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This is priceless. Why atheists laugh at religion (satire)

jet57 said:
No people laugh because that's the way fundamentalism comes across.
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Funny. I always find fundamentalists boring and dangerous.
 
Logicman said:
See, this is the kind of hysteria that goes along with your pernicious brand of atheism. You spend hour after hour bashing Christianity and you don't even have your arguments right.

It's obvious you've never studied the "Fall" of man and its consequences for disease, death, etc., and what part the devil also plays in it.

God has delivered hundreds of millions of us via faith in Christ, and God's love for us in eternity.

Personally, I'm thankful the Christ-bashing will come to a quick and final end at the Judgment of the antichrist crowd.

John 8:24
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Nonsense.
 
That's just your opinion against his! I believe that anti-Christian bias is now the only form of acceptable discrimination left in western society. I've seen it and experienced it many times.
 
zyzygy said:
You don't know what the word means?
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I didn't but I do now.
But I saw that the zyzygy spelling isn't used anymore.
Regardless, good to know.
 
Tim the plumber said:
What the hell are you talking about?
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Uh, Tim, the same thing all theists always mean. Now surely you can see the comparative meaning from reading other theists who posts, which their post mean exactly, almost verbatim, the same thing as the gentlemen whom you've question what his post is about. They all mean the very same thing. Does that help?
 
joG said:
Funny. I always find fundamentalists boring and dangerous.
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They are boring and dangerous, but when you put two opposing fundamentalist opinions of God together, you get the real picture. It's sort of like watching a Chinese guy and a Mexican guy together in a conversation when both can barrely speak English! I've seen that many times; and not to make fun, it is really very funny.
 
joG said:
Those are the worst fundamentalists. And they never keep their mouths shut.
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Feeling like your privilege is being pushed back? 'Its principle aim is the sacking of traditional Judaic and Christian values and beliefs, which are revisited through suspect liberal “scholarship” or politically-correct dogma in an effort to replace them with the tenets of moral relativism and the failed social doctrines of today’s liberal elitists.' Damn those liberals and their wanting to make the playing field level.
 
William Rea said:
Feeling like your privilege is being pushed back? 'Its principle aim is the sacking of traditional Judaic and Christian values and beliefs, which are revisited through suspect liberal “scholarship” or politically-correct dogma in an effort to replace them with the tenets of moral relativism and the failed social doctrines of today’s liberal elitists.' Damn those liberals and their wanting to make the playing field level.
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Really! I think you might be caught in a prejudice of your own.
 
ashurbanipal said:
My jaw is agape.

Consciousness is an evolutionary advantage.
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Really? That sounds false to me. Any being that behaved exactly the way I would under the same circumstances would do just as well as me in terms of resource gathering and reproductive success, regardless of whether it was conscious or not.
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consciousness noun (AWAKE) the state of being awake, thinking, and knowing what is happening around you: He lost consciousness after his accident and never recovered/regained it.
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Yep, that's an advantage for gathering resources.

Perhaps even more damaging to your claim is that beings which are surely not conscious seem to be quite successful in evolutionary terms. Since, say, amoebas reproduce by asexual division, it's no exaggeration to say that the original members of their species are still with us today--and they've survived far longer than any conscious species have done.

So, what evolutionary advantage does consciousness provide?
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None if you are a single celled organism but if you need to use your senses to hunt then understanding your world is a fairly basic requirement.

Normally, I'd play coy and ask you what you mean and to give some citations or something, but I'm in a bad mood. Your claim is simply false. No one has any clue how to get a computer to be conscious, let alone "model" it, whatever that might even mean. Worse, no one really has any fresh ideas about how to begin. It's become fairly obvious that the optimism attendant on GOFAI programs, and NAI programs, is unwarranted. We've been "10 years away" from conscious machines for well nigh 60 years.
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Are you aware that driver-less cars are about to hit the roads in a big way? They need to understand what is happening around them.

A start would be just how we go from neurons to mental events.
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Better would be if you were using the word sentience which is what I think you are talking about.

Yes. And how many times has physics been declared nearly complete, only to have new mysteries gape open beneath us? I don't hear anyone making such claims these days...
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I do. But yes there will be a long way to go before we finish physics. We will do that one day though.

This misses the point. Victor Stenger has made the claim (falsely, it seems to appear to many physicists) that we know that the universe arises from the laws of quantum mechanics. Fine: where do the laws of quantum mechanics come from?
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Outside this universe. There are, according to recently demonstrated physics, many many possibly an infinite number, of universes. At least that's according to the TV program I watch last week.

Worse: the Schrodinger Equation requires an initial state. Where did that come from? If there are other universes (say, across m-branes), where did those come from? Where did the branes come from? If the most basic unit of matter is some form of superstring, where did those come from?
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A problem that physics is attacking. My point.

The problem is that matter is intrinsically responsive to causation, but the origin of everything cannot be. That's a problem that simply cannot be resolved.
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Has not been answered yet.

N
o, the gaps evolve as our knowledge grows, and hence myths change. I suspect the next three centuries or so will see the death of many religions, but new ones will spring up because there simply isn't a way to close all gaps. This is partially due to the nature of explanation, which strikes me as intractably epistemic: for any explanation, we can ask for an explanation, ad infinitum. But this is also partially due to substantive facts we've discovered in our empiric investigation of the universe--some of which I've hinted at, above.
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And I disagree. We may reach the end of physics with a complete picture of how it works.

Any god drivel will always use as a starting point the universe as understood at that time. The next discovery obviously will make that religion obviously wrong.
 
Removable Mind said:
Uh, Tim, the same thing all theists always mean. Now surely you can see the comparative meaning from reading other theists who posts, which their post mean exactly, almost verbatim, the same thing as the gentlemen whom you've question what his post is about. They all mean the very same thing. Does that help?
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Oh, don't worry I fully understood where his drivel was heading. I just made sure that it was seen as drivel.

It's the antidote to the hypnotic method of putting your brain into a "groping for meaning" state.
 
Tim the plumber said:
Oh, don't worry I fully understood where his drivel was heading. I just made sure that it was seen as drivel.

It's the antidote to the hypnotic method of putting your brain into a "groping for meaning" state.
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Oh, I knew that you clearly knew - I was just being a little....
 
Tim the Plumber said:
Yep, that's an advantage for gathering resources.
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Surely being conscious means more than just "not being asleep." Again, there doesn't seem to be any particular problem with supposing that there could be someone who behaves exactly like I would in all possible situations, but who is entirely dark inside. Such a being would not be conscious, but would enjoy all the evolutionary success I have enjoyed. The fact that I have a sensation associated with, say, gathering food doesn't seem to have anything necessarily to do with how good I am at gathering it.

Tim the Plumber said:
None if you are a single celled organism but if you need to use your senses to hunt then understanding your world is a fairly basic requirement.
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Two problems:

1) This misses the point, which is that consciousness confers no evolutionary advantage. Nothing in the theory of evolution dictates that there should be anything other than unicellular organisms (or even that there should be those). Creatures with no consciousness do just as well, if not better, than those with consciousness, in terms of reproductive success. If consciousness confers an evolutionary advantage, this cannot be the case. But it is, ergo, consciousness confers no evolutionary advantage.

2) Your reply doesn't describe consciousness. We could, conceivably, invent a robot capable of gathering food and water in the wilderness under the same conditions affecting, and with no better abilities than, human beings. Such a robot could do those things and never once be aware of its actions as such.

Tim the Plumber said:
Are you aware that driver-less cars are about to hit the roads in a big way? They need to understand what is happening around them.
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First, I'm not sure why you keep adverting to understanding, since that seems to be a different thing than consciousness (though one which I think presents its own powerful challenge to materialism). I'm aware of all kinds of stuff I don't understand--I can look at optical illusions and not understand that my visual processes are being tricked. But I don't suddenly go blind in such a situation. I'm still conscious, even though I don't understand my experience.

Second, why do you think driverless cars have to understand anything? It looks to me like they just need to find edges, track movements, and run sufficiently complicated algorithms of navigation and driving tactics. That seems quite different from understanding. I understand driving tolerably well; I could write a manual for drivers. I can train someone to drive pretty well, and even probably tailor a driving education program for someone with a disability. I take those to be hallmarks of my understanding of driving (they're not the only ones, by any means). Can driverless cars, without any further programing, do those things? I can respond, by virtue of my understanding, to novel challenges on the spot that are only related to driving, but don't necessarily involve actual driving. I'll be impressed if driverless cars can do that.

Tim the Plumber said:
Better would be if you were using the word sentience which is what I think you are talking about.
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No, in the sentence in question, I meant exactly what I said. Mental events of any kind have no bottom-up explanations.

Tim the Plumber said:
I do. But yes there will be a long way to go before we finish physics. We will do that one day though.
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I was talking about claims that physics is nearly finished. Not that the finishing point is some indeterminate long way off. Unless you can actually see (metaphorically speaking) the finish point, you're just expressing faith that it will one day happen.

Tim the Plumber said:
Outside this universe. There are, according to recently demonstrated physics, many many possibly an infinite number, of universes. At least that's according to the TV program I watch last week.
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No, no such thing has been demonstrated. It's only been demonstrated that the mathematics works reasonably well. But the more entities you posit here, the greater the mystery.

Tim the Plumber said:
A problem that physics is attacking. My point.
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And my point is that, no matter the outcome, there will have to be ontological posits, and we can just ask the same questions about those. Rinse and repeat.

Tim the Plumber said:
And I disagree. We may reach the end of physics with a complete picture of how it works.
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In order to reasonably assert that, you have to respond to the problem I posted. Here's another way to phrase the same thing:

Ontological posits have two properties. First, they require an explanation. Second, they must be present in every adequate explanation.

The infinite regress is right there on the surface, but it's exactly what cannot be the case if physics is ever to be finished. There are always going to be gaps in our understanding.

Tim the Plumber said:
Any god drivel will always use as a starting point the universe as understood at that time. The next discovery obviously will make that religion obviously wrong.
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Sure (well, close enough, anyway). Doesn't mean that religion is wrong, only religions. Here's a cogent analogy: the mathematical models of the universe physics has proposed over past centuries have turned out to be wrong. Probably, our best current models are wrong, or at least not complete. Does this mean that mathematical modeling is wrong, and we should turn our back on the notion that mathematics has anything to do with reality? Of course not. That truth is independent of the truths of the models conceived under it.

One thing I find curious about certain kinds of religionists is that they become pluralists. Therese of Lisieux was, famously, Roman Catholic. But she often described travelling yogis as "men of God." I suspect she saw the Mystery beyond the window dressing of the details of individual religions. My thesis is that those details are merely instrumental; it's a tragedy that they're taken as essential.
 
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Ashurbaipal,

Conscious means being awake. Having an understanding of your world around you. That's all.

The word you want to use is sentient. It means understanding the thinking of other people and understanding that you are a separate thinking being.

When you have got that bit I will bother to read your posts.
 
Tim the Plumber said:
Conscious means being awake. Having an understanding of your world around you. That's all.
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Sounds like a convenient way out of a losing position to me...

So, what word would you use to denote the phenomenal experiences that occur to me (and presumably others) throughout the day? When I, say, look at the wall there's a visual experience of its color. When I hear a performance of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, there is an experience of hearing the piano. And so on.

By contrast, a computer can listen to Beethoven's piece and identify all the notes. It takes the vibrations of the air in and is equipped with various machinery to change those into electrical signals, which are then pumped to some complicated circuitry which analyzes those signals and organizes them into some coherent and intelligible data about the sounds in question. Functionally, this is all similar to the aural apparatus possessed by human beings. But the computer never once hears the Concerto. Human beings do. What word do you want to use to denote the property or properties that distinguish human beings from computers in such cases? The most usual word used in professional circles, at least the ones in which I travel, is "consciousness" or sometimes "phenomenal consciousness." I don't really care what you want to call it, though. Pick your word and then that's the subject of discussion.

Tim the Plumber said:
The word you want to use is sentient. It means understanding the thinking of other people and understanding that you are a separate thinking being.
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How do you know which word I want to use? What you've just said has nothing to do with what I meant in any of my posts in this thread.
 
ashurbanipal said:
Sounds like a convenient way out of a losing position to me...

So, what word would you use to denote the phenomenal experiences that occur to me (and presumably others) throughout the day? When I, say, look at the wall there's a visual experience of its color. When I hear a performance of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, there is an experience of hearing the piano. And so on.

By contrast, a computer can listen to Beethoven's piece and identify all the notes. It takes the vibrations of the air in and is equipped with various machinery to change those into electrical signals, which are then pumped to some complicated circuitry which analyzes those signals and organizes them into some coherent and intelligible data about the sounds in question. Functionally, this is all similar to the aural apparatus possessed by human beings. But the computer never once hears the Concerto. Human beings do. What word do you want to use to denote the property or properties that distinguish human beings from computers in such cases? The most usual word used in professional circles, at least the ones in which I travel, is "consciousness" or sometimes "phenomenal consciousness." I don't really care what you want to call it, though. Pick your word and then that's the subject of discussion.

How do you know which word I want to use? What you've just said has nothing to do with what I meant in any of my posts in this thread.
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... That certainly describes a machine that is conscious to sound, the way you use the word. Your verbiage is frustratingly imprecise. Putting words in italic font does not give them an obviously understandable meaning. What you are describing is the neural connections between sounds we percieve and personal emotion, experience, and cognition. All these things can be replicated, though to a lesser degree, in machines. The only thing that is noticably different currently between the human system and a computer/machine system is the efficiency, effectivness, and complexity of the human cognitive system. The machines you describe as not being conscious are only so because they have not been programmed and provided with that capacity.
 
CycloneWanderer said:
... That certainly describes a machine that is conscious to sound, the way you use the word. Your verbiage is frustratingly imprecise. Putting words in italic font does not give them an obviously understandable meaning. What you are describing is the neural connections between sounds we percieve and personal emotion, experience, and cognition. All these things can be replicated, though to a lesser degree, in machines. The only thing that is noticably different currently between the human system and a computer/machine system is the efficiency, effectivness, and complexity of the human cognitive system. The machines you describe as not being conscious are only so because they have not been programmed and provided with that capacity.
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Yep, his argument is 100% ;look at all the wonder!!!

When that is challenged he retreats and then comes out with a different pile of poo.
 
CycloneWanderer said:
That certainly describes a machine that is conscious to sound, the way you use the word.
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That seems obviously false to me. Why do you say that?

CycloneWanderer said:
Your verbiage is frustratingly imprecise. Putting words in italic font does not give them an obviously understandable meaning.
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Sure. I'm always happy to clarify anything I've said. On the other hand, in this case, I'm not so sure what is imprecise. Is it inconceivable, in your view, that a being (computer, clone of a human being, alien, starfish, whatever) could perform all the mechanical functions of, say, the human aural system, and yet have no experience of hearing anything? That seems entirely conceivable to me.

CycloneWanderer said:
What you are describing is the neural connections between sounds we percieve and personal emotion, experience, and cognition.
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No. I am emphatically not saying anything about that (in the post you quoted, that is). I am saying something only about the perception, before we cognize, recognize, categorize, reflect upon, emote about, or do anything else. I'm talking about the raw phenomenal feels that compose our experience of the world.

CycloneWanderer said:
All these things can be replicated, though to a lesser degree, in machines.
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With the exception of cognition (which is itself a rather imprecise word), that again seems obviously false. Who has programmed a machine to have emotions or to experience anything?

CycloneWanderer said:
The only thing that is noticably different currently between the human system and a computer/machine system is the efficiency, effectivness, and complexity of the human cognitive system.
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Sure. So what? The point is that consciousness is not a product of the brain, or at least not of computation.

CycloneWanderer said:
The machines you describe as not being conscious are only so because they have not been programmed and provided with that capacity.
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In one sense, of course, this is trivially true. No machines have ever been conscious because they haven't been provided with the capacity. But that's true of any relevantly similar situation, isn't it?

The interesting question is whether it's possible to give a machine such a capacity. It seems to me that mental properties are ineluctably different from material ones. Material things have mass, thermal states, quantum states, charge, and other such properties. Thoughts, emotions, mental images, intentions, seemings, and so on don't have any of these properties. They have other properties such as nonlocationality, qualativity, moral valence, intension, and so on.

Here are some things I think are pretty obvious about these properties. First, mental properties (the last set I listed) exist. Second, physical properties probably exist, with one caveat--see the very next sentence. Third, it's not obviously possible to produce mental properties from physical ones (which isn't quite the same as saying it's not possible), though it's pretty easy to conceive how physical properties could just come down to mental properties.

Now, feel free to argue these points. I wouldn't claim that there's a consensus on them, only that there are good arguments for them, and no good arguments against them. But, if they're correct, it's really doesn't look like machines could ever possibly be programmed to be conscious.

If your claim is that all the mechanical processing described in my last post is experience, or cannot avoid producing experience, there's a pretty compelling argument that such a view leads to absurd conclusions.
 
Tim the Plumber said:
Yep, his argument is 100% ;look at all the wonder!!!

When that is challenged he retreats and then comes out with a different pile of poo.
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If any of that were true, it would be easy for you to show by engaging my posts and showing with reasoned argument why I'm wrong. Instead, what you're doing is exactly what one would expect of someone who doesn't have a case: you feigned offense because I wasn't using the words you think I should be, and then you criticize my post in reply to another interlocutor.

Your actions clearly indicate ongoing interest in the discussion. But the fact you don't reply to my post directly indicates...well, what I've already said.
 
ashurbanipal said:
Here's my attempt to bring the conversation up a few notches:

Something that I find troubling about the four horseman-style attacks on religion in the popular media is a lack of understanding about the important claims of religion. I don't blame atheists for this, since some theists--often the most vocal and stupid kind--often promote just the wrong claims as the most important ones.

The mythical narratives of, say, the crucifixion of Jesus serve a purpose, but until very recently, weren't taken as literally true in the way that history is supposed to be true. They are supposed to stir the mythic imagination in order to effect some change in the substance of religionists. The important claim of religion is that there is something more than this life, and we human beings should humble ourselves before the great Mystery which that something is.

Even atheists recognize this Mystery, when we contemplate the origin of the universe, the epistemic situation of the laws of logic and mathematics, or the foundations of morality. And these are not the only routes to some apprehension of the Mystery; the various religions began, for my money, as ways of bringing such apprehension into the direct view of the mind. It seems to me that religion will never go away unless atheists can address this point in a serious way.
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Atheists do not fail to recognize this message contained in religious ideas. But we recognize that it is hogwash. And also quite harmful. There is no life past this one. This is what we get. And when people can be convinced to sacrifice this life for a fictional second one, they end up sacrificing everything. They live lives devoted to enhancing the power of people who abuse this idea. How many have suffered for the sake of the power of an organized church or imam? How many minds were stifled because they were taught to disregard the world we live in? This is a terrible message if it isn't true, and there is absolutely no reason to think that it is. This is the message that drove 19 men to crash airplanes into buildings to murder thousands of others.

ashurbanipal said:
My posts are written in perfectly comprehensible English. We do not know the final answers to the most basic questions of human existence, and more to the point, it doesn't seem reasonable to be optimistic that we ever will. Science, for all its illuminative power, doesn't answer the Big Questions--despite attempts by folks like Richard Dawkins to insist that it does. This is an old (5th c. B.C.) problem sometimes called the Dialellus--all explanations must end in mystery.

I suspect one way to state the most basic claim of religion is this: when one follows the chain of explanation on seemingly diverse intractable questions, those explanations ultimately end in the same mystery, which earns it status as Mystery with a capital 'M'. That's about as neutral a way as I can think to state it. The problem the atheist faces is that most people have something like that intuition--that if we could finally, comprehensively understand the mystery of consciousness (say) we would also understand something about the mystery of the origin of the universe. I don't think that's as crazy as it may initially sound.

But my point is that if atheists want to make any headway against religion, this is the claim that has to be addressed.
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This is also completely wrong. The things you're referring to aren't big questions at all. They're nonsense questions. "Why are we here?" isn't a question that comes with an answer. It implies purpose, and there is no evidence of any purpose at all. "Where do we go when we die?" is likewise a question without an answer. We go nowhere. These capital-M "mysteries" are no more valid questions than speculating about the world floating through space on the back of a giant turtle. "What is right and what is wrong?" at least has answers, but religion offers none. All it offers is submission to an authority. This is good and that is bad because this powerful king says so. This might matter if that powerful king existed, but it doesn't. Religion gives us no tools to discern right from wrong for ourselves.
 
Paschendale said:
Atheists do not fail to recognize this message contained in religious ideas. But we recognize that it is hogwash.
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Well, let me tell you why I believe it, at least in some sense:

1) I've got personal experience with it, and realize that to doubt my experience of seeing the world beyond death, I would have to also doubt that any and all of my other experiences import anything at all about reality. In short, to disbelieve it, I would either have to not apply the principle of the parity of reasoning (which is so basic it would mean I would have to abandon logic), or I would have to assume that all my experiences are not merely essentially, but entirely, illusory. Either way lies madness.

2) The general inexplicability of consciousness under any kind of calculationist framework, and the implausibility of non-calculationist materialist explanations of consciousness. These provide independent reasons for suspecting that the mind is just not the product of the brain.

3) The fact that beliefs similar to these are widespread enough, and that certain similar strains in their justification arise in multiple cultures suggest that the experiences I've had, and the sort of arguments and thoughts to which I connect them, are natural and common, and not merely my own "errors of the cave."

I like to think, anyway, that I'm a reasonable guy. I'd be inclined to agree with you that this is hogwash if you, or anyone, could explain where these points go wrong. I spent a long time, after my experiences, going over the ins and outs of the sorts of arguments that are usually made over these issues, and I find the ones for my position compelling, while the ones against it are utterly unconvincing for me, and indeed, all very clearly flawed. But I remain open to the possibility that new arguments could be made.

Paschendale said:
And also quite harmful. There is no life past this one. This is what we get. And when people can be convinced to sacrifice this life for a fictional second one, they end up sacrificing everything. They live lives devoted to enhancing the power of people who abuse this idea. How many have suffered for the sake of the power of an organized church or imam? How many minds were stifled because they were taught to disregard the world we live in? This is a terrible message if it isn't true, and there is absolutely no reason to think that it is. This is the message that drove 19 men to crash airplanes into buildings to murder thousands of others.
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This is an obviously legitimate concern. However, the fact that human beings don't have the wisdom to handle the truth isn't in itself an argument against the truth. It's an indictment of human frailty, stupidity, and lack of wisdom. It seems to form an argument that the manner in which these ideas are promulgated needs to be handled very differently.

I don't know whether you've ever read the Haditha, but it seems clear to me that none of the 9/11 hijackers had ever read it. Mohammed would have utterly condemned such an act. So would the other prophets of Islam. So would the prophets of Christianity in the case of Christian terrorists. The problem, it seems to me, is that religions are just not able to erase innate nastiness in a person when that person doesn't have spiritual experience.

On the other hand, it's disingenuous to say that nothing of this is intrinsic to religion. I also know this from personal experience. After seeing the world after death, I became curiously unaffected by death. My grandmother passed away a few years afterward, and I loved her very much, but I didn't really feel agrieved by her passing. I can see how it would be very easy for someone who isn't reflective by temperment to fail to see why, say, murdering someone would be harmful. I don't murder people, first because I just don't want to, and second, because even though I know that death is not annihilation, there is nevertheless a great deal of harm caused by murder. People are here for a reason, and killing removes their power to work on that reason. It also creates confusion and sadness, when my mission is to try to create clarity and understanding.

Things are more complicated than this simple account, of course. And, clearly, people on my side of the fence owe better work on this point than we've given so far.

Paschendale said:
This is also completely wrong. The things you're referring to aren't big questions at all. They're nonsense questions. "Why are we here?" isn't a question that comes with an answer. It implies purpose, and there is no evidence of any purpose at all.
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I don't understand why that would make the question nonsense. But aside from that, it seems false to me there's no evidence of purpose: I have a number of purposes, and I have no idea where they came from. That is, the processes by which I seem to gravitate towards certain kinds of activities and ends are not open to me for examination. For example, I like to teach. When I can see the lights "turn on" as I'm explaining, say, the problem of induction, or Kim's supervenience argument, or the concepts of validity and soundness, I'm touched with a sense of the rightness of things, as if in that moment I've done what I'm supposed to be doing.

But I never once reasoned towards having that purpose. It's been with me since I was rather young.

Paschendale said:
"Where do we go when we die?" is likewise a question without an answer. We go nowhere.
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How do you know?

Paschendale said:
"What is right and what is wrong?" at least has answers, but religion offers none. All it offers is submission to an authority.
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I do think religions, as such, probably have a rather different claim on morality than is usually supposed or argued. See below.

It is also obvious that many religions have strong authoritarian streaks. But not all do, and in some cases, the authoritarianism is a bit overplayed (of course, in other cases, it's not).

Paschendale said:
This is good and that is bad because this powerful king says so. This might matter if that powerful king existed, but it doesn't. Religion gives us no tools to discern right from wrong for ourselves.
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I disagree...sort of. The tools to do so are the same tools that provide spiritual experience. But very few people are capable of applying those tools to the point they yield results, and so religious morality, which begins, in the person with spiritual experience, as an awareness of the mystery of universal brotherhood (the awareness that all things, and all people, are deeply related and bound in a universal brotherhood), becomes the mere adduction of rules. What is actually a fluid mystery becomes a fixed and inflexible system of laws. And for most people, you're correct-that does not provide any means for understanding right and wrong.
 
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I'll start by saying that I appreciate such a thoughtful response. Part 1 of 2

ashurbanipal said:
1) I've got personal experience with it, and realize that to doubt my experience of seeing the world beyond death, I would have to also doubt that any and all of my other experiences import anything at all about reality. In short, to disbelieve it, I would either have to not apply the principle of the parity of reasoning (which is so basic it would mean I would have to abandon logic), or I would have to assume that all my experiences are not merely essentially, but entirely, illusory. Either way lies madness.
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I've had an NDE as well. I nearly drowned as a child. But despite being confused at what I was experiencing, learning later on that it was simply my brain malfunctioning from lack of oxygen doesn't make every other thing I experience suddenly false. I don't understand all of my dreams, either. To know how and why we experience what do allows us to interpret them and find out what's really going on. Sometimes we are deceived. Sometimes we simply don't understand. Keep in mind that likely the only reason you think that what you experienced during an NDE was an afterlife is because you were told to expect that from your religious ideas. That was certainly what I thought at the time, as well. But now I know more, and so I can apply my reason and logic to the situation, and understand what was really going on. I think you're being entirely hyperbolic here.

2) The general inexplicability of consciousness under any kind of calculationist framework, and the implausibility of non-calculationist materialist explanations of consciousness. These provide independent reasons for suspecting that the mind is just not the product of the brain.
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Consciousness isn't unexplainable at all. We may not be able to completely explain it at the moment, but there is no reason to think that these details will elude us forever. This is a bit of the "god of the gaps" argument. But either way, consciousness isn't mysterious. It's just how brains work. Non-human species certainly have some consciousness, and have thoughts, but their brains don't do as much as ours do. There is absolutely nothing to suggest some kind of non-physical component.

3) The fact that beliefs similar to these are widespread enough, and that certain similar strains in their justification arise in multiple cultures suggest that the experiences I've had, and the sort of arguments and thoughts to which I connect them, are natural and common, and not merely my own "errors of the cave."
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This doesn't speak to the validity of any wrong ideas, only that human beings, regardless of culture, still have the same kinds of minds. Every culture anthropomorphized the forces of nature in order to attempt to understand them. We understand human existence. In the absence of any other kind of understanding, we apply what we do understand. This was true for every budding human culture. This includes applying human existence to human non-existence, creating an afterlife.

I like to think, anyway, that I'm a reasonable guy. I'd be inclined to agree with you that this is hogwash if you, or anyone, could explain where these points go wrong. I spent a long time, after my experiences, going over the ins and outs of the sorts of arguments that are usually made over these issues, and I find the ones for my position compelling, while the ones against it are utterly unconvincing for me, and indeed, all very clearly flawed. But I remain open to the possibility that new arguments could be made.
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That sounds like you don't understand the arguments against you very well, and fail to understand the obvious problems with your own. Your interpretations of your experiences are clearly based on the myths and stories told you before you experienced them. Were you told different stories, your experiences would have meant something different to you. Jews don't have moving religious experiences of Vishnu and Muslims don't have moving religious experiences about Jesus. We all have those experiences, and all interpret them in our existing cultural framework. Fortunately, now we know that these experiences are wholly physical in nature, and when we don't apply these mythological interpretations, we can find universal understanding of them, regardless of anyone's pre-existing ideas or cultural biases.

This is an obviously legitimate concern. However, the fact that human beings don't have the wisdom to handle the truth isn't in itself an argument against the truth. It's an indictment of human frailty, stupidity, and lack of wisdom. It seems to form an argument that the manner in which these ideas are promulgated needs to be handled very differently.
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I made the argument that they were bad ideas and do not serve to make us better people. That they are also false is a different issue. People often can't handle the truth. Lots of people who have an emotional attachment to their religious ideas can't handle the truth that there is no magic, no gods, and no afterlife. We only get this one, and we'd best make as much of it as we can.

I don't know whether you've ever read the Haditha, but it seems clear to me that none of the 9/11 hijackers had ever read it. Mohammed would have utterly condemned such an act. So would the other prophets of Islam. So would the prophets of Christianity in the case of Christian terrorists. The problem, it seems to me, is that religions are just not able to erase innate nastiness in a person when that person doesn't have spiritual experience.
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Lots of very religious people have done lots of awful things. Spirituality seems to make people more prone to this, not less. Those hijackers actually thought that the myths they adhered to were true. Mohammed led armies and killed lots of people. Christian rulers did the same. Priests and bishops led inquisitions and purges and brutally murdered everyone in their path. All of these people were quite versed in the tenets of their religion, and their spirituality did nothing to stop them. Instead, either the delusion that their myths were true inspired them to violence, or they cynically exploited the myths to provide an excuse for their brutality. Likely there were many of both throughout history.
 
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On the other hand, it's disingenuous to say that nothing of this is intrinsic to religion. I also know this from personal experience. After seeing the world after death, I became curiously unaffected by death. My grandmother passed away a few years afterward, and I loved her very much, but I didn't really feel agrieved by her passing. I can see how it would be very easy for someone who isn't reflective by temperment to fail to see why, say, murdering someone would be harmful. I don't murder people, first because I just don't want to, and second, because even though I know that death is not annihilation, there is nevertheless a great deal of harm caused by murder. People are here for a reason, and killing removes their power to work on that reason. It also creates confusion and sadness, when my mission is to try to create clarity and understanding.
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And this is exactly how these myths are supposed to make you feel. So that you don't cling to this life. So that you'd be willing to toil it away in service to kings and priests so that their earthly lives can be fantastic. Death is annihilation. It is a complete end to existence. Your story ends completely. Mine will too. So will everyone else's. You didn't see the world after death. There is no world after death. You just had a bizarre experience from injury or sickness. But you have hit upon the reason for this myth right here. It is to make you easier to exploit and to instill in you a set of rules (most of which center on submission to authority) that you have to follow for this mythical afterlife. You, and countless others throughout history, have traded their efforts and energies and any real enjoyment or fulfillment in their lives away in exchange for this invisible product. And that product is merely illusion. It costs nothing to those who claim to be able to give it to you, and nobody ever comes back looking for a refund.

I don't understand why that would make the question nonsense. But aside from that, it seems false to me there's no evidence of purpose: I have a number of purposes, and I have no idea where they came from. That is, the processes by which I seem to gravitate towards certain kinds of activities and ends are not open to me for examination. For example, I like to teach. When I can see the lights "turn on" as I'm explaining, say, the problem of induction, or Kim's supervenience argument, or the concepts of validity and soundness, I'm touched with a sense of the rightness of things, as if in that moment I've done what I'm supposed to be doing.

But I never once reasoned towards having that purpose. It's been with me since I was rather young.
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That's not "purpose". That's just disposition. That's something internal. It's in you. It doesn't come from somewhere else. It's the result of your genetic makeup and your life experiences. It's no different than the elements that cause you to have a favorite color or a preferred type of music or food. That sense of "rightness", as you call it, is just dopamine. You can hook up gadgets to someone's brain and watch it happen.

How do you know?
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Because there is no reason to think otherwise. Really, this is a very complex answer full of details to debunk myths and dreams and ghosts and all manner of things. But it ultimately boils down to there being absolutely nothing to suggest an existence outside of this one.

I do think religions, as such, probably have a rather different claim on morality than is usually supposed or argued. See below.

It is also obvious that many religions have strong authoritarian streaks. But not all do, and in some cases, the authoritarianism is a bit overplayed (of course, in other cases, it's not).
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Authority is all that religions have to say about right and wrong. They offer no means to determine those for yourself, only a list of rules. This is true not only of western monotheistic religions, but of ancient myths and modern Hinduism. Buddhism might be an exception, but that isn't proof of any spirituality. It's simply that its ideas align somewhat more with a humanist viewpoint, based on the realities of human experience and physiology than on creating a system of power.

I disagree...sort of. The tools to do so are the same tools that provide spiritual experience. But very few people are capable of applying those tools to the point they yield results, and so religious morality, which begins, in the person with spiritual experience, as an awareness of the mystery of universal brotherhood (the awareness that all things, and all people, are deeply related and bound in a universal brotherhood), becomes the mere adduction of rules. What is actually a fluid mystery becomes a fixed and inflexible system of laws. And for most people, you're correct-that does not provide any means for understanding right and wrong.
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No spirituality is required here. We all know that we're all humans and are all mostly the same. It is by understanding that, not through myths and legends, that we come upon these tools. The story might say that god tells us the golden rule, but it is only a good idea because it fits with how we are. We do not like to experience suffering and fear, and so we understand that we shouldn't cause others to. We evolved as empathetic creatures. It is in our biology to care for one another. All of this is the result of our biology. That past human civilizations had absolutely no framework to understand this doesn't provide any reason to think that their wrong ideas were right. We do not need a spiritual existence to guide us, and focusing on a false reality, rather than the one we are actually experiencing, leads us astray.
 
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