Why don’t you let your father read this version of the “atheist professor”?
Quite the discussion you have going on here. One of my favorite topics to discuss and debate is the topic of the existence of God. I’m by no means a non-believer, but also not an organized religious person.
I want to put my two cents in this conversation as well. I agree with pretty much all of you because you guys have made quite valid arguments. Trying to prove or disprove the existence of God will prove futile because I believe we’re running on a faltered mind (the human mind). If God truly does exist, I don’t believe we’d be able to prove His existence with our own sense of logic. If He is omnipotent and all-powerful, wouldn’t it also mean that our human logic is far below his?
That’s probably what hardcore religious people would call “faith,” I guess. You don’t quite have scientific evidence that it’s there, but you feel it there.
As for thar argument, I wanted to re-iterate what one person said about “invisible pink unicorns.” I am a firm believer (because I still have a child in me even though I’m not a child anymore) in the magical world, and I don’t believe that simply because you haven’t seen it, heard it, touched it, smelled it, etc. that it doesn’t exist. I belive in fairies. I also believe in a million dollars. I haven’t seen neither, but I know they’re out there somewhere. 
It’s amusing to see humans fight over the existence of God because really, if we actually prove it one way or another, no one will believe us. Hehe. But it’s great reading about it – especially in an intelligent forum such as this. 
Btw, hi. I’m new.
Yes, it was a great thread, and since then I have found more scientific studies in progress to proof consciousness exists outside the brain and body.
http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies/case_types.cfm#NDE
There is very strong evidence that this is true.
Love
Leroy
I like the way you think. I believe you are correct.
Love
Leroy
Does your father think that this story proves that God exists? It seems obvious to me that it doesn’t.
I could claim my next door neighbor is not Homer Simpson.
I offer the following proof: My neighbor said that he is Homer Simpson. But Homer Simpson is a liar. Therefore, my neighbor is not Homer Simpson.
My argument is fallacious. Does that mean my neighbor really is Homer Simpson?
An invalid argument does not mean that the conclusion is false - it means that the conclusion is not supported.
But maybe your father only intended to point out that a lack of directly observable data is not enough to disprove the existence of God. I don’t think you can argue with that.
Oh, Jesus. [If you’ll pardon the pun.]
No real-life professor makes such a ridiculous argument. This isn’t the way a real atheist speaks. This is the way a Christian’s charicature of an atheist speaks. This “old story” is more like an old Christian urban legend. And I say “Christian” explicitly here because it is only a certain breed of Christians – not Jews, Muslims, or other monotheists – that resort to this kind of “argument.”
I’ve seen “arguments” from Christians like this before. They always involve an atheistic (or otherwise non-Christian) professor who’s smug and full of himself, sometimes even going to the extent of ridiculing the “true believers” in his classroom for being irrational. Inevitably, the professor in these stories gets his “just desserts” at the end when the Christian student outsmarts him (and occasionally wins a few new converts to Christianity from among his classmates). Jack Chick has a rather infamous example of this kind of pablum, called Big Daddy?.
I know of no real-life examples – with names and places given , not merely rumors – of any college professor that tried to convince his students that there was no God. However, real-life examples of professors that tried to convince their students that there was a God are another matter. Evangelical Christians love to proselytize. The more narrow-minded among the evangelical Christians may believe that everybody else in the world behaves like they do. Since they go out and try to win converts to Christianity, those naughty out there atheists must be trying to win converts to atheism! It is almost certainly this knee-jerk tendency of people to “project” their behavior onto others that caused these ridiculous atheist-proselytizing stories to arise in the first place. (Note, also, how the Christian’s-charicature-of-an-atheist professor is often intolerant of Christians in these stories. If the people who made up these stories were projecting their own behavior onto the professor, what does that tell you?)
But would you say that without a brain, there is no mind?
This will be something for you to show.
Are you saying that the brain cannot be considered as a location?
Regarding the OP, there are several ways to refute this. Just off the top of my head:
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“A mind is not a concrete object that exists, it is just an abstract concept. Are you saying that God does not exist but is an abstract concept?”
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“The professor says, ‘I am now speaking my mind.’ Ergo, proof.”
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“We can set up a scientific experiment to demostrate that the professor does have a mind. Can you do that with God?”
I think that’s enough for now.
Not really. If we agree that the mind is “who we are”, then the mind is very much contingent on the brain. Phineas Gage is a classic example. Many of the things that defined who he was changed after having the tamping iron blown through his head. A soul with a personality independent of the brain should leave a detectable foot print. Circa '93, when I was a student of neuralscience, I saw no evidence suggesting such a foot print was detected. To say that the mind is independent of the brain, yet wholly dependent on it for its expression is to say nothing at all.
If you went to the 19th. century with a computer, you could bet dollars to doughnuts that the location of data couldn’t be found. Not to mention the fact that many “thoughts” have been located. I’ve read about brain surgery patients who have specific thoughts triggered by an electrical stimulus. One boy thought that he was a forty year old woman when a certain part was stimulated. Another heard music. There is a very rich literature on what we know about the brain, and nothing I’ve read or heard strongly suggests that we exist indepently of it. To say that we can’t locate the consciousness in the brain and conclude a soul from that fact is merely an argument from ignorance.
Friendly heads up: it’s per se, meaning “in and of itself.”
lekatt, out of body experiences can be triggered in the lab. Best to stick with the prosaic explanations for now. If the soul as the self acts through the angular gyrus, but the expression of it is dependent on the whole brain, then you’ve got some explaining to do. The angular gyrus would be the most active part of the brain, since the self must channel every bit of the mind through that one structure, and all brain activity would reflected in a mapping with the activity of that organ.
Howdy.
I can’t say. But even if it were true, it doesn’t imply that god isn’t a testable hypothesis. I worked with a woman who constantly claimed that an ant can’t understand an airplane. But an ant can see an airplane, it can hear it, etc. Hell, I can barely understand an airplane, but I sure can prove one. Merely claiming that god isn’t testable because we’re mere humans is, no offense meant, a cop-out.
Well, if you click HERE you can read all about my favourite goddess.
You probably haven’t read the latest research on near death experiences showing strong evidence that the consciousness exists outside the brain and body.
http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies/case_types.cfm#NDE
The above is just the tip of the iceberg, there is a great deal more information refuting the brain as consciousness.
You can find it in the search engines or on NDE sites.
Love
Leroy
With all due respect, these cites don’t seem to offer compelling proof. Regarding the first, psychics are notorious for being able to dupe observers. I didn’t mean to use dupe in a perjorative sense, I didn’t have another word off-hand. Indeed, Zammit’s scientific naivete (sp?) is obvious in the million dollar challange. To say that James Randi is disengenous is simply a calumny. Such a strong claim as psychic contact with the dead, for example, needs to be rigorously verified. From the videos I’ve seen of Randi’s tests for the million dollar challange, he may be rigorous, but he is also fair. Cold reading is not psychic, it is psychology.
Regarding NDEs and out of body experiences (OBEs), let me first note that the plural of anecdote is not data. Second is that Occam’s Razor is a valid scientific criterion, and since OBEs are being stimulated in the lab with prosaic explanations, the prosaic explanations should be the ones provisionally accepted. Third, if self reports of untestable events were valid evidence, we’d be in a right theological mess. My sister knows Jesus personally, yet every reincarnated lama is discovered through a series of miracles. From voodoo, to astrology, to phrenology, virtually every system of belief would be verified. To say that NDEs and OBEs suggest something interesting is reasonable, to say that they suggest something supernatural isn’t.
That’s a very easy way to find out. Let us remove your brain from your body, then see if you retain your consciousness. What better way to verify it than this?
You are a true skepic, forget it.
Yes, I would retain my consciousness, and it would verify it.
Just that you wouldn’t be able to measure it with physical instruments, you will see when the time comes.
Love
Leroy
*Originally posted by js_africanus *
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?
Moses saw his backparts you left that one out.
Exodous 33:17-23
17And the LORD said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name. 18And he said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory. 19And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. 20And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. 21And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: 22and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: 23and I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts; but my face shall not be seen.
Moses’s wife “Gosh, Moses, it sure is a bright night tonight, isn’t it?”
Moses “Indeed, my love. Tonight we truly do see by the light of a glorious full moon!”
I wouldn’t be too sure of that. 19th century scientists were not stupid. It would be obvious that a computer was an electrical device by all the wiring. If they were in the later parts of the 19th century they would be familiar with mechanical calculators and punch-cards, and soon figure out it was a vastly more complicated version of the same. The removable storage devices (i.e. floppy drive, CD-ROM) would obviously be the equivalent of punch cards, and the CPU obviously is very important as everything ends up connected to it. Even if they can’t turn it on, it would be obvious the keyboard and mouse were some kind of controls for the device. When they took everything apart and analyzed it, they would see the similarities between the FDD and the hard drive and probably figure out that it was some kind of magnetic media…
I think with careful examination by a team of the 19th centuries greatest minds they would determine the basic function of a computer (a way to process and store data) and even know basically what the different parts do.
Sorry for the hijack.
Mindmirror wrote:
Actually, in the 1990s, the ontological argument was, um, resurrected. By defining God as “Supreme Being”, you can use modal logic’s premises about necessary existence (necessary = supreme, existence = being) to develop a simple and eloquent modal tableau.
There are several versions of these now, some more controversial than others. Here’s one that was the topic of a long thread here not too long ago.
Understanding the Ontological Argument. Here’s the gist of it:
Definition: G (necessary existence)
Hypothesis: G (God exists in actuality)
- G -> G (from the definition)
- ~~G (from <>G: it is possible that God exists)
- ~G -> ~~G (Becker’s postulate)
- G -> G (the Modal Theorem)
- G v ~G (excluded middle)
- G v ~G (distribution over 3 and 5)
- ~G -> ~G (modus tollens from 1 and 6)
- G v ~G (distribution over 6 and 7)
- G (syllogistic disjunction from 8)
Therefore, G (modus ponens from 9 and 4)
QED
What prevents me from replacing G:=god exists in actuality with G:=the perfect ham sandwich exists in actuality, thereby proving the existence of the perfect ham sandwich?
Question: is ~~G saying “not necessary existence not god exists in actuality”? How would you phrase that? Also, what is “<>”? Thanks.