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It is not the scientist's job to decide about the nature of consciousness, or whether consciousness precedes materiality. This is the job of the philosopher, and when scientists make claims about such immaterial things, they are overstepping their bounds. The good scientists know this. Their job is to remain within a certain paradigm. They are to investigate reality insofar as it is material (relations of energy). When they go beyond this paradigm and make claims about the nature of reality itself, they are acting as philosophers and not scientists. But this requires a different set of tools and different criteria for truth (no less rigorous, of course).

In any case, to make claims about the immaterial (consciousness) on the basis of the material is to overstep the bounds of science.

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False. This is a failure to understand science. Science is not just engineering, astronomy, chemisty, biology, etc, it is the method we use to explore and explain reality. If you are considering something outside the realm of science, you are considering something outside the realm of reality.

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Do you have an argument for this position? Or does it depend on the unspoken assumption that reality is nothing other than the physical world? If so, that particular assumption has not been proven, which is rather unscientific.

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I sugest you read about Quantum Foam, uncertainty and virtual particle pairs.
Science does indeed delve to explain reality! For that is the purpose of science, to learn what is.


Regretfully, I have been observing these threads not only for content, but for psychology. and whilst I am no expert (but I do have several psych classes) I observe this trend:
The philosophical / religious position is, statistically, ill informed about the role of Science, its methodology, criteria for self correction and processes of observation and prediction.

But that all comes round again to my first post. That one must first have a certain level of knowledge before one can intelligently debate a topic.

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Again, these are bare assertions. You have not engaged any argument, nor have you offered any argument of your own. You have stated that it is the purpose of science to explain reality. You have not shown how or why this is the case.

Next you have stated that religiously inclined folks are ill-informed about the nature of science (and you've included some comments about science capacity for self-correction--which, of course, is the very foundation of a truly scientific enterprise). None of this says anything whatsoever about what reality is. This says, given a certain region of reality, predefined according to a certain schema, science explains how certain things work. It does this with admiral rigor and it produces impressive results, none of which touch on the question of the being of reality.

If you hope to contribute to the conversation you could a) disprove the argument that states that the claim that science investigates reality is dogmatic, b) offer your own arguments as to why and how science does investigate the whole of reality (perhaps by explaining how quantum foam theory moves beyond the physical--although you should be aware that the "virtual" is merely another way of configuring a particularly attenuated physical reality, and thus fits squarely within the previous paradigm for scientific investigation), or c) offer some response to the earlier claim that the appropriate experiential region for asking about the question of God is the prior question, "Why are their beings (virtual or not) at all?

Again, more assertions re psychological biography or ungrounded statements (i.e., without argument) about the nature of science are unhelpful. They do nothing to further the discussion but merely afford you the opportunity state your beliefs (no matter how impassioned).

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