News just tagged this on to a news post but this is worth headlining:
Blurb:
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….
Food for thought. END
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….
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
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.,,,”
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
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!
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.”
A few supplemental quotes on the necessary primacy of consciousness for any coherent description of reality that we may give:
Sev,
Reppert (echoing and amplifying Lewis and Haldane), has highlighted the core fallacy behind mind = brain etc:
That categorical gap between computation and responsible reason is the gap you have to address.
KF
@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?
TJG, excellent questions; let’s see what answers will be forthcoming. KF
chirp, chirpity, chirp . . . ah, the power of self-referentiality