Showing posts with label Neurophysiology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neurophysiology. Show all posts

Friday 6 September 2024

Creationism Refuted - Consciousness Is Yielding Up Its Secrets To Science



Microtubules, seen in yellow in this image, are part of the skeleton of plant and animal cells
Wellesley - Wellesley team’s new research on anesthesia unlocks important clues about the nature of consciousness | Wellesley College

If there is one thing that creationists get right it is that science is a threat to their childish superstition, so they have two main lines of argument: firstly they tell us how their religion disagrees with science, using Bible quotes as though they are indisputable facts, not just claims written down and declared to be true; secondly they attack science as though finding fault with one aspect or another of science somehow invalidates all of it and their superstition wins by default.

Neither of these tactics ever provide any evidence for creationism of course because there is none to produce, but they have the desired effect of making the creationist feel superior to those clever-dicky, elitist scientists with their big words.

And one of their favourite lines of attack is to claim that 'science can't explain consciousness', conveniently forgetting to add the word 'yet' to the end of their claim. A basic understanding of science and the history of science, would tell them that not yet understanding something doesn't invalidate science, it invalidates ignorance. Science never used to understand lightening or earthquakes, or diseases, or atoms, or biodiversity and the appearance of kinship between species, but now it does.

And now we are beginning to understand consciousness too. We know, for example, that it doesn't exist independently of a fully-functional brain because it can be abolished with chemicals and by injury, so we know that whatever the mechanism, it is a function of neurophysiology and so amenable to scientific investigation and explanation. The questions are the 'how' and the 'what' that makes up all scientific investigation.

Saturday 1 March 2014

A Fitting End To Religion?


Solomon's Dream (Luca Giordano - circa 1694-1695)

Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain
Ecstatic epilepsy: How seizures can be bliss - health - 24 January 2014 - New Scientist

Only one of the following is a descriptions of religious experiences; the others are descriptions of a type of the aura experience by some epilepsy sufferers. I'll reveal which one later.

The immense joy that fills me is above physical sensations. It is a feeling of total presence, an absolute integration of myself, a feeling of unbelievable harmony of my whole body and myself with life, with the world, with the 'All'.
64 year-old woman

... it is as if I were very, very conscious, more aware, and the sensations, everything seems bigger, overwhelming me.
53 year-old female teacher

...the most amazing feeling came over me... a feeling of complete and utter love - I felt as if I were radiating like the heat of the sun...
Middle-aged woman

You are just feeling energy and all your senses. You take in everything that is around, you get a fusion.
41 year-old architect

...a sensation of velvet, as if I were sheltered from anything negative.
37 year-old man
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