| You're free to believe what you want, but be aware that > It's a safer bet to believe science can explain consciousness is not the rigorous logical position you are making it out to be. That is purely an opinion. There is no evidence that materialist science can explain consciousness - that's both an issue of track record and of principle (see the "hard problem" discussion). > consciousness is the only real mystery in the universe Consciousness is... pretty important. I wouldn't call it "the only real mystery," I'd call it, maybe, "THE mystery." So we must see things pretty differently if that's how you feel about it. > It makes sense that "experience" could be a side effect of certain highly complex highly connected systems. It doesn't make sense that "experience" (i.e. "having thoughts") magically drives those systems a certain direction. Again, "it makes sense" is an opinion. I'm not sure why you see it as less "magical" that the movement of particles would cause a subjective experience, but that is an opinion and a viewpoint, not a strictly rational belief system. For example, to me, it makes sense and aligns more with my experience and studies that there is a soul that somehow interacts with the brain. We don't know how, but we also don't know how experience should be caused by matter, so I'm just not sure why people like yourself seem to think people like me are being foolish, superstitious, and irrational, and that your viewpoint is supported by science and logic, when it factually isn't. Your viewpoint is supported not by the evidence, but by an axiomatic belief in materialism. |
Because cause->effect. If there is a soul or some other non-material power in the universe, why does it only influence the chemical reaction of animal brains? (We're not assuming the human species is special, right?)
My issue is that you paint tech people as arrogant or "disconnected from an experience of their own aliveness and soul" when in fact there is a much more mundane explanation -- they just have no good reason to believe in souls.
I've had many interesting and transcendent experiences, no reason to see them as anything other than extraordinary chemical states. For the closing remarks on this thread: why do you believe what you do?