Please, only a friendly debate as atheism/theism has been picked apart, the both

[synthesizer-patel]

Cris,
You should read about qualia, jackson argument (what mary did not know), zombie argument, nagel argument (What is like to be a bat) it will help you understand why consciousness could not arise from matter.

Nagel:
"if we acknowledge that a physical theory of mind must account for the subjective character of experience, we must admit that no presently available conception gives us a clue how this could be done."

Absolutely Classic God of The Gaps style statement!

forgot your pre-conceived idea about god please, be open minded (don't talk about god as creator or as a external agent..., it is true that some believe in it but many do not) God if defined as the generator of consciousness (we know it is not the brain) has to exist

So if at some point we do understand how consciousness arises you'll become an atheist?
I think not - I predict you will be looking for another gap to find god hiding in.

 

[ronan]

Nagel:
"if we acknowledge that a physical theory of mind must account for the subjective character of experience, we must admit that no presently available conception gives us a clue how this could be done."

Absolutely Classic God of The Gaps style statement!

You cannot deny his points by just quoting one sentence. And he is not alone, I told you to look at other arguments as well.

So if at some point we do understand how consciousness arises you'll become an atheist?
I think not - I predict you will be looking for another gap to find god hiding in.

We do understand how consciousness arise:it is from god ;-)
I don't think there is anything to understand if you mean by understanding that we can express the reality by language (being mathematic or not) , Reality is ineffable as Hume and Kant shows (they in fact believed in a stronger claim: that we cannot even know).

One interesting book on this subject (there are better books for people we do not believe in science only) is: On the Origin of Objects by Brian Smith

 

[synthesizer-patel]

You cannot deny his points by just quoting one sentence. And he is not alone, I told you to look at other arguments as well.

That one quote is enough to shoot it down - the other views have more or less the same outlook - namely "we don't know, it is very hard if not impossible to find out, therefore it must be god" - Nonsense!

Show me a religious bonobo

 

[ronan]

That one quote is enough to shoot it down - the other views have more or less the same outlook - namely "we don't know, it is very hard if not impossible to find out, therefore it must be god" - Nonsense!

Nagel overall point is not that we don't know it is that we cannot know.
Even by knowing evrything about bat's brain, we will not know what it will feel to be like a bat.

You know the zombie argument which is different?

Show me a religious bonobo

If you talk about religious institution, maybe there is not, but the point is not about institution but about the feeling of god as a encompassing reality .

In this latter case, we cannot know (Nagel, Zombie argument...) but we have data that suggest that they have a reverence for nature, probably a starting point for a feeling of an encompassing reality (I agree that it is speculation but anyway even if they have not, does it makes reality as encompassing inexistent ? No )

Chimpanzee rain dance:
http://www.janegoodall.org/chimp_central/chimpanzees/behavior/rain_dance.asp

 

[synthesizer-patel]

Nagel's overall point is not that we don't know it is that we cannot know.

Exactly!