(February 8, 2016 at 4:05 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote:(February 8, 2016 at 3:21 pm)Brian37 Wrote: There is evidence for dark matter, the word "spirit" cannot be compared to dark matter. Dark matter has a scientific definition. "spirit" is a gap answer word rooted in a superstitious past. I see no need to cling to old words that are really just the product of human imagination out of a fear of being finite.
The reality is, you are your brain in motion, that's all. Destroy that structure, your brain wont be in tact or in motion, you die, and stay dead. No, that is not comforting to most humans, but that is the reality.
There are si fi versions of an "afterlife" which are just as much bunk as old standard woo. Some people think atoms hold our thoughts. Certainly they do, but only as molecules as part of an in tact structure. An atom by itself is not an entire in tact brain, not even on the quantum level can a mere wave function act as an in tact human brain.
Just like if you smashed your computer into tiny unusable parts, it will not act as the in tact computer.
The only "forever" there is is that we are really made up of 14 billion year old material, stardust, but in cosmic time, no, we simply die, and our structure breaks down and what we call "I" as the individual, does not go on.
Although different parts of the brain, hemispheres, lobes, chemicals and electricity have been identifies as the cause of our thoughts, emotions and body functions, nothing in the brain has been identified and isolated as the agent/source of consciousness.
It could be said that what we now call dark matter was once known to the ancients as ether. If we throw away the concept of spirit because of its history, should we not also throw away the concept of dark matter/ either/some unseen force that holds the universe together and accounts for gravity?
If you’re going to do one and not the other, then yo need to know why. You need to be able to demonstrate that this is not just special pleading.
Yes our consciousness is explained by evolution. Your "thoughts" that make up you, are an abstraction due to our evolved language.
Just like 1 is an abstraction until it is applied to an object.
1 apple
1 car
1 hamburger
I wish there was a polite way to put it, but there simply isn't. It is comforting for many to think of the prospect of our "I" being separate from our physical brains, but that is simply not true.
We are an outcome of physical processes. We are atoms, but we are not "I" by one atom alone. Those atoms have to be in an evolutionary molecular structure in a very specific way and in tact.
I am sure you would find it absurd if someone claimed "All I have to do to build a car, is simply pump this gas out of the nozzle, and with no other material the gas will become the in tact car".
There are lots of steps between the wave function, and an in tact brain. Atoms by themselves as individual atoms do not act as an in tact brain.
"spirit" really is simply an old word and a gap answer. No, that is not comforting, but that is reality.
I still find it awesome to thing that the atoms in my finite existence come from stars much older than me. I had no thoughts before I was born, and I see nothing special about a universe without me. I find life as it is with all it's good and bad, still wonderful to think about in natural terms without old language.
Like the fact that we really are living fractals. There is not one single atom in you now, that was in you when your sperm and egg meet. Your body constantly replaces every single atom. THAT, to me is amazing.
