Demolishing Triablogue: Substance dualism is total bullshit

 This is my reply to an article at Triablogue by Steve Hays entitled 

Monday, October 07, 2019

Moreland–is there life after death? 

In this post I'll use "dualism" as shorthand for substance dualism. I subscribe to Cartesian interactionist dualism. I don't subscribe to Thomistic dualism (hylomorphism).

Apostle Paul forbids Christians from wrangling words (2nd Timothy 2:14).  Since in context he is discussing doctrine, and he concludes word-wrangling to be "useless" and harmful, the interpretation which says Paul in his old age disagreed with his prior instigating verbal wars with Jews in synagogues and otherwise defying this principle due to his youthful but ignorant zeal, is a reasonable interpretation.

Notice how little I care about "reconciling" the Paul of the Pastorals with the Paul of Acts and other epistles.  I think it has something to do with the fact that because most Christian scholars deny inerrancy or otherwise cannot agree with each other on its scope, there is no intellectual compulsion upon a non-Christian to automatically attempt harmonization of NT concepts.  If the profferred interpretation is consistent with the grammar and immediate context, that's all that is necessary to render it 'reasonable'.  Merely suggesting that we wouldn't expect one author to contradict himself, and questions of whether the larger context is "equally" important, venture into far more ambiguous areas.

However, even assuming bible inerrancy is true, reconciling my absolutist interpretation of 2nd Timothy 2:14 with Paul's previous desire to start verbal wars is easy:  What does Paul mean there?  Well, we can know what he didn't mean (if we are to assume his teaching were all consistent). He didn't mean you should engage in scholarly arguments about the meaning of words and phrases, because other related advice he gives indicates Paul thinks "teaching" and "persuading" are limited to your "preaching at" others, not interacting with the details of their arguments:

 9 But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and disputes about the Law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.
 10 Reject a factious man after a first and second warning,
 11 knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned. (Tit. 3:9-11 NAU)

First, Steve's hardcore inerrancy and Calvinism force him to classify any arguments against anything he believes as "foolish", so the unbeliever could reasonably argue, if they wished,  that by refusing to consider Steve's arguments, they are helping him avoid foolish controversies, sonething he would be drawn into by logical necessity if he chose to reply to the rebuttals of skeptics.

Second, Paul apparently believed that if you disagree with him, his followers are to "warn" you.  Since under bible inerrancy, he cannot have contradicted his 2nd Timothy 2:14 command to avoid word wrangling, then smooshing all this biblical crap together gives us the following result:  You are to limit yourself to two warnings when replying to those who disagree with Apostle Paul's theology, and those warning cannot consist of conduct that would amount to wrangling of words.

The reasonableness of that interpretation is not going to be diminished or made to disappear merely because the inerrantist reader can thump his chest and confidently boast that surely Paul was not condemning informed sincere scholarly interchange. 

So if the unbeliever wished to use Steve's word-wrangling as an excuse to say he is a hypocrite for failing to follow his faith-hero's basic advice about methdology, they would be reasonable to do so, if they so chose. 

And if Steve obeys this interpretation and he actually stops interacting with skeptics after the second "warning" (as he did with me), then the skeptic could easily get the "last word", then boast that Steve has failed to maintain his position against criticism.  Then Steve's mind would be a whirlwind of "should I respond to protect my pride?" and "or should I just tell my friends that God infallibly predestined me to drop the debate?"

Back to Steve's comments:

A. This is a fairly useful exchange as far as it goes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmfsZ_-Z_OY But it tries to cover far too much ground in far too little time.

So if the unbeliever felt it was unconvincing, there might actually be an intellectually justified basis for her to dismiss this video and regard her need to do laundry as more important than using her emergency rent money to purchase Dualism books by Moreland.

Oh, did I forget?  While J.P. Moreland is hailed by all Christians as an especially smart Christian philosopher, up there with the likes of William Lane Craig, he is not a Calvinist. That is, Steve is foced to admit that not even being a very smart person in Philosophy and the bible, and not even being genuinely born again,  provide the least bit of guarantee that you will EVER correctly understand biblical truths that Steve insists are "clear".

Steve will be unhappy to know that Moreland is an evidentialist, and despite being one of the world's smartest christian "philosophers", still thinks Presuppositionalists see no reason to "correct" a fallaciously question begging approach:

One's response to this objection will turn, in part, on one's approach to apologetics. If one is a fideist or a presuppositionalist (roughly, the view that rational argumentation and evidence cannot be offered as epistemic support for Christian theism from some neutral starting point), then one may say that begging the question is not a problem here. If one is an evidentialist, as I am...

Christianity and the Nature of Science, Baker, 1989, p. 205, fn. 42)

And yes, Steve and Moreland both agree that god's word is "perspicuous" or "clear".  What could be more funny than two Christians who each believe God's word is "clear", who nevertheless still accuse each other of denying the "clear" teaching of scripture?  Steve continues:

Also, Moreland and the interviewer are talking at cross-purposes for a while, which squanders precious time.

Same answer.

B. Moreland probably has far more to say about religious pluralism, but due to time constraints, deflected that issue.

Nice to know you are willing to use your background knowledge of Moreland to justify this speculation.  It will come in handy the next time you berate a skeptic for depending upon his own background knowledge of life to justify opposition to miracle claims, the way a mother depends on her background knowledge of her daughter to justify strong suspicion the daughter is lying...at a time before the mother can conclusively prove such.  You are a fool if you think it's always irrational to use one's background knowledge to justify dismissing a truth-claim.  I don't have all the answers to every trifle a Mormon apologist could possibly raise...so is my rejection of Mormonism irrational?

C. Up to a point, dualism and physicalism are empirically equivalent explanations. Both are consistent with the data that the interviewer cited, viz. memory loss, inability to form new memories, and loss of cognitive function.

Only in the opinion of somebody who thinks a theory that invokes "other dimensions" is equal to a theory that is purely naturalistic, when that clearly isn't the case.  "an angel did it" and "Bill did it" also possibly explain why a book is sitting on a table.  But the naturalist explanation obviously wins hands down apart from very compelling reasons to invoke invisible people and other dimensions.

According to dualism, the brain is an interface between the mind and the physical world.

Which means according to dualism, your mind comes into your brain from another dimension.  And yet Christian apologists want their views to be given equal consideration.

It mediates action or information in both directions. If damaged, the brain blocks input or output at both ends.

You would never say muscular power comes into the muscle from another dimension, because its obvious from the fact of muscle damage = loss of muscular strength that the "strength" or emergent property of the muscle is no less purely physical than the muscle itself.

But no, because the bible teaches the mind can exist apart from the brain, you will fight and die before you'll draw a similar conclusion from the fact that brain injury = loss of mental ability. 

If the brain is damaged, that may block new sensory input. That prevents the mind from receiving new information from and about the sensible world.
 If, conversely, the brain is damaged, that may block the ability of the mind to communicate with the outside world. Memories are stored in the mind, not the brain. If the brain is damaged, that impedes retrieval.

Except that physical memory molecules are real (see here), therefore, when brain degeneration takes place (Alzheimer's, i.e., the actual degradation of brain tissue and not merely blockage of neurons), memories actually disappear after the disease progresses from neuron blockage to actual degeneration of brain tissue.

Sorry Steve, but your twilight zone dualism would fail Occam's Razor before any naturalistic explanation would, regardless of how petulant and petty your endless trifles of language might be when you are trying to defend your position.

The memories can't get through a washed out bridge.

You may as well say muscular damage is why the strength, coming from another dimension through the muscle, cannot manifest as perfectly when the muscle or interface is damaged. Oh wait...the bible doesn't say muscular strength comes from the spirit-world, so that's the only reason you are comfortable thinking the purely naturalistic explanation of strength is permissible.

And before you get all cocky about how the mind = the spirit, you might want to google for that verse that says the spirit can pray without the mind understanding (i.e., not every bible verse agrees that the mind equals the spirit), and then explain to atheists why Paul defended a type of communication with god that is, by definition, 100% irrational.  You don't know what the fuck is going on...but yeah...you are legitimately "praying" to god nonetheless.  LOL.

So long as the mind is embodied, that imposes limits on mental activity.

Once again, your view presupposes the mind comes from another dimension, and the efforts of your cohort Jason Engwer to prove the reality of the Enfield Poltergeist do little more than show that everybody at Triablogue have been brainwashed to the same extent as the fools who trifle that playing with live rattlesnakes is a sign of spiritual maturity.  In both cases, the fact that anybody would dare challenge what they believe, is just proof that the challenger is either biblically incompetent, or being used by the devil, or both. 

The idea that you might actually be wrong about something, is completely off the table in your mind.  In other words, you have equated the posibility of you being wrong, with the possibility of god being wrong, since you wipe both possibilities completely off the table.

What we can be sure of, however, is that the so-called "evidence" for non-physical life is complete horseshit.  I don't care how many articles you write exploiting the minutia of the Amityville Lutz family drama, to pretend that some aspects of their experiences are consistent with demon possession. Gee, I'm pissing myself with worry that there might actually be another dimension or a real god (the historical evidence supporting Jesus' resurrection is incredibly weak, therefore, he more than likely stayed dead, therefore, Christianity is false, therefore, if the emergency backup god you plan to invoke in that case is the god of the OT, then because Christianity misrepresented that god for 2,000 years [i.e.., he didn't raise Jesus from the dead], that god is likely more pissed off at Christians than he is at atheists, since Christians, as teachers, thus receive the greater judgement, James 3:1, while those who are ignorant get lesser punishment, John 9:41).

In other words, when I get rid of Jesus' resurrection, you lose on all points.  The mere existence of a god and my own atheism would not begin to suggest that I was in the least bit of danger.

All things being equal, the scales tip slightly in favor of physicalism as the simpler explanation.

Damn straight.

All things considered, additional evidence weighs heavily on the dualist side of the scales.

Sorry, I've investigated Moreland's The Soul: How We Know It's Real and Why It Matters (Moody Publishers; New edition (March 1, 2014), and now I'm even more certain that dualism is false and requires Paul's worshippers to violate 2nd Timothy 2:14 just to make their case.  That's not the only dualist case I've considered.  (and since you think people are foolish to deny NDEs, the denial of NDEs constitutes a "foolish contention" and therefore constitutes the type of thing Paul told you to stay away from.  Titus 3:9.  You aren't "staying away" from such things when you blog about them and expect atheists to engage, that's rather intentional disobedience on your part to divine command.

D. Moreland greatly understates the evidence for the afterlife. I'll begin by proposing a more complex taxonomy:

Then apparently, if an unbeliever saw this video, wasn't impressed, and dismissed it, you really couldn't blame them.

1. Indirect philosophical evidence for the afterlife 2. Indirect empirical evidence for the afterlife 3. Direct theological evidence for the afterlife 4. Direct empirical evidence for the afterlife Let's run back through these: (1)-(2) constitute evidence for dualism. If there's evidence that the mind is ontologically independent of the brain, then that's indirect evidence for the afterlife. That's what makes disembodied consciousness possible.

Take your best shot, as I'm sure you will tell yourself you'll try.

1.  Indirect philosophical evidence for the afterlife i) The hard problem of consciousness. Philosophical arguments that the characteristics of consciousness are categorically different from physical structures and events. ii) Roderick Chisholm's argument: https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/09/body-and-soul.html

I now respond to the arguments at that link:

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Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Body and soul
The hard problem of consciousness is the best-known philosophical argument for substance dualism, but here's another argument by the eminent American philosopher Roderick Chisholm: 

In metaphysics, he held the view that ordinary objects (tables, chairs, etc.) are ‘logical fictions’, and that what exists “in the strict and philosophical sense” are parcels of matter. Parcels of matter cannot lose parts and continue to exist as the same things, according to Chisholm. But what we think of as ordinary objects are gaining and losing parts all the time, he noted. Some molecules that once composed the table in front of me no longer do so. They have been chipped off, and the table worn away with time. The same holds for human bodies. They gain and lose parts all the time, and thus for Chisholm, human bodies don’t persist through time “in the strict and philosophical sense.” But persons – whatever they are – do persist through changes in the matter that composes a body.

That's foolish, people's bodies get old and then they die, they no more "persist" through time than does a tree or a dog.

Therefore, he concluded, persons are not identical with their bodies, nor with any part of the body that can undergo change.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/75/On_Roderick_Chisholm

Would love to see you work that into America's criminal justice system, something that you would agree is a place where people want to find out the "actual" truth:  the fact that the criminal's body committed the crime doesn't necessarily prove that his PERSON committed the crime (i.e., Calvinist theology:  when a genuinely born again Christian sins, this is not their person, this is only the sin WITHIN them (Romans 7:17, 25).

Now what Steve?  Maybe the fact that mixing America's legal system with biblical ideas of self would cause America to die a horrific death just vindicates the bible?  And then you don't understand why other people say you are completely brainwashed?   How are you philosophically any less committed than the terrorist who praises Allah for each shriek of pain the child emits as he beats it to death?  "God's ways are mysterious" is therefore such a dangerous excuse that this is enough to justify the atheist to dismiss it when Christians use it, and demand either sufficient explanation or concession that the Christian has lost the debate.

CWB9/10/2019 10:57 PM☍Steve, what are your thoughts on his statement that persons – whatever they are – do persist through changes in the matter that composes a body? Is that true, and how do we know, apart from our sense that we are the same person over time? I think that the strength of the argument for dualism is predicated on the fact that my (any of us) awareness of my body is an awareness of a physical object, but no part of my awareness of my personhood (which I call the me inside of me) includes awareness of anything physical, and it is not perceived through any of the [five] senses by which we perceive matter.
 steve9/10/2019 11:08 PM☍That's a good way of putting it.
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And Steve actually thinks stupid trifling pathetic bullshit like this contributes to the reasons why unbelievers are "without excuse" before God.

2. Indirect empirical evidence for the afterlife i) Veridical near-death experiences and veridical out-of-body experiences.  ii) ESP, psychokinesis. If all mental activity takes place inside the brain, then the mind can't know about the physical world or act on the physical world apart from sensory input or the body interacting with its environment. If, conversely, there's empirical evidence that mental activity is not confined to the brain, then that's evidence for the metaphysical possibility of disembodied postmortem survival.

Sure.  Go ahead and give evidence that mental activity is not confined to the brain.   I would have said be sure to use your brain in this endeavor, but I wouldn't want to insult your intelligence.

3. Direct theological evidence for the afterlife i) The biblical witness to the intermediate state.

I may as well be listening to an Arminian quote the bible to prove Arminianism.  Seventh Day Adventists cannot be considered unsaved because they fall within the pale of orthodoxy, so when they give an interpretation of the bible, you are not free to pretend it is unworthy of serious consideration because it comes from spiritually dead people who cannot possibly know better....yet they insist on soul sleep, and that the life of the sinner cannot be separate from the body.

Peter Van Inwagen in 1995 was a Christian and offered a critique of the mind-body dualism he admitted many Christians hold to.  Dualism and Materialism:  Athens or Jerusalem?, Faith and Philosophy, Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers, Vol. 12, No. 4, October 1995.  See another Christian critique here.

I'm not trying to pretend these articles "refute" dualism.  I'm only showing that because even spiritually alive Christians don't find it convincing, YOU are the fool to 'expect' the spiritually dead person to appreiciate the alleged force of your own arguments in favor of dualism. Doesn't matter if dualism helps refute atheism or materialism...you have to first worry whether your own theory is "truthful", and because so many Christians reject dualism, this will always be sufficient rational warrant for the atheist to dismiss your arguments outright as leading to something other than actual truth.  What are atheists intellectually obligated to do?  Address each and every argument that any fool theist drums up?  No.  Are YOU intellectually obligated to address each and every argument for naturalism that any fool atheist might drum up?  No.  And yet it only takes one successful argument for naturalism to overturn your Christian belief.  So if you can be rational to place your own limit on how much research you need to do before you can draw ultimately conclusions about the subject matter, then atheists are going to be equally as reasonable to similarly place their own limits on how much research they need to do before they think it is enough to justify drawing ultimate conclusions.

That is, the childish "I got the last word, you didn't answer this argument over there, you are without excuse, Romans 1:20 has been vindicated!" means precisely nothing, especially to mature people.

If there's good evidence that the Bible is a trustworthy source of information, then that's indirect evidence for whatever it teaches.

And if there's an invisible taco that wants to attack you with bubbles on the planet Pluto, that's direct evidence that common sense is actually dangerous.

ii) The resurrection of Christ That's evidence, not for the immortality of the soul, but a reembodied state. That's what "Christian physicalists" pin their hopes on. However, the immortality of the soul is a bridge to the resurrection of the body. A philosophical objection to "Christian physicalism" is that if consciousness ceases at death, then what God resurrects isn't the same person who died but a copy of the person who died.

So?  We often accept copies as if they are indistinguishable from the originals, such as library books which are obviously different from the finished manuscript the authors turned over to the publishers.

Furthermore, the very fact that Christians allegedly get "incorruptible" bodies at the resurrection is already telling the reader that the person God changes you into, isn't going to have the same personal disposition toward sin that is currently the definition of your very nature.  So "copy" is actually a welcome change, not a concern.  What fool would pretend that the "you" who can never sin again is the same "you" that loved sin previously?  Some would argue that the resurrection is so drastic of a change that the new "you" really is better called a 'copy'.  I can mail you a razor blade if you don't like the parts of the bible that force you into blind stupidity.  They are just paper that can easily be easily sliced away.

And that raises questions of personal identity. If your existence is discontinuous, if there's a break or gap in your existence, then what does God restore? Is a copy of you you?

No, but because the bible says "yes", the problem is yours, not mine.

4. Direct empirical evidence for the afterlife i) A subset of near-death experiences report meeting a decedent who wasn't known to be dead at the time. In a variation, the decedent imparts information that could not naturally be known. If the report is true, that's direct empirical evidence for postmortem survival.

Sorry, I've investigated enough NDE's and there comes a time when throwing clothes in the laundry become more important than saving 50,000 google search hits for me to 'investigate' later.  I don't ask Christians how I should limit or expand my investigations into such things, that's not for you to decide, anymore than it is for me to decide how much you should investigate Marian apparitions before you can be reasonable to draw ultimate conclusions on who or what was doing the appearing.  Unless you plan to say that atheists are under an intellectual obligation to investigate thousands of instances of whatever phenomena you boast proves your case (which would justify viewing you as a pompous fool), you are going to have to admit that there can come a time when the atheist's choice to stop investigating and do something else is NOT irrational.  Since you cannot really pin down when and where that piont would arrive, you are no authority on the matter and therefore that question is not properly yours to answer.  If I decide NDEs are fake because I read a single book by a skeptic about it, you couldn't condemn me unless you also condemn every Christian who "accepted Jesus" at a time when their knowledge of the bible was equally as limited...something you likely wouldn't do.

And you are a fool to pretend that atheists "should' check out your claims, since checking them out requires time.  But if you believe I'll go to hell immediately and forever upon physical death, and you believe I cannot really predict when I'll die, you have to believe that every moment I delay repenting, the more chance I take of ending up in hell.  Given your beliefs about the afterlife and how urgent the danger is for with every passing second, all you are doing when telling me to check out your arguments, is telling me that I can safely delay the day of my repentance, or, If I should happen to die while in the middle of checking out your claims, that's an exceptional situation that means I'll be given a second chance in the spirit-world...you know...the position taken by Lydia McGrew...or...you don't really care whether I actually end up in hell or not.  Reconcile THAT bullshit with the bible!

ii) Veridical postmortem apparitions, viz. poltergeists, grief apparitions, crisis apparitions, Christophanies.
Posted by steve at 8:57 PM 

But enough skeptical debunking of such things has been done as to rationally justify the atheist wife who thinks that in her busy family life, any "free" time she might have would be better spent on family activities that have nothing to do with religion or the paranormal.  That is, the mere fact that you could trifle that some apparitions are true and thus another dimension exists, would not be sufficient to intellectually compel the atheist to "check it out".  I'm no Mormon scholar, but the fact that Mormon apologists continue on and on, relentlessly trifling away in the effort to show the historicity of the book of Mormon, does NOT operate to intellectually obligate anybody to either keep abreast of the latest such trifling, or admit that they are without reasonable justification for Book of Mormon skepticism.  There comes a time when not having the last word or not having a rebuttal argument, no longer counts as evidence of being "inexcusable".

But I'm quite sure that the fools at Triablogue are positively certain that their god would punish them severely if they didn't keep themselves updated on every biblical and metaphysical trifle under the sun.  After all, if they dared admit that their own chosen time to limit their study and start drawing conclusions, left them rational and reasonable, the skeptic could cite such arbitrary choice to justify the skeptic's similarly choosing to limit how much 'evidence' they investigate before it becomes safe to start drawing ultimate conclusions.  That would hurt Triablogue, who insist blindly that because they can come up with arguments an unbeliever refuses to deal with, said unbeliever is being irrational.

And don't even get me started on how the contradictions in the bible on god's justice reasonably justify the skeptic to view biblical hell as completely figurative...so that rejecting Christianity is about as dangerous as rejecting Mormonism, leaving the skeptic free from any intellectual obligation to "check it out".