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Author Topic:   Still small voice of God found
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9486
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.5


Message 56 of 77 (789857)
08-21-2016 3:26 AM
Reply to: Message 53 by GDR
08-20-2016 7:12 PM


Re: God In A Box
GDR writes:
Sure all we can see are the natural processes. There would be no discernible evidence as to whether the process was intelligently created or not.
You keep conflating issues.
We both know that we were created by our parents. We know the process. We both know that evolution was the force that created the human species. We know that the brain and the endocrine system is responsible for our thought and emotional processes. Now we can actually see the specific parts of the brain that handles the emotional reaction that we call empathy.
We both agree that we don't (yet) know how the entire process began but for the purposes of this thread it doesn't matter. You keep saying that god intervenes in earthy matters routinely. Yet we see no evidence of it. I think you claim that the feelings you have that causes you to feel sorry for other people - empathy - is god intervening. Have I got that right? This 'still small voice' is god 'talking' to each of us personally. Is that what you belive?

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 53 by GDR, posted 08-20-2016 7:12 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 58 by GDR, posted 08-21-2016 11:45 AM Tangle has replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9486
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.5


Message 57 of 77 (789863)
08-21-2016 7:33 AM


If it helps, let's be specific, when you see a picture like this, is it god telling you to feel sorry for this person and want to help or is it a universal human reflex that's built into us - something we can't help?

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

Replies to this message:
 Message 62 by GDR, posted 08-21-2016 9:17 PM Tangle has replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9486
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.5


Message 59 of 77 (789865)
08-21-2016 12:36 PM
Reply to: Message 58 by GDR
08-21-2016 11:45 AM


Re: God In A Box
GDR writes:
That is like saying though that because we can see a generator producing electricity and observe the flow of electrons and understand what how that generator works, that we can forget about the fact that the generator itself required a source of energy in the first place.
Yes, it's exactly like that. At the moment I'm trying to get you to talk about what's happening at the lightbulb - the generator is a different problem altogether. I'm allowing you a god given generator for the process of evolution, I'm trying to understand why you seem to be talking about empathy being driven by a different and supernatural process.
Partly, but of course we are influenced by life’s experiences and what others say and do etc. However ultimately yes, I do believe that the ability to love unselfishly and even sacrificially ultimately can be traced back to God.
Traced back to god directly - ie he's intervening minute by minute with our lives? or indirectly by kicking off evolution billions of years ago on a path that he knew would give us these traits? When we look at that picture, what do you think is happening to us? Are we reacting naturally or is there supernatural intervention making us feel sorry for the guy andmaking us want to help him?
Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 58 by GDR, posted 08-21-2016 11:45 AM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 61 by GDR, posted 08-21-2016 9:10 PM Tangle has replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9486
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.5


Message 64 of 77 (789902)
08-22-2016 3:24 AM
Reply to: Message 61 by GDR
08-21-2016 9:10 PM


Re: God In A Box
GDR writes:
OK, so you are conceding the idea of a prime mover although you are actually agnostic on the point yourself.
To be clear, I gave you a prime mover only for the purpose of the argument. My personal position is that we do not know and may never know but I believe (proper use of the word) that there isn't/wasn't one.
As part of that idea that we might also believe that the prime mover could have planned at the beginning, an evolving sense of right and wrong leading to empathy as part of the evolutionary process. Actually I believe that to be the case although I would think it is done more through Dawkin's memes than I do through biology, and from what you've said I think that you would agree with that. This is essentially the point I was trying to make in the other thread.
There is no difference between this position and an absence of god as the initiator. Remove god and nothing about the outcome changes, so we can set this aside (for the purpose of the argument.)
But as a matter of pure fact, empathy is a physical emotion that we are born with just like all our others. To some degree it can and is changed in a positive or negative way by our upbringing, but if there is a defect, it can not be added - hence sociopaths and pyschopaths.
However, again I do believe more than that, and for this I concede that it is primarily by belief and secondarily through experience, This is where we do really come apart on our conclusions. I do believe that in subtle ways, that we can't directly perceive, God does touch our hearts and minds. This is part of my faith for which I can present no evidence that would resonate with the non-theistic community.
Ok. I'm forced to dismiss it then.
So we're left with a pure belief unsupported by any evidence at all. That at least honest but
1) we have strong measurable evidence of how empathy - and other emotions - actually works in people and other related animals
2) the claim is that god is intervening routinely and in real time with our physical bodies. If this was the case we should see it. Read the first post again. When the scientists are doing things like this....
quote:
Dr Lockwood said: 'A specific part of the brain called the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex was the only part of the brain that was activated when learning to help other people. Put another way, the subgenual anterior cingulate seems to be especially tuned to benefiting other people.
'However, this region of the brain was not equally active in every person. People who rated themselves as having higher levels of empathy learnt to benefit others faster than those who reported having lower levels of empathy. They also showed increased signalling in their subgenual anterior cingulate cortex when benefitting others.'
...is god making interventions by miraculously triggering reactions in the subgenual anterior cingulate? If so why is he doing it less in some more in others and not at all in a few? And to what end? And are we not then puppets in his strings?

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 61 by GDR, posted 08-21-2016 9:10 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 68 by GDR, posted 08-22-2016 1:50 PM Tangle has replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9486
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.5


Message 65 of 77 (789906)
08-22-2016 4:56 AM
Reply to: Message 62 by GDR
08-21-2016 9:17 PM


GDR writes:
When you see people who are prepared to blow themselves up in order to kill others including children then at the very least I would say that it isn't universal.
We KNOW it isn't universal. We can measure and test for it. The people lacking empathy are called sociopaths and pychopaths. But the people who blow themselves up are not suffering from pycopathy - they're suffering a religious delusion. They have been taught to believe that those they kill are not human - they're infidels and heretics and therefore outside of their empathetic systems. You can't feel sorry for them because they are 'other'. But it's more complicated - you also have to put yourself in the future imagining the suffering that's been caused in order to feel sympathy. In this case the bomber is thinking not of that but of being at god's right hand and basking in the eternal light. In other worlds, totally deluded - all normal human feelings put into suspension.
For those of us that it does touch, I contend that one way or another it touches us because the ability to love is a gift that comes from God, no matter how He did it.
Touch? We either have the ability to empathise or we don't. The vast majority do.
I suggest also that it is a gift we can reject.
This 'gift' is actually an evolved trait, just like all the rest. But you are correct to say that we can reject it. Just like we can feel anger without killing, lust without raping - and suicide bomb without concern who you kill. Emotions are reflexive. We can't stop feeling them but our rational mind can modify our reaction to them.
Those that kill others do it for many reasons - when your country dropped the A bomb twice on Japan it did it for complex competing and very human reasons and despite our knowledge of the devastating human consequencies. When we saw the picture of the napalmed girl in the Vietnam war we all instinctively cried out for her - only a psycopath couldn't. But the war continued. Our evolved brain has both primitive and automatic functions and the later developed cognative functions that overcome them.
You have your target incorrectly identified. Empathy is a primitive reflex developed in other primates and lower order animals, we are the only species that is able to override those reflexes with conscious thought of cause and effect. If you must plant your god somewhere in us it's in the prefrontal cortex where executive processing and cognitive functioning occurs.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 62 by GDR, posted 08-21-2016 9:17 PM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 69 by GDR, posted 08-22-2016 2:02 PM Tangle has replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9486
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.5


Message 71 of 77 (789955)
08-22-2016 3:56 PM
Reply to: Message 68 by GDR
08-22-2016 1:50 PM


Re: God In A Box
GDR writes:
It seems to me that when a child is born it really doesn't have anything more than a survival instinct, primarily the need to be fed. I would think that the child's emotional development starts pretty much right away after birth and starts to receive love, or possibly an absence of love which starts off the emotional development.
That's just what you want to believe and of course it's at best only partially true. Empathy is a built in part of us like all emotions and depends on upbringing and environment to determine its development. All, of course, human provided.
quote:
The authors investigated the development of a disposition toward empathy and its genetic and environmental origins. Young twins' (N = 409 pairs) cognitive (hypothesis testing) and affective (empathic concern) empathy and prosocial behavior in response to simulated pain by mothers and examiners were observed at multiple time points. Children's mean level of empathy and prosociality increased from 14 to 36 months. Positive concurrent and longitudinal correlations indicated that empathy was a relatively stable disposition, generalizing across ages, across its affective and cognitive components, and across mother and examiner. Multivariate genetic analyses showed that genetic effects increased, and that shared environmental effects decreased, with age. Genetic effects contributed to both change and continuity in children's empathy, whereas shared environmental effects contributed to stability and nonshared environmental effects contributed to change. Empathy was associated with prosocial behavior, and this relationship was mainly due to environmental effects.
I agree that there can be a defect that canuses psychopathic behaviour but I also think that this can come about through abuse or other triggers.
Why do you 'think' that when we actually know some of these things? Pyschopathy is largely genetic and their brains are structurally different. Did god make their brains different deliberately?
quote:
In the past several years studies of brain activity in individuals meeting the criteria for psychopathy have yielded some groundbreaking findings. CAT scans reveal that with psychopaths, areas of the brain typically associated with emotion, especially the integration of emotion with other mental constructs, do not operate in the same manner as they do with normal individuals. Show most people a picture of something typically associated with a sentiment (e.g., a wedding ceremony), and areas of the brain that process information about the event as well as areas of the brain involved in emotion both show activity. But show the same image to a psychopath, and although the area of the brain recognizing the image or event is active, the area of the brain typically associated with an emotional response appears dormant. Other brains studies measuring different aspects of the integration of emotions with other human experiences have shown the same abnormalities when it comes to psychopaths.
So, what does this all mean? And would it be fair to say that all the disturbed characters among us are simply born the way they are? Naturally, the answer is not all that simple. Suffice it to say that many of the traditional assumptions about traumatic or impoverished environments being the cause of some of these conditions have now been rightfully and significantly challenged. There are biological factors at work and some of these factors are strong contributors to some of our more serious character disturbances. And there at least appears to be a strong genetic component to an individual’s capacity to experience empathy, guilt, and remorse. And while all this might come as welcome news to those exasperated parents who used to blame themselves and who we used to blame for raising monsters, there’s still a lot we don’t know about all the factors that contribute to someone becoming a full-blown psychopath.
But there are also scientists that do believe that God touches our heart so it isn't all that cut and dried. We both gravitate towards the ones that agree with our own position.
Now that is total rubbish. Science deals with observations. There are no scientists observing god intervening in people's emotions. But if you can find one, I'd be very interested. Pointing to research that supports a line of argument is not cherry picking, it's how science works. The fact that you can't support your argument with similar evidence should tell you something.
We are not puppets as we can observe, (on the assumption that my position is correct), people do respond to a large extent or to virtually no extent at all. We are free to reject it completely.
If this god of yours IS directly intervening, sometimes strongly, sometimes weakly, sometimes not at all but randomly - which is what we know happens in life - he's the worst kind of puppetmaster, he's just tormenting us.
Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 68 by GDR, posted 08-22-2016 1:50 PM GDR has not replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9486
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.5


Message 72 of 77 (789956)
08-22-2016 4:29 PM
Reply to: Message 69 by GDR
08-22-2016 2:02 PM


GDR writes:
Fair enough, but as I said in another thread there is a big difference between feeling empathy for the starving children in Africa for example and actually doing something about it that negatively affects our own situation. Some people will feel empathy and say "isn't that awful"; some will donate financially and maybe even enough that they keep the old car instead of buying a new one, and some, like some of the doctors I know, actually travel there risking there own health in order to help out.
Yes there is and I'm trying to get you to make the distinction between the reflexive feeling of empathy - the thing that creates the desire to help - and the decision to do something about it or not.
There is a difference between feeling empathy and actually doing something sacrificially.
Correct. They're seperate processes. Both are beginning to be understood. Nothing points to external intervention. Everything points to physical and environmental factors.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 69 by GDR, posted 08-22-2016 2:02 PM GDR has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 75 by Phat, posted 08-23-2016 12:07 PM Tangle has replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9486
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.5


(2)
Message 77 of 77 (790010)
08-23-2016 12:32 PM
Reply to: Message 75 by Phat
08-23-2016 12:07 PM


Re: Refusal to believe without Evidence
Phat writes:
Nothing in your mind, perhaps. But you want it that way.
Oh come on Phat - it's not in my mind, it's evidential. There is no evidence of external influence. If you had any, there would be no disagreement.
Humans that believe in anything prefer their beliefs to be agreeable to themselves.
Humans do not want/need or have to believe in something disagreeable.
My premise is that GOD is agreeable to some and disagreeable to others. I would expect that this by and large determines their stance on His possible/probable existence.
sigh
IT'S EVIDENTIAL. It's not a belief. It's got nothing to do with whether I find your god agreeable or not. He's a fantasy, he's as disagreeable as Neptune - He's not real Phat. I don't believe in your God because there's no evidence for him and stacks that we made it all up.
You guys keep imposing your own reasons on others. Making up excuses for us. God knows why, we keep telling you often enough. It's like you need us to be like you, just have different beliefs.
Try to get it into your head that we don't believe in your God because HE'S DOESN'T EXIST. At the very least stop making shit up about what you think we believe and why.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien.
Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 75 by Phat, posted 08-23-2016 12:07 PM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
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