is what these swingers are.

None of them are ever going to win any beauty contests, nor make much of a positive difference to society. Why waste time giving their crusty lifestyles any thought? Do you really think you're discussing a phenomenon that is new or progressive?

you say you want debate, but you don't really engage....don't discuss the issue at hand.

You just want people to tell you everything's alright and give you a hug.

You're a pundit and you put yourself in the public forum, then get upset when you're spanked by a f*ckwit like O'Reilly.

Yet your response shows that you're just as demagogic and polarized as he is. Do you seriously think these articles and the responses are doing anything to improve the quality of debate on the subject? No...it's all about you, Joan.

Delusional, weird and frankly pathetic.

Brand's "Booky Wook" was published in Nov 2007, over 2 years ago.

Britain has already overdosed and tired of him. Hopefully that's the end of it.

Salon always seems to come in late (see Alan Partridge/Steve Coogan etc), and genuinely seems to think that they have news (i.e. have no new angle or depth with which to attack the subject).

If you can't afford real writers, there must at least be high school interns with better pop culture awareness than this...surely?

HBO didn't make it, they're just showing it.

Mankind cannot outlast the universe, so in that sense it is "doomed" anyway, without finding some way to transcend our current physical limitations.

It's controversial, but not crackpot.

"The chemical forces that control the interactions of atoms and molecules are indeed quantum mechanical in origin, and it is largely chemical action that governs the behaviour of neurotransmitter substances that transfer signals from one neuron to another - across tiny gaps that are called synaptic clefts. Likewise, the action potentials that physically control nerve-signal transmission have an admittedly quantum-mechanical origin."

"Shadows of the Mind", Roger Penrose pp 348

Fair enough...the feeling is pretty mutual.

You are free to keep your prejudice and remain outside of the discussion.

What does he mean by reductionist?

Well "reductionism" is a philosophical model closely related to positivism. It "reduces" all explanations to exclude all conceptual/extra-physical reality causes.

New atheists like Dawkins appear to have been surepticiously pushing this, although without making it explicit because Dawkins knows how much ire it will invite from the scientific community at large (who unlike Bigguns suggested, are not so confident that science dismisses questions of the divine).

Dawkins often appears to imply certain beliefs without making them explicit, which may be why he's often accused of things he hasn't explicitly promoted. What specifically were you alluding to in the interview?

Did you have any meaningful comments or questions about my post?

Before I was a "troll" for disagreeing with you, now I suppose I'm a troll for introducing new concepts/words.

If you want to degrade the discussion then go ahead. As I keep telling you, the choice is yours.

I meant "materialism" as in the philosophical sense, like positivism or scientism and unlike Platonism.

Sorry if these words are unfamiliar to you but they are pertinent to the discussion.

If you believe that science is conceptually complete, that "science" is interchangeable with the term "rationality", then you are indeed a materialist. This philosophy is really inconsistent with all the major religions.

Conversely if you are sympathetic with any form of Platonism, then I would ask you why the idealised concept of God seems so bizarre to you.

It's up to you whether or not you engage meaningfully...I'm just trying to inject a bit of rationality into the discussion.

"I think nearly everyone is an unbeliever."

Then you'd be wrong.

I suggest you read a good book on cosmology, such as "The Road to Reality" by Roger Penrose, or "Godel Meets Einstien" by Yourgrau.

Having a better understanding of the foundations of science and it's place within our rationality might make you realise the limiting and fundamentally false nature of scientism/positivism/materialism that seems so pervasive amongst new atheists.

This interview seems full of speculation with the only real science being based on pop science.

In computer science, I would suggest that the field is pretty evenly split on whether or not strong AI is possible. Personally I think that Godel's incompleteness theorems make it practically, if not logically, impossible.

Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind" is referenced by Kauffman (although notably not the much more expansive "Shadows of the Mind").

Quantum coherence is just one hypothetical explanation for consciousness that Penrose posits. His general thrust is that there are hitherto undiscovered conceptual fields of physics/science that could potentially allow us to explain consciousness, but that currently we barely know where to start.

Kurt Godel similarly suggested the same (as well as suggesting we might eventually understand death and afterlife), basing his optimism on our ability to perceive vastly more a priori knowledge than we are currently aware of.

Personally I don't really buy into the quantum coherence thing. Its based on the probabilistic model of quantum mechanics, which I think is a fudge to cover up failings in boolean logic as applied to quantum mechanics. When quantum physics is eventually shown to be deterministic it will render this theory obsolete.

It's nice to have a biologist attempting to abandon positivism/materialism, and seeming to move slightly towards a more Platonistic perspective, but unfortunately Kauffman's attempts seem a little bit ham-fisted.

"I, transwoman and lesbian"

Trying to figure out all the qualifiers here, but if I've got it right then I think we're pretty similar. I've always considered myself a lesbian trapped in a man's body.

BTW..."whom" is not always interchangeable with "who". If in doubt stay with "who", using "whom" incorrectly draws a lot of attention to your lack of learning.