RE: “The Problem of Evil” in atheism and in Islam
February 5, 2015 at 10:35 am
(This post was last modified: February 5, 2015 at 10:44 am by paulpablo.)
Quote:Tell me what Natural Selection is and how it is selecting what it is selecting. What are the scientific procedures involved in Natural Selection.
Now I am sorry that I am giving you such questions knowingly that you do not have a biological background but your explanations are not giving me any options than to ask you these questions.
You are right on spot in saying that Natural Selection is some kind of blind god. The reason behind this assumption is that there no scientifically discernible explanation for Natural Selection.
It isn't selecting anything, there is no selection being made by any being, creature or entity.
As I said before no I don't have a background in biology but I do read up about nature in a non scientific way and can relate that to some scientific information I know about.
Natural selection, to my limited understanding of biology, is like a process of elimination, no one is selecting anything. Animals with beneficial traits bred into them by their parents live and those with none beneficial traits die without breeding.
This isn't the only type of selection though because there's also sexual selection, in which case the traits which evolve due to sexual selection won't have many benefits against predators or benefits in gaining food but just purely give the creature more mating success.
Again the same example I used last time, this is an explanation for the flightless birds on isolated islands, they didn't need to fly, flying takes up a lot of energy, they had no predators on land so they lost the use of flight.
If the selection had been by some all knowing entity, it would have told the birds to carry on flying because there are predators out there on other islands that will soon come and get them.
Quote:Few philosophers nowadays would maintain the bald thesis that the mind is identical to the brain, but it is a view that one hears among the laity.
The brain is a physical thing with a definite mass, weight, location, size, shape. One can inject dyes into several of its sub regions. One can insert electrodes into it. One can remove and discard parts of it. One can add parts. I can literally give you a piece of my brain. (And you hope I won't.) But can I literally give you a piece of my mind? Does my mind have a weight in grams? Is it divisible? Do my thoughts have a location or a volume? if one thought has a second as its object, as when I reflect, is the second thought located above the second? How far above? Can we intelligibly speak of the voltage drop across a thought? By removing piece of mind, do thoughts and cognition drop as well.
So it is clear that the mind cannot be identical to the brain. If that identity held, then every brain state would be mental, which is obviously false. But what is wrong with holding the converse, namely, that every mental state is a brain state?
If every mental state is a brain state, then every belief is a brain state. But beliefs have properties that brain states cannot have. One is the property of being either true or false; another is intentionality. So no belief is a brain state.
This information bares no relevence to to the questions I asked you in relation to what you originally said.
You were originally saying that you noticed that many animals that aren't humans seemed mechanical and seemingly without a will or soul.
I asked you a question, have you noticed that animals with more intellect and brain power seem to be less mechanical, for example any great ape, dolphin and so on, compared with a jellyfish.
What you seem to be implying is that if a jellyfish had human will power or soul, it would be no consequence that it actually has no brain, it would still make decisions of good vs evil and be able to think complex thoughts.
Are you ready for the fire? We are firemen. WE ARE FIREMEN! The heat doesn’t bother us. We live in the heat. We train in the heat. It tells us that we’re ready, we’re at home, we’re where we’re supposed to be. Flames don’t intimidate us. What do we do? We control the flame. We control them. We move the flames where we want to. And then we extinguish them.
Impersonation is treason.