Why do christians hate evolution?

WHy do you think "evolutionists" exist?

Why does someone who believe in evolution magically hate Christianity?

Originally posted by JesusIsAlive
😆

You are funny. Ok, how about explaining to me how the mind works i.e. conscience.

ummmm

that post could take years.

For instance, I was going through a stack of journal articles today that I was supposed to alphabetize for the prof I work for. Probably over 100 articles, all of them about very specific parts of how pre-frontal attentional allocation affects how and what we see, and how we feel about it.

That is only the smallest part of the equation.

Also, when it gets into talking about the communications between the hypothalamus and amygdale, thats completely meaningless to people without the background in the field. Neuro science is comparable in its complexity to astrophysics and quantum mechanics. There are hundreds of billions of neurons in the brain, each with potentially thousands of connections to other neurons.

If you want me to make a stab at it, consciousness is likely the way we describe the way we experience certain mental functions. Consciousness is honestly what I one day want to get into the research of, but really, its generally unexplainable right now.

The biggest problem being that it looks like it doesn't really exist, and that we need a much more complex way of describing human experience.

If you really want an in depth look at how I feel about this I'll cut and paste some of the stuff I put in the philosophy forum... It goes into lots more detail.

Originally posted by Burner
Why do evolutionists hate Christianity?

Good question.

Originally posted by inimalist
ummmm

that post could take years.

For instance, I was going through a stack of journal articles today that I was supposed to alphabetize for the prof I work for. Probably over 100 articles, all of them about very specific parts of how pre-frontal attentional allocation affects how and what we see, and how we feel about it.

That is only the smallest part of the equation.

Also, when it gets into talking about the communications between the hypothalamus and amygdale, thats completely meaningless to people without the background in the field. Neuro science is comparable in its complexity to astrophysics and quantum mechanics. There are hundreds of billions of neurons in the brain, each with potentially thousands of connections to other neurons.

If you want me to make a stab at it, consciousness is likely the way we describe the way we experience certain mental functions. Consciousness is honestly what I one day want to get into the research of, but really, its generally unexplainable right now.

The biggest problem being that it looks like it doesn't really exist, and that we need a much more complex way of describing human experience.

If you really want an in depth look at how I feel about this I'll cut and paste some of the stuff I put in the philosophy forum... It goes into lots more detail.

Good job of attempting to explain conscience.

Second question: do you believe something as complex as the mind (notice that I did not say the brain. I think that every person on earth unanimously agrees that the brain is complex) evolved? Ok, now lets include the brain, do you believe that the brain with all of its complexity evolved from a single-celled amoeba?

Originally posted by JesusIsAlive
Good job of attempting to explain conscience.

Second question: do you believe something as complex as the mind (notice that I did not say the brain. I think that every person on earth unanimously agrees that the brain is complex) evolved? Ok, now lets include the brain, do you believe that the brain with all of its complexity evolved from a single-celled amoeba?

I believe that the brain and the mind are one in the same.

I also believe that they are the product of evolution over time.

Originally posted by inimalist
ummmm

that post could take years.

😂 By years you mean forever.

Psychology....yuck.

Why don't we start by explaining evolution.

Originally posted by inimalist
I believe that the brain and the mind are one in the same.

I also believe that they are the product of evolution over time.

But how can the brain and the mind be one and the same? The mind is incorporeal (it has no tangibility). The brain is composed of matter the mind is not.

Originally posted by Alliance
😂 By years you mean forever.

Psychology....yuck.

Why don't we start by explaining evolution.

haha, different strokes for different folks I guess

but ya, so much amazing stuff out there that we will probably never know in our life time.

We are pretty small...

Originally posted by JesusIsAlive
But how can the brain and the mind be one and the same? The mind is incorporeal (it has no tangibility). The brain is composed of matter the mind is not.

Not if they are one and the same. If the mind can't exist without the brain...there must be some connection. The mind is simply the brains image of itself.

Originally posted by inimalist
haha, different strokes for different folks I guess

but ya, so much amazing stuff out there that we will probably never know in our life time.

We are pretty small...

Well, psychology wont figure it out. NeuroBIOLOGISTS will 😉

Originally posted by JesusIsAlive
But how can the brain and the mind be one and the same? The mind is incorporeal (it has no tangibility). The brain is composed of matter the mind is not.

wrong

really, brain=mind

oh whatever, ill find that post....

Originally posted by inimalist
It depends on what you mean by "thought" and how specific of an answer you want.

To begin with, there is not yet a human action or function or behaviour that has been found to be inexplicable through neuroscience. Everything we have observed has supported the idea that thought originates in the brain.

To begin with, "thoughts" is not a scientific or provable concept, so I will abandon it right now. However, there are many cognitive processes that amount to what we would consider to be "thoughts". For instance, all of our sensory organs relay information to our brain, which is then assembled by various regions into our general perception. Yes, there is proof that this is how our senses work, it is a massively robust field of psychology and biology. Pick up a biopsychology and sensation & perception textbook, the specifics of this type of "thought" are gone into in GREAT detail.

Well, what about knowledge? Sure, the brain can explain how the light from my computer screen gets into my eye and I become aware of it, but how do I know what is in that light? Well, thats simple. Every time stimuli hits a sensory organ, it elicits a pattern of responses that goes from the receptors to the cortex by way of the thalamus (smelling is a little different, but not enough so to throw off this point). From the cortex, the information travels to the infotemporal cortex and the amygdala (this is specific for sight, I will be honest in saying I don't know where emotional processing of other senses occurs), where semantic and emotional identification of the stimuli occurs. This all happens well before you become conscious of an object. For instance, there is a disorder known as agnosia, which is a disconnection between the amygdala and the hypothalamus (oh man, i think thats the one...). In this disorder, people are able to recognize and interact with everything, except they are unable to retrieve emotional memories for the purpose of identification. For instance, an agnosia patient who sees their father would describe them as "A person who looks exactly like my father, though clearly not them". The reason that the person cannot identify their father is because their brain is not sending the proper father signal. The information never makes it to the hypothalamus, so it can never be emotionally processed. This proof is two fold. To begin with, it shows that parts of the brain are specifically responsible for attributing information to certain aspects of perception. Why would your soul not be able to identify your father just because some brain thing is messed up? The second point is that conscious perception is completely dependent on subconscious processing. Before you become consciously aware of an item, your brain has already decided what it is, how you feel about it, and what you need to do to deal with it.

Well, what about "consciousness". To begin with, I hate the term. It is misleading in the first place, because asking about consciousness supposes that there is a consciousness to look for. The western philosophical and religious traditions basically named and defined the mental process we would term "consciousness" long before science had a chance to look at it. Now that we have things like EEGs and fMRIs, we find that "consciousness" is really diaphanous. For instance, there are things called brainwaves that are the byproduct of electrical charge in active neurons and things called glial cells which create synchronization in neuron activation. Some of these brainwaves, when they occur in certain parts of the brain, can be associated with certain patterns of neural activation, which can be used to determine what people are "thinking". Now, in an experiment, people were asked to move their hand and say when they become consciously aware of their intention to move their hand. What was found, when measuring brainwave activity from the motor cortex (the place responsible for movement) was activation much sooner than the person indicated awareness of the conscious intent to move. This means that people do not become aware of what they are going to do until after their brain has prepared to make that movement. This is a very standard result in cognitive neuroscience.

There is also the existence of something called, by Dr. Gazzaniga, the interpreter. It is within the left side of the brain, and all information must pass through it in order to be included in our interpretation of reality. For instance, a cure for some types of Epilepsy is to cut the corpus callosum, a nerve that connects the left and right sides of the brain. Once this is done, certain types of information can no longer pass from one side to the other. While this is ok in normal conditions, it can be manipulated in experimental conditions to show the inability of the brain to account for all stimuli. A person's left eye sends information to the right side of the brain, and vica versa. So, if a subject with their callosum cut is presented a ball in their left eye and a bike in the other, they will ONLY be aware of the bike (the ball is being sent to the right side of the brain which cannot communicate with the interpreter). Well, you say, thats because they are ignoring the ball (or some other argument that still supports some type of dualism) but wait, if after showing them those images you were to show them a page consisting of 4 images, say a horn, a baseball bat, a birdhouse and a bike helmet, they are most likely to pick something like the baseball bat because it is associated with the ball on the right side of the brain (although they are only consciously aware that they have seen the bike). When asked WHY they pointed to the bat, they will come up with a story like, "oh, well, i used to play baseball as a kid and sometimes my brother would bike up to see me play". This is because the "interpreter" is there, it can see you are pointing at the bat and you saw a bike, now it is looking for the rational explanation. Since it is unable to get the information from the left eye, it can not attribute the selection of the bat to the ball. And yes, this experiment was done with controls. People without a cut in the callosum will generally be able to justify what they selected. There are many, many, MANY experiments like these, many dealing with things like morality or more existential concerns. The have all uniformly shown us that our own beliefs and perceptions are directly related to mental processes, and can be subject to predictable error under experimental conditions. I can't imagine a definition of a "soul" that allows for this type of error.

Similar things can be said about the conception of self, the way we attribute cause to events, and our ability (or inability) to properly remember situations. Hell, the fact that we can trick our perceptive system with optical illusions even when we know how they work seems to indicate that there is nothing inside of us watching through our eyes and making our decisions. Probably the best evidence for this is that there is no place where the "soul" or "self" would be located. For the soul to be sending thoughts and actions to the brain it would need a direct connection. This connection does not exist. Not to mention that you would need to suppose a new type of communication between neurons other than neurotransmitters that allows for "spirit energy" to become electro-chemical energy.

I guess all I can ask you is, what part of your "mind" do you not think is explained by neuroscience?

Originally posted by Alliance
Not if they are one and the same. If the mind can't exist without the brain...there must be some connection. The mind is simply the brains image of itself.

Well, psychology wont figure it out. NeuroBIOLOGISTS will 😉

The mind is a holographic biological byproduct of the physical connections of billions of nerve cells: chemical-electrical.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
The mind is a holographic biological byproduct of the physical connections of billions of nerve cells: chemical-electrical.

You mean electro-chemical? 🙂

Originally posted by Alliance
Well, psychology wont figure it out. NeuroBIOLOGISTS will 😉

not to nit pick, but psychology is neurobiology, only at the behavioural and perceptive levels.

its come a long way since Freud and the couches. The stuff I'm working on right now deals with what kinda of preview objects help people locate similar objects in a field of other similar ones.

I don't really like using the term psychology just for the reason that the first thing people think of when they hear the term is Freud and Dr Phil.

Dewd. Wtf. JIA is actually making sense.

or just the fact that psychology is not real science, despite its supposed reliance on the scientific method.

I feel, and maybe I'm being overzealous, that all real advances in Psychology are simply the product of advnaces in neurobiology. I find behaviour and perception to be unscientific.

Originally posted by Alliance
You mean electro-chemical? 🙂

Ya, Hey! At least I got the right words. My dyslexia gets me every time.

Originally posted by Alliance
or just the fact that psychology is not real science, despite its supposed reliance on the scientific method.

I feel, and maybe I'm being overzealous, that all real advances in Psychology are simply the product of advnaces in neurobiology. I find behaviour and perception to be unscientific.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Ya, Hey! At least I got the right words. My dyslexia gets me every time.

well, electro d.n.e. electrical.

Its ok...I forgive you....but only this time.

Originally posted by Alliance
or just the fact that psychology is not real science, despite its supposed reliance on the scientific method.

I feel, and maybe I'm being overzealous, that all real advances in Psychology are simply the product of advnaces in neurobiology. I find behaviour and perception to be unscientific.

I guess you are entitled to your opinion.... Though I think its interesting how definitive you want to draw the line between biology and psychology.

C'est la vie. If you want I'll make a case for psychology, but I'm faily sure you are set 🙂

Originally posted by inimalist
wrong

really, brain=mind

oh whatever, ill find that post....

I guess all I can ask you is, what part of your "mind" do you not think is explained by neuroscience?

Originally posted by inimalist
It depends on what you mean by "thought" and how specific of an answer you want.

To begin with, there is not yet a human action or function or behaviour that has been found to be inexplicable through neuroscience. Everything we have observed has supported the idea that thought originates in the brain.

To begin with, "thoughts" is not a scientific or provable concept, so I will abandon it right now. However, there are many cognitive processes that amount to what we would consider to be "thoughts". For instance, all of our sensory organs relay information to our brain, which is then assembled by various regions into our general perception. Yes, there is proof that this is how our senses work, it is a massively robust field of psychology and biology. Pick up a biopsychology and sensation & perception textbook, the specifics of this type of "thought" are gone into in GREAT detail.

Well, what about knowledge? Sure, the brain can explain how the light from my computer screen gets into my eye and I become aware of it, but how do I know what is in that light? Well, thats simple. Every time stimuli hits a sensory organ, it elicits a pattern of responses that goes from the receptors to the cortex by way of the thalamus (smelling is a little different, but not enough so to throw off this point). From the cortex, the information travels to the infotemporal cortex and the amygdala (this is specific for sight, I will be honest in saying I don't know where emotional processing of other senses occurs), where semantic and emotional identification of the stimuli occurs. This all happens well before you become conscious of an object. For instance, there is a disorder known as agnosia, which is a disconnection between the amygdala and the hypothalamus (oh man, i think thats the one...). In this disorder, people are able to recognize and interact with everything, except they are unable to retrieve emotional memories for the purpose of identification. For instance, an agnosia patient who sees their father would describe them as "A person who looks exactly like my father, though clearly not them". The reason that the person cannot identify their father is because their brain is not sending the proper father signal. The information never makes it to the hypothalamus, so it can never be emotionally processed. This proof is two fold. To begin with, it shows that parts of the brain are specifically responsible for attributing information to certain aspects of perception. Why would your soul not be able to identify your father just because some brain thing is messed up? The second point is that conscious perception is completely dependent on subconscious processing. Before you become consciously aware of an item, your brain has already decided what it is, how you feel about it, and what you need to do to deal with it.

Well, what about "consciousness". To begin with, I hate the term. It is misleading in the first place, because asking about consciousness supposes that there is a consciousness to look for. The western philosophical and religious traditions basically named and defined the mental process we would term "consciousness" long before science had a chance to look at it. Now that we have things like EEGs and fMRIs, we find that "consciousness" is really diaphanous. For instance, there are things called brainwaves that are the byproduct of electrical charge in active neurons and things called glial cells which create synchronization in neuron activation. Some of these brainwaves, when they occur in certain parts of the brain, can be associated with certain patterns of neural activation, which can be used to determine what people are "thinking". Now, in an experiment, people were asked to move their hand and say when they become consciously aware of their intention to move their hand. What was found, when measuring brainwave activity from the motor cortex (the place responsible for movement) was activation much sooner than the person indicated awareness of the conscious intent to move. This means that people do not become aware of what they are going to do until after their brain has prepared to make that movement. This is a very standard result in cognitive neuroscience.

There is also the existence of something called, by Dr. Gazzaniga, the interpreter. It is within the left side of the brain, and all information must pass through it in order to be included in our interpretation of reality. For instance, a cure for some types of Epilepsy is to cut the corpus callosum, a nerve that connects the left and right sides of the brain. Once this is done, certain types of information can no longer pass from one side to the other. While this is ok in normal conditions, it can be manipulated in experimental conditions to show the inability of the brain to account for all stimuli. A person's left eye sends information to the right side of the brain, and vica versa. So, if a subject with their callosum cut is presented a ball in their left eye and a bike in the other, they will ONLY be aware of the bike (the ball is being sent to the right side of the brain which cannot communicate with the interpreter). Well, you say, thats because they are ignoring the ball (or some other argument that still supports some type of dualism) but wait, if after showing them those images you were to show them a page consisting of 4 images, say a horn, a baseball bat, a birdhouse and a bike helmet, they are most likely to pick something like the baseball bat because it is associated with the ball on the right side of the brain (although they are only consciously aware that they have seen the bike). When asked WHY they pointed to the bat, they will come up with a story like, "oh, well, i used to play baseball as a kid and sometimes my brother would bike up to see me play". This is because the "interpreter" is there, it can see you are pointing at the bat and you saw a bike, now it is looking for the rational explanation. Since it is unable to get the information from the left eye, it can not attribute the selection of the bat to the ball. And yes, this experiment was done with controls. People without a cut in the callosum will generally be able to justify what they selected. There are many, many, MANY experiments like these, many dealing with things like morality or more existential concerns. The have all uniformly shown us that our own beliefs and perceptions are directly related to mental processes, and can be subject to predictable error under experimental conditions. I can't imagine a definition of a "soul" that allows for this type of error.

Similar things can be said about the conception of self, the way we attribute cause to events, and our ability (or inability) to properly remember situations. Hell, the fact that we can trick our perceptive system with optical illusions even when we know how they work seems to indicate that there is nothing inside of us watching through our eyes and making our decisions. Probably the best evidence for this is that there is no place where the "soul" or "self" would be located. For the soul to be sending thoughts and actions to the brain it would need a direct connection. This connection does not exist. Not to mention that you would need to suppose a new type of communication between neurons other than neurotransmitters that allows for "spirit energy" to become electro-chemical energy.

How do you know that no connection between the soul and the brain exists?