lawyerliz_IHB
New member
I think if the God of the Jews/Christians/Muslims existed we would know
it; boy would we ever know it.
Sacred texts of all stripes have the gods really doing a lot of stuff. Now
god/dess doesn't seem to do anything.
At Lourdes there are all these crutches etc hanging up. The Church got
really picky about what it was going to report as a miracle, and now, guess
what, no more Lourdes miracles anymore.
By the way there is a beneficent method behind this madness. There are
certain diseases where there are regular, not well understood spontaneous
remissions. Some of these clearly have a mind body relationship that is stronger
than say, that in a ruptured appendix. So Lourdes may beneficently trigger
a curative mind/body response.
Which brings us to a truly fascinating question, which may eventually have
an answer:
What is "mind"? Also, spirit, soul, intelligence, etc. Lots of overlapping
words, concepts, ideas there.
However, I am dead certain (like Descartes) that my mind exists. (unlike the
Buddhists, who don't seem to and here I part company with them completely).
But as my hub's best friend, an atheist, was arguing with the hub, who goes
off on a different religious tangent every decade or so, and I think was in a
everything is spirit mood at the time, they got down to: How does the mind
move the electron? I want to pick up that pen. How does the mind move the
electron that starts the cascade of events that ends with me picking up the pen?
Electricity is clearly involved here. Is a mind a massively complex electric
field? Chemicals? What is a thought? Could we move our minds into another
body? Does reincarnation happen? Can mind exist without body.
There was a marvelous sci fi book called Valentina, where a massively complex
computer game comes alive. When the number of connections reaches the
number of the human mind, will the internet come alive?
I am on shakier ground here. I have read that the internal universe in our
brains (even realtors!) exceeds the entire external universe in complexity, so
maybe the internet has quite a way to go.
And of course the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and the writings of L. Neil Smith,
a libertarian admirer, in which great pains are taken to keep the computers
from become self-aware, because then you have to treat them like people,
because they ARE people.
And Brin, the author of the Uplift Wars, in which the first sentients lifted their
animals into sentience, creating client races. Humans are odd man out because
we evolved sentience by ourselves, but have gotten brownie points by Uplifting
Chimps and Dophins and Orcas and Whales. Chimps so like us we share 98-99%
of our DNA. This is not theoretically impossible.
In fact, I wonder what our military is doing at present with biology.
Harry Mudd offered Uhura eternal life in a robot body. She turned him down.
Would you?
it; boy would we ever know it.
Sacred texts of all stripes have the gods really doing a lot of stuff. Now
god/dess doesn't seem to do anything.
At Lourdes there are all these crutches etc hanging up. The Church got
really picky about what it was going to report as a miracle, and now, guess
what, no more Lourdes miracles anymore.
By the way there is a beneficent method behind this madness. There are
certain diseases where there are regular, not well understood spontaneous
remissions. Some of these clearly have a mind body relationship that is stronger
than say, that in a ruptured appendix. So Lourdes may beneficently trigger
a curative mind/body response.
Which brings us to a truly fascinating question, which may eventually have
an answer:
What is "mind"? Also, spirit, soul, intelligence, etc. Lots of overlapping
words, concepts, ideas there.
However, I am dead certain (like Descartes) that my mind exists. (unlike the
Buddhists, who don't seem to and here I part company with them completely).
But as my hub's best friend, an atheist, was arguing with the hub, who goes
off on a different religious tangent every decade or so, and I think was in a
everything is spirit mood at the time, they got down to: How does the mind
move the electron? I want to pick up that pen. How does the mind move the
electron that starts the cascade of events that ends with me picking up the pen?
Electricity is clearly involved here. Is a mind a massively complex electric
field? Chemicals? What is a thought? Could we move our minds into another
body? Does reincarnation happen? Can mind exist without body.
There was a marvelous sci fi book called Valentina, where a massively complex
computer game comes alive. When the number of connections reaches the
number of the human mind, will the internet come alive?
I am on shakier ground here. I have read that the internal universe in our
brains (even realtors!) exceeds the entire external universe in complexity, so
maybe the internet has quite a way to go.
And of course the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and the writings of L. Neil Smith,
a libertarian admirer, in which great pains are taken to keep the computers
from become self-aware, because then you have to treat them like people,
because they ARE people.
And Brin, the author of the Uplift Wars, in which the first sentients lifted their
animals into sentience, creating client races. Humans are odd man out because
we evolved sentience by ourselves, but have gotten brownie points by Uplifting
Chimps and Dophins and Orcas and Whales. Chimps so like us we share 98-99%
of our DNA. This is not theoretically impossible.
In fact, I wonder what our military is doing at present with biology.
Harry Mudd offered Uhura eternal life in a robot body. She turned him down.
Would you?
hh: