Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

. ..did they ever asked for your opinion? . . .

The most worrying (to me) aspect of religion is that its contents can be completely fabricated yet considered completely valid by its adherents.

To a pure idealist (at the philosophical sense, meaning the opposite of a materialist) everything is completely "fabricated" meaning there's no material support whatsoever that would be able to give to something some form of support in ontological terms.

Anyway, labeling different religions under the umbrella of "religion", as if all religions were at the same level, it's a reminiscence of materialism. Religion is not to be analyzed at the microscope to find it's characteristics, religion is a way of life.

Even more "anyway", I would like you to convince me that "truth" as any value. People don't need truth, they need something that points them directions to follow.
People find directions at many strange things, because people are lost. Lost as they were never before from the beginning of mankind. It's a sign of the times we live.

Not sure how I implied all religions were at the same level.

In the remark to the image I posted last in this thread, I said that the authors of scientific studies are subject to cognitive biases too. Specifically, they are subject to the cognitive bias that scientific studies say something irrefutable and irrevertible about reality. In the midst of contradictory conclusions drawn from different scientific experiments and observations, scientists are amazingly incapable of drawing the conclusion that contradictory perspectives are an inherent feature of this world.

You are trying to convince yourself of something that is not there and so you are merely deluding yourself...

I believe that science knows...

How do you know? As far as I can tell, I never tried to convince myself of anything. I simply figured things out, so the questions would stop bothering me.

Quote from: jseaton2311 on 2015-05-19, 03:30:31I believe that science knows...
Ah, you "believe". This is the difference between us. You are a man of faith. I never was.

It is time for humans to grow up, put on their game-face and consider that science is the answer to anything anyone can ask.

This of course applies to atheists too. (materialist/physicalist/naturalist) Atheists stress down-to-earth factuality and logical rigour to promote critical thinking. This works very well for them when criticising any point of view, except when it comes to criticising their own point of view. For example, mind-reading is supposed to not exist, because the mind as a non-physical entity cannot exist, because everything is physical and that's it. However, logically this means that thoughts, memories, dreams, imagination etc. are physically in the brain and neuroscientists, when they study the brain, should be able to directly see those things, i.e. neuroscientists should be mind-readers. Somehow logic, which serves atheists so well otherwise, is lost to them on this point.

The lesson I draw from this is that self-criticism should always be a more acute concern than criticism. And truth should never be compromised. Never as in never.

Quote from: ersi on 2015-05-16, 18:03:34

The lesson I draw from this is that self-criticism should always be a more acute concern than criticism. And truth should never be compromised. Never as in never.

Aka the outsider test. What a scam.

Your false equivocation of telepathy and thought identification through neuroimaging says nothing of interest...

My false equivocation? I explicitly attributed the equivocation to neuroscientists. You are not disputing that they have this view, instead you - falsely - assume it's my view.

Who's doing the obvious (and purposeful?) misinterpreting of the ambiguity in the term "mind reading" here? I rather doubt it's any neuroscientists — assuming they've used the term at all. The rest of what you wrote is pure gobbledygook. You're the one who's equivocating…

The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure signal changes in the brains of thirty subjects—fifteen committed Christians and fifteen nonbelievers—as they evaluated the truth and falsity of religious and nonreligious propositions. For both groups, and in both categories of stimuli, belief (judgments of “true” vs judgments of “false”) was associated with greater signal in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area important for self-representation [3], [4], [5], [6], emotional associations [7], reward [8], [9], [10], and goal-driven behavior [11].

This is precisely what I mean by phrenological presuppositions and this is what they do. They scan people's brains to determine whether they are religious or not. And, whatever you mean by charity, you should know by now how far Harris has taken this idea.

Edit: And a point of clarification - we are not talking about telepathy. Instead, I said "mind-reading", and there's a technical difference.

Telepathy is transference of thoughts, e.g. I want you to think/feel this or that, so I generate the corresponding idea in myself and transfer it to you. Whereas mind-reading is me seeing directly into your mind, reading your thoughts, ideas, memories, not implanting something extraneous. It's a pretty important difference, like the difference between reading and writing.

By phrenological presuppositions I mean that neuroscientists think they can detect some contents of memory/ideas in specific parts of the brain regardless if the subject knows it or not - a.k.a. mind-reading. Now, this is not scientifically confirmed (and, on my own presuppositions, never will be), but neuroscientists operate under these presuppositions anyway. Without these presuppositions, a title like "The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief" would be impossible.

I know that I see no similarity to your earlier description.

I'm not sure I agree with that definition, but it's not important. When I said telepathy I simply meant something not involving (known) physics. Then again, telepathy could in principle easily exist within the confines of naturalism. We have plenty of types of radiation available.

What do you mean by "regardless if the subject knows it or not"? You think the brain functions in a completely different way outside of fMRIs?

Surely you would laugh me away if I mixed up physical reading and writing, but this is precisely how mind-reading and telepathy differ, and you are insisting we should mix them up. I say that the work of neuroscientists, given their presuppositions, implies mind-reading, and I say mind-reading precisely because this is what I mean, not telepathy.

Quote from: ersi on 2015-05-29, 19:44:53

Surely you would laugh me away if I mixed up physical reading and writing, but this is precisely how mind-reading and telepathy differ, and you are insisting we should mix them up. I say that the work of neuroscientists, given their presuppositions, implies mind-reading, and I say mind-reading precisely because this is what I mean, not telepathy.

Telepathy would be hearing/speaking — without a known physical medium supporting such. Mind-reading would be hearing, without the other speaking — similarly.

So: If Harris' pseudoscience doesn't work, does Chomsky's various conspiracy theories?

Telepathy is like writing. What is important is the one who writes.

Quote from: ersi on 2015-05-29, 22:50:53

Telepathy is like writing. What is important is the one who writes.

Our disagreement here stems from our different languages; not our understanding, I think. In English (and especially English science fiction for more than three quarters of a century) the term "telepathy" involves mutual communication — by no mode known to our science…

To prove that Chomsky is just theorising, refute his facts.