Alan Burns #crackpot religionethics.co.uk

My view that conscious awareness can't be generated from material reactions alone is not just personal incredulity. It is based upon sound logic on which I could write many pages. Unfortunately I can only give a short account on this forum.

People seem to confuse material reactions with conscious perception. Conscious perception is not just a complex reaction. External observance of complex reactions can often be mistaken as an indication of conscious perception, but the simple truth is that consciousness is not material reaction, but perception of material reaction. Our consciousness allows us to perceive the data from our sensory organs rather than just react to it. We can share our conscious awareness with other human beings by choosing to use abstract media to communicate what we perceive. Early evidence of this type of communication exists in the early cave paintings in which humans were able to show what they perceived by reproducing images on the cave walls. These early cave paintings also demonstrate the human freedom to choose how to respond to perceived data rather than just react to it. Modern humans can now choose many different means to communicate their conscious awareness with other people.

I also challenge the presumption that there is no evidence for the existence of non physical entities beyond the scope of scientific investigation. The existence of our universe is in itself evidence of the non physical. Current evidence indicates that our material universe, together with its associated time dimension and physical properties came into existence a few milliseconds after the singularity known as the big bang. It is logical to presume that this singularity has a causation from outside our known universe, and by implication we must presume that this causation was a non physical entity. For want of another word, we could call this non physical entity the source. This source is obviously beyond the scope of scientific investigation, but without it there would be no science, no universe - nothing. Science can't determine if this source's only interaction with our universe was creating the singularity, or if there is still interaction from this source. Science can't be used to deny such interaction, because there are such things as quantum indeterminacy which have no discernable cause from within our current scientific knowledge. So we have scientific knowledge of the existence of this source, but very little else from the science perspective. If this source does have interaction with our material universe, we need to use our considerable abilities to look beyond the limitations of human scientific knowledge and contemplate the evidence provided by our own existence and human nature and come to realise that our ability to search for God is a profound human asset beyond the scope of scientific investigation.

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Confused?

So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

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