An Agnostic asserts: "Humans are not random objects like asteroids." I ask, " Are you sure?"

It has been awhile. Off busy with other activities. I had typically tried to write longer entries. The following short commentary is due to a comment found on social media a couple of years ago by an avowed agnostic who stated:

"Humans can and do agree amongst themselves what constitutes acceptable behaviour for the greater good of all. That's what distinguishes us from random objects like asteroids. Individual bad people including tyrants may depart from those standards just as they may break other human laws such as relating to fraud or democratic procedures."

This assertion, typical of evolutionary atheists and agnostics, was made in the context of the issue of morality. This person was arguing for conventional morals. But, of course, conventional morals are not true morals. Conventions are arbitrary and not absolute. This is moral relativism all in all. Different strokes for different folks.

But the main point is that, in this quote, we have yet another case of the unbeliever's contradictory presuppositions of his rational freedom and freedom from the causal matrix of quantum field theory in a reality of material monism. He claims humans are not "random objects!" Is he sure? Can he prove this assertion is consistent with his metaphysical presuppositions?

He can't. It is a mere assertion and contradictory to material monism. As a bundle of material he is just a configuration of quantum fields and, ipso facto, "a random object!" On his presuppositions he actually is no different than asteroids, or any other material object in the universe. He would be nothing but a clump of matter responding to the equal and opposite reactions from other clumps of matter in the rest of the universe. The same actions and reactions that have been going on for eternity in his mythology. And, of course, none of these actions and reactions are evil, and none are good.

The Amazing Autonomous Material Mind?

When defending Christian theism via the presuppositional method, we many times visit the various byways and side-roads of all of human experience. These visitations are to show that the presuppositions of the unbeliever are not consistent with the facts of human experience -- that the unbeliever is a self-contradiction (Prov. 26:5, "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit."). Needless to say, it is, by the nature of the case, inefficient to explicate every implication of particular problems in the materialist worldview in every conversation.

In recent conversations the discussion became focused on the issue of the cogency and existence of immaterial entities in the purely materialistic and immanent reality of atheism. The discussion was focused on the example of the mind being not composed of material. This issue is THE big problem for modern materialist philosophers of "mind." These atheist philosophers have been thrashing about and stewing in their own juices for a century, at least.

The idea that the mind is no more than the brain has infected society to an alarming degree, of late, and seems to be an accepted article of faith by many. Many unsophisticated man-in-the-street atheists believe it is plausible -- in spite of the fact that such a view undermines much, if not all, of their other beliefs (and thereby secretly involving themselves in unacknowledged, hidden self-contradictions).

I have been asked: "Why couldn't the mind be material?" One would hope that sometimes people would "do their homework!" For one, the properties of a purely material "mind" are not the properties that most unbelievers ascribe to themselves -- as being free rational beings. Or, on the other hand, how immaterial entities such as abstractions, mathematics, laws of logic are intelligible and exist in a reality of pure matter. Another conundrum is how aggregates of matter become conscious and self-aware, the problem of personal identity and such -- all from determining physical causes. No materialist theory of consciousness -- what consciousness is and how it "emerges" from matter -- is forthcoming. Be that as it may, we have endeavored in the pages of this blog to delineate the concomitant conclusions of the atheist presuppositions. Typical assumptions of the atheist are:

(1) Only material exists within our "universe"¹;
(2) The uniformity of nature. Nature is uniform in time -- the regularity of the laws of nature, the same in the past, present and future²;
(3) All states of the material universe are governed by material laws;
(4) Humans are purely material systems produced by chance and the laws of matter (consequence of (1),(2) and (3));
(5) Therefore, humans are purely material;
(6) Consequently, the mind and the material brain must be the same, or, rather, "mental" states are no more than particular material configurations (states) of the brain;
(7) Therefore, all "mental" states are the results (effects) of material processes, and consequently, "thoughts" are effects and "epiphenomena" -- illusions with no causal agency;
(8) However, humans are autonomous!

It should be apparent to most that (8) is contrary to (1) through (7). However it is not apparent to those who are willing(!) adherents of the irrationality of "modern" thought, and nonetheless, believe in the existence of their amazing autonomous material mind!³

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1 I put universe in quotes since the modern (atheist) view is that our observable universe is a detached quantum bubble -- the result of a quantum fluctuation in a larger "bulk" spacetime. Our "universe" is just one among a huge number of universes (multiverse theory). For the atheist, this larger "bulk" is considered eternal, uncreated and a brute fact. Regardless, the issue of minds within our "universe" is independent of that theory, as to the atheist only matter exists within our "universe."^↩
2 The unifromity of nature (a phrase coined by Hume) is the principle that the laws of nature in operation today are the same as those in the past and also the future. The principle is basic to the notion of causation and the necessary presupposition for science "to work." It is foundational to the principle of scientific induction. An atheist that would deny the uniformity of nature would see his entire "scientific" worldview crash to the ground.^↩
3 When the self-avowed material monist secretly believes (8) he is, in fact, an inconsistent crypto-dualist, cf. Van Til on the antitheses and An Atheist's Miracle.^↩

Another Futile Atheist Argument

Proverbs 17:28 Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace...

 

This meme, posted by an atheist whom we will identify as DJ, popped up on my social media when a friend commented on it. It is another example of the shallow thought of atheists -- a shallowness that results in illogical reasoning and self-contradiction. It is this utter shallowness of the "man-on-the-street" atheist that catches himself in self contradictions.

 

 Proverbs 26:5 Answer a fool according to his folly, Lest he be wise in his own eyes. 

 

First, the meme assumes there is such a thing as "good" and "evil." But "good" and "evil" do not exist in the purely material universe of atheism. All there is are mere chunks of matter undergoing temporal transformations according to the laws of physics. The only laws in a material universe are the underlying laws of physics. There are no moral laws. To put it another way, there is no such thing as "good" solutions of the laws of physics (e.g. a solution of the wave-function of the universe) or "evil" solutions. As has been often stated, there is no "ought" in physics, only what "is." If there are two future solutions, "X" and "Y," of the wave-equation, there is no physical reason the solution "ought" to be "X" rather than "Y;" and vice versa. This meme has to presuppose the existence of good and evil -- but to do so is to assume something that does not exist in the atheist universe; it has to assume theism. Such is the atheist's self-contradiction.

Second, this particular atheist, DJ, once commented in a prior exchange on social media, that the only things that are "real" are those testable by science and accessible via sense perception¹ .  This is a big problem for DJ.   I asked him if he had ever seen, tasted, heard, smelled or touched a "moral law."   Of course he had not; and, understandably, he offered no reply.   He was caught in his own trap. Moral laws are not empirically accessible, they are not natural and they are not discoverable in rocks, electric circuits, or test tubes via the scientific method.  By his own standard, "good" and "evil" are not real.

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1 The view that knowledge is only obtained through sense perception ("experience") is radical empiricism. I addressed part of this prior exchange in the post "Village Atheism and Magical Configurations of Matter".^↩

Humanism Made Silly by a Humanist

A few months back I came upon this humanist propaganda video. Of course, Humanism is a subjective dogma of atheists. What is funny is that it contains the refutation of Humanism within the narrative. Watch the video.



Did you catch it? In particular, note the self-defeating relativism at 1:15. The self-defeating claim is that there is no single "meaning" of human life. We all create our own, "different strokes for different folks!" Of course, this means there is no meaning. The video (presupposing an objective morality of the "decent folks") then presents a smorgasbord of benign activities that one of the "decent folks" might choose to be "happy." It is a rather self-serving selection! Cherry picking comes to mind. The reference to "drawing," in particular, evoked me to laughing ridicule.

"How can I be happy?" That's an implicit endorsement of a supposed benevolent epicureanism, hedonism, or egoism -- select a "meaning," take your pick. It's all relative. Individual happiness is the supreme goal. Individual happiness is a matter of individual tastes and a matter of personal opinion. That admission raises the following questions.

Conspicuously absent from the activities are such things as sexual promiscuity; marital infidelity; pedophilia; women murdering their unborn children for the sake of future "happiness;" Hitler Youth; Islamic terrorism and so on. All these are activities that make their practitioners happy and their lives "meaningful" according to their subjective tastes conditioned by external influences. No doubt "decent" humanists will reject some of these as acceptable practices. But they have no objective reason to reject any. In the amoral humanist universe, all "standards" are subjective and arbitrary. The video essentially admits as much.

Of course, the humanist will object to the mention of Hitler youth and terrorists (abortionists probably not), since the greatest "value" to a humanist is Humanity. But then, "Humanity" is a rather meaningless term. Its vagueness can be used as a cloak and justification for eugenics, ethnic cleansing and other activities whose goal is the "greater good" of Mankind "on the whole" according to arbitrary principles. Who is to dictate what is "best" for the "universal man," for humanity in the whole? Totalitarianism comes to mind -- the individual is expendable for the sake of "Humanity" in the whole. Of course, the benign benevolent humanism of the video (which leans to a libertarian view with potential anarchistic tendencies) conveniently ignores such philosophical problems that undermine its own foundations. It presumes an objective morality that Humanism cannot provide. To the extent that a Humanist adheres to true morals, he does so by borrowing them from the objective morality of Christian theism.

In summary, if "meaning" and happiness are subject to individual preference (shaped by influences external to the person, according to the video) then nothing is off limits according to Humanism -- including those who reject Humanism as the basis of a "meaning" of life. Humanism is a bankrupt philosophy with no foundations. The video admits as much when it says: "Humanists do not see any obvious purpose to the universe, but that it is a natural phenomenon with no design behind it." The base ingredients of Humanism -- mere chunks of the universe interacting with other chunks of the universe within a Godless and amoral evolutionary universe ruled by "chance" -- provide no ground for any of Humanism's unargued presuppositions.

The video ends with "That's Humanism!" What it shows is that Humanism is intellectually foolishness. How appropriate that it was narrated by a comedian, Stephen Fry.

Mind & Cosmos: Nagel's Unprincipled Principles

Having finally read Nagel's Mind and Cosmos -- previously discussed briefly here -- I had planned to write a more thorough and complete analysis of it. Other more important duties have precluded that goal. So instead, I plan to write a few shorter articles covering various problems in Nagel's philosophy. Here, belatedly, is my first installment of the promised analysis.

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Nagel's motivation for his philosophy of neutral monism is that material monism provides no basis for key characteristics of human experience, such as mind and consciousness. With this correct assessment, Christian theists will agree -- although we extend the list of features to include invariant abstract objects (such as mathematics and logic) and absolute moral laws. (Nagel's version of neutral monism¹ provides no metaphysical foundation for these either.)

Nagel rejects, therefore, materialism but he equally rejects theism. He wants to invent a "middle ground;" though he doesn't get near a putative "middle." Instead, what he posits is just a new version of attributive monism in which all "matter" (with its many usual physical attributes such as mass, charge, spin and so on) is also endowed with mental attributes. This is just as reductionistic as old-fashioned monism. It's a monism differing in degree, not kind.

Nagel asserts that dualism is not a serious option since it posits an inscrutable and a mysterious (at least more so to "naturalists") interaction between mind and body. To this end, then, Nagel resorts to postulating that all material of the cosmos has a property of mind attached. Every piece of stuff in the cosmos is intrinsically "mental" in some sense, in addition to being material.

This theory is tantamount to adding (in physicist terminology) a "psychic" quantum number to every quantum field. Of course such a psychic interaction has never been observed in particle-scattering experiments. Also, Nagel doesn't touch the issue of the quantity of psychic stuff attached to all matter. To be compatible with quantum field theory, there is a multitude of technical and mathematical issues that Nagel doesn't even begin to address. I won't delve into this in anymore detail at this point, but that alone deprives Nagel's theory of any shred of scientific credibility. Nagel, by mere verbal wishful thinking, expands on his "solution." Nagel postulates that though each particle is not conscious, one can hope to produce conscious brains by assembling enough of this psychically endowed stuff in sufficiently complex arrangements. A major defect of this theory is that the "mind" so produced is a composite of psychically endowed fields, and as such, still subject to bottom-up causation. All of the properties and "twitching" of this composite brain are the result of the interactions of the basic fields/particles. Such a mind is still physically determined. Thus, human rational freedom still does not exist. Such a theory is thereby a contradiction of most atheists' assumption of human autonomy. One can easily write the form of the equation that such a brain, and consequently the attached "mind," must satisfy. One does not need to know the exact details of the functional dependence of this composite mind on its constituents to draw the conclusion that such a brain is causally closed with respect to the underlying matter. Such an "emergent" mind is to the brain as pressure is to molecular motion - and, thus, has no causal autonomy. Case closed.

These, in brief, are some of the problems with Nagel's philosophy, but in a following blog I will look at the contradictory nature of Nagel's superficial rejection of dualism and proposing neutral monism. Nagel's principle, mentioned above, is that dualism is too mysterious and "unexplained" and that monism (and in particular his neutral monism that purports to explain "mind" and mental interactions) is not mysterious. But is it? Hardly. For a hint at what is coming, some might want to ask the question regarding the graphics below: "What exactly is going on at this electron-photon interaction?" (The straight red line is an electron of charge "e" and the black wavy line is an emitted (or absorbed) photon. The diagram represents the fundamental interaction of electrons and light.)

Continue to part 2.

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1 Neutral monism asserts that the ultimate constituents of reality are neither material (as in material monism) nor mental (as in idealism) but a neutral third kind of "stuff." For more details see Neutral Monism at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ^↩