Belief In God Plummets Among Youth (CHART)

[Greatest I am]

What does a God need with worship?

Regards
DL

 

[Stone]

What does a God need with worship?

Regards
DL

As you are a God, why do you need to be worshiped?

Any one here doubt me when I have called GIA a god like being?
Well, there he is, not just a god like being......a God.


You're not exactly what I was expecting

 

[Stone]

What's your faith? Please don't tell me you are a Christian. If so you need to go back to Jesus school.

You do realize that comment infers there are schools for believers in fairy land/Earth Simulators.
So which one did you graduate from?

 

[All Else Failed]

Do I judge people? Where?

you judge people in life


you cannot possibly say you don't because you need to judge people to make decisions

Science has already made great strides in disproving that there is anything about the brain that is permanently hardwired, so if you think that's the ultimate source of your nature you're already wrong.

Erm, not the scientific studies I've read


please don't tell me you're one of those "blank slate" people. that theory has been ripped apart

PS Neuro-scientists laugh at free will so there has to be hard wired elements to mankind

 

[Leananshee]

Erm, not the scientific studies I've read

please don't tell me you're one of those "blank slate" people. that theory has been ripped apart

PS Neuro-scientists laugh at free will so there has to be hard wired elements to mankind

Quote your source. I've already quoted mine.

And that neuropsychiatrist is already turning multiple fields on their respective heads. Regarding protests to this challenge to accepted "dogma", know that even in science there are flat-earth-Christian-style fundamentalists in lab coats. As I've said for years, all you have to do to be a fundie is have a sacred cow and hold onto it with a death grip. The fields of neurology and psychiatry have multiple hallmark examples of this.

I wasn't arguing whether we're born with certain things wired in, the question is if they're permanently so. And the answer is, not necessarily, no.

 

[All Else Failed]

Quote your source. I've already quoted mine.

And that neuropsychiatrist is already turning multiple fields on their respective heads. Regarding protests to this challenge to accepted "dogma", know that even in science there are flat-earth-Christian-style fundamentalists in lab coats. As I've said for years, all you have to do to be a fundie is have a sacred cow and hold onto it with a death grip. The fields of neurology and psychiatry have multiple hallmark examples of this.

I wasn't arguing whether we're born with certain things wired in, the question is if they're permanently so. And the answer is, not necessarily, no.

http://www.salescognition.com/articles/HowHardwiredIsHumanBehavioByNicholson.pdf

http://persquaremile.com/2011/08/17...ations-show-humans-are-hardwired-for-density/

http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/survival/wilderness/wired-for-survival1.htm

 

[Dana]

There is still hope for humanity.

The younger generation is abandoning God in droves.

See this is where people need to separate believing in a higher power from religion. I'm not religious at all. I haven't been since I was a child prob haven't been to church/mass since I was 10. My family is Episcopalian, I was never Baptized and attended a small Baptist church in the small town I grew up in. But just because I abandoned organized religion, doesn't mean I still don't carry some spirituality with me.

 

[Greatest I am]

See this is where people need to separate believing in a higher power from religion. I'm not religious at all. I haven't been since I was a child prob haven't been to church/mass since I was 10. My family is Episcopalian, I was never Baptized and attended a small Baptist church in the small town I grew up in. But just because I abandoned organized religion, doesn't mean I still don't carry some spirituality with me.

You will enjoy hearing this man then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AfFcAmx-Ro&feature=relmfu

Regards
DL

 

[Minor Axis]

See this is where people need to separate believing in a higher power from religion. I'm not religious at all. I haven't been since I was a child prob haven't been to church/mass since I was 10. My family is Episcopalian, I was never Baptized and attended a small Baptist church in the small town I grew up in. But just because I abandoned organized religion, doesn't mean I still don't carry some spirituality with me.

Searching for spirituality is always a good thing. It's that or dirt.

 

[Leananshee]

http://www.salescognition.com/articles/HowHardwiredIsHumanBehavioByNicholson.pdf

http://persquaremile.com/2011/08/17...ations-show-humans-are-hardwired-for-density/

http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/survival/wilderness/wired-for-survival1.htm

None of this refutes Dr. Schwartz's research. And his results, both measurable and repeatable, were achieved by using the will of the patients involved. Not that you'd actually look into it, because it would mean that *gasp!* you actually have personal responsibility for your own actions and nature, therefore no excuse like "Oh, I'm just hard-wired that way" to fall back on. That is the misinterpretation of even the research you've posted that you've presented.

 

[All Else Failed]

No actually those are examples of how humans have hard wired aspects to them, especially laid out in the first link

did you even read them?


are you seriously telling me humans do not have ANY elements that they act on gained from millions of years of evolution and that humans are just blank slates


I think you are confusing the issue. Humans can change in small ways, however what motivates us has not changed science we've crawled out of caves. Humans are not that different than we were 4,000 years ago in terms of what we want, how we achieve it and what is important to us. These things are hardwired. Human nature is pretty damn predictable and every little "thing" you change about yourself is still connected to the major elements to our nature that DO NOT change. This is why you have repeating patterns of behavior throughout history over very different civilizations and cultures.




Humans are wet robots. free will does not exist. You are pushed to do things by chemical reactions and electrical charges in your brain and body. The illusion of free will is simple a powerful mask on our lives that we choose to ignore, and we remain perfectly happy. Our genes and environment shape who we are. This is indisputable fact, and fantasies that we're 210% in control of our lives is laughable at best. Sure, when it comes down to it, we make people responsible for their actions, but that is only because we have a drive to dish out punishment and eliminate threats to our biological well-being. It is like robots scripted with a protocol to eliminate other robots who deviate from it due to a malfunction. They don't really have free will, but they disable them anyways in order to stick to the script.


Read "The Blank Slate" by Steven Pinker and "The moral Animal" by Robert Wright.


or talk to anyone in the behavioral genetics/ evolutionary psychology field

 

[Stone]

AEF......that's describing neural motor control and reflex actions, not the abstracts of conscious thought. Free will concerns decision making and physical responses are not the boundaries/limitations that necessarily define the decision making process.
Of course evolution favored the fight or flight response, it brought advantage to survival, but it's not an absolute on the individual, it's a species trait and tailored to their particular morphology. That is genetic hard wiring.
The free will/free won't argument will probably never be resolved until the distinction between the brain and mind is detailed.
Is awareness of the mind an illusion in all cases?
The ability to think in abstractions and derive conclusions would seem to counter the 'awareness is illusion' argument.
Thus awareness would not be a reflex action, it becomes an issue of initiating/originating. That would make language a big break through for humans. To make a conscious decision that abstractions relate to reality and derive conclusions would seem a free will concept rather than a hard wired issue.
The ability to converse could be considered genetic hard wiring, but the act of conversation would need free will.

And don't forget, if there is no such thing as free will, it really fucks with GIA's hatred with God for stealing it

 

[Leananshee]

No actually those are examples of how humans have hard wired aspects to them, especially laid out in the first link

did you even read them?

I find this question hilarious, considering I'd asked if you'd looked into Dr. Schwartz research. But yes, actually, I did read them.

are you seriously telling me humans do not have ANY elements that they act on gained from millions of years of evolution and that humans are just blank slates

I really don't know why you keep throwing that straw man in the mix. You can't answer my legitimate response, instead you just restate your original argument. Not the best way to debate and maintain credibility. I usually only get that kind of response from religious fundamentalists who can't answer a straightforward question.

But I'll answer yours - humans likely have some kind of rudimentary OS. The question, as I have stated from the beginning of this, is how much of it is permanent, and how much can be rewired? It used to be thought that after the first few years of life plasticity in humans diminished, and after a certain point ceased. That's now been shown to not be the case.

Humans are wet robots. free will does not exist. You are pushed to do things by chemical reactions and electrical charges in your brain and body. The illusion of free will is simple a powerful mask on our lives that we choose to ignore, and we remain perfectly happy.

If you believe Wegner, sure. I get it. You follow the biological materialists. But how does a "wet robot" make the determination that anything is an illusion? Robots can't "step outside of themselves", so to speak. And if, following all the disciples of Skinner, we're just stimulus-response drones, why are there those who don't follow the patterns outlined in your articles?

Better yet, how do Schwartz's OCD patients use their minds to rewire their own brains, if the brain affects the mind and not the reverse? If we're just circuitry, that shouldn't be possible. Here's a scientist actually using the will of his patients to effect a change in the wiring. Doesn't prove that there's a will there, necessarily, but what's the acting force if not that?

 

[All Else Failed]

But I'll answer yours - humans likely have some kind of rudimentary OS. The question, as I have stated from the beginning of this, is how much of it is permanent, and how much can be rewired? It used to be thought that after the first few years of life plasticity in humans diminished, and after a certain point ceased. That's now been shown to not be the case.

Oh, I'm sure some of it can be rewired, but anyone can see that humans are basically the same animals that existed in the stone age. This is no secret and you're sacrificing common sense to say this is not true. Fight (conquering for various self interests, assuring your bloodline, gathering resources), fuck (spreading seed and your familial line to secure power) and feast (this is self-explanatory). That is humanity. Everything stems from those three things. You cannot turn a single page of history without encountering these three archetypes for human behavior. They are ancient and embedded within us. They manifest themselves in different ways across the planet, but be assured that they are there, were there, and forever will be there. Plasticity in human beings happens on a micro level. Those three archetypes are always present, though and any plasticity takes place under it, but it doesn't really matter since our animalistic drives, however complicated and refined they may become through civilization and technology, will always get their way with very little exceptions that only a handful of human beings every so often can master.

You follow the biological materialists

what else is there? nothing. Unless you can find some magical force that shapes humans outside of our material reality there is no other answer besides materialistic biology. Everything that happens within cultures are an expression of genes, btw so any "nurture" argument is basically a round about way of arguing for genetics and the physical environment in the end.

we're just stimulus-response drones, why are there those who don't follow the patterns outlined in your articles?

you will always have a mathematical anomalies in nature, if anything these are basically programmed to happen every so often. No big deal. 99.9% of people are still within a normalcy of behavior in varying ways.

Better yet, how do Schwartz's OCD patients use their minds to rewire their own brains, if the brain affects the mind and not the reverse?

"They" aren't, their brains are. It is the human mind's way of adapting. They will "rewire" to a small extent and then find a behavior pattern just like everyone else.

If we're just circuitry, that shouldn't be possible.

why not? programs can re-write themselves.

oh and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-modifying_code

the human brain is 1,000Xs more complicated than that, and anything seen as free will or "a person rewiring their brain" is just a vast illusion.



also watch this:

http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_chalks_it_up_to_the_blank_slate.html

 

[Leananshee]

This is getting off-topic to the OP, about the number of people identifying as non-believers. I'm going to start another thread to talk about this more in-depth. However, what is somewhat relevant to the topic began here:

on the contrary, if a person deserves hatred they deserve it

that is probably a good or equal to investment of my time especially if they have done something grievous towards me

...
anyways, this flies in the face of hardwired human nature, so it is useless

This is where things fall apart. If you believe Freud, it's "It's not my fault, I had a rotten childhood". If you believe Skinner, it's "It's not my fault, different stimuli made me this way". Now here come the evolutionary psychologists: "It's not my fault, I'm hard-wired this way". And you yourself said it. You don't need to be forgiving of anyone because that's not how we're wired to behave. Or so you say, I didn't read anything of the sort. Which is not to say that I don't find the subject fascinating, I simply think your interpretation of it is dangerous at best.

As to your other points, I'll start that other thread in due course.

 

[All Else Failed]

I'm not saying people can 100% blame their wiring on what they "choose" to do. I'm saying how we are wired GREATLY influences our behavior, and even sometimes decides it. That is what I have been saying all along.