First of all, your Dad didn’t make this up. This story is an old wheezer. I bet if you googled for it on alt.atheism you’d find lots of theists posting this supposed story. I bet he got it from a church bulletin or something.
It might be gross , but it is pretty accurate. If there was no brain how could there be a mind? Brain damage is an example of it. People with brain tumors or injurys often undergo personality and behavioral changes. If the mind wasnt depentant on the brain for its existence then damageing parts of it wouldnt diminish the intelect.
As for the god question, How else can you explain a God powerful enough to create the entire universe, but stupid enough to create diffrent religions that do nothing but piss him off? If god realy existed wouldnt he want peace and harmony? Also wouldnt he want a little bit of credibility?? Since the dawn of time humanity has searched for god and come up with 2 things , jack and shit. If primitive scientist could find germs, and modern scientist can find atoms , and astronomers can find black holes , and genetic engineers can make exact genetic copies of things, wouldnt you think some where in there someone would have found gods hideing spot? I mean from what I hear there is no great shortage of people trying to find god. Then again it is pretty impossible to find something that was never there in the first place.
Why would God want that?
Same as above: Why would God want that?
An omnipotent (or, at the very least, “bloody powerful”) entity could probably remain hidden indefinitely if it chose to.
If you cracked open the professors head you would be able to see and touch his brain. There would be no “mind” in evidence. I don’t think you can hear a brain, maybe?
If you want to make God appear crack open your heart.
If you crack open your heart, you will die, and God will appear.
Of course, there are easier ways, try meditation.
Don’t stop there, Leroy. Tell us all about your theory that the brain is just an antenna and brain waves come from God to your brain.:rolleyes:
Your teaseing , right blowero?? People dont actualy believe that stuff , do they?
Nor would there be a soul in evidence, yet some people fervently believes that one exists. No (credible) person has ever seen, heard, or felt the soul in a tactile sense.
However, proving a negative is next to impossible. Take pink unicorns, for instance. No one on this planet has ever seen one, so it might be safe to conclude that they do not exist on Earth, but who’s to say that they don’t exist on other planets, or if you want to get really whacky, in another dimension?
The nature of a diety is invisibility to the mortal eye, as is the entire concept of Heaven, or an afterlife. There’s no way a living person could prove, conclusively, the matter one way or the other.
There have been instances of people returning from near-death experiences, or having been revived from death who claim to have seen their deity, but this must be taken with a grain of salt, since no Muslim has ever reported seeing Christ, nor have any Christians reported seeing Buddha. (Each person’s view of the “afterlife” was colored by their religious influence.) Some would argue that these people were not truly, completely “dead” and thus not sent to the hereafter. The only way to prove an afterlife would be to revive a person who has been truly dead for a while, but that’s beyond our capabilities.
In the past, when religious belief was more concrete and widespread, God had the effect of controlling anti-social behavior. There’s powerful incentive to behave if one truly believes that every thought and action is being observed and recorded for eternal reward or punishment after death.
Today, in our more secular society, the purpose of a diety has deflated a bit. New Age influences on belief have turned the God of Wrath and Vengence into a Buddy God. More people tend to base their behavior code on what’s legal and what their personal ethics allow.
God still fulfils a purpose in allowing believers to ask him for intervention in their lives. There’s also a certain stress-relieving factor in being able to say “God will take care of me.” Also, for the lonely, the thought that at least God loves you and cares for you is immensely comforting.
Tell your dad that that he’s confused about English. To prove you wrong, proving the existence of god is utterly immaterial, and his attempting to do so comes out of a severe confusion.
To prove you wrong, the ONLY acceptable thing to prove is that you DO, in fact, believe in God. Nothing else will prove you wrong, because you didn’t assert anything other than that.
Also of note: the important word is not “see, hear, feel, etc.” but rather “detect.”
INteresting idea Blowero, wish I had thought of it first.
Love
Leroy
“…the ‘mind’ really is a construct created before we understood that it’s all just interactions between neurons and chemicals and such. It only exists as an easy way of describing the physiology…”
If the import of this statement is that what we call consciousness “just is” the fact of all those neurons and chemicals and such interacting, you ought to bear (in your neurons and chemicals) the fact that a lot of very clever people, which number includes scientists and what one might call “logicians,” think such an account is not merely unlikely to be true, but is unintelligible.
What we call our “thoughts” either are about various things-that-are; or not. If not, no claim whatever, including yours, is of any significance whatever. If so, there is something to be explained: to paraphrase an analogy used by C.S. Lewis, What can it mean to claim that a cloud of atoms is “about” another cloud of atoms?
BURNER
If the brain is used as a tool by the mind; a mechanism that it works through, then the condition of that mechanism would effect how the mind functions through it.
So the mind can be dependent on the brain to some extent yet be distinct from it.
Besides thoughts cannot be found in the brain and neither can consciousness. They appear to emerge from that region of the body but have no location per say.
There are two concepts that are central to religion, though some if not most religions today have forgotten one of them. They are Faith and Free Will. God/Allah/Yaweh/(Insert Deity Here) give two basic tenents. I will use God from here on since it is shorter, but I make no distinction.
[list=1]
[li]If you believe in me, you must do so without a shred of concrete evidence. ← Faith[/li][li]You may choose whether to believe in me or not. I will not force you, as this would violate rule number 1. ← Free Will[/li][/list=1]
By starting this argument, your father is trying to do what God himself refused to do. He is trying to prove the existence of God.
Proof denies Faith. Religion depends on Faith. If God wants you in his flock, all he can do is transparently set things in your path that may guide you in that direction. He can save your life in an accident, he can arrange a meeting with a soulmate, he can make a really supreme sunset every now and then, but he won’t ever come right out and say, “I am God, you need to believe in me now.”
Not knowing your father, I am speculating as to his motivations, but it sounds to me like he is trying to make you sit up and say, “Oh yeah, I guess you’re right Dad, there must really be a God.” All the preaching in the world won’t change a mind if it is already set, but you never know who you’ll bump into that might make you believe. If that ever happens to you, do me a favor and call your Dad ok?
Would that be the same Yaweh who appeared to Abraham as a burning bush, or proved himself to some other poor slob by making the floor wet with dew but the cloth dry, or sent an angel to wrestle all night with yet another poor slob? The Old Testament god certainly doesn’t come across as a transparent fellow.
Yes, and the same God who sent his only begotten son to tell the people that his father wasn’t going to give them any proof of his existence, which never made sense to me either. New Testament is a lot easier to take on Faith :), plus it has the added benefit of ditching that messy “eye for an eye” stuff that caused no end of trouble.
Keep in mind that it WAS a philosophy course, and the whole point of philosophy is to come up with things like that. There is a type of philosophy that basically states that if it cannot be perceived, it does not exist. Therefore, if you close your eyes and cannot see a painting on a wall, then while your eyes are closed it does not exist. The premise of these views is that everything you perceive is only in your mind and doesn’t really exist. It only exists because your brain tells you that it’s there.
As for the God debate, I would like to throw this into the mix: to argue whether or not a deity exists, we are left to give evidence either that it does, or evidence that it does not. It is very easy to give evidence that something exists, but how does one prove that it does not?
If you want to explain atheism to your father, your best rebuttal (whether he accepts it or not is up to him, but it would up to you to stick to your views if they apply) would be to simply explain to your father what you do revere about life. I mean in terms of natural life processes, life in general, without getting to a spiritual level of things. If you explain to your dad that you appreciate life for what it is without pretending to understandt he nature of deity… he may accept that, or he may not. If you are a cynic and don’t revere life, then you’ll have to come up with something different. A rebuttal like this, however, may set his mind at ease a bit, depending on the strength of his religious convictions.
In a bizarre twist, a man named Schroedinger, and a fictitious cat went a long way to proving this philosophy on at least the quantum level.
I wish I were. From this catastrophe of a thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=131095
This was my post:
[…]But like I said before, this “the brain is like a tv antenna” theory is pure conjecture. Where’s the evidence that this is the case? If consciousness resides outside of the brain, then where is it? Why can’t we detect it? Can we use this theory to make predictions, and then test the results? If not, then it’s a pretty useless theory.
Here was Lekatt’s reply:
**Maybe we are detecting it and don’t know it. Can we be sure brain waves are coming from the brain. Maybe they are going to the brain.
**
Sadly, that was the least far-out theory advanced in that thread. The other ideas were even stranger.
I don’t really tend to care too much whether God exists but I definitely want to believe that sex goddesses exist! 
Am I gonna have to send you an ebuke from Betty Bowers?
In the case of a particular theology, one can look for logical inconsistencies and the absence of expected evidence. As to the first, this is a good intro. As to the second, you could start by studying the efficacy of prayer. This particularly important article illustrates the dangers of modern technology vis. prayer. Very, very important article to read.
p.s. I second the sex goddess sentiment. Could she hurry up, please?