I'm detecting several holes in your rebuttal ...
First of all, let me point out that there are a few types of memory—such as episodic, semantic, sensory, implicit, eidetic, etc.—and there are also a lot of people out there performing amazing acrobatics with mnemonics (Jeopardy Champions aren't the only ones). There are individuals recalling lengthy sequences of random numbers pages long which seems like an impossible feat until one learns how they do it; it wasn't necessarily because they were born with savant syndrome or mnemonic propensities, but rather, instead of the usual rote learning that many of us employ to memorise mere telephone numbers, such exemplars employ mentalist tricks from simple acronyms to more elaborate mental maps and memory palaces whereby each integer represents an element in an interesting narrative that is encoded in the sequence. So, these people will be the first ones to outright tell you that no divine or higher source is sending them accurate information about the past they were exposed to, but instead, their accurate recall is due to a blend of paying attention, associative imagination and the hard mnemonic work they put in. This has nothing to do with having an infallible repository of information in their heads. Most people (save for those with real mental deficits) can boost their memories with practice and dedication to these mental exercises. High functioning recall does not get ignored at all by the scientific community. In fact, The Mind, Explained is a documentary currently on Netflix which covers, in part, the research that has been done with mnemonists.
By the way, I will deal with your vague claim about having half of the brain removed with the preservation of memory as fallacious if used as a counterargument with the pretext for disclaiming decades of neuroscientific research. Seen as you provided no citations, I will cite you the case of Henry Molaison with a link and excerpt:
'A new examination of the brain of Patient H.M. — the man who became an iconic case in neuroscience when he developed a peculiar form of amnesia after parts of his brain were removed during surgery in 1953 — shows that his surgeon removed less of his brain than thought.
'At age 27, H.M., whose real name was Henry Molaison, underwent an experimental surgical treatment for his debilitating*epilepsy. His surgeon removed the medial temporal lobe, including a structure called the hippocampus.
'Thereafter, H.M. was unable to*form new memories. His case brought about the idea that the hippocampus may have a crucial role in retaining learned facts, replacing the notion that memories are scattered throughout the brain. H.M. became the focus of more than 50 years of memory research, working closely with the researchers who had to introduce themselves every time they met.'
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.liv...tem-brain.html
As you can see, it doesn't matter even if more than 50% of the brain has been removed, but what does matter is what parts of the brain have been removed—such as the hippocampus—and seen as you've cited nothing with your claim it means jack. In Molaison's case, there was even some post-death controversy about how much of his brain had been removed in contrast with early hyperbolic claims, particularly from the sensationalist media. So be careful with what you swallow there, Labyrinthus! I also find it side-splitting the fact that you've just labelled the brain as a recipient of memories and blabbed on about poor signals and brutish versions of the original if the receiver is faulty or imperfect and yet contradict yourself by presenting me with a vague scenario where all of a sudden half of the receiver is enough for a near enough decent signal ...
From where I'm standing, your line of reasoning is inconsistent or you are failing to express it without contradictions. What exactly are you trying to claim?
Your cartoon analogy explains nothing apart from residing in the realm of what-ifs. Reality is not a cartoon nor an artistic animation. Cartoons don't have minds that wonder about who made them or how they came to be; we do. So this analogy is rendered moot. You may invoke the brain in a vat or the simulation scenarios of Nick Bostrom, but these are just hypotheses and their hypothetical creators of worlds are far from being gods or supernatural entities when they are described as technologically advanced lifeforms. Again, it could be like in the movie The Matrix but that's besides the point—the notion that the world is a giant computer simulation does not take away from the notion that we live in a godless reality.
Also, your analogy comes with another strawman about what science really says regarding God and betrays your misunderstanding between Richard Dawkins's sensible de facto atheism and Penn Jillette's fallacious stance that God definitely doesn't exist. Scientists don't claim that their observations, instruments and experiments prove that God doesn't exist—this is a gross misconception on your part of the God Hypothesis in science. As I said before, a hypothesis lacks evidence, which is the reason why the existence of God is yet to be empirically verified. Until then, there is no reason to believe in God, much less a personal one, just as there is no reason to believe in ghosts. Atheism is merely a reasonably tentative (as opposed to dogmatic) stance of disbelief and therefore subject to change. If you claim that a god exists and created the cosmos, the onus is on you to describe such entity and the hows and whys besides demonstrating conclusively that such is the case. If you can't do that and merely claim it to be indescribable or ineffable because you are only human, then your proposition is unfalsifiable and as good as the musings or ramblings of a crackpot; you said it yourself: 'My premise will always remain unproven ...'—but you never stop to think that perhaps your premise isn't worth much or your rationale is simply intellectually defunct in the grand scheme of theories. Is it that it's unfalsifiable or perhaps your failure to convince others of your conclusion? Why is it that your argument is insufficient to convince others that it is the right one? I don't think you have considered these questions for your benefit and to merely besmirch nonbelievers by calling them dullards is a cop-out and borders on an ad hominem, which is the hallmark of a debate loser.
'Long story short, you are making the error of conflating non physical with non dual. Memories may be processed on a physical level but stored and retrieved from a non physical location. We know this from compelling empirical observation. Once the idea of this memory retrieval from a non-physical "cloud" is understood or even just allowed as viable speculation it is not too big of a stretch to reasonably surmise that thoughts can originate within duality but beyond the physical. The Creator is beyond duality and is thus "Unknown and Unknowable" given that knowledge and thoughts are "created" things of a dualistic nature (in and of the cartoon).
No, you don't get to invoke 'non-physical location' without saying and demonstrating where it is localised. A 'location' implies a where in the physical universe, within the space-time fabric. If you say it lies outside it, you are dealing in hypotheticals and surmising something undemonstrated to be the case to prematurely fill in current noetic gaps. That approach is pseudoscientific, unfounded, flawed and fallacious. You should bear in mind that what you find compelling as an armchair philosopher isn't necessarily compelling from an expert standpoint. Your conjecture, which is what it is, presents an inexact subterfuge for the mutual exclusivity between the physical and non-physical. It does not explain how something physical can interact with something immaterial (and it can't because the latter is hypothetical, anyway) and conveniently avoids having to deal with the origin and formation of memories by claiming, without any real foundation, that it occurs beyond human purview in some 'non-physical cloud'. What the hell is a non-physical cloud? Are you saying it is like a cloud? Because if you are, let me remind you that clouds are features of the physical universe as they are made of matter occupying space and moving through time, having dimensional properties; the adjective 'non-physical' before 'cloud' thus creates a problematic oxymoron when the former negates space-time, which is required for the dimensions of an object such as a cloud to exist in: if there is no space, the dimensional properties of a cloud cannot manifest, and if there is no time, well, nothing has time to happen, ergo, no function manifests. In essence, your stance is merely a flight of fancy which gives up on doing any further scientific research.
Atheists used to rest on their "singularity" laurels as the source of Creation. The singularity thought is a created thing. Granted it is a very pristine, uber primordial sort of thing, but it is still a created thing. (What created the singularity?)
Not all atheists subscribe to singularities as some are even taking Sir Roger Penrose's cosmological ideas of a looped universe seriously. Others conjure the notion of eternal inflation constantly producing countless bubble universes. Some say we live in a kind of Hilbert space. I couldn't give a toss about what they say because, ultimately, they will all be wrong or incomplete and such is the nature of scientific claims which are constantly under revision—that's how science works! Remember that we are insignificantly tiny and living on a rock that is akin to a mote of dust in an unbelievably gargantuan universe that only constitutes the observable. So no use speculating on what we think is and isn't based on what little we currently know and observe. There is more work to be done and we should be epistemologically consistent which requires us to be intellectually honest and humble in our conclusions. Forget the singularity!
What (as opposed to who) created what we see today is the real question! The answer is: I don't know and I refuse to prematurely conclude it was something sentient and intelligent. My best guess as to what makes more sense to me? Here goes: The laws of physics can be thought of as restrictions to what matter can do based on its properties but, in the beginning, there were no laws, and if there were no laws there were no restrictions, therefore, everything was permitted, hence the Big Bang (as evidenced by the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is, in essence, its afterglow). This is the best logical answer to the profound question of why there is something rather than nothing. Because nothingness, on a quantum level, is highly unstable as to render it impossible by the stretch of human imagination. We can only imagine nothing by conjuring something because it is an absence—and if there is an absence between two fingers they must necessarily meet in continuity because nothing exists between them, there is just something. Because the probability for something to emerge is so great that the real miracle would be if nothing ever existed at all. This is also congruent with cosmic expansion, dark energy etc. So here's a reasonable explanation that isn't necessarily the be all and end all but which can be proffered without involving an imaginary Creator.
Materialism isn't exactly a word that I am fond of, by the way. The world isn't just materials when we know that at the subatomic level wood and metal are no different and the universe, beyond its distinct elements, also presents us with forces which are invisible to the human eye but measurable nonetheless and their effects are observable. They are, after all, physical forces. This is why I much prefer the term physicalism.
The atheist is demanding that an impossible form of "proof" be presented. (Prove that the completely non-cartoon Cartoonist exists using cartoon data).
String theory, which invokes hidden dimensions to explain gravity on a quantum level, has a similar problem but, unlike the theistic and deistic suppositions, isn't almost entirely unfalsifiable when a large enough hadron collider the size of our solar system and far more powerful could potentially prove or disprove such stringy proposition. I'm sorry to break it to you, Labyrinthus, but you can't just bypass the Popperian principle and expect everyone to embrace your premise. You have not demonstrated it beyond all reasonable doubt with your philosophical reasoning which constitutes empty analogies given the context. Your stance doesn't get past the level of what-if—and this is not good enough if that's how you arrived at your conclusion. That's what happens when you start speaking from absolute certainty ...
This understanding can only come for those who make the effort required to pierce The Cloud Of Unknowing.
This is a bit cryptic, don't you think? A cloud? Sounds a bit obscurantist or in the least verging on the limiting idea that some things should remain mysterious for the sake of maintaining that awe of the unknown. Is this where you are coming from? Because if it is, I would advise against it. And how can one 'pierce' such 'cloud'? Unless you mean that we should unlearn what we think we know, but that happens everyday in light of new discoveries and where the refinement of theories is concerned. Or you are simply talking about coming to know the unknowable, which is oxymoronic but it does seem to be where you are coming from with your Cartoonist-like Creator hypothesis.
"Firstly, why would we need an external source to tell us about our own past experiences by manner of transmission when the brain has been directly collecting sensory input data throughout the span of its existence?"
It is not an external source. It sounds to me like you are asking, "why do the intestines need the stomach?"
The purely physical form would cease to function without the nonphysical (yet purely dualistic) counterpart and hierarchy.
You are the one who implied an external source when you initially provided the radio/TV analogy—after all, signals come from an external source. (Which is the complete opposite to the reality where parts of the digestive system mutually exist within the same organism.) Again, your analogies fail you.
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