Sometimes I Think God Is Just Something We Think About In Our Heads.

There's nothing quite like a "God" thread to warm the cockles on a cold Winter's eve...

 

That's like asking where a computer program is physically located. Without the hardware the operating system is just so much useless information and, vice versa, without the operating system the hardware is so much junk. To have a computer you must also have an operating system or the damned thing is no longer a computer, its just so many electronic parts. These days neurologists can literally read your mind using something as simple as an electroencephalogram. To argue that we have no mind is absurd because it just begs the question of who the hell is doing all the arguing and why the hell I should give a damn.

 

On the hard drive/hard disk. Or maybe an usb or external drive. It can be verified easily. I agree about the mind though. I wouldn't say it is absurd to argue we don't have one (would depend on how it is done ) but to me it is evident we have a mind.

 

you keep confusing "mind" with the physical organ "brain".

MIND:
noun 1.(in a human or other conscious being) the element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges, etc.:

the processes of the human mind.


2.Psychology. the totality of conscious and unconscious mental processes and activities.
3.intellect or understanding, as distinguished from the faculties of feeling and willing; intelligence.
4.a particular instance of the intellect or intelligence, as in a person.
5.a person considered with reference to intellectual power:

the greatest minds of the twentieth century.


6.intellectual power or ability.
7.reason, sanity, or sound mental condition:

to lose one's mind.

BRAIN:

noun 1.Anatomy, Zoology. the part of the central nervous system enclosed in the cranium of humans and other vertebrates, consisting of a soft, convoluted mass of gray and white matter and serving to control and coordinate the mental and physical actions.
2.Zoology. (in many invertebrates) a part of the nervous system more or less corresponding to the brain of vertebrates.
^^^ that is what all those fancy machines are measuring,
not this;
3.Sometimes, brains. ( used with a plural verb) understanding; intellectual power; intelligence.
4.the brain as the center of thought, understanding, etc.; mind; intellect.
5.brains, Slang. a member of a group who is regarded as its intellectual leader or planner:

The junior partner is the brains of the firm.






They are not "literally reading your mind" they are measuring the electrical impulses and blood flow to different regions of the brain and then we make conjectures and extrapolate about what cognitive functions coincide with the physiological phenomena we are measuring.


and to expand on what Asmo said, you can also locate exactly where/what areas/blocks of physical RAM a computer program is running in as it is running in real time, so your analogy is rather faulty to say the least.

 

The program is also running through the cpu and running everything the damned computer does making it difficult to say exactly where the program begins and ends. If the operating system were merely on the hard drive it would again be useless.

Energy and information are indivisible and physicists have even managed to create the first autonomous version of Maxwell's Demon that automatically sorts electrons according to their charges without expending any energy in the process. In other words, they can convert information directly into useful energy as if they had merely waved a magic wand over an otherwise quite ordinary copper transistor.

 

you put a lot of weight in theoretical concepts with a good dose of magical thinking thrown in.

and you can also track what registers are utilized in the cpu by a program in real time, so again a fail on the analogy.
guess you don't know much about computers, it isn't magic.

 

Again, a mind without a brain and vice versa is a demonstrable contradiction. A brain in a pickle jar is not a functioning living brain anymore than a computer without an operating system is more than a collection of electronic parts. Nor is an operating system on your hard drive or in your ram worth a damned unless it can run through your cpu and operate the rest of the computer. There is simply no way to separate what is physical and what is information unless you happen to be a psychic who talks to the dead.

 

what you say concerning information is nothing more than the energy/matter duality....yawn.

as I said, you are mixing science and magical thinking into one and then trying to tell me it's reality.

 

Insisting that demonstrable physical facts are important is anything but magical thinking. Quanta demonstrate all kinds of bizarre behavior and the theory that describes them makes no sense whatsoever, but that's reality for you. If you want to call the most successful physical theory of all time "magical" be my guest.

 

Converting information into energy without expending any energy in the process is acausal and, of course, you are again free to call quantum mechanics whatever you prefer.

 

how is that demonstrable?
could you please show me a picture of a mind all by itself?

 

You can't have a functioning brain without information moving through it. Insisting the mind is composed of something other than information is, as you like to put it, magical thinking.

 

As well as the idea of no God, yes.

The idea of God I am speaking of is "the creator." Since there is nothing to suggest the universe wasn't created by some sentient being, it's only natural that a species capable of abstract thought will conceive of such an entity.

There is no conceivable configuration of the universe that could make it so that a hypothetical God couldn't have created it to appear exactly as it does.

It's common knowledge that the existence of a creator is a possibility. If you're saying it's an impossibility, the onus is upon you to prove why that is the case.

My words are quite plain, and if you can't figure out why one thing leads to another, I'm not going to wrestle with you in vain hope that you will be able to understand what I am saying. I'll just accept that it is either hopeless or you understand perfectly well and are being argumentative for the sake of it.

Something truths have in common is that they cannot possibly be known to be false, is all I'm saying. No, a bonobo can't know its existence to be false. For good reason: It's true. Whereas the magical dandy who weighs ten pounds and sits on my thumb can be known to be false. God doesn't, and cannot, possess any quality that forces it into incompatibility with the known world.

It's worth whatever it's worth. It's not important to me that anybody believe in God, and I don't think sharing one distinct commonality with truths necessarily makes it so.

I have no problem with the mind being composed of information, but as of yet no one has explained what the ultimate nature of information is. It seems to me that saying the mind is made of information is as meaningless as saying the mind is made of spirit.

 

As with most philosophical ideas, what might be the best response is "I don't know".

 

yes it does. very little if anything is changed by whether or not one or more gods or god like beings exist.
the important things remain the same. that consideration is still the real morality, and the dominance of aggressiveness is just as much tyranny for one excuse as another.
and the wonder of strangeness remains universal as well. universal, inspiring, and beyond the grasp of any belief.

 

i agree that "mind" is the operating system that runs on the (de facto) hardware of the brain. it has no direct external storage, though we can synthasise poor ones by writing and making pictures, but these to not upload and download directly under operating system control without physical intervention. i believe, and i have to admit this is mostly on faith, that the system does have an external 'end user', and that is what we call spirit or soul or even ghost in the shell.

and further that it is this 'end user' and not our physical form, or any aspect of anything physical, even of the emergent phenomina that is the operating system called 'mind', that is our true and only true self.

(and even this does not require the existence of a god or gods, though does imply the possibility of their existence)

 

Yes.Because if it was somehow proved that the Universe is a random event that popped out of nowhere for no specific reason,it would not mean "Okay then,there's no God,so let's all do the most evil we can do." This is why some kind of faith is important.To me,anyway.

 

Everything is "just" something we think about in our heads.

 

Our ancestors were worshiping god in the stone age.

 

Maybe we have different ancestors but in the stone age mine were probably worshipping more than one.