Spirituality or just emotion...?

[_Franktalk]

..... We know a lot about how and why these particles move the way they do and, more importantly, the deterministic nature in which they operate makes it clear that they aren't being affected by some higher power......

So if you accept that the brain is operating on deterministic principles then our whole life and the history of the universe was all laid out before the big bang. Every thought in your head even the ones that make you feel that you are making your own decisions are from an unfolding preset condition. There is no love, there is no hate, in fact emotions don't exist. It is all a play and our parts just play along as time passes by. So somehow in that pin point of of a singularity every painting, every song, and every life was all there in the arrangement of energy. So with this in mind please answer some questions.

1. How did the arrangement of energy in the singularity get there?
2. What motivates you since there is no purpose to life?
3. Please describe your feelings about fake emotions and why they might have been in the original conditions of the singularity?

[_keithb]

..... We know a lot about how and why these particles move the way they do and, more importantly, the deterministic nature in which they operate makes it clear that they aren't being affected by some higher power......

So if you accept that the brain is operating on deterministic principles then our whole life and the history of the universe was all laid out before the big bang. Every thought in your head even the ones that make you feel that you are making your own decisions are from an unfolding preset condition. There is no love, there is no hate, in fact emotions don't exist. It is all a play and our parts just play along as time passes by. So somehow in that pin point of of a singularity every painting, every song, and every life was all there in the arrangement of energy. So with this in mind please answer some questions.

1. How did the arrangement of energy in the singularity get there?
2. What motivates you since there is no purpose to life?
3. Please describe your feelings about fake emotions and why they might have been in the original conditions of the singularity?

Here would be my responses to your questions:

1. I don't know. Neither do you. Neither did the goat herders who wrote the Bible.

2. Is this your version of the familiar argument: "If I didn't believe in God, I would kill lots of people" argument?

I think the same thing motivates us as does a field mouse -- the laws of physics, biology, chemistry, etc. Is there a supernatural force influencing us? I don't know and neither do you. I don't have any reason to believe that there is one, so I don't believe it.

3. Huh?

[_emilysmith]

..... We know a lot about how and why these particles move the way they do and, more importantly, the deterministic nature in which they operate makes it clear that they aren't being affected by some higher power......

So if you accept that the brain is operating on deterministic principles then our whole life and the history of the universe was all laid out before the big bang. Every thought in your head even the ones that make you feel that you are making your own decisions are from an unfolding preset condition. There is no love, there is no hate, in fact emotions don't exist. It is all a play and our parts just play along as time passes by. So somehow in that pin point of of a singularity every painting, every song, and every life was all there in the arrangement of energy. So with this in mind please answer some questions.

1. How did the arrangement of energy in the singularity get there?
2. What motivates you since there is no purpose to life?
3. Please describe your feelings about fake emotions and why they might have been in the original conditions of the singularity?

Who said there is no love? Nobody. That is silly. If you encountered more of my posts you would see how simplistic your point of view is. Of course emotions exist. You can alter emotions by altering biology and chemistry, which is how we know they operate according to consistent natural laws.

As to everything being determined... even the Greeks wrote about how you cannot cheat fate. This is not a new idea and plenty of people who believe in God are fatalists, even amongst Christians.

To question 1, I say it must have always been there, just in a different form. One theory is that the universe expands, runs out of energy, then gravity pulls it all back together after the heat death of everything. When it all collapses back into a single space, another big bang occurs, in an infinite loop of big bangs. I don't claim to know the answer, but there are plenty of theories out there that do not included a 14 billion year old bearded man who did nothing for humankind for over a hundred thousand years while people ran around and waited for the Israelites to deliver a message to.

To questions 2, I would refer you to the endless literature on existentialism. You make your own purpose. People are motivated by the reward centers in their brain and behave according to their own expectations of themselves. This is why instilling confidence in your children is imperative to their success in life. The Mormons believe one thing, and they have created their own purpose. The nihilists may not feel they have a purpose, but they aren't overcoming any of their biological instincts to continue living. In truth, any belief is overcome by biology which is why even Mormons sin when they think they know better.

Question 3 doesn't make any sense. How would fake emotions have existed in your singularity? You are just making stuff up. People all feel emotions. Even certainty is an emotional state. Emotional processes are what cause people to act. Why are you making stuff up? Where did I say there are fake emotions or a singularity?

You didn't address any of my main points...

You didn't describe how metaphysical force could interact with our biology.
You didn't describe how culture does not play actually role in religious beliefs.
You didn't describe why two people can come up with two different answers when they both believe they receive infallible information from God.

[_Franktalk]

emilysmith,

Thank you for your answers to my questions. The reasons I asked those questions is to start a conversation about faith and what we believe. I think that you know enough about science that you know that at some point we hit a wall where we don't know how or why things work the way they do. In religion we also hit a wall in which evidence is not available to support the claims that the Bible makes. So all of us must choose which path to take. We can take the path of naturalism and believe in naturalism to the point where the unknowns are not important and we embrace the natural world. Others can embrace the Bible and when it comes to the unknowns of the Bible they don't care about the unknowns and embrace the Bible anyway. So no matter which way you go and rest your faith you will have to at some point rest on faith.

I asked question 3 in order to show where causation leads to if one truly embraces a deterministic universe. Since even motions in a natural world are a thing manufactured by the body systems then emotions are subject to causation just like everything else in that model. If someone embraces a natural universe then that is a personal choice. We should be able to lay our beliefs down and examine them and at least supply some logic for our choice. In other words we are defending our choice of our world view. We should be honest about our beliefs and not consider anyone's beliefs less worthy than our own unless that person is just copying someone else's beliefs and is a parrot with no personal reason behind their position.

I hear people tell me all of the time that their beliefs rest in evidence and that they can't accept religion because of the lack of evidence. But I will tell you that I can argue all of the points of evidence and they all rest on assumptions and unknowns. So "facts" are very subjective in reality on both sides of science and religion. Many people have just not thought it through about what they believe. My questions are just to make sure that you are aware that your foundation is just as weak as mine. That statement surprises many and many disagree with it. I suspect you may as well. If that is the case then we can have the conversation about what is fact and what is not. We can also discuss the assumptions that lay under the view of the natural world.

[_emilysmith]

I somewhat agree with what you are trying to say in that there comes a point when you have to take things on faith. Do you accept that the earth goes around the sun? Most people do, but few can actually stop and prove it to someone else. "You can see it," doesn't work, because the same could be said for the sun going around the earth. You can offer a model of the solar system, but how do you prove that it is correct? There is actually a geocentric model of the solar system that is remarkably accurate at predicting positions of planets.

We believe the earth goes around the sun because of our culture and that is why we believe nearly everything else.

The difference between your position is that there does come a point when some information is more reliable than other information. Your position, in many aspects, is equivalent to geocentric theories of the solar system and flat earth Christianity.

Some information and some beliefs aren't just more likely than others, they are so much more likely that it borders on ridiculous to believe otherwise. To believe the heliocentric theory is false requires a great deal of evidence that doesn't exist. It is the same with your beliefs.

This is why the three points I made previously are so important. They demonstrate where the evidence falls apart for religious people and hold up for those who hold to a more materialistic point of view.

You can say you have reached a point on a subject where you "just need faith," but it is more than that. You can't even, in theory, posit a sound explanation for how a spirit can affect itself upon our bodies. This is the same as embracing geocentricity without even having the accurate planetary model.

If you "just need faith" to go with your revelation, then you have a real problem when someone gets a directly conflicting revelation of their own. Worse for you if it is a matter of life and death. Who is right? How do we know if both people claim divine inspiration?

If you "just need faith," then why is it that people who have never heard of the Bible don't randomly believe in Jesus? It is because they believe according to their culture. Different cultures inherit religious beliefs and practices from other cultures, even Mormonism. How do we account for these introduced aspects of religion in doctrine not in just one religion, but in all of them?

The material explanation accounts for all of these problems. The reliable information and formed theories are there and they are sound and they are reasonable to believe.

[_Franktalk]

Emilysmith,

Of the two world views which one is easier to accept? If you look at educated people you might say that the materialistic view wins. But if you look at world populations in the various religions you might suspect that faith in God is clearly the choice. So what is it about some education systems that lead one to a materialistic view? Are the people who go to these places of higher learning special? I don't think so. So something happens to them while they are in school. Can it be that the educational system (in America and Europe) is designed to produce people with a materialistic slant? I believe it is designed that way. Now others will say that children who grow up in a religious household will be predestined for religious faith. I am not sure that in Europe or in America the family holds that strong hold over the children like it used to. So can we say that each of us can choose the world view we like? I would like to think that it is a choice.

You speak of evidence in the material world. But what evidence would that be? Most evidence of the material world is neutral in determining a world view. A study of static or dynamic objects like bridges or airplanes gives neither side any advantage in picking a world view. But let us consider evolution or geology. Both of these have no direct observation of the past and theories about the past and assumptions on dating methods clouds our faith in the evidence. Unless of course you want to have a materialistic view and consider the assumptions of evolution and geology as facts or at least a logical choice in ones mind.

To test what I have just wrote maybe you can give me some evidence that you feel represents a solid foundation for a material world view. Then we can see if that evidence comes with any strings attached.

[_jo1952]

Good evening Jo :),

It depends on what you mean by mind. Let's look at a sea slug, for a moment, which only has 100,000 or so nerve cells... or neurons. If you apply an ice cube to one for a moment, it does nothing. If you wait a little while, then apply a small electric shock to it, it contracts. If you apply the ice cube, then shortly after apply the shock, it contracts after the shock. But, if you repeat this 20 times... the sea slug contracts after just being touched by the ice cube.

It may not have a mind, but it is able to learn and associate different events. A sea slug. So, when you ask me where the mind comes from, I conjure up images up the first notocord, the first eyes, and the gradually more and more complex creatures that all came before us. The mind arose gradually.

If you lined up the most simple nervous system gradually to the most complex, you can see how and which parts of the brain came to being first and how that may have affected the development of future organisms in a lineage. When looking at primates with smaller and smaller brains, you can compare which abilities they lack to which parts of the brain they lack.

The mind is made up of neurons, and those cells are made up of the various cell parts, which are made up by molecules which are made up by atoms. Atoms are static, for the most part, and the energy in our brains is generated by electrochemical reactions.

An electrochemical reaction is, simply put, the exchange of valence electrons. If you study microbiology, the relationships between the functions in the cells and the basic laws of chemistry start to tie together quite well. The reason i take it to this level is because that is as far as you can go. Valence electrons are the smallest unit of import when it comes to the workings of the mind. The problem this creates for people who believe in anything spiritual or metaphysical is that valence electrons operate according to the perfectly consistent laws of chemistry. We know a lot about how and why these particles move the way they do and, more importantly, the deterministic nature in which they operate makes it clear that they aren't being affected by some higher power.

If you gradually work up from there, there is no place in which a higher power can be seen interfering with our biological processes to generate thoughts, feelings, or the resulting behavior. The God of the Gaps has run out of places to hide.

Well, that may not be true, but we have yet to see anyone come up with a plausible explanation as to how something metaphysical may enact itself upon our biology.

More than that, the study of religious experiences under functional tomography scans shows exactly what is going on in people's brains and can explain what a person is feeling just by the state of the electrochemical activity in the brain.

When something happens in the base of your brain, it creates a chain reaction through feedback loops that effect what goes on elsewhere. The intensity, or lack thereof, will make its way from one part of the brain to another. So, when you are in a peaceful state, the part of your brain (in the base) that registers threat begins to push inhibitory chemicals (neurotransmitters) towards other parts of the brain. If this inhibition reaches the temporal lobe, you begin to lose your sense of time and space... the beginning of an out of body experience. If, for some reason the part of your brain that interprets hearing is triggered into excitatory state while the others are "quiet," then you have a transcendent experience where you hear voices. If, instead, the excitatory chain reaction is in the part of your brain that generates speech, you may speak in tongues. It is a little more complicated than that, but that should serve as a baseline so that you know where I am coming from.

Of course, if you haven't ever studied chemistry, it makes understanding a little more difficult.

Hi Emily,

Wow! You sound like me when I get into trying to explain something. Thank heavens I am not the only long-poster her. Thank you for that! I AM NOT ALONE!!!

That said, it looks like you took your study to a certain point beyond which you had no explanation for where the original source came from. That's okay, most young people today have been taught the portions of science which the powers that be want them to learn. It is unfortunately not a complete presentaton of the knowledge that is available. They take you up to the wall beyond which they have no good explanation, and so they focus on other aspects of what they HAVE taught you. They have also managed to completely remove God from their theories - whereas in the beginning, science had set out to actually try to prove God's existence. Actually, this is a fulfillment of prophesy, so I am not surprised by it as much as I am merely disappointed that man has done such a fine job of listening to the whispers of Satan.

I would offer it takes at least as much faith in science to accept their theories up to the point where they simply cannot explain anything further unless they come up with fantastic explanations (which also cannot be proven), as it does to have faith in God.

I had purposely mentioned quantum mechanics because many people who study it, going on to more in depth studies of particle physics, seem to eventually admit that there is an unseen power behind it. Now, some will still not admit that this unseen power is God; but many do.

Thank you so much for your willingness to share; and again for reminding me how old I am....sigh. I hope you don't mind if franktalk takes over more of the scientific aspects of our discussion, as he is lightyears ahead of me....rats.

When I was young, I didn't need to know any of that, though. It was as simple as seeing two people who have religious experiences and get two different messages from God. Many people are willing to kill and die for their religion, and they are all equally convinced that they are correct while everyone else is wrong. I have read estimates that 100 billion people have existed on this planet. How many of them believe what you believe? It is a tiny percentage, I assure you.

Ah yes, when I was young I was very disappointed to discover this. For some reason though, I wasn't as concerned about the differences unless they got to the point that one group or another decided they had to kill the others who did not agree with them. Surprisingly, this makes martyrs for Christ on both sides of the killing fields. In the big picture, it is an excellent example of how people actually are receiving what they perceive to be "different" answers from the Holy Ghost. It will take Christ to figure out the true intent of their hearts should they have gotten involved in "holy wars" and killed others as a result. I am sure Satan was a having a field day by putting ideas into men's heads and appealing to their egos and pride.

I believe that for the person who is truly and sincerely seeking truth through the guidance of the Holy Ghost is not going to come away with the idea that their interpretation is so correct that they need to kill another person over it. This breaks the first and second great commandments. Rather, I believe that when someone receives a different answer it is because the answer they DID receive is the answer Father thought they were ready for. With everyone's different experiences and world views, I am surprised that any of us can agree on anything they think the Holy Ghost has revealed to them. What it boils down to is that each of us is on a very personal journey with God; rarely, if ever, are two individuals at the very same place at the very same time. So, what others may perceive as differences is not really differences at all....rather, it is a revealing of a different PART of ALL Truth which any individual is ready to receive.

When we review history, we can see that there was great power held by the RCC - they had become as the church of the Nicolatians (sp?) referred to in Revelation. And Jesus hated that particular church. There weren't many times that Jesus "hated" anything. This was basically the cause of the Reformation which caused much death and destruction of its own. Today things seem to have calmed down between the Catholics and the Protestants; though not to the degree that the members may believe.

Now, the LDS Church is not perfect either. It is administered by men for heavens sakes. When has man ever proven to be infallible??? I also believe that too many members of the Church place our Leaders on pedestals. It is inevitable, that a man cannot make a mistake or be the perfect person the members want or desire them to be. Please don't get caught up in the leaders of the Church and look only to the leaders for direction. Your relationship should be a personal one between you and God; not you and the Church. Those who build their relationships with the Church and not with God, will become easily dissillusioned with the Church AND with God. The Church is a vehicle to help guide and direct us....it is NOT the means to our salvation. Christ is the Way. Heck, if you are too dissillusioned now to make a decent recovery because you cannot separate Church from God, then maybe you should seek another denomination where you will feel more comfortable and the negative thoughts you have can be quieted so that you can "be still and hear God". Just please do not throw God out with the Church.

The people who share your beliefs are people who share your culture. It is culture that shapes people's religious beliefs and it is culture that shapes people's expectations of religion and of themselves. We act according to our expectations. We believe according to how we think we are supposed to believe.

When two cultures intermingle, they begin to share ideas and theology and from this exchange arises new religions. In the case of Mormonism, we can see the obvious syncretic inheritance of ideas from Swedenborg (the three kingdoms) and other charismatic subsets of Christianity at the time. In the past, cultural exchanges resulted in new incarnations of old gods. In Egypt, they let primitive people keep their Gods when they conquered them, just so long as they knew that the Pharoah was the all powerful one. That was how human culture operated back then.

But then came the Israelites, and when they were defeated, they refused to accept that someone else's God could be better than theirs. After the destruction of the Temple, their God took on a new life and the fault became the fault of the people because of immorality and disobedience, rather than the weakness of their old Canaanite god.

In short, between the implications of how culture is exchanged between populations and the tendency of human biology to operate within the confines of well understood natural laws, it seems less than not likely that the God of Abraham exists and interacts with us through some metaphysical process where everyone gets different answers and even turn to killing each other over disagreements on things that they are just making up to serve their own ends.

Alas, man will never change - physical man is a natural enemy of God, as you have shown above. Yet there are elements of God's Truths among all nations and tongues and people. Sifting through them can be quite a chore - though it can also be very enlightening. In the words of an old favorite TV show, "The Truth is Out There".

Take a bit to think about that. I am happy to go into further detail on any aspect of what I said here. I prefer not to be exhaustive, but if someone will actually read it, I will put the time into it... since I have a short respite from in real life responsibilities.

This should give you some time ponder my offerings as well. I will probably not have much time for the next couple of days to post as we are in the process of moving. So eventually, we will have to shut the computers down, move them, and reset them.

You are a gem, and I am thoroughly enjoying corresponding with you. Please have a wonderful and safe Christmas!!

Love,

jo

[_emilysmith]

Emilysmith,

Of the two world views which one is easier to accept? If you look at educated people you might say that the materialistic view wins. But if you look at world populations in the various religions you might suspect that faith in God is clearly the choice. So what is it about some education systems that lead one to a materialistic view? Are the people who go to these places of higher learning special? I don't think so. So something happens to them while they are in school. Can it be that the educational system (in America and Europe) is designed to produce people with a materialistic slant? I believe it is designed that way. Now others will say that children who grow up in a religious household will be predestined for religious faith. I am not sure that in Europe or in America the family holds that strong hold over the children like it used to. So can we say that each of us can choose the world view we like? I would like to think that it is a choice.

You speak of evidence in the material world. But what evidence would that be? Most evidence of the material world is neutral in determining a world view. A study of static or dynamic objects like bridges or airplanes gives neither side any advantage in picking a world view. But let us consider evolution or geology. Both of these have no direct observation of the past and theories about the past and assumptions on dating methods clouds our faith in the evidence. Unless of course you want to have a materialistic view and consider the assumptions of evolution and geology as facts or at least a logical choice in ones mind.

To test what I have just wrote maybe you can give me some evidence that you feel represents a solid foundation for a material world view. Then we can see if that evidence comes with any strings attached.

It is irrelevant which view is easier to accept. Everyone is, basically, wrong about their world view and that is what is truly hard to accept. The only way to find out who or what is right is to start from the assumption that you are wrong. Just like the heliocentric theory... how do we go about proving it? When you take the time to learn about how to prove things, you adopt a more materialistic view because you learn which information is more reliable and why that information is more reliable. There is no slant necessary in education when it comes to the scientific method. I'm not saying bias doesn't exist, but I am saying that there are people who are better at knowing how to measure the truthfulness of some claims than other people.

Our world view isn't a choice, really. It is a result of which cultures we are exposed to and those cultures are weighted differently. One reason it is so easy to lose kids to the culture of their peers is because parents often make the line of communication fraught with judgement and one-sidedness.

You cannot take on a drastically different world view based on information you have never encountered before. The LDS church knows this and employs a little mind-control trick on everyone when they dictate that all members should only allow themselves to encounter faith-promoting material and activities. By controlling someone's culture and access to information, you control their world view. The most advanced cultures and points of view will the from the people who accessed the most information and exposed themselves to the most different cultures. Their point of view will generate explanations that transcend that of a single culture.

Knowledge of evolution can be applied to create real world solutions to real world problems. Denying the current model would set progress in the medical field and agriculture back thousands of years.

Knowledge of geology allows us to predict a great number of important things including where to get the fossil fuels that allow you to drive your car around. The entire world revolves around what geology has taught us.

Chemistry, physics and mathematics are the best evidence for a material world view. They demonstrate a consistency in the universe where human intuition cannot be trusted. What strings do you think are attached to these things?

it looks like you took your study to a certain point beyond which you had no explanation for where the original source came from.

The original source is unimportant because we are discussing the here and now of how everything works. Whether "the powers that be" want me to learn something or not, it is irrelevant in terms of whether or not the laws of chemistry and physics are reliable or not.

Quantum physics is a dead end in discussing consciousness because the behavior of subatomic particles does not play a role in neurochemical reactions. Have you ever taken chemistry? The smallest unit of import in a chemical reaction are the electrons in the outer orbital. The orbitals closer to the nucleus do not change and the atoms remain intact. The structure of nerve cells and their means of communication change according to classic chemistry, not quantum mechanics. Either way, the hidden variable theory is more likely than any theory about God's involvement in sub-atomic interactions.

Science may have set out to prove God's existence, but it obviously fell flat and it was not some kind of master plan. Should we then ignore everything science has taught us and stop all technological progress?

It does not take faith to accept theories in science if you take the time to understand how and why certain things are proved and are repeatedly tested. Do you need faith to know that 1 +1 = 2? If you haven't taken chemistry, you may need faith to understand combustion reactions, but that doesn't mean methane + oxygen (combustion) = to carbon dioxide and water cannot be predicted beforehand with stoichiometry and then measured for accuracy afterwards. You may not have faith in the counterintuitive idea that time moves slower, the faster you go, but we employ the mathematical corrections in our satellites to make sure the time on the satellite matches the time on earth. The fact that these corrections are working prove Einstein was right.

These things may require faith for the average, uneducated person, but do not require faith for someone who takes the time to learn how it works. Where it all came from is irrelevant if science has shown us that nature is consistent in how it operates.

--

People may be on different paths, but what happens when two people pray sincerely and get answers that are in direct opposition of each other? One man prays and receives confirmation that a black man should receive the Priesthood, then another gets a message from God that no black men should receive the priesthood, then how does anyone know who was right?

In short, sincerely praying and getting an answer only has the appearance of being useful to the person who did the praying. It isn't actually useful because nothing is actually fixed and no definitive answer has actually been given and no one has a way to confirm that you actually received that answer. Science is exactly the opposite of that because everyone can check everyone else's answers and then use the correct answers to make this world a better place.

While it is easy enough to say that people only hear what they are ready to receive, it is more likely that they are just hearing what they think they are supposed to hear and that always, conveniently, fits within the boundaries of their own culture and personal experience. Revelations never produce anything we can apply to the real world like, say, antibiotics, disinfectants or electric motors.

--

There was a time when I had given up on the church, but not on God. Then it gradually seemed more and more ridiculous that a bearded man in the cosmos had anything to do with what went on in the universe. If you learn about how the Israelites were never enslaved in Egypt and the Old Testament was derived from 4 different versions for political reasons, told blatant lies about history to make the Israelites seem stronger than they actually were, and it was written many years too late to be an accurate report of history, then what does that say about the Mormon religion? Then, you ask why the New Testament was written generations too late and in the wrong language and the fact that the early Christians believed in completely different versions of Christianity, and the Church falls apart from every angle. That leaves nothing left for Joseph Smith Jr, but that he was knowingly perpetuating a fraud.

And that is all I have time for this morning. Merry Christmas everyone.

[_SteelHead]

[
People may be on different paths, but what happens when two people pray sincerely and get answers that are in direct opposition of each other? One man prays and receives confirmation that a black man should receive the Priesthood, then another gets a message from God that no black men should receive the priesthood, then how does anyone know who was right?

In short, sincerely praying and getting an answer only has the appearance of being useful to the person who did the praying. It isn't actually useful because nothing is actually fixed and no definitive answer has actually been given and no one has a way to confirm that you actually received that answer. Science is exactly the opposite of that because everyone can check everyone else's answers and then use the correct answers to make this world a better place.

Interesting how it took the 15 prophets, seers and revelators over 20 years to all get the same message from the HG in regards to this (requiring the passing of the strict opponents of this to the other side), and only then when it was truly expedient for BYU's continued relevancy in sports, and under other external pressures.

[_Corpsegrinder]

Quantum physics is a dead end in discussing consciousness because the behavior of subatomic particles does not play a role in neurochemical reactions. Have you ever taken chemistry? The smallest unit of import in a chemical reaction are the electrons in the outer orbital. The orbitals closer to the nucleus do not change and the atoms remain intact. The structure of nerve cells and their means of communication change according to classic chemistry, not quantum mechanics. Either way, the hidden variable theory is more likely than any theory about God's involvement in sub-atomic interactions.

That’s very interesting. I recall reading somewhere that quantum computation occurs, at least to some degree, in the human brain…sorry, can’t recall the original source offhand but I could probably dig it up if you wanted me to. If this is true, wouldn’t this infer that consciousness is, in part, a quantum phenomenon?