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.