tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post5540584586940613927..comments2024-03-26T14:20:38.103-04:00Comments on The Thought Criminal: Hate Mail File -- You Can't Debunk Minds Without Also Debunking The Mind You're Using To Debunk MIndsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-44049780549407022892015-05-30T19:23:56.187-04:002015-05-30T19:23:56.187-04:00Thank you for the encouragement. It's good to...Thank you for the encouragement. It's good to know other people are thinking serious about the implications and even the necessary logical conclusions that the Sean Carrolls refuse to consider. Everything about the conduct of the materialists betrays that they either believe, somehow, they have an exemption from their own claims or that they haven't thought very deeply about them. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-27019741611434764672015-05-30T17:25:01.775-04:002015-05-30T17:25:01.775-04:00I really enjoy the posts. I started reading this b...I really enjoy the posts. I started reading this blog a little while ago, and it's nice to see someone who puts forth the effort to explain the irrationality and inconsistencies of materialism, particularly when it comes to attempting to explain the mind and consciousness. I tried writing a long message the other night but it got jumbled as my thinking often does. <br />Anyway, you've probably seen this quote from C.S. Lewis before, but I was wondering if you have any thoughts on it:<br /><br />"Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God."<br /><br /> I haven't read too much C.S. Lewis. My protestant grandfather was into him. He seems like he was a good person and quite smart (same with my grandfather!). <br /><br />When I've read about people like Sean Carroll or Alex Rosenberg who believe that everything is a part of a closed causal chain, it's pretty depressing. But still, it would have to be a pretty bizarre accident of that closed causal chain were any of our thoughts to have any actual bearing on abstract reality. That's a big problem for naturalism. Not only is morality not something that can be justified, but even rationality can't really be justified either. Not only would our thoughts not really be our thoughts, but we'd have no reason to really think them truthful. <br /><br />Keep put the blogging. It's very interesting stuff, Anthony!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-7777524568266289712015-01-28T12:02:44.112-05:002015-01-28T12:02:44.112-05:00My first response to your post was to point out th...My first response to your post was to point out the empiricism of Hume led him to conclude that "consciousness" was an illusion, because empiricism could only confirm that our brain received sensory inputs, it could not confirm what turned those inputs into awareness, understanding, memory, perception, etc.<br /><br />Hence, such things were illusory. There is, in other words, no "mind," no "me," no "ghost in the machine" which does the observing/processing of what sensory data the body provides.<br /><br />But how does that work? Does a television operating in an empty room perceive what it projects? Does the furniture in the room? Does the room? Hume was committed to his empiricism, so he had to conclude consciousness is imply illusory. It doesn't really explain anything, though. All it does is keep his empiricism intact.<br /><br />And keep it turtles, all the way down.<br /><br />And the update underscores how quickly we forget education and literacy and even Aristotle (the true "father of science" in the west) were kept alive by the church, which promoted the universities and the sciences, especially through Mendel and LeMaitre. I think it's fair to say that when science divorced itself from philosophy, and Anglo-American philosophy wedded itself to science, that both rather thoroughly lost their claims to answering more than the simplest, and ultimately least important, questions. We cannot, as you say, ever prove the nature and origin of the universe.<br /><br />And more and more I ask: what does that have to do with the question "How should we then live?" And really, which question is more important?Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-5512003502391466932015-01-28T10:28:17.059-05:002015-01-28T10:28:17.059-05:00One of the key insights I had in the past nine yea...One of the key insights I had in the past nine years of writing about this is that, at times, history can produce facts more absolute about reality then science does. It is an absolute fact that JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963 and it is knowable that disbelieving that is a delusion to within an absolute degree. I believe at the same time the eminent cosmologist Fred Hoyle was holding out for a universe which had no beginning, one which would violate the second law of thermodynamics, I'd expect. And today atheists such as Sean Carroll hold out for a fluctuating universe that goes in and out of existence, something which one philosopher pointed out would have had to have wound down some time in the infinite past if they wanted to retain the validity of the second law. Though I can't say I've mastered anything like the arguments involved. Carroll didn't have an answer to that point in anything I recall coming across. I think knowing that JFK was assassinated has a knowable reality, means of checking and an importance in human life that Carroll's entirely conjectural infinite ensemble of universes does not and never will. Something he and other atheists invented on the basis of nothing in order to get by the creation of the fine-tuned universe we are believed to know exists, the universe they claim to respect so much that they've made it the object of their study.<br /><br />The motives of ideological atheists in science and their production of an enormous amount of junk science would make an interesting study. I really meant it when I said that that weird science going back to the scholastic practices of the late medieval period was, in every case I know of, invented by and championed by atheists with a clear ideological motive. <br /><br />I hope you liked the Update. I almost had to put a shovel full of snow down I was so pleased with the idea. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-78373738189297284432015-01-28T09:47:35.976-05:002015-01-28T09:47:35.976-05:00Yes, my religious ideas are a product of fear or a...Yes, my religious ideas are a product of fear or a predilection toward taking certain mental experiences as "divine" when they are in fact chemical, and in confusing bio-chemistry for "God."<br /><br />Your scientific objectivity, on the other hand, is the result of direct access to universal truth because "science" and "objectivity". It's not a result of mere chemical reactions in nerve endings of the brain at all. That would be reductionist and absurd.<br /><br />Clearly. Because the truth is out there; but it's only accessible to science, not to religion. The latter is just the product of the "lizard brain" (I swear I still hear that nonsense treated as fact); the former transcends mere brain chemistry because....well, because it's true! Alright?!Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.com