Mr. Neil ([info]mister_neil) wrote,
@ 2008-04-22 07:00:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:humor, movie, religion, science, youtube

Ben Stein Crushed Under THUNDERFOOT!
Okay, yes, I still have a monsterous bug up my ass about this movie, even though it did absolutely nothing over the weekend. Watch as our old pal Thunderfoot lays to waste any doubt that Ben Stein, co-writer of Expelled, has absolutely zero understanding of the subject matter.


How is it, that in 2008, we STILL have people in this discussion that don't know the fundamental differences between biology, cosmology, and chemistry? You'd think it would be very easy. The etymology alone should reveal the obvious blunders in Ben Stein's amazing stupidity. Biology=life. Cosmology=the cosmos. Chemistry=chemicals. Ben Stein=idiot. See? A third-grader could figure this out.

Now, while Thunderfoot does make a valid argument about the slimey way in which Ben Stein and Mark Mathis went about getting interviews (essentially to gather sufficient footage from which to quote-mine), he failed to produce the single biggest trump card against Ben Stein's claim, which is simply that they had decided upon the name Expelled long before the interviews began. This can be proven by simply going to Who Is and typing in expelledthemovie.com. What you'll see is that the site was registered on March 1, 2007. Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott, and Michael Shermer were all interviewed later that same year.

Changed the name of the movie, eh? Bullshit. You had the title before you even interviewed any of the major biologists featured in the film. The only thing that keeps changing is the story that Mathis and Stein give to the media regarding this issue. To throw your own question back at you, Ben, what are you so afraid of that you have to hide something?


Anyone? Anyone?

Why do people get angry at creationists? Only creationists don't understand why.

(Post a new comment)


[info]kogmedia.com
2008-04-23 05:00 pm UTC (link)
just saw Expelled; the fact that Ben Stein isn't trying to win any popularity contests helps to validate his message... i gather that his goal is to promote free thought, especially more thinking about the worldviews that drive American academia

(Reply to this)(Thread)
Wrong.
[info]mister_neil
2008-04-23 05:44 pm UTC (link)
The fact that Ben Stein isn't trying to win a popularity contest is irrelevent, regardless of which side of the issue your on. It doesn't make his argument more valid. Your statement is a non sequitur.

Furthermore, the fact that Ben Stein clearly didn't do any research (as this video clearly demonstrates) is reason enough to dismiss his entire argument. His perception of what evolution is, as if it's this dogmatism in science, is wrong. Watch the damn video next time.

Besides, you already said this in another post, and I countered your claim. Maybe you didn't understand. You cannot compare the scientific establishment with a democratic free speech society. They are not the same thing. In a democracy, you can vote for elected officials, but one thing you cannot vote for is the truth. The truth in science relies on evidence, which means that you have to work to establish your suppositions.

In science, the validity of a theory rests on its ability to withstand criticism. Intelligent design doesn't even present a theory, and Ben Stein certainly didn't present one in the movie, which invalidates his entire argument. Personal convictions have no place in academia.

I don't appreciate spam on my blog. Don't do that again.



Repeat performances will be deleted.

(Reply to this)(Parent)
I may be nit picking here
[info]the_elf_boy
2008-04-24 04:54 am UTC (link)
I find the ad hominem argument style he goes into about 7 minutes in to be a bit distracting. not every one who believes in any kind of supernatural force is a weak minded person.

over all though I agree that creationists share the stage with the flat earth society for the most blatantly silly viewpoints of our era.

P.S. the Mr. Gruff icon is AWESOME

(Reply to this)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]mister_neil
2008-04-24 06:51 am UTC (link)
I understand that, but I also understand his point of view, which is the frustration of having people use supernatural events in place of real expanations or even such honest statements as "I don't know". The latter, while not as satisfying as an actual answer, at least does not imply that the game is up. A person who admits a lack of knowledge can just try again tomorrow, whereas someone with a supernatural answer is content to stop where he is.

He's talking about people who use the supernatural as a scientific answer; not necessarily all people who believe in the supernatural. For example, Dr. Ken Miller, who is a catholic, would never commit the sort of intellectual laziness that Ben Stein is perpetrating.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]the_elf_boy
2008-04-25 02:38 am UTC (link)
It may be an ill placed jab but. The intellectual laziness argument can also be levied against atheists. There is, as of yet, no substantial physical evidence about god for or against. Any statement of certainty one way or the other slams the door on what is really an open issue.

Mind you I separate the existence of god from the testable predictions of any particular religion. we have physical evidence against the creationists and other fundies but weather an "entity" of some kind was involved in the creation of the universe is as of yet scientifically unassailable.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]mister_neil
2008-04-25 05:51 am UTC (link)
I don't think you're understanding.

It's not a smear on people who believe in the supernatural. It's a direct criticism of those who attempt to give scientific answers while appealing to the supernatural. Since the supernatural isn't even clearly defined, there's no way to make any sort of inductive appeal that would be applicable in a scientific context.

In other words, if I'm a pharmaceutical doctor trying to make predictions on the latest strain of whatever disease I'm studying, I would need a theoretical model that describes the nature of how these things work. If I pull up a research paper and it says, "organisms were supernaturally designed", that doesn't tell me anything. Supernatural is not an explanation. People who posit the supernatural as a scientific answer are lazy, and they have no business working in science.

In fact, it's not even an honest answer. "I don't know" is the right answer.

It has nothing to do with atheism. It has to do with a simple violation of the philosophy of science.

In this respect, it's not merely enough to say that evolution has all the evidence in it's favor. While it's certainly true, it's not fully addressing the problem. The problem with intelligent design is that it's a violation of science at its core. It ignores the importance of application and induction and attempts to offer an answer that is functionally useless.

That's lazy.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]mister_neil
2008-04-25 06:57 am UTC (link)
Again, I submit that there are religious people in science who would agree with me on this point. When building a physical model in science that explains a particular phenomenon, you can't appeal to things that are non-material (i.e., supernatural). It just doesn't work that way.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]the_elf_boy
2008-04-26 02:23 am UTC (link)
For the most part I would agree however there are some grey areas. Not in physics or chemistry of course and for the most part not in biology either. However in some area where the complete process we do refer to certain short hands which could be debated to be non physical things that do in fact have physical effects. Cognitive science comes to mind.
It used to be considered a serious breech of rigor to even mention internal cognitive states in serious psychology. Even referring to a food deprived rat as being "hungry" could easily get your papers sent back to you for a rewrite. Now days there is a lot of good science out there involving not only the organism’s inferred "thoughts" and "feelings."
Now one might say that thoughts and feelings are completely the result of the electro chemical processes of the brain and that there is no such thing as an immaterial conscious mind. The only problem with saying it is that it is not scientific fact. The existence of an immaterial component of human consciousness can neither be confirmed nor ruled out by modern neuroscience. This may change someday but that day is unlikely to be soon.
thus if we were to build a model of any physical environment, and that model involved thinking, feeling humans, the model GAIN predictive power from use of theories that make use of cognitive terms such as happy or angry. These cognitive terms may not currently reducible to purely material phenomena.

One might argue, as the behaviorists, did that such concepts, such as guilt and fear, are not physically measurable and therefore should be left out of scientific discussion. The state of modern science however has been able to profit quite a bit predictive power from their use.

Now the question is, how exactly are you defining the term "material"?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]mister_neil
2008-04-26 02:59 am UTC (link)
"The existence of an immaterial component of human consciousness can neither be confirmed nor ruled out."

Yeah, but that's tautological. You're taking the concept of the immaterial, something that is negatively defined (i.e., outside of any inductive means of perception) and saying that we can't rule it out. Thats kind of like saying we don't know if that which we don't know exists.

It's nonsense. I don't stay up late at night wondering about the existence of the vague and mysterious.


"Now the question is, how exactly are you defining the term 'material'?"

I'm probably not going to have the perfect definition, but material is the substance of the universe which axiomatically exists.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]the_elf_boy
2008-04-26 06:04 pm UTC (link)
well lets imagine then that we lived in the betlegeuse universe. ghosts not only exist in this universe but follow certain well defined rules. they can see, thus being afected by the matierial world, and they can move objects around, thus interacting with the matierial universe. ghosts then are not outside inductive means of perception and they axiomatically exists.

in this universe would you say that ghosts now fit the requirements to physically exist.

(this is an actual question not an argument.)

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]mister_neil
2008-04-26 06:16 pm UTC (link)
If such a universe existed, then ghosts would be part of reality, even though they, in this universe, have no coherent meaning.

But again, what you're offering is tautological. If ghosts were part of reality, then they'd be part of reality. That's all you can say. Or in simpler terms, if things were different, then things would be different.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]mister_neil
2008-04-26 06:50 pm UTC (link)
And I know you were positing this as a sort of question, so I hope I responded to your satisfaction. But if not, here's another way to look at it.

Let's say I'm arguing with a theist, and he says to me, "A-ha! But if spirits were material entities, THEN you'd believe in them.". Yes, that's correct, but like he says, I would only believe in them if spirits were part of the physical universe. Simplified, what this is saying is that I believe in things inductively, based on physical reality. ...which isn't exactly saying anything. Everyone does that.

What the theist has done is to accuse me of not believing in things that are not within inductive reason. ...Which is sort of like accusing me of being human.

And what's funny is that I've actually had this happen. The point is that in the process of conjuring up hypothetic situations, the theist has only made a case for believing in ghosts and spirits if they happened to be material. Completely lost in his own argument, he has failed to provide a reason for believing in immaterial/supernatural things.

I love when the hypothetical arguments start coming out, because I know that tautology is not far behind.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]the_elf_boy
2008-04-26 08:13 pm UTC (link)
Ok pardon my lack of vocabulary but there seem to be 2 definitions of tautology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28rhetoric%29
And
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28logic%29
To which are you referring?


The argument you perceive is not in fact the one you state here. It is in fact the opposite. If you say that any thing that can interact with the physical universe, and can in theory be understood in logical terms then by saying that something is immaterial you are there fore already assuming that is has not had any effect on the universe. In doing this your conclusion directly follows from your assumption.

The problem is I don’t think that the type of person who believed in any sort of spirit or god would call them immaterial. Religious types obviously believe that god can affect the world, and if they believe in any sort of prayer they also believe that the gods can be affected by the world (Unless they’re one of those perfect unchanging god types).

If gods or souls or spirits or leprechauns are part of our universe then they can be, at least in some indirect fashion that may not yet be available to us, be observed scientifically.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]mister_neil
2008-04-26 09:47 pm UTC (link)
By tautology, I'm referring to a logical sense. A=A. Or in this case, if X was A, then X would be A. Both definitions refer to the redundency, but the rhetorical form is not necessarily illogical all the time.

For example, one of the phrases they use for the rhetorical definition, "I saw it with my own eyes", is redundant in the sense that your eyes are the only means by which you can see, but the phrase is used as a means of saying, "I was there", as opposed to seeing something in a picture, which would be, in a figurative sense, seeing something through someone else's eyes. It's a poetic way of speaking.

But I'm talking logically. In the logical sense, a tautology is an attempt to make a statement by referencing an identical (whether explicit or implicit) statement.


For the next part, you seemed to have made a number of proofreading errors, and I had to make a stabbing guess at what you were trying to say. I tried to reconstruct it as best I can, but feel free to correct me if I got it wrong wrong.

Revised: "If you say that anything that can interact with the physical universe can, in theory, be understood in logical terms, then by saying that something is immaterial, you are therefor already assuming that is has not had any effect on the universe."

If that's indeed what you meant to say, then I completely disagree. For one thing, if we're talking about "anything" that can interact with the physical universe, then we must be talking about things with particular properties (you need to be something in order to interact). Simply assuming that the immaterial is a qualified something is question-begging, because no such properties have been established.

I don't even know what immaterial means, and I'm not the slightest bit convinced that immaterial can be something.

How does an immaterial entity interact with the physical universe? How else would something interact unless it was physical?

Or more to the point, what is the difference between something that is immaterial and something that doesn't exist?


"The problem is I don’t think that the type of person who believed in any sort of spirit or god would call them immaterial."

Then you've never met a reformed apologist. I've gone round and round with people who've tried to tell me that not only is God immaterial, but so are our thoughts. ...I guess there are people who don't think we need our physical brains for anything.

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever met a religious person who didn't believe that supernatural meant immaterial. (Maybe scientologists, but I don't even want to go there.) Every single theistic person that I've ever met has referred to God as being above the material universe.

The problem is, I don't know what being "above the material universe" even means. To me, this sounds no more logical than saying "God is north of the north pole.".

Now it would be interesting if, say, because the universe is considered to be eternal (i.e., the matter and energy that exists remains constant), if there was some sort of religious sect that believed in a material-based deity. Perhaps he's made entirely of energy.

Actually, my friend Jen mentioned something similar to that a while back. She said that our souls could potentially carry on after we die. Of course, the only problem with that would be the laws of physics.


"Religious types obviously believe that god can affect the world, and if they believe in any sort of prayer they also believe that the gods can be affected by the world (Unless they’re one of those perfect unchanging god types)."

Then they got some splainin' to do.


"If gods or souls or spirits or leprechauns are part of our universe then they can be, at least in some indirect fashion that may not yet be available to us, be observed scientifically."

Yes. If they existed, then they'd exist.

I don't mean to be a smartass, but being observable means that it's inductive, and being inductive means that it's logical. So... they might be logical? What does that mean?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
(Anonymous)
2008-04-27 09:32 am UTC (link)
Ooops, i left out some rather important words (damn dyslexia). let me try speak better.

If you say that any thing that can interact with the physical universe, and can in theory be understood in logical terms is MATIRIAL, then by saying that something is immaterial you are therefore already assuming that is has not had any effect on the universe. In doing this your conclusion directly follows from your assumption. to say that something is immatierial is saying that it is not involved in our universe.

if immatierial means "does not affect the universe" then no one believes in an immatierial god.

also anything that interacts with our universe allready has at least one "particular property". if he has a habit of inventing universes
then he has another specific property. what sort of "particular properties" are you refering to?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]mister_neil
2008-04-27 04:09 pm UTC (link)
""if immatierial means 'does not affect the universe' then no one believes in an immatierial god."

Again, you're misunderstanding. I'm not the one defining immaterial as "that which does not interact with the universe". I don't believe that immaterial has any coherent meaning. It's on the onus of those who claim that it exists (or even those who claim that it might exist) to provide an explanation as to what it means.

How does something that is immaterial interact with the universe? What is the difference between something that is immaterial and something that doesn't exist?


"also anything that interacts with our universe allready has at least one 'particular property'."

Simply claiming that something has a property does not answer the question. In order to make claims about the interactivity of a particular concept, you have to explain what the properties are so that we know HOW it can interact. Otherwise, it's a meaningless, question-begging statement to posit such a concept as an explanation for anything.

For example, we can make claims about the way water interacts with its environment based on its properties. We know how it reacts to changes in temperature, gravity, topography, and so on. We can draw inferences from this and make predictions based on what we know about water.

What do we know about the immaterial? Nothing. Do we even know if that which we can't define even exists? Nope. Can we even speculate as to whether or not it exists at all? No, because we aren't even talking about something that's intelligable. Speculation implies that we understand its properties enough to make informed gueses. We're holding a meaningless concept and trying to pretend that its existence is an open issue.

It's like saying, "Something we don't know about might exist." This is rundundant and does nothing to justify any appeal to the supernatural in any explanatory way.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]the_elf_boy
2008-04-27 05:29 pm UTC (link)
ok you are claiming that "immaterial" is a word that is a word used by your opposition. how about "supernatural" thats a word that you and that video have used to refer to certain concepts. a

all I'm looking for here is to establish a meaningfull set of terms so that we can move on to a more meaningfull empyrical disscussion.

definitions are not sacred. word can mean anything you want them to mean as long as all parties involved in the discussion know what they mean.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]mister_neil
2008-04-27 06:33 pm UTC (link)
As far as I can tell, supernatural means not natural and/or above natural. Other worldly, perhaps. Or, to be most judicious, I suppose supernatural could be that which mysteriously doesn't obey the laws of nature, but that isn't very descriptive, either. The prefix "super" doesn't mean anything unless there's some kind of context, which usually means quantifiably greater in size, volume, strength, or number. There could be others that I'm missing, but generally it means better. Better at what, though? We need context.

For example, a super-structure would be something very big. Super Size is a large order of fries on the menu at Wendy's. Super speed would be extremely fast. But supernatural? I wasn't aware that nature could be quanified or given some sort of heirarchy. It doesn't seem to point to anything.

Now, I'm aware that the natural world itself may break down a tautology (i.e., "Reality is real."), but since it's an axiom, we can't really assume otherise (otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation). Belief in the natural world is foundationally implied in everything you do. You sit down at your computer and type on the assumption that it's actually there.

In the same sense, "I exist" is a tautology, because any self-referential pronoun automatically implies your existence. In fact, just talking or acting implies your existence. The phrase "I exist" is a true statment, but it's also redundant.

That is to say, tautologies are tricky in that they could actually be correct, but since they are redundant, they don't actually prove anything. And so when we turn to the supernatural, which is not coherently defined (i.e., we don't know what it is), and we say that we don't know if the supernatural exists, it breaks down to "I don't know if something I don't know exists." or "I don't know the mysterious.".

And that's what the video is referring to when Thunderfoot complains that supernatural is just a label that gets put on top of the absense of knowledge. In the philosophy of science, the only thing you can say about a mystery is, "I don't know".

Have I babbled enough? My head is spinning from all that, so hopefully I didn't lose you in the process.

I may go play Super Mario for a while.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]the_elf_boy
2008-04-29 04:41 am UTC (link)
hmm your statements about tautology would seem to apply to ALL deductive logic. Every deductive process is simply a process of clarifying things that are already undeniably true if all required assumptions are correct. This is the same as saying that every equation in algebra is in fact redundant because what ever is on the right side of the "=" is the same thing as what ever is on the left. While this is true algebra is still rather useful.

Overall your argument against ALL supernatural explanations must either be definitional, which you seem to be claiming it is not, or it is empirical. If it is empirical then it would require that there are not significant instances where supernatural forces have been clearly defined.

I think I would have to bring up Des Cartes as a reasonably good attempt to define and rationally examine the possibility of the existence of god. Granted much of his reasoning is deductive but I think his descriptions are sufficient to show that there can in fact be clearly defined, potentially verifiable concepts of things such as god and the soul.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]the_elf_boy
2008-04-29 04:49 am UTC (link)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]mister_neil
2008-04-29 07:54 am UTC (link)
"hmm your statements about tautology would seem to apply to ALL deductive logic. Every deductive process..."

Wait a minute. I'm not talking about processes. The processes you're talking about depend on the tautological nature of our base assumptions, but I already said that, anyway. Merely making a tautological statment is not proof of anything, and it's not the same as using logical deduction. A tautological statement is merely a way of stating something that is already taken for granted.

In other words, A=A is not an argument any more than stating that 1+1=2 is a process of math. In both cases, you're simply stating something that is taken for granted without proving anything. BUT, if you rephrase the equation to read "1+1=X" or "1+X=2", then you have the basis for identifying an unknown variable by appealing to non-contradiction. We already know that the solution on the other side of the equal sign must logically cohere with problem itself. It's not merely a useful fact; we depend on it unconditionally.

Note that when you're doing math, there are known integers that allow for the completion of the entire equation. Math is indeed useful, but only when there are some solid means of determining the unknown variable.

With supernaturalism, however, both sides of the equation are unknown variables, so you're stuck with "X=X" (or, if I want to be nice, it could be "X=Y", but that doesn't help either). "X=X" is a perfectly valid statement, but it leaves us without any means of determining what the unknown variables are. It's a dead end.

I'll read the Descartes thing later this week when I get a chance, but I skimmed it briefly, and I'm not really seeing any sort of definition here. I saw the words "perfect" and "infinite" a number of times. If that's his means of definition, it's not very good. For one thing, perfect is a subjective term, and thus it has no objective meaning.

Second, his use of the word "infinite" is rather wonky. He seems to be arguing that God must exist because the concept of an infinite being is one that cannot be invented by a finite mind, but I'm not following his logic at all. Infinite literally means "not finite". Or, to be nice, it means without boundaries or limits. Can we invent concepts in our minds without limits? Sure we can. It's merely the act of subtracting the perceived limitations that we already observe (i.e., death, aging, physical inability, etc.). It's not beyond the human imagination to invent something that DOESN'T have limits.

The Descartes' definition of a God, if I'm understanding correctly, seems to be, "He who is arbiter of the laws of physics who also does not need to obey them". So, in other words, God can do anything, including breaking the laws of physics. Well, that pretty much abandons induction, which doesn't bode well for Descartes.

But then, I was skimming, so maybe he's got more substance than that.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]the_elf_boy
2008-04-29 03:17 pm UTC (link)
perfect means without error, tus if you define what an error is then perfect is not a subjective term. des cartes was a smart guy, invented new branches of math in his spare time and his meditations are a fun read.

(Reply to this)(Parent)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]the_elf_boy
2008-04-30 01:48 am UTC (link)
the truth is i dont think his conclusions about god are nearly as iron clad as he seems to believe. but i dont need him to be right for my arguement to work, he simply needs to be making an honest atempt to clearly define the concepts he is refering to. i believe he does this.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]mister_neil
2008-05-05 07:35 pm UTC (link)
I've spent the last couple days contemplating how I should respond to this. While I don't want to come off rude, I think I should express my annoyance that you couldn't have anticipated my response to this. Giving me a synonym for perfect does not explain how it is objective. It doesn't tell me anything about the thing in question. I still don't know what a god is, nor does anyone seem capable of explaining what the supernatural is. Without an adequate, objective description, appealing to it as an explanation is not appropriate, and I still firmly support that it's grounded in intellectual laziness. It's no different than saying, "It was done with magic."

Saying something is flawless doesn't say anything if the thing in question has no intelligable definition. Let's make up a word. Let's say ZORBLEFLAX. If I say the zorbleflax is flawless, what have I told you? Nothing, because you have no idea what the hell a zorbleflax is. If I told you it was supernatural material, that doesn't exactly tell you anything either. It has no properties that you could appeal to. And again, by properties, I'm referring to descriptive, objective ways in which the thing in question interacts with reality. For example, water has several properties that describe how it interacts with reality. We can describe water. But if you simply say that the supernatural zorbleflax is capable of interacting, then that doesn't say anything, because no property has been established. There's nothing testable about that statement, and it's the same problem that science faces when claims of the supernatural are invoked. Without properties, there's no conclusion that can be drawn from such appeals.

This is what I mean by something you should have anticipated from me. By now, this should have been the obvious response. I do kind of lose my patience with stuff like this, because I get tired of having the goal post moved around.

I read this guy's page. I even went to the library even. I find nothing in this guy's work that even comes close to providing the sort of definition of supernatural that I'm looking for. He does what all theists do. He appeals outside of induction, which is precisely where I keep throwing the red flag. You can't do that. It's a betrayal to the very process by which we learn things. I don't even know where to begin with this guy, because he's not saying anything. What he gives is clever, and he may even have been sincere, but it's a typical archaic philosophical heirarchy that grounds itself in what is essentially a very contrived argument from ignorance.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
Re: I may be nit picking here
[info]the_elf_boy
2008-05-07 06:51 am UTC (link)
Very well, if Des Cartes fails to define a possible immaterial object in a concise way, then I shall have to attempt it myself.
There is an object, lets call it a soul. It is massless and indestructible however it has the ability to interact with an animal body in a way which influences that animal’s behavior. This causes certain observable patterns to emerge. Each soul is unique and thus cannot be copied.

Empirically this could be observed when attempting to copy an animal body's behavioral control mechanism (i.e. the brain and possibly endocrine system).

In the not so terribly distant future it may be possible to replicate a brain (either as a computer model or in its complete physical form). If such an exact copy can be created and it can reliably be distinguished from the original (perhaps due to deficiencies in things emotional faculties or creative ability) this would provide empirical support for the existence of an immaterial soul.

If on the other hand the replica can be made to be virtually identical to the original then the soul as we have defined it. The idea will either need to be redefined or scraped.

In this example the exact effects that a soul exerts on a body do not need to be rigidly defined until after some kind of effect can be verified. It is enough to say that if the difference in the behavior of two objects cannot be explained by differences in the arrangement of their atoms, the difference must arise from differences in other kinds of substance.

And yes I find it entirely possible that pixies may exist in some distant corner of the vast universe of ours.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

Create an Account
Forgot your login?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…