Atheism vs Agnosticism

[Demosthenes]

Which do you find easiest to agree with?

Consciousness can change things.
Consciousness can't change anything.
Consciousness may be able to change things, it's difficult to be certain.

 

[ska invita]

This thread is aboutAtheism v Agnosticism right? But in a way the two are not directly opposed:

Atheism is opposed to theism - I'm pretty much opposed to theism too, although I have a little tolerance for people building up worldviews based on half-truths and half-insights - although its high time we moved on from taking half-truths as the truth.

But as an agnostic I am directly opposed to gnostics, who think that these ultimate questions are knowable and that 'god' is knowable.

I have a lot of sympathy with gnostics, because many of them have direct, mystical, psychedelic, transcendental experiences from which they claim to have "knowledge" of "god" or some other insight into the nature of the universe - I've had a couple of these too, via a cocktail of drugs - feelings of universal consciousness, seeing bright white lights etc.,

I dont think these experiences are utterly invalid - they are interesting and have their own value. But they are rooted in human biology and chemistry, and use the human senses and organs as their instrument - as such they are fallable and utterly subjective.

Theism extends from Gnosticism - gnostics founded religion, so as an agnostic I am opposed to theism by extension. But atheism, it seems to me, is really just a reaction to theism, and side steps the issue of what can be known, and limits the world view of what is possible - instead rallying around science for all its answers.

 

[Demosthenes]

But as an agnostic I am directly opposed to gnostics, who think that these ultimate questions are knowable and that 'god' is knowable.

I have a lot of sympathy with gnostics, because many of them have direct, mystical, psychedelic, transcendental experiences from which they claim to have "knowledge" of "god" or some other insight into the nature of the universe - I've had a couple of these too, via a cocktail of drugs - feelings of universal consciousness, seeing bright white lights etc.,

I dont think these experiences are utterly invalid - they are interesting and have their own value. But they are rooted in human biology and chemistry, and use the human senses and organs as their instrument - as such they are fallable and utterly subjective.

Are they still utterly subjective when they happen to lots of people at the same time?

If you take some substance that's said to be hallucinogenic, and you caught sight of a flying spaghetti monster in your backgarden, - you might well conclude afterwards that it was a hallucination. If on the other hand, lots of people concurred, and ever afterwards you found spaghetti trails all over the place, - what should you conclude then?

 

[kyser_soze]

For me the science as religion argument boils down to the approach that the Big Bang can be explained away as a rational product of physics, and avoids asking or answering any more profound philosphoical questions such as how or why or what came before.

It's not about stubborn righteous belief in science - its about explaining everything with the laws of science, at the expense of any imagination or possibility that the truth may be beyond our human ability to understand (by scienetific method or otherwise).

Hence scienctific understanding becomes a dogma, particularly for the atheist, who not only rules out organised religion from the answers (probably a very good move) to any solution that cannot be immediately explained by the science of the day - in particular emphaticaly denying any role for consciousness in the process, a view based and motivated by little more than a hatred of organised religion.

OK, you seem to be making a large number of unwarrented assumptions here.

1. While it is currently called 'most likely', BB is not the only theory of creation doing the rounds that has support in the scietific community. My 'belief' in BB is the same as my 'belief' in the Standard Model - it's provisional and will only remain my belief while the interpreted evidence says that this is the 'most likely' way the universe is put together.

2. You are mistaking a belief in 'science' for faith in the model of scientific research and the thinking process that goes into it - for me, even something as flaky as ESP could be shown, in the future, to exist it's just that we lack the technolgy (or indeed the language) to express those ideas at present.

If anything, you seem to be the one dogmatically obsessed with the BB and demontrating that atheists occupy an inferior intellectual position through the errection of a strawman! Your comments regarding 'consciousness' are something I've thought about as well - ironically via sci-fi (Babylon 5), where one of the main strands of faith is the concept that we are all a small fragment of a universal consciousness that is trying to understand itself. Do I think it's a reasonable explanation for life? Yes. Is it one that I 'believe'? No.

you know how in star trek all the aliens are derivative of humans? its almost impossible for us to make up an alien without relating it to ourselves.

Yeah, but that basically comes down to the fact that until CGI it was cheaper to create humanoid aliens. An example of a non-humanoid intelligence in Star Trek is V'Ger from STtMP; other examples include things like Species 8472 from the Voyager series. Sci-fi is full of decent attempts to create genuine non-humanoid consciousnesses - hell, even Dune, a tale that is purely about human evolution creates a convincingly non-human conscience in the shape of the God Emporer.

 

[kyser_soze]

That were consciousness to be inehrent in the universe we as humans could test for it with our little instruments

It has to be said, your view seems to be very negative in what humans can and can't know - something that I find closer to the religious notion of acceptable knowledge. Why, at some point, won't we be able to measure the 'consciousness' of the universe - for all we know the CMB is a physical manifestation of some form of universal brain that we're interpreting in a partial way (by using it to map the history of the sky).

If being an agnostic means accepting that there are 'unknowable' things in the universe then you can keep it, thanks. I prefer hope and allowing my imagination to say that it's possible that one day we can know the unknowable - indeed, it's that imagination that has driven scietific curiousity in humans since someone first asked 'why does that happen?' and decided that the answer wasn';t unknowable.

So your argument that science is inimicable to imagination is utter bollocks.

 

[ska invita]

Are they still utterly subjective when they happen to lots of people at the same time?

If you take some substance that's said to be hallucinogenic, and you caught sight of a flying spaghetti monster in your backgarden, - you might well conclude afterwards that it was a hallucination. If on the other hand, lots of people concurred, and ever afterwards you found spaghetti trails all over the place, - what should you conclude then?

It would depend on the circumstanc I guess. There is some intersting work being done by scientist looking at what happens in the deepest meditativa state of different Budhhist groups and Hindu groups.

The results seem to be a deeper understand of the biology that creates certain sensation (such as seeing bright lights has something to do with the brain stem), but also a suprising amount of similarity between what these master meditators perceive as the nature of the universe regarding time and energy matching up with the latest theries of physicists.

There is a body of scientific work that looks at hallucination - for example Professor Groff's seminal work with LSD in the seventies (no longer legally replecable!) is fascinating.

What anyone chooses to conclude about anything is up to them, and depends on the information available to them. In terms of this thread the evidence is not spaghetti monsters and ragu trails, but the Big Bang+resulting universe and the nature of that moment.

 

[Fruitloop]

It has to be said, your view seems to be very negative in what humans can and can't know - something that I find closer to the religious notion of acceptable knowledge. Why, at some point, won't we be able to measure the 'consciousness' of the universe - for all we know the CMB is a physical manifestation of some form of universal brain that we're interpreting in a partial way (by using it to map the history of the sky).

Nice posts kyser.

One thing I think is interesting is the flipside of the idea of the causal closure of the universe (i.e. that everything that happens within the universe is caused by something else in it), i.e. the implied causal inclusion that the causal closure implies - i.e. that anything that can affect the universe is therefore part of it, since the boundary of the universe as we understand it is a causal one. So we may be too limited in our intelligence to comprehend whatever vast consciousness could perhaps permeate the whole universe, but it couldn't be completely outside our universe informationally, otherwise it would have no effect (and thus be a wee bit irrelevant IMO).

 

[kyser_soze]

Cheers - this is actually a good thread for me since it's the kind of discussion I have in my head about my atheism and general structure of 'belief' (easy word to summarise the phrase 'internally constructed interpretation of the universe that uses knowledge from physical/visceral experience, codified learning and surmised projection combining the two') but is always more useful to have with other people arguing...

 

[ska invita]

It has to be said, your view seems to be very negative in what humans can and can't know - something that I find closer to the religious notion of acceptable knowledge. Why, at some point, won't we be able to measure the 'consciousness' of the universe - for all we know the CMB is a physical manifestation of some form of universal brain that we're interpreting in a partial way (by using it to map the history of the sky).

If being an agnostic means accepting that there are 'unknowable' things in the universe then you can keep it, thanks.

I prefer hope and allowing my imagination to say that it's possible that one day we can know the unknowable - indeed, it's that imagination that has driven scietific curiousity in humans since someone first asked 'why does that happen?' and decided that the answer wasn';t unknowable.

I'm a fan of science - I support it and am thankfull for it. But will science really explain the Big Bang and what came before? Look at what scientists are saying now - "its not important/possible/relevant!" - completely dumbfounded. They are questions that go beyond the limtis of what science can do.

Id love science to solve all these problems, I really would. im not holding my breath though - in the meantime I will leave room for all manner of possibilities. This doesnt meant that any old shit someone makes up is likley - but Im recognising 1: The wonderous nature of the Big Bang/Universe and 2: The limits of the human microscopic mind within this infinite system.

I think it is important to recognise how humble humans are within the universe - as I keep saying, its scale and complexity is completely unconceivable by your, me or anyone.

So your argument that science is inimicable to imagination is utter bollocks.

[looks up inimicable in the dictionary ... means harmful]
I dont think thats my argument exactly - science need not be inimicable to imagination, but atheism is.

Agnosticism leaves room for, and perhaps even stimulates imagination on this subject in a way that atheism doesn't. By definition atheism rules out certain possible phenomena for the Big Bang, no?

 

[Fruitloop]

That's one of the best things about the interweb, IMO - as a counterbalance to the perils of autodidacticism.

 

[kyser_soze]

science need not be inimicable to imagination, but atheism is.

Well quite clearly it isn't - find me an atheist with little or no imagination and I'll give you a non-speculative answer for what happened before the Big Bang.

It's a ridiculous statement as well - you're saying that the denial of the notion of gods is a denial of imagination.

Agnosticism leaves room for, and perhaps even stimulates imagination on this subject in a way that atheism doesn't. By definition atheism rules out certain possible phenomena for the Big Bang, no?

Not at all - as I said earlier, even atheists like Dawkins admit to the possibility of the creation being the result of some form of consciousness, just that from where they stand it's probability is so remote as to be a non-starter as far as existing evidence and knowledge provide for.

Also, you are being really dogmatic about the Big Bang being the creation moment - there are at least two alternative views that end up with the physics of 'our' universe (which you can go find youself).

 

[exleper]

....

can we stop using that as an argument against religion?[NO!] Sorry but it just doesnt cut it. Name 100 'horrors' caused by religion and I could name 100 more caused by non-religious things.[So? Religion still sucks mate] Equally I could name 100 good things done by religions, and 100 good things done by non-religious people. [And?]

Wars are caused by people, not religions;[religions are used by intelligent bad people to use dim good people] if there weren't religions we'd still find something to fight about. [Maybe something worth fighting about] Surely a better argument would be to attack religion on a more, er, theological basis....?[No, 'cos then we'd be arguning in the terms of the loonies... theology is really just fairy stories.]

..

from what I could tell, the extent of your argument against my post seems to be 'no!', 'so?', 'and?' which isnt much of a reasoned response. For the record I have very little respect for religion and we'd probably agree on plenty of things but your level of debate is a bit childish so its hard to tell.

But the really interesting thing is that if you replace all the circles with Jesus' severed head, the word "Belief" begins to flash

Post of the year

 

[Demosthenes]

Well quite clearly it isn't - find me an atheist with little or no imagination and I'll give you a non-speculative answer for what happened before the Big Bang.

It's a ridiculous statement as well - you're saying that the denial of the notion of gods is a denial of imagination.

You have to have a good imagination before you can bring yourself to imagine some kind of device for measuring consciousness.. As far as I can tell, the idea doesn't even make sense.

 

[exleper]

Well quite clearly it isn't - find me an atheist with little or no imagination and I'll give you a non-speculative answer for what happened before the Big Bang.

It's a ridiculous statement as well - you're saying that the denial of the notion of gods is a denial of imagination.



Not at all - as I said earlier, even atheists like Dawkins admit to the possibility of the creation being the result of some form of consciousness, just that from where they stand it's probability is so remote as to be a non-starter as far as existing evidence and knowledge provide for.

Also, you are being really dogmatic about the Big Bang being the creation moment - there are at least two alternative views that end up with the physics of 'our' universe (which you can go find youself).

i would have thought theism shows a lack of imagination - its a lazy acceptance of an ancient tradition, a belief system passed down generations via memes. A great argument against religion is that most people will believe what their parents believed, and their parents believed, etc etc.

 

[ska invita]

Look, this stuff about imagination is hardly at the heart of what Im saying - but look through at atheists on this thread and in the outside world and see the reaction to the suggestion that perhaps the creation moment may have a conscious element to it - people think your a mystic-loon, an apologist for religion, delusional, etc.,

Some atheists as a result become utterly hostile to any view of the creation moment as anything other than some kind of unmotivated, random act of physics, which surely is a limitation on imagination.

You may not think so - Dawkins may not think so, thats fine, but I would suggest to you that you therefore are an agnostic, perhaps a model agnostic:

Model agnosticism—the view that philosophical and metaphysical questions are not ultimately verifiable but that a model of malleable assumption should be built upon rational thought. This branch of agnosticism does not focus on a deity's existence.

If Dawkins says there is a small chance that there is an explenation taht the creation moment as the result of a conscious act how can he be an atheist - which by definition rules out such a possibility?

Also, you are being really dogmatic about the Big Bang being the creation moment - there are at least two alternative views that end up with the physics of 'our' universe (which you can go find youself).

id love to hear what those two are, but wouldnt know where to start looking. Please share

 

[kyser_soze]

The question of organised religion is slightly outside where the main argument has gone, but my main problem with Chainsaw Cat's comments are that he/she is looking at religion in the simplest possible way - by placing moral arguments on it, instead of looking at organised religions for what they are; attempts to use certainty of belief to control a chaotic system that is changing through internal evolutionary pressures. I find it better to look at what religion IS and how something that appears to genuinely have a universal application in the human psyche (the needs to understand and place ourselves in reality via explaining that reality, and the need to belong to something greater than ourselves as individuals) has been repeatedly turned into an excercise in bureaucracy and something that activley seeks to stop and limit our imaginations for the purposes of social control.

 

[Fruitloop]

To be honest my problem with the whole idea of a universal consciousness is that it seems to be continuing the noble tradition of getting really, really wrong answers by extrapolating from one scale or frame of reference (usually the familiar human one of 'medium-sized dry goods') onto another one as if they should behave in the same way. From the idea that the sun was a chariot driven across the sky by Apollo to the notion of sub-atomic particles being like little billiard balls orbiting around and pinging off each other, the way to get a really cracking fallacy is to assume some constancy across different scales of time and space that has nothing genuinely in its favour other than its familiarity to us.

Given that it seems that even what we regard as the fundamental laws of physics may not be constant across the very largest of these scales, I think there's every reason to be extremely mistrustful of any assumption of similarity from one frame of reference to another. Just as the sun doesn't need wheels or a driver, just like a single hydrogen atom can pass through two slits simultaeously, the universe as a whole is incredibly unlikely to require such human attributes as consciousness, a discursive self, or feelings of agency or purpose. So given the immense tendency towards cock-up that this method of enquiry has engendered in the past, the sensible thing is to regard any other claims made along these lines as being incredibly improbable, even though it may never be possible to categorically disprove them.

 

[goldenecitrone]

I'm not even really sure of what 'God' is supposed to be these days so I couldn't say with absolute certainty whether I believe in 'it' or not. Some people probably believe that 'God' is a fundamental particle or force in the universe. I don't really care, to be honest. All I know for sure is that religious people get on my tits.

 

[ska invita]

To be honest my problem with the whole idea of a universal consciousness is that it seems to be continuing the noble tradition of getting really, really wrong answers by extrapolating from one scale or frame of reference (usually the familiar human one of 'medium-sized dry goods') onto another one as if they should behave in the same way. From the idea that the sun was a chariot driven across the sky by Apollo to the notion of sub-atomic particles being like little billiard balls orbiting around and pinging off each other, the way to get a really cracking fallacy is to assume some constancy across different scales of time and space that has nothing genuinely in its favour other than its familiarity to us.

I couldnt agree more - consciousness is the thing that for now seems to seperate humans as creative beings from everything else we know - but it is a very sketchy step to take that quality to the ultimate degree, ie., what created the Big Bang (or whatever other creation options we have).

This opens the door for unlimited possibiltiy, way beyond human comprehension. For me agnosticism best defines a belief that such unbelievable/unknowable/unimaginable possibilites might exist.

 

[kyser_soze]

You may not think so - Dawkins may not think so, thats fine, but I would suggest to you that you therefore are an agnostic, perhaps a model agnostic:

Quote:
Model agnosticism—the view that philosophical and metaphysical questions are not ultimately verifiable but that a model of malleable assumption should be built upon rational thought. This branch of agnosticism does not focus on a deity's existence.

If Dawkins says there is a small chance that there is an explenation taht the creation moment as the result of a conscious act how can he be an atheist - which by definition rules out such a possibility?

You need to read Bernard Shaw on atheism really, cos you don't understand it. Dawkins and other atheists like myself exist in a world of probability - there is no other logical (or indeed emotional/illogical) response to the belief that the universe is infinite, since within an infinite system everything can be asribed a probability. However, as a materialist rationalist, within our current scope of data, our ability to interpret that data and those 'greater reality' (i.e reality we have to understand via knowledge rather than direct physical sensation and interpretation) constructs, the notion of a God or gods is at the extreme end of that probability, and if you could design an experiment to show that such a consciousness exists we'd believe it.

You need to understand the difference between believing that it's this balance of probabilities leads Dawkins and other atheists (well at least those of us who've thought long enough to the core of deity-denial; not a dogmatic rejection, but only and ever a provisional one.

And so far no one has come up with evidence to me that says that there is a higher probability that the universe came into existance via the medium of a consciousness than via a random quantum event, and since my view of the universe is that it's subsequent development for both non- and biological systems is one of chance (and for bio-systems this is called evolution, a function of probability, environment and time) that isn't steered via consciousness or intelligence, why would I choose to believe that it was started by one?

 

[kyser_soze]

nik - how much do you know about quantum theory? Now THERE'S a real test of how far you can push your mind in attempting to understand something that is utterly outside the limits of our 'natural' understanding of how the universe functions.

You could start off easier on the dualistic properties of light (particle and wave) and relativity, but to really answer why at least I feel the way I do about chance, read up on QM.

BTW, typing 'alternative big bang' into Google got the following:

http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/02/0506/0506-cyclicuniverse.htm
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/cosmo.htm
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/gaat/2003/00000022/F0020004/art00007

Indeed, the 2nd link makes the point that many scientists are actually locked into the 'BB faith', and it's actually created a closed investigative system in science! (Which you seem happy to accept as well, which given your arguments about how agnostics don't have closed investigations is interesting)

 

[Demosthenes]

To be honest my problem with the whole idea of a universal consciousness is that it seems to be continuing the noble tradition of getting really, really wrong answers by extrapolating from one scale or frame of reference (usually the familiar human one of 'medium-sized dry goods') onto another one as if they should behave in the same way. From the idea that the sun was a chariot driven across the sky by Apollo to the notion of sub-atomic particles being like little billiard balls orbiting around and pinging off each other, the way to get a really cracking fallacy is to assume some constancy across different scales of time and space that has nothing genuinely in its favour other than its familiarity to us.

Given that it seems that even what we regard as the fundamental laws of physics may not be constant across the very largest of these scales, I think there's every reason to be extremely mistrustful of any assumption of similarity from one frame of reference to another. Just as the sun doesn't need wheels or a driver, just like a single hydrogen atom can pass through two slits simultaeously, the universe as a whole is incredibly unlikely to require such human attributes as consciousness, a discursive self, or feelings of agency or purpose. So given the immense tendency towards cock-up that this method of enquiry has engendered in the past, the sensible thing is to regard any other claims made along these lines as being incredibly improbable, even though it may never be possible to categorically disprove them.

It's an ingenious argument, - but, I think it's a misconception to think that whoever described the sun as a chariot driven across the heavens by Apollo was attempting the ancient greek equivalent of science. They were attempting poetry.

On the extrapolation of billiard balls, fair point, but it's a bad extrapolation, trying to put a materialist mechanist account of the universe that more or less works for inanimate objects at our scale, on to the subatomic scale. But the subatomic scale is more fundamental than our scale. Maybe the problem's with materialist mechanism rather than extrapolation per se.

Trying to extrapolate from two dubious and different forms of extrapolations to a general position that extrapolating ways of thinking from one scale to another is a sure way of getting wrong answers, seems to me to be an extrapolation too far.

By far the most noble and ancient tradition of getting really really wrong answers, is the human tradition of being convinced that -now- They really understood everything and there was nothing further to discover.

I can see why extrapolating from ideas of venerable powerful men, to the idea that God is an old man in a big hall in the sky with a big beard is a bad extrapolation,- I don't see why it is for the idea of a universal consciousness.

 

[kyser_soze]

Because the very notion that the universe required a conscious action to set it into motion implicitly takes the idea that humans only create things (houses) out of conscious will, and that something as big as the universe might (or in the case of the creationists has to), therefore have also come from a similar process. That's the basic notion of ID - that something as complex as out universe couldn't have come about by chance, that there must be a guiding consiousness or force that bought it about.

BTW - the chariot across the sky thing...if you look at most of the old polytheist religions, they took the observation that the sun moves across the sky with the other observation that 'it must be big' and compared that to their everyday lives and came up with 'Well, there must be a God who pulls the sun along; how to we pull stuff? We use chariots' The Egytian sun God, Ra, ferried the sun along on a giant boat - unsurprising since the Nile was the dominant feature in Egyptian life (all life comes from the river and the sun), hence it made logical sense that the whole universe would thus be like a river, therefore the sun is carried on a boat across the river of the heavens.

So it's not poetry, it's an attempt to explain the universe in human terms and in a way that can be understood easily.

Plus, back in those days it's impossible to separate out science, philosophy and religious faith. Personally I think one day the same thing will happen - that at present we are in a necessary phase of invesitgation that separation and specialisation are the norm, but that at some point the delineations between the sciences will truly end (it's already happening but on a small scale), and that eventually the idea that arts/philosophy and science are opposites will be reconciled - and in doing so create a concept of reality that transcends anything we can currently know or comprehend.

Admittedly for this the humam brain will probably have to evolve significantly into a single functional organism (I reckon that dualist thinking is a direct result of having a dualistic brain structure), but that this will only happen through radical environmental change or us physically altering ourselves...

 

[Fruitloop]

It's an ingenious argument, - but, I think it's a misconception to think that whoever described the sun as a chariot driven across the heavens by Apollo was attempting the ancient greek equivalent of science. They were attempting poetry.

On the extrapolation of billiard balls, fair point, but it's a bad extrapolation, trying to put a materialist mechanist account of the universe that more or less works for inanimate objects at our scale, on to the subatomic scale. But the subatomic scale is more fundamental than our scale. Maybe the problem's with materialist mechanism rather than extrapolation per se.

Trying to extrapolate from two dubious and different forms of extrapolations to a general position that extrapolating ways of thinking from one scale to another is a sure way of getting wrong answers, seems to me to be an extrapolation too far.

By far the most noble and ancient tradition of getting really really wrong answers, is the human tradition of being convinced that -now- They really understood everything and there was nothing further to discover.

I can see why extrapolating from ideas of venerable powerful men, to the idea that God is an old man in a big hall in the sky with a big beard is a bad extrapolation,- I don't see why it is for the idea of a universal consciousness.

Well, Newtonian mechanics is great if you want to predict the flight of a cricket ball, so it's not exactly 'wrong'. As for the quantum explanation being 'more fundamental', well that's dangerous ground you're standing on IMO!

My point was not that extrapolation from one scale to another is a sure way of getting wrong answers (since then the counterfactual would helpfully provide us with a means of getting right answers, which sadly it doesn't), it's more about the psychological fact that we have an innate sense of how the world should be, a 'folk psychology', a 'naive physics' etc etc, which constitutes an essential core of our remarkeable intuitive understanding of the world on the human scale. However there is a danger in this given that we also have an abstract and discursive intelligence that is capable of comprehending things far beyond that scale, i.e. that the discursive aspect gets sidetracked by the intuitive inner models of the world into assigning radically illogical degrees of probablity to ideas that in a purely rational sense are incredibly unlikely.

 

[Demosthenes]

Because the very notion that the universe required a conscious action to set it into motion implicitly takes the idea that humans only create things (houses) out of conscious will, and that something as big as the universe might (or in the case of the creationists has to), therefore have also come from a similar process. That's the basic notion of ID - that something as complex as out universe couldn't have come about by chance, that there must be a guiding consiousness or force that bought it about.

That's always seemed like a perfectly good analogy/argument to me. Though not a decisive one. Put it together with loads of other experiences and arguments, and it seems like one that should be taken seriously.

I kind of imagine the ancients making up their stories simply as stories, without any notion of trying to make true explanations, - and I guess if you could go and challenge them about the truth of their ideas, they'd think you were daft for thinking that they thought it was true. The sun is a great chariot crossing the sky, - seems more like the kind of thing you tell a child who keeps asking questions, when you know perfectly well you don't know the answer. Successful ways of keeping quiet curious children become cultural truths.

Incidentally, Did you know, Erwin Schrodinger, the man with the funny cat, also thought the idea of a universal consciousness was a good one.
He wrote, "The sum total of all minds is one." First sentence of Chapter 23, Mind and matter. I'd love to find out more about that. But I don't have the book, just the quote.

"eventually the idea that arts/philosophy and science are opposites will be reconciled - and in doing so create a concept of reality that transcends anything we can currently know or comprehend."

It would be nice to see it,- but I can't see it happening while science as a whole doesn't take consciousness seriously. And while I expect it's not true of you that your atheism stops you from taking consciousness seriously, I think, in general, in science, that's exactly what atheism does. OK, it's true, that atheism doesn't strictly mean materialism, - -- but 99% of people don't make that subtle distinction. And shit, if you can believe in the possibility of Q, then why not, "God", what have you got against god, - is it rational?

 

[Fruitloop]

I'm an atheist that takes consciousness seriously! I don't see the conflict to be honest.

 

[kyser_soze]

Because the word 'God', and the definition of 'God' is something I won't hold with - there's too much semantic baggage, plus it doesn't square with my notion of the way the universe is put together. That and my own personal belief about consciousness is that it's just an evolved piece of chemistry that enables us to hold a greater level of personal awareness of the world around us. I don't think there's anything mystical about it at all - everything comes from evolution, and if it's part of us it's part of this universe (as Fruitloop points out above)

Plus of course, the Q are themselves the result of cosmic evolution - they are not creators or destroyers of anything (which if you're familiar with the Q storylines is why Picard and Janeways' 'Q' is called a rebel cos he violates their version of the Prime Directive...anyway, enough Trek...)

 

[fudgefactorfive]

Can you tell me what came before the Big Bang?

meaningless question. you may as well ask what is the sound of one-hand clapping. there was no "before". makes no sense to ask "what came before the start of time", just as it makes no sense to ask "what is outside of all space".

the big bang happened because there was no other way it could have happened.

 

[Crispy]

What does the surface of a cone look like above the point?
There is no 'above' the point of a cone.
There is no 'before' the bug bang.

This is a perfect example of Fruitloops's 'human scale' of understanding.

 

[Gromit]

you may as well ask what is the sound of one-hand clapping.

"No sound" is the expected correct answer to that zen koan.

Did you think that question had no answer? Duh!