nothing against limb piercings though.

I am sorry father, for I have sinned. Not only have I watched a film that included 'anatomical references' and cohabitation, but I have even watched a film that had drinking!!! May I be forgiven.

And I don't like the way homosexuality is listed in the 'bad things'.

<Rev Lovejoy>Have you ever read this thing? Technically we're not even allowed to go to the bathroom</Rev. Lovejoy>

But I thought that's what religion in it's entirety was!

And I'll be sticking this straight on IIDB, after checking it's not already there somewhere.

btw, I went straight for devils advocate (top film).

but Offense to god, there was the obivous-
""God likes to watch. He's a prankster""
"daring God and arrogance toward His authority"

The weird -
"ghosting of female anatomy through clothing"
"at least 11 instances of full female nudity and many instances of lesser nudity " So what's lesser nudity?
"nude statues coming to life in a swirling mass of bodies"
"multiple gunshot hits on a man with no injuries" - lol!

and the downright laughably insane -
"doors opening and closing inexplicably"
"Voodoo-looking scenery"
"out-of-body visions of self"
WTF?! lol

If you want to be safe, watch "The Gospel of St. John".

Rated highly

hahahaha

now that would be a popular decision. an outright ban on 95% of everything ever made? let them decide!

Billy Elliot - "..instance of rear male nudity"

Err.. am I maybe the only one never to have seen an image of Adam with a fig leaf stuck to his arse!?

The 'review' for scary movie is classic

I like the line from the review of Shawshank Redemption

"Muder/suicide (M) lost a few points because of a murder and a suicide".

Well dur!

I am. I'm to the right of Richard Dawkins, I am, when it comes to dangerous superstition, but hey, live and let live.

And anyway, where are all the good films? Where're:

Tampopo?
The Seven Samurai?
Last Man Standing?
The Man in the White Suit?
Passport to Pimlico?

just to name a few off the top of my head. Tsk, these people aren't protecting me at *all*!

Tampopo? - Please tell me its a horror
Tag Line: "Tampopo - Very nearly a bloody mess"

Man in the White Suit is a cracker.

Never mind Tampopo where's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.

Now *that's* an interesting combination... two completely different films about sex and food

I don't know, I found Dawkins' book rather annoying. His whole argument about non-overlapping majesteria* was flawed, IMHO.

* Is that spelled right? It looks wrong. I suppose I could have checked it ... in less time than it's taken to write this footnote ... but there you go. The devil made me do it.

I wish they had reviewed Twin Town


This would have had them genuflecting behind the sofa.

Needless to say, not safe for work link, like anyone's netcopping IT admins are allowing Youtube these days. Goits!

Email sent to them asking to CAP rate "Anal Intrusion VI"

Oh god, this can only end badly

Well are you going to elaborate? I'd be interested, for one.

'Spelt' would have been better.

I'm not sure what Andrew didn't like about the argument; seems to me (from memory; it's a while since I read it) that religious apologists maintain disparate majesteria of faith and science; Dawkins seems to hold - and I agree with him, so he's in good company - that there are *no* majesteria; i.e. that the claim of 'proof by faith' is non-existent.

To me personally, after over twenty years of concerted research into the subject, the 'magisterium of science' seems equally groundless. People like Dawkins and Dennett just dogmatically assume that if something is the case then science will eventually encompass it. They seem to think that there is no need for them to justify this assumption.

Apparently not. Human (and animal) consciousness has persistently and completely evaded scientific explanation or understanding, over the entire period of philosophical and scientific enquiry. We are nowhere near understanding how a biological lump like a person, or person's brain, can be conscious, or why. And yet, faced with this undeniable fact, the dogmatic materialists of this world just project their dogmatism with ever more zeal.

One familiar manoeuvre is to proclaim that their opponents in the debate are being dogmatic if they begin to form the opinion that science will never succeeed in this respect. I disagree. Science has set itself up as having the objective world as its domain - whereas what we are discussing here is subjective. No objective description of a person's brain states can encompass consciousness, because consciousness is subjective. If the materialists were correct, there could be no subjective domain.

So, in a nutshell, I find Dawkins and Dennett as frustratingly dogmatic as their Bible-thumping counterparts.

I don't quite agree; I would hold that science is not the question of whether something is understood but a method by which it might be understood.

Basically; propose a theory; provide a mechanism by which the theory can be tested; then test it. Make the methodology available to others so that they can test it. If alternate information comes to light which invalidates the theory, then drop it and grow a new one.

The fact that we cannot explain consciousness is immaterial to the argument; we may never be able to. But the answer to the question is 'we don't know' not 'we can't know'. Religious thought (I use the term advisedly) holds that not only can we not know but that we should not even try.

My views - which are likely to get me flamed - are basically that religion is dangerous in *all* its forms; its adherents behave in a way which in any other context would have them classed as insane (talking to an invisible friend that only they can hear; repeated behaviour which has been shown to have no effect; obsessive compulsive behaviour; antisocial behaviour; permitting others to control their behaviour). Worse, it's a social virus... if you have it, you'll likely infect your kids, too. I *don't* like it.

As for religious behaviour; let's have a quick look at the ten commandments: are you suggesting that because I do not profess the christian (or jewish) faith, I will:
- fail to honor my parents?
- murder?
- commit adultery?
- steal?
- bear false witness against a neighbour (bit specific, that one?)
- covet my neighbours house/wife/ass (take your pick)?

Are you suggesting that the only reason people *don't* break all those commandments is because god told them not to? Pish, and likewise, tosh.

Each and every one of those commandments is entirely designed to stop local social trouble. Follow them, and your neighbours won't find it necessary to throw rocks at you...

I leave out the first four, all of which are to do with keeping the priesthood in power, and which give this amusing air of authority to the whole thing... amazing what the human can believe.

(This argument is best discussed over beer, but I'm not allowed beer at the moment for medical reasons )

Neil

Is this all directed at me? I am not suggesting anything about religion. My interest is in the assumed magisterium of science.



This is where we really disagree. You seem to be reflecting the general consensus pro-scientific movement in saying that we should never reach the point where we are entitled to pronounce science incapable of explaining certain phenomena. I agree that it is appropriate to try, until an unavoidable reason for giving up emerges. In the case of consciousness, I would say that is about where we are now.

The reason for giving up is this: science by its own definition attempts to understand the world in an objective sense - in terms of third-person observables. Consciousness is not in that domain, and so doesn't even stand as a candidate for scientific understanding.

Consciousness is *not presently* in that domain. Which is why it should most definitely be a candidate for understanding.

The conceit that 'we can't understand it' leads to 'some things man is not meant to know' and that leads to the idiocy of religious superstition.

I won't hold any truck with such a view; if we don't know, and the question interests us, then we should try and find out. The fact that previous attempts to find out have not succeeded are no reason to stop trying.

(The religion wasn't aimed at you, just a generic rant.)

Neil

I once coveted my neighbours ass, it was very pert though!

Sorry.

All religion is bunkum and we're better off without it.

Well, obviously, I disagree with you. The recognition that we can't understand consciousness in terms of objective science is not conceit, and it is not unwarranted. It is simply the recognition that consciousness, in the sense we are referring to it, is a subjective phenomenon. It will not become an objective phenomenon, however much work scientists do to uncover its objective correlates. Consciousness per se is subjective.

When you say not objective yet I think you pinpoint the source of our disagreement. As I understand it, science is not in the business of rendering subjective phenomena objective. The most it even aspires to is the determination of the objective correlates of consciousness. Scientific study of the brain can only have as its final goal an exact and complete description in objective terms of the state of the brain which is present if and only if a particular state of consciousness is present. That is an exercise in correlation - not identification.

Sorry, busy weekend.

My objection to Dawkin's anti-NOMA argument was that his whole stance is that religion is the product of woolly thinking, and I'd agree with him on that, and then he rejects the idea that religion and science could be said to have no overlap because religious people would reject it if science could be used to prove their faith.

So, in fact, what's he's arguing is NOMA should be rejected because a bunch of woolly thinkers would reject it, if it suited them to do so.

I'm no apologist for those who wish to believe that a magic sky pixie loves them all, but I'm still happy to concede that if articles of faith are kept out of the realms of the testable then it should not be the purpose of science to test them.

The consciousness argument is an interesting one. The hardline scientific view is that the brain is a collection of chemicals and, therefore, consciousness is defined by chemical interactions and electrical signals which obey a set of absolute laws. If this is the case then free will is an illusion - we're just responding to a vast number of fairly simple stimuli.

If you believe that isn't the whole story then, effectively, you believe in a soul of some sort, which I personally find somewhat arrogant and distasteful.

Again, I can only see that it would be arrogant if there were no good reason for believing it. In a nutshell, again, my reason for strongly mistrusting physicalism is that science is all about research into the objective world. At no point does it even attempt to introduce a subjective element. Indeed, what would it even mean to aspire to objectify the subjective? It would be arrogant of me, indeed, to cling on to the hope that eventually science might 'objectify consciousness', when I don't even understand what it means.

Souls haven't come into it, at least yet. The point I am at is that the physical account of the person appears not to be the complete account. In principle, this might change if 'the physical' gets redefined to allow in subjectivity. But then we are already having to admit that consciousness is not 'physical', in the original sense of the word.

Why should or would science introduce a subjective element? To do so would be to remove itself from the realm of science.

What science can show is that nothing happens within the brain that is beyond the scope of understood physical rules. Once that determination is made it is clear that self-awareness is the result of a very complex set of physical reactions.

If you believe that is not the case then you believe in, call it what you will, a soul.

I was being liberal. Let's stay with the original sense of 'science', then. I have no problem with that.

So which physical rules incorporate subjective facts?