Existence of "love" and other emotions.

There's the natural and the supernatural, and I don't believe in the supernatural.

What we call the supernatural can be reduced to the natural. As they are all just chemicals. We're back to you not getting this basic premise again. Just stop.
 
Science is still all about the physical world.

Never said it wasn't. It's also about studying complex systems and behavior. Breaking everything down into chemical compounds isn't science. It's just one small branch of science.
 
Science is still all about the physical world.



Every post I've seen from you seems to imply that there's something beyond the physical. Are you saying now that there's nothing beyond the physical? Well then what are we arguing about?

William James covered this. A supernatural event can be reduced to a hallucination or whatever, or natural causes.

But his point, is that no experience is superior to another. That is a true empiricist approach. How can one experience be more valid than another? What decides that? Majority opinion basically. If you were the only atheist alive, your experience is illegitimate, and could be discounted as a mental condition. Because it is so outside the norm within that context.
 
I'm not talking about everything. I'm talking only about human experience. That can all be broken down into neurons firing.

And take it to its logical conclusion. It can be reduced to atoms. And everything is equal there.

CS Lewis:

I was taught at school, when I had done a sum, to "prove my answer." The proof or verification of my Christian answer to the cosmic sum is this. When I accept Theology I may find difficulties, at this point or that, in harmonising it with some particular truths which are embedded in the mythical cosmology derived from science. But I can get in, or allow for, science as a whole. Granted that Reason is prior to matter and that the light of that primal Reason illuminates finite minds, I can understand how men should come, by observation and inference, to know a lot about the universe they live in. If, on the other hand, I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees. And this is to me the final test. This is how I distinguish dreaming and waking. When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know that there are such things as dreams: I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner: I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the nightmare I could not have fitted in my waking experience. The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world: the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one. For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific point of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.
 
I'm not talking about everything. I'm talking only about human experience. That can all be broken down into neurons firing.

Why would you discriminate between the human experience and any other complex phenomena?
 
You said breaking everything down into chemical compounds isn't science. I said I wasn't talking about everything. Of course not everything can be broken down into chemical compounds. But human experience can. It's all just neurotransmitters.

So you've solved the hard problem of consciousness? Please enlighten us. Actually, let me ask, do you believe consciousness exists?
 
If something exists, it's physical. If it's not physical, it doesn't exist. There is nothing beyond the physical. Everything can be explained in physical terms, including, eventually, the hard problem of consciousness. To say that there might be anything beyond the physical is to open the door to all that god bullshit.

That is a tautological and useless statement you can't back up. If you assume all things are physical, you will only find physical things. You are merely recovering a method.

You are just like a robot programmed to spout simplistic atheist groupthink, and say "science" a lot.
 
Off the top of my head, non-physical things:

numbers
subjective consciousness
qualia
pain
abstract concepts
logic
quantity
space
time
 
Every function of the physical universe must take place physically. It needs to be represented in that manner.

Love is just a chemical reaction in the brain like heat is just energy in transit.
 
You have argued nothing and explained nothing. Scientism at it's finest. Conversation over.
 
I had a feeling I was arguing with a couple of "believers" all this time. I put you people on ignore every time I encounter you. Like now. Bye.

You weren't arguing anything. Have you forgotten that logic doesn't exist?
 
There's the natural and the supernatural, and I don't believe in the supernatural.

Would you entertain that maybe, "There is no supernatural, only superphysical?"

On another note, is categorizing as natural/supernatural a hard rule for you? Might I present that what might normally fall into these categories rather as definitively explainable/unexplainable or perceptible/imperceptible, etc?
 
I believe that whatever truly exists is somehow a part of the physical world and can be explained in physical, scientific terms. Anything that can't be explained scientifically doesn't actually exist, AFAIC.

Not according to quantum mechanics. Thinking that the only things that exist are things that you can see is hilariously reductive.
 
I believe that whatever truly exists is somehow a part of the physical world and can be explained in physical, scientific terms. Anything that can't be explained scientifically doesn't actually exist, AFAIC.

Clear as crystal, then.
 
It's odd when people become so anti-religion that they lose the ability to even entertain a line of argument that's only tangentially related to it.

New Atheist groupthink strikes again.
 
Every function of the physical universe must take place physically. It needs to be represented in that manner.

Love is just a chemical reaction in the brain like heat is just energy in transit.

Does motive exist?
If so, what are you going to say that is? A chemical reaction?
If not, who is going to break the news to judges and lawyers?
 
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