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The evolution of consciousness

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  • New bumper sticker appearing on cars around biotech hubs soon:

    - God is just a severe case of HADD

    I wish I could get one of my independently-processing mini-brains to diagram in Visio one of its predictive models. My main brain would like to see that shit.

    • They just keep trying their best to avoid the soul.

      • Consciousness is the soul. Or maybe it's vice versa. If anything they are trying their best to avoid the dogma of specific belief systems. Obsessed with evidence they are.

        I thought the article was okay, even if it is speculation. What were you looking for? Some kind of confirmation?

        • Consciousness is the soul.

          I imagine he's speaking about the religious definition of "soul". Kinda like how when someone refers to the Holy Ghost, they don't exactly mean something that wanders the halls of a spooky mansion rattling chains.

          Animals have consciousness, but prolly only certain religions believe they have souls. Mine is not one of them, so as much as I love my dog (more than people, in general), he's as much chance of being with me in Heaven as a fern.

          Obsessed with evidence they are.

          I thought the article was okay, even if it is speculation.

          Wait, are they obsessed with evidence, or speculation?

          I also liked t

          • People feel the need for a soul/god/purpose, so they create one. Consciousness may become another lifeform, but it's not there yet. Dualism is another creation of man.

            Wait, are they obsessed with evidence, or speculation?

            Yes, without sufficient evidence, they are free to speculate, based on what they do have. It's not complicated.

            • People feel the need for a soul/god/purpose, so they create one.

              Tell me about it; that's why you godless elevate politics to be your religion. I care about politics, but only so much because to me this existence isn't the ultimate and final reality. I.e. there's something more important than this world and this lifetime. When you're godless, there can't be anything more important.

              sufficient evidence

              For varying degrees and definitions of "evidence" as well as "sufficient ". As science was overcome by Lefties and warped towards that religion, what is "evidence" and "sufficient" became w

              • When you're godless, there can't be anything more important.

                In your mind maybe. Only there does that even make sense. All choices, political, religious, etc. are personal...

                So, who are you today? Mr. Rogers? or Oscar the Grouch?

                • So, who are you today?

                  My netbook logs in to /. as Bill Dawg, my iPhone is still set up for the Bill Dog account, and my workstation has been having some work done. But to answer your question, from since earlier this year and on, I'm always Bill Dawg; no more Mr. Nice Guy. Fuck Political Correctness. (I voted for Trump yesterday.)

                  • I'm always Bill Dawg

                    :-) Yes, of course you are...

                    You, apparently just dropped by to pee on the carpet. S'alright...

                    I shall wait to see if our host here can truly externalize and project something so personal as consciousness itself. The "soul" (everything has/is one) is something you build, or grow. That is your conscious. If you can keep it going after death, more power... It is possible that humans are the only species aware of this and capable of doing so, but nobody really knows, but, like it o

                    • Now I get it, you don't seem to know the difference between conscience and conscious, which is why you don't understand the difference between conscious and soul.

                      But thanks for pointing that out- yet another "weird trinity" mirroring God internal to a human mind.

                    • You, apparently just dropped by to pee on the carpet.

                      Wait'll you see what I left behind the sofa.

                      The "soul" (everything has/is one) is something you build, or grow.

                      Like wow, man. I do love me some hippie spirituality.

                      Give a dog an opposable thumb and see what happens in a couple of million years.

                      Ah I see that in your religion miracles happen too. I think yours takes more faith.

                    • Sorry if I confused there and their and they're. I will elaborate later.

                    • Actually I don't have much to elaborate, since both emerge from within, and one is presumably exclusive to man, but man, in his infinite arrogance, is known to presume much.

                      As far as sensing pain, that is something that is brought to the conscious, something most vertebrates are assumed to have, if not of the "self". We have no idea what a fish feels, only that it reacts negatively to being hooked. It probably doesn't feel pain the way a human does any more than it sees and hears the way humans do. It might

                    • Conscience requires language and learning, and is the basis of morality. Conscious, or better yet to make it easier, Consciousness, is much more basic and yes, all vertebrates have it to some extent, as this article shows. I would argue that for a soul to exist, the body would need to support conscience.

                      And yes, it's rather arrogant to think we're the only species on the planet with it- I'm far more Franciscian than Dominican on that. Cats, dogs, songbirds, dolphins, and whales all show visible signs o

                    • Conscience requires language and learning, and is the basis of morality.

                      All well and good... That still does not provide an external source. It all came from inside the brain and through interaction and observation. "Morality" is determined by the local culture, a quality of which can be determined by what point homicide becomes justifiable, and the "conditions of their prisons", as the meme goes, but I drift. The whole point is that the gods created by humans are an expression of their conscience, an attem

                    • Language and learning require external sources. The boy raised in isolation can have no language, the man in Plato's cave can have no learning.

                    • The sources are still physical, coming from man. Where's the "god"?

                    • The sources are still coming from man- but from a part of man that only recently we have begun to manipulate- DNA. The computer program written by God through evolutionary programming techniques.

                      Well, that, and the billions of little tweaks to the universe that create that insidious anthropic principle that created the DNA. Stuff even you can't avoid- like the effects that drugs have on the brains of anybody who uses them to destroy intelligence.

                    • Well then god can be nothing but pure chaos, because it is from that that everything exists. Things can and do fall into order all by themselves. Put enough rocks together totally at random, and eventually, with enough gravitational attraction, everything crushes and settles into a perfect globe. Normalcy creates and powers itself.

                    • Things that exist are ordained to exist- and are thus in order. That you've blown your brains out on drugs and are now unable to understand the order, is not proof of chaos.

                    • "Ordained"? By what? Another of man's creations? Your religious "drug" is clouding your vision, and your judgement, and it dominates your imagination. It is just as hallucinogenic as LSD. All for the dopamine. Your attempt to troll me on the drug thing does not offend as much as it does amuse. It's a reflection of belief in pure caricatured propaganda. From you I expect better.

                    • I long ago lost all respect for you thanks to the drug abuse- and the brain damage I know comes from that. I pity you.

                      It is because of that drug abuse you can no longer see ordained reality for what it is: created by God. And because you can no longer see God's creation, you doubt He exists. But it wasn't God who chose to burn your brain out- you did. YOU choose to get high instead of get smart. You can't blame that on anybody other than yourself, and it is pitiful that you even try.

                    • created by God

                      Which was created by man.

                      You are doing it backwards.

                      I long ago lost all respect for you thanks to the drug abuse- and the brain damage I know comes from that. I pity you.

                      :-) You're just playing a different game, using a different drug, that's all, and responding with the stereotypical reactionary viewpoint of your chosen authority. I won't hold it against you. The opinions you recite on the matter are a simple caricature of Reefer Madness.

                    • Nothing good came from the 1960s- nothing at all. It was only destruction, no creation. It was only just another form of abuse.

                    • :-) Very entertaining thought (were you there?), but what does that have to do with the origin of the human conscience? Where is the non-human source?

                    • MTD is a false religion [crisismagazine.com]. The evolution of consciousness happened *before* human beings.

                    • Still earth bound. All coming from the physical. And everybody is still trying to get that dopamine fix, you too, Religion has the same effect on the brain as the drugs do, with even deadlier consequences. Your god and all its "morality" is a man made creation, from right here on earth, most likely as a result of some very strong hallucinogenics that were part of the ritual. That's where the evidence points. That is what the pretty colors on the MRI machine say.

                      Why did you go off on this drug thing anyway?

                    • Nope, Islam is also false religion. And there is no measurable difference between the theology of Moral Therapeutic Deism and Islam, they are two sides of the same coin, reinventing God instead of letting God reinvent you,

                    • Nope. Information doesn't come from the physical, it comes from quantum physics, which was invented by God. Your MRI machine is being misinterpreted.

                      The 60s killed my cousin. The 60s caused millions to abandon all that was good in favor of divorce, abortion, euthanasia, and destruction. The 60s caused the Eugenics War we're now suffering from; it caused Islamic Jihad.

                    • Sorry, didn't mean to post AC. I guess the system logs you out after some time

                    • Ordained by God. You can't get around a being whom the universe is just a subset of.

                    • Pure speculation, based on desire...

                    • Pure observation, not speculation. But I'm not surprised you don't see it, because as we established before, you've burned out your sense of the divine with destructive drugs, and are thus essentially insane.

                    • Observation, or chant induced hallucination? That is the only thing you have established. You just ignore the obvious in support of your opinion. Your drug has proven much more destructive.

                    • I only need to work with the homeless to see both the hand of God and the influence of the Devil. The rituals are to help deal with the observation, they are not the original observation in and of themselves.

                    • The rituals are to help deal with the observation

                      Precisely what I said, to conform it to your faith. That is what the brain does in order to comprehend its environment. Hell, it even has to vertically flip the image from your eyeballs (unless you live in the southern hemisphere). It hallucinates. The rituals, having the same effects as drugs and more often than not mixed with drugs (alcohol clearly the most popular), help make them more vivid. *The earth is the center of the universe* Ignoring and disparagi

                    • The faith conforms to the observation, not the other way around. The brain has to convert to reality, else it gets run over by a bus at the first zebra crossing (props for those who can identify the literary passage I just linked fustakrakich's philosophy to).

                    • You are indeed wagging the dog, and will continue to do so. I guess this is where it stays.

                      Zebra crossing = crosswalk

                      god = allah = LSD

                    • Allah and LSD are false Gods, so I'm not surprised you've chosen to worship them since you're scared of reality.

                    • :-)

                    • Another proof that LSD is harmful.

                    • Your opinion is duly noted. We should transplant your brain into everybody so we can all agree.

                    • No need. All you need to have my brain, is to not have become dependent upon drugs that burned out your brain.

                    • Mine is doing fine, with no attachments to false gods to impose on my neighbors. Your distortion field is clearly impenetrable. In some places that would be considered admirable. Basically it is just being obtuse, stubborn...

        • Mainly just a place to park a link until I can get around to crossposting it to a Diqus discussion on the ethics of catch and release fishing, in which the last post claimed that fish don't feel pain the same as humans do (and thus, catch and release is more humane than my rule- catch what you will eat and no more).

An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.

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