
^^ This is brilliant. I couldn't rep you, Nozz, but know that I'm feelin' the love.
Not a problem, I do my best I am sure you will see me again.
The error highlighted in that post however is an important one to espouse whenever you see it. The mistake made was to assume that if some part of our brain acts in a certain way in an extreme situation that it was therefore evolved to act like that in such a situation.
There is no reason to make any such assumption and, as you can see, many errors and unusual conclusions result when people do make that assumption.
Quite simply if X is evolved to do Y in situation Z, then in some other "unexpected" situation it will act in unexpected ways. This is normal and there is no reason to impute metaphysics to it.
This is wrong for two reasons . . . one, the information stored in our brains is only needed for interactions on this plane of existence as a physical being. It is not required as a Spirit (pure energy). Two, there is no need to violate any physical laws.
It's spiritual magic!, followed by "there is no need to violate any physical laws". Awesome! Well, you have to appreciate the irony and entertainment value at least.
Quite simply if X is evolved to do Y in situation Z, then in some other "unexpected" situation it will act in unexpected ways. This is normal and there is no reason to impute metaphysics to it.
Heck, if X mostly does Y kinda right in most situations Z, that's good enough for evolution. It's not a binary thing - natural selection works even on relatively small advantages. And if it also does A, B and C as a side effect, as long as those things don't get you killed before you reproduce, it's not a problem as well.
Now for an interesting question - is consciousness Y in this equation, or is it A, B or C? That is, is consciousness a selective advantage or is a neutral (or even slightly harmful) side effect of something other advantageous trait our brains acquired?
Indeed, but I only made it "binary" to highlight the point without getting into over complexity. My point remains the same when we add the intricacies of how Natural selection actually works.
The core point was simply that if something evolves to a certain environment, then it may act unusually under unusual stimulus or duress. That is all and that part is true.
The focus of the discussion here was the idea that if it acts in a certain way, it must be evolved to act in that way for a reason. That is where the nonsense comes in. It is a false assumption, not one we can make at all, and as we have seen when you try to explain what certain behaviors are "for" when there is no reason to think they are "for" anything.... you reach all kinds of nonsense conclusions.
A great non human example of this is moths flying into a flame. You could sit there for years trying to work out what this is "for". Why would a moth evolve to fly into flames. How could this possibly be beneficial?
What we eventually realise it that the moth did NOT evolve to fly into the flame. The moth evolved in the abscence of fire and he evolved to fly parallel to the brightest light source. Which before fire was the moon. Fly thusly to a bright object at optical infinity and you end up flying in a straight line.
Then we came along and started making fire and bright lights and suddenly the moon is not the brightest source of light at night any more. So the moths system goes haywire.
The moth did not evolve to fly into fire. It evolved to do something else, then under unusual conditions this system broke down and acts weird. That is the full explanation.
Similarly when the brain undergoes unusual inputs it acts in ways it was not "for" then it will act in ways that are also "for" nothing. What we are seeing on this thread however is the wish to say that these states must be "for" something and then the speaker makes up all kinds of metaphysical explanations for what it must be "for".
So in other words it is nonsense to say something like "If the brain feels there is a god under weird stimulus then the brain must have evolved to sense there is a god.... which means there is a god". This is not a QED argument, but a string of assumptions from start to finish and one to be avoided.
I think this not good way to explain just junk science
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I am sure you will see me again.
