I have asked him this several times already, he has ignored the question.
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I believe that itâs possible that God exists . . . but just because something is possible does not make it so.
As for why I think God is possble?
It depends upon the nature of the Universe.
I have argued (as have many, many other people) that the Universe may be infinitely cyclical, such that the Big Bang was the end of the last incarnation of the Universe, and the begining of this one.
So, weâve all heard Hoyleâs Fallacy, which describes a tornado spinning through a junkyard and assembling a 747. Technically possible, but the odds of this happening are overwhelmingly small.
So . . . if I have an infinite number of past universes to sort through, Iâll eventually find a Universe where this happened. It might be 10^10,000,000,000 years ago, but there would be an infinity of universes where a hurricane or a tornado assembled a 747 in a junkyard.
In a like manner, let us suppose that if we sort through enough past incarnations of the universe (a much larger number than the above number), we eventually find an incarnation of the Universe which gave birth to an all-encompassing being that knows itself.
Such a thing is far-fetched, because we know about the physical laws . . . but in another thread (my thought experiment with a jar full of air in a sealed box) I did a thought experiment which shows that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is a function of probability. If we can define the 2nd Law as a function of probability, then I can show that the same thought experiment shows that the law of conservation of linear momentum is also a function of probability (I believe that the Universe recycles due to probability, but my ideas donât address dark matter or Cosmic Inflation . . . as my arguments would have to be drastically reworkedâif not thrown outâif cosmic inflation and dark matter as assumed to be correct).
So, if most (or all) of the physical laws are a function of probability (as I suspect, but donât know), then perhaps God was spontaneously assembled right after a Big Bang ((10^10^10000)!) incarnations of the Universe ago. (Please note that the exclamation point denotes the factorial of 10^10^10000).
Does this mean that God exists now?
Of course not. God may have sacrificed itself to create the Universe now. Or, perhaps, God is a computer that spontaneously assembled (like our 747 after the tornado) during one incarnation of the Universe, and this is why the entire Universe may be a computer simulation.
Of course all of this bullshit goes out the window if the Universe isnât endlessly cyclical, and if it turns out that the Big Bang is a limit where science ends (ie: nothing âbeforeâ the Big Bang), then all of my speculation is nothing more than intellectual garbage.
All humans have grappled with this at some point in their lives.
I agree we are a complex material process⌠ask those who are mapping the brain 
. I wouldnât argue that a dolphin has a high level of experiences (subjective), as do dogs (hmmmm not just mammals), crows, lizards, octopus (smart fuckers). Insects have limited awareness (ants, bees 
abilities to communicate via scent or dance).
Awareness and consciousness may be interchangeable to some degree but there are differences.
However, I think earlier - let me scroll up
Has dirt or rocks been tested for subjective experience? How about ozone? (Or are you just sticking to solids, and not gases)?
Does AI have consciousness? One claims it does.
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Our Brains create subjective experiences, therefore other physical processes can create subjective experiences. NO!
Our brains are receiving information from the other physical processes and interpreting that information as subjective experience. No brain and you are left with simple stimulus response. The brain intervenes in the process to create the subjective experience.
No it does not. What evidence do you have for the existence of a universal consciousness? What aspects of this universal consciousness have you tested? How did you test it? I am dying to find out.
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than nonconscious . In general we accept that consciousness is a manifestation of brain in the way taste is a manifestation of the mouth or hearing a manifestation of the ear.
We are basically referencing âQualiaâ and the topic is hotly debated and contested throughout science and philosophy with many models. To assert the subjective experience can not be predicted or clarified is blatantly dishonest.
Atheists must do no such thing. What in the fuck are you talking about. Atheists are people that do not believe in God or gods. If you want to debate the hard problem of consciousness and the role qualia plays in it, why not go to a philosophical site? What in the fuck are you on about?
Can you demonstrate that Consciousness in Universal and exists without a brain? Yes or No? What evidence do you have? What studies have you done? Can you demonstrate your assertion? And even if you could, how in the hell does this ever get you close to anything called God?
Matter, our brains, does in fact generate subjective experience. That is a fact.
Demonstrate a physical experience not experienced by a living organism.
Yep, plants have no brains and yet respond to stimuli. What in the fk are you on about?
No! You donât get to jump from humans and plants to Universes. What the fuck kind of logic is that? Demonstrate consciousness existing independent of a living organism. Still waiting.
The debate on whether or not you need to take your medication is entirely resolved. Now, we just have to find your mommy and get her to do her job.
You donât get anywhere until you demonstrate consciousness independent of a biological functions.
The prevailing consensus in neuroscience is that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain and its metabolism. When the brain dies, the mind and consciousness of the being to whom that brain belonged cease to exist. In other words, without a brain, there can be no consciousness.
You have a burden of proof, if you are to overthrow the consensus. What you have written above is woefully inadequate.
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This is absurd suppositional nonsense. While we can demonstrate neural networks and their interaction/response to and with external stimuli, we have not evidenced such outside of a physical form such as a brain.
No, we can evidence consciousness through introspection, and unless you embrace solipsism, by other collective and observational means as well. Evidence any god please.
The âhard problemâ is overblown. As we gain more and more insight as to the answers for the âeasy problemâ, it becomes clear that as we have realized that life is not one thing and is composed and facilitated by underlying mechanisms: metabolism, homeostasis, reproduction,etc., consciousness can also be viewed as a somewhat amalgamation of processes and/or mechanisms, a combination thereof and likely emergent properties, existent only in the presence of a sufficiently developed brain.
Well of course that is factually untrue. While science has not identified a single mechanism or explanation, there are ever-increasing understandings concerning the collective phenomenon referred to as subjective experience, which indeed is gradually eliminating the entire notion of dualism.
Declaration of fact not supported by evidenceâŚscience can and does account for them, you just donât accept it. Demonstrate a subjective experience isolated from a brain please.
Atheists are not in any way obligated to explain your angst over not be able to accept the obvious simple answer in front of your face. You have tied yourself in a hangmans knot trying to justify your rigidly held belief in a supernatural explanation. I have never seen or heard a claim by any atheist such as
No they do not! That is in fact the opposite of what they imply! Atheists do not speculate on non-brain subjective experiences, outside of thought experiments or rhetorical humor. Where do you come up with this nonsense?
So letâs seeâŚyou have taken an entirely fabricated imaginary âtheoryâ by âatheistsâ and used it to conclude the plausibility of non-human brain subjective experiencesâŚIs your name really Rumpelstiltskin?
Or maybe you are so full of yourself that you think your fatuous âruminationsâ have some value to anyone else.
Well, of course by your standards, the debate over universe-farting pixies, bigfoot, grey aliens, self-gassed anal propulsion, magic bananas, honest politicians, etc., are all entirely plausible.
Any debate is plausible. No debate is plausible. Plausibility is plausibleâŚWTF?
Well hell, if itâs all that easy, have at it Hoss!
We may discover aliens soon tooâŚ
Nope, not without evidence even supporting the proposition as a candidate explanation.
HahahahhaâŚthatâs fucking hilarious.
Uh, while horseshit is rather solid, this is only a starting point if one wants to pursue a journey of fallacious, imaginary nonsenseâŚ
Did so long agoâŚincoherent circular reasoning. To even imagine such a thing, has to presume dualism to prove dualismâŚ
Well shit, if you are going to speculate, think big! Maybe we can âplug inâ to a âsliderâ and gain insight into dog turd experiences as wellâŚ
It is not at all problematic, unless one is trying to rectify the notion of a âgodâ (Which you have still failed to define or identify)
Hogwash, but thanks for the example of a false dichotomyâŚ
Yeah, about that⌠I think you may have missed something in science classâŚ
Ok not problematic and also not simpleâŚmakes perfect sense to me.
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I wish I had said it that way⌠Makes more sense I think.
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Yes, take twoâŚtheyâre smallâŚ
Edit (the ones that momma gives you donât do anything at all )
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Meanwhile, a question that is in need of answering before we go any further in this thread ⌠what is the difference between âsubjectiveâ and âobjectiveâ?
Only without a rigorous basis for this, any assertions on the subject are discardable.
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I intended to address that issue precisely, as there exists significant confusion regarding the relationship between brain activity and subjective experience. Here is a text that aids in comprehending the hard problem of consciousness and distinguishing it from the easy problem.
Moreover, I believe it would be beneficial to watch this short video in order to comprehend the concept that science is incapable of measuring subjective experience.
Science is entirely incapable of measuring subjective experience in any form. We cannot determine if a stone possesses any rudimentary subjective experience. Hence, we lack knowledge regarding the existence of any form of subjective experience beyond ourselves, making this assertion groundless.
This refers to the hard problem of consciousness. You can read about it here.
Iâm unsure why youâre repeating this question. I have already provided an answer to it.
The problem at hand is our inability to measure subjective experience in entities. We remain uncertain about whether the Earth, sea, wind, or any external being possess any form of subjective experience. We are confronted with an objective phenomenon known as âsubjective experience,â which is undeniably real because all evidence we have of reality originates from subjective experiences. However, we are unable to measure or study it through the observation of material reality.
In essence, science focuses on studying the external aspects of reality, but it overlooks the internal aspect of reality.
Can you please define what you mean by âexperienceâ?
What line if reasoning has lead you to ask a question âdoes rock have a subjective experienceâ?
Perhaps 
you can write a paper, and think of a demonstrable test for measuring the above 
Mind you throwing a virgin or two into a volcano 
seemed to calm it, eh? Preforming dances for rain 
when done consistently and long enough worked, right? Perhaps those can be used as examples of how the elements/earth respond to human pleading and gifts.
Also confronted with a phenomenon known as dreams and memories. I certainly have all three. I cannot demonstrate that you do though.
Ohhhh - just though of someone who can help with the wisdom and knowledge of earthâs magnetic field.
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Ahem, both pain and memory have explanations from the cognitive neuroscience literature.
Looks like your âphilosophersâ arenât aware of the relevant literature.
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You can demonstrate some objective evidence for sentience in the absence of a physical brain, or that survives the death of a physical brain?
If you think this kind of duplicitous hadwaving is compelling argument then I am back to pointing and laughing⌠
Straw man fallacy, since I didnât actually claim it could in my assertion you quoted, though it actually can of course, however even were this true it does not mean you get to make the unevidenced assumption that things like ice and the universe are sentient, now those ludicrous assertions are groundless, this is also of course an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. Your use of logical fallacies are coming like buses now.
This refers to the hard problem of consciousness. You can read about it here.
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No thanks, you cite some peer reviewed scientific work to support your claim about physics, otherwise I will continue to disbelieve it.
Not that I have seen, so was it a yes or a no? If it was a yes did you demonstrate any, or was it just a bare claim?
No it isnât. youâre just creating an unfalsifiable premise to base an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy on, so that you can irrationally pretend that not having contrary evidence to your claim, lends your ludicrous claim some credence. Though I am still waiting for you to offer one word of explanation as to how this ludicrous unevidenced and irrational assumption remotely evidences any deity, or which deity? If you could do this of course, Iâd bet my house youâd have done it by now as well.
This is not our first rodeoâŚ
Science studies consciousness under the umbrella of cognitive neuroscience, so wrong again. So this god of the gaps polemic might disappear one day like the many that came before it, either way not knowing something is not a rational basis for leaping to the unevidenced assumptions you are making.
We canât be certain we are not surrounded by invisible pink dragons, thatâs because like your ludicrous claims I have created an unfalsifiable claim. Now while you seem to think this is an impressive achievement, I recognise it is trivially easy, and utterly meaningless. In science such ideas are often referred to as ânot even wrongâ.
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Doctor Penfield, I smell burnt toast!
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The paper i posted about David Chalmers defines this concept.
As I mentioned earlier, the issue we are facing is our inability to measure it. This problem is connected to the concept of zombies, which you can read about. here
Dreams and memories are products of our minds. While these images may be completely unrelated to reality, the capacity to experience them is a real phenomenon. In simple terms, the movie you are watching is fiction, but you are real.
Please read David Chalmersâ paper to gain an understanding of the distinction between âexperienceâ and the neurological processes associated with it.
The problem here is that current physics does not predict the emergence of âexperienceâ in any material entity, whether itâs a stone, a brain, a calculator, the sun, or the Earth. However, in the one case we can verify, ourselves, this assumption is clearly incorrect. Science can explain all the external observations of our brain but fails to predict our internal experience of it. When we attempt to elucidate how âexperienceâ arises in a material brain, we discover that the same argument applies equally to postulate that this âexperienceâ could emerge in any other physical phenomenon.
In short, the assumption that a stone lacks any âexperienceâ is just as valid as the opposite, and it becomes a matter of personal choice.
Iâm not saying that ice âexperiences.â Iâm saying that it is equally valid to assume it experiences as it is to assume it does not. We have the same evidence for either of these assertions, as I mentioned in all the arguments before.
I have cited a peer-reviewed paper that provides a thorough explanation of the problem. Additionally, I have referenced the efforts of atheists who are attempting to address this issue. If you choose to reject this paper and disregard all the references I have provided, there is nothing else I can do to assist you.
As I stated in the introduction of this debate, I will be discussing the potential existence of God as a derivative of the problem of consciousness. It is quite evident that if we entertain the possibility of subjective experience emerging beyond the human brain, the notion of God becomes more plausible.
It is equally unfalsifiable to affirm that a stone has no subjective experience. This is the problem you seem unable to understand in my argument. Iâm not necessarily affirming anything; Iâm just saying that your assumption is arbitrary and contradicts some proposals made by atheists themselves to explain the hard problem of consciousness, such as panpsychism or Russellian monism.
This is the easy problem of consciousness, and it has already been explained in the paper that was posted. It does not address the phenomena of experience.
Your claim that âexperienceâ exists solely in the brain is also unfalsifiable.
Comment:
How incredibly useful is this tool that allows us to add quotes, enabling us to answer everything in just one comment! Congratulations to the inventor of this!
You are not facing it, youâre using an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy to claim insentient objects can experience consciousness because we canât disprove it. Your risible claim is both unevidenced and irrational.
And beyond tautological repetition of the claim, you canât explain how this remotely evidences any deity? Or which deity?
Just like the deity youâre imagining then.
âŚyou keep evading questions and responding with a repetition of your unevidenced claim.
Itâs not an assumption, since we have objective evidence to support it, what is an unevidenced assumption is your claim that sentience is possible in the absence of an evolved physical brain. As we can see you have nothing to support it here, beyond it being an unfalsifiable claim, and an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy to pretend makes your claim credible.
No we donât.
Wrong on both counts, you can carry on believing it possible nay plausible to assume that rocks can be sentient if it makes you happy, but all the objective evidence demonstrates that sentience is a characteristic of a brain, and we have zero examples of it occurring without a brain, you canât just handwave that away.
it is never valid to make unevidenced assumptions.However we have overwhelming objective evidence that sentience only occurs in the presence of functioning brains.
We have none for sentience in the absence of a functioning brain, do you think repeating this lie will sway anyone?
I donât believe you, cite it again and very specifically highlight where it supports your claim.
That doesnât remotely answer my question, can you demonstrate any objective evidence for any deity?
No it isnât since we have overwhelming objective evidence that sentience only occurs in the presence of a functioning brain, and ceases when that brain dies. However your hilarious assertion that your meaningless unevidenced assumption is as valid as the opposite meaningless assumption speaks for itself, and again your assertion is the very definition of an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. if you want to base belief on an irrational argument crack on, but I shall not be joining you, especially since you can demonstrate no objective evidence for any deity, canât even explain how your irrational argument is supposed to evidence any deity, despite being asked multiple times.
Your claim remains a god of the gaps polemic, based on an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.
I said consciousness, and no it isnât, though again this would lend no rational credence to your assertion, for some reason you donât want to acknowledge this fact. Quelle surpriseâŚwe are still waiting for you to explain how your unevidenced an irrational assertion evidences any deity. So far you seem to be implying sentience is possible in anything, because we canât disprove it, which is of course the argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, and thenâŚan undefined deity is real?
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All of these quotes presuppose the notion that âexperience,â as defined by Chalmers, solely arises from brain activity. The problem with this assumption is that we can equally consider the possibility that experience emerges from any physical processes, which encompass but are not limited to brain activity. In doing so, we would find, with the same amount of evidence, that âexperienceâ is not exclusive to living beings but extends to all things, albeit imperceptible to us.
Furthermore, it is misleading to claim that science has proven that âexperienceâ is only confined to brains. Science cannot determine whether AI is sentient or not, whether a starfish possesses sentience or not, whether a stone has some form of âexperience,â or what distinguishes a zombie from a sentient human, and so on.
The only sentience one can be certain of is their own. This is why we assume it originates in the brain. However, science cannot prove the existence of oneâs own sentience either. That is why your assumption that âexperienceâ is solely possible within a brain is unfalsifiable. We can be certain that âexperienceâ is real, but we cannot be certain that it exists exclusively in the brain.
Science can measure brain activity and posit that this activity generates âexperience.â Nevertheless, it is equally valid to propose that any physical process can generate âexperience.â Moreover, logic supports this idea: the brain can be reduced to a collection of simple physical processes, yet it produces âexperience.â Therefore, experience can be derived from physical processes.
I already provided the link
And the definition of zombie
If you refuse to acknowledge evidence, then refrain from demanding it.
I will not answer any further questions that have already been addressed unless you read at least some of the links I am posting and provide a proper argument as to why they do not support my point.
Because it is not the focal point of this debate. Please refer to the first post for further clarification.