Philosopher Mary Midgeley (1919–2018) on scientism

"It’s not at all clear that the provincial government’s response to the pandemic was any better than what we might have expected from the Three Stooges." Yeah but Crying Nurses and Former Football Players Andrew asauber

A bit idealised? Perhaps, but not too far off the mark. So do you think this guy is doing a better job than Cristóbal Vila of revealing 'hidden beauty'?

Encoding the Fibonacci Sequence Into Music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGJeGOw8TzQ

A few more notes

Do We Live in a "Golden Ratio" Universe? - December 2, 2014 *The curl of an elephant tusk *The shape of a kudu's horn *Hurricane spirals *The distribution of planets in the solar system *A biological species constant, T *The spiral structure of the cochlea ear-bone in a fossil hominin *The logarithmic spirals of galaxies *The structure of DNA *The growth of many plants (phyllotaxis) *The Periodic Table of the Elements *Spiral shells of certain mollusks, like snails *Spiral shells of living and extinct ammonites *Stress patterns in nanomaterials *The stability of atomic nuclides *The topology of space-time http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/12/do_we_live_in_a091611.html Number theory and the unity of science – 2014 Excerpt: We suggest that there is a strong case that this so-called ‘Golden Ratio’ (1.61803...) can be related not only to aspects of mathematics but also to physics, chemistry, biology and the topology of space-time.1 A convincing case for assuming a cosmic character of the Golden Ratio can be made based on the ubiquity of logarithmic spirals. Spectacular examples include the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), ammonites, the shape of Nautilus shells, Hurricane Katrina and the distribution of planets, moons, asteroids and rings in the solar system (Figure 1). The logarithmic spiral is firmly related to the Fibonacci series and the Golden Ratio of number theory. A familiar aspect of Fibonacci spirals is the way they feature in botanical phyllotaxis, the shape of kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) horns and the curvature of elephant tusks. Less well known is the way in which the crystallographic structure of DNA, stress patterns in nanomaterials, the stability of atomic nuclides and the periodicity of atomic matter depend on the Golden Ratio.1 file:///home/philip/Downloads/4033-Main%20document-17047-1-10-20180108.pdf

bornagain77

BA77, a bit idealised but the point is made. KF kairosfocus

kf I've always admired Cristóbal Vila's ability to bring out and highlight some of the deep 'hidden beauty' in life and the world

NATURE BY NUMBERS - Cristóbal Vila https://vimeo.com/9953368 Infinite Patterns - Cristóbal Vila https://vimeo.com/354924827

Here is a beautiful time-lapse video

The Mountain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk6_hdRtJOE

A poem

Why oh Why is it a tear I cry... While beholding some awesome wonder filling my eye? Is it as the Godless nay-sayers say... An evolutionary reaction to perhaps the bright light of day? Is it of no real meaning as Darwin's blind sages insist... Only a quirk of fate that may make my survival a best fit? Oh but NO ! Their fairy tales I shan't believe, For only of God's timeless beauty does this tear dare be Yes, ! And I will bless this tear that springs for the beauty of God's great love, Springing forth when I glimpse His awesome wonders above. For this tear is most genuine indeed, and no meaningless quirk dare stains this tears' creed

bornagain77

BA77, and yet, and yet . . . we cannot live without beauty, cannot. We die inside of beauty-thirst, even a sprouting flower in the narrow window of a dingy dungeon teaches hope and joy by simply being beautiful. without beauty we wither from within and die. KF PS: On principles of beauty, as discussed earlier. Start with Nefertiti, Sira and Mona Lisa. Then, let's go on from there. Just the other day I noticed a tiny, brilliantly blue flower of a plant locally called French Weed, in a garden. Just the touch of a blue like that was a joy. kairosfocus

You're all so stupid. Scientism is just about throwing out subjectivity, it is very obvious. Creationism provides the simple solution. 1. Creator / chooses / spiritual / subjective 2. Creation / chosen / material / objective You see, both subjectivity and objectivity validated, each in their own right, in one coherent conceptual scheme. http://creationwiki.org/Creationist_Philosophy If you look at it from my point of view, of someone who accepts the creationist conceptual scheme, you could see that you all look stupid. You all don't understand how subjectivity works. That is stupid, because the logic of it is directly available to you in the common discourse you use yourself. And many of you support intelligent design theory, while you don't understand the basic logic of intelligent design, which is choice. I guess to see the truth about some things, you first have to accept a judgment that you are not good, stupid. You have to shut yourself up, and accurately reflect the logic used in common discourse with words like choice and subjective words like beautiful. mohammadnursyamsu

And the final nail in the coffin for proving that the Darwinian worldview is 'illusory' worldview that destroys everything about what it means to be human, is the Darwinian belief that beauty itself is not real but illusory. Charles Darwin himself denied the objective reality of beauty and even said that, “This doctrine, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory.”

“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)

And although the Darwinian materialist is, apparently and unbelievably, forced to believe that beauty itself is illusory, lest it be “absolutely fatal” to Darwin’s theory, the Darwinist himself, in many of his arguments against God, is forced to believe that beauty is objectively real. You see, the Darwinist, in many of his arguments against God, will often point to some ‘ugly’ facet of this world, (disease, violence, death, etc.), and then argue that God would never allow such an ugly facet to exist in this world, and, in his simplistic reasoning, the atheist concludes that God therefore must not exist. Yet, like a lie is necessarily a departure from truth, and like evil is necessarily a departure from good, ugly itself is necessarily a departure from beauty. That is to say, like lies could not exist unless truth was first objectively real, and like evil could not exist unless good was first objectively real, likewise ugly can not exist unless beauty was also first objectively real. Thus, in his ‘argument from evil’, and in pointing to things he finds 'ugly' in this world, the atheist is unwittingly conceding the objective existence of beauty, i.e. of the very thing his worldview denies the existence of, (lest it be “absolutely fatal” to Darwin’s theory). And although the atheist may be overly focused on pointing out the ugliness of this world, might I suggest that we live in a world that is overwhelmingly infused with beauty and that the world as not nearly as ugly as the atheist seems predisposed to believe.

BEAUTY, DARWIN & DESIGN – video – 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ax-lkRoES8 The Biology of the Baroque – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FothcJW-Quo

And indeed, the objective existence of beauty, (as the atheist is forced to concede in his 'argument from evil'), is a very powerful argument for the existence of God

Beauty and the Imagination (The Argument From Beauty) – Aaron Ames – July 16th, 2017 Excerpt: Beauty… can be appreciated only by the mind. This would be impossible, if this ‘idea’ of beauty were not found in the Mind in a more perfect form…. This consideration has readily persuaded men of ability and learning… that the original “idea” is not to be found in this sphere (Augustine, City of God). https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2017/07/beauty-imagination-aaron-ames.html The Reason Why God Is the Beauty We All Seek – Sept. 4, 2019 Excerpt: God loves beauty. As Thomas Aquinas asserts, God “is beauty itself”[1] St. Anselm argues that “God must be the supreme beauty for the same reasons that He must be justice and other such qualities.”[2] As the contemporary theologian Michael Horton so aptly states in his book The Christian Faith, “God would not be God if he did not possess all his attributes in the simplicity and perfection of his essence.”[3] The reason why we gravitate toward beauty is because God created us in his image.,,, In a chapel sermon titled, “Can Beauty Save the World,” Albert Mohler explains, “The Christian worldview posits that anything pure and good finds its ultimate source in the self-existent, omnipotent God who is infinite in all his perfections. Thus the Christian worldview reminds us that the “transcendentals”—the good, the true, and the beautiful—are inseparable. Thus when Psalm 27 speaks of the beauty of the Lord, the Psalmist is also making a claim about the goodness of the Lord and the truthfulness of the Lord. While we distinguish God’s attributes from one another in order to understand them better, we must also recognize that these attributes are inseparable from one another.[19]” Mohler goes on to state, “Our job as Christians is to remember the difference between the beautiful and the pretty,” because pure beauty is found in goodness and truth.[20] When we gaze upon ascetically pleasing objects or witness kind deeds in this world, we are at best seeing imperfect versions of the pure beauty that can only be found in God. https://www.beautifulchristianlife.com/blog/reason-why-god-is-the-beauty-we-all-seek

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 naturalistic worldview. In what should be needless to say, any worldview that is devoid of any true and real meaning, beauty and purpose, for life is a severely impoverished, even severely depressing, worldview for anyone to have hold and to live as if it were actually true. How anyone can personally stand to be an atheist I have no idea. It is as if someone had the keys to a luxurious mansion with plenty of gourmet food to eat, and entertainment to enjoy, but instead choose to live their life in the squalors of a garbage dump, eating nothing but whatever rotting food they could scavenge from the garbage. Such an impoverished worldview, as the atheist is forced to hold onto, where everything that gives our lives any real meaning, beauty, and purpose is illusory, goes a very long way towards explaining why Christians report being much happier than atheists are,

‘Believers are happier than atheists’ – Jonathan Petre – 18 Mar 2008 People who believe in God are happier than agnostics or atheists, A report found that religious people were better able to cope with disappointments such as unemployment or divorce than non-believers. Moreover, they become even happier the more they pray and go to church, claims the study by Prof Andrew Clark and Dr Orsolya Lelkes. – per the telegraph UK

and also explains why Christians report having greater life satisfaction than atheists do,

Associations of Religious Upbringing With Subsequent Health and Well-Being From Adolescence to Young Adulthood: An Outcome-Wide Analysis Ying Chen, Tyler J VanderWeele – Sept. 10, 2018 Excerpt: Compared with no attendance, at least weekly attendance of religious services was associated with greater life satisfaction and positive affect, a number of character strengths, lower probabilities of marijuana use and early sexual initiation, and fewer lifetime sexual partners. Analyses of prayer or meditation yielded similar results. Although decisions about religion are not shaped principally by health, encouraging service attendance and private practices in adolescents who already hold religious beliefs may be meaningful avenues of development and support, possibly leading to better health and well-being. https://academic.oup.com/aje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwy142/5094534

and also explains why Christians having less mental and physical health issues than atheists do,

“I maintain that whatever else faith may be, it cannot be a delusion. The advantageous effect of religious belief and spirituality on mental and physical health is one of the best-kept secrets in psychiatry and medicine generally. If the findings of the huge volume of research on this topic had gone in the opposite direction and it had been found that religion damages your mental health, it would have been front-page news in every newspaper in the land.” – Professor Andrew Sims former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists – Is Faith Delusion?: Why religion is good for your health – preface “In the majority of studies, religious involvement is correlated with well-being, happiness and life satisfaction; hope and optimism; purpose and meaning in life; higher self-esteem; better adaptation to bereavement; greater social support and less loneliness; lower rates of depression and faster recovery from depression; lower rates of suicide and fewer positive attitudes towards suicide; less anxiety; less psychosis and fewer psychotic tendencies; lower rates of alcohol and drug use and abuse; less delinquency and criminal activity; greater marital stability and satisfaction… We concluded that for the vast majority of people the apparent benefits of devout belief and practice probably outweigh the risks.” – Professor Andrew Sims former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists – Is Faith Delusion?: Why religion is good for your health – page 100

and also explains why Christians have significantly fewer suicide attempts than atheists do,

Of snakebites and suicide – February 18, 2014 RESULTS: Religiously unaffiliated subjects had significantly more lifetime suicide attempts and more first-degree relatives who committed suicide than subjects who endorsed a religious affiliation. – per uncommon descent

and also explains why Christians live significantly longer than atheists do.

Can attending church really help you live longer? This study says yes – June 1, 2017 Excerpt: Specifically, the study says those middle-aged adults who go to church, synagogues, mosques or other houses of worship reduce their mortality risk by 55%. The Plos One journal published the “Church Attendance, Allostatic Load and Mortality in Middle Aged Adults” study May 16. “For those who did not attend church at all, they were twice as likely to die prematurely than those who did who attended church at some point over the last year,” Bruce said. – per USA Today Study: Religiously affiliated people live “9.45 and 5.64 years longer…” July 1, 2018 Excerpt: Self-reported religious service attendance has been linked with longevity. However, previous work has largely relied on self-report data and volunteer samples. Here, mention of a religious affiliation in obituaries was analyzed as an alternative measure of religiosity. In two samples (N = 505 from Des Moines, IA, and N = 1,096 from 42 U.S. cities), the religiously affiliated lived 9.45 and 5.64 years longer, respectively, than the nonreligiously affiliated. Additionally, social integration and volunteerism partially mediated the religion–longevity relation. – per uncommon descent Can Religion Extend Your Life? – By Chuck Dinerstein — June 16, 2018 Excerpt: The researcher’s regression analysis suggested that the effect of volunteering and participation accounted for 20% or 1 year of the impact, while religious affiliation accounted for the remaining four years or 80%. https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/06/16/can-religion-extend-your-life-13092

Again, I simply can’t understand how anyone would willingly choose to live their life in the squalors of the atheistic worldview. It is a severely impoverished, and depressing, worldview for anyone to willingly hold onto. The good news is that you, as an atheist, don’t have to live your life in such squalor, but you can choose to accept God into your life, and therefore accept all that is truly beautiful into your life, anytime you wish. Verse and Music:

Revelation 3:20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. Brooke Fraser - CS Lewis Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PycBrNP8dXg

bornagain77

Moreover, besides the Darwinian worldview leading to the catastrophic epistemological failure of science itself, the atheist’s own personal life also suffers dramatically with his adoption of reductive materialism which undergirds his Darwinian worldview. For example, the Darwinian materialist, since he believes that his life has no real meaning or purpose, is forced to make up illusory meaning and purposes for his life.

“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. – Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion 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/ How I’m Planning to Celebrate Darwin Day – TOM GILSON – February 11, 2020 Excerpt: Tomorrow, February 12, is Darwin Day.,, ,,, Darwin’s theory “showed” that the human species was the product of unintended accidents (random variation) and natural selection. Natural selection means “survival of the fittest,” where “fittest” is known only by “that which survives.” Every species that’s ever appeared on earth was the product of accidents and the survival of, well, the survivors. 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.,,, - per the stream org

The reason why atheists are forced to make up illusory meaning and purposes for their life is because it is simply 'unbearable' for anyone to live as if their life truly had no meaning and purpose.

"Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose." - Viktor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning - 1946 - Austrian psychiatrist, Auschwitz survivor of the holocaust https://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/8798/20140215/book-happiness-written-man-who-suffered.htm

The Darwinian materialist is also forced to hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God Who is the source for all real and objective moral truths,

“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 Insisting on the truth in times of chaos — Jordan Peterson – David Fuller – May 19, 2017 Excerpt: “Why the hell not every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost? It’s a perfectly coherent philosophy and it’s actually one that you can institute in the world with a fair bit of material success if you want to do it. To me I think that the universe that people like Dawkins and Harris inhabit is so intensely conditioned by mythological (Theistic) presuppositions that they take for granted the ethic that emerges out of that as if it’s just a rational given. And this of course was precisely Nietzsche’s observation as well as Dostoyevsky’s observation. I’m not arguing for the existence of God. I’m arguing that the ethic that drives our culture is predicated on the idea of God and that you can’t just take that idea away and expect the thing to remain intact midair without any foundational support.” – Jordan Peterson – clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Toronto. https://medium.com/perspectiva-institute/the-man-for-the-times-of-chaos-jordan-peterson-2df43c24672f Of note: If Theism is truly a ‘mythological presupposition’, as Jordan Peterson holds in the preceding quote, then morality itself must necessarily also be subjective and illusory, not objective and real. That is to say, in order for Peterson to not contradict himself in the preceding quote, he himself must necessarily hold Theism to be true and not merely mythological.)

In short, if God does not exist, then objective morality does not exist,

If Good and Evil Exist, God Exists: – Peter Kreeft – Prager University – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xliyujhwhNM The Moral Argument (for God) – Dr. Craig – animated video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxiAikEk2vU

Yet, just like no one ever lives their life as if it had no real meaning and purpose, no one ever lives their life as if morality did not really exist.

The Heretic – Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him? – March 25, 2013 Excerpt: ,,,Fortunately, materialism is never translated into life as it’s lived. As colleagues and friends, husbands and mothers, wives and fathers, sons and daughters, materialists never put their money where their mouth is. Nobody thinks his daughter is just molecules in motion and nothing but; nobody thinks the Holocaust was evil, but only in a relative, provisional sense. A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions—understanding himself to have no moral agency at all, seeing his friends and enemies and family as genetically determined robots—wouldn’t just be a materialist: He’d be a psychopath. http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/heretic_707692.html?page=3

Richard Dawkins himself admitted that it would be ‘intolerable’ for him to live his life as if he had no moral agency

Who wrote Richard Dawkins’s new book? – October 28, 2006 Excerpt: Dawkins: What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don’t feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do.,,, Manzari: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views? Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with otherwise life would be intolerable. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/10/who_wrote_richard_dawkinss_new002783.html

To point out the glaringly obvious implication in all of this, if it is impossible for you to live as if your worldview were actually true then your worldview cannot possibly reflect reality as it really is but your worldview must instead be based on a delusion.

Existential Argument against Atheism – November 1, 2013 by Jason Petersen 1. If a worldview is true then you should be able to live consistently with that worldview. 2. Atheists are unable to live consistently with their worldview. 3. If you can’t live consistently with an atheist worldview then the worldview does not reflect reality. 4. If a worldview does not reflect reality then that worldview is a delusion. 5. If atheism is a delusion then atheism cannot be true. Conclusion: Atheism is false. http://answersforhope.com/existential-argument-atheism/

bornagain77

And as if his denial of his sense of self and free will were not insane enough for the Atheist, the Darwinian materialist is also forced to believe that any beliefs he may have about reality are unreliable. That is to say he is forced to believe that any beliefs that he may have about reality may be illusory and not true. And moreover, he has no way to differentiate between his real beliefs and his imaginary beliefs..

“Since we are creatures of natural selection, we cannot totally trust our senses. Evolution only passes on traits that help a species survive, and not concerned with preserving traits that tell a species what is actually true about life.” Richard Dawkins – quoted from “The God Delusion” “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 “Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.” – Steven Pinker “If Darwin’s theory of natural selection is true,… the human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth.” – John Gray “Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under the pressure of discovering scientific truths but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive.” – Francis Crick “Sometimes you are more likely to survive and propagate if you believe a falsehood than if you believe the truth.” – Eric Baum

The belief that any beliefs we may have about reality may be illusory, and that we have no way to differentiate between the two beliefs, simply, besides being insane, undercuts the entire scientific enterprise itself. As Nancy Pearcey explains, “Applied consistently, Darwinism undercuts not only itself but also the entire scientific enterprise. Kenan Malik, a writer trained in neurobiology, writes, “If our cognitive capacities were simply evolved dispositions, there would be no way of knowing which of these capacities lead to true beliefs and which to false ones.” Thus “to view humans as little more than sophisticated animals …undermines confidence in the scientific method.”,,, Of course, the atheist pursuing his research has no choice but to rely on rationality, just as everyone else does. The point is that he has no philosophical basis for doing so. Only those who affirm a rational Creator have a basis for trusting human rationality.”

Why Evolutionary Theory Cannot Survive Itself Nancy Pearcey – March 8, 2015 Excerpt: An example of self-referential absurdity is a theory called evolutionary epistemology, a naturalistic approach that applies evolution to the process of knowing. The theory proposes that the human mind is a product of natural selection. The implication is that the ideas in our minds were selected for their survival value, not for their truth-value. But what if we apply that theory to itself? Then it, too, was selected for survival, not truth — which discredits its own claim to truth. Evolutionary epistemology commits suicide.,,, Applied consistently, Darwinism undercuts not only itself but also the entire scientific enterprise. Kenan Malik, a writer trained in neurobiology, writes, “If our cognitive capacities were simply evolved dispositions, there would be no way of knowing which of these capacities lead to true beliefs and which to false ones.” Thus “to view humans as little more than sophisticated animals …undermines confidence in the scientific method.”,,, Of course, the atheist pursuing his research has no choice but to rely on rationality, just as everyone else does. The point is that he has no philosophical basis for doing so. Only those who affirm a rational Creator have a basis for trusting human rationality. https://evolutionnews.org/2015/03/why_evolutionar/

And as if that was not bad enough for Darwinian materialists, the Darwinist, because of his materialistic presuppositions, is forced to believe that ALL the perceptions that he is having of reality are illusory. Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist, via extensive analysis of the mathematics of population genetics, has proven that, if Darwinian evolution is assumed as being true, then ALL of our perceptions of reality would be 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 Evolutionary Argument Against Reality – April 2016 The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman uses evolutionary game theory to show that our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions. Excerpt: “The classic argument is that those of our ancestors who saw more accurately had a competitive advantage over those who saw less accurately and thus were more likely to pass on their genes that coded for those more accurate perceptions, so after thousands of generations we can be quite confident that we’re the offspring of those who saw accurately, and so we see accurately. That sounds very plausible. But I think it is utterly false. It misunderstands the fundamental fact about evolution, which is that it’s about fitness functions — mathematical functions that describe how well a given strategy achieves the goals of survival and reproduction. The mathematical physicist Chetan Prakash proved a theorem that I devised that says: According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality/

Since reliable observation is an indispensable part of the scientific method itself, in fact reliable is the first step in, and therefore the cornerstone of, the scientific method,

The scientific method At the core of biology and other sciences lies a problem-solving approach called the scientific method. The scientific method has five basic steps, plus one feedback step: 1. Make an observation. 2. Ask a question. 3, Form a hypothesis, or testable explanation. 4. Make a prediction based on the hypothesis. 5. Test the prediction. 6. Iterate: use the results to make new hypotheses or predictions. The scientific method is used in all sciences—including chemistry, physics, geology, and psychology. The scientists in these fields ask different questions and perform different tests. However, they use the same core approach to find answers that are logical and supported by evidence. https://www.khanacademy.org/science/high-school-biology/hs-biology-foundations/hs-biology-and-the-scientific-method/a/the-science-of-biology

Since reliable observation is an indispensable part of the scientific method itself, then the Darwinian claim that ALL our perceptions of reality are illusory undermines the scientific method itself. Fortunately for us, science itself, (real science, and not the 'scientism' of Atheistic materialists), could care less if Darwinists are forced to believe that ALL their perceptions of reality are illusory. Specifically, advances in Quantum Mechanics have now experimentally proven that our observations of reality far more integral to reality, and therefore reliable of reality, than Darwinists are forced to claim via the mathematics of population genetics. As the following Wheeler Delayed Choice experiment that was conducted with atoms found, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”

New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It – June 3, 2015 Excerpt: Some particles, such as photons or electrons, can behave both as particles and as waves. Here comes a question of what exactly makes a photon or an electron act either as a particle or a wave. This is what Wheeler’s experiment asks: at what point does an object ‘decide’? The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/20.....at-it.html

And as the following violation of Leggett’s inequality found, “Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.”

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality – Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: Many realizations of the thought experiment have indeed verified the violation of Bell’s inequality. These have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell’s inequality does not tell specifically which assumption – realism, locality or both – is discordant with quantum mechanics. Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality. To do this, rather than taking measurements along just one plane of polarization, the Austrian team took measurements in additional, perpendicular planes to check for elliptical polarization. They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell’s thought experiment, Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it. “Our study shows that ‘just’ giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics,” Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. “You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism.” http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640

Thus, fortunately for us, science itself could care less if Darwinists are forced to believe that ALL their perceptions of reality are illusory. As far as experimental science itself is concerned, the Darwinist’s materialistic belief that ALL our perceptions of reality must be illusory is experimentally falsified. And as if all that was not bad enough for the supposed 'science' of Darwinists, the Darwinian materialist, (since he has no real time experimental evidence substantiating any of his grandiose claims for Darwinian evolution), is also forced to make up illusory ‘just-so stories’ with the impotent and illusory ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection.

“… another common misuse of evolutionary ideas: namely, the idea that some trait must have evolved merely because we can imagine a scenario under which possession of that trait would have been advantageous to fitness… Such forays into evolutionary explanation amount ultimately to storytelling… it is not enough to construct a story about how the trait might have evolved in response to a given selection pressure; rather, one must provide some sort of evidence that it really did so evolve. This is a very tall order.…” — Austin L. Hughes, The Folly of Scientism – The New Atlantis, Fall 2012 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 EVOLUTIONARY JUST-SO STORIES Excerpt: ,,,The term “just-so story” was popularized by Rudyard Kipling’s 1902 book by that title which contained fictional stories for children. Kipling says the camel got his hump as a punishment for refusing to work, the leopard’s spots were painted on him by an Ethiopian, and the kangaroo got its powerful hind legs after being chased all day by a dingo. Kipling’s just-so stories are as scientific as the Darwinian accounts of how the amoeba became a man. Lacking real scientific evidence for their theory, evolutionists have used the just-so story to great effect. Backed by impressive scientific credentials, the Darwinian just-so story has the aura of respectability. Biologist Michael Behe observes: “Some evolutionary biologists–like Richard Dawkins–have fertile imaginations. Given a starting point, they almost always can spin a story to get to any biological structure you wish” (Michael Behe – Darwin’s Black Box).,,, http://www.wayoflife.org/database/evolutionary_just_so_stories.html

Moreover, 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, they are forced to make up these illusory ‘just so stories’ with the illusory 'Designer substitute' of natural selection, so as 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 “Organisms appear as if they had been designed to perform in an astonishingly efficient way, and the human mind therefore finds it hard to accept that there need be no Designer to achieve this” – Francis Crick – What Mad Pursuit – p. 30 living organisms “appear to have been carefully and artfully designed” Richard C. Lewontin – Adaptation,” Scientific American, and Scientific American book ‘Evolution’ (September 1978) “This appearance of purposefulness is pervasive in nature…. Accounting for this apparent purposefulness is a basic problem for any system of philosophy or of science.” George Gaylord Simpson – “The Problem of Plan and Purpose in Nature” – 1947

It would be hard to fathom a worldview that turns out to be more antagonistic towards modern science, indeed more antagonistic towards reality itself, than the presumption of Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism has turned out to be for the atheist. In short, completely excluding God from science by falsely claiming that God is merely illusory, as Atheistic Materialists do, leads to the catastrophic epistemological failure of science itself, in that that denial of the reality of God forces the atheistic materialist into a ocean of illusion and fantasy with no discernible foundation of 'reality' for him to base his atheistic worldview on.

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 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 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. 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. 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.”

Here is a fitting poem for the 'illusory dilemma' the atheist finds himself in in his denial of God:

A Dream Within a Dream BY EDGAR ALLAN POE Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep — while I weep! O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

bornagain77

As well, the Darwinian materialist, in his denial of God and therefore in his denial of his own immaterial mind, (and besides being forced to claim that he himself is merely a neuronal illusion), is also forced to claim that he, (as a neuronal illusion), is having an illusion of free will. (The atheistic materialists turns out to be an illusion having an illusion :) ) As neuroscientist Matthew D. Lieberman stated, “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.

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 “Your decisions result from molecular-based electrical impulses and chemical substances transmitted from one brain cell to another. These molecules must obey the laws of physics, so the outputs of our brain—our “choices”—are dictated by those laws.” – Jerry Coyne – Professor and militant Darwinist Free Will is a Necessary Fiction (They Claim) Covers writers who suppose that free will is a necessary fiction: that although we don’t have such free will, we should still encourage a belief in it. Saul Smilansky,,, John Horgan,,, Matt Ridley, Genome,,, Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works,,, https://www.naturalism.org/philosophy/free-will/writers-on-the-self-and-free-will/free-will-is-a-necessary-fiction

Yet, although the Darwinists is forced to deny the reality of free will because of his reductive materialistic presuppositions, the denial of free will is simply insane and is blatantly self-refuting nonsense. And here is a shining example of just how blatantly self-refuting the denial of free will is. The following statement by Jerry Coyne should literally be the number one example of a self-refuting argument that is given in philosophy 101 classes, “Free will is an illusion so convincing that people simply refuse to believe that we don’t have it.”

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 https://samharris.org/the-illusion-of-free-will/

As the preceding statement by Coyne makes abundantly clear, the denial of the reality of free will by Darwinists undermines any ability that we have to make logically coherent arguments in the first place. As Martin Cothran explains, “By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true.”

Sam Harris’s Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It – Martin Cothran – November 9, 2012 Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state — including their position on this issue — is the effect of a physical, not logical cause. By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/sam_harriss_fre066221.html

Besides undermining any ability we have to make logically coherent arguments in the first place, the denial of free will also denies what we know to be absolutely true from first hand experience, and is therefore completely insane. As Paul Nelson explains in the following article, the denial of free will entails that “You didn’t write your email to me. Physics did, and informed (the illusion of) you of that event after the fact. “That’s crazy,” you reply, “I certainly did write my email.”

Do You Like SETI? Fine, Then Let’s Dump Methodological Naturalism Paul Nelson – September 24, 2014 Excerpt: Assessing the Damage MN (Methodological Naturalism) Does to Freedom of Inquiry Epistemology — how we know — and ontology — what exists — are both affected by methodological naturalism. If we say, “We cannot know that a mind caused x,” laying down an epistemological boundary defined by MN, then our ontology comprising real causes for x won’t include minds. MN entails an ontology in which minds are the consequence of physics, and thus, can only be placeholders for a more detailed causal account in which physics is the only (ultimate) actor. You didn’t write your email to me. Physics did, and informed you of that event after the fact. “That’s crazy,” you reply, “I certainly did write my email.” Okay, then — to what does the pronoun “I” in that sentence refer? Your personal agency; your mind. Are you supernatural?,,, You are certainly an intelligent cause, however, and your intelligence does not collapse into physics. (If it does collapse — i.e., can be reduced without explanatory loss — we haven’t the faintest idea how, which amounts to the same thing.) To explain the effects you bring about in the world — such as your email, a real pattern — we must refer to you as a unique agent. https://evolutionnews.org/2014/09/do_you_like_set/

And as George Ellis explained, “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.”

Physicist George Ellis on the importance of philosophy and free will – July 27, 2014 Excerpt: And free will?: Horgan: Einstein, in the following quote, seemed to doubt free will: “If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the Earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord…. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.” Do you believe in free will? Ellis: Yes. Einstein is perpetuating the belief that all causation is bottom up. This simply is not the case, as I can demonstrate with many examples from sociology, neuroscience, physiology, epigenetics, engineering, and physics. Furthermore 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. I find it very hard to believe this to be the case – indeed it does not seem to make any sense. Physicists should pay attention to Aristotle’s four forms of causation – if they have the free will to decide what they are doing. If they don’t, then why waste time talking to them? They are then not responsible for what they say. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/physicist-george-ellis-on-the-importance-of-philosophy-and-free-will/

In other words, Einstein didn’t discover the theory of Relativity, the laws of physics did and informed (the illusion of) Einstein of the event after the fact. Again, the denial that we have free will in some real and meaningful sense is simply insane. It denies what we know to be true and real from first hand experience. As Michael Egnor noted, “Someday, I predict, there will be a considerable psychiatric literature on the denial of free will. It’s essentially a delusion dressed up as science. To insist that your neurotransmitters completely control your choices is no different than insisting that your television or your iphone control your thoughts. It’s crazy.”

Michael Egnor: Jerry Coyne Just Can’t Give Up Denying Free Will – April 27, 2020 Excerpt: Someday, I predict, there will be a considerable psychiatric literature on the denial of free will. It’s essentially a delusion dressed up as science. To insist that your neurotransmitters completely control your choices is no different than insisting that your television or your iphone control your thoughts. It’s crazy. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/michael-egnor-jerry-coyne-just-cant-give-up-denying-free-will/

bornagain77

as to:

Scientism is invariably aligned with some kind of excessive reductionism,,,, Scientism often comes with a condescension towards those who don’t see science as they do. Oppositional views are lambasted as the naïve wish-fulfillment of the weak, probably involving unicorns and leprechauns, angels and devils. Scientism, then, is a faith, or at least a value system, in favour of materialistic asceticism. Which means that it wants to say, “Accept the bleakness of reality!” or “Don’t childishly daydream!” We must all accept The Truth, as defined by science, and to do otherwise is ignorant and superstitious.

Although Atheists may sincerely believe that they are the ones who are being 'scientific' and realistic, and everybody else is living in a fantasy land, this is definitely a case where the shoe is squarely on the other foot. Atheistic materialists, with their reductive materialistic framework, can't even define what a species truly is, much less can they define what it truly means to be human.

Darwin, Design & Thomas Aquinas The Mythical Conflict Between Thomism & Intelligent Design by Logan Paul Gage Excerpt:,,, 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. Denial of True Species Enter Darwinism. Recall that Darwin sought to explain the origin of “species.” Yet as he pondered his theory, he realized that it destroyed species as a reality altogether. For Darwinism suggests that any matter can potentially morph into any other arrangement of matter without the aid of an organizing principle. He thought cells were like simple blobs of Jell-O, easily re-arrangeable. For Darwin, there is no immaterial, immutable form. In The Origin of Species he writes: “I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, for convenience’s sake.” Statements like this should make card-carrying Thomists shudder.,,, The first conflict between Darwinism and Thomism, then, is the denial of true species or essences. For the Thomist, this denial is a grave error, because the essence of the individual (the species in the Aristotelian sense) is the true object of our knowledge. As philosopher Benjamin Wiker observes in Moral Darwinism, Darwin reduced species to “mere epiphenomena of matter in motion.” What we call a “dog,” in other words, is really just an arbitrary snapshot of the way things look at present. If we take the Darwinian view, Wiker suggests, there is no species “dog” but only a collection of individuals, connected in a long chain of changing shapes, which happen to resemble each other today but will not tomorrow. What About Man? Now we see Chesterton’s point. Man, the universal, does not really exist. According to the late Stanley Jaki, Chesterton detested Darwinism because “it abolishes forms and all that goes with them, including that deepest kind of ontological form which is the immortal human soul.” And if one does not believe in universals, there can be, by extension, no human nature—only a collection of somewhat similar individuals.,,, https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=23-06-037-f

As should be needless to say, the inability of a supposedly scientific theory, a supposedly scientific theory that seeks to explain the “Origin of Species” in the first place, to clearly define what a species actually is is a clear indication that that supposedly scientific theory cannot possibly be the proper ‘scientific’ explanation for the “Origin of Species” in the first place! And as the OP and the preceding article both touched upon, reductive materialistic explanations also destroy everything about what it really means to be human. First off, if God does not really exist as a real person, but is merely an illusion, then we ourselves do not really exist as real persons, but we are instead merely ‘neuronal illusions’.

The Confidence of Jerry Coyne – Ross Douthat – January 6, 2014 Excerpt: But then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession (by Coyne) that yes, okay, it’s quite possible given materialist premises that “our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” At which point the entire edifice suddenly looks terribly wobbly — because who, exactly, is doing all of this forging and shaping and purpose-creating if Jerry Coyne, as I understand him (and I assume he understands himself) quite possibly does not actually exist at all? The theme of his argument is the crucial importance of human agency under eliminative materialism, but if under materialist premises the actual agent is quite possibly a fiction, then who exactly is this I who “reads” and “learns” and “teaches,” and why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit? (Let alone that they’re morally significant: But more on that below.) Prometheus cannot be at once unbound and unreal; the human will cannot be simultaneously triumphant and imaginary. https://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/the-confidence-of-jerry-coyne/?mcubz=3 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 “What you’re doing is simply instantiating a self: the program run by your neurons which you feel is “you.”” Jerry Coyne At the 23:33 minute mark of the following video, Richard Dawkins agrees with materialistic philosophers who say that: “consciousness is an illusion” A few minutes later Rowan Williams asks Dawkins ”If consciousness is an illusion…what isn’t?”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWN4cfh1Fac&t=22m57s “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 “(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 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 “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.,,, – A.Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, ch.10

The reason why atheists are forced to, embarrassingly, claim that they do not really exist as real people, but that they are merely neuronal illusions, is because the entire concept of personhood is an abstract and immaterial concept that is simply not reducible to the ‘bottom up’ materialistic explanations of Darwinists.

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 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

The claim that our sense of self, that is to say, our subjective conscious experience, is just a neuronal illusion is simply insane. 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

By definition, illusions are NOT reality but are a distortions that pervert our perception of reality. So why in blue blazes should anyone care what neuronal illusions have to say about reality, much less what these supposed neuronal illusions have to say about science? bornagain77

I'm not sure that reductionism necessarily comes with scientism. Big Science always goes beyond the raw facts and adds its own moral imperatives, which are always the direct opposite of Natural Law. 2020 Big Science, which is an extension of the Gaian form, ignores facts entirely and makes up numbers to serve its moral ends. The "deniers" who oppose Big Science in both the Gaian and 2020 forms are far more rigorous about getting the facts right and using proper statistics and logic to process the facts. polistra