Religion: Real or Fake

[Imran Siddiqui]

Imran's point is that discussing chemicals can never explain a feeling just like discussing the paints that Leonardo da Vinci used can not explain the Mona Lisa.

This. Emotions are far more than simply chemical reactions.

[Docfeelgood]

This. Emotions are far more than simply chemical reactions.

Wow....i will have to think about this one.

[rah]

Religion is equally inadequate to explain these also.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Religion is equally inadequate to explain these also.

To some.

[N35t0r]

This. Emotions are far more than simply chemical reactions.

What if they could make you feel the same by sticking electrodes in your brain?

[Jon Miller]

If a robot could make the Mona Lisa, or whatever, would it destroy the meaning and mystery and so on?

The Mona Lisa is, after all, just gobs of paint. Or even less than that?

Isn't love so much more than the Mona Lisa? Isn't your relationships with others so much more than just some equations describing a relationship caused by chemicals/etc. If it isn't, then nothing would be lost if you were replaced by a robot which followed the same 'equations'.

JM

[MOBIUS]

I am Satan.

Prove I'm not...

[MOBIUS]

****, was hoping to get that onto post #666...

[rah]

Then I assume proof is not necessary.

[MOBIUS]

My ineptitude is a smokescreen...

[N35t0r]

Your point? I don't think there is free will...

In any case, said robot would have had to have been born (wtf tense?) from a womb, and have had the same experiences I did, and have changed from those experiences in the same way that I did, for it to be able to replace me. So that robot would essentially be an exact clone of me which lived through the same experiences I did. Or, you know, me.

If you want to know if I thin that making a 'robot' that 'thinks' as intricately as we do is possible, then yes. Certainly not now, and maybe we'll never be able to do it, but due to our own limitations.


As for your mona lisa question, that depends... Did he do it out of some sort of shakespeare monkey-typewriting experiment? What would you think of an excellent work of fiction produced by random arrangement of words? Or sentences? If the artist's motivation is as much part of the work as the work itself, then the answer is clear.

[N35t0r]

Isn't love so much more than the Mona Lisa? Isn't your relationships with others so much more than just some equations describing a relationship caused by chemicals/etc. If it isn't, then nothing would be lost if you were replaced by a robot which followed the same 'equations'.
JM

Of course, I'm genetically inclined to 'love' other human beings, not a robot...

Bottom line, even if 'love' could be faked through chemicals and electric impulses, that doesn't make real love any less real...

[Jon Miller]

If you don't believe your sentient, it isn't my problem. I guess.

Most people disagree though.

JM

[N35t0r]

hm?

free will != sentience

[Imran Siddiqui]

The basic gist of what Jon and I are getting at is that you are free to believe that the things that most people believe causes humanity to transcend (and I don't mean in terms of religion) their purely animalistic and mechanistic natures don't exist. However if you do believe that a work of art can be a transformational thing or a song can lift one to greater heights, then simply striping it down to its mechanic parts doesn't do it justice.