Heaven

[torridon]

Well...we do always remember having a good night's sleep! That requires consciousness. It is Consciousness that has experienced the good nights sleep. And the fact that you wake up as the same person you were before shows the consciousness did not really die during the sleep. It was merely unconnected. Like switching off the wifi. So...saying that Consciousness does not SURVIVE falling asleep is wrong.

Many people sleep walk..... when their subconscious/unconscious mind stays awake though the person does not remember the event. This shows part of our consciousness stays awake even when we sleep.  The Unconscious mind is part of our Consciousness. We cannot ignore it.

A number of inaccuracies and misunderstandings there Sriram, and I suppose my previous post was also somewhat sloppily worded.

Consciousness is something that admits of degrees, it is not an either/or thing, in fact we measure its strength now by an index, the perturbational complexity index, or pci for short.  It normally reduces during sleep and is maximised during states of high alert and minimised or even zero under general anaesthesia or coma or dreamless sleep. We tend to think of being awake and consciousness as being the same thing but that is not really true either; people in a vegetative state have periods of sleep and wake, but they are not conscious whilst awake.

I think you are mixing up memory with consciousness. Consciousness does not 'experience' anything, rather it is a synthesised retrospective experiential phenomenon of what the (unconscious) body collectively experienced just a moment ago.  The fact that we wake up feeling the same person as when we went to sleep is due to memory retention, not the persistence of consciousness during sleep.  There are occasional islands of conscious experience during sleep, we call them dreams.

There is nothing in the current flood of research that would support a notion of consciousness as being somehow a separate thing from the body, rather it is a process produced by a complex biological system and this process evolved primarily to provide a service of interoception, ie a holistic registering of the internal state of the body derived from data procured by a central nervous system; complex living bodies produce consciousness just as they produce many things, perspiration, for instance, and the idea of a consciousness separate from a body makes no more sense than the idea of perspiration existing independently of the body producing it.

[ekim]

the idea of a consciousness separate from a body makes no more sense than the idea of perspiration existing independently of the body producing it.

The other view is that consciousness produces living bodies as distinguished from inanimate objects and that perspiration can exist independently of the body producing it, until it changes its form through evaporation or merging with water.

[Sriram]

A number of inaccuracies and misunderstandings there Sriram, and I suppose my previous post was also somewhat sloppily worded.

Consciousness is something that admits of degrees, it is not an either/or thing, in fact we measure its strength now by an index, the perturbational complexity index, or pci for short.  It normally reduces during sleep and is maximised during states of high alert and minimised or even zero under general anaesthesia or coma or dreamless sleep. We tend to think of being awake and consciousness as being the same thing but that is not really true either; people in a vegetative state have periods of sleep and wake, but they are not conscious whilst awake.

I think you are mixing up memory with consciousness. Consciousness does not 'experience' anything, rather it is a synthesised retrospective experiential phenomenon of what the (unconscious) body collectively experienced just a moment ago.  The fact that we wake up feeling the same person as when we went to sleep is due to memory retention, not the persistence of consciousness during sleep.  There are occasional islands of conscious experience during sleep, we call them dreams.

There is nothing in the current flood of research that would support a notion of consciousness as being somehow a separate thing from the body, rather it is a process produced by a complex biological system and this process evolved primarily to provide a service of interoception, ie a holistic registering of the internal state of the body derived from data procured by a central nervous system; complex living bodies produce consciousness just as they produce many things, perspiration, for instance, and the idea of a consciousness separate from a body makes no more sense than the idea of perspiration existing independently of the body producing it.

We have discussed this many times.  There are two basic assumptions...

If we start of with a materialistic assumption, life has arisen just by accident. Evolution happens because DNA happen to mutate.  Consciousness is a emergent property at certain stages of evolution. NDE and other such phenomena are just brain generated hallucinations.

Second assumption is that.... NDE and such other paranormal phenomena are evidence of  a separate Consciousness/spirit/soul. This makes life and evolution as  products of this Consciousness. Evolution has a direction and complexity is deliberate.

I go with the second.... and obviously you go with the first.

[Sassy]

The point was that you said they wouldn't have put it on the TV news if it wasn't true however you don't think man went to the moon but this appeared on the TV news.

The point was:-

Sassy
Hero Member

Re: Heaven
« Reply #195 on: September 25, 2016, 01:32:23 PM »

Quote from: Sebastian Toe on September 25, 2016, 01:40:33 AM
Well, the moon landings were on the news so they could hardly be fiction then could they?
Just sayin' 

Until you have the ability and knowledge to prove by process they went to the moon. Should you be making comments you cannot support?

There is a difference between being unable to believe based on sound reasoning than to make statements of belief they went because you saw it on TV. I saw fireball XL5 on tv does that mean it really exists, or stingray...

Is that where all things you believe in come from? 

It is self - explanatory that my reply was about the general belief that anything on TV or even the News is true/fiction.
But we see the man alive and we see that the doctors and nurses witnessed it.
We see it made news media. But we choose in the end, what we believe.
So hence it is about processing the evidence in the case of the moon there was none we could process.
Because there is nothing to prove it happened at that time. With this we see the man alive and the
doctors and nurses who witnessed it. The photographer accused of helping MI6 to murder Princess Diana was found in a burnt-out BMW with a hole in his head, a court heard today.


So my post is clear... Somethings are not just simply what others would perceive them to be.

[Sassy]

Unless you have the ability and knowledge to disprove the process by which they went to the moon. Should you be making comments you cannot support?

Thought not!

I have the ability and the knowledge to know that you and others, even the evidence they put forth do not prove they went to the moon. We had movies and we had tv programs where the landing on the moon could have been recorded WITHOUT going to the moon. The USA wanted to be first... the science today which they could not account for then, show is less likely that they actually got to the moon. What it does it support the possibility they never went there.

Can you or I prove otherwise... NO! because the men who could talk about it were all mysteriously killed.
Will they kill the scientist today? Will they kill the astronauts? NO! Because there is always another scientist or astronaut who will come along and tell people the same thing.

We have to choose and frankly our choice now even on this website is immaterial. No one is interested in if they went to the moon or not because it makes no difference to the future. That was then, and now is now. I can tell you there won't be another moon landing...

[Harrowby Hall]

Spot the paradox.

Collection of old fairy stories, myths and legends about old man in the sky who does nasty things to people (like drowning everyone except one family) and who who makes a virgin pregnant. Their offspring, who does conjuring tricks, is executed, becomes alive again and then does an imitation of a helicopter and disappears into the sky. Total lack of supporting evidence, contemporaneous eye-witness reports and reliable archaeological evidence.

Sassy - every word is unfailingly true.

A mission by the USA to send men from Earth to the Moon and back again. Every single detail is verifiable, every technical component is feasible and entirely consistent with metallurgy, chemical engineering, electronic engineering and Newtonian physics. Every second of the mission is recorded in detail and independent observations made by totally independent and non-American agencies.

Sassy - this is a confidence trick played on the world. Total fiction.

[BashfulAnthony]

Spot the paradox.

Collection of old fairy stories, myths and legends about old man in the sky who does nasty things to people (like drowning everyone except one family) and who who makes a virgin pregnant. Their offspring, who does conjuring tricks, is executed, becomes alive again and then does an imitation of a helicopter and disappears into the sky. Total lack of supporting evidence, contemporaneous eye-witness reports and reliable archaeological evidence.

Sassy - every word is unfailingly true.

A mission by the USA to send men from Earth to the Moon and back again. Every single detail is verifiable, every technical component is feasible and entirely consistent with metallurgy, chemical engineering, electronic engineering and Newtonian physics. Every second of the mission is recorded in detail and independent observations made by totally independent and non-American agencies.

Sassy - this is a confidence trick played on the world. Total fiction.

,



You may not believe in God, and goodness' knows you've taken long enough to say so, but to be as childishly derisive as you have been in this post does you no credit, and if you wish to be considered as a sensible debater, I suggest you argue with a little more maturity.

[Aruntraveller]

An absurd post. Grow up!

Not absurd at all.

You really seem to struggle with posts that challenge your view of things. HH is just contrasting two issues which Sassy talks about and makes a valid point. Regardless of whether one believes in Christianity or not, from our pov in the early 21st century there is an abundance of evidence for the moon landings and rather less for the virgin birth.

It is perfectly reasonable to compare and contrast the two on a MB.

The silly order to grow up appears to be all you've got by way of an argument.

NB I note you've changed your original post. But still all you have is the sneering insult - childishly derisive - well you'd know all about that!

[torridon]

The other view is that consciousness produces living bodies as distinguished from inanimate objects and that perspiration can exist independently of the body producing it, until it changes its form through evaporation or merging with water.

I've never heard of a body being produced by perspiration.  Neither have I heard of living bodies being produced by consciousness, not unless we are using some sort of New Age babble meaning for consciousness.  Consciousness refers to the state of alertness of a body. A state of alertness can no more create bodies than a particular state of fear, or a state of temperature. It describes the condition of the body at a moment in time.

[torridon]

Obviously, the whole idea of what happens to our consciousness after death is 'highly speculative' (to put it mildly). I find reincarnation the only reasonably feasible option, though of course, the 'Hard Atheists' will point-out that our consciousness resides in a material brain that will rapidly self-destruct after death.

It's not 'hard atheists' pointing that out, it is called science and we are fools to ignore research in favour of some or other unsubstantiated woolly make-believe.  If you really find reincarnation feasible then what is your justification for that ?

[Sriram]

I've never heard of a body being produced by perspiration.  Neither have I heard of living bodies being produced by consciousness, not unless we are using some sort of New Age babble meaning for consciousness.  Consciousness refers to the state of alertness of a body. A state of alertness can no more create bodies than a particular state of fear, or a state of temperature. It describes the condition of the body at a moment in time.

You are once again adopting your materialistic POV and analyzing it accordingly. You are not seeing it from the POV of the second assumption.

'Consciousness is a state of alertness'...is just your definition. 'Consciousness is an independent form of existence that forms the core of all creation'....could be  another definition. 'Consciousness is what makes everything exist' ....could be another. 

In a simulated universe for example...Consciousness is everything.  A TV picture or a computer game  is nothing but electrical  or magnetic impulses. It becomes a picture only due to Consciousness.  Even in our own brain all inputs that we see and hear are just electrical impulses. They become meaningful only due to Consciousness.

[BashfulAnthony]

Not absurd at all.

You really seem to struggle with posts that challenge your view of things. HH is just contrasting two issues which Sassy talks about and makes a valid point. Regardless of whether one believes in Christianity or not, from our pov in the early 21st century there is an abundance of evidence for the moon landings and rather less for the virgin birth.

It is perfectly reasonable to compare and contrast the two on a MB.

The silly order to grow up appears to be all you've got by way of an argument.

NB I note you've changed your original post. But still all you have is the sneering insult - childishly derisive - well you'd know all about that!

You accuse me of being unable to accept views that challenge me:  fool, that's what debate is about.  You are the same  , everyone is.  As to the sneering snipe;  re-read your post.  You really are a pretty huge hypocrite.  As to the post in question;  wouldn't expect you to find any fault in it:  the childish allusions are right up your street.  I had once thought you were a reasonable person:  how wrong I got it!

[Steve H]

Sorry, SteveH,

The man was dead three hours he then descended into hell and in his fear he called our for Christ and he rescued him and sent him back to preach the gospel. I saw this man on television and I see no reason for anyone to doubt the medical reports.
You see there are others who have died and come back look at this one.

This is another incident of someone being raised from the dead...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Wxbv-julc

If they came back, they didn't actually die, by definition.  Whatever they saw or heard was some kind of hallucination.

[ekim]

(1)I've never heard of a body being produced by perspiration. 
(2)Neither have I heard of living bodies being produced by consciousness, not unless we are using some sort of New Age babble meaning for consciousness.  Consciousness refers to the state of alertness of a body. A state of alertness can no more create bodies than a particular state of fear, or a state of temperature. It describes the condition of the body at a moment in time.

(1) Perhaps I was misunderstanding what you meant by "perspiration (not) existing independently of the body producing it."  You can see it existing separately on a sweaty pair of socks.  It's only an excretion of what was taken into the body.
(2)I don't think the suggestion is that consciousness creates the physical forces but more that it merges with the physical and distinguishes the living from the dead. It allows for the modification of the body.  Of course, if we are restricting the definition to some sort of scientific babble then that is the end of the discussion.

[torridon]

You are once again adopting your materialistic POV and analyzing it accordingly. You are not seeing it from the POV of the second assumption.

'Consciousness is a state of alertness'...is just your definition. 'Consciousness is an independent form of existence that forms the core of all creation'....could be  another definition. 'Consciousness is what makes everything exist' ....could be another. 

In a simulated universe for example...Consciousness is everything.  A TV picture or a computer game  is nothing but electrical  or magnetic impulses. It becomes a picture only due to Consciousness.  Even in our own brain all inputs that we see and hear are just electrical impulses. They become meaningful only due to Consciousness.

Anyone can invent new definitions for words, that doesn't make them valid.  If you want to propose new scientific paradigms for the basis of existence it would be better to use new words to avoid the confusion. Anaesthetists have been working with consciousness for decades already, it is their day job to know how to control it, subdue it, make it go away.  I don't think they would recognise your definitions.

[torridon]

(2)I don't think the suggestion is that consciousness creates the physical forces but more that it merges with the physical and distinguishes the living from the dead. It allows for the modification of the body.  Of course, if we are restricting the definition to some sort of scientific babble then that is the end of the discussion.

Not all living things are conscious.  Mammalian consciousness evolved 525 mya, but we are not so sure about birds, fish, reptiles and insects.  Bacteria are alive but not conscious, so using consciousness as a marker for living things is incorrect.

[Aruntraveller]

You accuse me of being unable to accept views that challenge me:  fool, that's what debate is about.  You are the same  , everyone is.  As to the sneering snipe;  re-read your post.  You really are a pretty huge hypocrite.  As to the post in question;  wouldn't expect you to find any fault in it:  the childish allusions are right up your street.  I had once thought you were a reasonable person:  how wrong I got it!

And again with the insults.

It's astonishing that you can't see the way you behave makes you look silly.

Never mind, thanks for the laughs.

[BashfulAnthony]

And again with the insults.

It's astonishing that you can't see the way you behave makes you look silly.

Never mind, thanks for the laughs.

You have some problems with anything that is even vaguely intelligent.  You seem totally, constitutionally, unable to differentiate between insult and fact.  And you finish with a cheap shot, even though you take me to task for so-called insults. Classic!

[Aruntraveller]

You have some problems with anything that is even vaguely intelligent.  You seem totally, constitutionally, unable to differentiate between insult and fact.  And you finish with a cheap shot, even though you take me to task for so-called insults. Classic!

Of course dear. Now time to get back under that bridge.

[BashfulAnthony]

Of course dear. Now time to get back under that bridge.

More cheap and nasty comments.  Look up "hypocrite, "it's something else you don't understand.

[Aruntraveller]

More cheap and nasty comments.  Look up "hypocrite, "it's something else you don't understand.

One

[ekim]

Not all living things are conscious.  Mammalian consciousness evolved 525 mya, but we are not so sure about birds, fish, reptiles and insects.  Bacteria are alive but not conscious, so using consciousness as a marker for living things is incorrect.

Well it might depend upon how one understands consciousness.  I'm quite happy to be open to the possibility that there is a rudimentary consciousness or awareness at cellular level which distinguishes a living cell from say, a grain of sand.

[torridon]

Well it might depend upon how one understands consciousness.  I'm quite happy to be open to the possibility that there is a rudimentary consciousness or awareness at cellular level which distinguishes a living cell from say, a grain of sand.

We already have descriptions from biology and biochemistry of the salient differences between living and non-living material at the cellular level; for instance homoeostasis, cell division, metabolism, proton gradients, semi-permeable membranes etc. There is no need to redefine these phenomena with the word 'consciousness' as this more properly applies to a neurological phenomenom in higher animals of orders of magnitude greater complexity.  It just causes unnecessary confusion. Bacteria do not have complex states of arousal corresponding to those found in higher animals.

[jeremyp]

,



You may not believe in God, and goodness' knows you've taken long enough to say so, but to be as childishly derisive as you have been in this post does you no credit, and if you wish to be considered as a sensible debater, I suggest you argue with a little more maturity.

Sassy doesn't believe people have been to the Moon, but she does believe in a ludicrous 2,000 year old myth.

I'd say childish is the least derisive way of describing her position. I'm leaning towards "bonkers".

[ekim]

We already have descriptions from biology and biochemistry of the salient differences between living and non-living material at the cellular level; for instance homoeostasis, cell division, metabolism, proton gradients, semi-permeable membranes etc. There is no need to redefine these phenomena with the word 'consciousness' as this more properly applies to a neurological phenomenom in higher animals of orders of magnitude greater complexity.  It just causes unnecessary confusion. Bacteria do not have complex states of arousal corresponding to those found in higher animals.

Those descriptions appear to be functions of life forms.  They don't indicate what 'life' is nor what 'awareness' is.  It is not about redefining those phenomena but being open to the possibility that there is a simple awareness which allows those phenomena to function rather than remain inert like a grain of sand.  Who dictates that ' 'consciousness'  more properly applies to a neurological phenomenon in higher animals of orders of magnitude greater complexity.'?  Consciousness may be simple rather than complex and it is just the life form which changes in complexity and which gives the illusion of a complex underlying consciousness.