(September 25, 2014 at 12:59 am)snowtracks Wrote: while you neanderthals have been mucking in the intellectual mud, a world class atheist thinker says the ID crowd is correct about the mind and consciousness existing and naturalism/ materialism is royally whacked. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_and_Cosmos
this is obvious stuff, so how did the board members get their minds tricked so easily?

Oh, yet more Nagel.

So, first of all, philosophers aren't scientists, so what they have to say has very little impact on scientific fields on its own. Second, the idea of a mind or consciousness existing isn't excluded from naturalistic or materialistic thought, you blithering fool; as I've said numerous times, treating the mind either as a magic woo-woo spiritual thing or nonexistent is a false dichotomy. The mind is easily explained as being an emergent process arising from the material components of the brain arranged in a specific sequence; a conclusion that all the evidence in neuroscience tends to support. Nagel- I'm familiar with his work- and you are working from an unjustified presupposition that material elements cannot be more than the sum of their parts, or cannot be arranged in such a way as to accomplish things that they could not do separately. If you actually think that's true, then I think the entire field of mechanics and engineering would have something to say there.

Lastly, don't think I didn't notice you trying to smuggle in the claims of intelligent design under the cover of claims about consciousness. You're not going to just sneak those in so dishonestly, and if you want to demonstrate ID you've got to... actually do that, rather than cherrypicking single atheists and then pretending that their unsubstantiated claims are somehow proof of ID, even when they haven't addressed ID.

(September 9, 2014 at 2:14 am)snowtracks Wrote: stars have already gone through several cycles, the first ones fused hydrogen and helium to form heavier elements that astrophysics called metals. subsequent stars used these metals to form smaller, and hence longer-lived stars suitable to form rocky planets. the ashes of these smaller generation of stars enriched earth with the chemical form of metals; i.e., iron, nickel, moly, copper, etc. high concentration of these metals are poisonous to advanced life in soluble form. various forms of bacteria over a billion years fed on diluted soluble metal compounds converting these compounds into insoluble forms. the decayed residues of the bacteria yielded the concentrated ores.
so this bacteria activity over a billion years worked on the earth’s environment, made it safe for advanced life and produced ore deposits which without would have assured stone age isolation for homo sapiens sapiens.

First off, congratulations and you're welcome! Your linguistics seem to have evolved significantly from when you first graced us with your presence.

(September 25, 2014 at 12:59 am)snowtracks Wrote: while you neanderthals have been mucking in the intellectual mud, a world class atheist thinker says the ID crowd is correct about the mind and consciousness existing and naturalism/ materialism is royally whacked. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_and_Cosmos
this is obvious stuff, so how did the board members get their minds tricked so easily?

Aside from the fact that this guy wrote a book called, "What's it like to be a bat?", you have found yourself in a precarious position by quoting sir Nagel. If you had actually read his book, or did any sort of research on him, you would have found that he actually forewarns in the preface that his book “is just the opinion of a layman who reads widely in the literature that explains contemporary science to the nonspecialist.” And a recurring objection to what he learned from his layman’s reading of popular science writing is that much science “flies in the face of common sense,” that it is inconsistent with “evident facts about ourselves, that it “require[s] us to deny the obvious,” and so on.

blog Wrote:There is no way of judging reason from the exterior; all our thought is conducted within it. This is an argument and a conclusion with which I basically agree.

The problem is with how Nagel interprets this result. He "inflates" it as establishing a Platonic-Cartesian kind of picture, in which mind has the capacity of grasping reality through reason, and this capacity cannot be accounted for in scientific/naturalistic terms (as the result of evolution for example). Nagel thinks that any naturalistic account of reason must fall guilty of "standing outside it" and calling into question its absoluteness, by transforming it into a contingent feature of an animal species evolved by chance. And he thinks his earlier argument precludes this possibility, and thus dismisses naturalism together with subjectivism. (The fact that most English-speaking philosophers are naturalists and not subjectivists should have warned him that this step is not so easy).

book review Wrote:Searching Nagel’s book I was unable to locate any reference to the studies by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, nor was Jeffery L. Bada mentioned either. Most this was common knowledge over nine years ago. So Nagel either missed or conveniently left out such scientific findings so that he could prove his case of common sense speculation on emergentism. http://darkecologies.com/2014/02/07/thom...ergentism/

We conclude with a comment about truth in advertising. Nagel’s arguments against reductionism are quixotic, and his arguments against naturalism are unconvincing. He aspires to develop “rival alternative conceptions” to what he calls the materialist neo-Darwinian worldview, yet he never clearly articulates this rival conception, nor does he give us any reason to think that “the present right-thinking consensus will come to seem laughable in a generation or two.” Mind and Cosmos is certainly an apt title for Nagel’s philosophical meditations, but his subtitle—”Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False”—is highly misleading. Nagel, by his own admission, relies only on popular science writing and brings to bear idiosyncratic and often outdated views about a whole host of issues, from the objectivity of moral truth to the nature of explanation.

No one could possibly think he has shown that a massively successful scientific research program like the one inspired by Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection “is almost certainly false.” The subtitle seems intended to market the book to evolution deniers, intelligent-design acolytes, religious fanatics and others who are not really interested in the substantive scientific and philosophical issues.

Looks to me that any English speaking professional in the field he refers to (of which he's an admitted laymen), didn't "miss" anything. This book is a shining example of capitalism, nothing more. Hope you didn't waste your money already, neanderthal!

(September 25, 2014 at 1:55 am)psychoslice Wrote: Where the universe came from doesn't interest me the least, its where its going that I am concerned with.

Good point, though an understanding of its origins is a good way of discovering that latter state.

(September 25, 2014 at 12:59 am)snowtracks Wrote: while you neanderthals have been mucking in the intellectual mud, a world class atheist thinker says the ID crowd is correct about the mind and consciousness existing and naturalism/ materialism is royally whacked. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_and_Cosmos
this is obvious stuff, so how did the board members get their minds tricked so easily?

lol. Listen, the day we pay attention to a space cadet is the day our brains get extracted.

Your dishonesty in this thread is such that it makes me wonder whether Jesus would even accept you into heaven. Isn't lying bad?

(September 25, 2014 at 12:59 am)snowtracks Wrote: a world class atheist thinker says the ID crowd is correct about the mind and consciousness existing and naturalism/ materialism is royally whacked. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_and_Cosmos
this is obvious stuff, so how did the board members get their minds tricked so easily?

He's not a "world class atheist thinker," he's a fucking idiot.
He's a silly philosopher who must sell to a public to make money. If he writes a book that gives hope to the desperate christians, he makes money selling books. If he wrote a book confirming science, he couldn't give it away to his mother as no scientist gives a shit what a philosopher thinks about evolution.

Why did you drop out of third grade? Did the teachers just give up?

(September 25, 2014 at 12:59 am)snowtracks Wrote: while you neanderthals have been mucking in the intellectual mud, a world class atheist thinker

(September 25, 2014 at 4:13 am)Luckie Wrote: Aside from the fact that this guy wrote a book called, "What's it like to be a bat?"

*puts a gold star next to Luckie's name on the chalkboard*

Although I give snowtracks a couple of troll points for the "world class thinker" remark. That made me chuckle.

(September 25, 2014 at 12:59 am)snowtracks Wrote:

(September 6, 2014 at 8:24 am)downbeatplumb Wrote: In the past science was all about looking for evidence of god and trying to explain his creation.

It moved away from that when it became clear that the requirement for a divine creator was and would most likely never be found, in fact "materialistic" answers were all that was required for everything.

I am in fact unsure how a non-materialistic view of the universe could explain anything at all in any meaningful way

while you neanderthals have been mucking in the intellectual mud, a world class atheist thinker says the ID crowd is correct about the mind and consciousness existing and naturalism/ materialism is royally whacked. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_and_Cosmos
this is obvious stuff, so how did the board members get their minds tricked so easily?

I'm sorry, but his incredulity is not convincing.

Not is your credulity.

World class atheist thinker, eh? Haha funny!
You sure love your arguments from authority. Unfortunately, that guy doesn't understand the science.

Snowy, do your lips move when you read?

He reads?