This is really, really interesting timing because just in the last few days (and even today) I've developed this intuition that consciousness probably isn't either/or (as I've been discovering with so many things); that it may rise from an interaction outside the brain (I'm thinking locally in field form AND nonlocally) and processes inside the brain. I've been a puritan idealist (as opposed to materialist) for considerable time now but this is softening. Things are never black and white in this universe it seems and I keep discovering that anything and everything is more complex than I ever initially have given credit for.
"The evolutionary process is clearly purposeful, not random." I say this too but am usually returned with blank stares or outright condemnation for such a "religious" belief of a scientific phenomenon. I wonder if you take much flak for it too.
That's interesting you were thinking about similar topics, Aaron.
Most of my friends and relatives are probably in the other camp. They're spiritual -- believe in Deity and the Divine as well as the afterlife (as do I). So they're more likely to not see why all this extra dimensionality to the natural universe is that important.
But I've got a few non-theists in my life who lean a bit toward the Scientism that I find flat -- and I must admit that I find their realities a tad baffling. At least believe in and be aware of consciousness and the Field and fields -- that's what I always tell them -- cuz science is offering a much richer, fuller view of reality than the old Flatland that came out of the 1700s and 1800s.
This is really, really interesting timing because just in the last few days (and even today) I've developed this intuition that consciousness probably isn't either/or (as I've been discovering with so many things); that it may rise from an interaction outside the brain (I'm thinking locally in field form AND nonlocally) and processes inside the brain. I've been a puritan idealist (as opposed to materialist) for considerable time now but this is softening. Things are never black and white in this universe it seems and I keep discovering that anything and everything is more complex than I ever initially have given credit for.
"The evolutionary process is clearly purposeful, not random." I say this too but am usually returned with blank stares or outright condemnation for such a "religious" belief of a scientific phenomenon. I wonder if you take much flak for it too.
That's interesting you were thinking about similar topics, Aaron.
Most of my friends and relatives are probably in the other camp. They're spiritual -- believe in Deity and the Divine as well as the afterlife (as do I). So they're more likely to not see why all this extra dimensionality to the natural universe is that important.
But I've got a few non-theists in my life who lean a bit toward the Scientism that I find flat -- and I must admit that I find their realities a tad baffling. At least believe in and be aware of consciousness and the Field and fields -- that's what I always tell them -- cuz science is offering a much richer, fuller view of reality than the old Flatland that came out of the 1700s and 1800s.