patrick.net

Clearly the brain contains consciousness.
It is not clear how or if the brain creates it.
That is speculation on your part.

Dan8267 says

SoftShell says

"Does the brain create consciousness, or is consciousness a separate entity occupying the brain"

Clearly the brain creates consciousness. Numerous unethical experiments such as performing a lobotomy proves this beyond any doubt.

Dan8267 says

anyone who considers the death of this girl to be a tragedy is tacitly admitting that he does not really believe in the afterlife.

That is even more true in the abortion debate. Anyone who says that (a) life begins at conception, and (b) those who live without sin will go to eternal paradise, should celebrate abortion.

SoftShell says

Clearly the brain contains consciousness.

It is not clear how or if the brain creates it.

That is speculation on your part.

To believe that consciousness is not created by the brain, is essentially to believe that there are things in the brain that violate the laws of physics and then influence the brain physically.

There is no evidence of anything known that violate the laws of physics.

On the contrary, everything we know about consciousness is perfectly compatible with the laws of physics.

For example: almost anything physical that affects the brain can affect consciousness. If you drink alcohol, your consciousness is affected, which wouldn't be the case if your brain was just just a container of something unrelated to physics.

All evidence clearly point to a purely physical brain.

SoftShell says

At this point, nothing what either of us wrote in this post can be verified 100% accurate. To think otherwise is a form of self delusion.

If you were saying there's a pink unicorn living in New York subway but no one sees it because it bends the laws of physics to remain invisible and undetectable, no one could verify it either with 100% accuracy either.

Yet it would be a stupid belief anyway.

When bringing extraordinary thesis to the table, you better provide some kind of evidence.

When suicide happens, the reason is in virtually all cases an extreme emotional state, that is a mentally ill state of mind. We know NOTHING about the girl, or her circumstances. Maybe she has had trauma shortly before she killed herself, we just don't know anything at all. But her actions (killing herself) tell us she was in a sick state at that moment.

But Dan is so bad at losing arguments, that he comes back to tell us that he wants to spend thousands of words defending his position (actually it's not even his position - he's jumping on the band wagon of some pathetic radical atheists who want to make this girls tragic suicide the fault of religion).

Why ? This is all based on the one phrase that she wants to see her father again.
(ie essentially saying "don't feel bad Mom, I'm going to be with Dad" or possibly a passive aggressive message "feel bad Mom, for constantly giving me that BS story about heaven") The possible reasons for telling her mother that she was going to be with her father are many, but the most likely reason is the simplest one. After all the message was for the mothers benefit.

For centuries millions of people have believed in heaven, especially children. HAve we heard of cases of these people killing themselves to join dead loved ones ? Of course not. The desire to live (unless someone is suicidal) prevents one from doing this.

Also because it's a terrible sin. How can one believe in heaven, a reward for living a good life, and then think they get to go to heaven after doing the ultimate sinful thing, that is killing a human ?

Why ?

Why kill themself, when they can live a good maybe even enjoyable life and see their loved ones later in heaven anyway ?

It doesn't make sense, and that's why we never hear of it happening.

In this case, though because of that one phrase, Dan's going to pin the blame on religion ? Even if it wasn't for the Mother's benefit (the person the note was written to, and written for, "don't feel bad Mom, because.....") even if it wasn't for her, if someone understands anything about metaphor and abstraction, the idea of being with her father doesn't have to be literal, if she was in a very sick emotional place, which again,...is implied when someone takes their own life.

The FEELING that she is joining him as she gets close to the sick act of killing herself would be natural, and it would not have to mean that she literally thought (separate from that feeling) that she would be with him. This isn't a logical argument, it's an obvious common sense assertion about human emotion.

Is it possible on this site to NEVER SEE any post from either Religion or Politics 'zones'?

Patrick could make a coupla bucks charging extra $ to premium members to hide these horrifying time waster threads of complete lunacy and egoism, which only showcase how dumb/hopeless we are as a race. (unless you are at the top of a political and/or religious pyramid - then that shit is $4nothin&chicksferfree!)

seriously i hate every thread ever in those areas.

PockyClipsNow says

Is it possible on this site to NEVER SEE any post from either Religion or Politics 'zones'?

I can understand you feeling that way after reading more of Marcus attacking Dan with illogical drivel and misplaced ad hominem comments, but I've learned a lot from the religion and politics sections.

In particular:

Dan8267 says

anyone who considers the death of this girl to be a tragedy is tacitly admitting that he does not really believe in the afterlife.

That's it in a nutshell: the point of believing in an afterlife is to relieve temporarily the cognitive dissonance of mortality by denying it, but the professed belief doesn't hold up when the 'believer' is confronted with the undeniable fact of imminent or actual death. If you add up all the suicide terrorists, they are rarer than 1 in a thousand among Muslims; if they all really believed in the afterlife with virgins and a goat or whatever, there would be at least a thousand times more. School shootings and traffic accidents would result in celebrations, dancing in the street. This hapless girl was a true believer, and alas followed that belief to its logical conclusion, and the professed believers (e.g. Marcus) are dismayed and dissemble illogically.

bgamall4 says

Paul said he could wished that he himself was accursed if his brethren, the Jews would be saved.

By that logic, a truly believing female should have as many abortions as possible. Each "accursed" woman could have hundreds of abortions, sending hundreds of innocent children to eternal paradise, though at the risk of her own soul. If she survives past the age of fertility, she could then repent, and be saved.

Never heard that angle.
could you elaborate?

curious2 says

if they all really believed in the afterlife with virgins and a goat or whatever,

PockyClipsNow says

hide these horrifying time waster threads of complete lunacy and egoism,

I agree about it bewing a time waster and about the egoism.

It is a waste of my time, to respond to Dan here. And obviously he is wasting his time. But I don't see how it wastes much of your time. There are plenty of threads that I choose not to read.

Is it really that difficult to ignore this thread ? Especially after you know what it's about ?

Energy cannot be destroyed. Your brain runs on energy. Obviously the cells contained in the physical body "die" as humans describe it, but the energy contained within is simply transformed.

When consciousness is proven beyond a doubt to be entirely 'created' within the brain, you will have a point. We are not close to being there yet.

Regarding the laws of physics, they are being violated all the time.

After the death of his old friend, Albert Einstein said "Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us ... know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

Heraclitusstudent says

SoftShell says

Clearly the brain contains consciousness.


It is not clear how or if the brain creates it.


That is speculation on your part.

To believe that consciousness is not created by the brain, is essentially to believe that there are things in the brain that violate the laws of physics and then influence the brain physically.

There is no evidence of anything known that violate the laws of physics.

Almost anything physical that can affect a car can affect the people inside.
A car is a container for people.
Your example below does not hold water.

Heraclitusstudent says

For example: almost anything physical that affects the brain can affect consciousness. If you drink alcohol, your consciousness is affected, which wouldn't be the case if your brain was just just a container of something unrelated to physics.

bgamall4 says

But regarding the afterlife, you either believe Christ and his Apostles testimony or you don't. You can't prove they are wrong.

Can we prove big foot is a fake? Yes. Can we prove the Loch Ness Monster is a fake? Yes. Can we prove that Zeus and Odin are fakes? Yes. Can we prove that Christ is fake? Yes. And all for the same damn reasons.

You disprove myths by showing that those who had "proof" of them faked the evidence. You disprove myths by showing contradictions of stories. Jesus is no different from Big Foot.

Just because some people are passionate about a fiction, does not mean there is any truth to that fiction. If that were the case, then we'd have teleporters, replicators, phasers, and Klingons.

bgamall4 says

If he has not revealed himself to you it does not mean that he doesn't reveal himself to others.

Substitute Allah, Shiva, Odin, or Alignak and your statement is just as true. Have you accepted your Lord and Savior Shiva? WWOD: What would Odin do? If enough people believe in Alignak, does he become real? Or is your religion racist for rejecting all other people's gods?

bgamall4 says

Not true. Paul said

The rantings of your Paul does not change the fact that the girl's decision to kill herself is perfectly rational if and only if the afterlife she believed in was real. Math trumps Paul. If one rejects the inevitable conclusions of a premise, one is essentially rejecting the premise even if one isn't honest enough to admit it.

SoftShell says

Clearly the brain contains consciousness.

It is not clear how or if the brain creates it.

That is speculation on your part.

1. The statement "the brain contains consciousness" is meaningless.
2. I have not anywhere speculated or stated how the brain creates consciousness.
3. It is empirically verifiable that the brain does create every thought, every sensation, every emotion, every moral principle, every political belief you have. Denying this in the 21st century is like denying that the Earth is round. It is that well established.
4. You still haven't addressed D1, D2, or D3.

curious2 says

Dan8267 says

anyone who considers the death of this girl to be a tragedy is tacitly admitting that he does not really believe in the afterlife.

That is even more true in the abortion debate. Anyone who says that (a) life begins at conception, and (b) those who live without sin will go to eternal paradise, should celebrate abortion.

Even more pertinent, it becomes a moral imperative to murder babies in order to guarantee their placement in paradise if the Christian afterlife has any merit. The idiots who invented the lie of the Christian afterlife didn't put much thought into it, which is why the belief in this premise leads to such spectacularly stupid conclusions.

Much of Christian mythological revisioning over the past 2000 years have been motivated by attempts to plug up all the holes inherit in the afterlife concept. However, you cannot duct tape something that's fundamentally broken and expect it to work. The foundation of the idea has to be sound.

Heraclitusstudent says

To believe that consciousness is not created by the brain, is essentially to believe that there are things in the brain that violate the laws of physics and then influence the brain physically.

There is no evidence of anything known that violate the laws of physics.

On the contrary, everything we know about consciousness is perfectly compatible with the laws of physics

This is true. Furthermore, this argument can be trivially expanded to show that any "supernatural" entity cannot in any way, shape, or form interact with any physical entity since such an interaction would, by definition, by a physical one and would require the supernatural entity to obey all natural laws such as the laws of conservation of various properties.

Hence, if anything supernatural exists, it cannot interact with anything physical, not even sending a message. Therefore, no supernatural god could "create" the universe or talk to man or convey a moral code.

Dan8267 says

The Young Turks discuss this issue including the clause about suicide written to discourage people from offing themselves during their productive and taxable years to get to paradise sooner

Interesting thread, but I can't believe that others aren't more upset at this little brat for killing herself before we could extract her wealth in tax dollars in her potentially most productive working years. We all needed her to prop up Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and all these other broken systems and now the kid got away with consuming our finite supply of food without paying the price, I tell you the nerve.......LOL

marcus says

When suicide happens, the reason is in virtually all cases an extreme emotional state, that is a mentally ill state of mind.

Why should anyone accept your assertion that "an extreme emotional state" is, by definition, a form of mental illness. I've been to weddings. The bride is always in an extreme emotional sense, as are the parents of the bride and many others. Are they all mentally ill?

Leave it to Marcus to define "mental illness" to be anything he doesn't like.

marcus says

We know NOTHING about the girl, or her circumstances.

1. We know what she wrote.
2. This is a dodge.
3. Even if this girl hadn't killed herself, the hypothetical question of whether or not a person should kill herself to be with a loved on in heaven alone is enough to discredit the lie of the afterlife and give us plenty of pragmatic reason to stop spreading that lie.

marcus says

But Dan is so bad at losing arguments, that he comes back to tell us that he wants to spend thousands of words defending his position (actually it's not even his position - he's jumping on the band wagon of some pathetic radical atheists who want to make this girls tragic suicide the fault of religion).

Marcus, you are such a sore loser.

First off, I never "lose" an argument because if anyone makes a valid counter-argument that disproves my belief, I immediately change my belief to fit the new knowledge. I'll flip flop on an issue like John Kerry at the International House of Pancakes if the evidence or reasoning shows my current position is wrong. I am not married to any idea or position. Hell, if you could show that the universe was created by a giant Smurf dick ejaculating the stars, I'll wholeheartedly accept that if the evidence supports it. However, I reserve the right to be skeptical about everything.

Because I'm always willing to change my position if someone can give me a rational reason to do so, it is impossible for me to "lose" an argument. The only thing that is possible is that you have failed to convince me of your position, and that's your bad, not mine.

Second, I have rationally addressed every single argument you made. I've even outlined each argument and my responses so that it is clear that every piece of bullshit you brought up has been addressed. In contrast, you have failed to address any of my responses with an adult conversation. Instead, you simply resort to personal attacks that reflect your immaturity.

Third, speaking of personal attacks, the fact that you dismiss atheists as "pathetic" indicates you are arguing at the level of Ad Hominem at best. See the argument pyramid.

As such, why should anyone respect you or accept anything you say, Marcus?

Fourth, D1, D2, and D3 are certainly my position and I have defended them well. Just because you hate me, doesn't make me wrong. In fact, you hate me because I'm right and you cannot think of anyway to discredit my arguments, which is exactly why you resort to personal attacks. And quite frankly, it's pathetic that you feel the need to do so instead of simply addressing the subject matter.

Finally, this thread is and has always been specifically about the afterlife lie, not religion in general; and the fact that religion causes people to do stupid things like killing themselves or flying planes into buildings is not the fault of atheists.

PockyClipsNow says

Is it possible on this site to NEVER SEE any post from either Religion or Politics 'zones'?

Yes, it's quite easy. Simply do not click on those threads. It's like channel surfing on T.V. If you don't want to see man butt sex, don't click on the gay porn channel.

curious2 says

That's it in a nutshell: the point of believing in an afterlife is to relieve temporarily the cognitive dissonance of mortality by denying it, but the professed belief doesn't hold up when the 'believer' is confronted with the undeniable fact of imminent or actual death.
...
This hapless girl was a true believer, and alas followed that belief to its logical conclusion, and the professed believers (e.g. Marcus) are dismayed and dissemble illogically.

Well said. That's D1, D2, and D3 in a nutshell. And none of the pro-afterlife-lie people have even addressed this issue.

curious2 says

By that logic, a truly believing female should have as many abortions as possible. Each "accursed" woman could have hundreds of abortions, sending hundreds of innocent children to eternal paradise, though at the risk of her own soul. If she survives past the age of fertility, she could then repent, and be saved.

Totally agree, except for the last sentence. The woman has nothing to repent for since she did what was morally right even though it took a lot of effort and suffering on her own part. She would be a fine moral example if the afterlife lie weren't a lie. Any just god would consider her the greatest saint ever.

The existence of the afterlife materially affects whether or not specific actions are good or evil. It's not merely a "white lie" that we tell to comfort people. It has real-world implications including moral ones.

marcus says

It is a waste of my time, to respond to Dan here. And obviously he is wasting his time.

It is never a waste of time to ridicule the village idiot. Doing so serves a purpose, the purpose of discouraging future generations from adopting the role.

Every time I make you look like a dumb ass, as easy as that is, some kid reading this thread will realize how idiotic your superstitions and irrationality is and therefore will reject them. This prevents the virus of your bigotry from infecting the next generation.

Stupid ideas that are popular must be refuted no matter how obviously stupid they are. Idiocracy should not be socially acceptable. This truth is illustrated by one of George W. Bush's statements,

God told me to invade Iraq.

Millions of deaths of men, women, and children justify the opposition of the falsehoods of superstitions.

SoftShell says

Energy cannot be destroyed. Your brain runs on energy. Obviously the cells contained in the physical body "die" as humans describe it, but the energy contained within is simply transformed.

Yes, but energy isn't consciousness. The vast majority of the energy in the human brain remains as rest mass. The chemical energy in the brain is transformed as the brain rots and is eaten by micro-organisms. The transfer of this chemical energy to the micro-organisms does not make those micro-organism sentient.

The law of conservation of mass-energy does not mean that consciousness is not destroyed.

SoftShell says

Regarding the laws of physics, they are being violated all the time.

The laws of nature, by definition, are not violated. That is precisely why we call them natural laws.

Human understanding of these laws are constantly being improved, but mankind's knowledge is already so far advance that the old "god of gaps" argument no longer has enough bullshit room to support an afterlife myth. Yes, man is considerably less ignorant of the universe than he was in the Bronze Age.

SoftShell says

Energy cannot be destroyed. Your brain runs on energy. Obviously the cells contained in the physical body "die" as humans describe it, but the energy contained within is simply transformed.

Brain energy is dissipated as heat constantly.
If you are trying to imply that consciousness should continue to exists simply because the energy continues to exist... That would be a very bad misunderstanding.

SoftShell says

Regarding the laws of physics, they are being violated all the time.

You are obviously not conscious of what you are saying. If there was a single reproducible experiment showing something that violates laws of physics, it would make headlines and be a huge opportunity for physicists to refine their understanding of nature. There are no such experiment. And certainly nothing we know about consciousness even comes close to that.

SoftShell says

Almost anything physical that can affect a car can affect the people inside.

A car is a container for people.

Your example below does not hold water.

That's a BS argument. If you believe that consciousness can survive brain decay after death, then, to follow your analogy, the total destruction of the car leaves people inside unaffected.

So you really need to explain to us how a simple chemical like alcohol can affect consciousness if total brain decay doesn't.

Dan8267 says

3. Even if this girl hadn't killed herself, the hypothetical question of whether or not a person should kill herself to be with a loved on in heaven alone is enough to discredit the lie of the afterlife and give us plenty of pragmatic reason to stop spreading that lie.

Except for the fact that as far as we know, millions of people (perhaps billions if we include the past - maybe even billions without considering the past) believe in an after life, and NONE of them have killed themselves for the sole purpose of being with deceased loved ones.

Oh wait, sorry, there is that one time, the reason for this thread, that in a suicidal state, a girl wrote a phrase about missing her father, while in her suicide note. Dan argues that it wasn't her sick suicidal state of mind that caused her to kill herself, it was that she truly thought with certainty:

1) heaven exists
2) she will be forgiven for killing herself and go to heaven
3) she will be with her father in heaven after she dies
4) going ahead and seeing him now is better than living her life first (not that "now" would even have the same meaning in heaven that it does in this world).

All that from one phrase in her suicidal note, explaining to her mother why she shouldn't feel bad.

Of course we don't know. Maybe she thought that she would go to hell for killing herself, and for some reason felt certain her father was in hell, and that they would be reunited there ?

PockyClipsNow says

seriously i hate every thread ever in those areas.

Study Myers Briggs personality types. N people love discussions about big fuzzy topics: politics, religion, afterlife. S people can't stand them. Not everyone is like you. Get over it.

BobDDstryr says

You keep saying that if you believe in an afterlife, that suicide is rational and logical; its still not. If there's an afterlife - you'll be able to see your loved ones again eventually, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't do what you can with this life - make friends, find love; have children; increase your circle of loved ones that you'd be spending your afterlife with.

marcus says

BobDDstryr says

Maybe she would have committed suicide anyway, but that made a convenient excuse. Maybe she felt that her mom would appreciate that note more than one saying "It hurts too much to continue living, and just being with you isn't good enough anymore." Maybe she thought she'd actually survive it, and it was an elaborate cry for help.

Another good point. What if her Mom was constantly saying that her dad is in heaven but she didn't buy it and was in a sick suicidal state. In that case it seems like a reasonable thng to say to her Mom. In other words "if that's how you cope with dad being gone, hopefully it will work for coping with my being gone too."

Excellent points.

Dan has, through force of hand waving, shaky assumption, logical deduction, and the sheer force of his overweening personality disproven the Afterlife (TM).
Now fuck off and die!

Quigley says

Dan has, through force of hand waving, shaky assumption, logical deduction, and the sheer force of his overweening personality disproven the Afterlife

He used even weaker reasoning to prove that one phrase to her mother (with the antecedent "don't feel bad Mom"), is proof that the girl was of sound mind and made a rational decision to kill herself for the purpose of being with her father in the afterlife, actually knowing that she would be.

He actually believes he has proven this ?

It seems that given enough hand waving, and his personality, Dan can prove anything he sets his mind to proving.

Hey, it is the internet after all. I don't think he even cares if this character "Dan" that he has created is a total douchebag.

For those that follow a religion: Islam/Christianity/Judaism/etc.. - committing suicide is a one way ticket to hell. So this girl was either not given the proper understanding of life and death or was mentally disturbed. To be clear, this was not an act of love but rather of misunderstanding and confusion.

As far as other claims made by atheists that there is nothing after death; they cannot give 100% proof to support their claim. Neither can those individuals who have "nearly" died claim to know what comes next as near death is not the same as death.

Atheists like to pin their arguments on the known and observable universe. So it would be pointless to discuss with them the unknown. This would be akin to debating the size of the unknown universe (e.g., the portion of the universe for which light has not reached us and may never reach us. Therefore we cannot observe it nor can we deny that it exists with absolute certainty).

Puzzling are Atheists in my book. Why you may ask? Simply because they claim that God has nothing to do with creation. They claim that everything happens by chance. By chance the Universe was created from nothing; by chance planets form, by chance humans evolved from a single cell amoeba, by chance septillions of stars (1 trillion times 1 billion) are created-all of them following the exact same laws of planetary motion- and so on...

From this chaos and absolute chance we are able to derive definitive laws for genetics, physics, etc. At the end of the day, the core argument for atheists is that pure chaos and chance begets absolute perfection. Puzzling indeed.

this is basically why they outlawed suicide so early on in the history of religions. People killing themselves to get to the afterlife became an epidemic in early iterations of religious ideas. Yes, humans really are that dumb.

kashif313 says

they cannot give 100% proof to support their claim.

I think this line of reasoning was thoroughly shown to be self-evidently stupid. While atheist can't give 100% proof afterlife doesn't exist, religious people can't give the slightest evidence it does. Therefore, given the grotesque surrealist, physical laws violating, concept, it is 99.999% reasonable to assume it doesn't exist, just like a pink unicorn in NYC bending the laws of physics can safely be assumed to not exist.

humanity says

He actually believes he has proven this ?

It seems that given enough hand waving, and his personality, Dan can prove
anything he sets his mind to proving.

Hey, it is the internet after all. I don't think he even cares if this
character "Dan" that he has created is a total douchebag.

LOL, you and others, don't believe that there's an actual person named Dan, that you and them have read his posts and responded to, yet believe in a god and an afterlife though.

Toooooooo funny.

kashif313 says

Atheists like to pin their arguments on the known and observable universe. So it would be pointless to discuss with them the unknown.

Agnostic people claim they don't know the unknown and that is the 100% correct position.

Religious people claim they know the unknown and have grand delusions about what is in-there.

Atheists stay on the safe side to assume there in nothing magical until it becomes known otherwise. A much safer position than the religious one.

Heraclitusstudent says

kashif313 says

Atheists like to pin their arguments on the known and observable universe. So it would be pointless to discuss with them the unknown.

Agnostic people claim they don't know the unknown and that is the 100% correct position.

Religious people claim they know the unknown and have grand delusions about what is in-there.

Atheists stay on the safe side to assume there in nothing magical until it becomes known otherwise. A much safer position than the religious one.

I agree with the agnostic part, doesn't mean there are no incentives to lead a good life. I also often heard that agnostics are just too scared to admit they are atheists, which I disagree with. You can believe in a creative force (which I do) without having to or being able to exactly outline every inch of it. Part of the creative force is that you cannot comprehend it fully, similar to us not able to experience more than 3 dimensions. Plus atheists cannot answer the question what was there before the big-bang or who created the massive and dense energy that erupted into the big-bang.

kashif313 says

They claim that everything happens by chance. By chance the Universe was created from nothing; by chance planets form, by chance humans evolved from a single cell amoeba, by chance septillions of stars (1 trillion times 1 billion) are created-all of them following the exact same laws of planetary motion- and so on...

What we know about how the universe became what it is from the big bang has nothing to do with chance, and it fact nothing to do with atheism: it's just what is known about it.

Typical of religious people to say they want to talk about the unknown, and start by dismissing what is known.

Heraclitusstudent says

kashif313 says

They claim that everything happens by chance. By chance the Universe was created from nothing; by chance planets form, by chance humans evolved from a single cell amoeba, by chance septillions of stars (1 trillion times 1 billion) are created-all of them following the exact same laws of planetary motion- and so on...

What we know about how the universe became what it is from the big bang has nothing to do with chance, and it fact nothing to do with atheism: it's just what is known about it.

Typical of religious people to say they want to talk about the unknown, and start by dismissing what is known.

Then the garden variety atheist I've been speaking with doesn't know what they are speaking of? Do elucidate the uneducated - define atheism for us. If everything is not by chance AND there is no God...then how does our physical world come into existence? Is there a hybrid approach or are there now various "sects" of atheism?

Also, do we really understand the Big Bang? Can you mathematically explain the singularity found in the big bang and black holes? If you cant explain this, then the phenomena of existence itself cannot be explained. Is this your claim to the "known" - you're citing the big bang theory and hanging your hat on it? Wow - nice argument.