Materialism (championed by Darwinists) makes reason Impossible.

[AdMan]

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.

No wonder your arguments in that thread are so weak.

 

[corbin]

I'm not so sure the point made is as vacuous as you all think.

Why is anything intelligible? Why human reason? Seems to elude science in the same way that consciousness does.

 

[Lowpro]

So you believe intelligence comes from non-intelligent neurons?

Does it baffle you how C4 goes from a solid to explosive? Perhaps it should if you try to describe it without discussing sublimation and enthalpies...



THEREFOR GOD!

I'm not so sure the point made is as vacuous as you all think.

Why is anything intelligible? Why human reason? Seems to elude science in the same way that consciousness does.

Let me stop your thinking there...

First read this, what you're asking doesn't elude science, you're simply ignoring the answers

http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Conscio...=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1307846521&sr=1-2

 

[joobz]

I'm not so sure the point made is as vacuous as you all think.

Why is anything intelligible? Why human reason? Seems to elude science in the same way that consciousness does.

elude is an interesting term. Gravity as also Eluded scientists. Yet we know and understand more of it's nature than we did decades before. Similarly, we know more about consciousness and the nature of thought now than we did before. Nothing up to now has suggested a magical origin. Why should we expect one?

 

[corbin]

elude is an interesting term. Gravity as also Eluded scientists. Yet we know and understand more of it's nature than we did decades before. Similarly, we know more about consciousness and the nature of thought now than we did before. Nothing up to now has suggested a magical origin. Why should we expect one?

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.

 

[joobz]

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.

maybe you never had that strange thought that leads people to realize that gravity is much stranger than it appears.

 

[tsig]

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.

Seems to be a bare assertion.

 

[corbin]

Indeed it is. I know of no other way to understand the mind-body problem other than through experience. The awareness arises not through reasoning, but rather through experience of being conscious and its obvious distinction between the physical processes that are said to bring the consciousness about.

Its the same situation with how you can't explain how you perceive a difference between your sense of sight and your sense of hearing, it is observed through direct experience instead.

 

[Lowpro]

Indeed it is. I know of no other way to understand the mind-body problem other than through experience. The awareness arises not through reasoning, but rather through experience of being conscious and its obvious distinction between the physical processes that are said to bring the consciousness about.

Imagine if you had brain damage...how different your awareness may turn out.

And then realize the only tweak occurred in your brain, and you'll see why we all agree that your consciousness is emergent from the brain.

 

[tsig]

Indeed it is. I know of no other way to understand the mind-body problem other than through experience. The awareness arises not through reasoning, but rather through experience of being conscious and its obvious distinction between the physical processes that are said to bring the consciousness about.

You're a dualist then?

 

[Foster Zygote]

...its obvious distinction between the physical processes that are said to bring the consciousness about.

What obvious distinction? We can observe a direct relationship between the physical brain and the experience of consciousness.

 

[corbin]

I guess you guys are right. I lose.

 

[welshdean]

I guess you guys are right. I lose.

There you go DOC, it's easy to stand up and say, I'm wrong.

Try it, just once, go on I dare you.

 

[Kopji]

So likewise we shouldn't laugh at Lucille Ball on TV because it is just made up of electronic components that aren't very funny.

 

[Sideroxylon]

The book cited in post #1 goes on to say this on pgs. 129-130.

"Not only is reason impossible in a Darwinian world, but the Darwinist's assertion that we should rely on reason alone cannot be justified. Why not? Because reason actually requires faith. As J. Budziszewski points out, "The motto 'Reason Alone!' is nonsense anyway. Reason itself presupposes faith. Why? Because a defense of reason by reason is circular, therefore worthless. Our only guarantee that human reason works is God who made it.""

What are we doing here, Doc? Is this a classic fundamentalist attempt at muddying epistemic the waters? The old, "We can't know anything for sure, therefore the Bible"? We could however equally insert Allah into that kind of argument.

 

[welshdean]

DOC, I know it's a bit long, but please read through this (or at least the bold sections) so that we can end the nonsense espoused by Geisler and Turek.

GOD: THE FAILED HYPOTHESIS - How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist. VICTOR J. STENGER


BRAIN SCIENCE TODAY
Scientists no longer need to remove the brain from a dead body in order to study it. Imaging technology makes it possible not only to examine brains in detail but also to observe them while they are still alive and functioning. In recent years, this has enabled the sources of perceptual judgments and different types of thought to be located within the brain. Experiments have been conducted in which subjects are asked to make mechanical, intellectual, and moral choices, while researchers watch the brain carry out the necessary operations.
A number of imaging techniques have been developed with modern technology. Perhaps the most powerful is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Based on the physics of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), with the word "nuclear" removed so as not to alarm patients, MRI forms an image by detecting the energy that is released by the spinning nuclei of atoms. This energy is actually very low, coming from the radio region of the electromagnetic spectrum and not at all harmful—especially compared to x-rays, which have sufficient energy to break atomic bonds. In functional MRI (fMRI), the magnetic properties of the blood are used to see patterns of blood flow. An fMRI scan of the brain can quickly produce images that distinguish structures less than a millimeter apart and pinpoint areas in the brain that are being activated.
Other brain imaging techniques include positron emission tomography (PET), single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and electroencephalography (EEG). All these techniques confirm that thought processes are accompanied by localized physical activity in the brain. Let us look at just a few of the examples relevant to our discussion. Many more can be found in the literature.
Using fMRI, scientists in the United States and Brazil have discovered that the region of the brain activated when moral judgments are being made is different from the region activated for social judgments that are equally emotionally charged. Princeton researchers have studied the brain activity in people asked to make decisions based on various moral dilemmas. These dilemmas were divided into two categories—one involving impersonal actions and another where a direct personal action was required. The brain scans consistently showed greater activation in the areas of the brain associated with emotions when the actions were personal. The relevant point here is not just that physical processes in the brain take part in thinking; they seem to be responsible for the deepest thoughts that are supposed to be the province of spirit rather than matter. Another area of study with live brains involves the localized stimulation by electric or magnetic pulses. Neuroscientist Michael Persinger claims to have induced many of the types of experiences that people have interpreted as "religious" or "spiritual" by magnetic stimulation of the brain. However, Persinger's results have been called into question.
On the other hand, Olaf Blanke and his colleagues report that they are able to bring about so-called out-of-body experiences (OBE), where a person's consciousness seems to become detached from the body, by electrical stimulation of a specific region in the brain. I have discussed OBE experiments in twobooks and have concluded that they provide no evidence for anything happening outside of the physical processes of the brain.
These results do not totally deny the possibility that conscious thoughts are being directed by a disembodied soul, which then somehow implements them through the brain and nervous system. This, in one form or another, remains the teaching of most religions. In 1986 Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the 1950 statement by Pope Pius XII that the Church does not forbid the study and teaching of biological evolution. However, the pope made it very clear that evolution applied to the body—not the mind: "Theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person."
Despite the Holy Father's admonition, a wealth of empirical data now strongly suggests that mind is in fact a "mere epiphenomenon of this matter." Matter alone appears to be able to carry out all the activities that have been traditionally associated with the soul. No "spiritual" element is required by the data. The implication that "we" are bodies and brains made of atoms and nothing more is perhaps simply too new, too disturbing, too incompatible with common preconceptions to be soon accepted into common knowledge. However, if we do indeed possess an immaterial soul, or a material one with special properties that cannot be found in inanimate matter, then we should expect to find some evidence for it.
Chapter 3 - p.82 - p.84

 

[welshdean]

What are we doing here, Doc? Is this a classic fundamentalist attempt at muddying epistemic the waters? The old, "We can't know anything for sure, therefore the Bible"? We could however equally insert Allah into that kind of argument.

Don't be daft, Allah isn't real.

 

[Brainache]

So likewise we shouldn't laugh at Lucille Ball on TV because it is just made up of electronic components that aren't very funny.

No, we shouldn't laugh at Lucille Ball on TV because it is made up of joke components that aren't very funny

I like the chess game analogy: You have the board and the peices, the rules of chess and the interaction of the peices; when they are all working properly you have a game of chess. The game emerges from the interaction of inert peices and a few simple abstract rules and yet is dynamic and nearly infinitely variable. Mind emerges from the brain the way a game of chess emerges from a chess board.

 

[Sideroxylon]

Don't be daft, Allah isn't real.

I hope you didn't come to that conclusion using your faulty faculty of reason.

 

[Kopji]

No, we shouldn't laugh at Lucille Ball on TV because it is made up of joke components that aren't very funny

I like the chess game analogy: You have the board and the peices, the rules of chess and the interaction of the peices; when they are all working properly you have a game of chess. The game emerges from the interaction of inert peices and a few simple abstract rules and yet is dynamic and nearly infinitely variable. Mind emerges from the brain the way a game of chess emerges from a chess board.

Not than I'm not really excited about yet another DOC thread shaking the very foundations of phlisophical thought, but I have problems with the chess analogy.

The chess pieces aren't like a brain because without intelligence to move them they are just meaningless components. It takes an external intelligence to assign motion and rules to the pieces and board. A chess analogy seems rather more supportive of what DOC is saying than being against it - to be like chess we are like pieces animated by a greater intelligence. Without that intelligence we would be nothing.

Or maybe he's not saying that.

Anyway, my TV example is flawed, but flawed in the way that the OP is. Components and electrical impulses work together as a system and the picture and sound are an emergent property of good timing, signal, and source material (perhaps Monty Python instead of Lucy).

For TV, the source material comes from a studio and is transmitted via invisible waves to the set. But where do our invisible waves come from? Are we receivers of some great consiousness out there somewhere, or do the signals emerge as a property of chemicals, electricity, and millions of years evolution?

Why would reason care which? You could reason if there was a God, and reason if there was not. So I'm with whoever said it was gibberish.

I think the theists can do better.