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The virus is responsible for allowing our nerves and brain cells to function. This would be the case for a complex brain like ours, or a simple brain used only for regulation.
To get to consciousness we had to first evolve a complex mid brain, and then the intellectual fore brain. So it's just part of the evolutionary chain, it's not the direct cause of our consciousness. And that's what the title implied.
The title states "An Ancient Virus May Be Responsible for Human Consciousness", it did not claim that it was responsible for consciousness.
This is why I linked another more accurate source to explain what the science article was attempting to say.
Quote:
According to two papers published in the journal Cell in January, long ago, a virus bound its genetic code to the genome of four-limbed animals. That snippet of code is still very much alive in humans' brains today, where it does the very viral task of packaging up genetic information and sending it from nerve cells to their neighbors in little capsules that look a whole lot like viruses themselves. And these little packages of information might be critical elements of how nerves communicate and reorganize over time — tasks thought to be necessary for higher-order thinking, the researchers said.
Arc/Arg3.1 is required for synaptic plasticity and cognition, and mutations in this gene are linked to autism and schizophrenia. Arc bears a domain resembling retroviral/retrotransposon Gag-like proteins, which multimerize into a capsid that packages viral RNA.
So if Arc is responsible for cognition and people having a "broken" Arc gene present with autism and other atypical neural conditions, and the origins of this gene are from an ancient virus then I really don't see how the title is misleading.
This is a very well written paper...although very technical...it provides insights on how the Arc gene plays a crucial role in consciousness/cognition.
I have never experienced conditioning. Fact is we are a physical being existing in a physical world.
That's right...IYO!
Every single day of your life, your body and brain are being conditioned by association with the nature of your experiences. You consciously participate in learning only a tiny proportion of the associations your body and brain make with the outside world. Probably 80% or more (don't hold me to any specific number) of what you have "learned" about the outside world occurred through classical conditioning and operant conditioning, NOT cognitive learning. This means we are unaware of the bulk of the associations that are driving our emotions (reptilian brain) because they were learned by conditioning without our cognitive participation.
The danger is real. The answer is not to refrain from doing it but to be aware of the danger. People drive every day and they are mostly careful. The danger in claiming the Spirit guidance, just as in elevating a living human. is in doing so WITHOUT reference to the nature of that Spirit. People do it all the time and some religious traditions claim that guidance for their institution, but you will rarely see those people or institutions justifying their claims by showing how they demonstrate the Spirit described by Jesus.
Thanks, Nate. It is difficult to have to translate every little inference for those whose minds seem to be closed to anything not in accord with their preferred beliefs.
I guess you can't or won't make the effort given your post below.
Clearly, you refuse to deal honestly and objectively with my views because of your extreme defensiveness about your own views. The human consciousness of Jesus achieved perfect resonance (Identity) with the consciousness of God. That means His consciousness is indistinguishable from God's. Upon His death, His human consciousness became the first-born Spirit offspring of God. We are to follow Him as the adopted Spirit offspring of God upon our death. Your need to classify Him as God or not is a distraction and a distinction that has no relevance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
It is very relevant. Because you say it is "tremendous danger" and "no good can come of it" to elevate a human to the stature of God, a "mere flawed and fallible human." But then you do it anyway. You have made a dead Jew in your own words "indistinguishable from God." You can't distinguish between a dead Jew and God.
We are speaking at cross purposes. You are carnally focused on the physical person of Jesus. I am spiritually focused on His human consciousness and its relationship to the consciousness of God. God IS Spirit (Consciousness). We are to reproduce His consciousness. Jesus is the first-born human to achieve it perfectly and we are to follow, however imperfectly, because He prepared a connection for us ALL. You know full well my concern is about the danger of elevating mere humans and their books to the status of an infallible and inerrant God as most religions do. But we have a guide, the Comforter, sent in Christ's name to lead us to the Truth God has "written in our hearts." But instead of looking into our hearts with agape love under the guidance of the Comforter too many are looking in books and causing much pain and suffering both physical and mental.
We are speaking at cross purposes. You are carnally focused on the physical person of Jesus. I am spiritually focused on His human consciousness and its relationship to the consciousness of God. God IS Spirit (Consciousness). We are to reproduce His consciousness. Jesus is the first-born human to achieve it perfectly and we are to follow, however imperfectly, because He prepared a connection for us ALL. You know full well my concern is about the danger of elevating mere humans and their books to the status of an infallible and inerrant God as most religions do. But we have a guide, the Comforter, sent in Christ's name to lead us to the Truth God has "written in our hearts." But instead of looking into our hearts with agape love under the guidance of the Comforter too many are looking in books and causing much pain and suffering both physical and mental.
And that is exactly what you have done. And are doing. With your own religious beliefs. And the religion you state you belong to. You openly state that you can't distinguish between a dead human and God. You state a dead Jew is "indistinguishable from God" and you worship a dead human. You have elevated a human to the stature of God.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
... The human consciousness of Jesus achieved perfect resonance (Identity) with the consciousness of God. That means His consciousness is indistinguishable from God's. .....
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
... there is no significant difference between worshiping Jesus as the representation of God and worshiping God. Jesus DOES tell us to pray to our Father in Heaven, NOT Him, but that is nitpicking given the Christian confusion ....
and read the last quote. it says only pray to God, not to any human dead or alive, and you totally disregard that even!
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 02-13-2018 at 05:27 PM..
Every single day of your life, your body and brain are being conditioned by association with the nature of your experiences. You consciously participate in learning only a tiny proportion of the associations your body and brain make with the outside world. Probably 80% or more (don't hold me to any specific number) of what you have "learned" about the outside world occurred through classical conditioning and operant conditioning, NOT cognitive learning. This means we are unaware of the bulk of the associations that are driving our emotions (reptilian brain) because they were learned by conditioning without our cognitive participation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
We are just conditioned to think of ourselves as a physical being by the necessities of living in a material world.
What I meant to say is that I am not conditioned to think of myself as a physical being due to the necessities of living in a physical world. I don't need to be conditioned to understand that I am a physical being living in a physical world. Even if I were born in a vegetative state of mind and could not understand anything...it would not change the fact that I am a physical being existing in a physical world.
We are speaking at cross purposes. You are carnally focused on the physical person of Jesus. I am spiritually focused on His human consciousness and its relationship to the consciousness of God. God IS Spirit (Consciousness). We are to reproduce His consciousness. Jesus is the first-born human to achieve it perfectly and we are to follow, however imperfectly, because He prepared a connection for us ALL. You know full well my concern is about the danger of elevating mere humans and their books to the status of an infallible and inerrant God as most religions do. But we have a guide, the Comforter, sent in Christ's name to lead us to the Truth God has "written in our hearts." But instead of looking into our hearts with agape love under the guidance of the Comforter too many are looking in books and causing much pain and suffering both physical and mental.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
And that is exactly what you have done. And are doing. With your own religious beliefs. And the religion you state you belong to. You openly state that you can't distinguish between a dead human and God. You state a dead Jew is "indistinguishable from God" and you worship a dead human. You have elevated a human to the stature of God.
You are not even reading my posts given your continued carnal focus. I said we can't distinguish between the described consciousness Jesus attributed to God and the consciousness called the "mind of Christ" as revealed and demonstrated by His life and His death. My encounter with the consciousness of God matches those descriptions and the "mind of Christ." You can decide whatever the hell you want to decide about whether or not Jesus is God or not, it is of no relevance or concern to me at all. I refer to the books ONLY to relate to those who use them to try to understand Jesus and God.
Quote:
and read the last quote. it says only pray to God, not to any human dead or alive, and you totally disregard that even!
I pray to God. It is my belief that the "mind of Christ" and the attributes of God's Holy Spirit as described by Jesus match the consciousness of God that I experienced, period. It is supremely irrelevant to me what that lack of difference among them means.
And that is exactly what you have done. And are doing. With your own religious beliefs. And the religion you state you belong to. You openly state that you can't distinguish between a dead human and God. You state a dead Jew is "indistinguishable from God" and you worship a dead human. You have elevated a human to the stature of God.
I think what MPhD is clearly saying is that we obviously can distinguish Jesus from God. In the context of what he has been saying, this is so blatantly obvious that your accusations here seem disingenuous. Comments need to be understood in context - otherwise everyone's time is simply being wasted. I can't blame you being confused about MPhD's theory, but it seems to me that you take even the parts that are clear and then you muddy them up for no useful purpose. A better approach is to apply the Principle of Charity: Figure out the strongest interpretation you can see - e.g., an interpretation that does not contain a bunch of inherent logical contradictions, then offer this interpretation to see his reaction.
For example, I might try this: Jesus is a human and God is the Universal Consciousness Field. As humans we are all part of the Consciousness Field, perhaps roughly the way in which all colors are parts of the Electromagnetic spectrum. This is a bad analogy for various reasons (in other words, don't use the analogy to attack the argument, just use it as a tool to try to understand the underlying point being made). So, each human's conscious "vibration" is a color tint and let's say that God's conscious vibration is pure white. The lighter the tint, the "closer" (or "more similar" in certain respects) to God's pure consciousness. Jesus supposedly was born with (or achieved?) a consciousness that is "pure whiteness" - just like God's consciousness. This doesn't mean that Jesus-as-human was literally "God" or that he is (even now) completely indistinguishable from God - it just means that in terms of moral "purity", etc., Jesus's consciousness is indistinguishable from God. And, once he left his human body behind, the spirit of Jesus - being a "pure white" form of consciousness in certain critical ways - is FAPP indistinguishable from God. I don't know to what extent, if any, MPhD would say that Jesus-as-spirit retains some sort of individuality left over as a result of his time spent in human form (since individuality implies boundaries and boundaries imply limitations and I don't know exactly if or how limitations apply to spirit), but the key point would be that the "purity" of Jesus-as-human serves as a bridge to God's purity, and thus in some sense, or to some extent, God's consciousness.
Personally, I don't believe any of that stuff, but what I'm trying to do is demonstrate at least the spirit of the Principle of Charity. I'm trying to capture key features of MPhD's theory in my own words, but I'm doing this with the assumption that MPhD is not a compete idiot, so I'm doing my best to resolves things that may, at first glance, seem like contradictions. (And, to help with this, I'm trying to interpret his sentences in context so that sentences that, taken individually out of context, might seem contradictory turn out be non-contradictory when understood in context). It could still turn out that he is contradicting himself, or that I am missing some key elements and thus I'm creating contradictions that are not actually part of his own theory, but I am at least making a sincere effort to give the best interpretation that I can give.
BTW: It is fine to point out weaknesses in metaphors, but it wastes everybody's time if you take the metaphor as literal and then act as if you are attacking the theory itself when all you are really doing is pointing out a flaw in a metaphor.
Finally: There is a difference between constructive criticism and mere "trivial nit-picky cherry-picking resentment-driven shotgun attack mode" argumentation. Constructive criticism requires that you put some effort into applying the Principle of Charity so that you are engaging a reasonably strong interpretation of a theory, not just one of 10 billion strawmen that can be derived from the limitations that come from trying to explain a theory using natural human language.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 02-14-2018 at 10:04 AM..
You are not even reading my posts given your continued carnal focus. I said we can't distinguish between the described consciousness Jesus attributed to God and the consciousness called the "mind of Christ" as revealed and demonstrated by His life and His death. My encounter with the consciousness of God matches those descriptions and the "mind of Christ." You can decide whatever the hell you want to decide about whether or not Jesus is God or not, it is of no relevance or concern to me at all. I refer to the books ONLY to relate to those who use them to try to understand Jesus and God. I pray to God. It is my belief that the "mind of Christ" and the attributes of God's Holy Spirit as described by Jesus match the consciousness of God that I experienced, period. It is supremely irrelevant to me what that lack of difference among them means.
Well, Gaylenwoof (as usual) did a great exposition on what is going on, but I would like to say that all the "Trinity" hoopla is basically all ABOUT that failure to see the difference in nature between physical (personality) and spiritual so that everything tends to be understood in terms of physical, and especially individuality. A mistake that leads to meaningless controversy.
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