Deal with these scientific facts, religious believers

I'm a proud believer in reality. That's my god, now that I've deconverted from religious belief: natural reality. 

Science is the best, and arguably the only, way we humans have of knowing solid facts about the universe, which is the only natural reality available to us.

One of the reasons I'm enjoying re-reading "The Atheist's Guide to Reality" (by Alex Rosenberg) so much is that Rosenberg -- though a philosophy professor -- has a solid background in science. 

His philosophical conclusions don't come out of thin air. They're grounded in fundamental understandings of modern science. 

Below are some of those understandings. If anyone reading this blog post wants to challenge them, describe your reasons in a comment. Hey, who knows? Maybe you know more about natural reality than the world's scientists.

If so, a Nobel prize could await you -- if you have solid evidence for your hypothesis that goes beyond a Church of the Churchless blog post comment.

If not, these scientific understandings constitute a knowledge fence within which any attempt to place God, spirit, soul, heaven, or such must contend. Meaning, any religion, form of spirituality, or mystical teaching has to conform to these facts to have a chance of being believable. 

Understand: by "facts" I don't mean unchallengeable truth. Science doesn't work that way. Scientific facts always are open to modification as better knowledge about reality becomes available. 

But given our current state of scientific understanding -- which is hugely more accurate than religious conceptions of the cosmos -- these are solid facts about the universe that, as Rosenberg says in his book's title, are the best guide to reality for those unwilling to accept fanciful religious theologies.

(1) The universe began with a big bang 13.7 billion years ago.

(2) Everything in the universe is made up of fermions and bosons (basically, matter and force fields/energy).

(3) "All the processes in the universe, from atomic to bodily to mental, are purely physical processes involving fermions and bosons interacting with one another." (A Rosenberg quote)

(4) Evolution through natural selection explains how life has come to be as it is on Earth.

(5) Core morality enabled early humans to better survive by cooperating with each other, an evolutionary advantageous trait that persists today in us social creatures.

(6) Determinism, which is different from "fate," rules the universe at levels of reality above the quantum realm.

(7) The mind/brain produces consciousness, and does everything else, through complex interactions of neural circuits.

(8) There is no non-material self within the human body, just physical mind/brain goings-on.

Comments

[manjit]

Wow Brian, you really are incredibly disconnected from reality, science, facts and anything approaching wisdom!

You cling tenaciously to dogmatic delusions which are easily, and they have been, thoroughly discredited. Your inability to grasp or even acknowledge these arguments speaks volumes about your natural limitations in understanding.

As do your comments about Nobel prizes and the like - an obvious appeal to authority which demonstrates your own inability to grasp or discuss these things yourself. It has been obvious for a long while you have outsourced all your intellectual responsibility to those whom you consider your betters, demonstrating subservience. You just hold the delusion that you can get away with spouting this demonstrable nonsense to those you consider your intellectual inferiors, those who believe in religion & spirituality. It is an aside, I guess, that even your intelligentsia superiors, your priests, are themselves unable to answer the numerous philosophical flaws in the atheist, materialistic & scientism beliefs.

First, why should only "religious believers" "deal" with your so-called (but demonstrably false) "facts"? Cannot scientists disagree with them also, like many do?

1) Big Bang - already "dealt" with. Anyone who thinks this, Brian's number 1 "fact", is valid, please watch this superb documentary by the BBC. This documentary was released about 5 years ago, yet we have here Brian in 2016 still under the delusion the "big bang THEORY" is a fact. Speaks volumes. I posted this yesterday, Brian clearly didn't watch it as he has no interest in challenging his hidden assumptions, even when it is science itself which is showing them to be wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPv1sjMv37w

Wow - point 1, and Brian has already been shown, scientifically speaking, to be talking utter nonsense! (how predictable)

Brian has no interest in science, he has only an interest in the delusionary philosophy and dogma of scientism.

2) Fermions and bosons. Leaving aside just how little we really know about matter (quantum weirdness), this means absolutely nothing. Irrelevant to "religious believers" in any and all contexts.

3) Physical processes - as above, so what. Science measures only physical processes. What a surprise this claim is made!

4) Evolution - is still a theory, has huge gaps in it which remain unanswered, and, actually, ultimately says nothing about "God". Unless you're a Christian who takes the narrative of the Bible literally, there is no requirement "to deal with" this.

5) Core morality - there is absolutely no scientific proof for this idea. More speculative dogma.

6) Yes, determinism rules the physical world above the quantum level. So what? This means absolutely nothing. Of course, Brian is almost certainly not aware that quantum effects have been shown at the macro level, as this is not the sort of science dogmatists like Brian are interested in.

7) The "mind brain produces consciousness". Ahh, Brian's favourite lie! There is absolutely nothing, on any level whatsoever, that demonstrates this THEORY to be true at all.

Brian believes repeating a dogmatic and delusionary lie over and over again makes it true, and that then religious believers must deal with it.

Why should any religious believers care about Brian's lies?

There is ABSOLUTELY no scientific proof WHATSOEVER that such a thing as "consciousness" even exists, let alone the preposterous claim that the brain "produces" it.

Lies and distortions over, and over, and over again.

Deep delusions.

8) There is no "non-material" self in the body - again, another meaningless and unsubstantiated dogmatic claim.

Science has not detected ANYTHING "non-material" ANYWHERE, because science is the study of matter! It simply doesn't have any tools to measure anything "non material" (like consciousness, btw), so how can it tell if there is no such thing?

It is a little like saying there are no tv channels in Africa because I cannot pick them up with my cable provider here in the UK. It is an utterly ridiculous and irrelevant statement to make which is frankly speaking meaningless dogmatic dross.

What is happening here is simple to see & understand. Brian is a very religious fellow, and he has lost all sense of rationality, reason, open-mindedness etc in pursuit of dogmatic certainty.

I won't be posting here again - Brian says nothing of any interest or value imo, though the comments are often very interesting! I feel for those who keep coming back and reading and believing the mindless nonsense Brian posts here. My thoughts go out to them!

[Self]

My idea of the above ''statements''are also only believes!!

How does one know there is nothing different from the brain?

As you know dogs can hear things we can't so it can be that far byond the flesh there
is much more..what can't be measured.

[big balls maniac]

Brian just once listen to Manjit he really knows shit stop being sucha geek stop being so delluded you are open ...come on man wake up you became even more dogmatic and uptight than you were in rssb days....sorry man i loved you and still do but your preachiness? Come on.... i think you need alot of sensimilla to open your mandibula(aka brians close minded head)

...p.s. Does anybody knows where is that angry ever bitter and ever searching real man in himself tAo

[Brian Hines]

Thanks for the comments above, guys. Every time I read stuff like this, I thank Tao for having evolved to the point that I no longer believe in religious nonsense.

So your basic points are that modern science is mostly wrong about reality, and you guys are right. Except, you don't provide any persuasive evidence for why science is wrong and you are right. Thus you're just telling yourself a story about your Marvelous Knowingness.

Which feels good, I'm sure, as delusions/illusions often do.

But nothing is stopping you from understanding reality as it truly is except your attachments to unreality. Keep that in mind, even in your unconscious, because one day the wiser parts of your physical mind/brain may educate your religiously deluded conscious parts.

[big balls maniac]

Do not put me in religious group bro. As soon somebody critic you is religious?
tAo right? Hm..then you probably like manipulations lies and erasing his own messages
You cannot stand critical thinking and everytime somebody is criticizing you ...you put him in religious group...and don't put me in religious group bro.get it!?

[big balls maniac]

Quote Brian
Science is the best, and arguably the only, way we humans have of knowing solid facts about the universe, which is the only natural reality available to us.

.......and just a new religion was born.bravo for starting new religion. Just I am confused..will girls be wearing blue or orange robes

[David R]

Brian, I agree with Majid on this. You do seem to be out of touch with reality when you take statements or assertions that scientists have made, which are in the domain of theory and not fact, as unequivocally true and dismiss what anybody else says if they happen to have a different idea about how reality works. For example, you will side with a scientist that is an atheist but if a scientist is a theist you will dismiss their ideas. To me, this bias is a belief system. Nothing more. It certainly doesn't represent factual knowledge of the world and the human mind, especially when it is not even anywhere near close enough to constitute 100% verification.

Sometimes, people like you (self styled skeptics and atheists) use words to construct the argument that if a person relies on an authority to back up their opinion that this constitutes some kind of unalterable law of logic as a fallacy. But there is no such thing as the laws of logic if what is meant by that is something approaching or identical with mathematics. It is simply just people thinking and speaking and coming up with ideas. Where in nature will you find a rock that has writing on it outlining the 100 laws of logic? But you contradict yourself on these points all the time. For example, you use scientists as authorities that you agree with and you cite their words as some kind of evidence when this is nothing but the appeal to authority fallacy. I mean, we can nit pick words here but if you do not intuitively understand the point I just made, I think you might need a brain checkup so that my words don't fall on deaf ears.

Your sentence about Tao the writer on this blog from yesteryear, is actually grammatically erroneous. Did you say you wrote books in the past? Are they for sale any more and where can I find one? I would like to see the bad spelling, punctuation, and conceptual thinking in the written word that you have published just to make sure I am dealing with a real person that owns this blog and not some imposter that finds it hard to string a sentence together. Cheers.

People that do not believe something, even if it is real and true, will never believe in it, even if it is staring them in the face right in front of their nose.

[Himangsu Sekhar Pal]

Here is one link:
https://sekharpal.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/is-fine-tuning-actually-required-for-proving-the-existence-of-god/
You can go through this link and see whether everything in this universe is actually explicable naturally.

[Chris]

(1) The universe began with a big bang 13.7 billion years ago.
(2) Everything in the universe is made up of fermions and bosons (basically, matter and force fields/energy).
Numbers 1 and 2 are not a problem from an old-Earth Creationist point of view. There is arguably no conflict between these and the Christian view of Creation.

(3) "All the processes in the universe, from atomic to bodily to mental, are purely physical processes involving fermions and bosons interacting with one another." (A Rosenberg quote)

This is an unproven assertion.

(4) Evolution through natural selection explains how life has come to be as it is on Earth.

The theory of Evolution, namely that all forms of life on Earth have evolved from simpler forms to more complex forms based on natural selection is UNscientific in that NOBODY HAS EVER OBSERVED a simpler form evolving into a new, more complex form. Sure there is a modern idea of speciation, for example some forms of bacteria changing over time into a new species categorization, but the bacteria is still bacteria. Nobody has ever seen a change in kinds, fossile evidence can be argued for either side, depending on presupositions and biases, and there are numerous other problems, including logical problems, with Evolution. Evolution does NOT fit with what is observed in the natural world.

(5) Core morality enabled early humans to better survive by cooperating with each other, an evolutionary advantageous trait that persists today in us social creatures.

This is very poor thinking. There is no evidence for this claim that ‘core morality’ enabled early humans to better survive by cooperation. Core morality can not have come from human consensus and there are numerous logical problems with this assertion. For example, rape can be considered an ‘evolutionary advantageous’ activity. Was Ghengis Kahn wrong for fathering so many children via rape? After all, having hundreds of children can be seen as advantageous for the species.

(6) Determinism, which is different from "fate," rules the universe at levels of reality above the quantum realm.

This is an unproven assertion.

(7) The mind/brain produces consciousness, and does everything else, through complex interactions of neural circuits.
(8) There is no non-material self within the human body, just physical mind/brain goings-on.

7 and 8: So all of your thoughts on this subject are due to chemical/neural connections and reactions, which you don’t ultimately have control over since they are simply deterministic causal chains of events.

Final grade: D-