Egnor on the evidence against materialism:

8 Replies to “Egnor on the evidence against materialism:”

1. 1
   kairosfocus says:

   September 21, 2019 at 10:10 am

   Egnor on the evidence against materialism:

   Discovery Science
   In this bonus interview footage from Science Uprising, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor discusses the evidence against materialism and explains how materialism undercuts rather than supports genuine science. Be sure to visit https://scienceuprising.com/ to find more videos and explore related articles and books. Michael Egnor, MD (from Columbia University), neurosurgeon and professor of neurological surgery at Stony Brook University. Dr. Egnor is renowned for his work in pediatric neurosurgery. See https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2516312….
2. 2
   Seversky says:

   September 21, 2019 at 2:35 pm

   So when Dr Egnor operated on a human brain he did not regard it as a material entity? Or, if he did, he assumed that if he made a mistake that caused permanent damage to or even killed the physical brain, the associated mind, being a separate and immaterial entity, would be unharmed?
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   Axel says:

   September 21, 2019 at 4:03 pm

   Indeed, it would not be harmed. The connection of the brain with the mind is evidently not integral with the latter ontologically. That is manifestly clear from NDEs. When the body is glorified in heaven, it might persumably become so ontologically integrated in the new creation. As an aspect of the free will / predestination paradox.
4. 4
   bornagain77 says:

   September 21, 2019 at 5:36 pm

   Seversky believes the mind to be totally material. That it to say that Seversky believes that when the material brain dies then, according to Seversky’s atheistic materialism, the mind also dies. Besides the millions of recorded Near Death Experiences that directly contradict Seversky’s belief, there are many other problems with Seversky’s belief that the mind is totally material. First and foremost, Seversky, nor any other atheistic materialist, has the slightest clue how the material brain, all by its lonesome, can possibly generate consciousness.

   ‘But the hard problem of consciousness is so hard that I can’t even imagine what kind of empirical findings would satisfactorily solve it. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of discovery would get us to first base, not to mention a home run.’
   David Barash – Materialist/Atheist – evolutionary biologist and professor of psychology at the ­University of Washington

   “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness.”
   – Jerry Fodor – Rutgers University philosopher
   [2] Fodor, J. A., Can there be a science of mind? Times Literary Supplement. July 3, 1992, pp5-7.

   “Every day we recall the past, perceive the present and imagine the future. How do our brains accomplish these feats? It’s safe to say that nobody really knows.”
   Sebastian Seung – Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist – “Connectome”:

   “Those centermost processes of the brain with which consciousness is presumably associated are simply not understood. They are so far beyond our comprehension at present that no one I know of has been able even to imagine their nature.”
   Roger Wolcott Sperry – Nobel neurophysiologist
   As quoted in Genius Talk : Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries (1995) by Denis Brian

   “We have at present not even the vaguest idea how to connect the physio-chemical processes with the state of mind.”
   – Eugene Wigner – Nobel prize-winner – Quantum Symmetries

   “Science’s biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head, rather than the foot.”
   Nick Herbert – Contemporary physicist

   “No experiment has ever demonstrated the genesis of consciousness from matter. One might as well believe that rabbits emerge from magicians’ hats. Yet this vaporous possibility, this neuro-mythology, has enchanted generations of gullible scientists, in spite of the fact that there is not a shred of direct evidence to support it.”
   – Larry Dossey – Physician and author

   A second major problem with Seversky’s atheistic/materialistic belief that the material brain generates consciousness all by its lonesome is that many abilities of the mind are, by nature, immaterial and cannot possibly be reduced to any possible materialistic explanations. Mathematics itself being a fairly clear example of this:

   Mathematics itself exists in a transcendent, beyond space and time, realm which is not reducible any possible material explanation. This transcendent mathematical realm has been referred to as a Platonic mathematical world.

   Platonic mathematical world – image
   https://image.slidesharecdn.com/quantuminformation2-120301000431-phpapp01/95/quantum-information-14-728.jpg?cb=1330561190

   As David Berlinski states in the following article,“There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time.”

   An Interview with David Berlinski – Jonathan Witt
   Berlinski: There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time….
   Interviewer:… Come again(?) …
   Berlinski: No need to come again: I got to where I was going the first time. The number four, after all, did not come into existence at a particular time, and it is not going to go out of existence at another time. It is neither here nor there. Nonetheless we are in some sense able to grasp the number by a faculty of our minds. Mathematical intuition is utterly mysterious. So for that matter is the fact that mathematical objects such as a Lie Group or a differentiable manifold have the power to interact with elementary particles or accelerating forces. But these are precisely the claims that theologians have always made as well – that human beings are capable by an exercise of their devotional abilities to come to some understanding of the deity; and the deity, although beyond space and time, is capable of interacting with material objects.
   http://tofspot.blogspot.com/20.....-here.html

   And as M. Anthony Mills state in the following article, “The trouble is that numbers — along with other mathematical entities such as classes, sets, and functions — are indispensable for modern science. And yet — here’s the rub — these “abstract objects” are not material.”

   What Does It Mean to Say That Science & Religion Conflict? – M. Anthony Mills – April 16, 2018
   Excerpt: In fact, more problematic for the materialist than the non-existence of persons is the existence of mathematics. Why? Although a committed materialist might be perfectly willing to accept that you do not really exist, he will have a harder time accepting that numbers do not exist. The trouble is that numbers — along with other mathematical entities such as classes, sets, and functions — are indispensable for modern science. And yet — here’s the rub — these “abstract objects” are not material. Thus, one cannot take science as the only sure guide to reality and at the same time discount disbelief in all immaterial realities.
   https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2018/04/16/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_science_and_religion_conflict.html

   Moreover, to make this dilemma even more devastating to the Darwinian materialists, it turns out that atoms themselves are not the solid indivisible concrete particles, as they were originally envisioned to be by materialists, but it turns out that the descriptions we now use to describe atoms themselves, the further down we go, dissolve into “abstract conceptual tools for describing nature, which themselves seem to lack any real, concrete essence.,,,”

   Physics Is Pointing Inexorably to Mind
   So-called “information realism” has some surprising implications
   By Bernardo Kastrup – March 25, 2019
   Excerpt: according to the Greek atomists, if we kept on dividing things into ever-smaller bits, at the end there would remain solid, indivisible particles called atoms, imagined to be so concrete as to have even particular shapes. Yet, as our understanding of physics progressed, we’ve realized that atoms themselves can be further divided into smaller bits, and those into yet smaller ones, and so on, until what is left lacks shape and solidity altogether. At the bottom of the chain of physical reduction there are only elusive, phantasmal entities we label as “energy” and “fields”—abstract conceptual tools for describing nature, which themselves seem to lack any real, concrete essence.,,,
   https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/physics-is-pointing-inexorably-to-mind/

   In fact, according to quantum theory, the most fundamental ‘stuff’ of the world is not even matter or energy at all, (as Darwinian materialists originally presupposed) but is ‘abstract’ immaterial information itself

   “The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena.”
   Vlatko Vedral – Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and CQT (Centre for Quantum Technologies) at the National University of Singapore, and a Fellow of Wolfson College – a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics.

   “It is operationally impossible to separate Reality and Information”
   (48:35 minute mark)
   “In the beginning was the Word”
   John 1:1 (49:54 minute mark)
   Prof Anton Zeilinger speaks on quantum physics. at UCT
   https://youtu.be/s3ZPWW5NOrw?t=2984

   Thus, in irony of ironies, not even the material particles themselves turn to be are ‘real’ and concrete, (on the materialistic definition of what is ‘real’ and concrete), but turn out to be “abstract” immaterial information, i.e. a property of Mind!

   This puts the die-hard materialist in quite the conundrum because, as Bernardo Kastrup further explains in his article, to make sense of this conundrum of a non-material world of pure abstractions we must ultimately appeal to an immaterial mind. i.e. we must ultimately appeal to God!

   Physics Is Pointing Inexorably to Mind
   So-called “information realism” has some surprising implications
   By Bernardo Kastrup – March 25, 2019
   Excerpt: “To make sense of this conundrum,,, we must stick to what is most immediately present to us: solidity and concreteness are qualities of our experience. The world measured, modeled and ultimately predicted by physics is the world of perceptions, a category of mentation. The phantasms and abstractions reside merely in our descriptions of the behavior of that world, not in the world itself.,,,
   Where we get lost and confused is in imagining that what we are describing is a non-mental reality underlying our perceptions, as opposed to the perceptions themselves. We then try to find the solidity and concreteness of the perceived world in that postulated underlying reality. However, a non-mental world is inevitably abstract. And since solidity and concreteness are felt qualities of experience—what else?—we cannot find them there. The problem we face is thus merely an artifact of thought, something we conjure up out of thin air because of our theoretical habits and prejudices.,,,
   As I elaborate extensively in my new book, The Idea of the World, none of this implies solipsism. The mental universe exists in mind but not in your personal mind alone. Instead, it is a transpersonal field of mentation that presents itself to us as physicality—with its concreteness, solidity and definiteness—once our personal mental processes interact with it through observation. This mental universe is what physics is leading us to, not the hand-waving word games of information realism.
   https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/physics-is-pointing-inexorably-to-mind/

   Or to put it much more simply, as Physics professor Richard Conn Henry put it at the end of the following article, “The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy.”

   The mental Universe – Richard Conn Henry
   The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things.
   Excerpt: “The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy.”
   – Richard Conn Henry is a Professor in the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
   http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf

   A few supplemental quotes on the necessary primacy of consciousness for any coherent description of reality that we may give:

   “No, I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
   Max Planck (1858–1947), the main founder of quantum theory, The Observer, London, January 25, 1931

   “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”
   Schroedinger, Erwin. 1984. “General Scientific and Popular Papers,” in Collected Papers, Vol. 4. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences. Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig/Wiesbaden. p. 334.

   “The principal argument against materialism is not that illustrated in the last two sections: that it is incompatible with quantum theory. The principal argument is that thought processes and consciousness are the primary concepts, that our knowledge of the external world is the content of our consciousness and that the consciousness, therefore, cannot be denied. On the contrary, logically, the external world could be denied—though it is not very practical to do so. In the words of Niels Bohr, “The word consciousness, applied to ourselves as well as to others, is indispensable when dealing with the human situation.” In view of all this, one may well wonder how materialism, the doctrine that “life could be explained by sophisticated combinations of physical and chemical laws,” could so long be accepted by the majority of scientists.”
   – Eugene Wigner, Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, pp 167-177.

   How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate – video
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f0hL3Nrdas
5. 5
   kairosfocus says:

   September 22, 2019 at 3:25 am

   Sev,

   Reppert (echoing and amplifying Lewis and Haldane), has highlighted the core fallacy behind mind = brain etc:

   . . . let us suppose that brain state A [–> notice, state of a wetware, electrochemically operated computational substrate], which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief [–> concious, perceptual state or disposition] that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.

   That categorical gap between computation and responsible reason is the gap you have to address.

   KF
6. 6
   tjguy says:

   September 22, 2019 at 8:53 am

   @2 Seversky

   So Seversky, if you believe that your brain evolved by random blind directionless purposeless processes from the brain of some common ancestor of apes, why do you think that the thoughts that are produced by that evolved brain are trustworthy? After all, you don’t believe the thoughts that tell you the world is designed. You don’t believe the thoughts that tell you that you actually exist or the feeling that you have free will. So if what you are telling me, your beliefs/opinions about this subject are simply the result of some random chemical processes that occur in your evolved ape brain, and if you think that you have no control over them, why do you think that your thoughts are better than my thoughts? After all, in your chosen worldview, my thoughts and brain are also evolved from the same ape ancestor. And I do not have any control over what thoughts my brain spits out or on what I believe. My beliefs are all the result of natural evolutionary processes.

   So why are the processes that take place in your evolved ape brain any more trustworthy than the processes that take place in my evolved ape brain? And why should I even listen to your answer if you think that your thoughts are simply the result of random chemical processes that take place in your brain?
7. 7
   kairosfocus says:

   September 23, 2019 at 12:18 am

   TJG, excellent questions; let’s see what answers will be forthcoming. KF
8. 8
   kairosfocus says:

   September 24, 2019 at 4:15 am

   chirp, chirpity, chirp . . . ah, the power of self-referentiality