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Originally Posted by Botnst
Everybody who prays to God, just like everybody who speaks on the telephone, is giving and taking a Turing test.
I reread my post concerning Turing, Aquinas, and the mind and I completely understand why you had trouble understanding it. When I reread it I couldn't figure-out what I was saying either. I'll try again because somewhere in that mess I think there's a useful idea trying to escape. I'm trying an assault on Aquinas' first proof of God's existence. Basically the watchmaker's argument, I guess.
It works on a ratio in which mind is to brain as moved is to Mover. So, as we regress through phylogeny both brain and mind become less complex. If we move far enough back we arrive at some point at which the concept of brain and of mind cease to be meaningful. Neither is recognizably different from their environment. In the same sense, as we regress from the moved back through time, do the moved and Mover cease to be distinguishable, too? If so then the argument for a Mover collapses, I think.
B
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Now I get it. Yes, I can see your point, if we think of God as 'outside' the universe as Aquinas apparently did. But I can see two issues. Since the explanations of our own mind and consciousness seem to be independent of empirical causal explanations, might not explanations of the Prime Mover be completely independent of empirical causal explanations of the universe? Prime Mover explanations are parallel explanations to empirical causal explanations, just like mental causes and personal agency parallel empirical causal explanations.
On the other hand, if the universe is a part of God, then God's consciousness must also be increasing as the consciousness level of the universe increases thru evolution. There was primitive divine agency early on in the universe, now, thru our own consciousness and the consciousness of other animals, divine agency has become more complex.