Is athiesm a belief? What is "God?"

[trestres]

Reasonable said:

pizzahut451 said:

Reasonable said:

pizzahut451 said:

mysticwolf said:

I just think the idea of God is unrational. There's no logic. There's no physical evidence of God.

There is evidence to support that life started long ago with volcanic eruptions underwater. The volcanoes released chemicals, and these certain chemicals reacted with elements on the surface of the earth, and the right conditions were made for bacteria to be created.

Here's an article:

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2006/October/26100603.asp

there is no phisical evidence of a human thought either...just sayin

Sure there is.  You ever see a brain scan or wonder how they can make a device capable of identifying certain brain patterns and using that to operate something?

Thought can be traced back to activity in the brain.

do you mind showing mee the picture of a human though? A brain scan doesnt really show an actuall human thought. Otherwise, people could read other peoples thoughts from it. I mean, my cousins brother is a neurosurgeon, he operates on ahuman brain and he never saw a human though.  

I don't normally turn to Wiki, but it is free and mostly okay.  Take a look at this and read up on BCI devices.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain–computer_interface

Your cousin is operating at the macro level on the physical brain, of course he's not going to see a "thought" and I'm sure you know that.  A "thought" however exists within the brain and can be accessed, which is what BCI devices do.

It's early days, of course, but just imagine in 100 years or so.  Or even a 1000.

Human thoughts are quite tricky though.

We know for a fact that animals can recreate sensory images within their brains, as they do dream and also learn by memory. Our senses (our sensors really) capture images from the outside and translate them into electrical charges which are then processed at the brain. This exact same process happens in electronic sensors which then send the info to a microprocessor to get processed (or translated). We know for a fact then, that our senses do generate information that's not tangible to ourselves, because we can't see or touch electrons, but magnetic resonances do show electrical activity in our brains whenever there's a thought process or sensing process occurring.

The thing is though, that only we humans, out of all animals, have the ability to abstract the concept from the object. Which means that there's an inner source of information in humans. Everyone can conceptualize an object in their own manner, those are not universal, unlike the image of the object which will be the same regardless of the observer (unless their senses are not functioning properly or has brain damage).

My gripe with this all is that this inner source of information cannot be other than our souls, and by soul I mean the rational (intelligence and free will) aspect of ourselves. This aspect of ourselves is not physical, we can't locate intelligence in our bodies for instance. The brain only acts as a connecting pathway for all our thoughts, they do not generate from it. The brain is simply an organ capable of translating electrical and chemical messages from all of our body and sending an adequate response.

The thoughts that involve our rational aspect, I believe we will never be able to understand them fully, as they are not translated information from the outside, but rather generated from our own unique capacities. Yes, they exist as electrical charges traveling throughout the brain, but their origin trascends this physical universe. We cannot put concepts into images, therefore they are not physical.

Perhaps I shouldn't have quoted you, cause it really isn't disagreeing with your post, but it was related :P