Labels and beliefs

Yep, I agree labels are shorthand, they are convenient, and quick... but they do have real problems... some really bad ones, such as when they are used in a social way to define groups (as you are doing here)... this is because of the way the brain/mind (whatever you want to call it when combined) seems to work. There isn't an easy solution to this, the very fact these labels are easy, quick, useful and require less cognitive processing, means the alternative I'm suggesting is not as quick, is not as easy, and requires more cognitive processing. However this harder, slower way is more accurate, rejecting these labels, will over time, allow you to build up a more accurate picture of a subject. The use of these labels does feedback on your future understanding of a subject, that's why they are useful. But it's also why they can be a big problem.

You can read a basic primer about labeling theory on Wiki... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory There are some easy examples given, and some nice quotes which may mean something to you if you read through, which I hope you will.

I'm not sure it's the right place to go through my ideas here, suffice it to say (shorthand and inaccurately), I believe we would understand our everyday experiences as little more than join-the-dot like patterns of firing in our brains, just like a children's join the dot picture puzzle book. But I say we should think about those patterns of firing, as able to be added up, so that we can sum *all* matching past patterns to the present. That's what makes up our experience. Basically, alike patterns of brain activation in space-time get summed to what we experience as the present, and it doesn't matter whether these past patterns are ours, or somebody elses. We can also sum future matching patterns. All this can happen because information is probably not really organized the same way we experience it (3-dimensions of space, and 1-dimension of time), instead it might - for instance - be organized in only 2-dimensions, and experience might be the result of a collision. Our experiences would thus be just our way of understanding the information released by the collision of two 2-dimensions.

It was my intention to bring attention to the misuse of labels, not really to encourage them. While they do have a place, as I outlined above, I don't believe they should be the defining exposition of a person's views; rather to give context to opinions. I do agree that labels can be misleading and used as pejoratives - as I tried to explain above with the point about proponents being miscast as religious which is clearly a deliberate straw man in some debates. The other point was that it would seem that atheists like to give the impression that they are aligned with others who identify as skeptics or humanists, etc., when, in reality, the only difference is the label. They are the same group of people.

Incidentally, I don't think the same can be said of so-called proponents who appear to range from the religiously minded to some very scientific or mathematical types. Proponents often disagree philosophically so I, for example, would argue in favour of idealism while others might be dualists or panpsychists. The impression often promoted by those who would attack the views of proponents is that they (we) are anti-science. This, of course, is completely bogus.

As for your views, I am still somewhat confused about whether you are saying that the brain alone is responsible for all we experience. That is the issue which is most debated here and I get the impression that your theories are somewhat tangential. Stephenw seems just as keen to promote his preference for Information Theory and I have similar problems deciding where that leaves us on the mind-brain question. However, these issues are probably for another discussion.

This is an important point, Chris. And the reason, if I understand the point you are making, is that proponents often have to jump through hoops to explain that they are not arguing from religious motives. While the media and many atheists seem happy to characterise the debate as a religious one - God versus science - proponents are not, at least here, happy with that characterisation. Most of us are not religious. Most of us, if we use the word God, do not have a religiously taught concept of what God is. Many of us will agree with atheists about the iniquities of religious power throughout history. 

I think it's useful to make the distinction between atheist and materialist, because logically I think you can be the first without being the second (and it seems that quite a few people here are that, if the word atheist is strictly defined).

Conversely, I think it's useful to keep the distinction between theist and non-materialist. And as you suggest, the people who don't accept the scientific method aren't identical with the non-materialists either.

It's hard to explain, but there is no question to answer in my view, they are one and the same. Brains are not separate from my experience of the world. If you took the top of somebody's scull off, and looked inside, you would see a brain, and our perception of that brain itself is processed into space-time, exactly the same as the rest of world is formed into space-time, there is no difference. What is processed into space-time appears to be information that is stored in some different way. That information appears to get added-up to the moment, using [what we understand as] temporospatial patterns (i.e. in spacetime), and processed into this experience of reality (spacetime), and this appears to be our current way of understanding.  It makes the questions as to whether the brain is separate from mind, or that mind is perfectly isolated inside the brain, redundant.

I gave your post a like because I appreciate you attempting to explain it for us. Whether or not I agree - or even follow what you are saying - is, of course, another matter.

Brain = organ
Mind = Consciousness connection to the Higher Mind.
<eom>

As far as I know, the skeptics here and others I've come across on the Skeptiko forum, all identify as skeptics and also as atheists.

Atheist as a label doesn't allow for any grey area whatsoever, right? You are committing to a positive belief in the lack of God. Period. So if I think there's a .001% chance that the God from the Bible exists, am I an atheist? I wouldn't think so. A 1 in 10,000 chance seems pretty significant to me...certainly nothing like 0%.

And as we've found over and over and over and over and over and over and over again on this forum, the skeptics aren't 100% sure they're right, and they have repeatedly offered up opinions about the probability of psi's existence that are almost always non-zero (and sometimes have even been in the 10-20% neighborhood, even). I would imagine the same goes for a belief in God, or materialism or whatever other label you want to use that doesn't allow for any nuance. So we have a group of people who have a variety of beliefs, and a variety of confidences in those beliefs. Sounds like a group of similar people in that regard.

Atheist as a label doesn't allow for any grey area whatsoever, right? You are committing to a positive belief in the lack of God. Period. So if I think there's a .001% chance that the God from the Bible exists, am I an atheist? I wouldn't think so. A 1 in 10,000 chance seems pretty significant to me...certainly nothing like 0%.

And as we've found over and over and over and over and over and over and over again on this forum, the skeptics aren't 100% sure they're right, and they have repeatedly offered up opinions about the probability of psi's existence that are almost always non-zero (and sometimes have even been in the 10-20% neighborhood, even). I would imagine the same goes for a belief in God, or materialism or whatever other label you want to use that doesn't allow for any nuance. So we have a group of people who have a variety of beliefs, and a variety of confidences in those beliefs. Sounds like a group of similar people in that regard.

I agree. I suspect that whenever you have a club or organization, a description of what they are about tends to devolve towards the common denominators. But individuals tend to have a wide variety of more nuanced perspectives. It makes more sense, when you're interacting with individuals (such as on this forum), to let people describe what they believe for themselves and to engage with them on that basis.

I call myself an atheist, but that doesn't mean that I believe there is no God. Who knows whether there is or not? It means that I don't believe that what people are calling "God" or its products actually represents "a capricious creative or controlling force".

Linda

It always seems a bit strange to me that, although "atheist" is often used as a catch-all description of the opposition by proponents, there seems to be very little mention of God in these discussions. For example, looking at the poll I made about evolution, no one at all voted for the option involving God:
http://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-po...-evolution

That fixes that! Check the poll now.