One secret of Darwinian just-so stories is boundless imagination

And if you add to that the hypothesis that our consciousness itself is an illusion, there can be no prison because there's no mind.

I know nothing, I didn't see anything, I wasn't there, and if I was there, I was asleep. - Mob dictum

-Q Querius

AaronS1978

And using the power of Darwinian Evolution Seversky presents his argument because of the fact that he has experienced a flight or flight syndrome which was inherited from...

Seversky presents a garbage argument to himself because he has already acknowledged that he is speaking to himself. He 'thinks' that there is an 'outside world' but he can not be sure about it, because he has already mentioned that HE CAN NOT ESCAPE HIS OWN PRISON/MIND. Seversky= solipsist. Truthfreedom

Seversky: Schroedinger was an eminent quantum physicist but not a psychologist Why is it that I have encountered so many with degrees in psychology including from my alma mater Vanderbilt, who could not find work in their 'field' ? Even physicists lacking a Ph.D can find work in applied science (or teaching), as I encountered them in my career doing both. You guys can read ONE BOOK and then know much more valid information on consciousness than most Ph.D psychologists (with notable exceptions) and here is a link to my review of that book as I posted here years ago. And btw the fame of the author has grown since, as references to his work has snowballed (e.g. Michael Pollan, materialist-in-transition out): https://www.amazon.com/review/R93YN1VTGE33U groovamos

Seversky

We don’t deny ourselves some of them (life's pleasures) just because some argue that they are “sinful”.

Liar. Your "interpersonal agreement" bull is the code for: "good/ (allowed by society) behaviors (not-"sinful") "bad"/ (not allowed by society) behaviors ("sinful") Truthfreedom

AaronS1978

Anybody want to take a wild crack at how your science is influenced by your in genetics and so forth, it’s part of evolutionary theory, I’m sure your ancestors during the hunter gatherer phase have some reason for your choice of conclusions, I mean how can you trust or support your own conclusions when they could easily be influenced by the environment and your genetics. remember your subjective experience is not a valid form of science.

They "support" it via blatant circular "reasoning": -we can reach valid conclusions (and trust our reason) - because we have evolved to have "good enough" reason If you think the above statement is not stupid enough, now they add the following: -but we are plagued by "cognitive biases"/ "illusions"/ can not "understand reality". Except if you are a darwinist. Darwinism is magic, you read On The Origin of Species and then "you" (your "brain") gets cleansed of your biases and your brain chemistry magically changes. No more cheating! You are born-again. :) (Notice the parallel with religion/ baptism). Lol. It could be funny. But the truth is that is pathetic. Truthfreedom

And actually why have these long drawn out argument with these people? I mean the more I think about it you can just apply evolutionary theory to their own ideas and it invalidates all of them Think about it they never aim their own theories at themselves, they aim at religion, they aim at morality, and they certainly aim it at love. But they aim only at what society thinks is important they never aim it at themselves. Certainly never at the science that they do So aim Darwinian theory at Seversky or Chuckdarwin It’s super easy to do and then you can watch them scramble for excuses for why they still think they’re valid Evolutionary theory doesn’t play any favorites so aim it that their arguments And I really want to start applying the principles of evolution to scientists and their science AaronS1978

Seversky says: "In the absence of a known designer, the appearance of design is just that. We’re pretty sure we didn’t design those things that have that appearance so either there’s an unknown designer or that appearance is just a for of pareidolia." Well, I will give you credit for allowing for the possibility of a designer. Most atheists and agnostics do not even allow for that possibility. They just assume that there is none so they make up their silly stories to try and adequately explain things that can only adequately be explained by intelligence, intention, and design. If you choose to believe in an unlimited series of natural miracles of chance and think that such an explanation is actually more trustworthy /more accurate than the idea of a designer, then that's up to you. At least I think it is up to you. Perhaps it really isn't up to you. Perhaps your conclusions are pre-determined by the chemical interactions in your evolved monkey brain so that both you and I believe what we believe because of the brain that evolution blessed us with. We evolved to think the way we do and we really can't do anything about that. That's a lovely thought to dwell on because it makes real knowledge and truth inaccessible. We interpret the data the way we do because of the monkey brain we inherited. tjguy

Anybody want to take a wild crack at how your science is influenced by your in genetics and so forth, it’s part of evolutionary theory, I’m sure your ancestors during the hunter gatherer phase have some reason for your choice of conclusions, I mean how can you trust or support your own conclusions when they could easily be influenced by the environment and your genetics. remember your subjective experience is not a valid form of science Hey did anybody ever really realize that when you say the brain controls (or is) the mind and the brain informs the mind of its decision after, that it implies dualism immediately Correct that, it doesn’t imply it a presupposes it. AaronS1978

Seversky

“Fitness”, in the evolutionary sense, refers to the ability to survive in a given environment. The more accurate or truthful our understanding of that environment is the better our chances of survival in it are going to be. In terms of survival, searching for the truth has a clear advantage over falsehoods in terms of survival.

Alvin Plantinga has a different opinion: Atheists Can’t Trust Reason (Or Anything)

I saw on Twitter another version of the old you-can’t-trust-reason-without-God argument, under the title “On the futility of attempting rational discourse with atheists.” It went like this. 1. Anyone who accepts atheism accepts naturalism. 2. On naturalism, the reliability of human reason is astronomically improbable. 3. Therefore, anyone who accepts naturalism has a defeator for any conclusion whatever reached on the basis of reasoning, including the conclusions of naturalism and atheism. 4. Therefore, atheism can never be accepted by anyone on a rational basis, since every atheist  eo ipso  has a rational defeator for his own acceptance of atheism. 5. Therefore, all atheists accept atheism on wholly non-rational grounds. 6. Therefore, every atheists just as such places himself outside the sphere of rational discourse. 7. Therefore, it is pointless to attempt to engage an atheist qua atheist within the sphere of rational discourse. I thought this smelled familiar (e.g. “defeator”), and indeed the person who posted the argument points us later to Alvin Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (highly recommended, incidentally) in which this appears. Before tackling premise #2 (#1 is obviously true), but assuming it’s force, what is amusing are the atheists’ response to the posting. One fellow wrote, “Both empiricism and rationalism have brought us this far, and have served us well. To deny this fact is just a delusional claim.” Another said, “While that’s fortunate for theists, we can test our faulty reasoning against reality. Unfortunately, under theism we can’t trust reality.” Premise #2 asserts the fallibility, untrustworthiness, and groundlessness of human reasoning under the assumption of naturalism, therefore to answer, as these atheists implicitly do, that “I love muh rationality and muh naturalism” is no better than saying “Is not!” to the argument’s “Is so!” As we all know by now, all probability is conditional, and premise #2 speaks of probability. What are the conditions the argument has in mind that makes the reliability of human reason “astronomically improbable”? Naturalism is, of course, the philosophy that supernaturalism is false; a theorem of naturalism is that all that exists is matter and energy and various forces between them, i.e. the material world. That’s one condition, and a restatement of premise #1. We’re here and arguing and thus using some form of intellectual apparatus, so, accepting naturalism, we had to get here somehow and develop this apparatus. Call that somehow evolution, or whatever you like, as long as you don’t appeal to God and immaterial intellects and so on. Now what guarantee is there that the mechanism that brought us to this point aligns our intellectual facilities with the truth? None whatsoever. It is common to declare that evolution, operating in whatever mechanism you have in mind, caused our brains to produce ideas and convictions aligned with that which enhances our procreative abilities. Yet there no proof these ideas and convictions must be what is true. You can argue that they must be, but then you are arguing in circles, assuming what you wish to prove. Because it is logically possible that evolution caused us to believe what is false (at some times or even most times) or to reason badly. All we can say for sure is that we’re here. There is no proof on any conjecture beyond that. After all, dear atheist, it is true, is it not?, that the vast, vast majority of those who have ever lived have accepted supernaturalism and have managed to reproduce just fine. Yes? Given the relative performance of baby making, the religious have been and are still superior — on average, of course. Thus, rationality, if it be true, appears deleterious, especially when rationality causes some kind of socialism (this is only a mild joke). You may say you have designed an experiment to test whether our intellects are aligned with the truth, but this experiment, however it is constructed, must assume what it seeks to prove. At the least, we have to assume our intellects can map from experiments to truth, and there is no proof of that. It is only an assumption. It could be — it is logically possible — we have a built-in observational bias which causes us to misinterpret from only a few things to everything we see. Of course, all of this is absurd; our intellects work just fine. Mathematics is in no danger, neither is philosophical argumentation like this. But that is because there is an Ultimate Grounding and reason for us to trust our rationality. https://wmbriggs.com/post/22122/

Truthfreedom

Bornagain77, My pleasure :) Dr. Bonnette is excellent (an oasis of mental peace and welcoming logic among all the atheist insanity). Pinker non-sense:

The Brain: The Mystery of Consciousness – STEVEN PINKER – Monday, Jan. 29, 2007 Part II THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL Another startling conclusion from the science of consciousness is that the intuitive feeling we have that there’s an executive “I” that sits in a control room of our brain, scanning the screens of the senses and pushing the buttons of the muscles, is an illusion.

- It is no longer an illusion then if Mr. Pinker "knows" that is a "trick". An illusion is something that cheats on you without you knowing it. - Millions of years of evolution have "programmed" us to be "under the illusion of consciousness". Except certain 'chosen ones' (darwinists) that are not tricked, of course. And look at all the materialists that have been freed of the 'God delusion' program. Me, I would hire a better "programmer". Because this "evolution" thing is not very professional. Truthfreedom

Seversky

Atheists experience beauty and all the other pleasures of life just like anyone else.

As if you had an alternative. If your bain has been 'programmed' to make you experience 'beauty', then you are going to experience beauty. FULL STOP. Truthfreedom

Challenge to all Darwinian thinkers Science is influenced by your genes and scientists are subject to genetic predispositions in their conclusions, scientific Consensus is simply a group of individuals with similar genes and Dispositions AaronS1978

Actually many Darwinians defend the idea of consciousness because if it was epiphenominal it would not have evolved at all and would have disappeared So it’s not an illusion they also argue for free will in many cases to as a very useful adaptive strategy AaronS1978

Seversky, since you pretend to defend science, I have an experiment to put this entire 'is consciousness an illusion?' question to rest. Since consciousness is held, by Darwinian materialists, to be an illusion generated by the brain, and illusions, by definition, prevent us from seeing reality as it really is, then I propose that we remove your consciousness from you, (via general anesthesia, preferably by Dr. Stuart Hameroff who is a anesthesiologist), so we can see the reality of the situation much more clearly and see if you have anything interesting to say about consciousness being an illusion of the brain when that illusion that is preventing us from seeing reality as it really is removed from your brain. :) I would even be willing to have Dr. Hameroff perform to experiment repeatedly on you, thousands of times if necessary, so as to make the conclusion of the experiment all the more reliable and 'scientific'. :)

STUART R. HAMEROFF, MD https://www.quantumconsciousness.org/content/overview-sh Director, Center for Consciousness Studies Professor Emeritus Department of Anesthesiology, College of Medicine, University of Arizona and Department of Psychology Banner – University Medical Center Tucson Quantum Consciousness Theorist & Researcher hameroff@u.arizona.edu

bornagain77

Bornagain77 @ 2

For example, besides claiming that consciousness is an illusion, Darwinian materialists also claim that free will is an illusion,

Do you deny you are a product of your history? Do you deny that you have inherited traits from your parents? Was your sexual orientation consciously chosen by you at an early age? Could you change that orientation now just by an effort of will? To what extent can you say you have free will?

Why Evolutionary Theory Cannot Survive Itself – Nancy Pearcey – March 8, 2015 Excerpt: Steven Pinker writes, “Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.” The upshot is that survival is no guarantee of truth. If survival is the only standard, we can never know which ideas are true and which are adaptive but false.

"Fitness", in the evolutionary sense, refers to the ability to survive in a given environment. The more accurate or truthful our understanding of that environment is the better our chances of survival in it are going to be. In terms of survival, searching for the truth has a clear advantage over falsehoods in terms of survival.

On top of that, the Darwinian materialist is also forced to believe that his perceptions of reality are also illusory,

No, we believe like Steven Novella that it is most likely a "constructed representation".

The Darwinian materialist is forced to make up these illusory “just so stories” so as to ‘explain away’ the overwhelming appearance of design, which is to say to ‘explain away’ the overwhelming illusion of design

Materialists are well aware (mostly) that "just so" stories, without any evidence, are just that. In the absence of a known designer, the appearance of design is just that. We're pretty sure we didn't design those things that have that appearance so either there's an unknown designer or that appearance is just a for of pareidolia.

On top of that, the Darwinian materialist also must make up illusory meaning and purposes for his life since the hopelessness inherent in his nihilistic worldview is simply too much for him to bear,

And one can argue that religion exists for the same reason, because the hopelessness of the alternative is just as intolerable. But if all purposes are simply the inventions of a "purposer" then why should some other being's purposes be any better than ours?

On top of that, the Darwinian materialist is also forced to hold morality is subjective and illusory,, i.e. no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

If you can't derive "ought" from "is" then morality is inevitably subjective, even God's.

To say that such a view of reality where beauty, meaning and purpose, are complete illusions is an impoverished view of reality is to insult the truly impoverished people of the world who at least believe in God in spite of their material poverty. IMHO, they, with their faith in God, are, spiritually speaking, immensely richer than any academic atheist in America is.

Atheists experience beauty and all the other pleasures of life just like anyone else. We don't deny ourselves some of them just because some argue that they are "sinful" And the poor cling to religion because they are left with little else, the wealthy have grabbed most of the wealth for themselves. Seversky

And using the power of Darwinian Evolution Seversky presents his argument because of the fact that he has experienced a flight or flight syndrome which was inherited from millions of year of evolution and developed further from the interaction of our ancestors during the hunter gatherer phase AaronS1978

Truthfreedom, thanks for the link to Dr. Dennis Bonnette's article Naturalism’s Epistemological Nightmare. It's a keeper.

Naturalism’s Epistemological Nightmare - Dr. Dennis Bonnette https://strangenotions.com/naturalisms-epistemological-nightmare/

bornagain77

@

A particularly crystal clear example of this is when Richard Dawkins, (in a debate with Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams), stated that he agreed with materialistic philosophers who say that: “consciousness is an illusion” A few minutes later Rowan Williams asked Dawkins ”If consciousness is an illusion…what isn’t?”.

Perhaps Dawkins was making the same argument as our own WJM, that all we really experience is our internal mental model of reality. We assume that the model is representing the 'modeled', something that is out there beyond us but we have no way of distinguishing between an objective reality and a Matrix-like simulation. Aren't there those who argue that this whole reality is just thoughts in the mind of God?

Here are a few more quotes by atheistic materialists claiming that consciousness is just an illusion,

Personally, as an agnostic/atheist anathema, I believe that there is an objective reality beyond and we live our everyday lives in a mental model of that reality built on data coming in through our senses. It's not an entirely accurate model because our senses only provide a limited amount of data about what is out there, we don't see by infrared or ultraviolet or X-ray for example, but it's good enough for getting around in reasonable safety. But that's an assumption on my part. There's no way for me to prove it that I can see.

In the following video Dr. Dennis Bonnette gets into the details of exactly why atheistic materialists are forced into the insane position of claiming that they really don’t exist as real persons but that they are just ‘neuronal illusions’.

I don't claim we don't exist as real persons and I don't know anyone who does. But the fact remains that all we actually know is what's going on inside our heads. That could all be nothing more than a simulation.

And as Erwin Schroedinger himself succinctly put it, “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms.,,, It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”

Schroedinger was an eminent quantum physicist but not a psychologist or neurobiologist so he was speculating outside his own field. He clearly had no more idea how to solve the hard problem of consciousness than anyone else.

And as Eugene Wigner himself observed, “The principal argument (against materialism) 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.”

Which is what we've been saying earlier. Seversky

In the following video Dr. Dennis Bonnette gets into the details of exactly why atheistic materialists are forced into the insane position of claiming that they really don’t exist as real persons but that they are just ‘neuronal illusions’.

Dr. Dennis Bonnette is an incredible person (and yes, he DOES exist!) :) Thank you Bornagain77! Naturalism's Epistemological Nightmare

"Empirical verification presupposes epistemological realism—meaning that through sensation we know directly the exterior physical world around us. Natural science proclaims that it discovers the nature of the real physical cosmos, external to our brains or subjective selves. Yet, when we trace the optics and physiology of the sense of sight, we find ourselves entrapped in epistemological idealism -- meaning that we do not know external reality, but rather merely some change within our brains that we hope to be an accurate representation of the external world."

Dr. Dennis Bonnette https://strangenotions.com/naturalisms-epistemological-nightmare/ Truthfreedom

Rowan Williams' response to Richard Dawkins, ”If consciousness is an illusion…what isn’t?” is far more than just a rhetorical talking point in a debate. The denial of the primacy of consciousness, by atheistic materialists, effects everything downstream from it. For example, besides claiming that consciousness is an illusion, Darwinian materialists also claim that free will is an illusion,

THE ILLUSION OF FREE WILL - Sam Harris - 2012 Excerpt: "Free will is an illusion so convincing that people simply refuse to believe that we don’t have it." - Jerry Coyne - Darwinian atheist https://samharris.org/the-illusion-of-free-will/ Free Will: Weighing Truth and Experience - Do our beliefs matter? - Mar 22, 2012 Excerpt: If we acknowledge just how much we don’t know about the conscious mind, perhaps we would be a bit more humble. We have so much confidence in our materialist assumptions (which are assumptions, not facts) that something like free will is denied in principle. Maybe it doesn’t exist, but I don’t really know that. Either way, it doesn’t matter because if free will and consciousness are just an illusion, they are the most seamless illusions ever created. Film maker James Cameron wishes he had special effects that good. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-brain-social-mind/201203/free-will-weighing-truth-and-experience Matthew D. Lieberman – neuroscientist – materialist – UCLA professor

Besides consciousness and free will, the Darwinian materialist is also forced to believe that his beliefs about reality are unreliable, that is to say he is forced to believe that his beliefs are illusory,

Why Evolutionary Theory Cannot Survive Itself - Nancy Pearcey - March 8, 2015 Excerpt: Steven Pinker writes, "Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not." The upshot is that survival is no guarantee of truth. If survival is the only standard, we can never know which ideas are true and which are adaptive but false. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/03/why_evolutionar094171.html

On top of that, the Darwinian materialist is also forced to believe that his perceptions of reality are also illusory,

Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is? - Video - 9:59 minute mark Quote: “fitness does depend on reality as it is, yes.,,, Fitness is not the same thing as reality as it is, and it is fitness, and not reality as it is, that figures centrally in the equations of evolution. So, in my lab, we have run hundreds of thousands of evolutionary game simulations with lots of different randomly chosen worlds and organisms that compete for resources in those worlds. Some of the organisms see all of the reality. Others see just part of the reality. And some see none of the reality. Only fitness. Who wins? Well I hate to break it to you but perception of reality goes extinct. In almost every simulation, organisms that see none of reality, but are just tuned to fitness, drive to extinction (those organisms) that perceive reality as it is. So the bottom line is, evolution does not favor veridical, or accurate perceptions. Those (accurate) perceptions of reality go extinct. Now this is a bit stunning. How can it be that not seeing the world accurately gives us a survival advantage?” https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY?t=601 “the illusion that our brains evolved to have, a very compelling and persistent illusion – namely that the reality we perceive is real, rather than a constructed representation.” – Steven Novella – academic clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine

On top of that, the Darwinian materialist, since he has no real time experimental evidence substantiating any of his grandiose claims for Darwinian evolution, must also make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection,

Sociobiology: The Art of Story Telling – Stephen Jay Gould – 1978 – New Scientist Excerpt: Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers “Just So stories”. When evolutionists study individual adaptations, when they try to explain form and behaviour by reconstructing history and assessing current utility, they also tell just so stories – and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. https://books.google.com/books?id=tRj7EyRFVqYC&pg=PA530 Why Do We Invoke Darwin? - Philip Skell - 2005 Excerpt: The efforts mentioned there are not experimental biology; they are attempts to explain already authenticated phenomena in Darwinian terms, things like human nature. Further, Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self-centered and aggressive – except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection produces virile men who eagerly spread their seed – except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery. Darwinian evolution – whatever its other virtues – does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion-old/why-do-we-invoke-darwin-48438

The Darwinian materialist is forced to make up these illusory “just so stories” so as to ‘explain away’ the overwhelming appearance of design, which is to say to ‘explain away’ the overwhelming illusion of design,

"Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning." - Richard Dawkins - "The Blind Watchmaker" - 1986 - page 21 "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." - Francis Crick - What Mad Pursuit

On top of that, the Darwinian materialist also must make up illusory meaning and purposes for his life since the hopelessness inherent in his nihilistic worldview is simply too much for him to bear,

How I’m Planning to Celebrate Darwin Day - TOM GILSON - February 11, 2020 Excerpt: Making Humanity Meaningless If that looks meaningless at first glance, it remains so under full-length analysis. To be human (under naturalistic or undirected evolution) is to have meaningless origins, and those meaningless origins mean we live in a meaningless world. Many staunch Darwinists will grant there’s no meaning behind human existence, but still insist, “I create meaning for myself.” But that hardly makes sense. More likely, it’s meaninglessness creating the illusion of meaning.,,, https://stream.org/how-planning-celebrate-darwin-day/ Study: Atheists Find Meaning In Life By Inventing Fairy Tales - Richard Weikart MARCH 29, 2018 Excerpt: However, there is a problem with this finding. The survey admitted the meaning that atheists and non-religious people found in their lives is entirely self-invented. According to the survey, they embraced the position: “Life is only meaningful if you provide the meaning yourself.” Thus, when religious people say non-religious people have no basis for finding meaning in life, and when non-religious people object, saying they do indeed find meaning in life, they are not talking about the same thing. If one can find meaning in life by creating one’s own meaning, then one is only “finding” the product of one’s own imagination. One has complete freedom to invent whatever meaning one wants. This makes “meaning” on par with myths and fairy tales. It may make the non-religious person feel good, but it has no objective existence. http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/29/study-atheists-find-meaning-life-inventing-fairy-tales/

On top of that, the Darwinian materialist is also forced to hold morality is subjective and illusory,, i.e. no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

"In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” - Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life

On top of all that, and perhaps most insulting of all, the Darwinian materialist is also forced to hold, since beauty itself cannot be grounded within his materialistic worldview, that beauty itself must be illusory.

“The foregoing remarks lead me to say a few words on the protest lately made by some naturalists, against the utilitarian doctrine that every detail of structure has been produced for the good of its possessor. They believe that very many structures have been created for beauty in the eyes of man, or for mere variety. This doctrine, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory.” (Charles Darwin - 1859, p. 199)

Bottom line, without God nothing turns out to be truly real in the atheist’s worldview. Not even the atheist himself turns out to be real in his materialistic worldview. Much less are beauty, meaning, and purposes for his life to be considered real in his atheistic worldview. To say that such a view of reality where beauty, meaning and purpose, are complete illusions is an impoverished view of reality is to insult the truly impoverished people of the world who at least believe in God in spite of their material poverty. IMHO, they, with their faith in God, are, spiritually speaking, immensely richer than any academic atheist in America is. So in conclusion, the problem of unrestrained imagination and/or boundless illusion goes far beyond Darwinists just trying to explain away uncooperative "Data points like genes, rocks, fossils and embryos" with 'just so stories'. The problem of unrestrained imagination and/or boundless illusion in Darwinian explanations goes to the very heart of any definition of reality that we may try to put forth, and destroys any coherent definition of reality that we may try to put forth. In short, the Darwinian materialists lives in a ocean of unrestrained imagination and illusion with no discernible anchor for reality to grab onto. It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed, more antagonistic to reality itself, than Darwinian materialism has turned out to be.

2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; Matthew 7:24-27 24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

bornagain77

The problem of unrestrained imagination and/or boundless illusion goes far beyond Darwinists just trying to explain away uncooperative "Data points like genes, rocks, fossils and embryos" with 'just so stories'. The problem of unrestrained imagination and/or boundless illusion in Darwinian explanations goes to the very heart of any definition of reality that we may try to put forth. A particularly crystal clear example of this is when Richard Dawkins, (in a debate with Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams), stated that he agreed with materialistic philosophers who say that: “consciousness is an illusion” A few minutes later Rowan Williams asked Dawkins ”If consciousness is an illusion…what isn’t?”.

At the 23:33 minute mark of the following video, Richard Dawkins agreed with materialistic philosophers who say that: “consciousness is an illusion” A few minutes later Rowan Williams asked Dawkins ”If consciousness is an illusion…what isn’t?”. - Richard Dawkins, Rowan Williams, Anthony Kenny: "Human Beings & Ultimate Origin" Debate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWN4cfh1Fac&t=22m57s

Here are a few more quotes by atheistic materialists claiming that consciousness is just an illusion,

The Brain: The Mystery of Consciousness - STEVEN PINKER - Monday, Jan. 29, 2007 Part II THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL Another startling conclusion from the science of consciousness is that the intuitive feeling we have that there's an executive "I" that sits in a control room of our brain, scanning the screens of the senses and pushing the buttons of the muscles, is an illusion. http://www.academia.edu/2794859/The_Brain_The_Mystery_of_Consciousness “(Daniel) Dennett concludes, ‘nobody is conscious … we are all zombies’.” J.W. SCHOOLER & C.A. SCHREIBER – Experience, Meta-consciousness, and the Paradox of Introspection – 2004 The Consciousness Deniers – Galen Strawson – March 13, 2018 Excerpt: What is the silliest claim ever made? The competition is fierce, but I think the answer is easy. Some people have denied the existence of consciousness: conscious experience, the subjective character of experience, the “what-it-is-like” of experience.,,, Who are the Deniers?,,, Few have been fully explicit in their denial, but among those who have been, we find Brian Farrell, Paul Feyerabend, Richard Rorty, and the generally admirable Daniel Dennett.,,, http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/13/the-consciousness-deniers/ Ross Douthat Is On Another Erroneous Rampage Against Secularism – Jerry Coyne – December 26, 2013 Excerpt: “many (but not all) of us accept the notion that our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” Jerry Coyne – Professor of Evolutionary Biology – Atheist https://newrepublic.com/article/116047/ross-douthat-wrong-about-secularism-and-ethics “that “You”, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.” This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing.” Francis Crick – “The Astonishing Hypothesis” 1994 “There is no self in, around, or as part of anyone’s body. There can’t be. So there really isn’t any enduring self that ever could wake up morning after morning worrying about why it should bother getting out of bed. The self is just another illusion, like the illusion that thought is about stuff or that we carry around plans and purposes that give meaning to what our body does. Every morning’s introspectively fantasized self is a new one, remarkably similar to the one that consciousness ceased fantasizing when we fell sleep sometime the night before. Whatever purpose yesterday’s self thought it contrived to set the alarm last night, today’s newly fictionalized self is not identical to yesterday’s. It’s on its own, having to deal with the whole problem of why to bother getting out of bed all over again.” – Alex Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, ch.10

In the following video Dr. Dennis Bonnette gets into the details of exactly why atheistic materialists are forced into the insane position of claiming that they really don't exist as real persons but that they are just 'neuronal illusions'.

Atheistic Materialism – Does Richard Dawkins Exist? Dr. Dennis Bonnette – video 37:51 minute mark Quote: “It turns out that if every part of you, down to sub-atomic parts, are still what they were when they weren’t in you, in other words every ion,,, every single atom that was in the universe, that has now become part of your living body, is still what is was originally. It hasn’t undergone what metaphysicians call a ‘substantial change’. So you aren’t Richard Dawkins. You are just carbon and neon and sulfur and oxygen and all these individual atoms still. You can spout a philosophy that says scientific materialism, but there aren’t any scientific materialists to pronounce it.,,, That’s why I think they find it kind of embarrassing to talk that way. Nobody wants to stand up there and say, “You know, I’m not really here”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVCnzq2yTCg&t=37m51s

As well, M. Anthony Mills puts the insurmountable problem for reductive materialists like this, "scientific atheists often unwittingly assume not just metaphysical naturalism but an even more controversial philosophical position: reductive materialism, which says all that exists is or is reducible to the material constituents postulated by our most fundamental physical theories. As Barr points out, this implies not only that God does not exist — because God is not material — but that you do not exist. For you are not a material constituent postulated by any of our most fundamental physical theories; at best, you are an aggregate of those constituents, arranged in a particular way."

What Does It Mean to Say That Science & Religion Conflict? - M. Anthony Mills - April 16, 2018 Excerpt: Barr rightly observes that scientific atheists often unwittingly assume not just metaphysical naturalism but an even more controversial philosophical position: reductive materialism, which says all that exists is or is reducible to the material constituents postulated by our most fundamental physical theories. As Barr points out, this implies not only that God does not exist — because God is not material — but that you do not exist. For you are not a material constituent postulated by any of our most fundamental physical theories; at best, you are an aggregate of those constituents, arranged in a particular way. Not just you, but tables, chairs, countries, countrymen, symphonies, jokes, legal contracts, moral judgments, and acts of courage or cowardice — all of these must be fully explicable in terms of those more fundamental, material constituents. https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2018/04/16/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_science_and_religion_conflict.html

And as Erwin Schroedinger himself succinctly put it, “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms.,,, It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”

“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.

This denial of the primacy of consciousness by Darwinian materialists creates an insurmountable problem from Atheists. Namely, for anything to be real for us in the first place we must first be conscious of it. And as David Bentley Hart states in the following article, “Simply enough, you cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious because illusions are possible only for conscious minds. This is so incandescently obvious that it is almost embarrassing to have to state it.”

The Illusionist – Daniel Dennett’s latest book marks five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness. – 2017 Excerpt: “Simply enough, you cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious because illusions are possible only for conscious minds. This is so incandescently obvious that it is almost embarrassing to have to state it.” – David Bentley Hart https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-illusionist

And as Max Planck observed, "We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”

“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), one of the primary founders of quantum theory, The Observer, London, January 25, 1931

And as Eugene Wigner himself observed, "The principal argument (against materialism) 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."

“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.

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