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I'm happy to call myself an agnostic atheist, but apatheist and ignostic fit as well. I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about gods. When I do think about gods, I never think about them as separate entities. If they are defined as existing outside of time and creating the universe, space and time .. then that just strikes me as silly. Such a notion doesn't deserve a serious response.
The only sense I can make of gods is as portions of consciousness on-board human brains. I'm hugely impressed with our brains, consciousness and personal identity. I'm in awe of that stuff so obviously that must be where the gods are hanging out. I think the self we are aware of is but a portion of what goes on inside us. You might even say they make our ordinary selves possible.
But most people who want to talk about gods aren't interested in on-board gods. Neither do they want to consider advanced alien races. Only the absurdly literal 'god' that exists no where and everywhere will do for most. Too bad really.
(June 21, 2014 at 1:28 pm)One Above All Wrote: What self-proclaimed agnostics are trying to do is say "I don't believe, but I don't not believe either", which is utter bullshit. You can't "not believe" but also "not not believe". It's meaningless and makes no sense.
Quote:Here’s a fascinating snippet from neurologist VS Ramachandran, talking about a split-brain patient. The patient’s right brain believed in God, but the more rational left brain was atheist.
Ramachandran points to the obvious theological problem of what, in the Christian view, happens to such a person after they die; does the right brain go to heaven and the left to hell?
The video of this extract is on the page.
Everyone has a left and right brain so maybe some agnostics really are in two minds about God.
To me the whole agnostic concept is loaded with theistic presuppositions. I think it gives to much credence to god claims. If I'm open to the possibility there could be a 'god' who is always just out of sight (or more fundamentally unprovable) I'm basically open to anything. I could be a brain in a vat for instance.
Trusting reality to be as real as we can detect seems the only pragmatic way to go to me.
Quote:Here’s a fascinating snippet from neurologist VS Ramachandran, talking about a split-brain patient. The patient’s right brain believed in God, but the more rational left brain was atheist.
Ramachandran points to the obvious theological problem of what, in the Christian view, happens to such a person after they die; does the right brain go to heaven and the left to hell?
The video of this extract is on the page.
Everyone has a left and right brain so maybe some agnostics really are in two minds about God.
...You do know what a split-brain is, right? Basically, each hemisphere acts independently. It's almost like having two people inside your head, each with access to certain information (senses) that the other may or may not have.
The truth is absolute. Life forms are specks of specks (...) of specks of dust in the universe.
Why settle for normal, when you can be so much more? Why settle for something, when you can have everything?
(June 22, 2014 at 10:17 am)Bibliofagus Wrote: To me the whole agnostic concept is loaded with theistic presuppositions. I think it gives to much credence to god claims. If I'm open to the possibility there could be a 'god' who is always just out of sight (or more fundamentally unprovable) I'm basically open to anything. I could be a brain in a vat for instance.
Trusting reality to be as real as we can detect seems the only pragmatic way to go to me.
Being open to things and giving them credence are two different things. We may all be brains in vats, or worse, batteries for our machine overlords. Or we may be part of a computer simulation running on an alien nerd's laptop. These are things that, if given sufficient evidence, I could be convinced to believe, but I give them no credence because there is no evidence that we live anywhere but a material universe.
Thief and assassin for hire. Member in good standing of the Rogues Guild.
Belief is a binary mental state. It is not possible to be in some sort of in-between state neither believing or disbelieving.
Either one accepts the proposition or premise that at least one god exists, or they don't.
Agnosticism, in the formal definition, only defines what one claims to know or not know.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
June 24, 2014 at 5:15 pm (This post was last modified: June 24, 2014 at 5:21 pm by Confused Ape.)
(June 23, 2014 at 7:31 pm)One Above All Wrote: ...You do know what a split-brain is, right? Basically, each hemisphere acts independently. It's almost like having two people inside your head, each with access to certain information (senses) that the other may or may not have.
Yes, I do know what a split brain is but humans without split brains still tend to focus on left hemisphere experience and ignore what's going on in the right hemisphere. I found Ramacahndran's split brain patient very interesting in relation to something in God On The Brain.
Quote:NARRATOR: Temporal lobe epilepsy has one very unusual side effect. In a minority of patients it can induce religious hallucinations. These visions have led scientists to ask questions that have never been asked before. Rudi has always been a confirmed atheist, but even so, when he was 43 years old he had a powerful religious vision.
RUDI: I was lying on my bed in the wards in Crawley Hospital when suddenly it seemed to me that everything was changing. The room was still the same size but it was becoming something else. I thought that I had to fight against this at first and I tried very hard mentally to bring myself back to normal because I thought that I was going mad. I thought that I had died and I had gone to hell. I was told that I had gone there because I had not been a devout Christian, a believer in god. I was quite shocked to find that the Christian religion was the correct one. I was very depressed and very alarmed, very worried at what had happened, and at the thought that I was going to remain here forever.
NARRATOR: Fortunately for Rudi, his vision ended and he has never had another one. He remains a firm atheist.
Why would an atheist's brain produce this experience? Is it possible that somewhere, deep in his unconscious, there was a belief in God? If so, why?
Quote:When neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor had a stroke that put her logical, sequential left brain temporarily out of commission, she experienced a temporary state of peaceful, all-connected consciousness that changed her forever.
At first she saw this intuitive and wholistic right brain state as crucial to human mental health but after a visit to Antarctica with Al Gore she began to see how it might also offer clues about how a desperately-needed new eco-consciousness might be as close as the right side of our brains.
But how to experience this right-brain eco-connection without having to go through a potentially deadly stroke?
Once we understand the domains of the right and left brain hemispheres, many options appear. The left brain (which controls the right side of the body) is generally agreed to dominate functions like speech, logic, detail, science, math, planning, order, thinking, writing and a sense of the separate self. The right brain seems to focus more on a holistic sense of connection, images, stories, music, intuitive awareness of patterns, beauty and imagination.
Methods of connecting with the right brain (and thus balancing the brain hemispheres) are as old as humanity.Most indigenous cultures were well aware of them: story-telling, art, connecting with the beauty of nature, ingesting mind-altering plants under controlled conditions, making music, aromatherapy, body therapies, sex, humor, dreaming, stream of consciousness writing, meditation, religious ceremony and prayer are just a few.
Quote:When I start getting bored because my arthritis is playing up and I have to rest more I'll switch my brain over to a different way of operating. I call it my 'New Age' perception for want of a better label.
Everything now feels alive and it seems that there's meaning and purpose to life and the universe in general. When I'm in the 'ordinary perception' way of operating I know that my arthritis is playing up because I've been overdoing things. In 'New Age' perception, however, I'm getting the idea that my arthritis is playing up because I've been neglecting this way of operating so I'm being forced to switch over to it.
I find this interesting because there's a part of my unconscious mind which has some form of New Age religious belief when I switch over to 'New Age'. Where can this part of my unconscious be coming from? This question is why I find the video I'm posting particularly interesting. A Neuroanatomist had a stroke and her experience showed her that we have two cognitive minds - one from the left hemisphere and one from the right. Right hemisphere consciousness is being at one with everything etc.
I have to admit that my 'New Age' perception feels a lot nicer than 'ordinary perception' so maybe that's why many religious people want to keep their 'religious perception'. The advantage that I have, however, is that I can enjoy it without having to take any religious dogma on board.
Does the thought of my unconscious mind having some form of religious belief bother me? Not at all because it's just a result of the way my brain operates. Am I an atheist? Yes, because the way my brain operates doesn't prove that God or any other deity really exists. If researchers switched my left hemisphere off and asked my right hemisphere if it believed in God, would it indicate "Yes"? Probably. Does that bother me? No. Why should it?
June 24, 2014 at 5:55 pm (This post was last modified: June 24, 2014 at 5:57 pm by archangle.)
(June 22, 2014 at 6:54 am)Confused Ape Wrote:
(June 21, 2014 at 1:28 pm)One Above All Wrote: What self-proclaimed agnostics are trying to do is say "I don't believe, but I don't not believe either", which is utter bullshit. You can't "not believe" but also "not not believe". It's meaningless and makes no sense.
Quote:Here’s a fascinating snippet from neurologist VS Ramachandran, talking about a split-brain patient. The patient’s right brain believed in God, but the more rational left brain was atheist.
Ramachandran points to the obvious theological problem of what, in the Christian view, happens to such a person after they die; does the right brain go to heaven and the left to hell?
The video of this extract is on the page.
Everyone has a left and right brain so maybe some agnostics really are in two minds about God.
what he means is that if you say "nothing" you are claiming to know more bullshit than if you say "this type of thing".
Agnostics understand the use of the scientific method in the context of science, while others can just spit the definition out their asshole.
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