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: : First evolution. Natural selection is the driving mechanism of evolution, but it can only operate on those features of the organism that effect survival, either positively or negatively. : <JT>Evolution also operates on the features of the organism which benefit chances of mating, such as bright plumage on birds, which may not have a direct effect on survival per se.<#&47;JT> : Unless consciousness has the power to move atoms, it can’t make the body do anything, and so would not enhance or detract from an organism’s ability to survive. : <JT>You seem unable to get away from your premise that consciousness is separate and independent from the material universe. It doesn't EFFECT physical changes in the brain, consciousness IS physical changes in the brain. No brain activity=no consciousness. : Also, I disagree that consciousness does not affect a creature's ability to survive. A conscious creature has a HUGE advantage over non-conscious creatures or things.<#&47;JT> : It would be nothing more than an accidental by-product -- a curious glow – given off by complex atomic activity. Consequently, there would be no reason for evolution to adjust thought so as to make it rightly correspond to reality. : <JT>This is ludicrous. If thoughts don't correspond to reality, the creature gets killed. If my thoughts tell me there's a bridge across a chasm, and there isn't, I fall and die.<#&47;JT> : : Why is conscious phenomena powerless to effect physical changes in the brain? When we examine a living brain, there is no objective evidence of a thought, a feeling, or a perception. These phenomena in themselves have no objective properties that can be measured, weighed, or observed. : <JT>The above is ABSOLUTELY FALSE. Scientists have implanted chips in a man's brain which measure his brain activity and allow him to move a cursor around on a screen BY THINKING ABOUT IT. How did they do this? They implanted the chip, told the man to think about moving the cursor to the right, measured what kind of activity this produced, and programmed the computer to move the cursor to the right whenever it received that signal. If there were "no objective properties that can be measured, weighed, or observed," this would be an impossibility.<#&47;JT> : They are pure abstractions. If they themselves had a power to cause physical action, the cause would appear to come from nowhere, and the effect would appear as a totally spontaneous and un-caused action, thereby violating the law of Conservation of Energy. This is not physically possible. : <JT>Your brain is never at a totally inert state, unless you're dead. It's always operating, like a jet engine which needs air flowing through it at a certain speed or else it stalls. Thoughts don't arise out of nothing, they all have a chain of cause and effect, though you may not be conscious of it. That's why they call it a "stream" of consciousness. : Conservation of energy? I'm sorry, but your theory of a non-physical consciousness violates all kinds of physics, so don't try to ride two horses at once.<#&47;JT> : : Being powerless to effect physical matter, conscious phenomena in themselves would have no adaptive advantage or disadvantage, and so play no role in evolution. As far as biological survival is concerned, it would make no difference if consciousness is true, false, or absent. : <JT>False, false, false! Actually, I'm not sure about that last one. How is a consciousness true or false? If you mean corresponding to reality, then your statement is FALSE.<#&47;JT> : That it should be true, and be true consistently, would be a stroke of luck so fantastically improbable as to defy reason itself. : <JT>I have no idea what you're basing this ertion on.<#&47;JT> : : The problem with your statements is that evidence for your theory must presume that consciousness tells us true facts about the world. Yet the theory, if true, would undermine any reason to believe this, and so makes unbelievable the very evidence on which the theory rests. : <JT>You keep making ertions that my theory destroys itself, but I have no idea why you think this. Why does a material theory of consciousness reduce us to schizophrenics?<#&47;JT> : Unless I exempt myself from the consequences of your theory, what credible reason do I have for believing it? : <JT>The logic behind your statement escapes me.<#&47;JT> : : Second, you ert that only real plane of existence is the physical one, and this in no way implies determinism. No thinking materialist would accept this. : <JT>Hmm, only if you discount all the scientists in the world who subscribe to quantum theory!<#&47;JT> : Physical laws govern the physical plane. Physical things have no option to choose whether or not to obey these laws. Likewise, a physical process, which is but the interaction of physical things according to physical laws, has no option of choosing either. Only something non-physical and outside of these laws would have a power to choose. : <JT>That last statement is just baloney. It seems to me you reject the materialist view but you don't understand physics at all. Or maybe you reject the material view BECAUSE you don't understand physics. The classical mechanical (and therefore deterministic) view of the universe belongs to a bygone era.<#&47;JT> : : And third, why is the mind non-physical? If the mind were a physical thing, or a physical process, thought would have to obey the same laws as matter and the laws that determine the interaction of matter. Yet the mind can easily conceive of events that the material world cannot produce. Obviously, then, the mind itself is not a physical thing or a physical process. : <JT>This is such an incredible lapse in logic, I don't know where to begin. The mind is OBVIOUSLY not a physical object, like a block of stone. But the mind does in fact follow the laws of physics, if you look at it at the neuronal level. It's the effect that they have as a sum total we don't understand yet, but are beginning to. : The lift produced by an airplane wing isn't a physical object, either, but would you claim that it's caused by a spiritual force? Primitive stone-age cavemen would, definitely. : Similarly, we're only scratching the surface of neurology at this point in human history. Of course it all seems mysterious and strange and beyond our ability to understand. But I'm willing to bet that in the future, after materialists have studied and understood the brain and consciousness, people will look back at our age and laugh at us for believing in such ridiculous fabrications as spirits. : Take a long close look at your theories of spirits, and tell me honestly if it isnt' based on umptions covering up things we don't understand. We don't know how the brain makes us conscious, so we must possess spirits. We don't know how neurons produce a thought, so they must exist in a different plane. We don't know how the universe began so there must have been a Creator. Your theories give you a feeling of certainty but they're based on nothing.<#&47;JT>

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