Discussion about scientific issues as they relate to God and Christianity including archaeology, origins of life, the universe, intelligent design, evolution, etc.
Hello everyone, thanks again to those who participated in my atheist questionnaire, if it's ok here is a additional question that I decided to add to the questionnaire....
What is your favorite and or most convincing arguments and evidences against substance dualism and or the existence of the human soul and or for mind/brain physicalism?
My answer: Based on what I have studied thus far the best argument or evidence is the lack of any detectable evidence for the human soul. If there is anything that you all know of as far as scientific experiments,studies, or anything from neuroscience that have been done to verify mind/brain physicalism please list them. Anyway that's the add-on question and as always, thank you for your time and for your responses. Take care.
derrick09 wrote:Hello everyone, thanks again to those who participated in my atheist questionnaire, if it's ok here is a additional question that I decided to add to the questionnaire....
What is your favorite and or most convincing arguments and evidences against substance dualism and or the existence of the human soul and or for mind/brain physicalism?
My answer: Based on what I have studied thus far the best argument or evidence is the lack of any detectable evidence for the human soul. If there is anything that you all know of as far as scientific experiments,studies, or anything from neuroscience that have been done to verify mind/brain physicalism please list them. Anyway that's the add-on question and as always, thank you for your time and for your responses. Take care.
Sure thing.
You had it right about the lack of evidence. The reason I don't accept dualism is that it's just superfluous. Materialism accounts for consciousness just fine without invoking a mystical soul or other non-material substance (whatever that would mean).
That said, please note that materialism is not strictly a part of atheism.
You had it right about the lack of evidence. The reason I don't accept dualism is that it's just superfluous. Materialism accounts for consciousness just fine without invoking a mystical soul or other non-material substance (whatever that would mean).
Ah... No it doesn't. Can the natural world be explained and understood only in natural terms? If so, then we must have some indication that it is possible. As an example if one was to look at the brain, how would one conclude that there was consciousness? If you looked at a chemical process in the brain could you find what someone said that day or a book that they might have read? It doesn't mean that we don't know anything about it but if you are locked into the natural explanations as the only body of knowledge and the correspondence to it as the only reality, then you are making yourself your own reality.
Also if you want to talk about lack of evidence. Macro-evolution has truck loads of it...
hatsoff wrote:That said, please note that materialism is not strictly a part of atheism.
I disagree.. If you take God out of your materialistic world, you are preaching atheism. In this way it is..
The heart cannot rejoice in what the mind rejects as false - Galileo
We learn from history that we do not learn from history - Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. -Philippians 4:8
derrick09 wrote:Hello everyone, thanks again to those who participated in my atheist questionnaire, if it's ok here is a additional question that I decided to add to the questionnaire....
What is your favorite and or most convincing arguments and evidences against substance dualism and or the existence of the human soul and or for mind/brain physicalism?
My answer: Based on what I have studied thus far the best argument or evidence is the lack of any detectable evidence for the human soul. If there is anything that you all know of as far as scientific experiments,studies, or anything from neuroscience that have been done to verify mind/brain physicalism please list them. Anyway that's the add-on question and as always, thank you for your time and for your responses. Take care.
Sure thing.
You had it right about the lack of evidence. The reason I don't accept dualism is that it's just superfluous. Materialism accounts for consciousness just fine without invoking a mystical soul or other non-material substance (whatever that would mean).
That said, please note that materialism is not strictly a part of atheism.
Have you studied philosophy of mind? You say materialism accounts for consciousness just fine. I am wondering how you explain the mind-body problem?
Kurieuo wrote:Have you studied philosophy of mind? You say materialism accounts for consciousness just fine. I am wondering how you explain the mind-body problem?
I've studied a bit of philosophy of mind, and have found it somewhat lacking in substance. Like most philosophers, I'm attracted to functionalism, but I do not advance my attraction as any more than what it is---my current framework for understanding the mind.
I take the view that there is nothing shameful about admitting ignorance for the time being. We know quite a bit about the brain, but we have lots more yet to learn. This will happen through scientific study, not waxing eloquent about monism versus dualism. In the mean time, our knowledge is not any way improved by postulating the existence of a non-material realm.
hatsoff wrote:I take the view that there is nothing shameful about admitting ignorance for the time being. We know quite a bit about the brain, but we have lots more yet to learn.
You claim ignorance but materialism accounts for consciousness just fine? How?
hatsoff wrote:In the mean time, our knowledge is not any way improved by postulating the existence of a non-material realm.
How do you know? Scientists like Isaac Newton, who assumed that God was the designer, for example have also made valuable discoveries for science. The Big Bang is another...
The heart cannot rejoice in what the mind rejects as false - Galileo
We learn from history that we do not learn from history - Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. -Philippians 4:8
People are atheists and they don't even know why.. Maybe because it is cool or something.. Trendy.
The heart cannot rejoice in what the mind rejects as false - Galileo
We learn from history that we do not learn from history - Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. -Philippians 4:8
Gman wrote:You claim ignorance but materialism accounts for consciousness just fine? How?
We may conduct scientific study of behavior and body chemistry, especially brain function, under the umbrella of materialism. Postulating a non-material realm doesn't change or improve our investigations in any way that I have seen.
If some scientist out there wishes to hypothesize a non-material realm, and conduct scientific testing thereof in order to identify its mechanisms (for lack of a better word), then he is welcome to do so. To date, however, I know of no such successful endeavor.
hatsoff wrote:We may conduct scientific study of behavior and body chemistry, especially brain function, under the umbrella of materialism. Postulating a non-material realm doesn't change or improve our investigations in any way that I have seen.
No... You stated that materialism "accounts" for consciousness just fine without invoking a mystical soul or other non-material substance (i.e. God). Well it doesn't...
You are making a theological claim not a scientific one. Period.
hatsoff wrote:If some scientist out there wishes to hypothesize a non-material realm, and conduct scientific testing thereof in order to identify its mechanisms (for lack of a better word), then he is welcome to do so. To date, however, I know of no such successful endeavor.
It's called philosophy.. These kind of statements are pretty much neutral to science. A different philosophical idea, but not how science is actually done. Science is not in the business of ultimate explanations. That's not what it does.. It works on specific things, it advances theories, but it never makes a claim about everything. But people make the claims. People like you...
The heart cannot rejoice in what the mind rejects as false - Galileo
We learn from history that we do not learn from history - Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. -Philippians 4:8
The heart cannot rejoice in what the mind rejects as false - Galileo
We learn from history that we do not learn from history - Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. -Philippians 4:8
If one is speaking strictly in terms of hard science, then materialism may be “just fine.” Even seemingly mysterious phenomena like the “observer effect” of quantum physics and ESP (if you accept its existence) may be explainable in materialistic terms (they haven't been explained in materialistic terms, but they may well be). All knowledge of the observable universe inevitably must be gained through hard science; so if all you are interested in is understanding the workings of the observable universe, a materialistic approach may be sufficient and a demand for falsifiable evidence may be understandable. In this context, whether consciousness exists apart from the brain may be a superfluous issue. The analogy isn't perfect, but one could do a thorough hard-science study of a television set and explain its workings without ever worrying about the source of the programming. If consciousness is a mysterious “something other” that exists outside the observable universe, its existence may be seen as largely irrelevant to hard science.
It seems to me that the existence of consciousness apart the brain is relevant primarily to the issue of the survival of consciousness after bodily death and could be proven most readily by evidence of the survival of consciousness after bodily death. I have intensely studied survival phenomena for many years, and I happen to believe that there is compelling mass of evidence for the survival of consciousness -- enough to make a belief in survival a reasonable position, anyway. This is the sort of evidence that we accept all the time in other venues (such as courts of law), but it isn't falsifiable evidence of the sort demanded by hard science (or at least preferred by hard science). I long ago gave up trying to discuss this evidence with hard-core skeptics who are locked into a materialistic worldview, because this is never a worthwhile discussion (i.e., it's a waste of my time and theirs, since we end of talking past each other). I would say that the closest thing to compelling hard evidence for survival would be found in some of the Near Death research (such as Dr. Michael Sabom's case of Pam Reynolds, who was clinically brain dead) or Dr. Ian Stevenson's meticulous reincarnation research, but I wouldn't expect it to convince a diehard materialist who views survival as a superfluous issue that belongs to the realm of philosophy and religion.
