Materialists employ the same dodges to rational argument over and over. It is really tiresome to have to read the dodges in full time and again. Therefore, as a service to the materialists who post on this site, UD is developing a list of materialist dodges. Instead of having to type your dodge out every time, to save time and effort, our materialist friends should feel free to cite their dodges by number. For example, instead of writing out some tedious version of “I have no answer for why materialism is not logically incoherent. Instead, I will poke fun at caricatures of dualism” you can just cite “MD1” (for “Materialist Dodge 1”). We will add to the list as the Read More ›

In recent days the issue of the want of rational coherence of evolutionary materialist scientism has become a major focus at UD. For cause. In the most recent thread on it, BA says in the OP: I had an epiphany today. I think, after all this time, I finally get it . . . . Eigenstate intends for us to believe that intentional states do not exist. Eigenstate desires for us to believe that desires do not exist. Eigenstate believes (and asks us to believe) that beliefs do not exist. Eigenstate wants us to know that the word “I” in the sentence he just wrote (i.e. “I encourage any and all . . .”) maps to an illusion – i.e., Read More ›

From Scientific American A happy accident led to the discovery of the ancient tools. Sonia Harmand of Stony Brook University and her team had been en route to a known fossil site on the western shore of Lake Turkana one morning in July 2011 when the group took a wrong turn and ended up in a previously unexplored area. The researchers decided to survey it and by teatime they had found stone artifacts. They named the site Lomekwi 3, and went on to recover dozens of tools—including flakes, cores and anvils–from both the surface and below ground. Harmand described the findings April 14 in a talk given at the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society in San Francisco. “The cores Read More ›

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I had an epiphany today. I think, after all this time, I finally get it. I had the epiphany when I read this comment by eigenstate to my prior post: Materialists are quite clear about the illusory nature of, say, folk psychology, . . . materialism is the vehicle for making the case that these intuitions *are* illusory. Just so it’s clear, I encourage any and all to accept the illusory nature of what a scientifically-informed materialism would identify as illusions. Let us be clear about that phrase “folk psychology.” Here eigenstate is using a buzzword of eliminative materialism that refers to the following four general concepts: 1. ‘Belief,’ ‘desire’ and other familiar intentional state expressions are among the theoretical Read More ›

The philosophical and scientific discussions on this site are interesting to be sure, but the psychology displayed by the materialists who comment here is nothing short of fascinating. It is a wonder to behold, and I would not have believed such a thing is possible if I had not seen it myself. Self deception is absolutely essential to maintaining the materialist worldview. Again, WJM’s dictum: No sane person acts as if materialism were true. I was talking about this with my dad this afternoon and the following conversation ensued: Barry: The discussions on UD are fascinating. I have never seen a materialist change his mind about anything even when the logical incoherence of his view has been established beyond the Read More ›

They weren’t shopping at Bulk Barn? Here. The image of a Stone-Age man grasping the bony end of a bloody mammoth leg and chomping down on it with powerful gnashers is taking a bit of a battering. We already know that Neanderthals were partial to delicacies such as fish and small birds, with a healthy helping of plants. Now some are saying they might have flavoured their meaty feasts with wild herbs, too. Without a time machine to take us back 40,000 to 50,000 years, the suggestion remains highly speculative. But our long-lost cousins were clearly not the carnivorous beasts we once assumed them to be. And you assumed them to be so because … oh yes, once upon a Read More ›

As usual William J. Murray says it better than I. All that follows is his: 1. Whether or not the universe is determined, the logically consistent moral subjectivist admit that under materialism, all things are ultimately explicable by the interactions of matter and energy under the guiding influences of natural law and mechanical probability. 2. Matter and energy are neither conscious or intentional agencies under materialism, but rather only produce effects that we label with those terms. However, those labels – under materialism – do not and can not indicate anything categorically different from matter and energy interacting according to law and probability. There is no such thing as anything “intervening” in the lawful and probabilistic outcomes of material processes Read More ›

Sometimes a statement comes along that is so pristine in its lack of coherence, so mind-boggling in its pure, immaculate and flawless freedom from logic, that I just have to stop and call special attention to it. Eigenstate has favored us with such a statement: If I stipulate for the purposes of argument here that there is no choice and the world is rigidly deterministic, “moral” and “social” are just as meaningful and carry the same semantic freight as if it were otherwise. Empathy in a completely deterministic universe is just as much a moral dynamic as a empathy in universe with “libertarian free will”, allowing for the moment that that concept is not logically incoherent. Second quote of the Read More ›

New Scientist’s usual inventive PC gabble: Allegedly, women invented weapons Women could have been the first humans to use weapons to hunt. An analysis of spear-wielding chimps, most of which are females, suggests the idea may not be as eccentric as it might sound. It is still pretty eccentric. Aw come on. “Pitches like girl” is an epithet. “Pitches like boy” is not. If you do not understand what you are reading, you have spent too much time with politically correct trash.

Here.

In several previous posts, RDFish stumbled into a serious philosophical error that needs to be addressed. Barry Arrington had made the unassailable point that materialism (understood as physicalism) is incompatible with such concepts as good, evil, and objective morality. The reason is clear: Materialism reduces all choices to electro-chemical processes in the brain. With that model, all apparent moral decisions are really nothing more than chemcial-physical operations or functions.   Though RDF failed to refute the argument, confront the argument, or even define his own terms, he sought, nevertheless, to attack it through the back door, claiming that past atheist philosophers embraced both metaphysical materialism and objective morality. His list includes such notables as David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Ayn Rand, Read More ›

The Capitanian extinction, which did in a lot of brachiopods 262 mya From ScienceDaily: The widespread loss of carbonates across the Boreal Realm also suggests a role for acidification. The new data cements the Middle Permian crisis’s status as a true “mass extinction.” Thus the “Big 5” extinctions should now be considered the “Big 6.” More. Follow UD News at Twitter!

This will be my last post on this subject.  In the comments to my prior post, groovamos wrote a comment that contains a personal history followed by a gut wrenching story (which is in bold): I am in no sense as qualified as most on this thread to debate philosophy. However as one who embraced materialism TWICE in my youth, separated by a 3 year period of interest in mysticism, I’ll have a go. At the end of sophomore year I had converted to the typical campus leftist stance of the day, cultural zeitgeist being the driver, sexual license sealing the deal. Not outwardly religious as a kid, I quickly gave up belief in a supreme being. And just as Read More ›

Here: Our fascination with the brain seems to come from a longing to make psychology more like a hard science and hence, we assume, more useful. Physics gave us electricity, skyscrapers, and the Internet. Chemistry gave us medicine and more fresh food. Psychology is still taking baby steps, designing empirical tests of unsurprising observations. It may be too much to expect science to reliably save marriages, but how desperately we need the secret to stopping people from burning others alive. More. Psychology is like looking in a mirror and expecting objectivity. See also: The human mind Follow UD News at Twitter!