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 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.

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".

An atheist kills mind-body dualism

This is my reply to an article by Peter Saunders entitled

THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM

PETER SAUNDERS

CMF FILE NO 18, 2002

Are the mind and the body separate entities, or one and the same thing?

They are one thing.  There is no such thing as "immaterial" or "non-physical" in the sense of real existence that is other than physical.  That's just the result of a toddler smooshing different parts of words together to come up with fun entertaining nonsense.

If they are separate, how do they relate?

See above.

If they are one 'substance', is this substance mental or purely physical in nature?

 False distinction, the mental is nothing BUT physical.  That's why wthen the physical starts eroding away (i.e., Alzheimer's or Parkinson's diseases), so do those things you think are "mental", like memories and thoughts.  Not a whole lot different than what happens when computer drives get old and start losing memory.  It's all physical, even if you cannot see the electrons involved in the process of decay.

The 'mind-body problem', the difficulty of understanding how mind and body (or brain) relate, has fascinated philosophers for centuries and has profound implications for how we think about and treat other human beings. This File introduces some key aspects of the debate.

Stories of out of body experiences, beliefs in life after death, or diseases affecting the brain all raise questions about whether our minds and our bodies are separate entities that have the ability to exist independently.

Out of body experiences can occur under the influence of drugs, as part of religious experience, or close to death. During an out of body experience the person has the impression that their mind (or soul) is somehow leaving their physical body. Some people believe that these experiences are just 'a trick of the mind', but others see them as evidence that the body and mind really can exist independently.

The latter are delusional.  2,000 years of Christian history and scholasticism, and yet nobody has been able to demonstrate that intelligence can exist apart from a physical body.   Except perhaps the fool fundies who insist that certain reports of demon possession are true.

Belief in life after death is common in many religious and cultural traditions.

Grieving over the death of a loved one creates an extreme state of mind that is more prone than normal to think up ways to ease the pain, such as by conjuring up theories that death isn't the real end of this person.  Notice also that a refusal to believe our existence ends at death forever, can be linked to pride and vanity, not mere comfort.

Some people, particularly in the Western world, believe that death is the end of existence. Others believe that we continue to live after our body has died, either as dismembered spirits, or to be 're-clothed' with a new body, either reincarnated in this world or resurrected into a new world.

And Christians cannot even agree on whether the bible teaches that the person continues to exist in the "spirit" after their body dies.  Compare Jehovah's Witnesses and 7th Day Adventists, with traditional Protestantism and Catholicism.

Schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease are two examples of diseases affecting the mind where only the 'shell' of the original person appears to be left. Relatives and carers are left caring for those who appear utterly different from the people they once knew and loved. What actually happens when the mind goes?

Nothing much different than when a computer hard drive goes.  The drive ages, the physical stuff the memories are planted in starts to erode, and presto, you lose data. Sure, the human mind is more complex than a computer hard drive, but the analogy is still useful even if not exhaustively infallible.

Mind and matter

The 'mind-body problem' centres on whether the mind and the body are separate things or one and the same. There are two main competing theories, dualism and monism.

(snip) .

Questioning materialism

Of course these various views of how mind and body relate cannot all be equally correct. In fact, some are mutually exclusive. So which view best explains the diversity of 'physical' and 'mental' phenomena that we experience in the world about us? The answer has eluded some of the greatest minds in history, but we can start by assessing the predominant world view in Western society, before bringing a Christian perspective to bear on the issue.

Materialism has been criticised because it fails to explain everything and it has unfortunate implications for the way we treat human beings.

 Failure to explain "everything" is a defect plaguing any theory any human being ever had, simply because of the imperfection of knowledge.  You cannot condemn the physicalist denial of mind-body dualism on this score unless you condemn every theory anybody ever had about anything.

Second, physicalism doesn't have unfortunate implications for the way we treat human beings...unless you are a bleeding heart liberal.  Think about how the terrible wars and plagues of the centuries past contribute to why your town is currently not horrifically overpopulated, before you pretend that massive human death is always a bad thing.  Looked at from a long-term perspective, apparently this is something that prevents us today from having to stand in line at the store for 6 hours just to buy toothpaste.  Imagine how much more populated our towns would be if nobody in history ever died from anything other than old age.  The more you like the non-overpopulated status of your town, the more you approve of the past centuries of warfare and disease that wiped out hundreds of millions.  Nobody ever said you were consistent in your morality.  You're only human.

Explanatory power

Materialists have difficulty explaining how their theory can account for such psychological phenomena as desires, intentions, sensory experiences, thoughts and beliefs.

Then you must think bugs and reptiles have an immaterial nature, since its obvious that they too have desires, intentions, sensory experiences, thoughts and beliefs, even if on their level such things are not quite as complex as with us.  But since it is clear that the level of complexity increases as you move up the food chain, it makes reasonably good sense to say that humans are going to have the most complex basis for beliefs and intentions, but regardless, there's no reason to insist that our not having figured out every mystery of human consciousness somehow leaves the door open for our real self to originate in another dimension.  The sheer stupidity of the religious explanation (another dimension!?) would help promote the physicalist theory as having more explanatory power and scope.

Most of us believe that we have freedom to make choices, and that the 'I' that chooses somehow stands outside the chain of cause and effect.

 That popular view of freewill is obviously wrong.  Getting drunk means physical alcohol has affected a physical brain.  Since people who are drunk make freewill decisions differently than they do when sober, it is perfectly clear that whatever the "will" is, it is a physical thing that can be affected by physical things no less than a hammer can affect a nail.  Otherwise you wind up with stupid shit like "well maybe the will isn't affected by physical things but only seems to because it has to come into this dimension through a brain soaked in physical alcohol?"

Then I suggest you force a dog to drink one shot of whiskey.  When the dog starts wandering around aimlessly and seems "chill" and  less interested in life than he normally is, tell yourself that maybe it's just his spirit coming into this world from another dimension through the interface of an alcohol-soaked brain.  And if your bible told you that dogs have immaterial spirits, then yes, you'd be quick to pretend that such a theory is "obvious" and in no way refuted by the fact that physical things can cause the will to act differently than it normally does.

If not, our choices are determined as Skinner and Ryle, two influential twentieth century writers, believed. But, if we have no option when faced with a choice, surely it was never a choice in the first place?

Yes, and I'm not going to shove this scientific hypothesis under the rug merely because it would seem unfair to punish people who could not have chosen otherwise...it may very well be, and likely is, that America's ideas about justice and civil government arose from concepts having more to do with blind religion than confirmed scientific fact.  I don't toss science out the window merely because it would force us to say our national sense of justice was founded upon a false theory of the mind.  Maybe we need to change so our theories about justice are in closer alignment with scientific truth.  Either way, it doesn't follow that it is unjust to punish people who cannot help the way they act.  Rabid put bulls cannot help the way they act when mauling children, but you probably don't give a fuck about trifles of justice when using a chainsaw to protect your children from jaws of lesser life-forms.

Most of us naturally believe that there is actually an 'I' that feels and is conscious - an 'I' that knows guilt, pleasure and pain.

 That would seem true of the higher order mammals.  Do you suppose their true "selves" only come into their brain from another dimension?  Or does the bible forbid you from saying the animals were made in God's image?  Just so you know, your feeling constrained to interpret reality so that it conveniently always harmonizes with and never contradicts the bible, causes my atheist self to wake up in the middle of the night all scared.  And when Mormons preach at me, I look for dust, ashes, and an opportunity to repent and talk about how good it would be if another man was grinding my wife doggy style (Job 31:10).

These sensations are of course accompanied by electric signals in the brain that can be measured, and body and facial movements that can be observed.

The same is true for most of the higher-order living things.  Do they have spirits that survive physical death?  Or does the little white lie "all dogs go to heaven" achieve a higher good in your life if you "just" allow your little girl to believe it when Fido is found dead in the backyard?

But while we can measure and observe signals and movements, we can never know another person's private subjective experience.

 You also cannot ever know what a bug is thinking.  That hardly argues that the bug's true "self" is spiritual.

Even if we can deduce what they are feeling we will never experience it ourselves, in the way that they do. Similarly, although we can perceive our own bodies (see, touch and feel them) that is quite different from seeing and touching through them.

In the same way, you may be aware that others exist by reading their thoughts as they appear on paper or on a screen, but having their thoughts is something unique to them.

 You also cannot know for sure what a dog or cat is thinking.  Does this suggest cats and dogs have spirits?  Why not?  The bible says?  FUCK YOU.

I cannot experience your thoughts. Even if I am able with some technical device to know what you are thinking, that is quite different from actually experiencing your thoughts as you do.

We all have an intuitive sense that we are more than just bodies ruled by physical and chemical laws; more than just complex stimulus-response machines.

Sorry, but going off into what humans find "intuitive" is shaky territory, because human intuition obviously isn't presumably accurate enough to settle debates about reality, we have to search and probe and decide when hypotheses are more likely or less likely.

Yes, the concept that we are more than mere biological machines is popular, but then again, must of us were not raised by staunch atheists, nor did we learn in schools that forbid anything but scientifically demonstrable conclusions.  How we think goes back to how we were raised and the degree to which we found truth in our early education.  The fact that many atheists agree there's no ghost in the machine opens the door to the possibility that the contrary human intuition isn't quite the arbiter of truth you think it is.  Believing we are just molecules in motion is also consistent with one's innate sense of self.

There is something about materialism that doesn't quite ring true with our experience.

 If you are talking to people who were mostly raised in a generally religious society, yes.

This intuition could all be an illusion produced by brain biochemistry, but it could equally be true that there is some aspect of human existence which stands outside simple cause and effect, that human beings are in some sense 'supernatural'.

Sorry, but you cannot demonstrate the existence of such a thing as "outside simple cause and effect", therefore any notion of nature that is "super" or "beyond nature" is incoherent (i.e., can be dismissed immediately without further consideration).

We already know that in the natural world things exist beyond our immediate perceptions, but within the perceptions of other species. For example dogs can hear high pitch sounds that are inaudible to humans, and birds can see colours we can't. Could it be that 'mind' is something that human beings will never be able to measure or fully.

 Yes, but that doesn't mean what remains unknown is something incoherent such as the immaterial or non-physical.  The higher pitch only cats can hear is still physical.  The subtle distinctions of colors birds sense better than we can, are still physical.  First come up with a confirmed case of the existence of any non-physical or immaterial thing, then I'll be intellectually obligated to place your ghost-in-the-machine theory upon the table of logical possibilities.   But not before.

 Snip

But there is also a deeper logical problem with materialism. If we believe in a closed universe, where nothing but matter exists, then the human mind, by implication, becomes part of that closed cause and effect system. This leaves us having to believe that all our thoughts, including our belief in materialism, are simply determined by physics and biochemistry. But if we are simply determined to think that materialism is true, then how can we be sure that it really is true?

 I believe the question is illegitimate in that it automatically assumes that truth can only be correctly detected by an agent whose will is free from the laws of physics, itself a rather stupid theory.

Calculators don't have freewill, yet they manage to achieve mathematically correct conclusions to the problems you input.  We obviously discern that bugs are capable of correctly determining reality sufficiently to survive, even if not infallibly so.   Unless you wish to pretend that bugs must have an immaterial aspect to their nature because they can correctly discern reality (you won't because the bible doesn't tell you any such thing), then apparently the bug-analogy destroys your argument.  Being predetermined in our thinking does indeed open the door to our possibly being wrong, and indeed we are wrong plenty of times about reality, but you are incorrect to pretend that such predeterminism casts all hope of correct perception out the window.  There is nothing about being subject to the laws of physics that throws all of our knowledge into a state of perpectual uncertainty.

If we wish to retain any claim to objective knowledge, we must accept that the human mind has some independence from nature. But that would deny materialism!

Nope.  You deny that bacteria consist of anything more than material physicality (i.e., they don't have a spirit that survives physical death), yet they obviously are capable of correctly discerning reality, or else the original bugs would have died off permanently thousands of years ago.  The question could be thrown back in your face with your own bible, which says God will send strong delusion to certain people (2nd Thess. 2:11)....Gee...how do you know you are correctly orthodox in your beliefs and that you aren't being deceived by this higher deluding influence?   Don't the heretics quote the bible to support their beliefs just as often as you do?  Gee, should we despair about your inability to be certain?

Basis for respect

Another problem with materialism is that, it has led to a tendency to judge a person's worth by how clever they are.

 Christians suffer the same imperfection, only the know-it-all apologists have the biggest audience.  The churches with the largest Sunday attendance are always those lead by a charismatic pastor who seems to know it all.  The churches who take a more scholarly approach to the bible have far less attendance.

This results in us having no real basis for treating brain-damaged human beings any differently from animals.

 No, because inherent in the materialist reality of human life is the mammalian reality that we bond with others in our group and thus experience trauma if they stop responding to us through brain injury or death.  Higher mammals mourn their dead in various ways, but you deny they have a spirit that survives physical death.

Bioethicist Peter Singer has put it quite starkly:

'Once the religious mumbojumbo surrounding the term human has been stripped away, we may continue to see 'normal' members of our species as possessing greater qualities of rationality, selfconsciousness, communication and so on than members of any others species, but we will not regard as sacrosanct the life of each member of our species, no matter how limited its capacity for intelligent or even conscious life may be'.(3)

When the average person doesn't think they'll be quoted in the press, they usually DO want the pedophile to get beaten to death in main population, they usually don't want mentally retarded people to procreate, they usually don't give a job to the convicted felon on parole, they really don't like the idea of scores of minorities coming to live in their town....Fuck you...we live in a meritocracy where blind compassion is the exception, and harboring complete apathy to the misfits is the norm.

Based on this belief Singer has been an advocate for infanticide, euthanasia and placing animal rights alongside human rights.

Only emotion-based arguments could make an opposing view seem reasonable.

These attitudes may shock us, but they do follow naturally from the belief that human beings are 'less than persons' if they have lost, or never gained, reasonable mental faculties.

 I don't see the problem as anything bigger than modern society with its mistaking its emotional viewpoint with scientific reality.

The hard truth is that we really don't give a fuck about it when we hear on the news that some child in a far away country was killed in a robbery (or you cry a bit less about that than you would about your next-door neighbor's kid dying).  So the extent to which we care appears to be little more than emotion.   We also know that more we are exposed to shocking things, the less shocking they are, which is some of the reason why society today as utterly crazy compared to what existed in the 1930's.  You won't find many bleeding heart liberals working as prison guards.  America wouldn't be America if most of its people were seriously fair toward their fellow human beings in all ways.

Christian perspectives

The mind-body problem is complex. While Christians do not all agree on its solution, many take a dualist rather than a monist position. Christian researchers believe they are students both of the book of Nature (science) and the book of God (the Bible).

Then this is the precise point where your arguments lose whatever force they once had, and you start preaching the choir.  Atheists believe they are students of the book of macro-evolution.   Did that blast of education just knock you for a loop?  Hardly.

A Christian solution will be consistent with the science and also with the teaching of the Bible.

Which doesn't mean much given that the ambiguity of biblical statements has keep the church in doctrinal disarray for 2,000 years.  You may as well say that the true compassionate solution to sociatal problems will take into consideration all viewpoints.  That's true, but does precisely nothing to cause a real workable solution to emerge. You wholly impractical idealism is noted.

What light does the Bible have to shed on the nature of human beings, and hence the mind-body problem?

If the bible wasn't so fatally ambiguous about most of its subject matter, that might be a legitimate question to explore.

It tells us that human beings are godlike, complex, responsible and eternal - but also limited.

Godlike

God has a mind and yet doesn't need a body to act in the world.

 An incoherent concept.  First demonstrate any confirmed existence of intelligence apart from physicality, then the possibility you argue for here will remain upon the table of valid options.  Now what?  Your grandma heard a demon walking around in her kitchen, and she'd never lie about something like that?

Similarly, although human bodies are part of the natural world, human beings also have minds, which to some extent, transcend the natural order, and yet can affect what happens in it.

 Another incoherent idea:  nobody questions that physical object 1 can influence physical object 2, when but you assert that a non-physical something-or-other can also influence physical objects, you are talking about a scenario for which you don't have the least bit of persuasive evidence.  Worse, the concept doesn't even make sense.  By what mechanism does a non-physical thing cause a physical thing to move?  Telekinesis?

Being 'made in the image of God'(4) confers on us godlike qualities of creativity, rationality, personality, free will, selfawareness and consciousness and also gives us a special dignity, which deserves respect.(5)

 First, preaching the choir.  Second, the originally intended addressees of Genesis would likely have understood "image of God" as physical resemblance to god, despite later evolution in Judaism, reflected in the bible. But that involves something I might not wish to waste my time doing...pretending that the specific details of Genesis 2-4 are worthy of my time to trifle about.  Nope.  I decide when to bother with such bullshit, and today isn't that day.

Complex

The Bible describes man as consisting of spirit, soul and body.(6)

 And whether that means three parts or something else, has been dividing the trichotomists from the dichotomists for centuries.  Methinks you won't exactly be "cornering" me with anything.

But these components are not separate parts stuck together as in a 'lego kit'. Whilst Greek culture liked to separate spirit, soul and body, the Bible is strong in presenting human beings as a complex unity.

 A doctrine of unity you destroy as soon as you allege that the mind can continue conscience self-awareness after physical death.

Man was created by God to be a 'living being' composed both of the 'dust of the ground' and the 'breath of life'.(7) This tells us that we have both material and non-material aspects, but that they exist and belong together. Materialism, in contrast, tends to look for the simplest solution to issues.

 You have a bible.  We have Occam's Razor.  Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor.

Accountable

The Bible teaches that human beings can make real decisions, and are accountable for them. We are not simply ruled by nature or fate.

 Then you don't know your own bible, which says some people aren't meaningfully distinguishable from brute animals:

 12 But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed, (2 Pet. 2:12 NAU).

And how long should I study the in-house Christian debate on whether neanderthal man was or wasn't a full human being, before I know enough about it to justify drawing conclusions about which side got it right?

What if I die in a car wreck while on my way to the library to check out Christian apologetics books on the subject of the mind-body problem?  What should I be doing?  Considering the arguments of apologists? Or something more anti-intellectual like repenting and believing the gospel regardless of my level of knowledge?

This is why God can justifiably judge us. If we were just automatons and thereby the product of forces beyond our control, it would be unfair for God to hold us accountable for sin(8) (literally 'missing the mark'). This again implies that our minds are in some way outside the natural order.

 Then you don't know your bible.  Apostle Paul insisted that God's right to judge is entirely beyond any commentary or criticism man might make (Romans 9:20).   That is, your apostle Paul would not agree that our being freewilled creatures made in God's image is "why" God is just to judge us.  For Paul, the justness of God is not even open for commentary.  God would not be unjust to judge anybody under any circumstances whatsoever.  So quit pretending that God can have a sufficient "reason" for doing something.  It's incoherent.

Eternal

Our bodies die and yet the Bible teaches us that, despite this, human beings are eternal and live forever.

 All that shows is that you aren't a Jehovah Witness or 7th Day Adventist, two Christian schools of thought who affirm soul-sleep and deny self-awareness can continue apart from the physical body.

The person survives death, implying that we are more than just bodies. But death does not lead to life as a disembodied spirit, or reincarnation. Rather, the Bible teaches that man's destiny is to die once and then face judgement(9) and either heaven or hell depending on our response to Jesus Christ.(10)

 Which means you aren't doing the best evangelism you can if you ask atheists to read books or web articles.  They might die in a state of unbelief while on their way to the library, and according to you, since they weren't faithful upon death, they go to hell.  So if you don't want unbelievers to go to hell, you cannot talk to them as if salvation's importance is equal to the importance of their voting upon a local initiative.  If they are always a heartbeat away from the gates of an irreversible eternal hell, then the best you can do is to insist that they repent now, RIGHT NOW, the way you would if they were hanging over a cliff for dear life.  If the situation is that desperate, desperate measures are called for.

Of course, every act comes at cost...and here the act of urgent evangelism comes at the cost of intellectual suicide (i.e.,. if you do repent right now, then you are making a choice to believe Jesus is all he said he was, whether you actually have a solid understanding of gospel issues or not).  But if, like Lydia McGrew, you invent a non-existent bit of mercy the bible nowhere teaches, and insist that atheists who die while in the act of studying their bibles, will get a second chance in the spiritual world, then I obviously have nothing to worry about, as I study my bible 10 times more than any 100 'Christians' combined.

People who have a relationship with God through Jesus will experience resurrection and live with God forever in a perfect 'new heaven and new earth',(11) with new resurrected bodies like that of Christ's after his resurrection.(12) This is clear from Jesus' pronouncement to the thief on the cross - 'Today you will be with me in paradise'.(13)

 Do you think Jehovah's Witnesses and 7th Day Adventists have never seen that verse?  Unless you claim they are just rock-stupid, maybe you shouldn't classify your interpretation of it as "clear".

Limited

Finally, unlike God, human beings have finite power and knowledge. Despite our abilities we are limited in time and space.

Something that the more fanatical fundies might keep in mind as they continue to mistake their cocky confidence for god's own voice. 

Even with sophisticated technology there are many things about the universe that we will never know.

 Meaning the naturalistic explanation of these will never be decisively disproved.

This does not give us an excuse for failing to ask questions or invoking God to explain the gaps in our knowledge. But we will recognise humbly that some things will always remain mysteries and beyond our understanding. Perhaps the mind-body problem is a mystery that is impossible for human minds to solve.

 Nope.  The difference between the mind of a human and the mind of a reptile is one of degree, not nature.

Sure is funny how the further you move up the food chain, the more these ultimately material physical creatures come closer and closer to the human level of self-awareness.

Cold Case Christianity: Rebuttal to J. Warner Wallace's arguments for the existence of the soul

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

A Very Brief Review of Arguments for the Existence of the Soul (Free Bible Insert)

Posted: 23 May 2018 01:23 AM PDT

We’ve created a free Bible insert that is a short review of the philosophical arguments for dualism (articulated more fully in a podcast). As Christians, we believe hold a dual view of world around us. We believe in the existence of the brain and the mind, the body and the soul, a material world and a spiritual realm. This concept of dualism, the recognition of two co-existent realms and realities, is critical to our faith as Christians.

And it is denied by Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists, both of which teach that the soul is simply the life-force that ceases conscious awareness at death and doesn't become self-aware again until the day of resurrection or judgment.  We would hardly expect significant Christian groups to deny dualism, if its basis in the bible were "clear".  This is sufficient to rationally justify the average unbeliever to conclude the classic mind/body problem is too fraught with uncertainty to think studying it will yield anything useable, and to therefore walk away from what appears to be a furiously useless exercise in sophistry.

If dualism is not true (the opposite view is often called ‘monism’ or ‘physicalism’), there is no realm in which God exists, we are not souls designed for salvation and life with God, and there is no life beyond this one.

That only sounds bleak and repulsive to those who have already been nurturing a Christian faith for years aand have high hopes of being snatched up into the air to live on cloudy streets of gold forever.  It doesn't sound depressing at all to those who smartly refused to set their hopes unrealistically high.  When you tell a Mormon the book of Mormon is a fraud, the fact that they just cannot imagine such a negative thing being true, doesn't mean it isn't true.  It means the Mormon has set their hopes far higher than reality would have allowed.  Nothing is different in the case of the typical Christian, nor in the case of anybody who sets their hopes too high, then starts finding out that reality refuses to comply with their dreams.

So how can we begin to prove the existence of something we cannot see?

Maybe like you prove the existence of air, by tests that can detect things invisible to the naked eye?  Or did I forget that what you are talking about also cannot be physically detected in the first place?

What kind of science could we possibly use?

Did you forget that there is nothing in the NT that expresses or implies that you should ever try to make such arguments, while in fact if you simply did what Jesus and Pual clearly told you to do, you'd be too busy to indulge such trifles as the present one?

Are you positively certain that this mind/body dualism bullshit you bring up doesn't qualify as the 'word wrangling' Paul so strongly forbade in 2nd Timothy 2:14, and the sinful interest in controversial questions he forbade in 1st Timothy 6:4?

After all, science deals with the natural, physical realm, and we are trying to investigate something immaterial.

You are also trying to use science to investigate something that is "spiritual".  But this is your problem.

Is science even the right instrument to get this job done? Probably not.

Translation:  "the idea that the human body has an immaterial soul, is unscientific".

Instead, let’s examine the case from a philosophical perspective to see if there is any rational reason to believe dualism is true.

I wonder how many homeless people on the street end up in hell because you prefer to trifle about controversial philosophical topics on the internet instead of prioritizing the face-to-face preaching Jesus clearly commanded.  What if an unbeliever is so intrigued by this article of yours, that they wish to investigate further, and while on their way to the library, they die in a car crash?

Now if you hold to the standard conservative Christian view that ALL people who died before repentance go to eternal hell, then because this unbeliever died in a car crash before actually having repented and believed the gospel, he not only goes to hell, but stays there for all eternity.  And the reason he delayed repentance is because your argument here made him more interested in figuring out whether you were right or wrong, and less interested in the danger that he is always one heartbeat away from the dates of hell.

Doesn't it bother you that the more you indulge in theological controversies, the more you imply to unbelievers that they actually DO have tomorrow and the next day and the next few years to safely delay repentance without fear of the horrific consequences?

But once you try to duck this argument by parting ways with conservative Christian scholars and pretending you think some unbelievers are allowed a second chance to repent in the afterlife, you help skeptics and unbelievers confidently conclude that the bible-god probably isn't as fearsome and sadistic as Jonathon Edwards and most fundamentalists say, and therefore, another justification to delay repentance.

While much can be written on this issue, this short post will simply review the case for the soul based on the evidence from the Law of Identity:

A = A

The Law of identity simply states that something on one side of the equal sign is identical to something on the other side of the equation if they have the exact same qualities or properties.

Yes.  When we say the mind = the brain, we are not equating a non-material thing with a material thing.  The mind is purely physical.  What fool thinks there's no molecular basis to memory?  What fool doesn't notice that as Parkinson's disease erodes the physical brain, the memories stored there, which make up most of the the "mind" also disappear?  No reason to see this as any different than a computer memory card which no longer holds certain data because it was erased by a computer virus. What fool would say maybe the data still exist in the spiritual realm, and it only uses the physical disk as the doorway through which to enter into the physical world?  FUCK YOU.

If this is true, we can say that they have an “identity relationship”. When applied to our examination of the soul, monists describe the following identity relationship:

the brain = the mind

the body = the soul

If this is true, all the properties and qualities on one side of the equations should be identical to all the properties on the other side of the equation.

Not true.  Apple = fruit.  But not everything true about "fruit" is true of "apple".  Fallacy of equivocation.  So the mind can = the brain, without implying everything true about the brain is true of the mind.  But regardless of your technical error, there is no evidence that the mind is anything other than the physical brain, except of course the dualists whose controversial theological opinions motivate them to define "mind" more esoterically than most people.

If there are differences in the qualities and nature of the items on opposite sides of the equation, we have two realities, just as Christians have argued all along. Here then, is the brief summary of arguments describing the differences between our bodies and who we are as souls:

Difference One: “Public” Versus “Private”

(The Private Knowledge Argument)

Physical Properties Can Be PUBLICLY Known

We can look at a piece of sculpture, for example. The sculpture is physical and can be seen (accessed) by everyone.

Maybe that's why scientists and geologists disagree about what makes up the core of the earth...because these physical properties can be publicly known?

Mental Properties Are Only PRIVATELY Known

Not true.  When your mind is shocked by a frightening thing, your body reacts, even if only subtly, so even if dreams are private, not all mental properties are restricted to the private realm.  When we see a baby jump, twist her face, then start crying, its pretty obvious that her mind had perceived some type of pain or fright or frustration.

And if the private nature of mental properties be true, you just proved that insects and lower animals have souls that survive death, since according to your logic, if their mental properties are private (and they surely are no less private than human thoughts), such properties cannot be equated with the bug's physical brain and thus necessarily imply, under your reasoning, that their sense of identity arises from something more than their physical brain.

Will you go where your own logic leads?

Or will you insist that your reasoning can only be validated where it agrees with the bible?

If the latter...so much for your pretense of objectivity.

How the sculpture makes you feel is impossible for us to access publicly.

Not true.  If the man is heterosexual and the sculpture is of a scantily clad sexualized woman, a penile plethysmograph would detect what's going on in his mind, even if not perfectly.   Suppose you know a local man was convicted of child rape and went to prison and was released.  You see him on the sidewalk, staring at your kids for no earthly reason.  Your inability to be positively certain what his thoughts are, wouldn't slow you down from being confident that your suspicions about what's going on in his mind are likely correct, and reacting accordingly. 

Again, many people react physically to nightmares when sleeping.  Pretty easy to tell what they were thinking even if not perfectly so.  Mental events are not always private.  You lose.

You would have to tell us. We cannot determine this from a physical examination of your brain unless you tell us what you are feeling.

See above.

THEREFORE: Mental Properties Are NOT Physical Properties

The physical brain is something different than the immaterial mind. They are different because one possesses privately held knowledge (the mind) and the other (the brain) does not.

That doesn't follow.  you also cannot see the atoms responsible for exerting force on a piston in an engine as the result of a gasoline explosion, but you hardly conclude that the exerted force and the responsible atoms are different from each other.  

Or gee, I don't know...maybe you'll argue that the force that drives the piston down comes from the spiritual dimension and only uses the exploding gas as an interface by which to enter the physical realm?  How different is that from the trifling stupidity that says our thoughts originate with our soul/spirit in another dimension and only come into the physical world through the portal of the brain?

Difference Two: “I” Versus “My Body”

(The First Person Argument)

Like Everyone, I Only Use First Person Possessive Pronouns to Indicate Possession of Something Other Than “Me”

I use expressions like, “This is my toothbrush,” or “This is my mom,” because I am describing someone or something other than me.

Like Everyone, I Commonly Use First Person Possessive Pronouns When Describing My Body

I also find myself using expressions like, “This is my body,” or “This is my hand” when describing my physical body or some portion of my body.

A theory that, if true, would wreak havoc on the justice system.  Apparently, when the intruder said "this is my gun", he was describing someone or something other than himself, hence, his testimony, captured on home video, is inadmissible.  

Gee, Wallace, did you ever consider becoming an attorney? There's big bucks in dishonest sophistry.

THEREFORE: My Body Is Something Other Than “Me”

So because courts of law require the pursuit of actual truth, it would behoove you to convince America's courts of the "truth" that the criminal suspect's body is different than himself.  Under your Christan assumptions, adding this truth to the justice system can only help the cause of truth.  What a laugh.

Just like my toothbrush is something other than me, my physical body is also something other than me. I am not my body.  These are two different things.

Use that excuse as your alibi in a criminal trial. See what happens.  You'll soon find that the devil has blinded the minds of the jurors to spiritual truth...and maybe God decreed from all eternity that you conduct your ministry from a prison cell.

There are two realities, the material and the immaterial.

No, the "immaterial" constitutes an incoherence no less foolish than "dark matter", an thing its supporters admit they cannot even coherently define.

(By the way, although we sometimes use the expression, “my soul” this is an inaccurate use of the term. We don’t have souls, we are souls.)

That's exactly what Jehovah's Witnesses and 7th Day Adventists believe.

Difference Three: “Temporary Parts” Versus “Transcendent Identity”

(The Parts Argument)

Physical Entities Are Dependent on Their Parts for Their Identity

We know the difference between our car and someone else’s car in a parking lot, and we know the difference between our cell phone and someone else’s phone left behind in a library. We know this because we recognize parts are what establish the identity of physical objects

Which makes a powerful argument that my body parts are what establish my own identity.  Or maybe you never heard of DNA?  Your identity isn't lost if you lose an arm or all four limbs...but what if you lose your head?  Does the remaining torso still constitute "you"?  Probably not.  Hence, the physical head/brain are essential to identity.

But We, as Humans, Are NOT Dependent On Our Parts for Our Identity

But no matter how much we have changed (even if we have an organ transplant), we know our identity is not at risk.

But if we managed to succeed in transplanting a brain (cell phones were absurd ideas 1000 years ago, god only knows what breakthroughs await us in the future, there appear to be few absolute limits), you'd be quietly shitting yourself with worry that a man actually became another person solely for physical reasons.

I am still me, regardless of the fact I am now made of a completely different set of cells compared to my youth.

But the cells will always have your DNA and genetics. The day we can replace a person's DNA with different DNA, we will be looking at one person becoming a different person.  Sorry, but you cannot defeat the problem of human identity being tied to the physical.

THEREFORE: Humans Are NOT Purely Physical Entities

For this reason, we know that we are more than mere physical entities, dependent on our parts for our identity. Once again, we know intuitively we have a transcendent identity. We are souls.

Now you aren't being biblical.  First, you don't know whether the bible distinguishes soul from spirit.  Are you a dichotomist or trichotomist?  Second, Peter clearly taught that the flesh wars against the "soul", apparently teaching that the flesh can exhibit desires and motives independently of the "soul", 1st Peter 2:11.  That's contrary to your own belief that it is from our soul that we make choices. The biblical view is that the man who chooses to use the services of a prostitute has made a choice independently of his "soul".  This is parallel to apostle Paul's teaching that the flesh and the spirit are contrary to each other in Galatians 5:17.  You don't really know from the context whether "spirit" there should have a capital or lower-case "s".

That the bible does little more than mislead on this issue may be legitimately inferred from the horrifically confused self-deluded speech we get from Paul, who says sometimes when he sins, it isn't him doing it:

 14 For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.
 15 For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.
 16 But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good.
 17 So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.
 19 For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.
 20 But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
 21 I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. (Rom. 7:14-21 NAU)

 If that spiritual concept is true, then that truth should be lobbied by Christians into America's court system. After all, if there is a spiritual reality that says if you desire to do good but end up sinning anyway, the sin wasn't committed by "you", but by the sin itself (!?)

Good luck with that.

Note also that this contradicts modern Christian theory on soul and dualism.  Paul believed some choices could be made solely by the "sin that dwells in me", contrary to the popular modern view that all choices we make, are made at the level of the soul, and the body is merely reacting.  Apparently Paul believed it legitimate to credit nothing but "sin" as responsible for his body choosing to do something immoral.

Difference Four: “Measurable” Versus “Immeasurable”

(The Measurement Argument)

Physical Entities Can Be Measured Using Physical Measurement Instruments

We can take out a ruler and measure the width and length of your brain. We can weigh it and calculate it’s mass.

But As Humans, We Possess Mental Entities (Thoughts, Wills, Desires and Sensations) That Are Not Measurable By These Methods

We cannot use physical measurement tools to examine our thoughts. Propositional content cannot be measured in this way.

Not true.  Thoughts are formed mostly of memories, and memories are encoded in molecules, and molecules, being physical, have obvious detectable sizes.  So you and Frank Turek and other apologists are wrong, thoughts are physical.

THEREFORE: Humans Are More Than Physical Beings

There is a physically immeasurable dimension to our beings. We are more than matter. We are physically immeasurable souls.

If it keeps junior on the straight and narrow, he can go on pretending to be whatever combo of moisture and invisible man he pleases. Atheists should be practical, not militant.  Leave the Mormons alone, some fools bring much good, and even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Difference Five: “About Others” Versus “About Themselves”

(The Self-Existence Argument)

Mental Entities Are Not Self Existent

Our hopes, fears, concerns and worries are always about something else; something outside of themselves

Not true, delusional people have brain disorders that often cause them fear of things that don't exist, this is also true with many children who irrationally fear the dark and the monster under the bed that always goes invisible when mom checks...and therefore, the feared thing did not originate from anywhere except within their physical brain.

But Our Brains, As Physical Entities, ARE Self Existent

Physical things are not about something else; they simply exist on their own and do not rely on other physical objects for their definition

THEREFORE: Our Brains Are NOT The Same As Our Minds

Brains are physical, self-existent entities, minds contain mental entities that are dependent on outside entities for their definition.

Nope, see above.

Difference Six: “Morally Determined” Versus “Morally Free”

(The Free Will Argument)

Oh fuck you, this is where not even many Christians agree with you.  Unbelievers can reasonably decline an invitation to become involved in one of Christianity's numerous in-house debates.

No Physical System is a Free Agent

They are either determined (one event following the other) or random

Therefore No Physical System Has Moral Responsibility

Because moral responsibility requires moral freedom of choice

Moral responsibility cannot exist unless somebody insists that somebody else is morally responsible.  So moral responsibility can just as easily be a social fiction necessarily conjured up to make socities like America possible.   Children can be just as easily raised to feel no moral responsibility as raised to agree they have moral responsibility.  Babies and toddler need to be 'taught' to mimic the morality of the parent, because the morality they are born with is selfishness.  A sense of moral responsibility cannot be shown to transcend environmental conditioning.

Human Beings DO Have Moral Responsibility

We have the innate sense that each of us has the responsibility to act morally, and indeed, we observe we are free agents who do choose right from wrong freely

This is not true of sociopaths.  You can get rid of that rebuttal by arbitrarily excluding them as disqualified misfits, but the point is that your theory doesn't account for all the relevant data, you can only make your case by appeal to what some or most humans are like, not all. 

Sociopaths are just as human as anybody else, so we cannot automatically assume their sociopathic condition constitutes a misrepresentation of human reality.  To be human might indeed require that you have little to no concern for other people's feelings.

THEREFORE: Therefore Human Beings Are NOT Simply Physical Systems

If we are purely physical entities, we can only act as a series of events, and we are unable to act freely (this is the nature of physical things). Our free agency demonstrates we are more than simple physical objects.

Tell that to Christians who adopt 5-Point Calvinism, and they'll scream back that the ease with which you assume humans have "free agency" makes it appear you never read the bible in your life.   I suggest god's like-minded ones get their act together before they present their in-house controversies to the world as if they were absolute truth.