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New-age author and physician Deepak Chopra has offered prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins and others a $1 million prize challenge to offer a scientific explanation for the biological basis of thoughts and ideas.

Addressing what he called a "tribe of militant new atheists," naming Dawkins, James Randi, and Daniel Dennett, Chopra announced the challenge in a video uploaded on Youtube.

"Can you please offer a scientific understanding for the biological basis of a first-person experience? Any experience – mental experience, or perceptual experience. So for cognition, or for perception. And I'll even make it more simple. Can you offer a scientific understanding for the biological basis of an idea, a thought?" Chopra asks in the video.

"Just tell me how does electrochemistry produce a thought, an idea, and you get the million dollars. I will live up to this. But it has to be a valid, scientific explanation for the biological basis of an idea."

Chopra, who was born in India, has written several books dealing with new understandings of spirituality, alternative medicine and the mind-body relationship.

[b] With over a billion nerve cells in the brain all interacting together at once and responding differently it's just not possible.. .. it would be the equivalent of asking you to explain 100% accurately all the molecules in the air and their individual interaction with the earth to produce the weather..

A feat which in real life makes weather forecast constrained over longer periods of time.

So as the example, perception and things like ideas are the far-side that we know neurones produce but find it tasking to point the exact process.

Even without knowing every neurones part in perception it's been determined the regions of the brain where things like fears, conscience and many more come from, something the ancient Jewish theologians believed comes from the heart... yes the heart that pumps blood.

So the lack of understanding of this is not sufficient for a plea to the supernatural or anything else but our own ignorance.

The million bucks is just a red herring, irrelevant to the question entirely.. . merely a bait for fans(like the op) who follow his line of thinking to chatter on about the wager. [/b]

davien:
[b] With over a billion nerve cells in the brain all interacting together at once and responding differently it's just not possible.. .. it would be the equivalent of asking you to explain 100% accurately all the molecules in the air and their individual interaction with the earth to produce the weather..

A feat which in real life makes weather forecast constrained over longer periods of time.

So as the example, perception and things like ideas are the far-side that we know neurones produce but find it tasking to point the exact process.

Even without knowing every neurones part in perception it's been determined the regions of the brain where things like fears, conscience and many more come from, something the ancient Jewish theologians believed comes from the heart... yes the heart that pumps blood.

So the lack of understanding of this is not sufficient for a plea to the supernatural or anything else but our own ignorance.

The million bucks is just a red herring, irrelevant to the question entirely.. . merely a bait for fans(like the op) who follow his line of thinking to chatter on about the wager. [/b]

It's not really about explaining something to someone, it's whether such person would still agree after you have explained.

or they still won't agree since they already have a preconceived answer they want to hear..

so there wasn't really any need for you to have bothered, it's a total waste of time....

they asked for an explanation, now watch an argument start..

johnydon22:
It's not really about explaining something to someone, it's whether such person would still agree after you have explained.

or they still won't agree since they already have a preconceived answer they want to hear..

so there wasn't really any need for you to have bothered, it's a total waste of time....

they asked for an explanation, now watch an argument start..

So he gave a valid explanation right?

A question you have no answer to is stupid. While you demand that your own questions be answered. How convenient
Foolishness.

Absolute nonsense my friend. Who will determine whether they gave a satisfactory answer or not? Didn't you see how James Randi Foundation organized their own "One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge" ?

If James Randi answers that Chopra clown, let me fall in a lagoon!

Fine thread

JUST non... yet its what we do... but cannot be scientifically proved... or would it?

I don't think it's a good question since clearly the biological basis of thought lies in neural activity. The better way of approaching it would be to ask why a given configuration of matter would give rise to thought at all in violation of chemical laws. Specifically, Why would the human brain give rise to a conscious thought that is a fundamentally different substance from it?

The question lends zero support to the theist-atheist debate.
Set up a corollary and see for yourself. It should appear in a form like this:

Atheist cannot provide a biological basis for an idea therefore Jesus must have walked on water and Mohammed must have spoken with a pot of goat stew.

What is the point of the question?