Nitpick: “Worth” is a subjective assessment. “Meaning” is a false claim: many have heard God say grammatically meaningful things. Heck, a wholly meaningless statement is probably more difficult to construct. While I’m at it,
Cite? I would guess that most (not all) believers have a subjective perception of a Supreme Deity, but I don’t have the evidence either. I suppose somebody could look this up at Pew or Templeton.
Well, of the hundreds of people I know, not one has ever been spoken to by God. Not in any way a representative sample of the population, but indicative.
You softened the claim from “hearing the voice” to “having a subjective impression.” That’s a lot easier to establish…but also a lot more susceptible to false positives. (Heck, I have a subjective impression of Huckleberry Finn, just from reading the book.) I’ve been out in the lonely piney woods and felt like someone was watching me – but that isn’t really useful evidence that anyone actually was. It’s a feeling that sort of goes with the territory.
I agree that “worth” is subjective. In objective terms, I’d put it in the frame of information theory. Has God ever told anyone something that they could not already have known, and which turned out to be real?
(This is why I respect the notion of online Premonition Clearing Houses. If you suddenly get a feeling that “…A big passenger plane is going to crash in Cleveland tomorrow” and you register that with a valid date-stamp, and then, the next day, it actually happens, well, that’s a hell of a lot more valid than you claiming, a week later, “I knew it was going to happen the day before.” Maybe, but with an objective record, the obvious objections are eliminated.)
Ok, but recognize that the typical Christian ritual involves prayer possibly followed by “Subjective impression”. That’s something other than “Dead silence”.
I agree about the part on false positives though.
We might not be able to hear, see, taste, touch or smell minds, but that doesn’t mean we don’t see evidence of their existence. If you know anything about particle physics or astrophysics, you’ll know there are many things we do not observe directly; only their effects on other things.
We have no evidence for God.
We know the mind exists, so what is the mind. We know the mind thinks, reasons, holds memory, makes choices, is emotional, and many other attributes. Who are we. We think, reason, remember, make choices, become emotions,etc., so the mind must be us. We are our mind. We could not exist without the mind.
We can’t taste minds because eating brains is typically frowned upon; but if you did, you’d be tasting a mind.
If you want to define a god that’s so ethereal that it can’t possibly be tested or observed, fine.
How does it make it rain frogs, though?
More than likely because they “heard” the voice of god while in one of those altered states. If I were zonked on something and the table lamp suddenly started speaking to me, I’d probably think something supernatural was happening as well.
Brain and brain… what is brain?
I see I’m not the only one who keeps thinking of that… 
But we should, because a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
If brain is the same as mind then you are only a brain.
of and to whom, or what?
I don’t think so, unless you can taste energy. We are teaching our youth that they are no more than the workings of their brain. That the brain somehow creates the “mind.” What this teaching does is eliminate all reasons for living a good responsible life. After all why bother with creating anything if you will not survive to enjoy it. It leaves no hope for the future no faith in anything. Suicides are up depression and mental problems are up where do we go from here.
I am glad to know I am more than a brain.
I believe it to be true, and I am not suicidal at all. Are you claiming that I do not live a good responsible life?
I can taste energy bars.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
No it doesn’t. Just because YOU need fantastical reasons to live a “good life” does not mean everyone else does.
That’s the reason you think people create things? You’re a bigger cynic than DerTrihs can ever aspire to be, and that’s saying a lot.
Population numbers are up. Ability to identify (and treat) mental illness is up. Access to media, information and generation of statistics is up. Overreaction and hyperbole is up.
Yep. There’s that whole body thing your brain is attached to.
Up at record breaking levels, and it’s scaring the shit out of me! Something should be done about this NOW!
God once told my grandmother to drop, with instantaneous mental directions on exactly how to do it. Her leg was on fire at the time.
I, personally, don’t think it was God, but I’ve had similar sudden revelations, so I believe that she experienced the sudden internal voice with instantaneous unfolding of understanding. It’s also entirely possible that her leg wasn’t* that *on fire. But I’m going to give her a pass on that.
I’m going to dissent, but for a different reason than Lekatt. I think the “mind” is more of an emergent entity. And is more of an abstract label than anything that “exists”. Nothing wacky or spiritual, more that I’d be hesitant to call a dead person’s brain a “mind”. To me the brain really needs to be functional to be a mind. The same way I’d hesitate to call my hard drive Microsoft Windows even though it has Windows on it. I’d even hesitate to call my Windows install disc “Windows”, it’s a disc containing Windows, which is an abstract entity that doesn’t really “exist” in a meaningful sense, but is a useful way of describing a series of processes that are exhibited under certain conditions. For Windows this is the data being installed, interpreted, and executed by a valid running computer, for the mind it’s the behaviors and physical effects emergent from a living brain – it’s the observable effects of a working brain – the brain is just the magnificent lump of flesh that allows the mind to emerge. In other words, the brain is the thing, the mind is a not-thing, just a word that describes the effects that the brain-thing has on the world when it’s under the constraint of being “living”.
Well, strictly speaking I personally take a more holistic “systems” approach and lump in the endocrine system and such into the concept of a “mind”, but that’s splitting hairs for purposes of this discussion.
Mind.
Ingredients: Self-awareness. Memory. Comprehension. Sodium Benzoate added as a preservative.
A mind is not a soul. We can identify and observe the presence and behavior of a mind. A soul is expectedly more elusive. Here’s my question (has it already been asked?) If we develop Artificial Intelligence and it becomes self-aware, does that constitute a mind, and will that be a person?