Given the progress to date in verifying the falsifiability of one Neurologist’s analysis of his own work I would have to side with those who feel God falls outside of the set of falsifiable concepts.
I could be wrong, though.
Tris
Tris
Well, you could be, I guess. But I agree with you and Dr. Ramachandran.
As I said before, “The reason I brought up Ramachandran was that I thought his point was pertinent to the Opening Post. The same data can be interpreted in various ways, and therefore God['s existence] is not falsifiable.”
Ramachandran stimulated patients with temporal lobe epilepsy by showin them visual imagery including religious words and icons. He measured the subjects’ galvanic skin response to each image.
Libertarian ran out of salient points and reverted to rhetorical dodges rather than admit that his pet metaphor was not a perfect fit for the question of God’s existence.
Welcome back.
I agree with your conclusion, but surely someone with your deep understanding of logic realizes that it does not follow from Ramachandran’s experiments. At best, Ramachandran’s work argument can be used to support the idea that limbic activity cannot be used to prove or disprove God’s existence.
And in those patients, the GSR was always measurably and significantly greater for religious words and icons. He did the same experiments with patients who had normal brains. Their GSRs came out differently, with heightened responses to sexual and provocative images.
He then said that you could not use the apparent implications of the experiments (that only people with conditioned limbic systems seemed “equipped” to apprehend God, whereas others did not) to disprove the existence of God any more than you could use experiements showing that only people with color reception capability see color, whereas others do not, to disprove the existence of color.
I haven’t heard any criticism of that eminently simple and correct argument except from one source.
Gratuitous and loaded. All he did was remind people what the actual experiments, data, and conclusion were.
Well, his point was that lack of limbic activity (in the other patient set) cannot be used to disprove God’s existence.
Regarding Ramachandran, what is the relevance in the first place? He showed that religious iconography and ideas cause certain people to have a demonstrable reaction. So what? How does this in any way address the falsifiability of God? People are not reacting to God, but to the things they were shown. Isn’t it true that any reaction imbued with emotional content will produce various changes in the subject’s neurochemistry? All this seems to indicate is that some people react strongly to religious ideas. It just doesn’t seem to address the falsifiability of God at any level so far as I can see.
The “certain people” you mention are a very specific set of people, namely epileptics. Get it?
In the two epileptics measured that was the case. It has not been shown to be true for a general population. Regardless, you asked me what the experiment was, not what the results were.
You have heard criticism of that analogy from several sources just in this thread. You are again sacrificing accuracy to score rhetorical points.
No. You asked me what the experiment was. Since you obviously are and were familiar with the details you could not have been asking for information. This is a common rhetorical trick used to imply that the person you ask does not know the answer and has been arguing from ignorance. I do not know which offends me more, that you chose to use such a tactic or that you have learned so little about me in the past months that you thought it would be effective.
He also noted that it could not be used to prove God’s existence. I note that you rarely dwell upon that asppect when introducing this work as a topic of conversation.
Two epileptics, to be precise. Sureley a large enough sample to draw a strong conclusion to a fundamental question. In fact, these same two patients displayed a diminished response to photos of family and sexual imagery, so perhaps we should conclude that religious apprehension interferes with a person’s sexual desire and ability to form strong familial connections?
Also, I note that you rarely menion that the reason Ramachandran selected this specific sample group was because he expected a uniformly high GSR due to a kindling effect from the increased temporal lobe activity. This expectation was not supported. In most well designed experiments, this would lead to a re-examination of the choice of test-population.
In fact, I find the experiment quite interesting, though far too limited to derive any wide-ranging conlusions. I also agree with Ramachandran that it can be used neither to prove nor disprove the existence of God. I simply disagree with the analogy to light that he uses and the hyperbolic introductions that you use to describe the work. It says nothing about anybody other than temporal lobe epileptics and nothing about God at all. It does address the perception of religious iconography in a select population. This is actually quite intersting in its own right. It does not need to be inflated into sweeping claims about the nature of man’s perception of God.
Well, I do agree with you there, Spiritus. I am indeed given to Melancholy-type hyperbole. In fact, you might say that I am […nudge… …nudge…] “saddle sore” from my [… he he …] hyperbole! 