Well…
Brains do compute and if we are going to use loose difinitions, have a spiritually blessed Christmas… LOL I guess that’s why they call it a debate room?
Colloquially the word ‘spirit’ is thrown about. I get it. It is one of those ‘catch all’ but meaningless words to describe all sorts of interesting situations. And, these situations are typically very difficult to explain. However, if I look back at your explanation, you were off to a good start.
IMO… calling it spiritual is a shorthand that detracts from the experience. It is a vague explanation of a life altering experience. It sounded like you knew exactly where everything came from… at least in as much as we can identify where any thought comes from.
Yes, and a long (50+ years) overdue “Thanks Carlos” for that…
Agree
Nor do I, except that “most” people I have heard use the word did not mean it metaphorically, but rather as an unevidenced “realm of the supernatural”, to which I do object.
Indeed it has appeared often in my life, bearing a chameleon definition… It has served as a go-to categorization for those less common experiences for which some people lack the education or perhaps awareness to be able to identify accurately.
I have come to a similar understanding and acceptance of this. This certainly was not always the case for me.
I have had a number of experiences that, at the time, I referred to as “spiritual” without having clearly defined for myself what the hell that even meant. They were mostly uncommon or even extremely rare events (from my experiential point of view) for which I had not yet identified a definitional or explanatory framework. One of the truly valuable gifts of living a long time is perspective, if you accept the gift. Wrinkles are not wisdom, but the vast array of experiences one can have, along with the observations of those of others, may provide some rational context.
I sometimes find it amusing to reflect on an experience I had, to which I referred to as"spiritual".
I think, for me, it was a way to “venerate” the experience and perhaps assign it to a personal category of “specialness”.
Generally speaking, I can appreciate the notion that people want to hold some experiences with a higher esteem than their every-day ones might garner. However, relegating an experience to the “spiritual” may in fact detract from the opportunity to view it as entirely normal and special.
From Abraham Maslow: “The great lesson from the true mystics… the sacred is in the ordinary, that is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s backyard”
This has made more sense to me for some time…
Yeah, that’s pretty much where I come down. I also recognize those occasions when belaboring a conversation with an obstinance about the definition is probably counter-productive.
yeah I agree…to the extent that those with whom we are having the discussion(s) are capable of such interlocutions…
Well of course you should define for yourself. For me, there have not been any “sudden, drastic change” in my values, since I adopted introspection as a permanent “stepchild”.
Rather, I have had a number of instances where I altered or amended my behavior to align with my values. @Kevin_Levites This seems more in line with your experience becoming a vegetarian. Not trying to correct you, but it seems more like you came to an awareness of a diversion from your values in your consumption of meat ?
Perhaps, but it wasn’t at all analytical. I suddenly just got a very bad feeling of overwhelming guilt at being a part of killing animals for my culinary enjoyment. I stopped enjoying meat after this happened, as I couldn’t separate the act of eating from an overwhelming guilt.
One reason is that religion promises an after life. People think: What happens after death? Science has no answer for that. Religions provide answers that are based on imagination and fantasies. Still they get an answer and that is what people want. For them, it is comforting to ‘know’ that even after death, they can still live.
A Turing machine, i.e. a computer device that is Turing complete/computationally universal can in principle, given enough time and resources, compute anything computable. A brain can emulate a Turing machine if you mentally follow the rules of such a machine. Thus one can argue that the brain is Turing complete, and therefore that it is a computer.
Science has no answer for what? You have to demonstrate there is a 'what" there, before you need a reason for it. No one has ever shown one iota of evidence for a life after death.; You die, and you are dead. That is the end of that. “That is what dead means.” You cannot be brought back from dead. The previous articles posted made this quite clear. Dead is dead.
" And what Turing grasped better than most of his followers is that the characteristic sign of the ability to think is not giving correct answers, but responsive ones — replies that show an understanding of the remarks that prompted them. If we are to regard an interlocutor as a thinking being, his responses need to be autonomous; to think is to think for yourself. The belief that a hidden entity is thinking depends heavily on the words he addresses to us being not re-hashings of the words we just said to him, but words we did not use or think of ourselves — words that are not derivative but original. By this criterion, no computer, however sophisticated, has come anywhere near real thinking."\
The brain can be used as a computer. Which means that the brain can be seen as a computer. On the other hand, the computer cannot necessarily be used as a brain. At least not yet. Which means that current computers can be regarded as subsets of a brain, and brains as supersets of a computer. The fact that the Turing test has not been passed yet doesn’t mean that it cannot be passed.
The best they can offer are fanciful claims of near death experiences. They don’t seem to understand that when the brain is near death, it goes haywire and produces all sorts of bizarre hallucinations.
For you it is depressing and of course there is no objective evidence, but for them it is comforting like an ostrich take comfort by burying its head in the sand.
What’s depressing? Christians thinking they have a life after death? Why would that be depressing for me? Most religions have some version of this sort of thinking. I pretty much ignore it. By the way, the Old Testament and original Abrahamic thinkers were pretty much in agreement. You die and you are gone. " The pre-Exilic period is dominated by the belief that death, as a purely natural phenomenon, marked the end of life. The after-life, if one could call it that, consisted of a silent existence in *Sheol *, the realm of the dead, where both righteous and wicked shared a common fate, isolated for eternity from God and the living." (A realm of non-existence). This IS original Biblical teaching. After the exile from Babylonia, things began to change.
All this God shit, heaven and hell, is made-up bullshit that comes along some 600 years after the Jewish exile from Babylonia. The evolution of the Christian God is clearly outlined in the Old and New Testaments.
Indeed, but if one cares that what one believes is true, then one ought to avoid basing belief on how one feels about the belief. For me whether it is true is more important than how I feel about it. For example, if the objective evidence supported an eternal afterlife, I wouldn’t deny that evidence just because I found the prospect depressing, there simply is no objective evidence though, that we can survive our own physical deaths in any meaningful way.