Can the Religious Be Trusted?

[Gary Childress]

Why? You've never paid me for my service to you. Isn't chatting on a forum pretty much free?

You never asked.

OK. So if I ask you for $1000.00 (an enormous discount) are you going to pay?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Sorry, I have a strict ethical policy: I cannot give money either to a) religious nutters or b) schizophrenics.

[Gary Childress]

Sorry, I have a strict ethical policy: I cannot give money either to a) religious nutters or b) schizophrenics.

Oh well. We'll have to ask Mike if he gives money to posers on philosophy forums who pretend to be wiser than everyone else.

[BigMike]

It is not a “lazy dismissal” to express what it is that I notice about your perceptual system, the predicates that inform it, and the ideology that you created or that results from that ideology. Not at all.

By “obsession” I mean an intensity of focus on a select set of ideas and notions. These “determine” the ideology you have formed.

The long and the short of it, if you really wanted to reduce this to basic elements, is that I do not care what means you employ to arrive at your anthropological ideology that man (i.e. me, you, the next guy) does not have agency (as I define agency). I disagree with this operative conclusion andcregard it as false. However, I do recognize and accept that it is utterly and incontrovertibly real in your mind. Carry on!

The very ability to conceptualize “options” and review “patterns,” which you insist distinguishes humans from rolling rocks or robots, is itself determined by the current state of your neural network. The options you perceive, the thoughts you entertain, and the decisions you make are all constrained and shaped by this deterministic system.

My view is that in this is where your core “error” is located.

Since I do not dispute, nor would I dispute, that a “neural network” located in space and time exists, and is “conditioned” as such, my thrust is only that a man — you or I or some other — have access to act let’s say creatively and intelligently within that limitation. I reject this phrasing:

Here’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

We are not merely “rocks rolling downhill” nor molecules of water impelled along determined, unalterable paths. I accept a grounding in biological structure however, and can include the brain’s functions in my understanding of “mind” (as in IC’s usage).

But I cannot go along with you nor your obsessed posture. There are many different reasons why, but the larger on has to do with how destructive such a reduction would be to knowledge and understanding (in my sense of these).

To reduce us to “rolling rocks” and to state that we “don’t control [our] thoughts, [our] desires, or [our] decisions. That [we] are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli” will result in undermining the self (and the persona) in our world. But this does not negate external inputs, biological processes, nor environmental stimuli!

They must all be considered in a holistic way.

And as you know I do accept that a “realm of the metaphysical” exists. And though I cannot explain it in terms amenable to science terms (materialist philosophy) I not only “believe in” a supernatural power but understand that I have a relationship to it. But how it can be described as acting on the physical world is a puzzle for me personally.

(Since we won’t go much further here, and because I need moolah, I will reduce your $1,500.00 debt to $750.00 if that helps.)

Alexis, at this very moment, as we engage in this dialogue, you are precisely the culmination of every deterministic process that has brought you to this point—just as I am. We are, in the most concrete sense, "rocks rolling downhill" or molecules moving along determined paths. This isn't a metaphor designed to belittle or undermine; it's a description of how every moment is shaped by the physical laws governing all things, including our brains.

Right now, your neural network—its current state, shaped by your biology, your experiences, and your environment—determines the thoughts you're having, the objections you're raising, and even the emotions you feel about this conversation. You don’t escape this reality by insisting on "creative and intelligent" action within limitations. Those very acts of creativity and intelligence are themselves the products of the deterministic processes you want to resist.

Here’s the catch: understanding this doesn't negate the beauty or significance of choosing to act. If, in this very moment, your neural network is wired to grasp the profound implications of determinism, you might decide to expose yourself to experiences that enrich your life—studying, painting, singing, or even reconsidering long-held beliefs. If you don’t understand it right now, you won’t take that step. Not this time. Maybe next time. Or maybe not. It all depends on the cascade of causes unfolding within and around you.

Perhaps you find this unsettling. Maybe you're just slow to see the elegance of the deterministic reality I’m describing. But slow or fast, resistant or accepting, you are every bit as determined as the rolling rock or the rushing stream. The only difference is that your complexity allows you the illusion of control, which you cherish despite it being just that—an illusion.

[henry quirk]

If, in this very moment, your neural network is wired to grasp the profound implications of determinism, you might decide to expose yourself to experiences that enrich your life—studying, painting, singing, or even reconsidering long-held beliefs.

Not possible, Mike.

What you mean to say is...

If, in this very moment, your neural network is wired to accept a certain input, you will be driven to expose yourself to other inputs which may drive you to apply color to a surface, or make noise.

Grasping implications (profound or picayune), decisions, life-enrichment, art, introspection: these are what a person does, not the meat machine you describe AJ as.

[Dubious]

Now, let’s get to the crux of your claim: that humans are capable of “changing or affecting conditioning” through choice. This is tautological nonsense. Of course, humans can change their conditioning—but only through deterministic processes like learning, memory, and adaptation.

The human brain is complex enough to contain multiple deterministic processes; it's how they interact beyond simply learning, memory and adaptation which highlights the uncertainty of a purely deterministic process within a multifunctional, multiplexed organ which is seldom certain if it won't negate the prior programmed response.

Also, within the sequence of learning, memory, and adaptation it is the latter which becomes individualized in having to digest the contents of learning and memory; in that respect, almost everyone evaluates differently except when one is made to master a discipline upon established knowledge and tested accordingly.

The deterministic processes, as you name them, express themselves as variable, if they manifest from a singular or core foundation into a plurality of interactions where its deterministic agents begin to overlap becoming much more fluid when summarized into a single process.

The brain operates like a fugue of many interweaving themes combining and separating with each theme based on its own rules.

[Atla]

Anyway FYI, this forum fell about 5 years ago to the religious nutters and the schizophrenic nutters (and the religious-schizophrenic nutters), so don't feel too bad about not achieving much here. This forum is mainly for entertainment.

That explains a lot! Thanks.

Might I recommend that at the very least you offer a payment for his valuable service?

Nah it's fine, I don't charge people for simple stuff like this.

Now after decades of effort, I also came up with probably the best explanation for our existence. It's an entirely novel idea that no one had thought of before, extremely simple in a sense but also extremely outside the box and difficult to grasp. I've never revealed it to anyone nor do intend to, but a hefty sum might change my mind. (Besides, trust me people, you don't want to know.)

[Age]

That explains a lot! Thanks.

Might I recommend that at the very least you offer a payment for his valuable service?

Nah it's fine, I don't charge people for simple stuff like this.

Now after decades of effort, I also came up with probably the best explanation for our existence. It's an entirely novel idea that no one had thought of before, extremely simple in a sense but also extremely outside the box and difficult to grasp. I've never revealed it to anyone nor do intend to, but a hefty sum might change my mind. (Besides, trust me people, you don't want to know.)

LOL

[Atla]

Might I recommend that at the very least you offer a payment for his valuable service?

Nah it's fine, I don't charge people for simple stuff like this.

Now after decades of effort, I also came up with probably the best explanation for our existence. It's an entirely novel idea that no one had thought of before, extremely simple in a sense but also extremely outside the box and difficult to grasp. I've never revealed it to anyone nor do intend to, but a hefty sum might change my mind. (Besides, trust me people, you don't want to know.)

LOL

The TRRUUUuuUuuUUUUuuTH is likely not what Age thinks it is, not even close.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Right now, your neural network—its current state, shaped by your biology, your experiences, and your environment—determines the thoughts you're having, the objections you're raising, and even the emotions you feel about this conversation. You don’t escape this reality by insisting on "creative and intelligent" action within limitations. Those very acts of creativity and intelligence are themselves the products of the deterministic processes you want to resist.

You believe you have very important messages to communicate to other people, and your presentation, your ideologically driven shtick, is rhetorically geared to that. What I notice, what I focus on, is the psychological and psychic element in that which you feel provides you with — and this is quite essential — a meaning-set to which you are committing yourself. Surely you are involved in a truth searching project and, here in these pages, in overblown posts (posts after posts after posts), evince what is obvious to others, less obvious to you, a near-religious zealousness.

The foundation of your certainty is located in your absolutist descriptions of neuronal processes which, in your adamant view, and one supported by the sheer bedrock of evidentiary science, is a perceptual and ideological basis for your “preaching the gospel truth” in forms that, for you, are inarguable. This is how you set it up:

“I am presenting to you an incontrovertible view of Reality. It is as I am stating it. No other view, no other interpretation is possible. And try as I might I cannot get through to people, wedded to their emotionally determined illusions & fantasies.”

Do you get it? You are wielding a narrative and you have specific objectives in mind. My suggestion to you is that you turn around enough so that you can begin to see this. There is a function in your overblown rehearsal of these ideological diatribes. Those functions are not simple because, obviously, they are deeply psychological. Many in this forum have sent up objections to your absolutist formulations, and you have shot down every one of them!

I suggest paying attention to this driving adamancy.

There are different ways to look at, to interpret, the brain and consciousness too. For example you have ears that hear sounds, and sounds can only be “heard” when there is an instrument: the ear. However, what is there to be heard exists independently of the instrument. Same with the marvelous •eye•. You likely see where I am tending here. Let’s say that our brain is a tremendously complex, and fabulous (but also a limited biological structure) that becomes capable of becoming conscious. Is it possible that similarly to the ear’s hearing and the eye’s seeing — dependent on biological structures — that the biological apparatus of the brain is a reception device for all that the word “consciousness” means for us? Kind of a netting device that receives, and translates to our psyche, that which can be known about “our mysterious universe” in Carlyle’s terms?

Cutting to the chase let me say that 1) I do not negate the brain’s functions as you aptly describe them, but 2) I do not feel psychologically driven to “believe” what you have concluded from your “transports” in the realm of sciency interpretations of Reality, of this manifest world, of my being in this world.

When I examine your discourse, your rhetorical constructs, in combo with your neo-religious zealousness, I see a preacher who is “up to something”. You have an end in mind. You are pursuing that end through a project consisting of an attempt to create a convincing, compelling argument that is capable of converting your listeners to your doctrinal platform! You tell me this involves (in essence) creating a better world (etc etc — you have a whole spiel about this).

My view? You need to look more closely at all this presumption.

[Please note that in Chapter 7, Subsection 14 of The Course entitled “Biting into the Magic Sciential Apple” I offer humanity a path to a more rounded, a more grounded, way of being in our confusing world at this unusual juncture between conflicting explanatory systems (“ideational scaffolding”) that, in senses that can be noted, are tearing people apart. Please, PLEASE, consider signing up.]

Speaking of fugues ….

[BigMike]

Right now, your neural network—its current state, shaped by your biology, your experiences, and your environment—determines the thoughts you're having, the objections you're raising, and even the emotions you feel about this conversation. You don’t escape this reality by insisting on "creative and intelligent" action within limitations. Those very acts of creativity and intelligence are themselves the products of the deterministic processes you want to resist.

You believe you have very important messages to communicate to other people, and your presentation, your ideologically driven shtick, is rhetorically geared to that. What I notice, what I focus on, is the psychological and psychic element in that which you feel provides you with — and this is quite essential — a meaning-set to which you are committing yourself. Surely you are involved in a truth searching project and, here in these pages, in overblown posts (posts after posts after posts), evince what is obvious to others, less obvious to you, a near-religious zealousness.

The foundation of your certainty is located in your absolutist descriptions of neuronal processes which, in your adamant view, and one supported by the sheer bedrock of evidentiary science, is a perceptual and ideological basis for your “preaching the gospel truth” in forms that, for you, are inarguable. This is how you set it up:

“I am presenting to you an incontrovertible view of Reality. It is as I am stating it. No other view, no other interpretation is possible. And try as I might I cannot get through to people, wedded to their emotionally determined illusions & fantasies.”

Do you get it? You are wielding a narrative and you have specific objectives in mind. My suggestion to you is that you turn around enough so that you can begin to see this. There is a function in your overblown rehearsal of these ideological diatribes. Those functions are not simple because, obviously, they are deeply psychological. Many in this forum have sent up objections to your absolutist formulations, and you have shot down every one of them!

I suggest paying attention to this driving adamancy.

There are different ways to look at, to interpret, the brain and consciousness too. For example you have ears that hear sounds, and sounds can only be “heard” when there is an instrument: the ear. However, what is there to be heard exists independently of the instrument. Same with the marvelous •eye•. You likely see where I am tending here. Let’s say that our brain is a tremendously complex, and fabulous (but also a limited biological structure) that becomes capable of becoming conscious. Is it possible that similarly to the ear’s hearing and the eye’s seeing — dependent on biological structures — that the biological apparatus of the brain is a reception device for all that the word “consciousness” means for us? Kind of a netting device that receives, and translates to our psyche, that which can be known about “our mysterious universe” in Carlyle’s terms?

Cutting to the chase let me say that 1) I do not negate the brain’s functions as you aptly describe them, but 2) I do not feel psychologically driven to “believe” what you have concluded from your “transports” in the realm of sciency interpretations of Reality, of this manifest world, of my being in this world.

When I examine your discourse, your rhetorical constructs, in combo with your neo-religious zealousness, I see a preacher who is “up to something”. You have an end in mind. You are pursuing that end through a project consisting of an attempt to create a convincing, compelling argument that is capable of converting your listeners to your doctrinal platform! You tell me this involves (in essence) creating a better world (etc etc — you have a whole spiel about this).

My view? You need to look more closely at all this presumption.

[Please note that in Chapter 7, Subsection 14 of The Course entitled “Biting into the Magic Sciential Apple” I offer humanity a path to a more rounded, a more grounded, way of being in our confusing world at this unusual juncture between conflicting explanatory systems (“ideational scaffolding”) that, in senses that can be noted, are tearing people apart. Please, PLEASE, consider signing up.]

Speaking of fugues ….

Alexis, your verbose ramblings are little more than a self-indulgent mess of pseudo-intellectual fluff. You think you’re profound, but all you’ve done is wrap incoherence in word salad. Spare us the lectures; your "chase" never gets cut, and your attempts to philosophize are as empty as your endless tangents.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It’s hard, Mike, it is really hard, nearly an insuperable difficulty, to become critically conscious of one’s own habitual assumptions.

TE Hulme said: “Doctrines felt as facts can only be seen to be doctrines, and not facts, after great efforts of thought, and usually with the aid of a first-rate metaphysician.”

In your case, and in your last post, you present for all to see the hard hard shell of your adamancy. You tell people they must abandon their views, their understanding, and subscribe to yours. And no matter what anyone has said to you so far, you refuse to be influenced.

You construct your defense through aggressive dismissals (using the “royal we” I might add!) constructed with this boilerplate:

Alexis, your verbose ramblings are little more than a self-indulgent mess of pseudo-intellectual fluff. You think you’re profound, but all you’ve done is wrap incoherence in word salad. Spare us the lectures; your "chase" never gets cut, and your attempts to philosophize are as empty as your endless tangents.

It is your prerogative, BigMike. But if you asked me I’d recommend that you modify the posture.

Any ideas that are not precisely yours, all that has been presented to you, has been pseudo-intellectual fluff and “word salad”.

That is the entirety if your shtick.

I only want to point this out and, connected to that, make reference to the psychological configuration that I assume (intuit?) produces this. I do place a good deal of emphasis on our psychology, though I admit that realm of consideration is outside or beside conversations strictly on ideas per se.

Determinism's Gift [Master Alexis] to the PN Forum has intoned: There are different ways to look at, to interpret, the brain and consciousness too. For example you have ears that hear sounds, and sounds can only be “heard” when there is an instrument: the ear. However, what is there to be heard exists independently of the instrument. Same with the marvelous •eye•. You likely see where I am tending here. Let’s say that our brain is a tremendously complex, and fabulous (but also a limited biological) structure that becomes capable of becoming conscious. Is it possible that similarly to the ear’s hearing and the eye’s seeing — dependent on biological structures — that the biological apparatus of the brain is a reception device for all that the word “consciousness” means for us? Kind of a netting device that receives, and translates to our psyche, that which can be known about “our mysterious universe” in Carlyle’s terms?

Nothing to say, BigMike?

[Dubious]

The world is a nuthouse for which you can blame our brains as the main culprit and determinant but you can't blame us who never wanted it to be this way

[BigMike]

It’s hard, Mike, it is really hard, nearly an insuperable difficulty, to become critically conscious of one’s own habitual assumptions.

TE Hulme said: “Doctrines felt as facts can only be seen to be doctrines, and not facts, after great efforts of thought, and usually with the aid of a first-rate metaphysician.”

In your case, and in your last post, you present for all to see the hard hard shell of your adamancy. You tell people they must abandon their views, their understanding, and subscribe to yours. And no matter what anyone has said to you so far, you refuse to be influenced.

You construct your defense through aggressive dismissals (using the “royal we” I might add!) constructed with this boilerplate:

Alexis, your verbose ramblings are little more than a self-indulgent mess of pseudo-intellectual fluff. You think you’re profound, but all you’ve done is wrap incoherence in word salad. Spare us the lectures; your "chase" never gets cut, and your attempts to philosophize are as empty as your endless tangents.

It is your prerogative, BigMike. But if you asked me I’d recommend that you modify the posture.

Any ideas that are not precisely yours, all that has been presented to you, has been pseudo-intellectual fluff and “word salad”.

That is the entirety if your shtick.

I only want to point this out and, connected to that, make reference to the psychological configuration that I assume (intuit?) produces this. I do place a good deal of emphasis on our psychology, though I admit that realm of consideration is outside or beside conversations strictly on ideas per se.

Determinism's Gift [Master Alexis] to the PN Forum has intoned: There are different ways to look at, to interpret, the brain and consciousness too. For example you have ears that hear sounds, and sounds can only be “heard” when there is an instrument: the ear. However, what is there to be heard exists independently of the instrument. Same with the marvelous •eye•. You likely see where I am tending here. Let’s say that our brain is a tremendously complex, and fabulous (but also a limited biological) structure that becomes capable of becoming conscious. Is it possible that similarly to the ear’s hearing and the eye’s seeing — dependent on biological structures — that the biological apparatus of the brain is a reception device for all that the word “consciousness” means for us? Kind of a netting device that receives, and translates to our psyche, that which can be known about “our mysterious universe” in Carlyle’s terms?

Nothing to say, BigMike?

Alexis,

You accuse me of being adamant, dismissive, and resistant to influence, yet here you are, trotting out the same tired rhetorical gymnastics and vague metaphysical speculation that serve only to avoid engaging with the actual points at hand. Let’s not pretend this is about open inquiry or mutual understanding. You’re not interested in grappling with my arguments—you’re interested in grandstanding.

Let’s cut through the fluff. You suggest the brain might be a "reception device" for consciousness, akin to an ear hearing sound or an eye seeing light. This is nothing more than unsubstantiated metaphysical hand-waving. Where’s your evidence? Consciousness isn’t some mystical signal floating around in the ether; it’s the result of deterministic, physical processes within the brain. We know this because when you alter the brain—through injury, drugs, or disease—you alter consciousness. There’s no need for poetic analogies when the science is clear: the brain isn’t "receiving" consciousness; it’s generating it.

Your entire response is an exercise in evasion. Instead of addressing the specific points I’ve raised—like how learning and memory operate deterministically, or how symbols are grounded in physical processes—you retreat into abstractions about "psychological configurations" and "habitual assumptions." That’s not an argument; it’s a distraction.

You claim I dismiss ideas that aren’t mine. Wrong. I dismiss ideas that aren’t substantiated, that fail to engage with the evidence, and that hide behind lofty rhetoric instead of offering coherent reasoning. If you think that’s unfair, then prove me wrong. Show me where your "reception device" theory explains anything better than the established understanding of consciousness as a product of neural activity. Until then, spare me the condescension.

You want me to "modify my posture"? Here’s a recommendation for you: stop pontificating about how others are closed-minded and start addressing the actual arguments. Because until you do, all your talk of "amphibious approaches" and "synthesizing minds" is just noise—empty, self-congratulatory noise. If you have something substantive to say, say it. Otherwise, don’t waste my time.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You accuse me of being adamant, dismissive, and resistant to influence

Accuse is not the right word, and this is not my intention. My objective is to see you and the ideology that you construct within a context — that of intellectual evolution or perhaps devolution. The qualities or the characteristics I notice in you are the qualities that seem to define the age we are in. When I comment about you I am actually speaking to that. Your adamancy arises from within these absolutisms that you are so involved with. You have no other choice, really, but to *dismiss* any notion that does not conform to the ideology you develop. And to influence you to consider other models is impossible, because of your adamancy, your dismissiveness, etc. You seem to me to operate in a closed loop.

rhetorical gymnastics and vague metaphysical speculation

Those are your labels, naturally. And their purpose is dismissiveness. What other choice do you have but to assign them? Unlike you, I do not dismiss metaphysics because what is metaphysical, to everything that is grasped by a “brute” perception, unquestionably exists. I know, I keep repeating this and you will keep rejecting the import of it, but this can’t be helped.

I presented one alternative to the views you have and the purpose of my reference was to demonstrate how different orderings of perception can and will allow for different results. The reason I do this is because I notice that the system that you are developing is destructive to *realms of knowledge* that you, necessarily, must dismiss. It is entirely plausible, if the eye and the ear are compared to *the brain*, that the brain develops to receive consciousness. And consciousness that is latent in this weird Cosmos. Again, I was sort of riffing of of the Carlyle quote. And yes, I get that everything that does not accord with your established views is *fluff*.

You suggest the brain might be a "reception device" for consciousness, akin to an ear hearing sound or an eye seeing light. This is nothing more than unsubstantiated metaphysical hand-waving

Actually I could respond by noting that the idea is compatible, in one example, with some Eastern ideas from yoga-philosophy that man is a perceiving instrument and that he can, and perhaps must, increase his capability to *receive* what is there to receive. Obviously this fits with some of my own notions about receiving impulses from what is *divine* and “angelic” and I regret a little that these ideas seem utterly retrograde to responsible modernists. But please remember that I agreed, largely, with your initial assertion that man finds himself in a terribly conditioned situation with just *a cubic centimeter of chance* to alter the current of causation and conditioning that has him in its grip. Another way to understand the connotation in the symbol of the Fall. And yes, again, I recognize that these present references can only make you gag!

“This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.”

Obviously, the *eye* is not the physical eye but more the mind and more our consciousness. And if our *mind* is really what we need to hone, or nourish, or purify (?) then one’s relationship to one’s self really does become different (than what I understand of your anthropological-ideological project).

you retreat into abstractions about "psychological configurations" and "habitual assumptions”

That is one way to negatively describe it. There are other, more favorable, alternatives.

You want me to "modify my posture"? Here’s a recommendation for you: stop pontificating about how others are closed-minded and start addressing the actual arguments

I have definitely been involved in thinking about and addressing what I think are the ramifications of your ideas, what the consequences of your ideas seem to me to be, could be, might be. Your advent here to this forum is very fortunate in my opinion. But obviously (in my case) not for the reasons you’d suppose nor are you achieving (with me) what you seem to desire.