Materialism (championed by Darwinists) makes reason Impossible.

Darat said:
This one always gets me as we all pretty much every day see the empirical evidence for this not being true i.e. we eat - which is simply taking in "inanimate stuff" (on the whole so not including bacteria and stuff like cheese) and make it "animate". (There is an even better example of this and it is the taking of a "multi-vitamin supplement", many of these are just minerals or metals that have never been "animate".) There is no way to distinguish the "living" carbon atoms in my body from the "inanimate" carbon atoms in a piece of coal.
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What you eat today walks and talks tomorrow!
 
DOC said:
Because they are programmed by reason. No reasoning computer programmers, no reasoning computer programs.

Reasoning In --- Reasoning Out.
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What is being addressed is the erroneous claim that an object cannot do something that its individual component cannot do alone. There are a great many examples of emergence to be found in nature as well.
 
I'm with you DOC,

Those silly Darwinists probably believe you can build a 6 foot tall wall out of 2-inch tall bricks! They're only 2-inches tall! Ridiculous.

Therefore Jesus.

QED.
 
JoeB said:
I'm with you DOC,

Those silly Darwinists probably believe you can build a 6 foot tall wall out of 2-inch tall bricks! They're only 2-inches tall! Ridiculous.

Therefore Jesus.

QED.
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I bow to your superior reasoning... Errr... Faithening? Errr...

If reason is bad and reason is really faith and faith is good so long as it's not reason which is faith...

*pop*

I think I just faithed myself out of reason.
 
JoeB said:
I'm with you DOC,

Those silly Darwinists probably believe you can build a 6 foot tall wall out of 2-inch tall bricks! They're only 2-inches tall! Ridiculous.

Therefore Jesus.

QED.
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How long before DOC realises you're not on his side?
 
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.

This is supremely ironic because Darwinists---who claim to champion truth and reason---have made truth and reason impossible by their theory of materialism. So even when Darwinists are right about something, their worldview gives us no reason to believe them---because reason itself is impossible in a world governed only by chemical and physical forces."
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Mush, and more mush, with a side of mush.

Um materialism is a monism. Chemicals reacting is what consciousness is. Or appears to be at any rate.

So what magic substrate do you want to propose and defend?

let me guess this is a strawman.
 
Craig4 said:
So why if thoughts aren't the products of chemicals does adding chemicals to the body alter thoughts? Give a schizophrenic an anti psychotic and presto no more (or reduced) paranoid delusions. Give me alcohol and I suddenly think it's a good idea to dance on tables. If these are not chemical processes why does adding a chemical to the process cause thoughts to alter?
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Because the debbil is in them drugs
 
DOC said:
A perfect all powerful God could choose not to know the future decisions of his creations to guarantee free will. He has the ability to know them but he simply chooses not to.

I might have the ability to look up the answers of a crossword puzzle, but I may choose not to.
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Your sophistry does not an argument make.

God could make a burrito so hot that he could not eat it, but chooses not to do so....
 
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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So bosons, electrons (leptons) and femions are intelligent?

Then why are their stupid people?

Oh thats right because quantum mechanics is based upon free will!
 
DOC said:
A perfect all powerful God could choose not to know the future decisions of his creations to guarantee free will. He has the ability to know them but he simply chooses not to.
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Then you argue that god could be omniscient, but he chooses not to be.

So you think god isn't omniscient. Fair enough.
 
DOC said:
A perfect all powerful God could choose not to know the future decisions of his creations to guarantee free will. He has the ability to know them but he simply chooses not to.

I might have the ability to look up the answers of a crossword puzzle, but I may choose not to.
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It is not an issue of free will, rather having a basis for reasoning because everything is unknown.

Without God I can reason that if it is raining I can use an umbrella to prevent getting wet.

If God exists, I have no reason to expect that water is wet, or that the rain won't travel through my umbrella, basing decisions on prior observations is making an assumption about the mind of God which is pointless as it is unfathomable.
 
A quick control and f of the pages showed that nobody has mentioned Plantinga's similarly worded argument that evolution defeats naturalism.
Included the example
"Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief... Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it... Clearly there are any number of belief-cum-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behaviour."

I always found it pretty hard to engage with the argument for "survival over truth" in examples like the one above, so wonder if someone could word the possible objections in a nice easy to understand format :p

Oh and yes, I did copy and paste the example straight from wikipedia.
 
DOC said:
Well Christ said I will send you the Holy Spirit who will teach you all things. So one form of knowledge could be from the Holy Spirit (to those filled with the Holy Spirit). It is believed Paul received revelatory knowledge in certain areas such as his "in the twinkling of an eye" verse.

Another way is through study of the Bible. One verse in the OT basically says God regretted making man because of man's sinning. This implies that God did not know that man would sin to the extent man did. Since we know the bible says God is perfect (able to do all things) , then God could have "chosen" not to know the future actions of man to give man the gift of free will (and not merely be a puppet programmed not to sin). All of this more suited to a "free will" thread though.
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How is this anything other than a roundabout way of saying that you spout whatever crap you can make up and attribute the "insight" to God?
 
catsmate1 said:
So you're just pimping his book them? Well if it's as awful as the excerpts suggest I won't be wasting time or money on it.
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Well, I certainly hope he's not doing that, as it would probably be in breach of the new interpretation of rule 6.
 
DOC said:
A perfect all powerful God could choose not to know the future decisions of his creations to guarantee free will. He has the ability to know them but he simply chooses not to.

I might have the ability to look up the answers of a crossword puzzle, but I may choose not to.
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So god self lobotomizes?
 
Malerin said:
Oh, I don't doubt it follows a program. That doesn't equate to reasoning, or even knowing what a board is or a rook or that it has a goal.

10 Query "What's your name";A$
20 Print "Hello,"; A$

That's as best as I can remember BASIC on my old Commodore. A simple program that asks for your name and then addresses you by name. Is that an example of reasoning?
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We are also following a program. A very complicated one, massively parallel, self changing and self referential, but a program nonetheless.

The programmer were called : parent , teacher , environment, and most of it was programmed during school, home.

The issue is that you want to see us as special. We are not. We are just more complicated.
 
Darat said:
This one always gets me as we all pretty much every day see the empirical evidence for this not being true i.e. we eat - which is simply taking in "inanimate stuff" (on the whole so not including bacteria and stuff like cheese) and make it "animate". (There is an even better example of this and it is the taking of a "multi-vitamin supplement", many of these are just minerals or metals that have never been "animate".) There is no way to distinguish the "living" carbon atoms in my body from the "inanimate" carbon atoms in a piece of coal.
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Do not worry they have an argument for that : animated living stuff (we) can eat and transform unliving stuff. But unliving stuff alone can't be ransformed into living stuff. A living entity iws necessary to do the transformation. Usually given as an argument against abiogenesis and the need to have gods to breath life into innanimate stuff.

It is all balderdash naturaly, not to use another B acronym in 2 letters.

But really it is the sam reasonning. And the same type of preacher using the argument.
 
Seismosaurus said:
Then you argue that god could be omniscient, but he chooses not to be.

So you think god isn't omniscient. Fair enough.
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Since we're being a little silly, this reminds me of Randy Newman's brilliant song from Faust, with James Taylor as God. Excerpt:


Folks up here, ask me why
Things go so badly down below
I tell them when they ask me why
I really do not know
(But you do know, don't you Lord?)
Of course I do, sing it!

Oh, Lord
How great our Lord
Oh, Lord
How great our Lord
So great Lord

Folks up here, ask me why
Things go so badly down below
I like to tell them when they ask me why
I say, I really do not know
(But you do know, right?)
You know it, come on!
 
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