For all o'you atheists out there...

[afghooey]

I have a proposition for you.

Consider this carefully:

If we're not creations of a 'supernatural' God who put us into the universe, it would follow that we naturally came out of the universe, and that we are therefore a natural expression of the universe, correct?

If you agree to that, then consider this:

In a universe of purely mindless mechanisms, how can the mind exist? In a universe that is composed of purely unconscious, unintelligent, 'dead' matter, how can life, consciousness and intelligence exist?

It's utterly illogical to me that life, consciousness and intelligence are somehow expressions of a dead, unconscious, unintelligent universe. To say, they 'just happened' as an isolated fluke seems just as much of a cop out as saying "God did it." ... in fact, to me, it makes even less sense. At least the supernatural God hypothesis suggests that our attributes are an expression of God's attributes, rather than coming out of nowhere.

But then maybe you can explain how this makes sense to you? :stoned:

afghooey Reviewed by afghooey on 06-16-2007. For all o'you atheists out there... I have a proposition for you. Consider this carefully: If we're not creations of a 'supernatural' God who put us into the universe, it would follow that we naturally came out of the universe, and that we are therefore a natural expression of the universe, correct? If you agree to that, then consider this: In a universe of purely mindless mechanisms, how can the mind exist? In a universe that is composed of purely unconscious, unintelligent, 'dead' matter, how can life, Rating: 5

[Billy Preston]

Because its not an isolated fluke.

Conciousness developed over millions of years. Thousands of different animal species, including humans. Nothing came from nowhere. Giraffes are tall because they need to reach leaves in high places. Sharks have gills so they can breath underwater....these kind of attributes developed over millions and millions of years. Think of all the animals who didnt make it because they weren't suited to the enviroment. Did god put them there to fail?

Saying "God did it" is the biggest cop out of all because it prevents you from trying to figure whats really going on. Religion encloses your mind in a box, "this is what happened...is happening....will happen...how you should live, think and act".

Imagine being born in a room. A single room. A person tells you that this is the world. You're never allowed to leave the room, you only do what your told because this is what you know. Reality is what you're presented with.

Imagine you're born in China and raised a buddhist. It's safe to say you'd believe in buddhism with the same conviction as you do christianty.

What boggles my mind is how people are told something. Grown up with something and automatically they believe it with such conviction that they are willing to die for it, kill for it, start wars over it.

Education (in the western world primarily) focuses on facts and figures...you learn things, you write them down in an exam and generally forget them soon after. This strengthens the side of the brain dealing with facts so that when you are told something it sticks in your head....religion, advertising, propaganda.

How is it even remotely conceivable that there is one way for everyone to run thier lives, one set of rules, morals and ideals that works for everyone. It can't happen. I believe in evolution because it's been proved by science...i can see how it works and that it makes sense. Beyond that I have absolutley no clue of the meaning of life and I never will....no one will.

I believe in ideas and philosophies.....you can change an idea....you can develop a philosophy. Your life experience shapes who and what you are. Not what was written in a book by other people hundreds of years ago.

[afghooey]

Thank you for the response!

I actually agree with just about everything you said... let me take a moment to point out that this thread wasn't created to tout or refute any religion, nor to dispute the validity of evolutionary theory. Since this thread is aimed at atheists, it was created with the assumption that most (if not all) of those responding would probably be in acceptance of the theory of evolution, and also in opposition to the idea of a supernatural God.

Though I don't consider myself an atheist, I actually share these opinions myself; however, these aren't the points I'm trying to emphasize.

The problem is that time, by itself, can't explain how unconscious, unintelligent dead matter evolved into conscious, intelligent life. Where in time can you point out where this transition occurred? At what moment did dead matter suddenly become alive? When, in a universe of mindless mechanical dead matter, did life suddenly and miraculously begin? At what moment did life become conscious, and at what moment did it become intelligent?

These questions are, of course, rhetorical. I'm not asking anyone here for a literal explanation. No one on earth, not even the most adroit scientists, knows the exact process by which the first cell or cells came into being, though many have theories. However, the precise mechanical process by which these cells formed (and for that matter the point in time at which they formed) is inconsequential to the point I'm trying to make, which is this:

How can life emerge from something dead? How can consciousness come from unconsciousness? How can intelligence arise from non-intelligence?

[nightlight]

Before there was nothing there was neither. In my opinion the universe is not dead, and for all we know could very well have a mind of its own. It doesn't have to create itself because something else did.

[Delta9 UK]

If you can accept that amino acids can be created with some primordial soup, you can get to RNA from there and then to a degree of replication and synthesis and then onto DNA later as its more stable.

Seeded from the stars or started right here at home on Earth - that's not the question. If my biology is right ^ it doesn't matter as that's not what we are chewing on - we are talking about the creation of something as complex as the human mind, not the brain.

I would say that to argue that life, conciousness and mind isn't logical does defy observation though. There is plenty of it around us.

Does a dog have mind? Does a blade of grass? Not in a way we perceive it but these things all share the same point origin - we all evolved from the same germ line.

If we all evolved from the same point origin then are we not just on different levels of mind/conciousness and it is our inability to communicate about this with any other species (OK Dolphins are getting interesting and apes share many of our base thought processes) that makes us feel so self-important.

I'm not sure human conciousness is anything that special at all - right now maybe we are just Big Fish in a Small Pond. I think it is a natural process of evolution we passed through as our brains developed to better cope with a changing environment.

Being able to think your way out of a problem is a lot better than freezing and starving to death.

I think this is where the human condition originates.

[Billy Preston]

I think there was a specific second in time where it happened....the moment of self awareness.

I guess this is destined to happen again in the future in the form of AI.

Now there's an area of discussion. Artificial conciousness.

....discuss?

[BoilerUp]

The universe is composed of a limited number of materials and elements. When some of those are combined, they create conscious life. Simple as that.

I think you guys are viewing consciousness as something very advanced, which i do not see it as. I think consciousness is just like a computer. Your eyes, ears, and touch are just things that send electrical input signals to your brain. Based on those signals your brain sends more electrical signals to other parts of your body, creating a reaction.

That simple input/reaction(output) can be applied to anything we do, whether it is building a bridge or deciding what to write in a post.

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Consciousness is an impermanent, formless, every-changing and near infinately complex product of other complex biological mechanisms. Yes, one could ask "how can consciousness come out of a non-conscious universe?". But then, how could cars come out of non-vehicle universe? How could rocks come out of a universe that started without rocks?


It's a very interesting question afghooey, but I think we tend to isolate conscious beings from the rest of existence, predetermining the notion that everything else of incredible complexity could happen "by accident" (though "accident" is not the appropriate word), while consciousness could never happen of its own accord because we attach a high significance to it. But really, we can trace the complex biological mechanisms of non-conscious strands of protein forming into DNA, and how they turn unconscious material into conscious beings already, simply by looking at the process of conception and developement.


It's interesting, I've only been recently learning about string theory, yet it gives a coherent explanation for what I already believed, that all matter and energy are formed from the same energetic reactions holding electrons and protons together through the strong nuclear force. I'm still working on understanding the weak nuclear force. But assuming this theory is correct, or at least somewhere in the ballpark, everything that exists is made of the same cosmic material put together in different arangements to create different illusions of separation. Or perhapse I should put it as different arangements of energy to form unique bits of matter and energy. Once you do that, you need only let natural selection, electro-magnetic, and gravitational forces go to work and continuously gather and increase the complexity of all that is. Eventually, that complexity developes into biological matter, truly the most incredible type we've seen yet. And when that biological matter eventually grew more complex, consciousness was developed; a little piece at a time, starting with basic reactionary organisms like insects, to simpler animals like mice, and eventually to the complexity of human consciousness, the first to really be able to interpret existence in abstract terms. Just as the base forces of reality brought matter and energy together, matter and energy came into complexity, complexity turned into biology, biology developes into the conscious. It's inevitable for complexity to grow continuously really, thus far we are the highest (known) product.

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

I feel I should also point out that most don't allow for consciousness to come out of a godless universe, yet god, the most complex and incredible of concievable consciousnesses, can appear in and of its own accord. It's quite the double standard.

[afghooey]

First, thank you all very much for your replies!

I'm going to reply to you all in the same post to try and keep my thoughts somewhat organized (so that I don't end up repeating myself too much) and because most of the points you guys made coincide with each other. I know it's really long, but I'd like to ask that you read all of my replies rather than just the ones directed at you specifically, or at the very least to read my conclusions (the paragraphs after my quoting of Gandalf) before replying.

If you can accept that amino acids can be created with some primordial soup, you can get to RNA from there and then to a degree of replication and synthesis and then onto DNA later as its more stable.

But is RNA life? is DNA even life? These things are most often considered 'dead' matter. People say, "Oh, they're merely information, they're just the blueprints." It's pretty widely accepted that in order for it to be life, those 'blueprints' have got to be put to use.

You say we all evolved from the same germ line. Didn't that germ line theoretically evolve from the same DNA line? Didn't that evolve from the same amino acid line? Didn't that evolve from the same carbon line? At what level of complexity, exactly, can life be delineated from non-life?

From what I've found, every 'prerequisite' of life as it's defined can be seen elsewhere in our 'dead' universe: replication, growth, adaption, etc -- especially in the fields of 'artificial' intelligence.
The one exception (to my knowledge at least) is metabolism. Even that, as defined, is "the sum of physical and chemical processes in an organism by which material substance is produced, maintained, and destroyed, and by which energy is made available." Isn't a 'chemical or physical process' just another interaction of dead matter with dead matter? Where does life fit into this?

I think there was a specific second in time where it happened....the moment of self awareness.

I guess this is destined to happen again in the future in the form of AI.

Now there's an area of discussion. Artificial conciousness.

....discuss?

Is a germ self-aware? Is a caterpillar? A salamander? Most organisms, it would seem, are not-self aware at all... not in the way that humans and other intelligent animals like dolphins and great apes are self-aware. But they're still complex enough to be considered life; why?

Also, on the topic of AI, something quite interesting: there have been experiments that have traced the evolution of 'computer organisms', step by step, from a simple form to an irreducibly complex form... so the old 'pocket watch' approach of irreducibility touted by creationists has more or less been disproved. (source: Testing Darwin | Technology | DISCOVER Magazine). Pretty neat, huh?

The universe is composed of a limited number of materials and elements. When some of those are combined, they create conscious life. Simple as that.

I think you guys are viewing consciousness as something very advanced, which i do not see it as. I think consciousness is just like a computer. Your eyes, ears, and touch are just things that send electrical input signals to your brain. Based on those signals your brain sends more electrical signals to other parts of your body, creating a reaction.

That simple input/reaction(output) can be applied to anything we do, whether it is building a bridge or deciding what to write in a post.

Wonderful! Here we arrive at another conclusion I hoped would be touched on: that consciousness, just like life (by definition, at least), is a mere reaction; an interaction of dead matter with dead matter.

Consciousness is an impermanent, formless, every-changing and near infinately complex product of other complex biological mechanisms. Yes, one could ask "how can consciousness come out of a non-conscious universe?". But then, how could cars come out of non-vehicle universe? How could rocks come out of a universe that started without rocks?

The questions I posed were actually not meant to prompt an explanation for how consciousness 'arrived' in a non-conscious universe. To the contrary, they were meant to point out exactly what you're saying: that asking how life or consciousness 'appeared' in the universe is as illogical and silly as asking how rocks or cars 'appeared' in a rockless, carless universe.

Rather, the point I'm making is that these reactions that we're talking about (be they metabolism, evolution, consciousness, etc.), are expressions of the universe in the exact same way as the reactions of 'non-animate', 'dead' matter.

If you look at the nature of all dualities, you find that they are not opposing forces at all; light and darkness are two polarities of the same condition, just as hot and cold are two polarities of temperature. Do light and darkness oppose each other? No indeed; they give way to each other as easily as day gives way to night and night to day.

Likewise, I'd argue that 'life' and 'death' aren't separate, opposing states at all, as some people seem to think. Rather, they're polarities of the same state; complexity is one polarity of reactions, while simplicity is the other. One could easily say that there is no such thing as 'unconsciousness', that, instead, all things are conscious at some level (because they have the ability to react), it simply happens to be that our reactions are at the complex end of the spectrum, while the reactions of particles of matter are at the simple end.

It's all a matter of perspective, so whether or not you would call that fundamental state of reaction 'alive' or 'dead', 'conscious' or 'unconscious' is completely arbitrary . Yet, how we view that fundamental state can have a huge effect on how we act and react to our surroundings.

If we view the world in terms of opposing forces, we come to the conclusion that we must oppose the opposite end of the spectrum; for instance: We are alive and so we must oppose death. We, intelligent, conscious entities, must conquer and subdue our unintelligent, unconscious surroundings. We must not let the mechanism control us, but instead we must control the mechanism, and so forth. In reality, this control that we perceive is an illusion; when we push the universe, it pushes back, whether we realize it or not.

How we view our relation to these polarities also ultimately determines whether we think of the universe as 'God' or as 'mechanism'; whether we would call ourselves 'spiritual', or 'atheist'. Really, they're two different angles of looking at the exact same thing.