Okay, not struggling anymore. just going to point out the many contradictions.
We are both meaningless and meaningful. I'm not going to define it quantitatively.
We can't be both meaningless and meaningful. Instead of hiding behind a paradox, you should have just admitted it was wrong.
We make our own meaning. We are valued as much as we are valued....this is strongly subjective.
If there is no objective meaning or value to human life, then there is nothing wrong with killing anyone at any time.
"Right to live" is an interesting phrase.
the right to live is considered to be one of the basic human rights. it's not a strange new idea.
I don't know if robots or machines have a "right" to live. I suppose they don't until robots reach a point of consciousness. If they can feel empathy, etc,etc. Even my cats have emotion and sentience. Zygotes have none of that.
Unconscious people also do not have empathy, emotion, or sentience. If someone gets knocked unconscious, are you allowed to kill them?
I know it has to do with the brain.
there's actually no way to prove that it's all in the brain, and even an attempt to disprove it would require human experimentation.
You can't predict it completely in ALL cases because of the slight random factor that I mentioned of neuron firings.
sigh. if you believe in determinism, randomness is an illusion. this A is not B but B is A nonsense is getting old.
You asked, "Why does it matter if we die?". What an odd question.. It should be fairly obvious...
yes, it should be fairly obvious why I asked -- you said we were all meaningless.
we have an attachment to people...we care about one another. We are all in this together. We are emotionally, physically, spiritually and genetically bound with other people.
You are talking about subjectively valuing other people, but if subjective value is the only value people have, then objectively, people are meaningless and their life and death doesn't matter.
we all will die in our physical bodies but will live on spiritually
If we live on spiritually, as you say, then consciousness is not just about the brain.
I'm really baffled as far as what you're getting at with this question
How can you be baffled when you yourself said we are all meaningless? How is it that hard to get the implications of your own statement? Do you just say these things to avoid thinking?
Maybe it doesn't matter because in the long run no one will remember me in 100 years or whatever, but it matters now while I'm here.
no no no, it either matters, or it doesn't matter. You have to choose one to believe in, or else your whole argument is a lie.
I love all animals and I love life.
you don't love zygotes apparently. do you just pretend things aren't alive when it suits you?
You seem to again be equating the "human spirit' with consciousness. This is a mistake.
No, I didn't -- I said, if you say you are more valuable than a zygote because of 'sentience' which no one can define or pinpoint, then, pro-lifers can say a zygote is a human being because of 'human spirit' which also can't be defined or pinpointed.
However, it is true that consciousness is characteristic of all life.
I really wasn't trying to talk about anything transcendent though. I do believe in transcendence but I wasn't really talking about that here...not sure why you brought it up.
any belief in a human right to life requires something transcendent. the trouble is getting people to look at the implications of what they say they believe.
Neuroscientists can't define it? Didn't Descartes define it pretty well many many centuries ago with his quote "I think therefore I am"?
1. No they can't, scientists can't answer philosophical questions scientifically, it makes science a religion.
2. No descartes didn't define it. He said that thinking proves he exists, yes, but it doesn't define the limits of existence or of consciousness, because he wasn't aware of all thoughts, only his own.
I hope you're starting to see how little sense you're making.
It's definitely in the brain. No brain, no consciousness.
how do we prove this? how do you prove that a person -never- experiences more consciousness after their ability to communicate via their brain and body is ended?
(btw you are apparently switching beliefs in this post because you already said you believed in transcendence and life after death)
There is no scientific evidence for anything "deserving" to live. Why should there be?
because you cited neuroscience when arguing that a zygote does not have sentience and therefore does not 'deserve' to live. where is your scientific proof that you have sentience? where is your scientific proof of this criteria that says you deserve to live and the zygote doesn't?
There is nothing nihilistic or degrading about anything I said. I don't know God see's us. I know He loves us. I love us too.
You don't love someone if you think they are a meaningless meat robot or a machine of chemical processes. Please stop switching back and forth between materialist worldview and christian worldview.
The Jeremiah verse everyone always quotes clearly states knowing "BEFORE" being formed in the womb. And God didn't form anyone in the womb either... It's a metaphor.
It's a metaphor? Was the consecration a metaphor? Was the speaking to the nations a metaphor? Didn't those things literally happen? It seems like you're just saying it's a metaphor because it isn't convenient for you. How do you know God isn't forming people in wombs in a way that looks natural to us because we can only see the natural part of it?
He's talking about knowing your spirit/soul. This quote is always taken so far out of context.
In the context, God is always answering a symbolic image with a literal explanation. Forming someone in the womb is not followed up with a literal explanation. Therefore, in context, it does not seem to be a symbolic image, but a literal one.
Even though it might be problematic for your political views, there it sits, and btw if we have spirits and souls then you can't say we are just meat robots. Which is it Kisses? have some courage and pick one position and don't abandon it to switch back and forth.
Should they have had that option? Absolutely, in a free society at least.
so you believe that mary should have been allowed to abort God's son? do you think Jesus' consciousness didn't exist until he was born, and ended after his brain ceased to function on the cross?
But I should spend one more second commenting on your mistaken charge of nihilism. There is nothing about Determinism or God's Will that is nihilistic!
What you said after this, and all the other things you've said about decisions and free will and determinism, are false. And also, they don't have anything to do with this debate, but since you keep using it as a distraction, I'll go into it.
Determinism does not require that people have no influence in how things are determined. You may experience your choices and your influence on things as mysterious and seemingly random, so you may think that choice is only choice if it comes from a mysterious unknown place. That is not true. God can know us so thoroughly and so well as to predict every possible choice we make and contain it within his choices. This is how determinism works. Free will never meant indeterminate or random will, it just meant individual will.
Determinism is like an incredibly complex algorithm. When we are within time we are within the algorithm, we can only see the factors in front of us and behind us. When we are outside we can look at the whole thing.
Right now we only have experience making decisions within the algorithm. So we associate decision making with incomplete knowledge. However, decision making comes from our identity, and if we knew ourselves completely, and stood outside of time, we could know the factor that we play in the algorithm, and all the rest of the algorithm, and we would see all our decisions as inevitable manifestations of our own 'variable' in the algorithm.
Your belief that determinism means we have no individual part to play, is an 'optical illusion' of the mind's eye, because you are looking at Time from within time, and applying the rules within time to a perspective outside of it. It's like a fish in a fishbowl assuming the whole world is underwater because he has never experienced anything beyond the fishbowl.
So please stop misapplying the concept of determinism. What you're talking about is -Materialist- determinism which assumes that all factors are physically observable. it's directly opposed to the existence of God. and also it's deceptive, because it's a philosophical belief pretending to be scientific.
Neuroscientists ..have even stimulated parts of the brain ..to get a subject to wave his/her right hand at someone walking across the hall ..this is very impressive and indicative of how consciousness works!
no, it's indicative of how the -brain- works, and it's not that impressive because it only explores one -factor- that influences us, it does not prove that the brain is the only factor, and neuroscience can't prove that because only Omniscience can prove there are no other factors. So instead of being so impressed with science, maybe you should spend some time talking to the one that created everything, if you want to learn something.
We rationalize and essentially make up excuses for everything that we do that we have no control over.
your entire position on (materialist) determination is one big excuse, but I wouldn't call it rational. man's greatest thoughts and theories are just a place to hide from the least of God's truths.
I don't know if we're merely "meat robots". That could be totally wrong.
now. NOW we are getting somewhere. thank you for saying that Kisses.
I borrowed that word from Professor Jerry Coyne who did a lecture...I think it was called bluntly "You Don't Have Freewill". But maybe he's totally wrong.
He is totally wrong, and apparently as a professor, he has made a profession of it. please don't waste time swallowing ignorant notions constructed by feeble mortal minds. the Bible is an introduction to the greatest intelligence we will ever encounter.
I know you're trying hard to trap me in logical or philosophical loopholes about "at what point is abortion acceptable", etc..
No, I was trying to get you to define the value of human life as you see it, so I could point out how your exception of zygotes from human life, could also be used to kill other people, because the exceptions are generally selfish and irrational. But you essentially backed out of defining anything and said it's all subjective, implying there is no truth and therefore no reason to try to be right about anything. Which is the mental implosion of most liberal positions these days.
There are horrible cases with the baby dying a few hours post birth because it's missing a liver or something and why go through all that hardship? .... Again, I don't much care for using it as a birth control. But while it's growing inside the mother, yes, the mothers body and will is worth more than this unconscious growing thing that will end up being a human if allowed to
sigh... here we are again... if someone is unconscious, are they no longer human? I asked this earlier in the post, no need to answer it twice.
and, if there are 100 abortions and 5 of them are due to unavoidable medical hardship, does that mean the other 95 for selfish reasons are morally sound? Exceptions don't justify the norm. A rare hardship doesn't justify frivolous freedom to abort at will.
Most of this discussion has been me pulling the loose screws out of your badly-constructed arguments. But it seems as I do it you frantically heap up more arguments that are even more self-defeating and contradictory. I'm not likely to continue wading through these. If you thought about what you're saying you wouldn't say it, and I shouldn't have to make you think about it. You shouldn't be baffled. Also, you shouldn't swallow the delusions of confused college professors no matter how famous they are. It's nasty stuff and it'll make your mind sick. They're just selling people a place to hide from the big questions.