God is not (so bad after all)

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Originally Posted by Cioran

So, IOW, you take an NDE at face value because you want it to be evidence of an afterlife, and blithely ignore all the evidence of its naturalistic cause?

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And it sounds like you don't take an NDE at face value because you don't want it to be evidence of an afterlife. I do agree with you that the evidence it points to at face value is "naturalistic". It is just the way nature is.

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Originally Posted by Cioran

Totally false. We can and have duplicated the NDE experience through natural means.

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Stimulating an experience does not make that experience false when it has not been artificially stimulated. It just means it is an "experience" and not a cultural artifact.

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Originally Posted by Cioran

The many worlds formulation is the only interpretation of QM that does NOT "add on" something inexplicable to the equation. It is the most parsimonious and elegant solution to the ontology of QM available.

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I am aware that MWI thinks it is superior by not letting the wave function collapse. This actually makes it vague, sort of on the order of removing the 5th, parallel, postulate from Euclid's geometry. Doing that would make Euclid more "parsimonious" at the expense of not being able to derive much about parallel lines. If Euclid had claimed that each configuration of the parallel postulate represented another real "world" that no one could see, so no one could refute, he would have anticipated MWI.

Otherwise, MWI takes a free ride on the results obtained from the Copenhagen interpretation. If it didn't it would be false.

There is also a MWI belief that by removing the wave function collapse, determinism and locality are restored. I don't think that has been proven. It is more of an assumption or metaphysical dogma that after one floods reality with a non-parsimonious infinity of universes the uncertainty of quantum mechanics would magically go away. I don't think one can make it go away even with MWI.

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Originally Posted by Cioran

What makes you think some metaphor that you happen to like in any way reflects reality? Wishful thinking?

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What makes you think it doesn't?

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Now, how do we tie all this back to Hitchens and his distaste for Gods?

Perhaps we can consider it like this. If materialism, where all causality is reducible to either chance or the actions of chemistry, were true, then the Gods that Hitchens could imagine, God of the Gaps, Deism, intelligent design Gods, would exist to support that deterministic universe. In such a universe, I wouldn't care if these Gods existed or not.

However, if the universe is not deterministic, and it is not, then not only do all these deistic Gods have to go, but so does MWI and materialistic metaphysics.

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Originally Posted by Cioran

We can and have duplicated the NDE experience through natural means.

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How did you do it?

As I recall Raymond Moody, the scientist who created the phrase "near death experience", was experimenting with some methods. Being able to have an NDE without actually dying first might have therapeutic benefits.

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

"Language has a tyranny on thought." -- The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

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Luckily, Lesswrong has a whole sequence on language that eloquently (and thoroughly) explains its place in the map/territory relationship as well. Language is, indeed, part of the map, and when language gets disconnected from anticipated experiences is when you start mistaking another kind of map for the territory. FWIW, language doesn't HAVE to have a tyranny on thought. We can think in terms of sense experiences just like any animal can. Sense experience has nothing to do with language... until we try to express it, and hence the need/reason for scientific reductionism (one term per referent) in language. If you don't want to read the whole guide, a good place to start would be here.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Yes, it can be viewed as an interpretation. However, it is an interpretation that takes the evidence at face value.

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No, no, no, it’s not that it “CAN be viewed as an interpretation,” it’s very much that it IS an interpretation, no matter how you try to spin it. Any time you go from “I experienced this” to “this is why I experienced this,” you are INTERPRETING and offering at least an explanatory hypothesis that can be either true or false but should be falsifiable/testable if we are to take it seriously. You’re (deliberately now, I think) trying to pass off an actual, gosh-darn interpretation as taking it at “face value.” Is this how those Geocentrists took the sun’s movement “at face value?”

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Who is this "we"? It is an argument from authority and not evidence, like a modern clergy setting itself up against the laity.

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Neuroscientists. Start here and here. Argument from authority isn’t a fallacy when you’re dealing with subjects where authorities are needed and the authorities are actual, you know, authorities.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

The Copenhagen interpretation is the standard interpretation. It is also a positivist interpretation, or one that tries to offer minimal metaphysics.

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What makes it “standard?” That it came first? That’s hardly a legitimate reason to make it the “standard.” It’s no more positivist than any interpretation, and has just as many “metaphysics” (if not more) than every other interpretation. Try again.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I agree. It has no evidence that you accept to support it. I don't expect it to. From my end, many worlds has no evidence that I accept to support it either.

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I just spent several posts explaining to you what evidence is and why some evidence is demonstrably better than others, and you come back with a post that acts as if I didn’t type any of it. WTF, man? What’s more, MW has as much evidence in favor of it as any QM interpretations, and actually more if we consider Bayesian logic and Occam’s Razor.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

A deterministic universe where all change was caused by chance and chemistry where there was no choice nor goal-orientation would be lifeless. Our experience would be nothing because we wouldn't be here at all. In a universe that allowed choice and goal-orientation throughout it would allow life to exist.

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Proof please. Your teleological argument fails for many reasons, but one is if MW or any multi-verse theory is right; and, besides MW, we also have a multi-verse as predicted by Inflation, which actually DOES have some experimental evidence for it in the form of the CMBR.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

There is some chance, no matter how small, and we lucked out. That's fine, but we seem to be lucking out all the time because every post we make, assuming it is by chance, is not likely. And yet we still have the conversation.

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For every probabilistic event that happens in Vegas on any given night, the chance that all those events would happen as they did is astronomically small. This is one reason the teleological argument fails; it assumes that life is somehow special and that everything exists solely so life can without the slightest reason for assuming this. Why is life not just something else that can and has happened given the laws, vastness, and age of the universe?

Besides, you didn’t really answer my question. I asked, assuming life was here anyway, how would we tell between an ontologically real free-will/purposeful reality and a mere subjectively real free-will/purposeful reality. The teleological argument deals with the probability of life itself existing, not what I asked.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I understand where you are going with adding an additional constraint on a proposition. That should make the proposition more unlikely. I don't see how it helps clarify the free-will and goal-orientation argument.

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I thought it was quite clear: either free-will/purpose exists both in our mind AND in reality, or it only exists in our mind. The latter is more likely for the same reason “Jane is an accountant” is more likely than “Jazz is an accountant and plays jazz.” You’re multiplying probabilistic propositions and that’s always going to result in something that’s less likely.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I've seen some of these. The most recent essay I've read is Harris, "Free Will", who summarized Dennett's position.

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So what’s your response?

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Originally Posted by YesNo

There are many interpretations of quantum mechanics.

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Indeed, and MW is the one that assumes the least and adds the least to the situation. If Occam’s Razor handed out awards, MW would win.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

And it sounds like you don't take an NDE at face value because you don't want it to be evidence of an afterlife.

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Why is it evidence of an afterlife as opposed to evidence that something wonky happens to our brains when having a traumatic experience? Especially when we know the latter actually, you know, happens?

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I am aware that MWI thinks it is superior by not letting the wave function collapse. This actually makes it vague, sort of on the order of removing the 5th, parallel, postulate from Euclid's geometry. Doing that would make Euclid more "parsimonious" at the expense of not being able to derive much about parallel lines. If Euclid had claimed that each configuration of the parallel postulate represented another real "world" that no one could see, so no one could refute, he would have anticipated MWI.

Otherwise, MWI takes a free ride on the results obtained from the Copenhagen interpretation. If it didn't it would be false.

There is also a MWI belief that by removing the wave function collapse, determinism and locality are restored. I don't think that has been proven. It is more of an assumption or metaphysical dogma that after one floods reality with a non-parsimonious infinity of universes the uncertainty of quantum mechanics would magically go away. I don't think one can make it go away even with MWI.

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With every post you just prove how much you DON’T know about QM and MW. I don’t even know where to start with this, so I’ll just let Cioran handle if (if he’s up to it).

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Originally Posted by YesNo

What makes you think it doesn't?

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To start with, a good mathematical argument: there are probably countless ways we can imagine reality being and only one way it actually is; so, mathematically speaking, your proposed reality (the cosmic egg), in the absence of substantial evidence (of the kind I described in previous posts), is very unlikely to be true.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

No, no, no, it’s not that it “CAN be viewed as an interpretation,” it’s very much that it IS an interpretation, no matter how you try to spin it. Any time you go from “I experienced this” to “this is why I experienced this,” you are INTERPRETING and offering at least an explanatory hypothesis that can be either true or false but should be falsifiable/testable if we are to take it seriously. You’re (deliberately now, I think) trying to pass off an actual, gosh-darn interpretation as taking it at “face value.” Is this how those Geocentrists took the sun’s movement “at face value?”

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An explanation of "why" they experienced something is not interesting, but only what they experienced. When they say they experienced a "light at the end of a tunnel", for example, that is an interpretation because they used language to describe their experience. It is not an explanation for the light at the end of the tunnel.

What they describe will be different from each other though patterns have been noticed (for example, the light at the end of the tunnel). These are all case studies which have to be treated as such.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Neuroscientists. Start here and here. Argument from authority isn’t a fallacy when you’re dealing with subjects where authorities are needed and the authorities are actual, you know, authorities.

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I do accept authorities. The problem is authorities can be wrong.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

What makes it “standard?” That it came first? That’s hardly a legitimate reason to make it the “standard.” It’s no more positivist than any interpretation, and has just as many “metaphysics” (if not more) than every other interpretation. Try again.

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I think you are right about "standard". I'll want to reserve the word "standard" for things like the "standard model of cosmology". I'll call it one of the "earliest and most commonly taught" based on this authority: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation

The Copenhagen interpretation is one of the earliest and most commonly taught interpretations of quantum mechanics.

I don't agree with your comment on positivism. A positivist interpretation is backed by some evidence. The peculiarities of MWI have none, and I think they would agree that they have none.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I just spent several posts explaining to you what evidence is and why some evidence is demonstrably better than others, and you come back with a post that acts as if I didn’t type any of it. WTF, man? What’s more, MW has as much evidence in favor of it as any QM interpretations, and actually more if we consider Bayesian logic and Occam’s Razor.

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You can forget Occam's Razor. I know that works as an argument for people who believe in MWI, just as Jesus' resurrection works as an argument for Christians. But if you are not a believer, the unending number of alternate universes violates Occam's Razor. It seems a high price to pay merely for the hope that this will recover determinism and locality.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Proof please. Your teleological argument fails for many reasons, but one is if MW or any multi-verse theory is right; and, besides MW, we also have a multi-verse as predicted by Inflation, which actually DOES have some experimental evidence for it in the form of the CMBR.

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The Big Bang (aka, Standard Model of Cosmology) does imply the universe had a beginning. That does imply the likelihood that other big bangs occurred. Together, all these big bangs could be called a "multi-verse". This is the only multi-verse that has enough evidence for me to consider accepting. However, the likely existence of this does not imply any of these universes is deterministic.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

For every probabilistic event that happens in Vegas on any given night, the chance that all those events would happen as they did is astronomically small. This is one reason the teleological argument fails; it assumes that life is somehow special and that everything exists solely so life can without the slightest reason for assuming this. Why is life not just something else that can and has happened given the laws, vastness, and age of the universe?

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What is the likelihood that life occurred on earth by chance alone? If that unlikelihood is large enough, and if we find that life existed on another planet of our solar system, say, microbial life on Mars, even fossilized life, we can conclude using statistical reasoning that something besides chance was the cause.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Besides, you didn’t really answer my question. I asked, assuming life was here anyway, how would we tell between an ontologically real free-will/purposeful reality and a mere subjectively real free-will/purposeful reality. The teleological argument deals with the probability of life itself existing, not what I asked.

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I did answer it by saying the assumption that "life was here anyway" was inconsistent. If life exists, the universe is not deterministic.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I thought it was quite clear: either free-will/purpose exists both in our mind AND in reality, or it only exists in our mind. The latter is more likely for the same reason “Jane is an accountant” is more likely than “Jazz is an accountant and plays jazz.” You’re multiplying probabilistic propositions and that’s always going to result in something that’s less likely.

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Let's try this on many worlds.

A) Many worlds exist in our minds AND in reality.

B) Many worlds exist in our minds.

Which is more likely? I assume you will have to say B. So let's continue where I think you're leading and conclude that many worlds more likely exists only in our minds. This may not be a useful conclusion, but I suspect it is what you want me to conclude about free will.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Indeed, and MW is the one that assumes the least and adds the least to the situation. If Occam’s Razor handed out awards, MW would win.

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Above, I used your reasoning to show that many worlds is more likely just a fantasy in the minds of MWI supporters. Earlier, I claimed that invoking Occam's Razor is like invoking Jesus' resurrection for Christians. The Occam's Razor argument is most effective if you are already a believer.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Why is it evidence of an afterlife as opposed to evidence that something wonky happens to our brains when having a traumatic experience? Especially when we know the latter actually, you know, happens?

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Who is this "we"? I bring this up because I really don't like the phrase "we know", no matter who is using it.

To get back to your question, an NDE should not be evidence for your metaphysics. I don't expect it to be. However, it is for mine. I also accept neuroscience with the modern brain scan technologies. You may find this surprising, but I see them as evidence for my metaphysics. Basically, NDEs are "experiences".

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

To start with, a good mathematical argument: there are probably countless ways we can imagine reality being and only one way it actually is; so, mathematically speaking, your proposed reality (the cosmic egg), in the absence of substantial evidence (of the kind I described in previous posts), is very unlikely to be true.

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So we can imagine there being many fanciful worlds, but only one of them that actually is? If that is what you are saying, then we agree. The "cosmic egg" concept implies there is purpose and goal orientation throughout the universe that we see in our own behavior.

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To bring this back to Hitchens, rejection of a set of Gods and accepting another set of Gods, is a side-effect of our metaphysics which is our view of the universe. Hitchens thinks he is rejecting all Gods, but he is just cleaning house for a materialistic metaphysics. Acceptance or rejection of views of the universe is the flip side of acceptance or rejection of metaphors for God.

One can test whether an atheistic perspective makes sense or not by shifting the question to what the atheistic view of the universe happens to be. Although atheists tend to claim they don't believe in any Gods, they usually believe there is something called a "universe".

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Originally Posted by YesNo

He admits that these are metaphors, adding, 'Incidentally, there is of course no "architect"

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In other words, despite Dawkins clear double assurance that his explanation was completely metaphorical - a perfectly reasonable tactic when dealing with a largely scientifically-illiterate readership - Sheldrake still accuses of him of being a vitalist.

"I'm not a racist, but...."

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Originally Posted by The Atheist

In other words, despite Dawkins clear double assurance that his explanation was completely metaphorical - a perfectly reasonable tactic when dealing with a largely scientifically-illiterate readership - Sheldrake still accuses of him of being a vitalist.

"I'm not a racist, but...."

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I think the question is whether there was much to the selfish gene concept but metaphor and metaphysics.

Sheldrake also mentioned that the promise of the gene didn't deliver even when good money was thrown at it in the late 20th century. He quotes Jonathan Latham, director of the Bioscience Resource Project who wrote in 2011 (page 169):

"The most likely explanation for why genes for common diseases have not been found is that, with few exceptions, they do not exist."

If Latham and Sheldrake are right and represent current scientific opinion, perhaps the only people still fascinated with genes are the "scientifically illiterate" readership.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I think the question is whether there was much to the selfish gene concept but metaphor and metaphysics.

Sheldrake also mentioned that the promise of the gene didn't deliver even when good money was thrown at it in the late 20th century. He quotes Jonathan Latham, director of the Bioscience Resource Project who wrote in 2011 (page 169):

"The most likely explanation for why genes for common diseases have not been found is that, with few exceptions, they do not exist."

If Latham and Sheldrake are right and represent current scientific opinion, perhaps the only people still fascinated with genes are the "scientifically illiterate" readership.

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You've got yourself horribly confused here - Latham isn't saying what you think he is. He's not claiming that viruses and bacteria don't have genes, he's claiming (quite rightly) that human diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes, are not based on genetic factors.

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Originally Posted by The Atheist

You've got yourself horribly confused here - Latham isn't saying what you think he is. He's not claiming that viruses and bacteria don't have genes, he's claiming (quite rightly) that human diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes, are not based on genetic factors.

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What makes you think I'm claiming they don't have genes?

The power of genes, not their existence, is what is at issue. The gene, whether selfish or not, is not the kind of deterministic replicator materialists hoped it would be.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

What makes you think I'm claiming they don't have genes?

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It was the only thing that made sense even though it's wrong.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

The power of genes, not their existence, is what is at issue.

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Uhh, right. So you were going to prove that by mentioning the non-existence of a certain type of gene that had only ever been posited as a possibility?

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Originally Posted by YesNo

The gene, whether selfish or not, is not the kind of deterministic replicator materialists hoped it would be.

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You're making less sense as the post goes on.

What is this "hoped it would be" nonsense? Dawkins is a scientist, he reports what he finds, and I find the idea that he - or anyone else - had hoped to find anything laughable.

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Originally Posted by The Atheist

What is this "hoped it would be" nonsense? Dawkins is a scientist, he reports what he finds, and I find the idea that he - or anyone else - had hoped to find anything laughable.

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YesNo is under the impression that the way all humans (including scientists) operate is by twisting everything they find/see/experience to fit their metaphysical beliefs. This means that Dawkins, being a materialistic atheist, looks for anything that can possibly confirm that belief. The notion that people reach conclusions based on logical inferences from the objective data without such biases, and that such data actually does favor some interpretations/theories over others, seems completely alien to YesNo.

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Originally Posted by The Atheist

What is this "hoped it would be" nonsense? Dawkins is a scientist, he reports what he finds, and I find the idea that he - or anyone else - had hoped to find anything laughable.

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Perhaps you are confusing the gene with Dawkins' meme?

Materialists need a method of cultural inheritance and Dawkins presented one like the gene that he portrayed as a deterministic physical replicator. The purpose in the process was the selfishness of the meme to replicate.

To meet a materialistic metaphysics this replicator has to be material and inside the brain. Sheldrake has a field theory of cultural inheritance and contrasted this with a comment by Dawkins on it that illustrates Dawkins' driving metaphysics: (Pages 183-4)

I once attempted to discuss this point with Richard Dawkins. I said to him that memes and morphic fields seem to play a similar role in cultural inheritance. He replied, "They have nothing in common whatsoever. Memes are real because they are material. They exist inside material brains. Morphic fields are not material and therefore they don't exist.'"

Regarding memes I would claim that they don't exist. I have only recently read about morphic fields, but considering that science accepts electromagnetic fields, I don't have any reason at the moment to reject them. Regarding genes, they exist but are not the determinants materialists hoped to find.

Just to bring this back to the original topic, we are discussing Gods and atheistic rejection of Gods. To flip the spotlight back onto atheists, we need to understand how they view the universe. To even understand a theist's God, we need to examine the theist's universe.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

YesNo is under the impression that the way all humans (including scientists) operate is by twisting everything they find/see/experience to fit their metaphysical beliefs. This means that Dawkins, being a materialistic atheist, looks for anything that can possibly confirm that belief. The notion that people reach conclusions based on logical inferences from the objective data without such biases, and that such data actually does favor some interpretations/theories over others, seems completely alien to YesNo.

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Scientists don't even trust they behave the way you describe them. That is why they created blind, double blind and triple blind experiments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_experiment

I'm very aware of blind/double blind testing; they're yet another method scientists use to eliminate, as far as possible, various human biases that distort our perception of reality. But every scientific experiment is designed to do this on some level; hence the whole notion of peer-review, repeated results, and falsification. The entire scientific framework is set up so that if, indeed, human bias is in any way distorting the results, we can find a way to eliminate it and get to the truth. That's why I call your harping on the "metaphysical bias" of scientists completely out of touch with how science and scientific beliefs have progressed historically. Compared to religion, it's basically a long tome of new evidence overturning old beliefs, old metaphysics.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I'm very aware of blind/double blind testing; they're yet another method scientists use to eliminate, as far as possible, various human biases that distort our perception of reality. But every scientific experiment is designed to do this on some level; hence the whole notion of peer-review, repeated results, and falsification. The entire scientific framework is set up so that if, indeed, human bias is in any way distorting the results, we can find a way to eliminate it and get to the truth. That's why I call your harping on the "metaphysical bias" of scientists completely out of touch with how science and scientific beliefs have progressed historically. Compared to religion, it's basically a long tome of new evidence overturning old beliefs, old metaphysics.

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Give it up. This is not even good marketing.