Shedding Light On How Cells Communicate (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, November 22, 2012, 12:21 (4361 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID (under Proving common descent): NDE's are a form of proof that consciousness is universal. That is how the brain can formulate NDE stories while totally non-functional.-dhw: Or perhaps they are proof that energy as processed by the brain survives the death of the brain and brings human consciousness into the energy that first gave rise to life on Earth. Otherwise, how would the ND-experiencer preserve his/her identity? It's interesting that ND-ers see certain people from their own world. That = individual and intersubjective consciousness, but NOT universal consciousness.-DAVID: I don't think we have to go as far back as the energy of first cause unless you will agree that the UI is the same thing as first cause. -It depends what we mean by these terms. My hypothesis has been that first cause energy may be intelligent in the sense that ... like Nature and the "intelligent cell" ... it spontaneously created and is still creating some sort of functioning order without necessarily being conscious or self-conscious. Only in this sense could my hypothetical first cause be called a UI.-DAVID: The NDE'rs keep an intact module of their own consciousness during the episode, that is obvious, but they might very well be using a portion of the energy of the UI in doing that. All quantum activity is interconnected. The only problem with all this theorizing is we do not know what consciousness is. We only know what we experience, not its foundation. 
DAVID: We will have to agree that no one knows what consciousness arises from. We all experience it. And we have to leave it at that. All else is theory.-Exactly. Perhaps consciousness is produced by the brain, is received by the brain, is influenced by the brain, influences the brain...Perhaps first cause energy acts randomly, perhaps it is intelligent, perhaps it is conscious, perhaps it is self-conscious. Theists and atheists alike have nothing but a series of 'perhapses'!-DAVID (under Standard model; quantum mechanics): Great review of what it does not tell us:-http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/surely_its_disc066461.html-"The conclusion that follows from these observations is inevitable. There is no such thing as the world, or the universe to which the SM unequivocally points. And so there can be no large and general conclusions about what the study of the world, the universe, or of Nature reveal about the existence of God."-Put all these perhapses and theories and hypotheses and don't-knows together, and it sounds to me like a pretty good case for agnosticism!