Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
i thought you were going to explain the physical nature of the mind and conciousness
Oh, that. Um. Yeah, gimme a minute.
i thought you were going to explain the physical nature of the mind and conciousness
Roger Penrose reckons consciousness arises from the quantum superposition of different protein configurations in structures called microtubules that are found in neurons, and that they decohere via a process involving quantum gravity. I don't think he's found any way to work this into a viable theory, however. And he's arguably one of the cleverest people alive.
lool!
what conciousness actually is, is kind of ambiguous really.. perhaps muddies peoples different attempts to understand it or describe how it works. I found this talk really interesting, http://worldsciencefestival.com/videos/consciousness_explored_and_explained
that doesn't mean they couldn't be understood by rational beings with different (and perhaps greater) intellectual capabilities than us.
BTW speaking as we were of psychedelics, I've certainly 'understood' or rather intuitively grasped certain concepts or modes of experience while tripping that are completely inaccessible while sober.
This i think is not correct, as i think structural inequalities tend to prevent poorer countries from indulging in scientific research more than any cultural preference, even if the lovely Dr Jim says otherwise.Likewise, he's correct to point out that the development of Muslim countries is being held back by a widespread suspicion of and hostility to science, with the result that they invest in science research and teaching just a tiny fraction of that spent by non-Muslim countries. (The same point is made by Jim al-Khalili, who is an atheist but clearly not an Islamophobe.) At the same time, while he has grudgingly admits that amazing scientific achievements were made in the Muslim world in the middle ages, he fails to see or refuses to see that someone writing in the 12th century could just as well use this to argue that European culture is inherently 'backwards' compared to Islamic/Arabic-Persian culture, which at the time was true.
this is correct thoughI think where RD goes wrong is in his insistence that religion is the root of all evil, because he's confusing cause and effect.
the UK? the queen being the head of the state and the national religion? I don't think you'll find that countries with muslim populations are less likely to have secular systems of government or law, count them up!The big asymmetry of course is that many Muslim countries have an explicitly religious basis for their legal systems, which is in general not the case for Christian countries. (Meaning countries where the majority of the population is, or historically has been, Christian - clearly there are no 'Christian' states in the sense that Iran is an Islamic state, unless you include the Vatican, I guess.)
apologies for dragging up posts from earlier in the discussion but...This i think is not correct, as i think structural inequalities tend to prevent poorer countries from indulging in scientific research more than any cultural preference, even if the lovely Dr Jim says otherwise.
the UK? the queen being the head of the state and the national religion? I don't think you'll find that countries with muslim populations are less likely to have secular systems of government or law, count them up!
And you can ask him this evening when he will be expounding on exactly this topic - please go along & report back! http://www.cara1933.org/events/43/s...b-world-a-personal-and-historical-perspective
wish i could have gone as i'm sure it would be fascinating, although i think dr jim is a bit of a safe mouthpiece for the beeb secularist viewpoint...ta for the heads-up but sadly I'm not in London these days.
that's interesting, but equally shows that impoverished african, (also asian and latin american) countries that aren't mainly muslim spend less, and that's not because of their religion, it's because of them not having enough money to spend on the basics, let alone scientific R&D. When the proportion of minted countries like saudi is compared to somewhere like uganda that means that a big amount is actually getting spent - Saudi has pretty good science education, & is actually world leader is some random stuff like conjoined twinsBut where do these structural inequalities come from in the first place? Surely they come in large part from the culture, of which religion is an important aspect? And I don't see quite why you've substituted 'poorer countries' for 'Muslim countries' - Saudi Arabia and certain other Gulf states weren't short of a few quid the last time I looked, yet they invest virtually nothing in R&D because they can just rely on oil. In fact Uganda proportionally outspends Saudi Arabia eight times over. Look at this map:
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS/countries?display=map
ok i was being a wee bit silly there, but if you ask an iranian whether uk is a christian country, they will give the same misinformed response, based on that slim evidence, that you're coming up with on saudi - which is a monarchy, run by the royals who style themselves defenders of the faith, just as the brits do.Oh come oooon, England (not the UK) may notionally have an 'official religion' but by any reasonable measure we're one of the most secularized countries in the world. I said some Muslim countries have legal systems that are explicitly based on religious law in a way that, as far as I know, few if any Christian countries do (with a caveat about recent worrying developments in Russia). Why isn't there a colour on this map for 'Christian law' in the way there is for 'Islamic law'?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ldMap.png/800px-LegalSystemsOfTheWorldMap.png
Is there a country that's basically the Christian equivalent of Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan or Iran? I'll take it all back if you can provide an example.
surely you're not saying that the reason that many southern countries, (regardless of their religion), are poor, is simply down to their culture?
ok i was being a wee bit silly there, but if you ask an iranian whether uk is a christian country, they will give the same misinformed response, based on that slim evidence, that you're coming up with on saudi - which is a monarchy, run by the royals who style themselves defenders of the faith, just as the brits do.
I think that religion, or at least an ethics based on understandings historically derived from whatever religion, is fairly fundamental to most legal systems, west or elsewhere.
So as for why the map has not got "christian legal system" on it, that's a case in point; it's cos it was (presumably) done by a xtian - wikipedia is chronically blind to it's own lack of conciousness of such matters (cf their culturally insensitive treatment to complaints about putting up pictures of the prophet). What you call 'the legal system' a non-christian would call 'the christian legal system'.
Anyhow, I had been considering starting up a thread on 'stuff science can't explain' for a while, & this one was nicely heading in that direction, so apologies to divert from that interesting convo with this culture warrior stuff that has been fairly well rinsed on many other threads...