PopeBeanie

Here’s the best lecture yet I’ve seen on how to respond to creationists. If you don’t want to watch the whole 80 minute video (which imo is good in every minute, by the way), we jump (below) into when Dr. Donald Prothero presents encyclopedic evidence for transitional species:

michael17 wrote:

[..] it does not jive with the original manuscript

That was just a first draft.

David Philpot, welcome to AZ, and +1 on your first posts! (I rarely say that last part.)

Robert_ wrote:

Never did answer a question directly but then again, how could he?

Haha, well put. I wouldn’t say he was always respectful, because in fact he was so evasive, so often pretending he didn’t understand what was said to him. But evasive in an intelligent way, if not downright misleading at times, or even trollish on a bad day.

I…[Read more]

[…] The consciousness podcast… https://theconsciousnesspodcast.com/

He is on episode 13 but all the episodes are interesting

I was going to mention Chopra too, as he is also “on the forefront”, or should we say “leading the fringe”.

I’ll look into the podcast you suggest, and I’ll suggest some as well. Might I suggest, if any these put you to…[Read more]

Polymythism, as old as human language.

Special pleading with special “secret” shared closely among glossy-eyed tribal members. Oh, and if only you would join us, you’d feel it, too!

Unseen wrote:

Perhaps the real you no longer exists at all, then, which is simply another way of being dead, isn’t it?

LOL, I detect “tongue-in-cheek” on that comment, but it can still make people think.

Naw, besides, we’ve been completely ignoring the probabilistic effects of quantum entanglement between these supposed perfect copies of each other.

As for duplicating consciousnesses, there’s still plenty of opportunity to learn how identical twins share the same kinds of thoughts and feelings. Even if their consciousnesses could be made and said to be exactly the same, we still know they’re two different people, right?!

That’s what gets me about discussions about uploading your own…[Read more]

So let’s say one may experience life someday “exactly” like a butterfly. Apart from the problem of knowing when one has actually achieved the goal, would you, returned back to your human consciousness, really be able to remember exactly what it was like? I’m thinking we’d first have to experiment with simulations. And then it can only be up to wh…[Read more]

mike wrote:

My model suggest countless levels that go back to the original quantum particles that we are evolved from…and comes directly from states of awareness I recognize in myself, and these states are observable in other organisms. Can you deny that our white blood cell are not aware of the bacteria they engulf? How about the heart knowing w…

[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:

Unseen wrote:

Inalienable rights are a little like life after death. It’d be great if we had them but basically you can’t have them without something like a deity. And I don’t believe in deities so…

It may be even more intertwined than that… the promise of life after death is sold as the great equalizer when those denied th…

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I think you’re alluding to something like this: The realest rights are those legislated, with judicial oversight of due process on a per-incident basis when contested, and then enforced by an enforcement authority.

Unfortunately in past history and present, religion has played all these roles, and much of Islam in particular still employ very…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Maybe start with this video first.

Nicely thought-out/spelled-out video, covering biggest myths and providing best explanations. Most people like to simplify explanations, but “KISS” makes it too easy to avoid deeper understandings. “God did it, so why bother with scientific details?” is an easy cop out. OTOH, some…[Read more]

Clearsky wrote:

1)religion as beliefs and meaning […]  2) Religion as Identity( group) […]  3) religion as structured social relations. ( power relations)

I like that. I’ve never taken a course on religion, but if I did, I’d also be interested in how religion and politics relate (or not) to each other, especially those times when they’re kep…[Read more]