Posts by slimboyfat

375

This thread is for proof that God exists

by juandefiero in

jw
friends

however, i haven't found any evidence to support that belief.. have you?

if so please, show me the evidence that god exists, and i will believe along with you.. criteria:.

(1) you must specify which god you are talking about;.

slimboyfat

That you say the views are reconcilable just tells me you've not actually read Tallis.

Neuroprattle that locates our experiences, propensities and character in the activity of parts of our brain stops us taking this hazardous leap and gets in the way of the humanist project of truly understanding ourselves.
Next time you see a prettily coloured brain scan next to an article burbling on about breakthroughs in understanding our humanity, reach for the salt.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aping-Mankind-Neuromania-Darwinitis-Misrepresentation/dp/1844652734/

375

This thread is for proof that God exists

by juandefiero in

jw
friends

however, i haven't found any evidence to support that belief.. have you?

if so please, show me the evidence that god exists, and i will believe along with you.. criteria:.

(1) you must specify which god you are talking about;.

slimboyfat

As Raymond Tallis says:

our consciousness is not tucked away in a particular space, but is irreducibly relational....Studies that locate irreducibly social phenomena – such as "love", the aesthetic sense, "wisdom" or "Muslim fundamentalism" – in the function or dysfunction of bits of our brains are conceptually misconceived.

Contrast with what you said:

There are multiple ways to measure love including the use of electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and computer aided tomography - just to name a few.

375

This thread is for proof that God exists

by juandefiero in

jw
friends

however, i haven't found any evidence to support that belief.. have you?

if so please, show me the evidence that god exists, and i will believe along with you.. criteria:.

(1) you must specify which god you are talking about;.

Raymond Tallis's "Martian" comment about people who suppose love can be reduced in this way is well judged. Elsewhere, and more recently, he's described this approach as neuromania and a kind of neo-phrenology. Quite. When these scientists are finished scanning the brain for the location of love maybe they can get around to scanning rainbows for the coordinates of hope and the sky to measure the height of possibility.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/02/brain-scans-innermost-thoughts

The jewel in the neuroscientific crown is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), justly described by Matt Crawford as "a fast-acting solvent of the critical faculties". It seems that pretty well any assertion placed next to an fMRI scan will attract credulous attention. Behind this is something that goes deeper than uncritical technophilia. It is the belief that you are your brain, and brain activity is identical with your consciousness, so that peering into the intracranial darkness is the best way of advancing our knowledge of humankind.
Alas, this is based on a simple error. As someone who worked for many years, as a clinician and scientist, with people who had had strokes or suffered from epilepsy, I was acutely aware of the extent to which living an ordinary life was dependent on having a brain in some kind of working order. It did not follow from this that everyday living is being a brain in some kind of working order. The brain is a necessary condition for ordinary consciousness, but not a sufficient condition.
You don't have to be a Cartesian dualist to accept that we are more than our brains. It's enough to acknowledge that our consciousness is not tucked away in a particular space, but is irreducibly relational. What is more, our moment-to-moment consciousness – unlike nerve impulses – is steeped in a personal and historical past and a personal and collective future, in cultures that extend beyond our individual selves. We belong to a community of minds, developed over hundreds of thousands of years, to which our brains give us access but which is not confined to the stand-alone brain. Studies that locate irreducibly social phenomena – such as "love", the aesthetic sense, "wisdom" or "Muslim fundamentalism" – in the function or dysfunction of bits of our brains are conceptually misconceived.

375

This thread is for proof that God exists

by juandefiero in

jw
friends

however, i haven't found any evidence to support that belief.. have you?

if so please, show me the evidence that god exists, and i will believe along with you.. criteria:.

(1) you must specify which god you are talking about;.

slimboyfat

I just noticed this ridiculous comment on the first page.

Love is an emotion that all of us have experienced first hand - and love is also scientifically demonstrable with measurable accuracy.

It's exactly this sort of nonsensical reductionism (love can be scientifically measured) that neuroscientist Raymond Tallis never tires of exposing.

Finally, and most importantly, the experiments look at the response to very simple stimuli – for example, a picture of the face of a loved one compared with that of the face of one who is not loved. But, as I have pointed out elsewhere (for the benefit of Martians), romantic love is not like a response to a stimulus. It is not even a single enduring state, like being cold. It encompasses many things, including not feeling in love at that moment; hunger, indifference, delight; wanting to be kind, wanting to impress; worrying over the logistics of meetings; lust, awe, surprise; imagining conversations, events; speculating what the loved one is doing when one is not there; and so on. (The most sophisticated neural imaging, by the way, cannot even distinguish between physical pain and the pain of social rejection: they seem to “light up” the same areas!)

https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/2172/neurotrash

375

This thread is for proof that God exists

by juandefiero in

jw
friends

however, i haven't found any evidence to support that belief.. have you?

if so please, show me the evidence that god exists, and i will believe along with you.. criteria:.

(1) you must specify which god you are talking about;.

slimboyfat

I know what you mean Ruby. "Essentially" I think I agree with Cofty on what you'd think are the important issues: JWs are wrong and harmful, evolution explains how we got here, there's probably no God... but that doesn't seem to be enough. You have to declare these stances the Truth of the matter and label anyone else ignorant or stupid, otherwise you're a heretic, no better than an unbeliever!

It may be wrong but sometimes I get the impression:

Cofty in 1992 - you're an idiot for not being a JW

Cofty in 2002 - you're an idiot for not being an evangelical

Cofty in 2012 - you're an idiot for not being an atheist

Cofty in 2022 - ???

So I wouldn't take it personally.

53

How did you feel when they eliminated the Con. Book Study?

by Freeandclear in

jw
friends

years ago when i was "in" i loved the book study.

it was my favorite meeting by far.

mainly because it was a small group.

slimboyfat

It was my favourite meeting. Dropping probably contributed in a small way to me becoming inactive.

Plus how they lied about "gas prices" being the reason was just ridiculous.

375

This thread is for proof that God exists

by juandefiero in

jw
friends

however, i haven't found any evidence to support that belief.. have you?

if so please, show me the evidence that god exists, and i will believe along with you.. criteria:.

(1) you must specify which god you are talking about;.

slimboyfat

Ruby give him a break he probably really does think there is text in DNA. Science is pure reality-speak after all, everything else is inferior, non-reality based gibberish.

66

THE LINGERING SHADOW OF '75

by Terry in

none of you are old enough to have been there, i suspect.

i had been in prison two years as a jw conscientious objector when the exciting news about 1975 spread like wildfire.i was paroled from prison in 1969 and immediately began pioneering.

the pressures began mounting throughout the organization.

slimboyfat

If I remember correctly, according to yearbook statistics, there were more people baptised in either 1974 or 1975 than in any year since, likely more than there will ever be. Locally this was true also. Again from what I gather from talking to older ones, I was born in the 80s.

66

THE LINGERING SHADOW OF '75

by Terry in

none of you are old enough to have been there, i suspect.

i had been in prison two years as a jw conscientious objector when the exciting news about 1975 spread like wildfire.i was paroled from prison in 1969 and immediately began pioneering.

the pressures began mounting throughout the organization.

slimboyfat

In my congregation I can think of at least 14 people who were baptised in the run up to 1975, a few of them dead now. I gathered this from talking to them over the years. None of them flat out said they joined because of 1975 but they talk about the excitement in the congregation and the "sense of urgency" in the 1970s.

66

THE LINGERING SHADOW OF '75

by Terry in

none of you are old enough to have been there, i suspect.

i had been in prison two years as a jw conscientious objector when the exciting news about 1975 spread like wildfire.i was paroled from prison in 1969 and immediately began pioneering.

the pressures began mounting throughout the organization.

slimboyfat

Not sure if liking is appropriate response to this post so I write to say I appreciated it.