May Allah Bless and Reward Both of You in this Life and in the Hereafter.

Hamza Tzortzis is literally the nicest person I have ever seen. May Allah preserve him

Hamza Tzortsiz is always a treasure to have on

Can't explain how happy it felt when I saw Ustad Hamza. It's always a pleasure watching ustad speak. It was a very beneficial presentation as well. May Allah bless ustad Hamza.

BT dropping another banger right before I was going to sleep! May Allah bless you for your work! ❤

Brother Paul and the Blogging Theology alongside brother Hamza Tzortzis are a powerful and needed duo for the ummah allahumma barik

NO WAY. I am definitely going to brew a big cup of pour over coffee for this one. Thank you BT!!

38:24 Subhanallah brother, I was experiencing the same thing when I was about that age. I didn't cry in the shower though. I just stared at nothing "experiencing" that thought until someone snap me out of it. 39:46 especially when you said "It's just me, and I'm seeing things only through me" with that hand gesture, that made me chuckle because that's exactly how I acted then when I try to tell people about it. It made me feel alone back then. Even now, that thought come and go every now and then. No matter how much words we're using to articulate that, it'd never be enough. Although words help, your experience of it isn't the same as mine.

Dear Paul, I read this: 92 Percent of Germans Abstain from Church Services In Germany, we can hardly speak of "lived religiousness" any longer: Today, 92.1 percent of people living in Germany frequently refrain from attending religious events. The fact that the overwhelming majority of Germans are now "practice-free abstainers" is not only due to the steadily growing group of non-denominational people. After all, 25 percent of the population are non-practicing Catholics, 24 percent are non-practicing Protestants. If these internal religious quotas are converted to the total population, it becomes clear that only a minority of 7.9 percent of people living in Germany practice their own faith on a regular basis. "Denominational Muslims" are now the largest group.

Never boring watching ustad Hamza bai..... May Allah reward both of you... Thanku u bro paul for another super session

Ustadh Humza Andreas Tzortzis cheers and enlivens me, regardless of the title of the talk. Wow, Masha'Allah!

I'm an engineer, with research experience and publications in AI. Though its not my career anymore, I do understand the algorithms and mechanisms. And trust me when I say this: AI will never be "conscious", irrespective of what mainstream definition of consciousness one subscribes to. In fact, for someone who understands the raw mathematics of it, it's laughable to even posit such a thing. It's a mechanism to replicate our knowledge, our behaviour and our decision-making patterns. The question of consciousness doesn't even come into the picture. It's something akin to a category mistake fallacy.

This was very interesting and it shows how complicated we are designed SubhanAllah, thank you very much for posting and sharing. and Allah bless all who worked on this great lecture.

mashallah ustaz Hamza ! that is very beneficial ...we love you ya habibi

JazakAllah'u khairan brothers

Barakallahu feekum my beloved brothers 🥰

Mashallah Tabarakallah this is a beautiful conversation! May Allah bless the host and the audience of this wonderful suhbat. Allah Humma Sali Wa Salamu Alay Sayyidina Muhammad wa Ala Alihi Sayyidina Muhammad Sal Allahu Alayhi wa Salam! 💚🙌

Masha Allah ❤

Tabarakah Allah ma sha Allah. Jazakum Allah khairan kathiran Ustadhuna aljaleel. Hafadhakum Allah wa Barakah fiykum wa zadakum min fadlihi ameen.

This was good

May the Most High (swt) continue to fortify you brother's righteous endeavors-ameen.🤲🏽

Next topic should be on life after death materialism vs metaphysics

I know these lectures may not get millions of views any time soon. However, please continue the work because from the thousands it does get, a few hundreds will be by the future daees who will InShaAllah reach millions and then billions.

Mashallah. Gonna need some strong coffee for this one

One question that could be posited, is this: "If it conscious can be simulated in a 'good enough way" that "if you can't tell the difference, does it REALLY matter? on the ground, practical level". Maybe for most people in the near future, one could argue "No" it wouldn't really matter. And this is where Hamza's Marriage between Humans and Bots become a Westworld-like reality.

You should make a video about the portrayal of incest in the Bible. Btw love your content.

Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatouLLAHI wa barakatouHOU

Br. Paul/Hamza, When will there be the webinar explaining why Panpsychism is not sufficient to explain consciousness in the universe?

Wa alykum Asalam wa Rahmatu Allahi wa Barakatuh

💡 *Summary of The Key Points:* 02:03 🪨 Setting the stage with the stone and butterflies analogy, questioning how physical processes lead to consciousness. 08:12 📝 Preliminary exploration of theism's coherence in explaining consciousness over physicalism. 12:05 🧠 Overview of the hard problem, critique of physicalism, and theistic metaphysical explanation. 15:31 🤔 Understanding the subjective nature of consciousness and its limitations in language. 23:16 🧩 Epistemic and ontological inquiries into consciousness and the hard problem. 30:32 🚴‍♂ Discussion on experiential knowledge, objections to physicalism, and the ability hypothesis. 41:28 🧠 Reflecting on philosophical debates, Western thought, and the relevance of belief and God discussions. 42:25 🤔 Evaluation of physicalist approaches to consciousness, focusing on the easy problems. 45:31 🔬 Analysis of eliminative materialism and critiques against dismissing subjective consciousness. 56:29 🔄 Comparison between eliminative and reductive materialism in addressing subjective consciousness. 01:02:09 🧠 Recognition of the gap between subjective consciousness and physical phenomena. 01:12:24 💡 Overview of functionalism's approach to consciousness. 01:19:12 🌀 Discussion on weak emergent materialism and its explanatory challenges. 01:26:13 🤔 Addressing the limitations of strong emergent materialism. 01:30:38 💧 Critique of emergent materialism and water analogy. 01:35:26 🤖 Expanding on AI's relevance to emergent materialism discussions. 01:43:45 🤖 Exploring AI basics, its relation to consciousness, and emergent materialism. 01:53:05 🤖 AI as an extension of human cognition, distinguishing strong and weak AI. 02:06:21 🤖 Limitations of functionalism in explaining consciousness, particularly subjective experiences. 02:12:23 🧠 Challenges for neuroscience in addressing the hard problem of consciousness. 02:23:06 🧠 The hard problem's metaphysical implications and theistic propositions. 02:29:34 💡 Integrating neuroscience with theistic metaphysics to comprehensively address consciousness. 02:43:03 🤔 Advocating for a Quranic way of thinking in intellectual discourse, emphasizing reverence towards Allah. 02:44:31 📚 Recognizing the value of original research in Islamic apologetics, encouraging its utilization.

The argument from consciousness is a philosophical and sometimes theological argument that demonstrates the existence of a transcendent or spiritual reality based on the nature of consciousness or subjective experience. This argument suggests that consciousness cannot be fully explained by physical or naturalistic explanations and, therefore, requires a non-material or supernatural source. The argument from consciousness can take several forms, but its core idea is typically as follows: 1. *Existence of Consciousness:* Human beings (and potentially other sentient beings) possess consciousness, subjective experience, or an inner mental life. This includes thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and self-awareness. 2. *Irreducibility of Consciousness:* Consciousness is irreducible to purely physical or material processes. In other words, consciousness cannot be fully explained or accounted for by the activity of neurons, brain chemistry, or any physical component alone. 3. *Immaterial or Non-Physical Nature:* From the perceived limitations of a purely physical explanation, consciousness must have an immaterial or non-physical component. This immaterial aspect can be a soul or a non-material mind. 4. *Existence of a Transcendent Reality:* Finally, this concludes that the existence of consciousness points to the existence of a transcendent or spiritual reality that is responsible for or intimately connected to the phenomenon of consciousness. This transcendent reality can be God or a higher spiritual realm.

Subhan Allah ❤

we've been "alive without breathing in our mothers womb and this realm gave us some clue about "alive without breathing realm" hereafter. assalamualaiqum

To brother hamza وَعَلَيْكُم السَّلَام وَرَحْمَةُ اَللهِ وَبَرَكاتُهُ

4:30 my question is regarding panphychism. If non-living objects have no consciousness and free will (i.e. ability to choose), then how can you explain the following verse: "Indeed, We offered the Trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, and they declined to bear it and feared it; but man [undertook to] bear it. Indeed, he was unjust and ignorant." Quran 33:72

Can we download the slides anywhere ?

Given that the whole topic is, at least currently, in the realm of the unseen, I propose we stick to revelation, if any, when discussing it philosophically. There is no need to fall for the falsehood of atheists such as Dawkins who are saying that consciousness is the new battleground, let it be their battleground, no need for us to be lured in. Even if consciousness can be fully explained by physical means, the question remains "who created the physical processes in the first place?". Arguing that consciousness can only be explained by metaphysical phenomena such as the soul is not founded on revelation and can mislead many if someday it turns out to be false, so why argue for such statement? Not that we deny the metaphysical, we affirm it and we affirm that the soul is outside of our comprehension, so it's not really appropriate for us to give related assertions such as linking consciousness to it, unless such assertions are founded in revelation. ChatGPT does not rely in its core on syntactical language analysis, it is based on ANNs, which try to simulate how brains work using currently available electronics. This is relatively new technology that took off after the 80's (all quotes in the lecture related to AI seem to be from that era), when ANNs were not the standard, they were ridiculed at that time in favor of symbolic AI algorithms which eventually failed to yield meaningful results. Only recently in the 2000s ANNs took off when hardware became fast enough to simulate big enough ANNs. So the tests mentioned in the lecture are obsolete, ChatGPT can translate complex paragraphs across many languages and therefore seems to be able to understand and attache meaning to words, not just treat them as symbols or mere syntax. The Chinese room thought experiment does not seem to apply to ChatGPT as it is not a simple program assigning output symbols to input symbols, no one knows how the neural network really works other than it tries to simulate the brain. All that does not mean ChatGPT has consciousness, but maybe we need to revise our definition of consciousness and articulate a test that can differentiate between intelligence and consciousness, and not conflate archaic classifications of AI like weak and strong with consciousness, such classifications have little value, someone proposed them at a time when no one had yet experienced any AI, not to mention that relationship between intelligence and consciousness is not clear.

Hamza you have to work on giving the cream to us your students please . كان كلامه فصلا يفهمها كل من سمعته . Please try to summarize the knowledge you gained . Sharing all its details won't help us move forward faster

"In the City of God, St. Augustine opined that the Church is like Noah’s ark, a small ship bouncing on the rough seas of history. As the great empires come and go, as the waves of history crash noisily against the shore, God’s kingdom is quietly advancing, unnoticed but inevitable. One of my very favorite images from C.S. Lewis speaks to this principle. How, he asks, did God enter history? Quietly, in a forgotten corner of the Roman Empire-sneaking, as it were, behind enemy lines" Bishop Robert Barron "Daily Gospel Reflection (07/23/23)"

Hello my brothers, is it possible to add Turkish subtitle to automatic translate ? Thank you,,,🙏🌹💧🌊🕋❤️

🤖 *Accountability / Responsibility Gap* We don't put AI in court and have it stand before a judge

Hydrogen and oxygen combining to produce water is a reversible reaction. We can break down water into its constituents that is hydrogen and oxygen in a very precise manner and vice versa. The question is, can we break down inner subjective consciousness into its constituents down to the fundamental level and vice versa? No. So the analogue of water with consciousness is totally falacious.

♥️♥️♥️

Who naturalized nature?

Hamza look little bit tired in the video. May Allah bless him and if he is not feeling well, may Allah cure him and make him always in good health. I don't know it might be just the camera. But he does look a little bit tired. May Allah bless all our beloved brothers.

Why are there no subtitles?

Consciousness? Quantum Mechanics is only spooky if you don't want to think outside the box... once you do, everything falls into place. Our perception of reality works just like a rendering engine in video games. When you are not looking at it, everything appears as probability but once you start perceiving it or try to take a measurement, the probability collapse into an accurate set of data. In terms of programming, this is a resource optimization process. If you try to mess with the codes in order to reveal its secrets, it will debug itself on the fly to prevent a break in reality from happening. There is no damn particle, only information being computed and rendered. Now the big problem here is the huge psychological barrier you got to overcome in order to accept this possibility. As a matter of fact, this information is so much reality bending that you can't even share it to the public... which of course the old school physicist never did.

Its very simple not hard at all, for me understanding the souls is more appropriate in Islam and already mentioned..... But somehow......we are ignored on this very intimate point just within our reach and daily live, also becarefull the realm of souls is chaotic and irrational. The clues is Dream 😵‍💫

Some people are on the Muslim manhaj. Others are on the Nicki Manhaj 🤣 Great video though, gotta watch a few times.

🌹🌹🌹🌹❤️❤️❤️❤️

Tzortzis's two primary sources disagree with him. Searle does *not* believe a robot could not possess consciousness. Tzortzis has misrepresented him. "I do not see any reason, in principle, why we could not build an artificial machine that was conscious " - Searle The other of Tzortzis's primary sources (David Chalmers) also believes a machine could be conscious. And here's what he thinks of the supposed theistic 'explanation' of consciousness: "i don't think just saying "god" or "dualism" explains much -- any more than saying "god" or "materialism" explains physics. we need to have a proper theory of how consciousness arises from physical processes." A conscious machine would obviously undermine theism because consciousness is posed by apologists like Tzortzis as a 'recalcitrant fact' for naturalism. A conscious machine would remove that line of support for theism and that is exactly what it means to 'undermine' something.

Little by little, “the mystery of iniquity” carried forward its deceptive work. The customs of heathenism found their way into the Christian church, restrained for a time by fierce persecutions under paganism; but as persecution ceased, Christianity laid aside the humble simplicity of Christ for the pomp of pagan priests and rulers. The nominal conversion of Constantine caused great rejoicing. Now the work of corruption rapidly progressed. Paganism, appearing vanquished, became the conqueror. Her doctrines and superstitions were incorporated into the faith of the professed followers of Christ. This compromise between paganism and Christianity resulted in “the man of sin” foretold in prophecy. That false religion is a masterpiece of Satan, his effort to seat himself upon the throne to rule the earth according to his will. It is one of the leading doctrines of Romanism that the pope is invested with supreme authority over bishops and pastors in all the world. More than this, the pope has been styled “Lord God the Pope” and declared infallible. The same claim urged by Satan in the wilderness of temptation is still urged by him through the Church of Rome, and vast numbers yield him homage.

All these questions would become insignificant if some brilliant mind could solve why eternal matter cannot exist. This is the key to absolutely annihilation of atheism. Essentially it is worth more than all the money in the world. Unfortunately, alot of what we hear lack real concrete substance

The interviewer likes hearing his own voice too much and constantly interrupts the person talking

Life, consciousness, soul and faith are more metaphysical, than physical. The universe and the cosmic consciousness/divine design are eternal processes and the relation with humans are temporary. Humans can feel the eternal only through circumstantial evidence, the divine design remains off-limit. So, how complexity leads to determinism, belongs to God and humans are left to ignorance. It is futile to beat Gilgamesh and pretend to attain immortality.

I only made it to 3 minutes and 10 seconds into the video before shutting it off because he started off with a weak foundation to build upon. Meaning, his position on the absence of consciousness in a rock. Philosophy doesn't define conscious awareness for me. Allah and does. And I recall the Prophet Muhammad (sw) speaking to the rumbling mountain and making it aware that walking upon it was the Prophet and future martyrs in order to calm it down. So is the speaker telling me that they know more about consciousness and awareness in Allahs creation than Allah and his messenger?

There is zero irony in an atheist holding superstitious beliefs. Atheism is not an absence of belief. It's an absence of theistic belief, ergo the absence of belief in an intervening God. Asymmetric = a lack of symmetry Agnosticism = a lack of knowledge Atheism = a lack of theism

I don’t mean to be disrespectful of these clearly very highly educated young men, but… This seems to be two different solutions to a problem that calls for neither. 😂

Jared Lanier talks about how the tech world has for a long time presented an idea that their inventions are much more valuable and wiser than humans. We the consumers have accepted this as a fact. It is anti human for a capitalist reason. They want us to believe that their tech is much wiser than us so we can eventually succumb to their control. It is elitism for the modern world. As long as we believe the hype that chap gpt is smarter than a human, then well we are doomed. All chat gpt is, is the data they have been collecting for years from us. It is trained on collective human thought and nothing novel. It has no mind of its on.

Consciousness is an emergent property of intelligence, caused by a neural network. Even spiders have intelligence and reason. People once thought lightening was from angry god. Are there are things wee still don't know? Yes, but we will. In time we will look back and laugh at those who believed in a god. Ra, Oden, Zeus, Shiva, Allah, blah, blah, blah ......

Gospel of John is copy was written 90-110 AD which was found, Which is 60 years off since Jesus died. The writer is his apostle John who was writing what he has seen jesus did. SO the John's Gospel is written before john died which may be estimated to be written around 40 to 50 ad. All this rambling of scolarily discussion is fake.

Naturalism....next 😂

Human hands and fish fins are created by the same genome 🐟

One massive god of the gaps argument

8:45 the naturalists does not only need Islam to know what to belive, they also need Ismal to know what not to belive in i.e. superstitions