The World without Religion

From a practical standpoint, to be agnostic is to act as though God did not exist. Atheism seems to me dogmatic. There is no proof that God does not exist. Of course, there's also none that he does. Agnosticism is not a "cop-out." It's the most reasonable position to take.

Primordial, there are all sorts of reasons for claiming that God exists:1. What started the Big Bang?2. Why do we have a conscience? (don't play the Freudian card--I forbid you).3. Why through human history has every civilization believed in God?4. How did matter create mind (my personal favorite)?Answer these questions if you dare.

1. What started the Big Bang?I don't know, but is God any more unreasonable than a causeless effect? That seems very unreasonable to me.An eternal universe with an infinite # of contractions and explosions would make more sense, but haven't they ruled that out?2. Why do we have a conscience? I have never been able to convince myself that a sense of right and wrong is totally cultural. Everybody says that cultures have different moralities. Well, they do in the details (like, for example, how many wives you can have), but do they differ in the essentials? Like honesty and courage being a good thing and so forth? If we could posit a universal essential morality, that suggests an objective morality. Which makes you wonder where that came from.3. Why in human history has every civilization believed in God? Where did the idea come from in the first place? Who would dream that up and why? It's universal in history and so must be some natural trait of mankind. Not that this proves much, but still . . .4. Primordial, this is the 2nd time you've sent me scurrying to the dictionary, and my dictionary doesn't have "qualia" in it. The point about matter and mind is this: the problem that I see with evolution (if it is a problem)is how matter can create mind. Now if mind creates matter we call it a miracle. Why is not matter creating mind a miracle? I do not understand how a certain number and type of brain cells produce "consciousness," of all things. The mental, if it exists, is such a very different thing from the physical. For one thing it exists in time but not in space (of course, the word "exist" here is probematic). You can argue there is no such thing as mentality (that it's all physical) and if that's true then of course the problem is solved. But I haven't been able to convince myself of that.My overall point is that positing a God is not totally unreasonable--just very problematic.

Quetzal, as regards the question of right and wrong and your example of witches. I would say that there is no change in moral principle here. The change is in our understanding of facts about the world. We no longer believe in witches. If we did, no doubt we would punish them.

Quetzal, the way a case can be made for universal morality is if we can say that certain concepts--let's call them virtues or vices--can be said to be meaningful as such, without regard to particular cases.Let's say "stealing" is a vice. Now one group may say that a particular case is not an example of stealing, whereas others say it is. Nonetheless they both agree that "stealing" (however defined in a particular case) is a vice. And so stealing is a universal vice.

Obviously the Slovakian case is one in which "stealing" is defined differently than usual. Since I do not know Slavokian mind-sets, let me offer an alternative example.Suppose a communist revolution. The communist rebels take a rich man's property. The rich man calls it stealing. The communists do not. However, both agree that stealing is bad. The argument is not over that, but over the definition of ownership.

Quetzal, yeah I guess you're right. If the definition of stealing can not be pinned down at all, then it loses all meaning.

Quetzal, I was trying to figure out a definition of stealing (or whatever) that could be universal, but there's always a term in the definition (or many terms) that cannot be pinned down. In the example about commmunists and rich men, if I say they both agree that stealing is bad but disagree about ownership, all I have done is displace the equivocal meaning to another term. How am I going to define stealing without defining ownership? Ownership is a key term in any definition of "stealing." So the example doesn't really prove anything. It's a mere playing around with words.However, I do think that a lot of times when somebody might say that different moral principles are at work, there is really not a difference of moral principle but a difference in "facts" (as in the example about witches).

Quetzal, as regards Post 17, it seems to me like you're saying that any creature with a developed brain is likely to start beliving in the supernatural, if not God. Example: you talk about humans being prone to detecting patterns. Some turn out to be real and some not. I would think that the ability to detect patterns would be a universal quality of developed brainpower, but you seem to want to make it more human-specific.

Quetzal, suppose biological evolution on planet X. Is it possible to imagine brain-power evolving in such a way that is sheerly non-human-like? Having intelligence but not having the tendency, for example, to "detect patterns"?

My point about pattern detecting has to do with what we make of them rather than the method of transmission. I don't think bats and sea turtles are speculating about the supernatural. Their pattern detecting is presumably unconscious, which can help them to survive but not help them be believers in the supernatural.One can imagine a creature on planet X developing an extreme amount of automatic systems (I don't know what the brain-terms are for this function, Quetzal--maybe you can supply it) and hence developing what looks from a distance like conscious intelligence. Maybe it would be a kind of super insect. This super insect would evolve its automatic instinctive capabilities to the point where it can make things and so forth. In some ways, this sort of development might even be more advantageous from an evolutionary point of view. It would have no fear, whereas humans are full of fears. It would not hesitate to give up its life for the group, whereas humans are often hesitant. Still it would not be speculating about the possibility of supernatural events or beings since it would not be speculating at all. In religious terms, this creature would have no soul. In my terms, it would have no mind--though the brain might be huge.But I cannot imagine a fully conscious intelligence, an intelligence capable of forming theories about the causes of patterns, being different from humans no matter what the transmission device--sonar or simple hearing. Therefore, the implication of your post 17 is: all intelligent beings, at least in the early phase of their existence, have a tendency to invent a supernatural realm--and so a belief in gods or God. Such creatures have a tendency not to believe in simple coincidence. My wife has given birth all 3 times during a full moon. Obviously there's a connection. From a survival point of view, it is good to assume a connection between recurring events. Is there a scenario where skepticism about coincidences would benefit the survival of a species?

Quetzal, what I was doing was trying to imagine a brain development that would be different from human-style development. I thought to myself, what if there was brain development but not of the type that produced consciousness? So what we could have is like an ant except much more developed in terms of programmed behavior. Much more sophisticated automatic behavior--but still automatic. This creature would have a big brain but it would only be of the sort that generates unconscious reactions. That was the only alternative I could think of to human-type consciousness. An ant will attack someone who is a 1,000 times bigger than him (such as myself). Apparently this ant is programmed to bite anything that registers disturbance, or in human terms, whatever is threatening. In this sense the ant has no fear. I would assume in terms of evolution the cause of such programming is that it helps to protect the ant-city as a whole (thus the so-called "altruism"). It certainly doesn't protect the individual ant. Now suppose the ant continued to evolve along these lines rather than take a human-like path. You would eventually have a creature who could do all sorts of things unconsciously. This creature would have no mind (or soul).Obviously this thread I started is getting a little too fanciful . . .But I like to talk, so what the hell . . . As far as the advantage, I was comparing this to humans. However, on the whole the humans would have an advantage because of their capacity for creative thought. If we had a war with such creatures, we would be able to predict their strategies.[This message has been edited by robinrohan, 12-04-2002]

And now I think I know what my point is. Consciousness is a threshold, not something gradual. You are either conscious or you're not. For not to be conscious of oneself is not to be conscious at all. Animals are not conscious. Dogs are functionally blind.

Actually, the main point would not depend on whether or not animals are conscious. If somebody wanted to say that consciousness begins at a certain level--say, chimps or even dogs--I have no problem with that. I don't think so myself, but the main point is the suddenness of the switch from unconsciousness to consciousness. However, for me to agree they would have to agree that chimps or whatever are totally conscious in the human sense, because that is the only sense there is.John has explained to me what happens when we "see" a picture on the wall. There's a sense in which we don't see it (he went into the physiology of it). What happens when we "see" is a series of automatic physical activities. My point was that, whatever we may call it, if we don't "see" then we certainly have an illusion of seeing the picture. That illusion is the mental leap. Suppose dogs are unconscious. Physically, the same thing happens when they see something as with us (more or less), but it would be very accurate to say they don't actually "see" because there is no mental leap.There can be no consciousness without self-consciousness, without a sense of "me." Why? Because without a sense of "me" we can't "see." We have to be able to realize that what we are looking at is a separate object from the "me." (We never see the "me." The "me" is the point we are looking from).Nor can we imagine, for the same reason. If we are going to imagine something, we have to be able to realize that that is what we are doing (even if we are mistaken about it). Otherwise all you have are a series of automatic physical activities.

Quetzal, my hypothesis is that the only definition you need for consciousness is "self-awareness." If you have that you are fully conscious; if you don't have it you are not conscious at all. So a dog either has self-awareness or he is not conscious at all. As far as seeing, I am not suggesting that the dog's eyes don't work. They work perfectly fine. It all depends on what you mean by seeing.John said that humans do not "see" (in a sense). I think his idea is wrong with regard to humans, but correct with regard to animals.But as regards animals, my hypothesis is as follows:Some animals may very well be conscious--if they are they are fully conscious (they have self-awareness). If not, they have none. Your point about their inability to function if they have no consciousness does not hold, since insects presumably are not conscious and they function just fine. Birds build nests--a pretty complicated procedure--do you want to argue that birds have self-awareness, that they are thinking about their nest-building and wondering if they put it in the right place, etc? Because that is what they would be doing if they are conscious.