How does quantum mechanics "blow the possibility of a god existing completely out of the water"?
This is why I believe in God: based on some unusual personal experiences that made it difficult to reject the supernatural, I came to the conclusion at one point that, in fact, consciousness is not an illusion, and that there is no such thing as randomness, and that our course along the quantum "tree" is chosen by some being for a purpose (or purposes). This doesn't mean that we live in a deterministic world, but that we live in a physical one that is constantly taking "pushes" from a spiritual beings. This seems supernatural and unlikely, but if we believe that the spirit (consciousness) is not an illusion, then we accept that a complex physical system, the brain, can be affected by a spiritual entity, human consciousness, and so it doesn't seem implausible that there are other spiritual beings among us, doing things like rigging the seemingly "random" collisions of particles so that 10^-20000 improbabilities (life) actually happen. This, coupled with the direct experience of mystics, makes it likely that there are vastly superior spiritual beings in existence, which could be construed as gods or facets of God.
First of all - you should disregard unusual personal experiences if you don't know of any way to repeat them. I dream. I even start halucinating when I don't sleep enough. People can even dream and halucinate under fairly ordinary circumstances. Given the tendency for people to halucinate, I see no reason to seek for supernatural explanations.
"Human consciousness" doesn't need to be something metaphysical. The brain is basically a big petri dish. Chemical reactions everywhere. Our understanding of it is poor, but we're making lots of progress. We know which regions serve which purpose, and we can make people laugh or cry by sticking electrodes in somebody's head during brain surgery. We can see people enjoying music, by watching electrical activity, and we can see how brains of savants differ from ours. The more we learn, the less of a mystery the brain becomes. But we still have 95% to explain.
As you make computer programs more complex you realize that sooner or later you have to start meta-programming. Only by making a program introspect itself or the system around it can you give it additional functionality. Windows Vista is a good example - it's all about processing watching other processes work. Watching memory patterns, to improve cache efficiency. Monitoring which programs are run often. Watching which clusters on the hard drive are suspiciously unresponsive. Meta. Meta meta meta.
Windows Vista is conscious in the sense that it feels when programs are unresponsive, or when the system has trouble shutting down. And it will try to take measures to fix it. Isn't this just basic consciousness? Nothing spiritual about it. And when you can explain consciousness by just saying it's a function of complexity of a brain we have a pretty plausible answer.
Does your cell phone have consciousness? Yes, but very little. Less than an ant, probably.
How about babies? Yes, but only as much consciousness as a cat.
How about a rock? Yes, about as much consciousness as a "Hello World" program. That's simply no consciousness at all.
Consciousness doesn't need to be a binary switch. A spark that people get at some point. A "soul" doesn't explain anything.
You probably don't agree with the way I frame my answers. So what's do you think the difference is between the capacity for introspection (think about self) and consciousness?
"First of all - you should disregard unusual personal experiences if you don't know of any way to repeat them."
I disagree. Experiences are not always under your control and therefore you can't always repeat them even if they are true. This is true in relationships with other humans and it seems likely that it would also be true with a personal god.
Let's say your girlfriend does something nice for you and you feel like you love her for it. Let's say she then dumps you for hottie that doesn't even know how to code and never talks to you again. You can't repeat that experience with her because her free choice made it possible. That doesn't mean that the experience was fake, it just means that it is outside of your control.
I'm sure there are some wholes in that logic, but hopefully it was able to shed some extra light on the subject.
"First of all - you should disregard unusual personal experiences if you don't know of any way to repeat them. I dream. I even start halucinating when I don't sleep enough. People can even dream and halucinate under fairly ordinary circumstances."
I was talking about paranormal experiences I've had, such as the ability to predict dates and details of major events. I don't believe that anyone (certainly not me) is "psychic" and I can't reproduce this at will, but there have been enough paranormal events in my life that I cannot ignore the likelihood of a conscious will directing the things we consider "random".
In October 2005, I predicted that I'd meet a girl at a very specific place (a particular coffeeshop) on a specific date, four months into the future, and had a rough vision of her appearance, knew her ethnicity and about six other details about her, all of which turned out to be correct. This ended up leading to a relationship that lasted over two years. There could be a "self-fulfilling prophecy" at work, but the mind-boggling number of details that matched leads me to find it unlikely. Although I cannot possibly explain why, I've had 5 or 6 occurrences like this (and a couple that didn't come true). I've also had limited success in drawing on past lives to develop talents that I never thought I had, although I haven't seen enough strength in this department to rule out non-paranormal explanations.
Frankly, my opinion is that "the paranormal" almost certainly exists, although 99% of it is complete bunk, and the remaining 1% is nearly impossible to control or contain.
More like 99.99 % to explain, but we are working on it (neuroscientist here.)
As for consciousness: the ghost in the machine. That is, one can explain the machine with and without it -- the ghost is just one's perception of the other self, one's generalization and oversimplification of the other self.
on a more general note, i see it from the perspective of obvious design (natural or otherwise)
what's more reasonable from a survival point of view, that that cut you just received on your left arm from a knife show up in some sort of terminator-like HUD...
.
.
.
[DAMAGE TO LEFT ARM]
.
.
.
[AVOID RECURRENCE IF POSSIBLE]
.
.
.
or that you are made to "feel" the cut as intrinsic to you? which are you more likely to heed? that's basically what i think consciousness arises from -- the need to internalize sensations so that you respect them. so that you respect the fact that some maniac with a knife just took a slice at your arm, or that your fingers are burning on the stove while you're standing there being absent minded and you NEED TO GET YOUR FINGERS OUT OF THERE RIGHT NOW
a HUD would be very poor for that sort of thing. i see consciousness as the best solution
This is why I believe in God: based on some unusual personal experiences that made it difficult to reject the supernatural, I came to the conclusion at one point that, in fact, consciousness is not an illusion, and that there is no such thing as randomness, and that our course along the quantum "tree" is chosen by some being for a purpose (or purposes). This doesn't mean that we live in a deterministic world, but that we live in a physical one that is constantly taking "pushes" from a spiritual beings. This seems supernatural and unlikely, but if we believe that the spirit (consciousness) is not an illusion, then we accept that a complex physical system, the brain, can be affected by a spiritual entity, human consciousness, and so it doesn't seem implausible that there are other spiritual beings among us, doing things like rigging the seemingly "random" collisions of particles so that 10^-20000 improbabilities (life) actually happen. This, coupled with the direct experience of mystics, makes it likely that there are vastly superior spiritual beings in existence, which could be construed as gods or facets of God.