[ExI] Science or Scientism?

[William Flynn Wallace]

Where little is known about something, there you will find the most
theories about it, not excepting the most bizarre ones anyone can think
of.  bill w

On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 10:02 AM Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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