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JC39

This is a thought I find fascinating. If it turns out there is no god and everything is purely science, then surely you arent a person. Youre just a group of complex molecules that act in a way that they think they are living.

Thoughts have to come from somewhere. One could argue that they come from your mind which is something extraordinary and may not b black and white science.

However if thoughts and feelings are just simply different protein hormones and such, then surely you dont decide what you do or how you feel its just the chemicals and stuff.

 

Fillabong

Watch Waking Life. It's a film you might enjoy

Yeah, when you feel good, I think that's just seratonin and other neurotransmitters staying in the synaptic cleft for longer and in larger volumes. You can equate every emotion with a change in biochemistry.

vladimir

but most of what goes on in our brain cannot simply be explained by a change in one substance. most of the time, there are a lot of things working together to create whatever we feel, and this is why the human brain is such a big mystery to science. even just for the feeling of happy, theres at least 10 different neurotransmitters that can play a role in that.

Green Love

I know I may not sound real scientific, but from what I have learned science is only getting closer and closer to God. Everytime we find the cause for ie "a seratonin release" we only uncover reasons for that and so forth. I feel as we constantly delve deeper and deeper we will eventually come to an understanding of who/what we are.

Cassius

The scary thing is that religion and science BOTH argue for predestination, sort of. The Bible refers to humans as pots of clay, and says, "The potter makes one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour... who is the pot to ask the potter 'Why hast thou made me thus?'". Science, too, suggests on a basic level that most of your decisions could only have gone one way. When you get up in the morning and ponder whether to have Raisin Bran or Cheerios, there are an inordinate amount of influences on you to choose either way -- you have a predilection for Cheerios, and so you choose that, and in retrospect you couldn't have chosen any other.

Where these theories break down, in my opinion, is that the ability to choose (free will) comes in the gap between stimulus and response. Think about it. However, that is an ability not often exercised. It requires proactivity, and most people live their entire lives reactively.

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vladimir

yea, that part when he was talking about how everything we do is the result of some chemical interactions and phyiscal guidelines changed my life. though i think theres more to life than what he said (half of that movie is not meant to be taken seriously), it is interesting to see that extreme end of it.

Green Love

Holy ****! I just picked between raisenbran and cheerios. I'm eating Cheerios right now.

jjbongalong

I think it was Laplace who postulated the idea that if the universe consisted of ideal systems working on exact rules, then if all the information in the universe was gathered in an instant, then it could be put into models of the systems and extrapolated into the future with 100% accuracy.

Now we know that this is not possible for several reasons:

Information must travel at a velocity less than or equal to the speed of light, (light cones) in a given length of time we can only affect things within a certain radius of us.

There is no universal now- time is relative, so systems working in different space cannot be compared easily, as they are in different inertial frames.

Both momentum (hence velocity) and position cannot be certain at the same instant, and neither can energy and time. So quantum theory shows that particles do not have a specific position, but will adapt to a certain mode when an operation is acted on them, hence have a wave function.



I personally like the last one, as it gives room for free-will, as uncertainty, and differences in position, time, energy, etc. allows for changes which are too small to be easily concieved, but may have a profound effect on our brain.

Then again, perhaps quantum theory is wrong, and there are specific equations too complicated for us to understand yet, and the universe is in a state of unchangeable motion.

JJBongalong.

sideoftheroad

What's wrong with being a group of chemicals that behave like a machine?!

I mean there really is no difference between a blade of grass on your lawn and a sequoia towering hundreds of feet... yet when we see that tree we are in awe.

It may be a highly-specialized plant who's sole purpose is to grow to acquire more light so it can in turn grow some more (all which are governed by hormones and chemicals reacting), but holy **** if you see that you are going to have a religious experience guaranteed

I probably do have more choice than that tree does, but my choices aren't really 100% up to my mind. I mean I still must eat and breath and sleep, but I can choose WHEN. Even then, if I was in the woods (and not my kitchen) it wouldn't be a simple choice of "I wish to eat now", I could starve to death trying to find food.

So yeah, the choices mad in our brain are influenced by millions of chemicals and factors - the glucose level in my body, hormones (which could be seen as infatuation/anger/sadness), etc.

But it still doesn't take the surprise and wonder out of life!

PotShot

We are a machine, and our mind is a computer.

There is certainly mathmatics that we do not understand. I believe with adequate understanding, it would be possible to predict the future, or from a much larger level of intelligence, take a snapshot of the cosmos and therefore be able to predict the rest of its future... as well as replay its past.

Prediction is after all the nature of intelligence. The ability to understand cause and effect, and that is what we are; We are a group of matter that has the ability to intelligently manipulate its surroundings.

Our machine is also equipped with networking abilities, we can, to an extent, link up with each other via spoken and written language. We share ideas, and pool wisdom to amplify our intelligence.

Some machines are better than others at tranfering data, with a more pricise language, a language consisting of 1 and 0.

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