fresco wrote:Interestingly here is a talk on Spinoza who
did propose a "proof" that "God doesn't exist".
http://beyondbelief2006.org/Watch/ (see "Session 5" Speaker 2)
(I thoroughly recommend this whole series to participants on this thread.)
fresco wrote:If you follow up the V.S. Ramachandran article in session 4 of those videos you will find that he cites neurological evidence for one side of the brain as theistic, while the other side is atheistic. A differentiation of "intelligence" may be a similar phenomenon.
However, getting beyond the reductionism implied by "straight neurology" (as opposed to the "quantum neurology" of Hameroff) the subtle issue about "fooling oneself" is the epistemological problem which lies with the "naive realism" of the word "fooling" which implies "truth" is/can be objective. A secondary issue is that the fragmentation implied by "self fooling self" can be technically eliminated by a "transcendent move" either to Self (capital S) or Nonself
Hi fresco,
I have not viewed session 4, but here's my take on the session 5 proof argument:
The speaker in question was Steven Nadler, Professor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
http://philosophy.wisc.edu/nadler/
The Spinozian proof that there is no god, is only arguable in the narrow anthropomorphic providential view of god (as compared to nature on its own terms).
Steven Nadler says both nature and god (god in this narrow sense) are an "eternal infinite substance that generates everything that happens" and are thus (presumably, because Nadler does not go into it) mutually exclusive and/or redundant.
However this proof does not necessarily stand firm when a wider more general sense of god is argued, such as an indifferent god whose sole action was the instigator of our present realm
I for one don't even need to try and make the argument that they must be mutually exclusive and/or redundant, to dismiss that narrow view of god, for the simple reason that there are too many conflicting / contradictory religions of equal merit (or lack thereof) which cannot, by default, all be correct!
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As an aside, after Steven Nadler, the session 5 speaker in question was Pat (did not get her last name) and I did not like her much, after about 5 minutes I shut her off. Why you ask?
It's complete BS that the history of mammals is the history of morals and the family way of life! She does not give cold-blooded creatures their due by any stretch of the imagination. In fact there is argument that at least some dinosaurs functioned in herds, functioned as family units and looked after their young. She also tried to draw parallels between birds and mammals in an adaptive-moral-sense which is quite absurd as birds (in essence) have more in common with dinosaurs than mammals.
I don't like that kind of myopic hubris and claims of warm-blooded moral superiority over cold blooded creatures (she kept diddling with her nose while she spoke too).
