My reply to Rational Christian Discernment's defense of mind-body dualism

My other blog pieces refuting the mind-body dualism whose biblical basis Christians cannot agree on. See here and here..

The RCD article starts out quoting the non-dualist opinion that the brain = the mind, and that consciousness is a real mystery to the experts:

Monday, September 30, 2019
A Rational Argument For The Existence Of The Human Soul
"In this discussion, many modern scientific thinkers have taken position that consciousness is an illusory faculty created by our neuronal activity. According to this position, our subjective self-awareness is wholly imagined fantasy that has no objective existence:
“Despite our every instinct to the contrary, there is one thing that consciousness is not; some deep entity inside the brain that corresponds to the “self”, some kernel of awareness that runs the show ... after more than a century of looking for it brain researchers have long since concluded that there is no conceivable place for such a self to be located in the physical brain, and that it simply doesn’t exist.” (Journalist Michael Leminick, Time Magazine)
“We feel, most of the time, like we are riding around inside our bodies, as though we are an inner subject that can utilize the body as a kind of object. This last representation is an illusion ... “ (Atheist author Sam Harris)
“The intuitive feeling that we have that there’s an executive “I” that sits in the control room of our brain ... is an illusion.” (Dr. Steven Pinker)
These thinkers all readily acknowledge that our actual experience of reality seems to fly in the face of their description of it — hence Professor Dennett’s “problem of consciousness.” One would think that in order to draw conclusions about the true nature of this problem they would rely on carefully researched evidence and hard facts before informing us that every experience that we have (or will ever have) — from love and morality to the appreciation of beauty and free will — are fictitious. Here are some examples of what the world of science does actually offer on this topic:
“Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious.” (Dr. Jerry Fodor, Professor of philosophy and cognitive science)

Then we start getting the rhetoric:

“The problem of consciousness tends to embarrass biologists. Taking it to be an aspect of living things, they feel they should know about it and be able to tell physicists about it, whereas they have nothing relevant to say.” (Dr. George Wald, Nobel Prize winning biologist)

Biologists don't specialize in the brain's function, neurologists do. 

“Science’s biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness.

History shows us that it is fallacious to assume that lack of current explanation suddenly means "god did it".

It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all.” (Dr. Nick Herbert, Physicist)

Then apparently you haven't read the explanations neuroscientists give for consciousness.  Start here. Basically, it is not coincidence that physical or chemical changes to the brain always produce difference in mental activity or awarness as a result.

Christians of course are free to simplemindedly trifle that perhaps the mind can only come into the brain, so that the mind's ability to manifest itself only appears to be, but isn't actually, affected by a degraded form of the brain.  But since this theory also posits the mind coming into the brain from another dimension, this trifling possibility has a far lower probability than the empirically demonstrable correlations which are always consistent:  to mess with the brain is to mess with the mind, hence, the mind is nothing but the function of the brain, sort of like power to the wheels is the function of a running engine. 

Based on these honest assessments of the state of scientific knowledge on this topic one might think that these thinkers — who have a priori drawn conclusions on a subject for which they seem to have little to no evidence — would speak in far more humble and guarded tones.

No, Christian mind-body dualism posits our mind coming from another dimension.  That's sufficient to render reasonable the skeptic who argues from history that we will, in all likelihood, do for the mind what we did for epilepsy fits and thunder...and find a purely naturalistic explanation.  If you were a real Christian, you'd find obeying Jesus far more important than doing science.  The more you cite mind-body "research" the more you must admit being dissatisfied with the way the Holy Spirit convicted people of their sin before the age of Enlightenment.  If you already have biblical assurance the HOly Spirit will do his job merely by your "preaching the word", then your desire to "help" the Holy Spirit with further advances in science is reasonably construed as your rejection of the sufficiency of scripture. For if you thought scripture "sufficient" for faith and morals, you wouldn't try to "help make it more convincing" with non-scriptural references, just like if you think one glass of water is sufficient, you don't seek a second.  But since you use commentaries the way most people use college books, you are apparently very screwed up on what it means to live out your alleged belief that scripture is "sufficient" for faith and morals.  You may as well say one piece of clothing is "sufficient" for you, despite your desire to fill up your wardrobe with numerous additional articles of clothing.

No one seriously suggests that protons, quarks or chemical compounds possess innate awareness.

Correct, we rather assert that when those things are arranged in certain ways, degrees of self-awareness become emergent properties.

Why then do they suggest that the products of these foundational materials will suddenly leap into self-cognizance?

I don't think human consciousness is a "sudden leap".  As you go down the food chain, self-awareness and consciousness become far more fuzzy.

Is this a truly rational position to hold?

When the alternative is minds coming into our bodies from other dimensions?  Yes.

Exactly how many electrons does it take for them to become “aware” of themselves?

A lot.  Present science cannot give an exact number.  Exactness not required for reasonableness of theory.

Cells do not wonder about themselves, molecules have no identity and a machine — no matter how sophisticated — is imbecilic (without its programmer).

Not true, plenty of experts in artificial intelligence acknowledge that if the sophistication continues to increase, robots will begin to feel self-awareness.  See here.

If our decision-making faculty was indeed an illusion of the brain it should be impossible to physically affect the brain through our own willful decisions and yet research has demonstrated that the “I” can and does alter brain activity through the agency of free will as described by Canadian neuroscientist Dr. Mario Beauregard:
“Jeffrey Schwartz ... a UCLA neuropsychiatrist, treats obsessive-compulsive disorder — by getting patients to reprogram their brains. Evidence of the mind’s control over the brain is actually captured in these studies. There is such a thing as mind over matter. We do have will power, consciousness, and emotions, and combined with a sense of purpose and meaning, we can effect change.”

So Schwartz is a "top-down causality" advocate.  Wonderful.  Other brain doctors are bottom-up causalists.
I'd have to view his notes to make an informed decision about whether his tests were conducted correctly.  I also wonder what he has to say about OCD patients who fail to respond favorable to his treatments. 

Why then should we not consider the possibility — the one that satisfies our deepest, most powerful and intuitive sense — that the “I” that we all experience is the human soul?

of course the feeling is powerful, so is our feeling in every other part of our body.  Will you thus argue that our elbows come from another dimension?

And that the reason that science has not discovered its whereabouts is not that it doesn’t exist, but rather that it is not part of physical reality as we know it and as such is undetectable and unmeasurable by material means.

But since you cannot show that any "non-material" method is reliable, your confessed inability to materially demonstrate your hypothesis makes it reasonable for skeptics to regard it as a loser.  What are you going to argue now?  That the OT predicted specific details of Jesus' life with amazing accuracy hundreds of years before he was born?  Gee, skeptics have never trashed the book of Daniel, have they?

It is certainly understandable that for those who believe that material reality is the only reality this would be an unwelcome notion.

Because we are reasonable to have initial and sustained resistance to theories taht require positing immaterial beings that come into our bodies from other dimensions.  We tire of such ideas when we finish watching science fiction movies.

Nonetheless, I submit that in absence of any compelling alternative and with the obviousness of the reality of our self-awareness so manifestly apparent — it is the rational conclusion to draw."

Nope, you require the existence of an immaterial being who comes into my brain from another dimension.  Sorry, but because the arguments against Jesus' resurrection are powerful, Christians are running no less risk in offending whatever "god" is left, than atheists are.  If you feel comfortable in your current beliefs despite your inability to answer every trifling bickering bit of bullshit somebody can throw at you, you cannot fault atheists for learning from your example and doing the same.

My intelligent design challenge to "Rational Christian Discernment"

The RCD blog posted a piece in favor of ID, see here.

I replied as follows, which is cross-post here because my reply there might simply be deleted:

except that you cannot limit logic merely because of biblical doctrine.  If you believe "complexity requires designer", then that logic cannot be circumscribed merely because it would otherwise destroy some biblical doctrine you currently believe in. 

And yet if you DON'T come up with objective justification to delimit how far you can push "complexity requires designer", then there is no reason to assume such logic would be limited to certain contexts, so that under your own logic, god's creation of complex things necessarily requires that he himself possess at least that much complexity, if not more, in which case god's own complexity also requires a designer. 

You are free to say "the logic has to stop somewhere, and the bible says it stops with god", but skeptics are also free to ignore you when you degrade yourself from "apologist" to "preacher".  You are not achieving your goal of proving atheists to be unreasonable by simply insisting that the demands required of your bible force you to insist that "complexity requires designer" has necessary limits. 

So for now, since you obviously DO think god's complexity can simply exist without requiring a designer, what criteria do you use to decide whether an instance of complexity implies intelligent design?   

Do you have anything more substantive than simply "whether it harmonizes with my religion"?

My mind-body dualism challenge to Roderick Chisholm

The Rational Christian Discernment blog quoted words from Roderick Chisholm to make "A Philosophical Argument For The Immateriality Of The Soul", see here.  

I responded, but because it won't be visible until after approval, which might mean "never",  and because many Christians have tried to avoid me by simply deleting my challenges from their blogs, I cross-post my reply here (couple of typos corrected):

Persons do not persist through time as fully as you say.  Millions of adults will tell you that they are no longer the same as the stupid juvenile delinquent they used to be.  Apparently, the brain's aging is a reasonable explanation for why most adults do not act like rambunctious teenagers.  And we all acknowledge that a certain alcoholic "becomes another person" when they drink.  The idea that people retain their attributes more strongly than inanimate objects is foolish.  Archaeology shows us exactly what the pottery from thousands of years ago looked like, yet this obviously outlives any "person". 

Persons persist through time sufficiently to morally justify imposition of criminal law, of course, but from a technical standpoint, people are in a constant state of change no less than your table that changes when pieces are chipped off of it. They only differ from one another in how often the changes take place.  If you think chipping changes the table, why don't you think brain injuries that degrade personality have changed the person? 

When this is combined with the obvious proofs that the mind is nothing but the physical brain function, and combined with the absurdity of the theory that our minds come into our brains from another dimension, the skeptic is perfectly reasonable, even if not infallible, to deny mind-body dualism.  But as the vast majority of Christians will agree, one need only be reasonable, they need not be infallible, to be morally and intellectually justified to believe the way they do.  The standard cannot be higher for the skeptic. 

This is to say nothing of the fact that some Christians who hold to the "essentials", such as 7th day Adventists, and therefore cannot be automatically wiped off the page as deluded heretics, see no biblical basis to assert that there is an immaterial part of a human being that continues in self-aware consciousness after physical death. 

You run a severe risk of wasting your time in the sin of word-wrangling over a doctrine that could very well not even be biblical.  There's a huge spiritual risk involved in using your lust to argue to fill in the gaps left by a Jesus who never told you to refute the arguments of skeptics.  It very well might be that Jesus expected of his followers a type of devotion and faith that is far more simpleminded than the ceaseless word-wrangling "answer everything" sin that dominates modern-day Christianity and inerrancy-scholarship.  Human tradition is all you have to justify viewing anything in the NT after the 4 gospels as "inspired by God", and by putting so much stock in the full 27-book NT canon, you are elevating the importance of that human tradition to the same level as the words of Christ himself.  I suspect there's a little bit of Roman Catholicism in all Protestant Christians.

Obviously this is just the tip of the ice-box.  To avoid flaming a blog is to shorten the length of response, which means intentionally refusing in a single post to cover every possible point of bickering.

The atheist justification for denying mind-body dualism answers all the "arguments" advanced by the Christians who cannot even agree on whether the bible teaches any such thing (i.e., 7th Day adventists affirm the Trinity, bodily resurrection of Jesus and other "essentials", yet affirm soul-sleep and deny that a person continues in conscious self-awareness after physical death.).

I will be happy to respond to any rejoinders any "Christian" might wish to post.  I simply ask that you keep it to one point at at time, and do not divide your reply into two separate posts to defeat Blogger's word-limit.  Arguing one little point at a time has far more probability of helping us pin-point why we disagree on presuppositions, than if you simply post a rough draft of a master's thesis and then "expect" full rebuttal.  That is the procedure of a stupid clown, not a person concerned to get down to actual truth.

My bible inerrancy challenge to Rational Christian Discernment

A blog called Rational Christian Discernment puts forth a lot of effort to trifle about atheist scholar Bart Ehrman's alleged "errors" concerning the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.  It does this with an article to that effect written by Dr. Peter J. Williams is the Warden, (CEO) of Tyndale House and a member of the Faculty of Divinity in the University of Cambridge. See here.  The blogger apparently cross-posted that article from the inerrancy-fanatic "Triablogue" blog site. See here.

I posted a direct challenge to biblical inerrancy in response to that article.  However, the resulting screen said the post would be visible "after approval".  So there is a risk here that I've endured for years...that my challenge will simply be quietly deleted by the zealous inerrantist in the hopes that it will just go away and allow them to forget about it.

But...I have declared war on all things Christian fundamentalist and Christian "neo-fundamentalist".  If you don't answer the polite knock at your door, it will be kicked in.  You will either admit your dogmatic certitude is nothing but hot air, or you will endure challenge from an above-average bible skeptic.

So to protect my reputation, preserve the challenge and make sure God's fearless warriors for inerrancy are forced into the debate arena, I've cross-posted that challenge here:

I'd like to discuss with you the following argument I have created to refute the doctrine of biblical inerrancy: 

Several inerrantist Christian scholars, along with other conservative but non-inerrantist Christian scholars, all of whom accept Markan priority, assert that Matthew and Luke often "tone down" Mark's expressions or otherwise omit them altogther.   

Why would it be the least bit "unreasonable" for an atheist or bible skeptic to infer from these scholarly admissions that Matthew and Luke likely didn't think Mark's gospel was inerrant?
Have you ever met any inerrantist who put forth effort to "tone down" or "omit" any biblical wording that they believed to be present in the autographs?   To believe in inerrancy is to positively and absolutely preclude any desire to "tone down" or "omit" any of the bible's original words. 

"maybe they were working from an errant copy of Mark" is nothing but a possibility, whereas historiography is an art not a science and proceeds by degrees of probability.  Nobody can win such a debate merely by conjuring up a "possibility".  So if you invoke this particular possibility, I'd like to see the historical and biblical evidence in favor or it, and why you think that "working from an imperfect copy of Mark" conclusion is more reasonable than the "they didn't think Mark's original was inerrant".   

The inerrantist scholars who believe in Markan priority are always saying, without qualification, that "Matthew tones down Mark here", as if they wanted the reader to believe Matthew was toning down something Mark himself wrote, not merely toning down a textual corruption within a copy of Mark.I