|
Register | Sign In |
|
QuickSearch
Thread ▼ Details |
|
Thread Info
|
|
|
Author | Topic: Man raised back to life in Jesus' name | |||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Interesting that there are no eyewitness statements to support her claim.
As best I can tell, "miracles" only happen when there are no skeptical eyewitnesses present. Impeach Bush
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
quote:If you had looked at a couple of my teeth last November, you would have seen very obvious fillings. If you looked again today, you would see no sign of the fillings. They are called crowns. I expect that a dentist can distinguish between crowns and plain teeth, but most untrained people could not. Impeach Bush
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
It is NOT up to us to prove it. You claim that every issue needs to be framed via empirical observations? I've got news for you---you and your ilk are not the final standard by which to judge the idiosuncracies of life.
It is not up to us to tell you what you should consider a miracle. I agree that no proof is required for that, other that what proof you might yourself need. In this case, randman posted the report in an attempt to persuade us that there was a miracle. So it is up to randman to provide persuasive evidence. Pragmatically, the burden of proof falls on who would attempt to persuade others.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Or are there documented cases of gold filled teeth from an era before dentists started using them. Or maybe God is not omniscient after all, and had to wait until the dentists discovered the methodology before He knew how to do it.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
There are, however, some reports of "ghost limbs" appearing on the MRI's of people who have recently had a limb amputated or severed,
This is likely true if those were MRI brain scans. Ghost limbs are a well known phenomenon. Someone whose legs have been amputated might have sensations of an itchy toe.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Could one consider this as a potential evidence that the soul exists?
In a word, NO. It is just that the brain wired itself when the limbs were present. Now that they are absent, there are still neural signals that cause sensations that made sense when the limbs were present.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
There is quite a literature on ghost limbs. Try google.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
As far as I know, what happens is that a person has an itchy toe, but no toe to itch. I suppose that is very frustrating.
You really have to ask the people who have had these experiences.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
It seems to me that you're basically conclusing that mind (or consciousness) is a function of matter -- matter that has attained a certain degree of organization.
That wouldn't be my preferred choice of words, but I basically agree with that.
If so, some neurosurgurians in the field has concluded otherwise.
I would look to neuroscientists, rather than neurosurgeons.
For example, Wilder Penfield actually changed his mind on this very topic based on his own investigations into neurological connections. Penfield is actually considerd the father of modern neurosurgury -- and he, like you, actually started off with the idea that consciousness somehow emanated from the neural activities of the brain.
My own view is that you cannot confine consciousness to be due to the brain. I believe it takes a whole person, and a brain by itself (say a brain in a vat) is not sufficient.
Lee Edward Travis writes: Penfield would stimulate electrically the proper motor cortx of conscious patients and challenge them to keep one hand from moving when current was applied. The patient would seize his hand with the other hand and struggle to hold it still. Thus one hand under the control of the eletrical current and the other hand under the control of the patient's mind fought against each other. There is positive evidence that consciousness and the self are not merely a physical process of the brain. We have experimental data where people's brains are electrically stimulatd in order to cause them to move their arms or legs, turn their heads or eyes, talk or swallow. And invariably the patient (each one) would respond by saying something like, "I didn't do that. You did." In other words, the patient clearly thinks of himself as having an existence separate from his body. In fact, no matter how far Penfield probed the cerebral cortex, there was no place that he could find where an eletrical stimulation of the brain would cause a patient to "believe" or "decide".
I think the general view is that belief is not a matter of electrical signal, but has to do with the structural organization of the brain. Electrical stimulation could not easily create beliefs. Changes in neural structure would be needed for that. Decision might be electrical, but it won't be the kind of simple electrical signal that can be generated by probes.
Another study showed a delay between the time an eletric shock was applied to the skin, its reaching the cerebral cortx, and the self conscious perception of it by the person. This too suggests that "the self" is more than just a machine that simply "reacts" to stimuli as it receives them.
Some people have jumped to conclusions as a result of studies of timing differences. But I think those conclusions are premature.
Think about dreaming itself.
They observe and measure that movement. How exactly do researchers know that there are a certain eye movements when people are dreaming? You can see eye movement, even when the eye is closed. In sleep labs, they can use instrumentation to measure more precisely.
Researchers can certainly know about the brain by studying it, but they can't know about the mind without asking the person to reveal it.
This is true. Many scientists believe that "mind" is a poor concept to use in scientific discussion. It's a folk theory construct. There are many folk theory constructs that scientists find to be poor concepts. For example, physicists will tell you that "centrifugal force" is a poor term and doesn't actually refer to any real force.
The details of the neurophysiology of the brain can easilly be viewed as merely footprints (in a physical medium) of non-physical, non-genetic supersensible realities connected to the activity of human consciousness. In fact, it seems as though the evidence currently points towards the view that consciousness exists independently of the brain.
That's roughly the view of Cartesian dualism. It's a philosophical position. I don't know of any credible neuro-scientist who believes it.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
How this...
Not having read the book, I can't comment.
What it suggests is that the mind is something which can work independently from the brain itself. In other words, the basic observation is that people are quite aware of the fact that they are not "willingly" doing the actions that these electrical signals are producing in them. In fact, they can (and have) resisted these impusles using their own consciousness working independently of their own brain synapses.
I disagree with that. A few years ago, while driving, I was applying the breaks. The car was pretty slow. It should have stopped within another six inches. It didn't. It lurched into the car in front, causing significant damage to both. Did my car have a mind independent of its physical components? No, it was just that somebody crashed into the rear of my car, and the force of the collision overrode what would normally have been able to control it. It is the same with the experiments you are describing. Electrical signals were injected, and these directly stimulated motor neurons, causing the movement. The injected signals overrode the volitional control signals from other parts of the brain. I really don't think there is any mystery here.
The researchers I've quoted were actively searching for purely naturalistic causalities within the brain to conclude to the brain itself is the sum total of a person's consciousness. Contrary to what they were expecting to find, however, they found convincing data which appeared to contradict their own assumptions in regards to the "seat of consciousness".
That only shows that we do not yet fully understand the basis for consciousness. It isn't evidence against material causation.
It seems as though Julia Mossbridge might be working on it.
I'm not familiar with her work. The titles of her publications do not raise any eyebrows.
Here's her CV for your perusal.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
But the assumption that the impulse overode the "volitional control" part of the brain is what I question.
You've got me there. I'm a theoretician, not a biologist. What is the "volitional control" part of the brain? There are areas of the brain that are particularly active during thinking, and these are what I was referring to. But I don't know brain anatomy well enough to identify them. Our knowledge of how the brain works is far from complete. As far as I know, it is not currently possible to use electrical stimulation to fully control conscious decision making.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
It would be interesting to start a new thread where we all pool our resources together to see what information is available.
The field of cognitive science is still in its infancy. Theories of cognition are all over the map, ranging from theories based on quantum gravity, theories based on electromagnetic fields to theories that the brain is a kind of super-computer to theories of biological self-organization. I'm not convinced that a thread on the topic would be all that informative.
Like I said, the evidence I've seen seems to indicate otherwise.
At present there is no knock down proof that you are wrong. However, most cognitive scientists believe that a fully naturalistic account will be found.
|
|
|
Do Nothing Button
Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved
Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024