The Christian Scientific Society: The Truth, Wherever It Leads
Details for the Annual Meeting, April 17-18 in Pittsburgh here:
J.P. Moreland, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University
“The irrelevance of neuroscience for formulating and addressing the fundamental problems in philosophy/theology of mind.”
In the first part of my talk, I will lay out the autonomy and authority theses in philosophy and identify the central questions in the four key areas of the mind/body problem. In the second section, I will show why neuroscience cannot even formulate, much less address these central questions. I will also clarify what it means to say that two or more theories are empirically equivalent and go on to argue that when it comes to the neuroscience of mirror neurons, (1) strict physicalism (2) mere property dualism and (3) substance dualism are empirically equivalent treatments of the scientific data. And an appeal to theoretical simplicity does not favor strict physicalism.In the third section, I will show that a simple soul is, but a complex brain is not the sort of thing that can acomodate 3 things we know about ourselves: (1) we are possibly such that we can exist in a disembodied state after death and NDEs have made this beyond reasonable doubt; (2) we possess a fundamentally unified consciousness; (3) we are continuants even though our bodies and brains undergo severe part replacement. I will conclude by point out that while philosophy/theology does not need neuroscience to address its central issues the converse is not true. Neuroscience needs philosophy to do its work.
Michael Egnor, M.D., Professor of Neurosurgery and Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Stony Brook University
“Misconceptions in modern neuroscience”
During the past century neuroscientists have have gained much understanding of molecular and cellular neurobiology. Yet a genuine scientific understanding of the biological basis for consciousness remains elusive. A primary reason for this is the materialist metaphysical predicate in which neuroscientific research is conducted. An understanding of this conceptual error, and replacement of materialist metaphysics with a hylemorphic metaphysical perspective, will deepen scientific insight into the mind and its biological substrate. More.
OT: Dr. Giem has a new lecture up from the book ‘Biological Information’:
Biological Information – The Membrane Code 4-4-2015 by Paul Giem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YgXbHvYuBM&index=21&list=PLHDSWJBW3DNUUhiC9VwPnhl-ymuObyTWJ
The Christian Scientific Society: The Truth, Wherever It Leads
Nice motto. Too bad they immediately spoil it with this:
The Truth, Wherever It Leads… except There. Don’t Go There!
phoenix you ridicule people who hold a ‘very high view of the Bible’ by saying:
“The Truth, Wherever It Leads… except There. Don’t Go There!”
That is an interesting comment for a materialist/atheist to make since atheistic materialism cannot account for ‘truth’ in the first place:
In fact, the belief that there is an single overarching ‘truth’ to be found is a teleological, i.e. Theistic, presupposition. It is not an atheistic/materialistic presupposition:
Atheistic Materialism simply dissolves into absurdity whenever it tries to account for why anything exists, since atheistic materialism insists that, at bottom, everything exists for no reason at all. Much less does atheistic materialism presuppose an ‘ultimate closure’ to science:
Moreover, whereas atheism cannot even account for why we do science in the first place, much less bring ‘ultimate closure’ to science, Christianity can provide both a reason why we do science and also brings an ultimate closure to science:
If these cats don’t include the SOUL as a option for all thinking and so the physical mind as not very important then they are not addressing Christian beliefs.
The bible is clear on these points.
Further the mind could only be a machine and so it could only be the memory. The only thing in man, affecting his thinking, that can be affected by the material world.
Good luck to them and bring intellectual change. Christians have the lef up on the others.