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Materialism (championed by Darwinists) makes reason Impossible.

DOC said:
Well, at least that is one of the claims in the book "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist" by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. Many of you should know of this book as it is the focus of my Evidence thread in the History Forum. The book says this on page 129.

"...if materialism is true, then reason itself is impossible. For if mental processes are nothing but chemical reactions in the brain, then there is no reason to believe that anything is true (including the theory of materialism). Chemicals can't evaluate whether or not a theory is true. Chemicals don't reason, they react.
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Underlined is the part where he assumes his conclusion. His assumption that reasoning is not something that can be done by certain configurations of chemical is something that can only proceed from his prior assumption that Materialism is false.
 
DOC said:
...in the book "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist" by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek.
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A book written by two preachers. Do go on.

The book says this on page 129.

"...<snip>For if mental processes are nothing but chemical reactions in the brain, then there is no reason to believe that anything is true (including the theory of materialism). ...Chemicals don't reason, they react."
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Ummm...care to elaborate on that "just so" statement? Atoms don't reason either yet even you, most holy of us, is made up of them. Humans are not made up of "human molecules" either. Everything we know is made up of "dumb" things. The fact that chemicals don't reason and, therefore, brains can't reason is, at best, an unsupported statement. I would call it an outright lie. How's that?

because reason itself is impossible in a world governed only by chemical and physical forces."
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For you, maybe. The rest of us do very well, thanks for asking. :eye-poppi
 
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Hey, a new DOC thread!
DOC said:
"... a Darwinian world, but the Darwinist's assertion.... "
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OK, I'll bite.
DOC, it's a direct question to you.
What is a Darwinist?

... a defense of reason by reason is circular, therefore worthless....
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A circular argument?
This sounds familiar.
 
corbin said:
Maybe you've never experienced the strange thought that leads people to the problem of consciousness - the stark awareness that our conscious experience and existence itself has a quality entirely different from and not reducible to the sum of its sensible parts.
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Evidence?

Edit: Sorry, never mind.
 
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Foster Zygote said:
It is stupid because its author ignores, or is completely ignorant of, the phenomena of emergent properties. To think that something cannot perform a function simply because its simplest components cannot individually perform the same function is ludicrous.
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That is not what he is saying, he is saying you can't give something you don't have. If neurons don't possess intelligence then they can't give it-- that is basically what he is saying.
 
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DOC said:
You have to read the other 420 pages of the book for that.
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The bit you've presented so far in this thread is balderdash, DOC, as are all of the excerpts you've presented in support of your various failed arguments, so it seems reasonable to assume that the rest of it is just as bad.
 
Akhenaten said:
That's exactly what FZ said, DOC. Too many syllables for you?

Anyway, are you going to tell us next that sand = silicon = microchips and therefore computers don't work?
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Garbage in: Garbage out is a term used by some computer people. Computers are only as good as their programmers.
 
DOC said:
That is not what he is saying, he is saying you can't give something you don't have.
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That would explain why you haven't given us any "evidence for why we know the New Testament writers told the truth", but it is irrelevant to the question of emergent properties.
 
DOC said:
That is not what he is saying, he is saying you can't give something you don't have. If neurons don't possess intelligence then they can't give it-- that is basically what he is saying.
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Basically what he is doing is making an argument from incredulity - "I can't explain how conciousness/intelligence can emerge from a system of dumb molecules, therefore it can't".

Doc, it is clear that science does not have all the answers to the question as to how conciousness arises from our physical brains but every new understanding has led to the conclusion that we are on the right track and that a materialistic explanation is sufficient.

This is just another God of the gaps argument. I think Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave a solid reason for why this is a poor position for a theist to take:

...how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

To deny the writing on the wall with regards to materialistic explanations for conciousness, as well as the existence of life in general, in favour of a purely faith-based position requires wilful ignorance and intellectual dishonesty.
 
DOC said:
Garbage in: Garbage out is a term used by some computer people. Computers are only as good as their programmers.
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Completely irrelevant drivel, DOC. The point here is that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The question isn't whether computers produce accurate or meaningful results but that they operate at all, which they shouldn't if Turek's idiotic theory had any truth to it.
 
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