More on the God Delusion

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I still plan on reading this book, but I am interested to know how much of his rivalry with his brother is influencing his thinking and how much is based in rationality. Because I don't see a problem with being both scientific and if not religious, at least spiritual.

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Hitch has a brother?

Why don't people write books about Muslim moderates and the humanitarian aspects of Islamic practice? Intellectuals tend to go and on about anti semitic Imams, public beheadings and mysoginist theocracies, but they never discuss all the decent people living in places like Saudi Arabia.

[ 23 September 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Originally posted by DonnyBGood:
[b]If we avoid annihilating ourselves and continiue to evolve then down the road humans will have very God-like attributes as may cockroaches and armadillos. Of course some species have changed very little in hundreds of millions of years[/b]

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Are we evolving? Or have we stopped evolving to any significant degree since dominating natural surroundings so utterly and thoroughly ? Some scientists and futurists are saying the next step in our evolution will be the emergence of human-machine hybrids. And eventually, a new species of being will be introduced to the planet in the form of artificially intelligent machines. Synthetic intelligence is predicted to be able to think and reason millions of times faster than the cleverest people. They just have to figure out how to duplicate human consciousness first before creating this new species. Ahhhem ...

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Originally posted by Fidel:
[b]Synthetic intelligence is predicted to be able to think and reason millions of times faster than the cleverest people. They just have to figure out how to duplicate human consciousness first before creating this new species. Ahhhem ...[/b]

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This discounts the role of consciousness in human cognitive abilities. There is also lots of existing (not predicted) evidence that an increase in consciousness and concentration of attention (by way of meditation, for example) can lead to stunningly fast insights - i.e. what we call "intuitions" - which are incredibly accurate though, by definition, unscientific.

Science likes (much like grade 10 math teachers) to focus on the "work" of getting right answers and dismisses answers - often equally right - produced by "intuition".

As a child I was often able to produce correct answers to multiple-stage "problem solving" exercises in math with little to no systematic written or mental work. I would glance at the problem, doodle a little, make a few completely erroneous (by mathematical standards) "formulas" that only made sense to me and quickly get the correct answer more often than many of my hardworking classmates.

Couldn't back it up - but I was right.

Furthermore, to the question of human consciousness and unconscious machines: How can consciousness evolve from unconciousness?

[ 24 September 2007: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
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Hitch has a brother?[/b]

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yes, and they are book-ends, ideologically:
[url=http://tinyurl.com/yootd7]http://tinyurl.com/yootd7[/url]

[i]We disagreed about the Iraq War – he was for it, I was against it. Despite the occasional temptation, I have never reviewed any of his books until today.

But now, in God Is Not Great, he has written about religion itself, attacking it as a stupid delusion.

This case, I feel, needs an answer. Most of the British elite will applaud, since they see religion as an embarrassing and (worse) unfashionable form of mania.

And I am no less qualified to defend God than Christopher is to attack him, neither of us being experts on the subject.

People sometimes ask how two brothers, born less than three years apart, should have come to such different conclusions.

To which I’d answer that I’m not sure they’re as different as they look, and that it’s not over yet.

Christopher has quite often written and spoken about our upbringing and background, whereas I haven’t, but I think I’m now entitled to give a small account of what we have in common. [/i]

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[ 24 September 2007: Message edited by: Geneva ]

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Evolution as I understand it is the process whereby existence organizes itself into increasingly more complicated and sophisticated organisms, hallmarks of which are intelligence and conciousness. Devolution can occur but it would seem that this occurs only as a result of some anomalous catastrophe. Ok so let us thenm look down the road say a few million years.

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One of the key points evolutionary biologists will make repeatedly is that evolution is NOT a process where organisms become more complicated, sophisticated, more intelligent or more conscious. It is NOT a linear process because states of life have no heirarchy. Evolution selects for survivability and reproduction - that's it. There's no guarantee that complexity, sophistication or intelligence will make for easier survival or better chances at reproduction.

Some of the most effective lifeforms on the planet are, in fact, extremely simple - bacteria jump immediately to mind. Others have evolved very little in millenia because they are simply that good at what they do - sharks, bugs. Humans might have the whole brains-and-technology thing going, but we're a comparatively new species on this planet, and the evidence that we have the best survival skills out there is not very compelling - we can only survive an a fraction of the planet, for starters, and our current levels of success are based on a survival structure which is much more precarious than that of, say, algae. "Society on stilts" and all that.

Anyway, Steven Jay Gould says it better than me in any number of his essays.

Charlotte

Humans are doing a great job of stagnating evolution for ourselves and for any other creatures on earth.

As you know evolution only sees positive benefits when coupled with natural selection, however we have decided (rightfully so as well) that we should cure disease other than letting it wipe out the weaker people, we allow everyone to breed (some exceptions of course) whether they're superior in looks, intelligence, skills, or nothing. And we use medical technology to help people with fertility problems have kids.

All of these things are completely contrary to natural selection, and therefore help spawn a sort of 'genetic mediocrity'. I apologise if I sound like a eugenist, I'm not supporting the idea, just saying this is the genetic reality.

As for nature, we're stumping it's ability to evolve by being so directly invasive in almost every level of it's 'nature' by mass land changes and environmental inputs we change their habits too frequently to allow any sort of natural progression to things, the only real chance they have of evolving is through some really random environmental input that warps them in a way that helps them in this ever polluted environment, however that's a longer shot than normal evolution.

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Originally posted by Sisyphus:
[b] If we die out in the next eight million years or so, our successors may remark "They were cute, those bald primates, but as species go, below average."
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*PSSSHSTTHHEBBBTT!!* Whatever!! Those successors are going to remark something more along the lines of "HOLY CRAP look at how much damage they did over such a TINY period of time!"

If only because of our nuclear usage, we will be remembered for 10's of millions of years.

There will always be finer points of philosophy to quibble over (this seems to me the major selling point of Atheism, and therefore why organizing them is as Dawkins described like hearding cats) but the main thrust of both Dawkins and Hitchens if for Atheists to come out of the closet.

And not because we know so much better than the true belivers. But because we merit having our voices heard, also. Part of the reason whey religion has enjoyed so much ascendancy over the last few decades is because we abandoned the field.

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Originally posted by B.L. Zeebub LLD:
[b]Furthermore, to the question of human consciousness and unconscious machines: How can consciousness evolve from unconciousness?

[ 24 September 2007: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ][/b]

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That's the caramilk secret, isn't it?

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That is one of the "science-meets religion"-type questions, innit?

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If the answer is, "we don't know so it must be God," I suppose you are right. Of course, we could ask, how does something evolve out of nothing? How does life evolve from lifelessness? Any number of questions can lead to dead ends that do not necessitate the invention of God to answer. We could just answer, "we don't know". But then maybe that would lead to more questions that could lead to rational answers such as, for example, over how many centuries did it take for consciousness to evolve? What role in human survival does consciousness play? Would humans have survived and thrived in the wild without the development of consciousness?

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
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Any number of questions can lead to dead ends that do not necessitate the invention of God to answer. We could just answer, "we don't know"[/b]

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I think that's good enough for this stage of the game. In his 1930's book, The Mysterious Universe, Sir James Jeans sensed that scientific understanding was headed toward a belief in [i]"a non-mechanical reality - the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter - we are beginning to suspect that we ought to hail it as the creator and or governor of matter."[/i]

And there were more, from Sir John Eccles to Canadian Wilder Penfield who realized that consciousness seems to be more than the sum of parts of the mechanical brain. Some have even likened the brain to a transformer of sorts.

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[i]"As far as what's really going on in the world, I don't have a clue, except that it's much stranger than we once thought, and somehow consciousness seems to be involved,"[/i] -- Kuttner & Rosenblum , Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness

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Originally posted by DonnyBGood:
[b]Excellent citation Fidel. Seems as if this debate has been done before. Dawkins critiques these cosmic design ideas but does not address the questions raised here...[/b]

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Consciousness. There are many descriptions of what it is. Consciousness is self-awareness. It's having memories of the past, present and thoughts about the future. Consciousness is the ability to question your own understanding, and so on. They still haven't built a computer as bright as a HAL9000. But the experts are saying it will happen. Maybe 20 or 30 years from now during a time of "technological singularity." At that point in time, technological progress and understanding of everything could become so rapid that nobody will be able to predict the rate of advancement. Superhuman intelligence. Scientists have balked at the notion until recent years with advances in nanotechnology and microprocessor advancements.

Richard Dawkins apparently [i]is[/i] a respected theorist in the field of evolutionary science. In fact, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Deutsch]David Deutsch[/url] is one of the more conservative of today's theoretical physicists wrt quantum mechanics, string theory etc. [url=http://www.quiprocone.org/Protected/DD_lectures.htm]Deutsch's interpretation (see video lectures)[/url] of the "fabric of reality" makes use of Dawkins' refinement of Darwinian evolution as well as Hugh Everett's many world's interpretation of quantum physics. One of the ways in which it is proposed to prove the existence of other dimensions, dimensions other than the four dimensions known about since Einstein, is to build a quantum computer. A quantum computer, if it works, is said to work by interacting with matter that can only exist in the "multiverse" or multiple other universes. Ensuring that such a computer is even stable and error-free is the largest task at hand by what I've read. And, what kinds of information would they want to compute the answers to with such a powerful computer ?

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
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If the answer is, "we don't know so it must be God," I suppose you are right.

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I don't know if that is the answer or not. I'm certainly not suggesting it is.

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But then maybe that would lead to more questions that could lead to rational answers such as, for example, over how many centuries did it take for consciousness to evolve?

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First we'd need to know what consciousness [i]is[/i]. This would then bring us to the question of defining consciousness against unconsciousness. Unfortunately, the experience of "unconciousness" by a "conscious" being, is impossible. We can only tell where it starts and ends, if we're lucky. We might be able to empirically demonstrate that certain mechanical/chemical processes occur when consciousness is being experienced, but that would only give us correlation, not cause.

Of course, even if we could settle that, then we'd need to know when human consciousness started - which brings us back at the problem of "how does consciousness come out of unconciousness?"

I've read a couple of Canadian Tom Harpur's books. He's a Rhodes scholar and former Anglican priest. In his view, Jesus was most likely a mythical person. For Harpur, it's not important to his faith whether Jesus was or wasn't real. I think what's important is that different cultures have held people like Jesus in such high regard.

[i]"In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you."[/i] -- King James Bible

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Originally posted by Sisyphus:
[b]I have always been very sceptical of the idea of true AI coming from a non-biological substrate but I can't think of any reason, in principle, why a 3-D analogue to the human mind --which would reproduce the ebb and flow of voltages, currents and excitation and inhibiton responses to varied inputs-- couldn't be built.[/b]

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I can only think it will be a monumental and immensely difficult task. But I can't help but enthusiastic along with the optimism of people like Ray Kurzweil when he suggests that the technology to achieving it is in the basic research stages today. Kurzweil himself believes that before a possible new species of intelligent machines, silicon based life or otherwise, is introduced to the planet, there will be a merging of intelligent machines and human biology. And although he says there are multiple scenarios for it happening, Kurzweil points to nanotechnology as being key. I think his comments on nanotech and solar energy are very interesting as well.

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[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/06/14/DI200... are multiple scenarios[/url]. But one that I find compelling is that we will send intelligent nanobots (robots the size of blood cells with nano features) into the human body and
brain through the capillaries. One application is to keep us healthy from inside. If this sounds
very futuristic I would point out we're doing this already in animal experiments. One scientist cured type I diabetes in rats with blood cell sized devices with 7 nanometer pores that let insulin out in a controlled fashion and block antibodies.

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Originally posted by DonnyBGood:
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The logic of all this is that maachines will become aware in the same way conglomerates of amino acids did.[/b]

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Isn't this a chicken and egg paradox? People may well have origins in pond scum. And we have sub-human intelligence with computer technology now. Some software was tested and shown capable of fooling psychiatrists into believing they were speaking with a mildly psychotic person hidden from view.

I have a hard time believing AI will happen without the intervening hand of man.

Next will come advanced but still sub-human AI. Then we'll approach near human AI, and then "AI." And then at some point something really strange is going to happen. Next may well come superhuman AI, a new and distinct species of self aware machines capable of thinking and solving problems many-many times faster than people using computers are capable of today.

[i]"Skynet has become self aware. In one hour it will initiate a massive nuclear attack on its enemy."[/i] -- Arnold the terminator, T3: Rise of the Machines

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Originally posted by DonnyBGood:

The logic of all this is that maachines will become aware in the same way conglomerates of amino acids did.

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Well, we [i]were[/i] talking about human consciousness in that particular sequence.

[ 08 October 2007: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

Maybe we can liken our brain to a computer. Without software to instruct the computer to operate, the computer doesn't work. I think that's similar to what Donny is saying. At some point the software needs to become creative and develop its own purpose within the bounds of the computer's physical hardware.

A theoretical physicist, Fritjof Capra, has developed his own view based on string theory and multiple universe theory. He thinks the human mind is interconnected with energies existing throughout different universes. And multiple universes are interconnected with each other and the mind. Capra says it's possible that we interact with these multiple universes at a physical level(this one), as well as an imaginary level, an intuitive level, semi-conscious sleep-dream level, creative and even psychic levels.

String theory has some serious problems. I wouldn't rely upon it for a theory of consciousness until, if it ever happens, string theory itself is substantiated more thoroughly.

Fidel, with appreciation, I have your post on [url=http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.cgi?http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.cgi?[URL=http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=31&t=000663]Ontario's[/url] coming referendum on voting reform to thank for being introduced to this thread! My thanks!

As my exposure to Rabble heretofore was exclusively to public copy of socially responsible articles I had seen before, the Forum's content, after I posted my first reader's comment since "sign-on" became mandatory was and continues to be quite a surprise.

In a heart-beat I read a qualitative spark in yours I had not seen before in any of the other very limited posts I have now seen since my first post and this thread by a huge margin, I found fascinating from beginning to end!

A short list of a longer list that I made of a number of concepts that I found new and provocatively stimulating would include:

(I should add I posit these as of my interest, as in "a personalistic truth" in contrast to a "propositional truth", with the these two not necessarily in harmony nor in keeping with each other, yet the one does not contradict the other...)

1 "we can only survive an a fraction of the planet, for starters, and our current levels of success are based on a survival structure which is much more precarious than that of, say, algae. "Society on stilts" and all that."

2 "Equally true, is that everything else on the planet is eveolving pretty much as it always did, except that human effects on prey/competitor populations and habitat/climate will be crucial in determining which species/alleles survive. Zebra mussels, the AIDS virus and algae must love us; cod, whales, tigers and smallpox virus, not so much."

3 Then on humans special mark on planet earth: "PSSSHSTTHHEBBBTT!!* Whatever!! Those successors are going to remark something more along the lines of "HOLY CRAP look at how much damage they did over such a TINY period of time!"

If only because of our nuclear usage, we will be remembered for 10's of millions of years."

4 "Evolution does not have any direction at all. AT ALL. The same mollusks which were here 150 million years ago are still here, as are many smaller organisms. As for many other organisms, there is no reason whatever to believe they are
becoming more intelligent...

Intelligence may be ADAPTIVELY USEFUL; if so, artificial selection may select for it. However, for many, many species, no reachable intelligence level will assist in the lifestyle of surviving on dirt, microbes, or tree canopy.

(and a befitting well put concluding qualifier) A basic understanding of evolution can be gotten from writers like Stephen J. Gould. Until you have done the reading, it is idle to be finding problems with a theory whose fundamentals you have completely misunderstood."

5 "I found his ability to find this kind of inspiration in his re-vitalized Christianity to be the most remakable aspect of The Pagan Christ."

6 "What you are addressing, so well, is one of the conceits of humankind, that we are the pinnacle, the apex, of evolution...."!

7 "How can consciousness evolve from unconciousness?"

Reply: "That's the caramilk secret, isn't it?" [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img] ))

My thanks for these and many more! Also how, without the need of a moderating intervention, how disciplined this thread appears to be in focusing on thoughts and ideas, and not bedevilling the person!

8 As another thought offered in contrast to or in addition to #7, people of faith routinely accept that as "fact" when as but one of many examples; for example, the cycle from birth to death is summarised as "from earth to earth, ashes to ashes..."

9 I was reluctant at first to wade in, as much of the physics and biology was not even "invented" when I went to school, however stimulating it might now be.

Then after seeing #6 a further corresponding thought came back to me that I heard directed at self-absorbed people of faith having achieved their climax, "If you would find the perfect church, would you join and thereby but its perfection at risk?".

10 I leave you with two thoughts from Soren Kierkegaard:

a) "God creates out of nothing, wonderful, you say: yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners."

b) "In relation to their systems most systematisers are like a man who builds an enormous castle and lives in a shake close by; they do not live in their own enormous systematic buildings. But spiritually that is a decisive objection. Spiritually speaking a man's thought must be the building in which he lives--otherwise everything is topsy-turvy."

Again my thanks for a provocative and stimulating experience.

And as I am still not familiar with all the mechanics of how to turn certain options on and off, though in time I intend to be back, instead of subscribing to this thread with so much activity and the "notices" only provide notice not content (and why in this age of automation such notices are so challenged, I do not understand) should a direct post be made to mine, would you mind sending me the information through Rabble's back door or even more privately through my site? And no personal comments will be made public.

Sincerely,

Eduard

Did I somehow rain on the parade and the fun and party are now over?

And what does TAT mean in the previous post?

Thanks for the reply Old goat and having some fun while you were at it!

Re reducing the impact on TAT, of which I was unaware, sure, go for it and pass on the instructions how.

Lastly how do I turn the switch on and later off if I want to get notices of postings in a thread?

Eduard

Hi oldgoat,

1 By way of reminder, you volunteered earlier to provide me with information so that when I use long url's they don't cause problems on some screens. Would you please? Please do via the back door or eh-rabbleATnetscapeDOTca as I am not signed up to this thread and having to keep looking with no answer is kind of futile.

I would also much appreciate if you would clarify the following additional technicals.

2 I have also asked how to turn the notice switch on and off when something is posted. How, and where is it?

3 Without repeating it all, in [url=http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=31&t=000663]h...
Ontario's coming referendum on voting reform

I am having difficulty finding some active forums. Would you please round out this email and advise what link I need to be able to see all active forums within the last 5 days. 5 days is my defining preference.

4 In that forum not all urls get entered corretly, What went wrong?

Eduard