The apologia of the cosmos. Evidence of God

[KCfromNC]

Theory Of Relativity

Still waiting for peer-reviewed scientific publications showing this law of causality and the evidence behind it.

 

[The Engineer]

We have these God-given instruments called logic, reason, and rationality. I suggest you start applying them, even if you do not believe in God.

Instead of answering Davian's question, you passive-aggressively tell him he's irrational. That doesn't qualify as a proper answer.

Who says that a mind of necessity must be the emergent property of a brain?

Follow-up questions do not qualify as answers.

All the data we have suggests that the mind is an emergent property of the brain. For example, brain tumors and head injuries have been known to change the personality of people. Drugs, too, change the personality (most often, but not always, for small periods of time), as we would expect of substances that block or stimulate neurons.

There is no evidence for the notion that the mind is separate from the brain, and there is no counter-evidence against the notion that the mind is an emerging property of the brain.

The universe is His handiwork, I would consider this vast proof of His being.

Can you please explain this? How would the universe be proof of Gods existence?

It is so simple that children in elementary school understand it.

Is that supposed to be an insult? Because it certainly sounds like one.

 

[Davian]

Instead of answering Davian's question, you passive-aggressively tell him he's irrational. That doesn't qualify as a proper answer.

Yes, he does use a lot of insults.

Follow-up questions do not qualify as answers.

All the data we have suggests that the mind is an emergent property of the brain. For example, brain tumors and head injuries have been known to change the personality of people. Drugs, too, change the personality (most often, but not always, for small periods of time), as we would expect of substances that block or stimulate neurons.

There is no evidence for the notion that the mind is separate from the brain, and there is no counter-evidence against the notion that the mind is an emerging property of the brain.

What I observe in these discussions is how the theist/dualist will refer to the 'mind' as a 'thing', rather than a process, or as you say, an emergent property. Life is a process (or collection of processes). Consciousness is a process.

It is like asking, where did oxidation come from? Oxidation cannot come from non-oxidation! Impossible!

Can you please explain this? How would the universe be proof of Gods existence?

That was just a throwaway unfalsifiable claim. However, it may be that he thinks that 'unfalsifiable' is a strength, rather than what it really is - without scientific significance.

Is that supposed to be an insult? Because it certainly sounds like one.

I do wonder if there is a theists' handbook somewhere that says that "if your assertions are being rejected, use a condescending tone, and insult those you are trying to convince. The confidence you exude is sure to win them over."

 

[Elioenai26]

Instead of answering Davian's question, you passive-aggressively tell him he's irrational. That doesn't qualify as a proper answer.

Im not quite sure how you can, as you say: "passive-aggressively" tell someone something. I think a better, more concise word would be "insinuate".

Nonetheless, I have not "insinuated" that Davian is irrational, I am stating out right that his views, as well as any other non-theist's views are, at best, irrational.

Follow-up questions do not qualify as answers.

Who said they did?

All the data we have suggests that the mind is an emergent property of the brain. For example, brain tumors and head injuries have been known to change the personality of people. Drugs, too, change the personality (most often, but not always, for small periods of time), as we would expect of substances that block or stimulate neurons.

You mean rather, all the data naturalists and materialists "choose" to accept that agrees with their precommitment to naturalism.

There is no evidence for the notion that the mind is separate from the brain, and there is no counter-evidence against the notion that the mind is an emerging property of the brain.

So you say.

Can you please explain this? How would the universe be proof of Gods existence?

I shall refer you to the six page thread entitled: "apologia of the cosmos".

Is that supposed to be an insult? Because it certainly sounds like one.

Insults are in no way productive, conducive, or necessary for formulating a defense of Christianity. Therefore I do not use them, nor would I if they were somehow effective.

 

[Elioenai26]

What I observe in these discussions is how the theist/dualist will refer to the 'mind' as a 'thing', rather than a process, or as you say, an emergent property. Life is a process (or collection of processes). Consciousness is a process.

It is like asking, where did oxidation come from? Oxidation cannot come from non-oxidation! Impossible!

The following material is courtesy of Dr. William Lane Craig, Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology.

The question, which is similar to what you and other non-theists have maintained regarding the mind:

Hi Dr. Craig, I have a question for you about the mind of God. I understand that we often find ourselves talking in religious contexts about a supreme, transcendant, omniscient "mind" overseeing the affairs of the universe (or generating them for that matter), but I can't help but feel that advances in neurology, cognitive psychology, biology, etc. are basically making this intuition incoherent. As we discover more and more about the workings of the brain (e.g. we can now manipulate some feelings and emotions by stimulating parts of the brain itself), it seems like an inevitable progression that we will be able to boil consciousness and all that it entails down into its material components. Using this knowledge, I don't see how one can believe that a "mind" could exist disembodied, and therefore it seems nonsensical to think of God as being a spiritual entity who still thinks like we do if he doesn't have a physical brain. I can't help but feel that all the neurological disorders that abound in the world (e.g. those with brain damage or nerve disorders, which often are the manifestation of a physical impairment of the brain tissue itself) inescapably point to a materialistic understanding of the brain and consciousness. This makes it very difficult for me to believe that it is coherent to believe that a divine mind could exist...I just don't see how one could think that there is some mind out there when all the evidence I know of suggests that minds are identical to brains. I am aware that some religious people would cite certain out-of-body or near-death experiences where people record their "soul's" witness of a post-death experience, but I inevitably find skeptical explanations for these phenomena more compelling. Your thoughts and clarification would be much appreciated,

Michael




Your sort of question is one that I encounter with increasing frequency when I speak on university campuses about the existence of God. I recently had the pleasure of reading Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro’s excellent book Naturalism (Grand Rapids, Mich: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008), which deals precisely with your question. So I’ve invited Dr. Goetz, who is Professor of Philosophy at Ursinus College and a specialist in philosophy of mind to address your question as a guest columnist this week. His reply follows:

Dear Michael,

Dr. Craig has invited me to respond to your interesting question concerning the mind of God. The logic of your concern seems to be as follows: Our concept of God is rooted in our concept of ourselves. Thus, if we think that God is an immaterial mind (soul) that exists disembodied, then this is because we think of ourselves as immaterial minds (souls) that might exist disembodied. Advances in contemporary neuroscience and cognitive psychology provide evidence that undermines the coherence of the view that we are immaterial minds that might exist disembodied. Therefore, the coherence of our idea of God as a disembodied mind is called into question.

What evidence does contemporary neuroscience provide in support of the view that our minds are not immaterial? You believe that the evidence is causal in nature: the fact that we can stimulate different parts of the brain and causally produce feelings, thoughts, emotions, etc., supports the view that these psychological events/states are themselves material. Moreover, the fact that brain damage causes psychological impairments also supports a materialistic view of ourselves. In short, what we know from neuroscience justifies the claim that our minds are identical with our brains.

While I agree with the idea that our concept of God is rooted in our concept of ourselves, I am not convinced that evidence from neuroscience supports the view that our minds are identical with our brains. The reasons for my not being convinced are several.
First, neuroscience contributes nothing substantively new to our understanding of ourselves and our relationship to our bodies. We have known all along that our mental lives could be and are causally related to what happens to our bodies. After all, we did not need neuroscience to know that a good knock on the head could produce a change in our psychological lives. Who could fail to be aware that dropping a brick on one’s foot would produce pain? What neuroscience has done is provide us with a more detailed picture of how the human mind is influenced by certain events in the brain. It has not changed the general nature of that picture. The fact that much of what happens in our minds is influenced by what happens in our bodies was something known by the first self-conscious human beings.

Second, though you do not comment on the following point, it is an important one: not everything that goes on in our minds is causally determined by what goes on in our bodies. Sometimes what goes on in our bodies is a result of what goes on in our minds. For example, the movements of my fingers as I type this response to your question are ultimately produced my mental events. I chose to accept Dr. Craig’s invitation to respond to your question and this choice led to an intention to type up this response. Here we have mental-to-physical causation. What explains both this choice of mine and the physical events in my body that are ultimately produced by this choice? The explanation is the purpose that I provide an answer to your question. A purposeful explanation is a teleological explanation. It is well known that those who identify the mind with the brain typically deny that any of us freely (indeterministically) make choices for purposes. Materialists are typically determinists who insist that the only legitimate kind of explanation is a non-teleological explanation. Causal explanations are the most well-known and frequently used kind of non-teleological explanations. Those who exclude the possibility of teleological explanations are often called ‘naturalists.’ My colleague, Charles Taliaferro, and I have written a book entitled Naturalism (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008) in which we explain what naturalism is and offer a critique of it. You might find it helpful.

Third, I believe it is important to note that some of the world’s foremost neuroscientists have believed that the mind is immaterial. These neuroscientists have been well aware that stimulating the brain can produce some intriguing psychological results. One of the pioneers in the field of neuroscience was Wilder Penfield. In his fascinating book The Mystery of the Mind, he writes the following:

When I have caused a conscious patient to move his hand by applying an electrode to the motor cortex of one hemisphere, I have often asked him about it. Invariably his response was: ‘I didn’t do that. You did.’ When I caused him to vocalize, he said: ‘I didn’t make that sound. You pulled it out of me.’ When I caused the record of the stream of consciousness to run again and so presented to him the record of his past experience, he marveled that he should be conscious of the past as well as of the present. He was astonished that it should come back to him so completely, with more detail than he could possibly recall voluntarily. He assumed at once that, somehow, the surgeon was responsible for the phenomenon, but he recognized the details as those of his own past experience. (76)


Penfield goes on to note that “There is no place in the cerebral cortex where electrical stimulation will cause a patient . . . to decide” (77). This is consistent with my point that choices are undetermined events with a teleological explanation. In light of his work as a neuroscientist, Penfield concludes the following: “For my own part, after years of striving to explain the mind on the basis of brain-action alone, I have come to the conclusion that it is simpler (and far easier and logical) if one adopts the hypothesis that our being does consist of two fundamental elements” (80).

Another famous neuroscientist who believed that the mind is immaterial was Sir John C. Eccles. He and the widely respected philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper wrote a book entitled The Self and Its Brain in which they argued that the human mind is best understood along interactionist dualist lines (the mind and brain are separate entities that causally interact). After reading The Mystery of the Mind and The Self and Its Brain and many similar books and puzzling over questions about the mind-brain relationship, I have come to the conclusion that neuroscience provides no evidence whatsoever that the mind is identical with its brain. I am convinced that those who believe that it does provide such evidence bring their naturalist convictions to the evidence. In other words, they are already naturalists (materialists) before they do their neuroscience.
Fourth, we might ask why neuroscientists like Penfield and Eccles believed in the immateriality of the mind, even though they were well aware of the causal dependency of many psychological events on brain events. I believe that part of the answer is that they did not confuse the concept of the correlation of two events with the concept of the identity of two events. It simply does not follow from the fact that two events are correlated that they are identical. For example, when one learns that a high score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is correlated with entrance to a good college one does not identify scoring well on the exam with entrance to college. Similarly, when one discovers that eating a certain food is correlated with an upset stomach one does not identify eating that food with having an upset stomach. Then there is the fact that movements of bodily limbs like arms and legs are correlated with events in the motor cortex of the brain. No one believes, however, that movements of arms and legs are identical with their causal antecedents in the brain. Upon reflection, it is just as obvious that there is no good reason to believe that psychological events are identical with brain events simply because the two are correlated.

Finally, you state that some religious people cite out-of-the-body or near-death experiences as evidence for the immateriality of the mind and the possibility of its surviving disembodied. With all due respect, I seriously doubt that this is what really convinces people that the mind is immaterial. Most people start out believing that the mind is immaterial and in light of this initial conviction find nothing conceptually problematic with near-death and out-of-the-body experiences. They do not come to believe that the mind is immaterial on the basis of having or hearing about such experiences. Moreover, I believe that most people are religious because they believe that the mind is immaterial. They do not come to believe that the mind is immaterial because they are religious.
With all good wishes,

Stewart Goetz, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Ursinus College
Collegeville, PA 19426

Read more: God and Mind/Body Dualism | Reasonable Faith
​

 

[The Engineer]

Im not quite sure how you can, as you say: "passive-aggressively" tell someone something. I think a better, more concise word would be "insinuate".

You do know what passive-aggressive means, right? It's not my duty to play dictionary to you.

Who said they did?

So you admit to using follow-up questions to dodge giving an answer.

You mean rather, all the data naturalists and materialists "choose" to accept that agrees with their precommitment to naturalism.

Nice! Your answer to me presenting evidence to you is to accuse me, or at least the group you think I belong to, of being irrational!
How about you address the evidence instead of throwing disingenuous assertions at the people you are talking to?

So you say.

Yes, that's what I say. Want to change my mind? Then give me the counter-evidence, and stop wasting my time with your worthless comments.

I shall refer you to the six page thread entitled: "apologia of the cosmos".

How smart! Especially because the thread has 21 pages.

Insults are in no way productive, conducive, or necessary for formulating a defense of Christianity. Therefore I do not use them, nor would I if they were somehow effective.

Accusing your conversation partners of being irrational after they clearly presented evidence to you is much better, I guess.

I won't even bother addressing the argumentation in your next post, but I give you credit for mentioning where you copypasted it from, for once. It would still make me happy if you could stop copying texts instead of using your own arguments. If everyone would do this, this would soon become the equivalent of the pirate bay.

Just one more thing:

After reading The Mystery of the Mind and The Self and Its Brain and many similar books and puzzling over questions about the mind-brain relationship, I have come to the conclusion that neuroscience provides no evidence whatsoever that the mind is identical with its brain.

Does Phineas Gage tell you something? Got an iron rod driven through his face, changed his character. Lifelong meth addicts? Get depressed even two years after getting clean, because the reward system of their brain got burned out. Oxytocin? Neuroscientists figured out this neurotransmitter makes people loyal to each other. Turns out it really does that.
How come changes to the brain always go along with changes to the mind, if the two things are separate?

The claim, neuroscientists had no evidence, is factually wrong.

I am convinced that those who believe that it does provide such evidence bring their naturalist convictions to the evidence. In other words, they are already naturalists (materialists) before they do their neuroscience.

This reminds me of your tactic when presented with evidence:
1. Ignore the evidence
2. Claim the evidence doesn't exist
3. Accuse the other person of having no evidence
4. Call it a day

Now I know where you have it from.

 

[Elioenai26]

You do know what passive-aggressive means, right? It's not my duty to play dictionary to you.


So you admit to using follow-up questions to dodge giving an answer.


Nice! Your answer to me presenting evidence to you is to accuse me, or at least the group you think I belong to, of being irrational!
How about you address the evidence instead of throwing disingenuous assertions at the people you are talking to?


Yes, that's what I say. Want to change my mind? Then give me the counter-evidence, and stop wasting my time with your worthless comments.


How smart! Especially because the thread has 21 pages.


Accusing your conversation partners of being irrational after they clearly presented evidence to you is much better, I guess.

I won't even bother addressing the argumentation in your next post, but I give you credit for mentioning where you copypasted it from, for once. It would still make me happy if you could stop copying texts instead of using your own arguments. If everyone would do this, this would soon become the equivalent of the pirate bay.

Just one more thing:

Does Phineas Gage tell you something? Got an iron rod driven through his face, changed his character. Lifelong meth addicts? Get depressed even two years after getting clean, because the reward system of their brain got burned out. Oxytocin? Neuroscientists figured out this neurotransmitter makes people loyal to each other. Turns out it really does that.
How come changes to the brain always go along with changes to the mind, if the two things are separate?

The claim, neuroscientists had no evidence, is factually wrong.


This reminds me of your tactic when presented with evidence:
1. Ignore the evidence
2. Claim the evidence doesn't exist
3. Accuse the other person of having no evidence
4. Call it a day

Now I know where you have it from.

I suggest you address your concerns with Dr. Goetz, who is Professor of Philosophy at Ursinus College and a specialist in philosophy of mind if you want an answer from someone knowledgeable on the subject.

 

[The Engineer]

I suggest you address your concerns with Dr. Goetz, who is Professor of Philosophy at Ursinus College and a specialist in philosophy of mind if you want an answer from someone knowledgeable on the subject.

So he can tell me why you don't know the difference between a six page thread and a twenty-one page thread?

If you want to have a discussion led by a proxy, then I suggest you tell your Dr. Goetz that he can discuss this with Thomas Metzinger.

By the way, you just acknowledged that you have no idea about the subject.

Because of this, and because you ignored all the evidence I gave you, I now proclaim my viewpoint to be the more logical one.

 

[Elioenai26]

So he can tell me why you don't know the difference between a six page thread and a twenty-one page thread?

If you want to have a discussion led by a proxy, then I suggest you tell your Dr. Goetz that he can discuss this with Thomas Metzinger.

By the way, you just acknowledged that you have no idea about the subject.

Because of this, and because you ignored all the evidence I gave you, I now proclaim my viewpoint to be the more logical one.

LOL. Ok, if you say so. I see you are more concerned about winning an argument than discovering what truth is. So I shall leave you to the task of validating your "proclamation". Best wishes to you.

 

[Davian]

The following material is courtesy of Dr. William Lane Craig, Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology.

The question, which is similar to what you and other non-theists have maintained regarding the mind:

Hi Dr. Craig, I have a question for you about the mind of God. I understand that we often find ourselves talking in religious contexts about a supreme, transcendant, omniscient "mind" overseeing the affairs of the universe (or generating them for that matter), but I can't help but feel that advances in neurology, cognitive psychology, biology, etc. are basically making this intuition incoherent. As we discover more and more about the workings of the brain (e.g. we can now manipulate some feelings and emotions by stimulating parts of the brain itself), it seems like an inevitable progression that we will be able to boil consciousness and all that it entails down into its material components. Using this knowledge, I don't see how one can believe that a "mind" could exist disembodied, and therefore it seems nonsensical to think of God as being a spiritual entity who still thinks like we do if he doesn't have a physical brain. I can't help but feel that all the neurological disorders that abound in the world (e.g. those with brain damage or nerve disorders, which often are the manifestation of a physical impairment of the brain tissue itself) inescapably point to a materialistic understanding of the brain and consciousness. This makes it very difficult for me to believe that it is coherent to believe that a divine mind could exist...I just don't see how one could think that there is some mind out there when all the evidence I know of suggests that minds are identical to brains. I am aware that some religious people would cite certain out-of-body or near-death experiences where people record their "soul's" witness of a post-death experience, but I inevitably find skeptical explanations for these phenomena more compelling. Your thoughts and clarification would be much appreciated,

Michael

Your sort of question is one that I encounter with increasing frequency when I speak on university campuses about the existence of God. I recently had the pleasure of reading Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro’s excellent book Naturalism (Grand Rapids, Mich: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008), which deals precisely with your question. So I’ve invited Dr. Goetz, who is Professor of Philosophy at Ursinus College and a specialist in philosophy of mind to address your question as a guest columnist this week. His reply follows:

Dear Michael,

Dr. Craig has invited me to respond to your interesting question concerning the mind of God. The logic of your concern seems to be as follows: Our concept of God is rooted in our concept of ourselves. Thus, if we think that God is an immaterial mind (soul) that exists disembodied, then this is because we think of ourselves as immaterial minds (souls) that might exist disembodied. Advances in contemporary neuroscience and cognitive psychology provide evidence that undermines the coherence of the view that we are immaterial minds that might exist disembodied. Therefore, the coherence of our idea of God as a disembodied mind is called into question.

What evidence does contemporary neuroscience provide in support of the view that our minds are not immaterial? You believe that the evidence is causal in nature: the fact that we can stimulate different parts of the brain and causally produce feelings, thoughts, emotions, etc., supports the view that these psychological events/states are themselves material. Moreover, the fact that brain damage causes psychological impairments also supports a materialistic view of ourselves. In short, what we know from neuroscience justifies the claim that our minds are identical with our brains.

While I agree with the idea that our concept of God is rooted in our concept of ourselves, I am not convinced that evidence from neuroscience supports the view that our minds are identical with our brains. The reasons for my not being convinced are several.
First, neuroscience contributes nothing substantively new to our understanding of ourselves and our relationship to our bodies. We have known all along that our mental lives could be and are causally related to what happens to our bodies. After all, we did not need neuroscience to know that a good knock on the head could produce a change in our psychological lives. Who could fail to be aware that dropping a brick on one’s foot would produce pain? What neuroscience has done is provide us with a more detailed picture of how the human mind is influenced by certain events in the brain. It has not changed the general nature of that picture. The fact that much of what happens in our minds is influenced by what happens in our bodies was something known by the first self-conscious human beings.

Second, though you do not comment on the following point, it is an important one: not everything that goes on in our minds is causally determined by what goes on in our bodies. Sometimes what goes on in our bodies is a result of what goes on in our minds. For example, the movements of my fingers as I type this response to your question are ultimately produced my mental events. I chose to accept Dr. Craig’s invitation to respond to your question and this choice led to an intention to type up this response. Here we have mental-to-physical causation. What explains both this choice of mine and the physical events in my body that are ultimately produced by this choice? The explanation is the purpose that I provide an answer to your question. A purposeful explanation is a teleological explanation. It is well known that those who identify the mind with the brain typically deny that any of us freely (indeterministically) make choices for purposes. Materialists are typically determinists who insist that the only legitimate kind of explanation is a non-teleological explanation. Causal explanations are the most well-known and frequently used kind of non-teleological explanations. Those who exclude the possibility of teleological explanations are often called ‘naturalists.’ My colleague, Charles Taliaferro, and I have written a book entitled Naturalism (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008) in which we explain what naturalism is and offer a critique of it. You might find it helpful.

Third, I believe it is important to note that some of the world’s foremost neuroscientists have believed that the mind is immaterial. These neuroscientists have been well aware that stimulating the brain can produce some intriguing psychological results. One of the pioneers in the field of neuroscience was Wilder Penfield. In his fascinating book The Mystery of the Mind, he writes the following:

When I have caused a conscious patient to move his hand by applying an electrode to the motor cortex of one hemisphere, I have often asked him about it. Invariably his response was: ‘I didn’t do that. You did.’ When I caused him to vocalize, he said: ‘I didn’t make that sound. You pulled it out of me.’ When I caused the record of the stream of consciousness to run again and so presented to him the record of his past experience, he marveled that he should be conscious of the past as well as of the present. He was astonished that it should come back to him so completely, with more detail than he could possibly recall voluntarily. He assumed at once that, somehow, the surgeon was responsible for the phenomenon, but he recognized the details as those of his own past experience. (76)


Penfield goes on to note that “There is no place in the cerebral cortex where electrical stimulation will cause a patient . . . to decide” (77). This is consistent with my point that choices are undetermined events with a teleological explanation. In light of his work as a neuroscientist, Penfield concludes the following: “For my own part, after years of striving to explain the mind on the basis of brain-action alone, I have come to the conclusion that it is simpler (and far easier and logical) if one adopts the hypothesis that our being does consist of two fundamental elements” (80).

Another famous neuroscientist who believed that the mind is immaterial was Sir John C. Eccles. He and the widely respected philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper wrote a book entitled The Self and Its Brain in which they argued that the human mind is best understood along interactionist dualist lines (the mind and brain are separate entities that causally interact). After reading The Mystery of the Mind and The Self and Its Brain and many similar books and puzzling over questions about the mind-brain relationship, I have come to the conclusion that neuroscience provides no evidence whatsoever that the mind is identical with its brain. I am convinced that those who believe that it does provide such evidence bring their naturalist convictions to the evidence. In other words, they are already naturalists (materialists) before they do their neuroscience.
Fourth, we might ask why neuroscientists like Penfield and Eccles believed in the immateriality of the mind, even though they were well aware of the causal dependency of many psychological events on brain events. I believe that part of the answer is that they did not confuse the concept of the correlation of two events with the concept of the identity of two events. It simply does not follow from the fact that two events are correlated that they are identical. For example, when one learns that a high score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is correlated with entrance to a good college one does not identify scoring well on the exam with entrance to college. Similarly, when one discovers that eating a certain food is correlated with an upset stomach one does not identify eating that food with having an upset stomach. Then there is the fact that movements of bodily limbs like arms and legs are correlated with events in the motor cortex of the brain. No one believes, however, that movements of arms and legs are identical with their causal antecedents in the brain. Upon reflection, it is just as obvious that there is no good reason to believe that psychological events are identical with brain events simply because the two are correlated.

Finally, you state that some religious people cite out-of-the-body or near-death experiences as evidence for the immateriality of the mind and the possibility of its surviving disembodied. With all due respect, I seriously doubt that this is what really convinces people that the mind is immaterial. Most people start out believing that the mind is immaterial and in light of this initial conviction find nothing conceptually problematic with near-death and out-of-the-body experiences. They do not come to believe that the mind is immaterial on the basis of having or hearing about such experiences. Moreover, I believe that most people are religious because they believe that the mind is immaterial. They do not come to believe that the mind is immaterial because they are religious.
With all good wishes,

Stewart Goetz, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Ursinus College
Collegeville, PA 19426

Read more: God and Mind/Body Dualism | Reasonable Faith
​

Elioenai, perhaps you could rephrase in your own words what you meant by this. I read it, and see that they commit the same fallacy as I mention in the post you are responding to.

Is oxidation 'immaterial'?

If it is not 'material', what is it? Can you define it by what it is, rather than what it is not?

Worse, they bring up the straw man of "our minds are identical with our brains". Is digestion identical to our digestive system?

Here is a except from a post I made here a while back on this subject:
--
Excerpted from Thomas Metzinger's book, Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity (Bradford):

Consciousness, the Phenomenal Self, and the First-Person Perspective

"This is a book about consciousness, the phenomenal self, and the first-person perspective. Its main thesis is that no such things as selves exist in the world: Nobody ever was or had a self. All that ever existed were conscious self-models that could not be recognized as models. The phenomenal self is not a thing, but a process—and the subjective experience of being someone emerges if a conscious information-processing system operates under a transparent self-model. You are such a system right now, as you read these sentences. Because you cannot recognize your self-model as a model, it is transparent: you look right through it. You don’t see it. But you see with it. In other, more metaphorical, words, the central claim of this book is that as you read these lines you constantly confuse yourself with the content of the self-model currently activated by your brain.
This is not your fault. Evolution has made you this way. On the contrary. Arguably, until now, the conscious self-model of human beings is the best invention Mother Nature has made. It is a wonderfully efficient two-way window that allows an organism to conceive of itself as a whole, and thereby to causally interact with its inner and outer environment in an entirely new, integrated, and intelligent manner. Consciousness, the phenomenal self, and the first-person perspective are fascinating representational phenomena that have a long evolutionary history, a history which eventually led to the formation of complex societies and a cultural embedding of conscious experience itself. For many researchers in the cognitive neurosciences it is now clear that the first-person perspective somehow must have been the decisive link in this transition from biological to cultural evolution. In philosophical quarters, on the other hand, it is popular to say things like “The first-person perspective cannot be reduced to the third-person perspective!” or to develop complex technical arguments showing that some kinds of irreducible first-person facts exist. But nobody ever asks what a first-person perspective is in the first place. This is what I will do. I will offer a representationalist and a functionalist analysis of what a consciously experienced first-person perspective is."

-------------------------

From Youtube: "Thomas Metzinger is the Director of the Philosophy Group at the Department of Philosophy at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz. His research focuses on philosophy of mind, especially on consciousness and the nature of the self. In this lecture he develops a representationalist theory of phenomenal self-consciousness. "

"Being No One"

 

[Davian]

LOL. Ok, if you say so. I see you are more concerned about winning an argument than discovering what truth is. So I shall leave you to the task of validating your "proclamation". Best wishes to you.

How about yourself? Are you here in an effort to discover truth, or to proselytize?

 

[Elioenai26]

How about yourself? Are you here in an effort to discover truth, or to proselytize?

With regards to the discussions of the beginning of the universe and the origin of life, I know the truth, so no, I am not here to discover it.

With regards to proselytizing, no. I am not here to win any converts by argumentation. People do not become Christians solely by being convinced by a philosophical/scientific argument.

 

[Tinker Grey]

So why are you here?

 

[Elioenai26]

So why are you here?

Well, my posts and threads have been mainly geared towards offering a defense for the Christian Worldview. This is the main purpose for my posting here.

I am also here to dialogue with non-theists to better understand their positions and why they believe the things they do.

 

[Elioenai26]

No, the data does not demand that at all. In fact, it is a nonsensical proposition. You are claiming that nothing (immaterial), nowhere (non-spatial) and at no time (timeless) brought into existence everything, including space and time. The kind of cause you are postulating is radically unlike any other cause we observe in the universe.

I also don't understand why you think God must the simplest explanation for the existence of the universe. I don't think "God did it" is a sufficient explanation at all. But supposing that it were an explanation, it would only add another level of complexity for us to explain.

What does the data demand then?

 

[PursueTheTruth]

So much to reply to...

First, there is no proof that the universe is not eternal. If the conservation law is in fact "truth" then it would be strong evidence that the universe is eternal and therefore needs no creator.

 

[PursueTheTruth]

Second, truth in language is near impossible to relay and that is because language is interpreted and perceived differently by everyone. Truth in math is easy and common because it is what it is and cannot be misinterpreted.
This is why the truth cannot come from the bible, even though it may be possible that the bible is the truth.
So if God is rea,l why would he use a method of relaying the truth that would cause us to come to false conclusions?

 

[Elioenai26]

So much to reply to...

First, there is no proof that the universe is not eternal. If the conservation law is in fact "truth" then it would be strong evidence that the universe is eternal and therefore needs no creator.

I suggest you do some research on the Standard Model of the universe which is the model based on Einstein's research in General Relativity. It is also the standard model that has been verified by the scientific community for the past half century through various means of observation and corroborative research.

The Law of the Conservation of Mass and Energy has nothing to do with the age or origin of the universe.

 

[Elioenai26]

Second, truth in language is near impossible to relay and that is because language is interpreted and perceived differently by everyone. Truth in math is easy and common because it is what it is and cannot be misinterpreted.
This is why the truth cannot come from the bible, even though it may be possible that the bible is the truth.
So if God is rea,l why would he use a method of relaying the truth that would cause us to come to false conclusions?

Your statement is riddled with unsubstantiated presumptions.

 

[PursueTheTruth]

Your statement is riddled with unsubstantiated presumptions.

I have substantial evidence. Why are there so many denominations for christianity? They interpet the same words in many different ways and not all of them can be the truth. So it must be that they are mostly falsities. Does God allow everyone to have falsities from reading his truth or is there no God. Those are the only two possibilities that I can forsee. Do you see another based on this evidence?