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09/02/2008 06:45:07 PM · #451 |
Originally posted by rox_rox:
Originally posted by scalvert:
Originally posted by rox_rox:
I'm not questioning anyone's capacity for love. I am curious how true scientific atheists define it. My questions are based upon the idea that we are biological machines and that everything we do and feel has a scientific explanation. If this is the case, wouldn't it be understood that our feelings of love and responsibility are measurable reactions in our brains, designed to assure the continuation of our species? |
How would you define it otherwise given swans mating for life, sea turtles mourning a lost mate, animals putting their own lives at risk for their babies, or hundreds of similar examples in the animal kingdom? |
So, you are saying that animals feel love? This is a purely biological phenomenon, isn't it? |
Yep. IMO the only difference is that humans have the audacity to think they're unique in possessing feelings. |
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09/02/2008 08:32:12 PM · #452 |
Originally posted by rox_rox:
How does Shakespeare define immortality and inspiration? |
Immortality through being remembered (eternalised in his verse), and through reproduction. Here's a good open website for reading them. Try 16, 18, 55, 81, and 107 for examples of his enduring verse.
"You still shall live--such virtue hath my pen--
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men."
Sonnets 1, 3, 12, reference breeding to beat time's beat:
"And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defense
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence."
Originally posted by rox_rox:
What if some of us have the biological urge to find greater meaning for our existence than science currently allows? Who is in charge of validating biological urges? |
Well - that would be quite a sophisticated "biological urge" - those urges are more focussed around sex and survival instincts - prompted chemically within humans (eg through adrenaline). Higher reasoning ("what is the meaning of life?") are the product of a reasoning mind. Science will probably never be able to be used to test and prove philosophical questions like these - which ultimately have no demonstrably "right" answer.
No-one is in charge of scientific enquiry to validate it - anyone and everyone can do it. Peer review (the assessment of other people as to the strength of your evidence and theory and conclusions) tends to govern how well scientific theories are regarded.
Originally posted by rox_rox:
What if the propensity for seeing meaning in statistical coincidence is actually an innate human trait critical for the survival of our species? |
One way of thinking about it is that creating "connections" such as cause and effect is a critical part of human brain function - it enables us to reason and draw conclusions very rapidly (it's one key way that our brain's computational method differs from that of a computer). That has a huge survival advantage so in one way I agree with you.
The side effects of making connections very quickly is that we sometimes over estimate or underestimate the validity of a connection. We can demonstrate our inability to intuitively guess statistics by a simple experiment. Given 25 people in a room, most people would not intuitively guess that the chances that two people present might share a birthday is over 50% - but it is (you can do the maths, or check it out by testing it at a few parties where there are 25+ people and keeping a record of the results).
Originally posted by rox_rox:
How did I get the technology to test my theory? Why would I bother to test it unless I believed that I would make a new discovery? Did the majority of the scientific community consider me an outsider for investigating a theory that (to date) was considered impossible? |
That is what scientists do - identify theories to explain the unknown, develop a test for it, build the necessary test equipment/technology (or wait for it to be developed - we are still testing and proving part of Einstein's theories for which the technology did not previously exist), then carry out the test (or "experiment") to see if the answers fit the theory. If they do, then develop the theory, develop more tests, and test it further. If not, come up with a new theory to explain your test results and test it again with a new experiment.
I was thinking of Eratosthenes with my example who measured the circumference of the world with a remarkable degree of accuracy by measuring the angle of elevation of the sun from different ancient Greek cities. Also, Hipparchus measured the distance of the Earth to the sun using eclipses measured in Alexandria and the Hellespont. I am sure that they had to develop some tools, or use existing ones in new ways, to carry out the measurements they needed to take.
The most experiment that most excites me at the moment is the Large Hadron Collider. The theories that it is testing are very complex but essentially it is a bit of new technology developed at the cost of billions to test for the existence of particles (in particular the "Higgs Boson") that are theorised - but are theorised to be so small/weak to have been detected by any existing accelerator/detector until now.
It will be very exciting if we either find the particle and prove another cornerstone to the modern standard theory of particle physics. It would be even more exciting if cannot find the Higgs Boson or if we find something else. That would throw a huge spanner in the works - we'd have to look at the results and work out why the theory has seemed to explain every other experiment for 50 years and how it needs to be refined or changed to explain the evidence that we see before us. That would be a big new adventure with the prospect of all kinds of new discoveries to be made.
Originally posted by rox_rox:
Absolutely. What irks me is that some people seem bent upon insisting that (despite advances in modern physics) any such thing is absolutely impossible. To top it off, they choose to deride anyone who dares to imagine the possibilities. Proving a sixth sense right now, today might be as difficult as proving the world is round by walking round it. Who's to say that tomorrow's technology won't reveal the new Copernicus? |
People should not say that it is "absolutely impossible" - it is not. However, so far there is no reliable evidence for alternative theories such as sixth sense and strong evidence for the conventional theories (statistics etc). You'd have to find some breakthrough evidence to make the alternative theories persuasive. You never know - it could happen - but with the evidence (not just opinions) piling up on the conventional side it seems increasingly unlikely (to the point where it the odds are infinitessimally small). So not impossible - but overwhelmingly unlikely. |
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09/02/2008 08:38:04 PM · #453 |
Originally posted by rox_rox:
I'm not questioning anyone's capacity for love. I am curious how true scientific atheists define it. My questions are based upon the idea that we are biological machines and that everything we do and feel has a scientific explanation. If this is the case, wouldn't it be understood that our feelings of love and responsibility are measurable reactions in our brains, designed to assure the continuation of our species? And knowing that, wouldn't we expect everything to cease when we die (including our concern for the future)? |
1) I know no atheist who denies the reality of love. Atheists just believe that the capacity for love is part and parcel of the biological processes of our existence, not an aspect of a soul or other similar paranormal extremity.
2) As an atheist who doesn't believe in a soul, I do absolutely expect that everything that I am will cease upon my death. I may "live on" in memory or works, but no independent aspect of my personality will survive beyond the death of my brain. This doesn't trouble me, as I won't be around to mourn my demise. ;)
3) Why would the fact that I won't care when I die (because I won't be around to care) impact whether I care now? As Matthew has said, if I have children, why wouldn't I want to work to make the world the best place possible for those children now and after my death? Even if I don't have children, why would there be any contradiction in working for what I perceive to be a better, fairer, more reasoned world? Even if I never see the ultimate fruition of my efforts to improve the world around me, any little improvement that I can aid in by definition improves my existence during my life. The fight to improve the world can itself provide certain immediate moral, intellectual, and associative benefits.
In short - yes, I don't expect to care after my death one way or the other, but I exist now, I care now, and I act accordingly. |
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09/02/2008 08:53:15 PM · #454 |
 Matthew, The Large Hadron Collider is fascinating, and I've been following it as much as time permits and my pea brain can absorb. Unfortunately, starting to grasp particle physics at 40 isn't as easy as it might have been had I studied it in college. Thanks for the links and your explanations. I want to check them out before replying to your post.
shutterpuppy, eqsite and  scalvert, thanks for your replies, too. Always a pleasure. I'd love to continue this discussion, but my biological urges mandate that I go to sleep;) |
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09/02/2008 08:57:40 PM · #455 |
I thought this story was interesting in the context of science and the unexplained.
For generations sailors have told tales of midnight seas suddenly glowing beneath their ships for as far as the eye could see. Now for the first time scientists believe they have finally captured proof of the phenomenon via satellite image and have begun to unravel its mysteries.
//www.livescience.com/strangenews/051004_sea_glow.html |
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09/02/2008 10:17:57 PM · #456 |
Originally posted by togtog:
I thought this story was interesting in the context of science and the unexplained.
For generations sailors have told tales of midnight seas suddenly glowing beneath their ships for as far as the eye could see. Now for the first time scientists believe they have finally captured proof of the phenomenon via satellite image and have begun to unravel its mysteries.
//www.livescience.com/strangenews/051004_sea_glow.html |
That's super-cool! When I was a teenager, my parents used to sail around Puget Sound and the Juan de Fuca straight and we would occasionally get the dinoflagellate luminescence, especially up near Friday Harbor, but I'd never even heard of "mildy seas." |
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09/19/2008 07:49:49 PM · #457 |
This thread may have suffered a near-death experience, but it's back!
I found this Time article "What Happens When We Die?" interesting.
Here are a couple of excerpts:
"A fellow at New York's Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Sam Parnia is one of the world's leading experts on the scientific study of death. Last week, Parnia and his colleagues at the Human Consciousness Project announced their first major undertaking: a 3-year exploration of the biology behind 'out-of-body' experiences. The study, known as AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation), involves the collaboration of 25 major medical centers through Europe, Canada and the U.S., and will examine some 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrest. TIME spoke with Parnia about the project's origins, its skeptics, and the difference between the mind and the brain...
'I have about five hundred or so cases of people that I've interviewed since I first started out more than ten years ago. It's the consistency of the experiences, the reality of what they were describing. I managed to speak to doctors and nurses who had been present who said these patients had told them exactly what had happened and they couldn't explain it. I actually documented a few of those in my book What Happens When We Die because I wanted people to get both angles —not just the patients' side but also get the doctors' side — and see how it feels for the doctors to have a patient come back and tell them what was going on. There was a cardiologist that I spoke with who said he hasn't told anyone else about it because he has no explanation for how this patient could have been able to describe in detail what he had said and done. He was so freaked out by it that he just decided not to think about it anymore.'" |
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