Why do we exist?

@Noflaps said in #50:
> But we use our ability to describe something with mathematics (often more approximately than we realize) in order to comfort ourselves with a notion that it is in any case a naive waste of time to contemplate, or even really notice, our profound unknowing. Note Katzenschinken's response to me: "So what?"

That's not my take on not knowing. My take is: Stick to the facts. You can hypothesize but you have to base it on supporting facts. If you don't have those then make sure to get them before sticking your head out of the window and yelling some incoherent mumbojumbo into the landscape.

> I think I'm being accused, sub silento, of favoring a "God o' the Gaps."

Well, at least you were talking of some sort of "Consciousness", spelled with a capital C. One could indeed be led to believe you were thinking of some god entity. As you didn't mention a god I didn't use the term "God of the Gaps" and instead asked for clarification. Which you unfortunately did not provide.

> A somewhat condescending way of describing people who are unwilling to believe that a current scientific "theory" is necessarily the last word really needed, and who push God or spirituality or even doubt itself as a pacifier for the weak-minded or uneducated.

The God-of-the-Gaps argument does not apply to people who just doubt a scientific theory. You are misrepresenting that term. It is specifically used by people who fill the unknowns with God or even reject scientific theories that they don't understand and replace it with the machinations of the invisible man. Something which I indeed consider intellectual laziness at least.

> A "theorem" in mathematics is irrefutable so long as (or to the extent that) the axioms at its foundation are -- and logic itself is -- correct.

Agreed.

> But other sciences -- say biology -- do not truly or always share this near certainty with mathematics. The "theories" supported by "evidence" are created inductively -- and induction does NOT carry with it the virtual certainty that deduction (the pillar of mathematics) does.

Again, I agree. That's the reason why in the natural sciences (even in physics) you never claim to have reached the final truth.

However, this should not deter from the fact that a theory - as much as we don't consider it to be the ultimate truth - can stand on very firm ground and has a very solid body of evidence for it. Evolution has that. And to attack it you need more than "I don't believe that 7 million years of evolution are enough to separate us from the chimp" or "To me there seems a secret Consciousness guiding our evolution".

> By the way, my use of the word "magic" was merely a rhetorical device -- to get across a point.

If that was the case it certainly was not helpful to talk of an undefined 'Consciousness' that applies, erm, conscious guidance (which you could call magic) on which mutations take place within two populations of Sahelanthropus tchadensis (or whatever the last common ancestor between humans and chimps was), one leading to Homo sapiens, the other leading to Pan troglodytes.

> Furthermore, 7 million years, or 10 million, is NOT convincingly long enough to evolve by wise or impulsive procreation the astonishing complexity of body and brain.

First: Body and brain didn't start 7 or 10 million years ago at zero.
Second: For drastical changes in the body appearance within short time just take the example of dogs. A German Shepherd looks different enough to wolves but take Chihuahuas, Great Danes, Poodles, Pugs... All done within 30,000 years of evolution, even if most of it was done not by natural but artificial (human-lead) selection.

I have to repeat myself: As long as you don't provide a bit more this just sounds like an argument from personal incredulity.

> And, I must point out, some highly significant "evolution" has taken place in a much shorter time than that. Homo Sapiens appeared and supplanted Homo Erectus in a much shorter time.

The differences between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens are not that big anymore. And from the earliest Homo erectus to us we still have about 2 million years of time.

@derrickz127 said in #1:
> I wonder why do we exist?
1. To find purpose
2. To become strong
3. To feel happiness
4. To make our kind great
5. To make the planet great
6. To make the universe great.
7. To gain knowledge.
8. To savior the good moments.
9. To be successful.
10. To be strong
11. To be a world leader
12. To find peace
13. To find war
14. To discover the answer to this question
15. To make more
16. To live a holy life
17. To live a perfect life
18. To live a movie-like life
19. To take risks
20. To discover the truth
21. To fulfil the prophecies
22. To be one of the ants in the croud
23. To work for manipulators
24. To be the manipulator
25. To go to mars
26. To explore the world
27. To get revenge
28. To have beef with people
29. To win
30. To lose
31. To be an emo and dye your hair
32. To make others smile
33. To make others like you
34. To be validated
35. To lose it all.
36. To wonder
37. To feel
38. To be alive.
39. To do it all over again
40. To achieve heaven, nirvana etc
41. Prove others wrong
42. Prove others right.
43. Confuse others
44. To stop global warming
45. To stop poverty
46. To end world hunger
47. To give your lunch money to a homeless person
48. To pollute
49. To cause poverty
50. To steal others belongings
51. To steal others good name
52. To steal others light
53. To give others what yours
54. To give others a good name
55. To give those in darkness light.
56. To save a life
57. To lose a life
58. To ask
59. To wonder
60. To doubt
61. To keep waiting
62. Keep waiting for an answer.
63. To want an answer
64. But yet to not want to hear the answer
65. To not know the truth
66. To hide
67. To deny the truth
68. To stop wondering
69. To stop asking
70. To stop fearing
71. To. Stop questioning
72. To stop proving
73. To stop showing
74. To stop reacting
75. To stop distracting
76. To stop deceiving
77. To start believing

@Katzenschinken is an excellent writer and he is not likely to buy what I am selling.

He also seems (to me, at least) to think that any reference to a
"Consciousness" (with a capital C) is too uncomfortably close to the magical for me to claim that I was not actually adverting to magic, no matter what I say.

Yet, Consciousness (as a distinct phenomenon) more and more seems, surprisingly, to be of fundamental, causal importance in the physical reality our theories attempt confidently to explain.

Several educated people have tried diligently and hopefully to demonstrate that our current view of unguided evolution creaks a bit and leaves some room for wonder and doubt. And that's even if we ignore the initial problem of creating any sort of life spontaneously from the nonliving, so that evolution can even begin.

I could frantically mine those sources, refresh my memory of them, and bring to this post some of their more salient points -- like the astonishing intricacy and interaction evidenced by some of our biochemistry and internal regulation.

And if I did that, I would no doubt be met with real skepticism and most likely some outright mocking. At this time and with this memory, I could not do their views justice. No doubt some of their points, at least, could be refuted beyond my feeble attempt to defend them.

But I'm not trying to win an argument; especially one that I am sure I cannot convincingly win. Instead, I am merely giving voice to an intuition which has been formed over many years, guided by way too much schooling, a defensible amount of reading, and many thoughts and glimpses which have arisen but then died away from specific memory, leaving only a taste that remains behind but that I cannot adequately articulate.

So why bother? Why give voice to a view likely to earn me not agreement but scorn instead? Because I cannot help thinking that we need to edge away from an increasingly cold and lonely assurance that we are merely machines.

Such an assurance does not seem to be making us happier and more sane. To the contrary. Even if many find it intellectually satisfying.

because god made us

@Noflaps said in #53:
> Such an assurance does not seem to be making us happier and more sane. To the contrary. Even if many find it intellectually satisfying.

Just for you I'd recommend looking into spiritual communities online (reddit!!). Try Robert Monroe. Possibly psychedelics. Read people's experiences. There is another route to knowledge, and it is through personal experience.

There is more to life but it is not merely religious skepticism on evolution. That's just another road that leads to a dead end. To be frank if you are going to fight science on its own terms, science will always win. Stephen C. Meyer is the religious apologist who typically voices ideas similar to yours but he has been roundly refuted by many many scientists :P. You won't get anywhere going that way, or through any other ancient religious arguments on the existence of God from good old William Lane Craig

Thank you, @kyanite -- it's always nice to get a thoughtful response rather than a hurled mud pie.

I have been a meditator of reasonable consistency for decades. Long enough for my navel to shout "hey, stop staring at me."

As any long term meditator is almost bound to do, I agree that direct experience is much more convincing than argument or teaching. The challenge, of course, is to tell an experienced delusion from an experienced reality.

At this point, my mantra, repeated in a much less direct and sometimes windy fashion, on this forum and in the company of intelligent and well-educated folks, is: why so certain? I am surprised at the extent to which new orthodoxies have become entrenched among many who would be astonished to be described as orthodox.

But they should sometimes shout back at me: why so serious? After all, it will all work out. One way or another.

@Noflaps said in #53:
> He also seems (to me, at least) to think that any reference to a "Consciousness" (with a capital C) is too uncomfortably close to the magical for me to claim that I was not actually adverting to magic

To what are you refering then? Tell us.

> no matter what I say.

That's the point. You don't say what you mean.

> Yet, Consciousness (as a distinct phenomenon) more and more seems, surprisingly, to be of fundamental, causal importance in the physical reality our theories attempt confidently to explain.

Really? So according to you - and according to sources from several educated people that you could only list by frantically mining them - this Consciousness (with a capital C and being a distinct phenomenon) does not need a brain but can exist on its own, contrary to everything that we so far experienced in the biological realm. Even if this, lets say, 'information' is only a conjecture by me as you seemingly don't want to go into further detail.

> Several educated people have tried diligently and hopefully to demonstrate that our current view of unguided evolution creaks a bit

You see, there are two assumptions in this sentence. First: That our view on evolution is lacking something. That may or may not be true. But it also can be viewed as normal because even a scientific theory like the theory of evolution never can be considered the final say as you rightly established in your previous comment.
Second: That it therefore has to be guided evolution. Now this is something these "educated people" really need to back up with substantial evidence as this would be a fundamental change in our view on evolution. Unfortunately you already announced that we have to wait a bit longer for your frantical source mining.

> And that's even if we ignore the initial problem of creating any sort of life spontaneously from the nonliving, so that evolution can even begin.

Fortunately we have the living world and its fossilized past right before us so we don't need to have solved the problem of Abiogenesis to establish that evolution works. A problem BTW that is worked on in a separate scientific discipline.

> Because I cannot help thinking that we need to edge away from an increasingly cold and lonely assurance that we are merely machines.

Did I really make this assurance? Can't remember.

But I do remember from other debates with theists that this is a well preferred accusation to atheists. Somehow our lack of belief in invisible entities in the sky is supposed to degrade humans to a mere machine and take our humanity away. Why that is, I don't have a single clue.

> Such an assurance does not seem to be making us happier and more sane.

Is it only me who hears another preferred claim by theists here? "Oh, you atheists must live such an unhappy life without God!"

Anyway, seems to me that this conversation is kind of over as you now address me by "He" and not by "You" and as you express in a later comment that my last post was not an argument but "a hurled mud pie". I guess, I have to live with that.

@derrickz127 said in #1:
> I wonder why do we exist?
to ask the question
"why do we exist"

The well-written and skilled debater @Katzenschinken has asked me to "tell" him what I mean about consciousness. Taking a deep breath, and a sip of black coffee, I begin:

Consciousness with a C is being mistaken here, apparently, as necessarily referring to God, or as some might more mockingly describe Him, the "Sky Daddy" or, with a more polytheistic and less subconsciously patriarchal inclination, "invisible entities in the sky."

But I use Consciousness to mean something broader, without, of course, excluding God as a possibility. Consciousness is a separate, and apparently important casual phenomenon (for more than obvious personal reasons having to do with barbecued ribs and beautiful autumn days). It is apparently not merely an illusion that we supposed biological machines trick ourselves into accepting as "real." It seems to play a fundamental role in our physics that has come slowly to be recognized.

What determines the death of Schrödinger's cat? The cat's situation resolves when the box is opened and it is observed. What is doing the observation? Some consciousness (perhaps that of my brother Lenny, if I had a brother), although that observation, as I more generally noted in a previous post, may be done more indirectly (as through a camera or cat respiration telemetry) and, oddly, perhaps even heedless of our normal ideals about the flow of time (as by later viewing a recording made by the camera).

Some may find comfort or at least a reduced workload by quickly and fervently imagining that I am (obviously! Just, you know, obviously!) an anti-science religious nut job (not that I believe anyone should find religious faith to be necessarily "nutty"). After all, for some that is the orthodox conclusion to be made about anyone who disagrees with their satisfying and hard-won worldview in certain ways. "Label and dismiss" has become a common strategy many use to avoid any reflective questioning of established (and preferred) viewpoints. Some bellow "it's the science" and then retreat into memorized positions rather than pause and engage in any further observation or reflection.

But by both long schooling and inclination, and even years of actual practice, I am not-at-all anti-science, And while I am also not-at-all an atheist, I must confess, with trepidation, that churches have rarely seen me over the years, except during weddings and funerals. Indeed, I don't even live in the American South, although increasingly that seems like a pleasant option, at least in the absence of hurricanes.

But I did not set out to discuss my own strengths or failings. I merely hoped to articulate a growing conviction that we should not look at ourselves as merely the prototype of much better machines to come. And while (as some seem to have forgotten, and perhaps even become confused about) I have not, and do not, deny the occurrence of evolution. I've said that more than once. I say it again. Sure, progressive fossils! Cocker Spaniels! (Which were, I might gleefully add, "deliberately" bred to so evolve).

But I can't help intuiting that more is going on than merely that. However, such intuitions now feel like heresy, and perhaps in another twenty-five years I could be burned at the stake for having them. At least I hope that there still remains a twenty-five year cushion.

Those who burn heretics are often very bright and well educated. But, still more often, I believe, they are quite certain. Very assertively so.

@Noflaps

You wrote much and said a lot less. And with these two paragraphs...

> However, such intuitions now feel like heresy, and perhaps in another twenty-five years I could be burned at the stake for having them. At least I hope that there still remains a twenty-five year cushion.
> Those who burn heretics are often very bright and well educated. But, still more often, I believe, they are quite certain. Very assertively so.

... which make a decent job of smearing the opponent and indulging in the own persecution complex I feel it is better to stop here.