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Post by heeeeey on Dec 7, 2018 22:56:43 GMT
Excerpt:
This case is far from closed.
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Post by thefleetsin on Dec 7, 2018 23:11:33 GMT
there's a whole hell of a lot of money riding on the existence of the soul.
so you gotta believe that it's a market share that will eventually die, but die hard.
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Post by lowtacks86 on Dec 8, 2018 1:17:33 GMT
"This case is far from closed."
It's never gonna be "closed" because a soul is pretty much an unfalsifiable hypothesis (can't be disproven). That really doesn't add validity to the idea of a "soul" though as it can be applied to any number of extaordinary claims (you can't disprove leprechauns either). Even someone like Richard Dawkins probably wouldn't say "soul's don't exist" but rather "valid evidence for souls don't exist". So really saying "the case is far from closed" is rather useless and kinda misrepresenting skeptic arguments against souls/gods/religions/etc.
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Post by captainbryce on Dec 8, 2018 3:15:05 GMT
Regarding that article (from 2011): Any claim that space and time aren't cold, hard, physical things has to raise an eyebrow. Some of the reactions to Lanza's ideas, first set forth two years ago in an essay for The American Scholar, brand them as "pseudo-scientific philosophical claptrap" or "no better than any religion." Lanza admits that the reviews haven't all been glowing, particularly among some physicists. "Their response has been much how you'd expect priests to respond to stem cell research," he told me Monday. Biocentrism (from Greek: βίος, bios, “life”; and κέντρον, kentron, “center”) — also known as the biocentric universe — is a theory proposed in 2007 by American scientist Robert Lanza, which sees biology as the central driving science in the universe, and an understanding of the other sciences as reliant on a deeper understanding of biology. Lanza believes that life and biology are central to being, reality, and the cosmos—consciousness creates the universe rather than the other way around. While physics is considered fundamental to the study of the universe, and chemistry fundamental to the study of life, Lanza claims that scientists will need to place biology before the other sciences to produce a “theory of everything”
So! Can this proposition be criticized. Yes. Of course. And without much difficulty. To be concise, it is nonsense! With a caveat coming from Buddhism.
Science involves analysis at different levels. Beneath biology lies chemistry, next classical physics, atomic physics, and then quantum mechanics. Above biology are psychology, sociology, and perhaps objective morality/ethics. Biology lies in the apparent middle of this sequence of levels.
It is important to understand that the methods of analysis change from level to level. So the science of chemistry uses different methods than biology. Biology, for example, can accept more anecdotal evidence, not subject to the same statistical rules as chemistry. Animal behavior (perhaps appropriately called macro-biology) might vary from animal to animal within the same species. This is not true of chemical reactions which, under identical conditions, will remain the same as measured within statistical norms.
It is very clear, however, that while phenomena within each level of analysis differs, these phenomena depend upon those of the lower underlying level. For example, cell biology depends upon the chemistry of its constituents. So how then could biology, which falls in the sort of middle of the sequence of levels, be predictive of lower levels. This would be like saying that I can direct the movement of electrons around the atomic nuclei in the water that I drink.
So biocentricism seems more like religion than science. And perhaps it is proposed by Robert Lanza because of his immersion into medical research.
Now the caveat that I mentioned. Madyamica Buddhist cosmology proposes that everything that exists must be available to the perception of a sentient mind. This is like asking if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it fall, does it fall. Except from the Buddhist point of view no one has to hear the tree fall. Only have the possibility of hearing it fall. So physical phenomena exist according to the laws of natural science and the laws of mind science. Well that’s what the Madyamica Buddhists believe.
Perhaps it is not biology that is the basis of a theory of everything, as Robert Lanza proposes, but rather mind at the root of all phenomena. - Elia Sinaiko (Psychologist - Associate Research Scientist at NYU School of Medicine 1983-2002). Complete destruction of Biocentrism: nirmukta.com/2009/12/14/biocentrism-demystified-a-response-to-deepak-chopra-and-robert-lanzas-notion-of-a-conscious-universe/ |
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Post by faustus5 on Dec 8, 2018 12:50:24 GMT
Of course Heeeyyy, being a complete scientific illiterate with no intellectual standards to speak of, is going to cite an article by a complete quack who isn't taken seriously by anyone in the scientific community.
There was nothing that even remotely counted as evidence for a soul in the entire article. Nothing. It wasn't even an actual scientific theory, just some complete idiot talking about a subject (quantum physics) he isn't qualified to talk about, and actually getting it wrong.
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Post by phludowin on Dec 8, 2018 13:50:21 GMT
I'll post the conclusions from that article here. As for the old article linked in the OP: I read it, and found it not very convincing. I'll post his ending. The first bolded part is dealt with in the article from nirmukta. The word "suggest" is another key. Biocentrism is nothing but a hypothesis. A suggestion. The "evidence" may well have other explanations that don't necessitate biocentrism. Just advancing a hypothesis and saying that the evidence fits the hypothesis, therefore the hypothesis must be true, is unscientific. Since the article is 7 years old, and no further case has been made for biocentrism, I'll stick to my materialistic-naturalistic world view. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2018 14:27:29 GMT
Excerpt:
This case is far from closed.
Nonsensical claptrap. |
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Post by Catman on Dec 8, 2018 14:38:44 GMT
Do auras next!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2018 17:23:48 GMT
You don't know much about science, do you?
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