Eric Hedin writes:
Do we believe that rational thought is possible?
We may at times reason badly, but we do not thereby mistrust the existence or efficacy of reason.
There are those, however, who do dismiss reason. “There is a thought that stops thought,” wrote G. K. Chesterton.[i] It’s the idea that there is no fundamental basis for reason. Such a self-destructive thought is aided and abetted by thinking nature is all that there is. If nature is only particles in the void obeying mindless regularities, where in that scenario is there any room for rational inquiry?
The atheist rejects faith in God and holds that reality is limited to objective scientific reasoning within the constraints of the laws of nature and the material universe.
Perhaps not all who call themselves atheists are consistent atheists, but a consistent atheist would necessarily adhere to the view that the thoughts in his brain are only the result of interactions between charged particles governed by the laws of physics.
G. K. Chesterton wrote, “It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.”[ii] Thought itself requires a separateness from the mechanism of thinking. If naturalism is true, then our thoughts are not real in themselves; they are only random physical states of the molecules which make up the neurons of our brains. With such an assumption, we could not think. Our thoughts would only be interactions following the laws of nature, unguided by anything higher than the forces between atoms.
What becomes, then of “you”? Naturalism allows no identity of the individual beyond the probabilistic output of the three pound collection of atoms between our ears. “You cannot think if you are not separate from the subject of thought,” Chesterton continued. “Descartes said, ‘I think; therefore I am.’ The philosophic evolutionist reverses and negatives the epigram. He says, ‘I am not; therefore I cannot think.’”[iii]
Our minds, however, are unnatural in at least one important sense: they have the ability not only to comprehend nature, but also to transform nature’s elements into objects and machines that would never assemble themselves in that way. This fact is underscored by the common distinction between natural and artificial, between nature and artifice.
Years ago, I read something that brings the claims of naturalism into a stark light: Naturalism insists that hydrogen gas, given enough time, will turn into people. And since people make the technological marvels of our culture, we can extend this claim of naturalism to say that hydrogen gas, given enough time, will turn into cars, computers, and cathedrals. That’s one explanation on the table. The question is whether we are willing to consider another possibility, that mind is as much behind our finely tuned, unfolding universe as it is behind cars, computers, and cathedrals—the possibility, as C.S. Lewis put it, that “human thought is… God-kindled.”[iv] If so, then reason has a foundation far better than hydrogen gas, far better than particles in the void.
[i] G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Hollywood, FL: Simon & Brown, 1908, 2010), 28.
[ii] Chesterton, Orthodoxy (2010), 28.
[iii] Chesterton, Orthodoxy (2010), 29.
[iv] C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Harper Collins, 1947, 2001), 44.
Excerpted and adapted from Canceled Science: What Some Atheists Don’t Want You to See, by Eric Hedin (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2021), ch. 11.
There is no such thing as a consistent atheist.
There has never been a logical argument for atheism. It is a belief based on assertions.
How do I know? No one has ever presented a coherent rational for belief in it. If Stephen Hawkins could not do it, then assume it cannot be done.
Several months ago Ross Douthat wrote an article on belief in the New York Times that generated about a 1000 comments against him. Not one was coherent. If readers of The NY Times cannot do it, assume no one can as they will have access to the best sources.
Aside: if there are so many who believe in atheism, why? Namely there is no QED proof for a creator which then gives them leeway to not believe.
So there is doubt. Then the question becomes why didn’t the creator provide a QED proof. No one here wants to address that. Instead this so called religious site rejects the largest religion of the world.
Until yesterday default position was faith in God(we don’t discuss which religion is true or false , we discuss the manifestation of faith throughout history ) .Atheism is a malfunction a mind virus that attach to any host who has “pride” . Today “pride” becomes a virtue and not the most venomous act of a human . All the horrors start with pride.
Sometime people don’t have a clue what a wrong action is
From an atheist perspective religion could be viewed as a persistent delusion – a comforting delusion to be sure, which is why it’s persistent – but still what Marx referred to as the opium of the people. And opium is highly addictive. Addicts tell us that giving it up is painful to say the least.
What is interesting is the vehemence with which the faithful attack a theory like evolution and especially any suggestion that human beings and the other apes are closely related. What does it matter? If the Christian God is the all-powerful being it is claimed then what is to prevent it from creating life that changes over time or that the centerpiece of creation – human beings – are a branch of the ape family. It looks to me that the way Egnor and his kind bristle at the very suggestion is a form of speciesism, driven by the same bigotry as racism. The same pride that some human beings take in themselves as being somehow better than the rest of the natural order.
And isn’t Chesterton’s argument in part an exercise in “nothing buttery”?
From an theist perspective atheism could be viewed as a persistent delusion – a comforting delusion to be sure, which is why it’s persistent
What is interesting is the vehemence with which the atheists attack religion using a theory like evolution.
😉
PS: Everybody is worshiping something. This is an universal pattern. If is not God then something else will fill that place as the highest value a person could perceive(worship of science or an actor or an footballer or an musician or an politician…or yourself.)
Maybe, but for one to attribute a delusion to another when they can not justify their own beliefs is extremely ironic.
The last thing I want to do is discuss religion since my POV is that ID has nothing to do with a specific religion. However, ID while not pointing to a specific religion does point to the lack of acknowledging a creator as foolish if not stupid which is what an atheist is doing.
We do not get any sincere objectors to ID here or anywhere. What we get are mocking and inane comments. Which actually is pointing to oneself as a trivial person. We most assuredly get trivial people commenting here.
There is no such thing as a serious atheist.
As to,
Besides our thoughts becoming unreal, a ‘person’ who is capable of having thoughts also becomes unreal, and/or illusory, under atheistic naturalism,
Thus, in a fairly amazing twist of poetic justice, in his claim that God does not really exist as a real person, the atheistic naturalist himself ends up claiming that he himself does not really exist as a real person, (i.e. he ends up denying he is a ‘real person’ with ‘real thoughts’).
Yet as Rene Descartes, via his ‘method of doubt’, pointed out, he could doubt the existence of all things save for the fact that he existed as a real person in order to do the doubting in the first place, “As Descartes explained, “we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt….”
And from the conclusion that he could only be certain of the fact that he existed as a real person in order to do the doubting in the first place, Rene Descartes then went on to use that conclusion from his ‘method of doubt’ as a starting point to then argue for the existence of the person of God.
Dr. Antoine Suarez states the irresolvable dilemma for reductive materialists as such, (paraphrase) “it is impossible for us to be ‘persons’ experiencing ‘now’ if we are nothing but particles flowing in space time. Moreover, for us to refer to ourselves as ‘persons’, we cannot refer to space-time as the ultimate substratum upon which everything exists, but must refer to a Person who is not bound by space time. (In other words) We must refer to God!”
In short, we cannot hold ourselves to be ‘real persons’ with ‘real thoughts’ unless we first hold ourselves to be ‘souls’ with ‘immaterial minds’,
Shoot, besides thoughts, and persons, becoming unreal and illusory under Darwinian materialism, even the supposedly simple concept of ‘species’ itself becomes impossible for Darwinists to explain within their reductive materialistic framework.
As Logan Paul Gage states in the following article, ”In Aristotelian and Thomistic thought, each particular organism belongs to a certain universal class of things. Each individual shares a particular nature—or essence—and acts according to its nature. Squirrels act squirrelly and cats catty. We know with certainty that a squirrel is a squirrel because a crucial feature of human reason is its ability to abstract the universal nature from our sense experience of particular organisms.”,,, ” this denial (of true species) is a grave error, because the essence of the individual (the species in the Aristotelian sense) is the true object of our knowledge.”
And you don’t have to take Logan Paul Gage’s word for it. In 2019, a Darwinist honestly admitted that “The most important concept in all of biology, (i.e. species), is a complete mystery”
And as the following 2020 article pointed out, Darwinists simply have no rigid, ‘one size fits all’, demarcation criteria for what actually constitutes a species.
And as Logan Paul Gage pointed out in his article, even Charles Darwin himself honestly admitted that he did not have a rigid definition for what a species actually was when he stated, “I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience,”
As should be needless to say, if your supposedly scientific theory can’t even tell us exactly what a ‘species’ actually is, well then, so much for your claim that you have scientifically explained the ‘origin of species’. i.e. Scientifically speaking, your claim is worse than useless, and as Wolfgang Pauli might have put it, your supposedly scientific theory is, ‘Not even wrong’.
Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, (and in direct contradiction to their blusterous, constantly repeated, claims to the contrary), simply have no realistic clue how any species may achieve its particular ‘biological form’, much less do they have any clue, (much less do they have any actual empirical evidence), as to how any distinct ‘biological form’, i.e. distinct species, may morph into another distinct ‘biological form’, i.e. into another distinct species.
In conclusion, the reductive materialism of Atheistic Naturalism, time and time again, fails in its explanatory power at every level you look at it. There is simply no ‘biological form’ within the universe, (or even the macroscopic ‘form’ of the universe itself), that can ever be explained by reference solely to microscopic descriptions, and/or the behavior of, material particles. i.e. reductive materialism
And this catastrophic failure for the explanations of reductive materialism lie at a very deep level.
As the following extension of Godel’s incomplete into quantum physics proved, “the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
Verse:
Even atheists must admit rational thought occurs with humans. There would be no response to threads like this without rational thought. The letters typed show intent of thought that forms words with specific definitions. Sentences are formed by rules of the English language. The sentences show intent to make a given point by rational thought, or at least the perception of rational thought through emotion.
Man is the only creature to have rational thought. It is the reason we choose alternatives to man’s inhumanity to man, which is something else that cannot be found in other creatures.
Seversky @
This is a killer argument against naturalism. Naturalism cannot enclose rationality. Case closed.
Seversky pretends that Chesterton’s argument boils down to the faithful attacking evolution and wants to discuss the resemblance between apes and humans. But that’s not what this argument is about. This argument is much more profound: it unequivocally shows that naturalism is a non-starter; that it is an irrational position.
This is entirely false. It does not follow from the non-existence of a personal God that our thoughts lack content or correspondence. Only someone wholly ignorant of basic logic could say something so inane.
Of course it can. Whatever are you talking about?
I can’t tell whether this is Chesterton or Hedin’s observation. However, rationality is found in the regularities themselves. The author doesn’t claim that fundamental particles act unpredictably or chaotically (i.e., irrationally), but according to rules. We determine these rules by observation and measurement. How else would we have discovered these regularities?
The implication that only “believers” are capable of rational thought is, itself, completely irrational….
“Such a self-destructive thought is aided and abetted by thinking nature is all that there is. If nature is only particles in the void obeying mindless regularities, where in that scenario is there any room for rational inquiry?”
Perhaps *that* is the thought that stops all thought.
It apparently doesn’t occur to the (supposedly rational) Chesterton that the particles might be arranged in very complex ways to perform rational analysis. That could have been done very purposely by entities outside our universe, or could have been generated by mutation-selection evolution (if that process actually does generate such things) — but either way, there is no need for us to be “more” than that, in order to be capable of rational thought.
Darwinists commit the fallacy of question begging when they cite the obvious existence of complex life as evidence that mutation-selection evolution could have generated it — but likewise, when anyone cites the obvious human capability for rational analysis as evidence that humans must be “more than” an extremely sophisticated arrangement of atoms, that question too is being shameless begged.
PyrrhoManiac1:
That is not the argument. Try again.
– – – – – – – –
Chuckdarwin:
Obeying mindless rules doesn’t make rationality.
Chesterton again:
If naturalism is true, our thoughts are produced by mindless particles obeying mindless physical laws. IOW our thoughts are produced by stuff that is not at all interested in rationality and has no overview of any kind. So, if naturalism is true, then rational inquiry is not possible.
@13
Naturalism says that there is nothing supernatural: that all that exists is somehow continuous with the world of ordinary sense-experience. Hence it excludes Platonic forms, a transcendent God, and real abstracta.
To say that our thoughts are produced by mindless stuff obeying physical laws is to say that our thoughts lack content — they aren’t about anything, they lack what philosophers call “intentionality” — and that they cannot correspond to how things are, they lack truth-value (can be neither true nor false).
Hence I was quite correct to say “It does not follow from the non-existence of a personal God that our thoughts lack content or correspondence”.
PyrrhoManiac1 @
Under materialism, thoughts lacking content, not being about anything, is just one more affixed problem. Chesterton, as I understand him, stresses the crucial point that, under materialism, thoughts are produced by blind processes lacking all basic requirements WRT rationality.
His argument is conclusive. Naturalism is a non-starter, an irreparable irrational theory.
Origenes/13
You (and the author) keep using the term “mindless” to describe particles and laws. Laws are not “mindless” (unless they are enacted by MAGA legislators). Laws are invariant predictions of how “particles” (matter) will act in a given situation. The mistake lies in conflating “natural” with “mindless.” Equating the natural world with a “mindless” world demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the natural world. Matter acted in a lawful manner long before “minds” arrived on the scene.
Chuckdarwin:
Surely, there is no mistake in pointing out that naturalism is an irrational position. “Mindless” here simply refers to the fact that both particles and physical laws are operating in total disconnect from rationality. If our thoughts are produced by mindless particles in the void mindlessly obeying physical laws, then rationality does not exist.
Hope that helps.
Jerry @1 “There is no such thing as a consistent atheist.”
In speaking of a consistent atheist, I was referring to someone whose worldview is internally consistent with the tenets of atheism. Whether or not one judges that worldview to be consistent with reality is another matter.
Jerry @1: “Then the question becomes why didn’t the creator provide a QED proof.”
Much could be said about this, but it is fair to say that there is enough evidence for God if one is open to belief and there is enough hiddenness of God to freely reject him if one is not open to belief. So, God has designed the way things are to enable each of us to have a free choice with respect to what we believe. Such is consistent with love.
PM1 @10: I appreciate your response to the main point of the post. However, just negating it doesn’t really amount to a counter-argument.
You say,
“This is entirely false. It does not follow from the non-existence of a personal God that our thoughts lack content or correspondence. Only someone wholly ignorant of basic logic could say something so inane.
Naturalism cannot enclose rationality.
Of course it can. Whatever are you talking about?”
The argument you negate is that if only natural forces exist, rationalism is non-existent.
Why would this be the case?
It would be like imagining that a computer came into existence by natural forces, and then expecting it to also become sentient by natural forces.
Natural forces lead to predictable outcomes. Even within the quantum world, probabilistic outcomes can be predicted. Our rationality is not predictable; if it were, we are deluded robots.
Random or chaotic systems are just terms for systems in which the outcomes are difficult to predict, due to lack of knowledge of the initial conditions, or in cases where the outcome is very sensitive to slight changes in the initial conditions. Neither situation is a substitute for anything resembling rationality.
If our rationality is a function of something non-physical, meaning an impartation of a spiritual nature from God, then something other than forces between atoms is at work. It’s slightly akin to having a programmer at the keyboard of the computer, or it’s like having a live DJ on the air with the radio show, or it’s like interacting with a living human being rather than a cadaver.
I hope you can see past my lame examples to believe that a person is more than a body run by a computer made of meat.
Origenes/17
Defining “naturalism” as accepting only physical explanations for physical phenomena, it is hardly an “irrational position.” In fact, it is the only testable position…..
As to PM1:
A fatal flaw in the Atheistic Naturalist’s (PMI’s) claim that rationality can be grounded within Naturalism is that logic itself, (and therefore logical reasoning), is profoundly immaterial in its foundational essence.
As Dr. Egnor noted, “logic — is neither material nor natural. Logic, after all, doesn’t exist “in the space-time continuum” and isn’t described by physics. What is the location of modus ponens? How much does Gödel’s incompleteness theorem weigh? What is the physics of non-contradiction?,,, The strength of Clark’s defense of naturalism is that it is an attempt to present naturalism’s tenets clearly and logically. That is its weakness as well,,,, Even to define naturalism is to refute it.”
Another fatal flaw for Atheistic Naturalists, a fatal flaw that renders their worldview profoundly irrational, is their denial of the reality of free will.
The supposedly ‘scientific’ denial of the reality of free will, i.e. agent causality, by Atheistic Naturalists, leads to some rather bizarre situations for the atheist.
For instance, “if Einstein did not have free will in some meaningful sense, then he could not have been responsible for the theory of relativity – it would have been a product of lower level processes but not of an intelligent mind choosing between possible options.”
To further illustrate just how insane the Atheistic Naturalist’s position is, in their denial of free will, atheists are forced to hold that, “You didn’t write your email to me. Physics did, and informed you of that event after the fact.”
If denying that you are the author of your very own writing is not an irrational position for a person to hold, then nothing else is to be considered irrational.
Moreover, nobody, not even atheists, actually live their lives as if they had no free will,
Even leading Darwinian atheists themselves have honestly admitted that it impossible for them to actually live their lives as if they did not have free will,
Even Richard Dawkins himself admitted that it would be ‘intolerable’ for him to live his life as if his atheistic materialism were actually true and that he had no free will, i.e. no moral agency,
In what should be needless to say, if it is impossible for you to consistently live your life as if your worldview were actually true, (and as if you don’t actually have free will in some real and meaningful sense), then your worldview can’t possibly reflect reality as it really is, but instead your worldview must be based on a delusion.
And indeed, scientifically speaking, the Atheist’s denial of free will does not ‘reflect reality as it really is’. Neuroscience itself, despite the atheist’s denial to the contrary, shows that we most certainly do have free will,
In further scientifically demonstrating that the atheist’s denial of the reality of free will does not “reflect reality as it really is’, in quantum mechanics we also find that, via their free will, “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,,”
As newly minted Nobel Laureate Anton Zeilinger stated, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
Moreover, the belief in the reality of free will, especially the free will of God, (via ‘contingency”), played a central role in founding of modern science in medieval Christian Europe,
Moreover, when we rightly allow the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, (as the Christian founders of modern science originally held with the presupposition of ‘contingency’), and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands with the closing of the “freedom-of-choice” loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), then rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead bridges the infinite mathematical divide that exists between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and provides us with an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”
Verse:
I have no idea what you mean.
I don’t know what “worldview” implies for an atheist so as to judge if it is consistent with atheism. Certainly people who claim they are atheist are all over the place politically, and socially.
I have no idea how love fits in but why the knife edge?
It is definitely based on free choice and it definitely meant to create doubt but why? I believe this is the key question and designed this way. I fail to see how love is a main part of the answer
Also why are people so easily swayed and why is it so hard to believe? My experience with the world is that few people believe but another larger group will go along for emotional reasons because it is good that they should believe.
The CNS is composed of neural and glial cells, not “meat.”
Chuckdarwin @
Naturalism is a metaphysical claim about the entirety of reality — our thoughts included. And testable or not, naturalism is a non-starter in the world of rationality.
CD: “Defining “naturalism” as accepting only physical explanations for physical phenomena, it is hardly an “irrational position.” In fact, it is the only testable position…..”
“it is the only testable position”? Really???
I beg to differ. Besides the fact that assuming naturalism/materialism to be true drives science into catastrophic epistemological failure,,
,,, Besides the fact that assuming naturalism/materialism to be true drives science into catastrophic epistemological failure, the Naturalistic/materialistic philosophy and Theistic philosophy make, and have made, several contradictory predictions about what type of scientific evidence we will find.
These contradictory predictions, and the scientific evidence that we now have in hand, can be tested against one another to see if either Naturalism/materialism or Theism is true.
As you can see when we remove the artificial imposition of the materialistic philosophy (methodological naturalism), from the scientific method, and look carefully at the predictions of both the materialistic philosophy and the Theistic philosophy, side by side, we find the scientific method is very good at pointing us in the direction of Theism as the true explanation. – In fact modern science is even very good at pointing us to Christianity as the solution to the much sought after ‘theory of everything’
Verse:
BOOM!!
And along come pretty little niche so rationale is busting out all over.
The consciousness niche and rationality niche were there waiting to create. All it took was the make believe niche.
In reality, niches destroy not create something new. UD is full of niches, one is the fools niche for which there is great competition.
Aside: I recently saw Carousel which is the source of the metaphor.
@20
This contains, I think, the main idea that I disagree with: that “natural forces lead to predictable outcomes”. If that were right, then I can see how the rest of what you say might follow.
I think this is wrong because it relies upon a certain version of reductive materialism. Specifically, it assumes that biological phenomena can be reduced to physical ones. But I don’t think that they can be.
Physical phenomena are, for the most part, governed by entailing laws: once we know the laws that describe the behavior of a system, and we know the boundary conditions of that system, we can predict how the system will change over time.
But life is not like that. The boundary conditions are not given in advance. There are no entailing laws that prestate what ecological niches will emerge. Life is fundamentally unprestatable. (For more, see No entailing laws, but enablemement in the evolution of the biosphere, The world is not a theorem, and for the daring, the magisterial and incomparable Life Itself by Robert Rosen.
If life itself is fundamentally different from non-biological systems in that it is not governed by entailing laws, then we should reject a conception of “nature” that is based on physics alone.
The next step would be conceptualize cognition in biological terms, focusing on the importance of anticipation. Biological cognitive systems build maps of the environment and of the organism’s body in relation to that environment for the sake of achieving organism-specific goals and satisfying organism-specific needs. These maps allow organisms to anticipate, from what is given here-and-now, what will be available at different times and places. These maps needed to be updatable based on what happens to the organism — in other words, organisms needed to be able to learn. The evolution of learning was a huge leap forward in kinds of neurocognitive systems.
What language allows us to do, I think, is that it gives us a format in which to encode our neurobiological map-based inferences, make those inferences available to others, who can then issue corrections based on their neurobiological inferential maps. That is: argumentation drove the evolution of human rationality: arguments about where to hunt, where to camp, how to build an efficient and weather-resistant shelter, etc.
In other words, I don’t think there is any obstacle to a naturalistic account of rationality, if one begins with what naturalists themselves actually think naturalism is, and not with what their opponents think that naturalism is.
If somebody claims that he is “a neuronal illusion” means also that every statement he make is an illusion(including the statement about him being a neuronal illusion) therefore is like begging(unintentionally) for not being believed. Self-contradiction.
:))) Talking about self-contradiction.
“I don’t think there is any obstacle to a naturalistic account of rationality”
PM1,
Of course you don’t. It would be like saying “I don’t think there is any obstacle to ID or Flying Pasta Monsters, or Zeus, or Something From Nothing.” Your entire post is gobbeldy-gook, and it doesn’t demonstrate anything.
Andrew
@31
Not that it matters much, but I never made any claims here about the self being a neuronal illusion. (I do not find such claims altogether coherent, since they tend to end up in a weird sort of materialistic Cartesianism.)
What contradiction do you observe here?
@32
My post demonstrates that if one were to begin with the ideas that naturalists themselves endorse, rather than with the silly caricature invented by Chesterton, one has all the resources necessary to show how rationality makes sense within a naturalistic worldview.
Nonsense
Only in the land of Make Believe. As said above, gobbledygook.
@34
Well, I don’t quite know what to say. I’ve made a careful study of the history of naturalism, including Lucretius, Spinoza, Hume, Marx, Nietzsche, and Dewey. I keep up with developments in cognitive neuroscience, theoretical biology, history of philosophy of biology, and evolutionary theory. Are you seriously suggesting that someone who has taken the time to understand naturalism is less reliable than someone who has constructed a silly little caricature based on what they imagine naturalism is?
Yes.
You presented a lot of nonsense. It’s like you had a Bingo card with a lot of unrelated words on it that sounded esoteric and you covered them all.
As said, gobbledygook.
If you actually understood naturalism, you would be able to explain it in simple terms. And then how it could possibly lead to life, then rational thought and discourse.
Simple enough for Jerry to understand? Not sure about that.
36
If there’s something specific that you didn’t understand, by all means say so. I can’t do anything with “it’s all nonsense to me!”
it’s all nonsense
So start over with simple ideas. That may work if there is anything really there. My guess by your answer that there is nothing there.
“Are you seriously suggesting that someone who has taken the time to understand naturalism is less reliable than someone who has constructed a silly little caricature based on what they imagine naturalism is?”
I’m not sure there’s much to understand. Naturalism is ambiguous. So, whatever you prefer.
Andrew
PM1,
I give you as a key case in point, one certain Sir Francis Crick (1994: The Astonishing Hypothesis), raising a first level of the problem:
KF
PS, One certain William Provine, similarly:
My problem is with the notion of emergence or essentially, it just happened. This is part of the Rosen book. For which I only read the reviews. No one could really explain the book.
If such thing as emergence is real, then it must still be happening and one could point to what has emerged at various times in history. But there is nothing to point too. And why not today?
There must also be a mechanism for emergence. Biology is full of mechanisms that obey the laws of physics. Why should emergence not obey these laws too?. Biological systems are complicated and there is no theory on how they arose. To say that they emerged is just question begging.
Life is incredibly complex and unfathomable, the essence of the Rosen book. I agree. How it arose/emerged/happened is a mystery though.
; and 6) rationality does not exist.
It follows that, given that naturalism is true, Charles Darwin understood nothing, since blind particles in the void mindlessly obeying physical laws understand nothing.
PM1@ 30:
I appreciate your thoughts. Part of what you said is:
“This contains, I think, the main idea that I disagree with: that “natural forces lead to predictable outcomes”. If that were right, then I can see how the rest of what you say might follow.
I think this is wrong because it relies upon a certain version of reductive materialism. Specifically, it assumes that biological phenomena can be reduced to physical ones. But I don’t think that they can be.”
In some sense, I agree with you. I don’t think that the “biological phenomena” of a living creature can be entirely reduced to physical explanations. However, I would not suggest that they can be explained by some sort of emergent phenomenon (something that “emerges” from the physical once the arrangement of atoms gets complex enough). This sounds like a belief in magic. Moreover, it (the emergent phenomenon) cannot violate known laws of nature.
I would argue that known laws of physics preclude the natural development of the systemic complexity of atoms that we find in even the simplest living organism. So, the origin of living things must have a metaphysical cause (consistent with God). Further, the origin of thought, consciousness, selfhood, would come from a metaphysical source (or a spiritual source), not from physical phenomenon that emerges from physical arrangements of matter.
It is their presupposition of ‘Pure chance, absolutely free but blind’, instead of God, as the creator of all things that precludes Atheistic Naturalism from ever being rational.
As Wolfgang Pauli himself pointed out, the presupposition of ‘Pure chance, absolutely free but blind’ makes evolutionary biologists “very irrational”, because they are using the word ‘chance’ no ‘longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability’, but instead they are use the word ‘chance’ in such a way that it becomes “more or less synonymous with the old word ‘miracle.’”
The key difference between ‘pure chance’ and miracles being, of course, there is no reason, nor rationale, to ever be found for why something happens by ‘pure chance’, while there is always a reason, or rationale, for why God does a ‘miracle’.
As Dr. Bruce Gordon explains, the materialist is forced to believe in random miracles as an explanatory principle. Yet, In a Theistic universe, nothing happens without a reason. Miracles are therefore intelligently directed deviations from divinely maintained regularities, and are thus expressions of rational purpose. Therefore, Scientific materialism, (Naturalism), is epistemically self defeating: it makes scientific rationality impossible.
This reliance on pure chance, i.e. “random miracles as an explanatory principle”, by Atheistic Naturalists, and thus their denial that there is any ultimate purpose reason and/or rationale to be found for why the universe and life exist, is more than a small problem for atheistic naturalists.
In short, in his reliance on completely free ‘pure chance’ as the ultimate explanation of the universe and life, the atheistic naturalist is forced to forsake teleological explanations altogether,
As Dr. Egnor explains, “It is purpose that must be denied in order to deny design in nature. So the mind, as well as teleology, must be denied.”
Yet, although the atheistic naturalist is forced to forsake teleological, purposeful, explanations, (lest they give credence to the explanations of Intelligent Design), it is simply impossible for biologists to do their research without illegitimately resorting to teleological, i.e. purposeful, explanations.
As J.B.S. Haldane himself honestly admitted, “Teleology is like a mistress to the biologist; he dare not be seen with her in public but cannot live without her.”
In the following article, Stephen Talbott challenges Darwinists to, “pose a single topic for biological research, doing so in language that avoids all implication of agency, cognition, and purposiveness (i.e. teleology)”
Denis Noble also notes that “it is virtually impossible to speak of living beings for any length of time without using teleological and normative language”.
This working biologist agrees with Talbott and Noble’s assessment and states, “in our work, we biologists use words that imply intentionality, functionality, strategy, and design in biology–we simply cannot avoid them.”
And as the following 2020 study found, “teleological concepts cannot be abstracted away from biological explanations without loss of meaning and explanatory power, life is inherently teleological.”
In fact, whereas “teleological concepts cannot be abstracted away from biological explanations without loss of meaning and explanatory power”, the ‘purposeless’ concept of evolution itself can be readily jettisoned from, and/or replaced in, research papers without negatively effecting the actual scientific research of the papers.
As the late Philip Skell pointed out, “In the peer-reviewed literature, the word “evolution” often occurs as a sort of coda to academic papers in experimental biology. Is the term integral or superfluous to the substance of these papers? To find out, I substituted for “evolution” some other word – “Buddhism,” “Aztec cosmology,” or even “creationism.” I found that the substitution never touched the paper’s core.”
In fact, stripping the ‘narrative gloss’ of evolutionary concepts from research papers actually makes the science of the papers, “healthier and more useful.”
Thus, teleological, i.e. purpose based, language is found to be absolutely essential for doing biological research, whereas ‘evolutionary language’ is found to be a superficial ‘narrative gloss’ that can be readily stripped away, and/or jettisoned, from the research papers without negatively effecting the actual science in the papers. In fact, and again, stripping away evolutionary language actually makes the science of the papers, “healthier and more useful.”
If Darwinists are to maintain that their words actually mean anything, and if they are to maintain that they are being ‘rational’ in their reasoning, then this a ‘hard falsification’ of their theory that they should readily accept.
It is found that the very words that Darwinian biologists themselves are forced to use when they are doing their research falsifies Darwinian explanations, and validates the teleological explanations of Intelligent Design.
The most remarkable molecule in the universe is the result of emergence.
That is water. I understand that no one can explain how joining two hydrogen atoms to an oxygen creates the amazing properties of water.
——————-
Teacher: Johnny, what is the chemical formula for water?
Johnny: H I J K L M N O
Teacher: That’s ridiculous. Where did you ever hear that?
Johnny: From you. You said yesterday that the formula for water was H to O.
The concept of emergentism does nothing to change the naturalistic core belief that causality fundamentally lies with mindless particles in the void obeying physical laws. Emergent properties are hypothesized to be not fully explainable by physics, but, nevertheless, their full dependence on the physical layer on which they sit is not in question. It follows that an ‘emergent mind’ must act in full accord with whatever the mindless particles in the void are instructed to do by mindless physical laws.
Conclusion: emergentism offers no pathway to rationality — mindless particles in the void rule supreme.
@45
I can understand why it might seem like ‘magic’. Let me explain why I disagree.
The root idea of emergence is “the whole is different from the sum of its parts”: specifically, the whole has causal powers that are distinct from the causal powers that belong to each of its parts, taken individually.
I think that this is not only true, but it is necessarily true given a correct understanding of causality itself. Causation is a relation: a causal power is the realization of a difference between things. (As a trivial example: oxygen causes iron to rust because of the relational difference between the orbitals in the atoms, such that iron tends to become iron oxide in the presence of oxygen.)
Once we see that causation is always about a relational difference, then it becomes rather easy to see that different kinds of organization will bring forth different causal powers. These causal powers will include the power to bring forth new kinds of organization.
What’s needed to naturalize teleology is to combine this generic account of emergence with a specific idea about the levels of complexity that emergence can bring about.
There are, I think, at least three distinct levels: (1) basic thermodynamic systems, which tend to maximize entropy over time unless additional energy is put into the system; (2) self-organized far-from-equilibrium thermodynamic systems, which tend to resist entropy over time if the system is set up with background parameters; (3) teleological systems, which tend to resist entropy over time by virtue of generating their own parameters.
We know that systems of class (2) can emerge from systems of class (1). (Ilya Prigogine got the 1977 Nobel Prize in chemistry for demonstrating this.) So the $64,000 question is, can systems of class (3) emerge from systems of class (2)?
Right, but notice that “cannot violate” is very different from “can be predicted from” or even “are entailed by”. The only constraint that the naturalist would insist upon is that no emergent phenomena (teleology, intentionality, normativity) can violate the laws of fundamental physics — no violation of the laws of quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, or general relativity. (Or any successor theory to any or all of those.)
That’s perfectly consistent with also insisting that the laws of fundamental physics do not allow us to predict the behavior of emergent phenomena.
If self-organizing far-from-equilibrium systems can emerge spontaneously from equilibrium thermodynamics (and we know that they can), why can’t teleological systems emerge spontaneously from self-organizing far-from-equilibrium systems?
As I see it, here’s the fundamental issue at contention: is the difference between a teleological system and a self-organizing but non-teleological system the same kind of difference as the difference between a self-organizing non-teleological system and a system that tends towards equilibrium?
I might be wrong in thinking that the answer to that question is “yes”. If I’m wrong, then that would strengthen the case for ID. But I don’t think it’s irrational to think that the answer is “yes”, which means that naturalism is not an irrational position to hold.
“The root idea of emergence is “the whole is different from the sum of its parts”
This isn’t scientific. It’s poetry.
Andrew
@49
It’s part of a branch of philosophy called metaphysics, and I gave a very brief argument for why we should accept it, based on a very brief statement of how I think we should think about causation.
If you want to say that metaphysics has no place here, and that it’s just about science and nothing else, then I’ll allow you and KF to argue about positivism and scientism.
PM@
Starting with a vigorously shaken mixture of oil and water, oil aggregates and separates from the water. Behold … “self-organization”.
Why can’t oil separated from water not produce a teleological system, you ask? Because it lacks the ability to make a plan?
PM1
What emerged first, the penis or the vagina? Pick your mammal species. Show your work.
Also describe how a purposeless unguided process made dual purposiveness emerge in the penis, a mechanism for elminiating liquid waste as well as for the delivery of cellular material outside the body.
Again, show your work.
@52
Ha ha, very funny.
Except also no, that’s not at all what self-organizing systems are. I’m referring to what are also called dissipative structures (see also
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33287069“>here. They’ve been known and studied for about fifty years now.
PM1 @ 45
Please see my post for today, commenting on the difference between self-organization as highlighted in Prigogine’s work and the complex functional information required for a living organism.
The suggested causal powers of emergence that you mention don’t seem to arise naturally, although I would again agree with you that once a living organism is brought into existence (for the sake of argument, by whatever means), then it represents a system of which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps this is explainable by what we don’t know about nature, but it seems to contradict what we do know about nature. Therefore, I believe that life, consciousness, and the human mind are evidence of something that can reasonably be described as having a supernatural source.
Neither. First was the cloaca
AF@56. Non-responsive. Stick with the question. AND SHOW YOUR WORK.
Good grief, another commenter with allcapsitis!.
Did you follow my link?
I did. It does not address my question.
Naturalism attempts to have mindless particles in the void obeying mindless regularities to perform behavior as if it is informed by rationality, without that being actually the case. IOW it wants irrational particles to mimic rational behavior – to create the illusion of rationality. It wants mindless particles to perform a behavior that is, from the outside, indistinguishable from behavior that would stem from an embodied person who is factually rational.
Suppose this naturalistic attempt is somehow successful, what’s being achieved? “Rationality is just an illusion, it’s just blind particles fooling us [arguendo assuming that there is something like ‘us persons’ who can be fooled]”?
This would undercut their own position.
As I have stated before, the naturalistic attempt to explain rationality is a non-starter.
@60
We would need to distinguish between some closely related questions if we are to avoid hopeless confusion.
1. Can we be reasonably assured that the physical universe, considered independently of all finite minds, has any causal and modal structure at all?
2. Can metaphysical naturalism explain why the physical universe has any detectable causal and modal structure at all?
3. Does the causal and modal structure of the physical universe allow for emergence?
4. Does the causal and modal structure of the physical universe allow for the kind of emergence that would be necessary for the emergence of real teleology in the absence of supernatural intervention?
5. Do the natural sciences (biology, psychology) give us sufficient detail that one can construct a rough-grained account from the emergence of life to the evolution of mindedness, intentionality, and rule-governed rational thought and conduct?
To these questions, I think “yes” is a reasonable answer to all of them except for (2). But, I don’t think that it’s coherent to explain the causal and modal structure of the universe in terms of supernatural origins, either.
I think that this is one of those points at which the principle of sufficient reason hits a brick wall: we can know that the physical universe has the detectable causal and modal structure necessary for the emergence of rational animals capable of constructing increasingly reliable maps of that causal and modal structure, but we cannot really know why it has that structure.
No, the reasonable answer is no to most.
Definitely 1 is yes but 2, 4 and 5 are no.
Whatever emergence that happens in 3 is trivial for life. For example, water is amazing but has nothing to do with OOL. So is this a no? I believe it would count as a no.
Minds are the only explanation for any emergence at all including water. Some creator made the laws that led to water.
If one wants to keep talking about emergence, they should provide meaningful examples. They should be reproducible.
@62
Well, at least we’ve identified what the issue is. Progress?
Confusion about what?
1. Yes
2. No. In particular physical laws cannot be explained.
3. Emergence of what?
4. No, as I have argued.
5. No, as I have argued, starting with mindless particles, one can, at a very maximum, get to the illusion of rationality.
Questions for PyrrhoManiac1
1. Does rationality require a person who is in control of his thoughts?
2. Do you agree that, under naturalism, all events are caused by laws of physics and can be traced back to events long before we were born?
3. Do you agree that we neither control laws of physics nor events long before we were born?
@65
No, I don’t think so. I think that rationality requires a person who is responsible for what they say and for what they do. This involves acknowledging that what they say and do is governed by rules, both epistemic and ethical. And this also requires the ability to recognize when they have violated those rules and to make amends. It also requires the ability to recognize when others have violated those rules and to tell them to make amends.
I think of this as being different from “being in control of one’s thoughts”, although certainly anyone who has been socialized as a rational being will have some capacity of self-regulation. This involves noticing which thoughts and feelings are appropriate to the situation and which are not, and how to express them in ways that are healthy and respectful. For example, one can notice that a thought is not grounded in the reality of a situation but driven by fear or anger, and thereby refrain from acting on the basis of that thought.
I don’t know if that’s what you mean by “being in control of one’s thoughts,” but that’s what I think rationality involves.
No, I wouldn’t say this at all. Firstly, the laws of physics are descriptions of causal powers and not themselves causal powers, so laws of physics can’t cause anything.
Secondly, naturalism entails rejecting anything that violates the laws of fundamental physics. But that’s all. More specifically, it says that nothing can happen that would violate the laws of thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and/or general relativity.
I don’t think that knowing all the laws of fundamental physics would allow us to determine everything that could happen in the universe. That’s part of the point of emergentism: genuine unpredictable novelties can occur because the space of possibilities cannot be prestated in advance.
Yes, but given my answers to (1) and (2), this is not quite the “gotcha!” that you were hoping for.
I don’t see how there would be any violation of the laws of fundamental physics in the idea that people (for the most part) can and should be held responsible for what they say and do, and can and should hold themselves responsible for what they say and do.
PyrrhoManiac1 @
Utterly baffling. I should probably stop reading right here.
So, according to you, a rational person does not control what he says or does, but, nevertheless, he is responsible for what he does not control.
– – – – – –
Ok. I have tried, but I really don’t want to read the rest of your answer, because this is already too much for me to take in. So, this is where our discussion ends. Have a good day sir.
.
lol
lol indeed. I thought the prosecution was always careful not to pose questions to which they did not know the answer.
@67
I never asserted that we are not in control of our thoughts. I said that I don’t know what “being in control of one’s thoughts” means, and quite frankly I have reservations about the concept of control here.
We can (to some extent) control what we say and do. But very often, at least this is my experience, thoughts and feelings arise and disappear with little guidance. I can deliberately set myself to solving some problem, but the ideas that get generated in the ‘brainstorming’ process must themselves be examined, tested, explored, etc. Sometimes the ideas work out, and sometimes they don’t. At any rate I don’t experience myself as being the creator of all the ideas that I come up with — sometimes they really do seem to come ‘out of nowhere’: inspiration, creativity, sudden epiphanies are real phenomena (at least in my experience), and I’m trying to describe the experience of thinking.
Feelings, emotions, and moods are quite different, in large part because here we’re dealing with the less-than-rational dimension of subjective mental life. Consider all the times that we get suddenly angry with someone for no discernible reason, only to realize much later that the anger was not directed at them but because of some association between how they acted in that moment and how one was treated by an older sibling many years ago.
(There are many cases like this that one could vary with respect to the moods involved and the kinds of underlying unresolved issues of childhood and upbringing that are entangled with those moods.)
So the question, “do we control our thoughts?” does not seem to be the right kind of question to ask, if what we’re trying to do is explain the nature of human rationality.
PM1 @70
Indeed.
Sometimes we loosen our control over our thoughts and engage in daydreaming.
This is important. When necessary, we strengthen our grip, our focus. 13 x 67 = ? Perhaps one can say that we (even) control the extent to which we control our thoughts.
True. Note that, also here, one can, at will, intensify one’s focus/control in order to get to a thorough examination of a particular brainstorm-idea.
All this is true. And there is definitely something mysterious about ‘thinking’. I have often wondered how it is possible for us to engage in impromptu speaking; to spontaneously form sentences. Why is it not necessary for us to carefully arrange each word one by one in a painstakingly slow process? Somehow, when we talk (and think), we are being assisted by a mysterious process that speeds things up dramatically.
However, for me it is clear as day that I am in control when I speak or write. So, this mysterious assistance is an aspect of me and certainly not another person. I say exactly what I want to say. And when a word comes up which is out of tune with my intent (when the ‘assistance’ fails, so to speak) I immediately notice that something is off and look for a better term.
Here we completely disagree. Without control over one’s thoughts, one cannot be rational. If something other than you is in control over “your” thoughts, it’s game over, then you are disconnected from “your” thoughts; from rationality. It is that simple.
1. If naturalism is true, then all our actions and thoughts are consequences of events and laws of nature in the remote past before we were born.
2. We have no control over circumstances that existed in the remote past before we were born, nor do we have any control over the laws of nature.
3. If A causes B, and we have no control over A, and A is sufficient for B, then we have no control over B.
Therefore
4. If naturalism is true, then we have no control over our own thoughts and actions.
Therefore, assuming that rationality requires control,
5. If naturalism is true, we are not rational.