Commenter psypaul writes regarding those (such as Sam Harris) who say consciousness is an illusion.
Consciousness is an illusion….to whom? Who is being deceived? Isn’t ‘self’ an illusion as well? Doesn’t the concept of ‘illusion’ require a perceiver (person)? Absurdity.
Indeed, psypaul. As with much of the drivel that comes pouring out of the materialists, this is a statement of purported universal truth that requires an implicit exception for the speaker, thus rendering absurd its claim to being universal.
“Consciousness is an illusion – except for me right now; I’m aware of (that is to say, “conscious of”) the illusion.”
“There is no meaning. Except what I just said. That has meaning.”
“We deconstructionists assert absolutely that all texts have infinite meaning and therefore must be deconstructed; except this text; it has only the plain meaning I intend; no deconstruction necessary.”
“At bottom there is no good or evil in the universe; except for creationists; they are insane, stupid or wicked.”
“There is no truth, except what I just said; that’s true.”
Materialism makes people say stupid things. To those who would respond that materialists don’t actually say the things that are implicit in their assertions, I say, “so what?” If a proposition necessarily follows as a matter of logic from what someone has just said, then one of two things is true: (1) that person accepts that necessary corollary and embraces it; or (2) he is too stupid to understand the necessary corollary follows from his assertion. With the materialist propositions set forth above, either way he is stupid.
There are other propositions requiring an implicit exception for the speaker. Readers are welcome to add to the list.
Materialist: my worldview is based on naturalistic science, which informs me that my worldview is formed by non-rational uncomprehending blind particles in motion.
Box, I like it.
How about:
“Our brains evolved for fitness, not truth; and that statement is true.” or
“Religion is an evolutionary adaptation, and we know it to be false; science is also an evolutionary adaptation, and we know it to be true.” or
“Metaphysics is dead; except for the metaphyscial assertion I just made.” or
“Science is the only source of reliable knowledge; except for the knowledge I have of the truth of the statement I just made, which is metaphysical, not scientific.”
We could play this game all day.
UDEditors: Box, you forgot to add the implicit exception for the speaker:
“‘thoughts’ in the brain can’t be about anything at all, either things inside or outside the brain; except for the thought I am now expressing, which is about something outside of my brain, namely the concept of ‘thought.'”
“the statement : ‘the painting is beautiful’, is a statement of fact about a love for the way the painting looks existing in my brain”
It is very obvious that materialism only works with objectivity, facts. There is no room in it for subjectivity at all, opinion. It is really as simple as that.
And my finding is that neither the religious intellectuals provide much room for subjectivity.
The structure of common religion is valid, and provides straightforward room for subjectivity. But the work of religious intellectuals is mainly to destroy that room.
Sophisticated mumbo jumbo while neglecting the basis of faith, how faith works. Then you get such terms as “reasoned faith” where only the reasoning part is explained how it works, but the faith part is left unexplained.
The wiki on free will is a mess of contradictory points of view. The religious intellectuals, intelligent design theorists, and creationists, aren’t providing basic knowledge about how things are chosen, let alone sophisticated knowledge.
It is very obvious that there is something going on with people that distorts knowledge about how choosing works. That something is original sin.
It is totally ridiculous that we can talk in terms of choosing in daily life, yet intellectually our knowledge about how choosing works is a big mess. That is the weakness of man, tragically failing in the most simple thing, to bring knowledge HE ALREADY HAS on a common level, to an intellectual level.
mohammadnursyamsu, you are on to something.
“Free will does not exist; except for the freedom you have to evaluate and accept that proposition.”
Consciousness is an illusion, but we can never know that it is an illusion.
The one thing that stands out for me, in the atheistic/materialistic claim that consciousness is merely an illusion, is that the atheists, supposedly the rational scientific ones, (at least according to them), have no scientific evidence whatsoever that consciousness can possibly emerge from a material basis, whereas the Theist is more than amply verified with empirical evidence in his belief that the consciousness of God sustains reality in its continually being.
As to atheists having no empirical support whatsoever for their claim that consciousness is ’emergent’ from a material basis, here are a few quotes:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist Sebastian Seung makes this clear in his book “Connectome,” saying:
There is simply no direct evidence that anything material is capable of generating consciousness. As Rutgers University philosopher Jerry Fodor says,
As Nobel neurophysiologist Roger Sperry wrote,
From modern physics, Nobel prize-winner Eugene Wigner agreed:
Contemporary physicist Nick Herbert states,
Physician and author Larry Dossey wrote:
Whereas, on the other hand, the Theist is more than amply verified with empirical evidence in his belief that the consciousness of God sustains reality in its continually being.
Prof. Richard Conn Henry stated this after the Leggett results came in:
Leggett’s Inequality, the mathematics behind it, and the overwhelming Theistic implications of it, are discussed beginning at the 24:15 minute mark of the following video:
Besides Leggett’s Inequality, the Delayed Choice experiments give us the same ‘reality doesn’t exist until we measure it’ result:
I like Scott Aaronson’s humorous thought on the implications of it all:
A few more quotes of note:
Verse and Music:
“Survival of the Fittest” is an illusion. We can all agree on that I presume,
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....e-fittest/
“We Scientists . . . oops, where do we get to ‘we’?”
Try 2: “Science has proved . . . oops, how do we get to proof in a world of blind stochastic-dynamic matter-energy and space time without intentionality and without non-delusional identity? Double oops, how do we get to we again, and isn’t scientists another way of saying we?”
mohammadnursyamsu @ 4
Speaking as a materialist, I’d say that’s nonsense. I have the same subjective experience of the world as you. The only problem I have is in explaining how that subjective experience arises from the physical brain.
Sciemce tells us that the red color of the car I see in the parking lot is not a property of the car. The car is coated in a paint that is designed to reflect only a narrow band of wavelengths from the visible spectrum of electromagnetic radiation and absorb the rest. Those wavelengths are represented in my conscious awareness of that car as the color red. Does that make it an illusion? Some may think so. I don’t. I prefer to think of it as living within a mental model of the world created on the basis of sensory input. It’s not very accurate and it’s far from a complete representation – there’s a lot of what is out there that we don’t have the sensory apparatus to detect – but it’s fit for purpose. It enables us to navigate our way around the world fairly safely. It’s not entirely reliable, no, but it’s the best we’ve got so it’ll have to do for the present.
As for free will, how many people here consciously chose their sexuality? How many sat down one day and asked, “Hmmm, should I be straight or should I be gay? You know, I think I’ll be straight.” Free will is not some all-or-nothing absolute. There are some things where we seem to have have a degree of freedom of choice and others where we really have no choice at all
@#7
OK, a bit off topic, but I want to respond to this wacko statement that BA quoted above: (nothing against BA — I doubt he quoted it for the purpose of ridiculing creationists. I’m guessing he would agree with this critique too.)
I know the purpose of bringing up this quote was not to give validation to this part of the quote, but I need to point out how ridiculous it is.
I know of no creationist one who believes this. There may be some who take a stab at the date of creation, but it is simply a guess. No one knows for sure. Even the year 4004 BC is just an educated guess. Adding the 9am Baylonian time is a cute addition, but it gives the false impression that creationists actually believe this. I know of not one group that does. False accusation – and he knows it – meant simply to denigrate creationists!
Then there is the idea of God creating the ground with fossils already in it. I know of no credible creationist organization that makes such a claim. If Mr. Aaronson(associate MIT professor) is going to make such ridiculous accusations, he should give references to support them. Perhaps he could even find someone somewhere who might make such a claim, but treating it as if it is a fair representation of what creationists believe is simply dishonest and not appropriate for anyone, let alone a university professor! (Perhaps morality is not important to this guy, I don’t know.) But we creationists could also do the same thing with evolution. We could take the evo-devo stuff, claim it is what evolutionists believe, and ridicule them and in so doing make evolution sound even sillier than it already does. Why do they feel like they can treat us unfairly, but then get all huffy and puffy if we were to try the same thing? No double standard there, right?
Then he claims that creationists believe that God created the universe with light on the way to earth. This is one POSSIBLE option for solving the problem of light travel that some groups mention, but again, I do not know one credible creationist group that actually takes this position. I don’t know enough about the various creationist groups that exist to say definitively that none take this position, but I know the major groups do not. So that alone ruins his claim of what creationists believe.
Amazingly, not one of his claims/charicatures of creationists is accurate. So strike three – you’re out!
Herre’s a novel idea: Why not deal with the views of the mainstream creationist groups such as CMI, AiG, or ICR, as opposed to non scientific fringe groups/individuals that may or may not really exist?
Critics love straw men! They cannot talk back and so the attacker is seen to be wise while the opponent is made out to look stupid.
tjguy, I certainly didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers, but I like his quote since he is at least honest enough to admit that materialists are in a far worse position than YECs.
Being a OEC, I guess I am not as sensitive to the slight as you would be. But he is absolutely right, the fact that ‘reality doesn’t exist until we measure it’ is absolutely devastating to the atheistic materialist.
Moreover, you can’t get any better observational evidence in science than having the observation itself do the falsifying of atheistic materialism !
It simply can’t get any better than that in science!
It is the best science we have, (i.e. a primary quantum mechanical prediction verified to 120 standard deviations), and it is also the best falsification of atheistic materialistic premises that any Theist of any stripe, whether they be OEC or YEC, could possibly have ever hoped for. 🙂
I hope that makes his quote a bit more palatable for you.
Personally, I love to hear people say that I shouldn’t “judge” certain behavior and/or attitudes as wrong. Judgment is evil, don’cha know!
I ask, “You mean like how you are judging me right now?”
Perplexity and indignation ensue…
tjguy: Even the year 4004 BC is just an educated guess.
An educated guess. You’re serious. Sadly.
The idea that the earth is 6000 years old is not an educated guess. Not in the slightest. It’s a mis-educated speculation.
Only a small minority of “religiously educated” people believe the earth is only 6000 years old. For some odd reason these “religiously educated” people think the Bible teaches that the universe was created 6000 years ago, plus or minus a few “guesses” to the contrary.
Further, based on their “religious guesstimations” they then go on to accuse old earth creationists of all sorts of perfidious beliefs and intentions, as if the bible clearly identifies old earth creationism as a mortal sin.
The actual evidence that the earth is older than 6000 years is immense. This is not in conflict with any statement in the bible, because the bible does not state how old the earth is.
The pernicious nature of YECism is most evident in it’s claims that Jesus was a liar. The incoherence of YECism can be seen in it’s claims to be based on what Jesus taught. If Jesus lied about when he would return then any statements he made that can be construed to establish the age of the earth are suspect.
The irony here is that BBA77 claims to be an old earth creationist while still accepting the YEC hermeneutic.
@seversky
It’s true that one can have subjectivity in spite of materialism, but materialism still destroys a large part of it.
For instance you don’t believe in God. That’s subjectivity that materialism destroyed for you.
But it doesn’t stop there, you also don’t believe in the human spirit or soul. That’s destroying a lot more subjectivity. And you don’t BELIEVE emotions are real, subjectively, either. You accept they are real as fact, but then these factually measurable things in the brain are not the real emotions.
I predict that you are a calculating person who is always and forever thinking about what is best to do, as opposed to a spontaneous person (distinct from an impulsive person).
That is because materialists define choosing as sorting out the best result, they have no recourse to the definition of the spirit making a possible future the present or not, because the spirit is not material.
The main subjectivity that survives for materialists is opinions pretending to be facts. Materialism opposes emotions because they cannot be measured, so then what emotions do in response to that attack, is simply to make the expression of emotions into statements of fact, in stead of opinions.
So that is how materialists become to regard the worth of human beings as a matter of scientific fact, like Sam Harris says. That is the only way for him to have any expression of emotion left.
anthropic #14
That was why Jesus immediately followed up his apparent commandment against judging, with his commandment not to condemn.
Jesus knew that atheists themselves, ergo the atheist in all of us, never choose to believe in hell so fervently as when they hate and condemn someone. It was never Jesus’ intention that we should abnegate our intelligence, far from it. How else could we speak to a person’s condition, if we fail to analyze it, to make a judgment.
In law, judgments, I believe, are often called ‘decisions’, but that is because such decisions have specific, material implications for the future of the accused. ‘Appraisal’ might otherwise be a more appropriate term.
Great post, your #4, BA77. It seems to me that Leggett’s Inequality seems to bear out my thesis that we each live in a littel world of our own, seamlessly coordinated by God.
tjguy, their are fundamentalists of an especially narrow, literalist cast of mind. It also happens that all theists are tarred with the brush of these YECs by atheists, indeed, sovereign irony, they like to ascribe a belief in unicorns and pink pixies to us. To them, all theists are extreme ‘fundies’, becauase they absolttly require a straw man.
It was a simple a case of exaggeration for the sake of emphasis, in this narrow context, justified by his conclusion, cutting the ground from under atheism. It sometimes happens that in order to berate someone or ridicule a dreranged and truculent opponent it is necessary to use what will be an insult to them.
A Dutch footballer complained to the club’s chairman and ‘money-man’, that the money he was offered would be laughed at by a homeless person. He was slagged off by the perjured media who had heavy investments in the club, but he fitted the imagery to the person. It would have be taken as an unambiguous compliment by Christ or one of his Apostles.
A cursory review of the teachings of Jesus will show that Jesus did not speak literally at every turn of a phrase:
“And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?” Jesus answered them, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. “For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. “Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, … ” (Matthew 13:10-14)
The Jesus’ empiricus, ‘reliance on experience’, is embedded throughout his teachings and even more recognizable in his parables. Jesus’ empiricus does not mean we can transmute him to a present day empirical scientist and then shackle his teaching to a scientific position, as we naively take such positions. Yet an understanding of Jesus’ empiricus could help ‘shed light on’ the nature of knowledge and our understanding of human experiencing. This could be performed with a review of Newton’s empiricus, Planck’s empiricus, Bohm’s empiricus.
What a human empiricus could say about epistemology, and resultantly scientific inquiry and interpretation, concerns a spectrum with ‘jumps’ or discontinuous points, continua with critical points, and not neatly cut isolated regions of that which is true and that which is false. The spectrum of knowledge is not sullied or deformed beyond recognition through the inclusion of the material and the immaterial, the physical and the metaphysical, the plain and the mysterious, the temporal and the timeless, the objective and the subjective, the transient and the absolute. An empiricus that is neatly cut isolated regions of human experiencing can be used for analytic purposes, but is not incontrovertibly the case an absolute.
Scientific research often demands setting causes, components, and functions into manageable categories, in analytic concept boxes, and following upon a working completion a scientist will likely use interpretation to gather, reconstruct, and unify. It is at the interpretation point(s) that the discontinuities are difficult to integrate along an otherwise smooth set of functions … for knowledge and understanding of the full spectrum in human experiencing. If our empiricus is made to be bounded by physical-sensible data, are we creating an artificial world and therefore a necessary illusion of reality? The artificial can be a useful device, and has been shown useful in the many devices we employ, yet mistaking the artificial as a conclusive sum for human experiencing of reality is not empirically and epistemically sustainable, not in toto.
Some have eyes but do not see. Some have ears but do not hear. Some do not understand. So parables embedded with empiricus are given, not the mysteries of the kingdom, because they, the some, have the world in neatly cut isolated regions and are bounded by physical-sensible data. The mysteries are not in a neighborhood near the point the some have found themselves and they will not move beyond that discontinuity.
The mysteries were symbols and signs, ‘symbolon’, tokens of identity verified by comparing its other half. Jesus’ empiricus shows an acute awareness of the asymmetry in the perceptions of humans and he used the asymmetry to teach others how to begin moving beyond the discontinuities. For Jesus this is a process for removing the disjoint separating neighborhoods and coming into a Oneness of human experiencing with the Creator, in which our identity is verified by comparing our empiricus with the full spectrum. And not ‘forced’ into a bounded confinement. Here Jesus’ declarative, If you have faith the size of a grain … in which Jesus has again and again made clear, unfolds faith as not blind but rather the fundamental principle for his empiricus.
Axel 17
Yeah, the whole “judge not” passage is often ripped out of context to mean something entirely different than what Jesus meant.
Matthew 7:1-6
1“Do not judge so that you will not be judged. 2“For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. 3“Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4“Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? 5“You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
6“Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
——————————————————–
Note that Jesus was NOT saying that we are barred from noticing faults & sins in others. Instead, he was saying that we actually should help others with their issues, but first make sure we are not being hypocritical about it.
If, for instance, a pastor is involved in adultery with the already married church secretary, he should NOT do family counseling! (Really he shouldn’t be a pastor, either.) Or, for example, a grossly obese person shouldn’t lecture others about proper dietary habits.
We examine ourselves and deal honestly with our own issues precisely so we CAN “see clearly” enough to judge rightly. Not only so we can help others with their issues, but also so we can judge those who beyond our help.
Some people have no wish to deal with their issues, nor the truth, and will ferociously bark & snarl at anyone foolish enough to try to reason with them. Jesus says we should properly judge if someone is like this; if so, we should leave them alone.
Bottom line: Yes, we are to judge. But we must first judge ourselves, which leads to both humility (we, too, are flawed) and transparency.
Yes, a crucial point, anthropicus: the beam and the moat and keeping one’s own eye clear as best, with God’s grace’ we are able.
Still, Old Nick has a vast array of means to tempt us to subvert our own integrity; often in little ways to begin with, but if they are left unchecked they develop; and when they develop, they can cross into areas we might not suspect to be vulnerable.
‘It’s a hard life, if you don’t weaken’ is an old saying, but in my experience, it can be much harder of you do weaken.
redwave @ your 18, I think Aldous Huxley referred to those concepts as the ‘analytical intelligence’ and the ‘unitive intelligence’.
Einstein seems to me, at least in his earlier years, to have understood the primacy of wisdom, the unitive, spiritual intelligence, rating imagination higher than the rigidly compartmentalised, analytical, worldly intelligence. The latter being pretty good for IQ tests, I suspect, so perhaps it’s not so surprising his teacher told him he’d never amount to much, and he came about 12th of 14 in his Polytechnic class at his polytechnic.
Sitting there imagining a man sliding down a rainbow! You can just imagine his teacher, if he could have read his mind: ‘You’ll go far, lad! You just keep day-dreaming like a dopey kid.’ Though I think the ‘rainbow slide’ insight came to him, looking out of the window of his patent office.
I believe his father was quite an easy-going, happy-go-lucky type, an equable atheist, but making sure Albert got a sound grounding in Judaism and his education. And I wonder if that happy-go-lucky outlook rubbed off on his son, so that he really became interested in truth, itself, rather than being driven primarily by ambition, as most parents I think favour.
Pretty comical, when you consider how he has become a byword for extremely high intelligence. while the Wisdom books of the Old Testament designate the worldly-wise as the simple ones.
‘Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all things will be added’. In his prioritization of seeking truth for its own sake, in his own way he was seeking the kingdom of heaven.
Modern materialism is not really very consistent — and it couldn’t be, because taking materialism to its logical consequences would turn society upside down. There are lots of non-material “entities” with which we operate (like logic, numbers, probability, moral laws etc). In his book Uncommon Wisdom: Fault Lines in the Foundations of Atheism, Ashish Dalela has this to say on the matter:
Also
And, in a blog post, he also addresses the problems of the materialist viewpoint from another perspective:
http://www.ashishdalela.com/20.....n-reality/