I just can't help it and use one argument from debate that got awfully similar. Not my opinion, but it fits in well, in very awkward way.
Just because you are unaware of God, it doesn't mean he isn't there.
Ach, that's a low blow!
We have however scientific (meh, I'm not sure how much psychology can be called an actual
science: I may love to blabber about it in quite the Freudian way, but still I hate psychologists, how they generalize and objectify something inherently subjective as the human mind, and I still believe Freud was the real nutcase, so much for consistency in my thoughts) reasons to admit the existence of certain instincts. The extent of their influence can be debatable, but we know of them.
God's existence only relies on ignorance, the opposite. Mind me, in this case I'm not using "ignorance" as a negative term, it's just what faith literally is: to believe in something without any proof of it. As man has problems to fully explain the nature and laws of the universe, he (instinctively, actually...) fills the gap with a creation of his own to give some sense to it, an apparent order.
The point per se, though, is unquestionable. I can't prove God doesn't exist. Not even Stephen Hawking can. Just as I can't prove the imaginary friend a small child has isn't real.
Fact is, to me there's no reason to even try to do it: as there's no pointer that would logically, scientifically lead to presuppose there is a God, it's safe and obvious to assume there isn't one. Who doesn't come to that conclusion is simply being illogical.
Illogical and
wrong are two inherently different words though.
I simply disagree. Universe is chaotic. People are chaotic. Not everything must have reason and objective to exist
My choice of words might have been quite poor. I shouldn't have used
reason, I should have said
cause. The former has too much philosophical significance.
The universe is chaotic? Not at all. Well, apart from the whole entropy thing, I mean, but that's another thing. Everything we have the ability to observe and analyze is ruled by a physic law, and most of all everything is ruled by the laws of cause and effect. In such meaning everything happens, no matter how chaotically,
for a reason. That reason might be blurred, self-contradictory (how many times evolution, as we stumbled on it already several times in our discussion, apparently takes by chance what really doesn't seem the easiest, most efficient path?), but the actual cause isn't. Even when a
cause is completely random, when it comes to be by pure chance, it only means it is under the rule of statistics (and quantum mechanics, but I'm not going there, I'm already annoying enough as it is).
Just to lighten things up a bit, are you familiar with Isaac Asimov? In his Foundation saga he theorized this fictional science, psychohistory, that would be able to reliably predict - to a certain margin of statistical error - the future of humankind and its history. The basic premise behind it was that just as much as the motion of a single molecule isn't predictable but we are able to mathematically predict the motion of a mass of molecules (kynetic theory), it would be possible to mathematically predict the "motion" of a mass of people even though the motion of every single one of them is absolutely unpredictable.
I always found it - apart from simply good storytelling - an extremely poignant metaphor of what really is the human being and his mind from a strictly scientific standpoint. I'd be curious to hear what your thoughts on that are.
Put a primitive man into civilized society to see what insticts are. Something we have long forgotten.
Well. That's a cool twist.
It's consistent with my theory though. A primitive man is in direct contact with his
needs, and his mind is accustomed with them much more than with
desires as we are. Probably, if that primitive man were an adult when we "time shift" him I agree he'd never be able to adapt and learn to redirect and elaborate (you might say suppress and overcome) his instincts. But if we time shift him as a baby, as long as he still is of the
sapiens sapiens variety of course, there would be no measurable difference in his thought development and patterns from ours.
When we do the opposite, put a civilized man in a primitive environment, he'd have difficulties to adapt as well, of course, and he probably wouldn't survive. But almost assuredly he will "fall" into the most primeval of behaviours as long as they could help him survive. Think about those people stranded after a plane crash that ended up eating human flesh to save themselves. The survival instinct was so strong that it even overtook several other instincts that tell us eating human flesh is a no go (I believe these instincts come from the fact cannibalism has far higher chances of spreading diseases, as all diseas that could actually infest a human being are of course compatible with any other one of us; morality and customs came after).
However here, by this train of thought I've got to take a step back. In such extreme circumstances it is known that few human beings chose death. As it is very different from
suicide, and it actually was a reasoned decision between the strongest of instincts and social/moral values (which are at most only a byproduct of instincts), that's something I can't easily deny. I could maybe try to find in instincts the reason why those moral values could assume such overwhelming relevance, but I already realize my argument would end up being kinda weak.
I still believe in the fundamentals of my view on the matter as inherently consistent, but I've got to give up on such exceptions, I give you that.
Damn.
I do not see the paradox, because I did not mean "the perfect purity" and true free will in the philosophical or even theological way, but in fact, in a practical way. It is far from impossible to get rid of almost all effects of culture an society, just as repressing or ignoring the trivial thinking processes. Of course, the "perfect" purity is something else and not very far from dead brain in a living body, hah.
The paradox there was rather simple: is it possible to reach a status of mind free (or anyway
more free) of those instincts push when it is instincts themselves (under the guise of desires) that make you want to get there? Can someone learn to
dominate his instincts, when it's those instincts themselves what compel him to do so? It's contradictory at best. I myself believe that is actually the direction we are evolving into, but we are eons from reaching any real evolutionary cornerstone on the matter. While we only are few millennia, a ludicrously small amount of time evolutionary speaking, from cavemen. It still is mostly in the realm of philosophy and science fiction, imo, even though there can be a glimpse of the potential.
Hard to me to say if that glimpse really is there or it is just hope, just another form of
faith, however.
Regardless, instincts driving complex thoughts? Doubtful.
Well, it's what all psychologists agree on. It's called subconscious. If you look at Freud's first model, it is assumed to work in a fundamentally similar way as an electric circuit. They don't
drive them, as complex thoughts are in the realm of the conscious mind, of course, but they are the spark that causes them and often have unseen effects on them we are unaware of.
Psychoanalysis is the "science" of identifying what instincts lurk behind a certain behavior, and to what extent and in what way they influence thoughts
en route, so to say.
Mind me, as I aforementioned, I believe most of the derivative interpretations they end up with have the same scientific credibility as Scientology: by its own nature interpretation is as subjective - and thus unreliable and non scientific - as it gets, but the basic model makes lots of sense and is the only thing that could be somewhat proven with the scientific method.
