Why Books are Better than Drugs

[FrodoFriend]

OK then, sorry, I'm just a raving lunatic.

[mirrille]

Originally posted by jerseydevil

Mirrille - That was funny. I have a friend that lives in Canada - so I'm always teasing her.

Thanks! Laughing at ourselves is a national pasttime. Join in the fun! But keeping it non-meanspirited.

Books are better than drugs because they can affect you on an emotional level. Make you happy, make you sad. Drugs will make you high...and then all this other stuff happens, but it's not quite the same, is it? It's just chemicals playing with your nervous system.

[CardenIAntauraNauco]

I won't even attempt to write a books are better than drugs to disguise the fact that I'm trying to prove something.

I asked some questions earlier(3 of them) . Now, nobody's bothered to answer them. Somebody give me an answer to those questions. I believe following arguments that are not abstract will acctually advance the debate towards a side.






Frodo Friend...

I understand that you don't study the Bible and are not famillar with all it's beliefs which is perfectly understandable because you are not a christian. I'm not meaning to patronize anyone by stating my beliefs or by pointing out things to the Atheist who are posting.

It's a very interesting point you brought up though about god controling us. Controling our thought's, emotion's,action's and etc..(note that I don't believe he does which I will state later.) If there is no God who IS controling our thoughts.

Us?..How can we control our thoughts?.. What are thoughts? Are they Highly complex sytems of energy? Under the atheistic view point that's all they could be. For our own conveinence we will call the unknown organ in your body that synthesizes the aforementioned "highly complex level of energy"(also known as thoughts) OrganX.

Now, OrganX's job is to take various energy particles and possibly even matter and join them into a conglomeration of various chemicals energy and what not to produce what we know as thoughts. Now suppose I want to make a "thought". My brain transmits a "thought" to OrganX telling it to create a "thought". Correct? I'm sure you can already see what's wrong with this scenario.

It's circular and impossible... The brain creates a thought to let OrganX know to produce a thought but OrganX has to be the producer of the thought so the brain couldn't have produced that thought that told OrganX to produce a thought etc... Loop Reasoning...Impossible.

So we can conclude what? That our thought's must be created by OrganX and not manufactured using other materials right? If they did have to get materials they would have to send out "thoughts" to get that information. Right?

(this is leading somewhere don't worry)

So now we know for certain that OrganX creates it's own "thoughts". And we know that nothing can create matter. Likewise nothing can create energy. So thoughts cannot be energy because

Energy ~= Created ; Matter~= Created ; Thoughts = Created
Therefore Thoughts ~=Matter .....Thoughts ~= Energy

So one may ask "What are thoughts made from?"
My conclusion is that there must be something that does not use matter to make it's non-matter products. It would seem that a God is the only thing that could provide thoughts because it is the only non-matter entity. Well the christian view-point is that god has provided us with a soul which is capable of manufacturing thoughts. So we get to choose for ourselves. To do right or to do wrong, and be sure if there is a god then these two things do exist. I would encourage you to post back and not Ignore or take my post lightly. I would also encourage you to point out logical flaws not flaws in my demanor or emotions.

[jerseydevil]

You're flawed in your reasoning by one fact. Just like we take wind or gas and convert it into usable energy - our body takes foods and liquid and converts that to energy. That is where the energy comes from that powers our brain as well as all our other organs.

It is true that Energy can not be created or destroyed - but it can be converted into other forms.

[Arathorn]

Regarding thoughts being made up of highly complex systems of energy, my view is that memory is made up of patterns of brain cells in different chemical states; and that a thought is the process that occurs as these cells interact with each other by chemical and electrical actions/responses. The reactions are so complex and the variables so many that the actual state at any time cannot be reproduced (like the weather). This gives us our unique personalities and thus the explanation of the thought.

Regarding matter and energy not being created, the popular view these days in physics (as per Einstein's E=MC^2) is that they can be converted from one to the other. (bring an electron and a positrion together and they annihilate thus producing energy in the form of gamma waves). I guess what you might mean is that the sumtotal of all matter and energy is constant; although they may transform from one to the other. And that there must be a Someone/Something that originated all this.

That is also my view on Creation, for lack of a better explanation. I do read the Bible but I take the story of creation figuratively. The others I have "faith" in (a requirement of religion).

Regarding science, I always thought that it is our way of growing out of the "Storybook" explanations that religion gives us through our traditions. If science can now explain a phenomenon, a part of religion is "outgrown".

Come to think of it, all the great religious wars are fought over "details" about Who/What created the world and which "fraternity" clubs are better.

<I'm ramblingagain...>

[Arathorn]

Here's another view, this one about Time:

Why does time move forward and not back? Or why do we remember our past and not our future?

Dr Feynman proposed that matter can move backwards in time by way of it's anti-matter. That a positron is actually an electron moving backwards in time.

Anyway, there is a view that the path Time takes as viewed by us is the same as the one taken by Entropy; meaning we see Time in such a way that everything decays eventually and that Time might also move backwards but we don't observe this because our brain cells and therefore our memory follows the path of Entropy and thus Time seems to move "forward".

[FrodoFriend]

Sometimes I wonder if Time exists. It's terribly confusing. The paradoxes are mind-numbing.

As for this OrganX thing . . .

I think maybe there is a third substance in the universe. Energy, Matter, and Consciousness. There is something in humans that makes us more than just energy and matter, something that endows us with feeling and . . . well, consciousness. I think consciousness exists in the universe, and somehow through evolution came to gather in humans. When we die, it goes back into the huge consciousness well along with matter and energy. And it too can change form. This seems to fit in with nature and what we know of it.

All just idle speculation, of course, but it makes sense to me.

[jerseydevil]

Well that would explain the possibility of ghosts.

[Arathorn]

'been watching Final Fantasy The Movie, eh?

(Gaea Theory)

[CardenIAntauraNauco]

You're flawed in your reasoning by one fact. Just like we take wind or gas and convert it into usable energy - our body takes foods and liquid and converts that to energy. That is where the energy comes from that powers our brain as well as all our other organs.

I know that and I explained that that is impossible in my post

[quote]
So we can conclude what? That our thought's must be created by OrganX and not manufactured using other materials right? If they did have to get materials they would have to send out "thoughts" to get that information. Right?
[quote]

To get materials we would have to "think". And to "think" we would have to get materials...loop reasoning impossible.

[Arathorn]

CardenIAntauraNauco,

I think this problem of looping (where you need to get materials for a thought and you need a thought to get the materials) occurs if you assume that you don't have "stored thoughts" a.k.a. memory and stored food/materials. To start off, when you were born, your body is given energy reserves from your mother's body. And before your body and brain dies due to lack of materials/food, you crave to retrieve more than you need. You thus either grow up or grow fat.

I believe that you also do not necessarily need to "consciously think" of every action that your body needs to do. There are involuntary/automatic actions that each organelle, cell, tissue, organ, system is programmed from the time it is conceived by its ancestor/s. You may consider these to be the elemental thoughts on the cellular level. On the chromosomal level, such as DNA, they only "know" how to split and attract new chemicals to reproduce 2 copies. And if not perfect, we have mutation.

<Our head hurts...it hurtses us, this thinking>

[jerseydevil]

also -when we first start getting nutrients to power our body and mind and thus produce thoughts - we don't have to think. Our mother's do the thinking and eating for us - the nutrients pass to us through the ambilical cord. Thus all we're responsible for is to keep the process going once we are born and self supporting. So it's not really a circular impossibility. We don't have to think in the beginning to get the nutrients to start the thinking process.

[mirrille]

yah..

Most of our biology is involuntary. At the lowest level, it's just alot of chemistry. It's based on spontaneous events. Anything that isn't spontaneous (i.e. wouldn't normally happen by itself) is coupled to something that is. Even living things have to obey the laws of thermodynamics.
Like a bacterium making ATP (fuel) for itself isn't spontaneous, but molecules moving down a concentration gradient is, so if you link the two events, it'll all happen by itself, without anyone having to think.

[FrodoFriend]

Originally posted by Arathorn
'been watching Final Fantasy The Movie, eh?

(Gaea Theory)

Actually . . . never seen it, never had any interest in Final Fantasy. Is it any good? That idea came mostly from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.

[Arathorn]

Actually . . . never seen it, never had any interest in Final Fantasy. Is it any good?

The image rendering's quite realistic; like the hair and freckle details.

The plot is simple and quick to catch early on, though. Not very interesting. You just watch it for the effects.

[mirrille]

I didn't like the plot too much. I guess I was expecting something with a little more...fantasy. I haven't played those games for a long time, so I haven't been keeping up with the series, but for a movie with that title, I was expecting at least a chocobo or two. But it's really something to watch for the animation itself. Really pretty. Would be even prettier if the whole thing didn't take place in a fairly dark metal-looking city and a bit of desert. Looks like alot of work went into it.

[CardenIAntauraNauco]

All very good theories, Just a question... Do we have any control over our thoughts? It seems like it would be impossible to have any control over our thoughts in the theories of thought you have layed down. (except for FrodoFriend's Universal Soul Idea.)

[Arathorn]

I think that of the thoughts that you are conscious of, the ones you "will" into existence, such as your plans, you have some control. The others - I guess they just occur as part of one's being; in the same way you can't control your own birth.

[FrodoFriend]

Ah, what are thoughts anyway? How would people think if they never learned a language? They'd still be intelligent, after all. Are thoughts electrical or chemical impulses? Do they come from outside our bodies? What are they made of?

[Starr Polish]

They are made of marshmallow fluff.

Actually, to be scientific they are chemical reactions that stimulate the synopsis between brain cells, and they believe our memories are simply chemical reactions stored in our brain...