There is no heaven when the brain is unconscious

[Pinball1970]

And all that non-scientific religious clap-trap means anything at all? Why am I being picked on? I did not invent all this nonsense.
The argument that religions have social value is pure BS. Their exclusivity begs for conflict.

I am trying to steer this concept of a universal God to a neutral arena that adresses all facets of life, and that involves either values or functions.

If you want philosophy or psychology, use the scientificapproach. Biblical religions have done enough damage. It's time to grow up!

I am not picking on you Write4U, I just think the premise of the thread is flawed.
If we are to engage with theists we have to do it in the right way.

There is no point in attacking them, it does not advance us.

 

[Pinball1970]

And all that non-scientific religious clap-trap means anything at all? Why am I being picked on? I did not invent all this nonsense.
The argument that religions have social value is pure BS. Their exclusivity begs for conflict.

I am trying to steer this concept of a universal God to a neutral arena that adresses all facets of life, and that involves either values or functions.

If you want philosophy or psychology, use the scientificapproach. Biblical religions have done enough damage. It's time to grow up!

I agree with a lot of what you have said. Religion does divide people but religious people are not stupid,I used to be one!

 

[Write4U]

I agree with a lot of what you have said. Religion does divide people but religious people are not stupid,I used to be one!

And you grew up!

I can live with allegory. If properly presented it can be useful in spreading a secular moral across different cultures.

But religions don't do that. They teach exclusivity and prejudice. Ask Salman Rushdie if he considers the Koran a useful allegorical document.

I heard someone say that God spared Rushie from worse than losing 1 eye. That outrageous statement was from a nice religious person.
She also asked me once about the 6 (7) day creation story when science says that the universe is 14 billion years old.
I replied that no one knows the duration of god's day. If his day is 2 billion years long, then the universe is 14 billion yeasrs old.
She was so relieved by that interpretation that she immediately accepted this crude analogy. But I felt satisfied that I dispelled that 6 human day BS.

p.s. I was a victim of religious persecution by "conservative warriors for god" . I have "cause" to complain. They are dangerous!!!.

 

[Write4U]

That's because we are all sick and tired of you preaching your mathematical universe religion at us, which is what you are clearly itching to do here. You've already done it numerous times, you are bore on the topic and it is not the subject of this thread.

But I now notice, with growing consternation, that you also mention "action potentials". This term, which relates to potential differences between the inside and outside of living cells, could well be a gateway for you to start drivelling about microtubules, as well.

Actually that is coming back to the OP.
But you are so enraged by my very presence, you automatically reject everything I say, just like religious people don't accept anything but what their bible says.

"There is no heaven when the brain is unconscious" is not a religious declaration. It is a scientific observation.

 

[Sarkus]

And all that non-scientific religious clap-trap means anything at all?

Clearly not to you. Fortunately you don't get to decide who it makes sense for.

Why am I being picked on?

Are you, though?

The thread is in part about "heaven" and yet you disrespectfully dismiss the entire side of the debate that gives it any meaning. As such seem to be not here to discuss the thread topic but rather to push another agenda.
When a disruptive pupil at school is hauled out of class, are they being picked on?

I did not invent all this nonsense.
The argument that religions have social value is pure BS. Their exclusivity begs for conflict.

That is your belief, and you are welcome to it. But as far as the thread is concerned, it doesn't seem a helpful position.

I am trying to steer this concept of a universal God to a neutral arena that adresses all facets of life, and that involves either values or functions.

The physical values and functions that only cater to the physical aspects of things?

If you want philosophy or psychology, use the scientific approach.

You may not be aware but philosophy is not limited to that found within science.

Biblical religions have done enough damage. It's time to grow up!

Your position is noted, for all the good it does this thread.

"There is no heaven when the brain is unconscious" is not a religious declaration. It is a scientific observation.

No, it is a claim. One that invokes the concepts of "heaven" and "consciousness".

One can certainly answer that claim from a scientific point of view while asserting heaven to not exist, of course. However, in such a case "when the brain is unconscious" would unnecessary to the claim.

Therefore, given the redundancy in that claim under such an assertion, one might actually conclude that the intention was to also include the possibility that heaven does exist when the brain is conscious.
I.e. the nature of heaven and it's relationship with consciousness is a matter to be explored.

A forthright assertion that "religion is all bs" or some such, and that science is the only way, etc, is thus likely to be considered somewhat disruptive.

That is not picking on you, any more than a policeman "picks on" people breaking into houses.

 

[Pinball1970]

And you grew up!

I can live with allegory. If properly presented it can be useful in spreading a secular moral across different cultures.

But religions don't do that. They teach exclusivity and prejudice. Ask Salman Rushdie if he considers the Koran a useful allegorical document.

I heard someone say that God spared Rushie from worse than losing 1 eye. That outrageous statement was from a nice religious person.
She also asked me once about the 6 (7) day creation story when science says that the universe is 14 billion years old.
I replied that no one knows the duration of god's day. If his day is 2 billion years long, then the universe is 14 billion yeasrs old.
She was so relieved by that interpretation that she immediately accepted this crude analogy. But I felt satisfied that I dispelled that 6 human day BS.

p.s. I was a victim of religious persecution by "conservative warriors for god" . I have "cause" to complain. They are dangerous!!!.

I am sorry you had very negative experiences. I had a mixed bag, great parish, interactive, community spirit. It was great.

There are some wonderful, interesting, intelligent, human spirits on this planet.
If your fellow creature is in need of help are going to ignore him because he is a Muslim or Jew? Of course not. That is what is great about our innate human solidarity.

We do not believe in gods any more, perhaps you never did.

Step one, stop being angry with the past you cannot change it.
Step two, stop judging theists, you could be one right now if you would have been on a different path.
Step three, absolutely agree that terrible things happen in the name of religion. What are you going to do about it?

 

[Write4U]

Step three, absolutely agree that terrible things happen in the name of religion. What are you going to do about it?

Maintain a strict separation between church and state.
In the US this is called the "Establishment Clause". It would prevent the establishment of a theocracy, with the resulting consequences.

Why the establishment clause applies to all levels of government

The Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause says “…nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The term “liberty” has been interpreted by the court since 1925 to include the liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment. Through this doctrine, called incorporation, states are now subject to the First Amendment along with the federal government. Not until the 1947 case of Everson v. Board of Education did the Supreme Court explicitly apply the First Amendment’s establishment clause to the states.

Supreme Court tests for applying the establishment clause

Since the Everson decision, the Supreme Court has decided many establishment clause cases that have shaped the relationship of religion and government.

The most influential test for determining whether the government has unconstitutionally supported religion is referred to as the “Lemon test” from the 1971 decision Lemon v. Kurtzman. In Lemon, the court struck down a state program providing aid to religious elementary and secondary schools.

The Lemon test requires that government laws or actions (1) have a nonreligious purpose; (2) have a predominantly nonreligious effect; and (3) not create an “excessive entanglement” between government and religion. Failing to meet any one of these three would mean the program violated the establishment clause.

Critics of the test argued that it was vague, not historically supported and hostile to religion.

The Establishment Clause: Everything to Know

What is the establishment clause? How does it protect religious freedom? Here's everything you need to know.

www.freedomforum.org

Note that several States are now acting contrary to this prudent law and installing the 10 Commandments in every school room.
Of all moral messages the10 Commandments are the least informative.

 

[C C]

[...] My support of Tegmark on a well defined and scientifically supportable concept has been ridiculed ad nauseam, but we must respect the concept of God and heaven, because a lot of people believe in different versions of ......????

That's why I observed, that a religious universal heaven is given more "imaginary" credence than some "functional" scientific mathematical universal hypothesis, such as MUH. And that is exactly what I have experienced on this forum. I am astounded by the duplicity. [...]

Well, that at least clarifies what the "real" point of this thread is. (I.e., a kind of unfair "grudge" issue?)

MUH has to be represented somewhat properly, though, and be the uninfringed focus. If instead MUH is just a concept that bits are being borrowed from and cobbled together with features from other hypotheses, then the latter (the "mongrel product") would be what's actually under siege.

For instance, there is no "process of changes" taking place in MUH, and thereby no floating "mathematical principles" or unfolding computation actually regulating the events of a supposed developing universe. It concerns just another higher-dimensional structure like the Block Universe, but one that embraces Tegmark's passion for a multiverse. And thereby due to that extra complexity he prefers to call it a "mathematical structure" rather than specifically a BU (which, again, is too simple to accommodate Many Worlds).

Note: I don't see a "flow of time" problem like the blogger below, since what we're interpreting as "moments" are the increments of brain cognition. Apprehended differences between one experience and another that are measured with a millisecond yardstick. Not a specious, objective "now". If the latter was the case, it would have to accommodate the rapidity of electromagnetic oscillations and the sextillionth of a second changes of subatomic states and interactions. Vastly and insanely outside the league of our "slowpoke", milliseconds-sized "elephants" of conscious divisions.

• 

  Tegmark: MUH? Meh!

  I finally finished Our Mathematical Universe (2014) by Max Tegmark. It took me a while — only two days left on the 21-day library loan. I often had to put it down to clear my mind and give my neck …

  logosconcarne.com
  
  EXCERPT: Tegmark takes MWI and the block universe (BU) as being correct descriptions and instrumental to his hypothesis.
  
  [...] The showstopper I see here involves time and our sense of time flowing.
  
  The MUH has the same time flow problem as the BU. Both say time and change don’t exist. The BU posits a static four-dimensional block that contains all of spacetime. The MUH posits a static mathematical structure describing what amounts to a BU.
  
  So where does our sense of time flowing come from? Why do we all seem to share the «now» as well as a mutual past?
  - - - - - - - - - - -
  
  Max Tegmark: "Moreover, as emphasized by Einstein, it is arguably more natural to view our universe not from the frog perspective as a 3-dimensional space where things happen, but from the bird perspective as a 4-dimensional spacetime that merely is.
  
  There should therefore be no need for the computer to compute anything at all — it could simply store all the 4-dimensional data, i.e., encode all properties of the mathematical structure that is our universe. Individual time slices could then be read out sequentially if desired, and the “simulated” world should still feel as real to its inhabitants as in the case where only 3-dimensional data is stored and evolved. ---The Mathematical Universe (paper)
  
  And to quote one of the pioneers of structural realism, that MUH arguably slots under:
  
  Hermann Weyl: "The objective world simply IS, it does not HAPPEN. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the life line of my body, does a certain section of this world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time." --Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science

 

[Write4U]

Are you, though?

Yes, I don't insert a personal ad hominem in every reply. I would not presume.

 

[Write4U]

No, it is a claim. One that invokes the concepts of "heaven" and "consciousness".

No, it invokes the ability to perceive and experience anything at all.

 

[Write4U]

CC said:

[...] My support of Tegmark on a well defined and scientifically supportable concept has been ridiculed ad nauseam, but we must respect the concept of God and heaven, because a lot of people believe in different versions of ......????

That's why I observed, that a religious universal heaven is given more "imaginary" credence than some "functional" scientific mathematical universal hypothesis, such as MUH. And that is exactly what I have experienced on this forum. I am astounded by the duplicity. [...]

Well, that at least clarifies what the "real" point of this thread is. (I.e., a kind of unfair "grudge" issue?)

No, no grudge, just impatience with dogma.

MUH has to be represented somewhat properly, though, and be the uninfringed focus. If instead MUH is just a concept that bits are being borrowed from and cobbled together with features from other hypotheses, then the latter (the "mongrel product") would be what's actually under siege.

I agree totally, I mention MUH as but one example of the newer proposals that are being fashioned with all the new information coming from the Webb telescope looking much deeper than before, allowing for much larger sampling of universal processes.

Several new propsals have been made, like a "halting universe", which could explain the cause for the BB itself.

A very novel interpretation. A timeless, but dynamic universe that alternately loses and gains energy

But after watching this, a toroid universe came to mind, where the universe alternately expands, losing energy, and contracts, gaining energy.
The implications of such a model are staggering, but could potentially explain the creation and conservation of energy.


As too "consciousness" there are several new proposals.
There is IIT (Integrated Information theory), ORCH OR (Orchestrated Objective Reduction), GWT (Global Workspace theory)
Which are all promising but still seem to have their strengths and weaknesses. But our electron microscopes are now beginning to reach down to the finer scales which is yielding much greater clarity as to the neural processes in brain and body.

The problem with keeping a very narrow definition that cannot be expanded upon tends to what Bohm called the fracturing (not fractaling) of the concept of wholeness.

Everyone admits it's all connected, but then immediately begin to tear is all into unrelated little bits and pieces.

This is why I get so frustrated trying to get a comprehensive overview of spacetime and it's enfolded (implicate) and unfolded (explicated) potentials

IMO, when you deal with grand landscapes you cannot single out a blade of grass and expect to get an impression of the whole landscape.

 

[Sarkus]

No, it invokes the ability to perceive and experience anything at all.

Among other things, as mentioned above.

The issue here, Write4U, is that you don't respect the threads you are in. You seem to want to turn every thread you can toward your main focus, almost irrespective of the actual discussion. And you get frustrated and angry when people don't bite, and when they criticise you for this MO. Respect the thread, please. If people don't bite, move on.

Case in point: this thread invokes religious and scientific and philosophical ideas, yet you only want to discuss the scientific, and are dismissive of the rest. That is not respectful.

 

[Write4U]

That is not respectful.

I have made my position very clear and propsed alternative concept that could replace the erroneos concept of a biblical god.
But you won't let me propse alternative ideas. And that is what religion does. It excludes all other concepts, while avoiding all criticisms or corrections, not in spite of, but because of the admitted allegorical nature of an abstract creative agency as described in scripture, a collection of mythological hearsay stories..

It's the most absurd thing I have ever heard of. Imagine, the power that is given an Islamic mufti, who can issue a fatwah, a death warrant on anyone he deems infidel. Talk aboyt individual rights.

I have posted this before, but it bears repeating.

The Inquisition was characterized by secret procedures, the use of torture during interrogation, and the complete lack of rights for the accused.

Spanish Inquisition | Key Facts

List of important facts about the Spanish Inquisition, judicial institution first authorized in 1478, ostensibly to combat heresy, or dissent, from Roman Catholic teachings and beliefs in Spain. The institution served to consolidate power in the Spanish monarchy, achieving that end through...

www.britannica.com

This message is particularly disturbingL

The 1578 edition of the Directorium Inquisitorum (a standard Inquisitorial manual) spelled out the purpose of inquisitorial penalties: ... quoniam punitio non refertur primo & per se in correctionem & bonum eius qui punitur, sed in bonum publicum ut alij terreantur, & a malis committendis avocentur (translation: "... for punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit").

No heaven for you!

 

[Sarkus]

I have made my position very clear and propsed alternative concept that could replace the erroneos concept of a biblical god

You have made your position clear. You have also disrespected, and continue to disrespect, this thread.
Enough already!

 

[exchemist]

This thread seems to have degenerated into rants about Write4U’s personal beefs with religion, interspersed with yet more tedious plugs for his preferred religion of Tegmark/Shapiro’s “mathematical universe”. Enfolding and unfolding even get a walk-on part. At one point he came close, with his bizarre reference to action potentials, to somehow working his way round to microtubules, but sheered off at the last moment. So we almost have a full house of his various obsessions, all in a single thread.

 

[exchemist]

You have made your position clear. You have also disrespected, and continue to disrespect, this thread.
Enough already!

I had no idea you were Jewish.

 

[Pinball1970]

This thread seems to have degenerated into rants about Write4U’s personal beefs with religion, interspersed with yet more tedious plugs for his preferred religion of Tegmark/Shapiro’s “mathematical universe”. Enfolding and unfolding even get a walk-on part. At one point he came close, with his bizarre reference to action potentials, to somehow working his way round to microtubules, but sheered off at the last moment. So we almost have a full house of his various obsessions, all in a single thread.

It could probably do with being closed.

 

[Write4U]

Well, it was interestingly comprehensive for awhile. And I found some agreement here and there. That was encouraging.

Perhaps the puzzle is beginning to show the boundaries and now we need to fill in the middle. It's a large puzzle with many pieces.

I believe that, as science marches on, more pieces will be found and the puzzle will begin to show the whole symphony rather than individual stanzas.

 

[Write4U]

You have made your position clear. You have also disrespected, and continue to disrespect, this thread.

You mean I have disrespected religion. Well, religion has disrespected me, so there it is.

When my wife declares she is Democrat, and someone says "you worship the anti-christ", while that person actually professed a near-worship of Trump as the second coming, I lose respect for the moral teaching of religion.

It so happens that my wife is a nurse and has cared for the infirm for 50+ years, in the best sense of Christian behavior.
Can you even imagine how deep that accusation, loudly uttered in public, wounded her? Those were not mere words. Those were knives.

Religion is a form of madness. Look at the Vatican and what it represents. Not heaven, and that's not an abstract fact.

Disrespect? You have to be kidding!

 

[Pinball1970]

You mean I have disrespected religion. Well, religion has disrespected me, so there it is.

I think he means you tend to pull threads in certain directions, like Bohm, Tegmark, MT MUH even though they are not the topic of the thread.
If you think religion is bad for humanity that is a different thread.