[ExI] Science or Scientism?

[Will Steinberg]

On Wed, Nov 7, 2018, 09:39 John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com wrote:

>
> ...But that sort of argument comes from people who have rejected the idea
> that God is a intelligent conscious BEING...
>

Just curious, what do you think makes the matter in our brains conscious?
And do you think it is not possible that an entity containing multiple
consicous brains passing information between each other is not conscious?

By that logic, let's consider if your brain was without a particular
module, say Broca's area.  You're still consicous, but aphasic.

Now add in the Broca's area.  Would you not say that this is a more
expansive consicous entity?

Now add a whole other human Brian you're passing information back and forth
with.  You mean to tell me this dyad is not a more expansive conscious
entity than a single brain?  Is the brain a magic special thing that is the
only unit of consciousness?

I thought we got rid of vitalism last century.

In my humble opinion, given the evidence that the matter in our brains is
conscious, and that is composed of smaller conscious units (cf. corpus
callosotomy,) and that the universe is made of the same matter of our
brains, and that everything in the universe is physically contiguous in
spacetime because of our birth from a singularity, it is quite clear that
whatever the universe is has consciousness similar to and more expansive
than any of its constituent parts.  You may say we are too separate in time
from the rest of the universe to be connected in a consicous manner, but
how is that different from the nanoseconds it takes to pass information
from neuron to neuron?

No, I think it is quite rational given overt evidence in the form of
scientific studies in matter and spacetime, and in the form of observing
our own consciousness, that the universe itself is indeed consicous.  Not
only do we not know enough about consicousness to say it only resides in
brains, but it quite explicitly follows, from these valid points of
evidence, that any entity containing smaller conscious entities interacting
(including the contiguous nature of all matter and energy, having
interacted at the singularity) is itself conscious in some way.

Your error is equating 'God' with the childish notion that an
anthropomorphic bearded male figure, who thinks like a human, controls the
universe and can alter causality.  This is a silly, stupid idea and those
who try and truly interpret spiritual thought--the mystics, the
gnostics--have a far more transhuman, gender neutral idea of 'God',
specifically that whatever the universe is, it is a greater consicousness
that contains us--albeit one that cannot be contemplated in human terms
except for structural considerations like 'God is consicous', 'God contains
humanity', &c.

>
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