withallyourmind.net

I ended the first part of this brief series by asking the question: “Are there things which are true of mental states/properties which are not true of physical states/properties?”

The answer is yes. Physical states or properties may be described in terms of size, shape, electrical charge and spatial location. Mental states or properties do not have size, shape, or spatial location. For example, What size is the thought of pecan pie? What shape is the desire to drink water? If we apply Leibniz’s law, therefore, mental states are not identical to physical states.

Likewise, mental states (e.g., thoughts) can be true or false, whereas physical states cannot. Similarly, sensations can be pleasurable, whereas physical states cannot.

A blind neuroscientist can have exhaustive knowledge of the neurophysiology of seeing color, as well as the physics of light. Does she know everything there is to know about color perception? Most would agree that she does not. She does not know what the color red actually looks like. Suppose she suddenly gained ability to see, would she learn something new about perceiving the color red? Obviously, yes.

A related example was made famous by philosopher Thomas Nagel when he asked, “What is it like to be a bat?” One could have complete knowledge of the biology and physiology of bats, but one would not know something about the bat, that is, exactly what it is like to be a bat. The first-person awareness of being a bat is not capable of being described in physical terms.

The above arguments, in addition to others not mentioned here demonstrate that consciousness, or mind, is not identical to physical states or properties. A scientist can know much more about my brain than I do, but he cannot have more knowledge of my thoughts, emotions, and beliefs than I do. The mind is not identical to the brain.

Next, a few words about intentionality.

Physicalism is the philosophical belief that the only kinds of things that are real are physical things. Only entities which can be described by physics are considered to exist. Therefore, such things as the soul or an immaterial mind are not real. Physicalism is a form of monism, teaching that the universe, including man, is made of one kind of substance, physical or material. This is the dominant philosophy in academic circles today. In contrast, throughout most of human history, both the educated and uneducated alike have held to a form of dualism, that is, that reality consists of more than just matter and physical laws. Christianity has held for centuries that man is, in the words of Thomas Aquinas…

… composed of a spiritual and corporeal substance.

There are good reasons to accept dualism and reject physicalism as the proper ontology of our existence. I will briefly submit a few of these reasons over the next couple of posts.

For many, modern science has proven that the immaterial mind does not exist. What we call the mind is just a complex organization of matter and chemistry. Is the mind nothing more than a function of the brain? To answer this question, we turn to Leibniz’s law, which states for any X and any Y, if X is identical Y, then for all properties P, P is true of X if and only if P is true of Y. In other words, if a property is true of X which is not true of Y, they are not identical. When applied to the issue at hand, the question becomes, “Are there things which are true of mental states/properties which are not true of physical states/properties?”

Next, I’ll attempt to answer that question.

A London Times article, Richard Dawkins slaps creationists into the primordial soup, by Kate Muir, describes Richard Dawkins as “a knight of the mind who goes into battle against the ignorance and foolhardiness of the populace.” By this, she means, of course, the antiquated belief in God. I’ve rarely read such drooling adulation in the public media. Dawkins, who will featured in a three-part television series in Britain, Dawkins on Darwin, claims that:

natural selection is “the most important idea to occur to the human mind”, the slow change of species over millions of ideas disproving the religious theory of intelligent design by God.

There is much one could say about this article, but one particular comment of Dawkin’s caught my eye. Muir explains:

Again he lapses into silence, but I now know to sit out these Pinteresque moments rather than interrupt – while most interviewees are floundering, Dawkins is thinking. “There’s a very important misunderstanding of the relationship between Hitler and Darwin, which is relevant to this,” he resumes. “A lot of people think that Hitler sort of was a Darwinian, which he absolutely wasn’t. What Hitler did was to take the principle of domestic breeding of animals and apply it to humans. What Darwin did was to take the principle of the domestic breeding of animals and apply it to nature. It’s all done by nature, by who as a matter of fact survives.”

About three months ago, I wrote a post, The Darwin-Hitler Link, which was written in the context of the controversy stirred by the Ben Stein movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. This movie suggested that Darwinism was a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the atrocities committed under Hitler. Of course, the church of science, of which Richard Dawkins is the leading evangelist, contested about the unfairness and illegitimacy of claiming that Darwinism was in any way responsible for Naziism.

Now, whether or not Hitler ever knew of Darwin (which he most certainly did), Dawkins seems to admit that the Hitler and Darwin both based their theories and/or actions on the same basic understanding. Hitler applied domestic breeding principles to human beings, while Darwin applied it to all of nature. Based on this observation, it seems to be a straightforward, non-contestable claim that Hitler’s actions were based on Darwinian principles. Human beings are, on a Darwinian view, nothing more than a part of nature. They are, like any other animal, a product of blind chance and natural selection. To say that it is a misunderstanding that Hitler was “sort of a Darwinian” seems moot in any important sense. Hitler applied the same principles as did Darwin to a subset (human beings) of the total Darwinian set (all of nature, including human beings). Am I missing something, or is not the Darwin-Hitler link established by Dawkins’ statements?

(HT: Al Mohler)

As I attempted to catch up on the last week’s posts by my favoite bloggers, I came across this surprising one in which John Mark Reynolds attempts to defend the (nearly) indefensible. The (nearly) indefensible, in this case, is the sacrilege offered by scientist/religious skeptic P.Z. Myers:

I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There’s no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I’m sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. . .

These remarks (and others) have produced much angry response. Reynolds, first of all explains why some are rightfully upset about Myers’ words. After this, however, Reynolds offers some great counsel concerning what a Christian’s response to such “blasphemy” should be.

First, he advises, one should not confuse the actions of one skeptic with that of most skeptics. Not all, in fact, not many, skeptics share his views, or would condone his actions.

Second,…

if P.Z. Myers does blaspheme, then it will be a sad act of theatrical atheism doing more harm to his own cause than to Christianity. Such antics embarrass the vast majority of nonbelievers who are good neighbors in our pluralistic, but majority Christian society.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Reynolds reminds us that Christians should examine their own attitudes and actions:

Surely it is no better, and perhaps worse, when we piously kneel to receive Christ’s body only to slander our neighbor over the after church coffee? Myers blasphemes a God he does not know, but we fail in our duty to a God we do know.
Thereby, the tortured body of Christ suffers…

Professor Myers harms what he does not understand, but many of us have harmed ourselves and others, and thus Jesus Christ, while knowing what we are doing. Sadly, it will not likely be Professor Myers who causes the suffering Son of God the most pain this year.

Lastly, he stresses that one should be allowed to express his private opinions without fearing for his job at as a teacher at a public university. In Reynolds’ words:

Myers is invincibly ignorant of sophisticated philosophy or theology, but is evidently a fine scientist and teacher…

We may protest, argue, and defend our ideas. But history shows that our ideas will prosper best and that our churches are most safe in a society where Professor Myers can say what he wishes.

It’s a precept of my Christian faith that my redemption comes through Christ. But I’m also a big believer in the Golden Rule, which I think is an essential pillar not only of my faith, but of my values and my ideals and my experience here on Earth. And I’m also a believer, as part of my faith, that I am a limited being, with limited understanding. And so I operate on the basis of, I operate knowing what I know for myself, but not presuming that I know everything, certainly not enough for me to condemn others, or to presume that their path is wrong.

These words were uttered by a presidential candidate in a recent Newsweek article about his religious faith. Melinda, over at Stand to Reason, has an excellent post in which she takes a closer look at this explanation of religious conviction. In her insightful commentary, she notes the following:

This, of course, isn’t an unusual sentiment these days - even among those who profess Christ, as the Senator does. But the only way a rational person can make such a statement is if they don’t believe religion is objectively true with any factual basis. This kind of statement can only be made if religion is a different kind of conviction than the rest of our beliefs that we live and function by. Religion is a personal preference with no objective, rational, truthful basis. The evidence that this is how Senator Obama views religion is how he treats other things he believes in, like politics. He is running for president because he thinks he knows the solutions for America and he’s comfortable saying that President Bush and Senator McCain are wrong in politics. Why else would you run for president and be interested in putting your ideas into public policy and law? So he’s comfortable presuming he knows true things that he wants to persuade others of in politics, but not religion because religion is somehow not truthful or factual in the same way.

She further notes:

Disagreeing with someone’s religion is not condemning them. Saying someone will go to Hell isn’t condemning them. It’s expressing a viewpoint. We don’t have control over whether someone goes to Heaven or Hell, and it’s possible we are wrong. But it’s God who condemns - or forgives. Not us. This common compulsion to compare disagreement with condemnation is false.

Here’s what I would love for a politician to say in reference to his religious beliefs (and moral beliefs for that matter). “I am firmly convinced that my religious faith (whatever that might be, Christian, Muslim, etc.) is true. That, of course, means I think other religious viewpoints are false in many of thier claims. Since we make contradictory claims, we cannot all be correct. I feel similarly about my political views. I believe I am right and the other candidate is wrong. This does not make one a bad person. I could be wrong about my beliefs and am always willing to reexamine them and rationally discuss them with those who disagree. I believe people should be free to embrace whatever religious beliefs which they feel are correct.”

Wouldn’t that be refreshing? (Of course, perhaps the person is a pluralist, in which case he should simply state that he is. He should then drop the line about his own faith and admit that all belief is equally true and valid and he chooses his own faith for reasons other than the truth value of it.)

In Al Mohler’s latest blog entry, Modernity, Madness, and Morals, he uses a recent Minette Marrin article in the London Times discussing a secular form of ethics called rational choice theory. According to this theory of ethics, which has features of a social contract theory, a person decides what is the correct course of action based on a rational choice. Mohler summarizes:

More recently, moral philosophers have settled on a more clearly secular theory of morality — rational choice theory. According to rational choice theory, people tend to settle on a moral code that fits their needs and leads, or is likely to lead, to their desired outcomes. In other words, individuals make a rational choice. A young woman might make a rational choice not to engage in premarital sex because she does not want to harm her reputation or opportunities or marriage. A young man might not shoplift because it would harm his chances of advancement. Rational choice theorists argue that their theory can explain virtually any human behavior, including moral choice.

As Marrin laments, and Mohler agrees, such a theory fails as an adequate theory upon which a society can base morality and ethics. Mohler uses the analogy of two boys, the first of which does well and receives positive reinforcement for his “good” decisions. The second receives no such reinforcement. Mohler observes:

The second boy has no experience of similar controls. He does not expect life to go better for him if he behaves well. He may lack parents who would even teach him how to behave, much less reward him when he obeys and punish him when he disobeys. Instead, he learns that cutting corners, breaking rules, flaunting his misbehavior, and playing the part of the “bad” boy works for him. He gets more attention (even if negative attention) and gains the respect of his peer structure by misbehavior.

Marrin astutely observes:

Morality depends on having something to lose. It isn’t just a matter of learning right from wrong, least of all in a post-religious society. Morality is socially constructed. I will respect your property and your person because I want you to respect mine. We both have something to lose. One does not have to be educated in political philosophy to understand that ancient deal. But if I have neither property nor respect from anyone, what’s in the deal for me?

Rational-choice theory certainly explains much of our behavior, but it is incapable of providing a firm basis of morality. This is the first of Mohler’s observations. The second is since much of our behavior may be explained by rational choice, humility should be embraced by all Christians who think they’re “good.” Much of our good behavior may be readily explained simply on the basis of rational choice. There is no place for pride. Mohler concludes thusly:

The rational choice theorist has little or nothing to say to the boys and young men of Minette Marrin’s concern. The Christian church does have something to say — the liberating truth of the Gospel. But in order to be heard, we had better first be humbled by the honest recognition that we are not as “good” as we like to think. We are all delinquents — every last one of us.

Mary Jo, of Confident Christainity, has reviewed Eckart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose, here. This book has been touted by Oprah Winfrey in her promotion of her new age religious philosophy.

Mary Jo does a nice job explaining the basic premises of the book and pinpointing the major problems:

Though there are numerous problems with Tolle’s philosophy, there are three glaring issues that I will touch on in this review: 1) Tolle’s view of thought processes: Through excessive reliance on thinking, reality becomes fragmented (page 196) and Being must be felt. It can’t be thought (page 40), 2) The problem of special knowledge, and 3) The refuting of “either/or” logic using “either/or” logic.

She fleshes out these problems in more detail in her post. While acknowledging that Tolle is not wrong in everything he states in the book, she asserts that much more is wrong than is right. She further states:

This is only a brief review of some of the problems with Tolle’s book. There are many more issues to deal with such as the relativism problem, the revisionist history included, and the cherry-picking of arguments to make a better case. There are also numerous theological issues; such as Tolle’s concept of the Christian view of God, his exegesis of passages of Scripture, his doctrine of the nature of man, and his doctrine of Jesus.

This NY Times article discusses a controversial ancient tablet that was found approximately 10 years ago, but is now attracting lots of attention. This stone, which some call Gabriel’s Revelation (Since it contains an apocalypse given by the Angel Gabriel), was found in the Dead Sea area and is possible a Dead Sea Scroll on a 3 foot high piece of Stone. It is felt to date from the first century B.C.

The controversy arises from a small section of the text in which many words are missing and is very hard to make out what the text is saying. Some believe that the tablet contains a reference to a Jewish messiah figure who dies and is then resurrected three days later. The significance of this, according to one scholar, Israel Knohl:

“This should shake our basic view of Christianity,” he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”

New Testament scholar Ben Witherington has a brief commentary on the significance of this tablet at his website and Amy Hall, of Stand to Reason, comments on the finding here.

The bottom line is this:

1. Ben thinks the tablet is probably authentic given the guys who have examined it and have weighed in on its authenticity and dating.

2. The section which is said to contain the reference to the death and resurrection of a messiah figure three days later is not at all clear and there may be some reading into the text what one wishes the text to say.

3. Let’s assume the tablet is authentic and the text does contain the reference which some claim that it does. What follows? Nothing which “shakes our basic view of Christianity. As Amy points out, it seems that the outcome is rigged against the basic truth of the Christian message. For a long time, critics have claimed that the resurrection story cannot be true because the Jews of that time had no concept of such a messiah. This story, therefore, must have been subsequently added back in to the Gospels to make them support later Christian teaching. Now that we have possible found a 1st century B.C. Jewish source which does contain the concept of a resurrected messiah, the Gospel message is obviously not true since it just copied from an earlier Jewish source.

4. It is not surprising that there might be 1st century B.C. references to such a messiah given certain O.T. texts, such as Isaiah 53.

5. The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth should be evaluated on its own evidence (which is substantial), whether or not there was such a concept in the Jewish thought of that time.

Ben Witherington concludes:

This stone certainly does not demonstrate that the Gospel passion stories are created on the basis of this stone text, which appears to be a Dead Sea text. For one thing the text is hard to read at crucial junctures, and it is not absolutely clear it is talking about a risen messiah. BUT what it does do is make plausible that Jesus could have said some of the things credited to him in Mk. 8.31, 9,31, and 10.33-34.

Addendum: (Al Mohler also addresses the topic here.)

Yesterday, I came across what appears to be an excellent website and resource for presenting and defending the Christian worldview, PleaseConvinceMe.com. There is a wealth of material available covering a range of topics pertaining to Christian apologetics. I appreciate the nonconfrontational approach with which these topics are discussed. Check it out.

The latest edition of Truth & Consequences, a product of Summit Ministries, is a piece by Chuck Edwards encouraging Christians to engage the culture. After discussing the impact of popular culture on society, Edwards turns to the mandate Christians have to shape that culture. He does so by appealing to Genesis 1:28 in which God gives man the responsibility to care for creation, and then to Matthew 5:13-16 in which Jesus refers to his followers as “salt” and “light” in the world.

Edwards then challenges Christians to impact culture from the perspective of a Christian worldview. Here are his closing remarks:

Learning to be discerning enables the Christian to avoid two undesirable extremes: what Brian Godawa describes as cultural anorexia and cultural gluttony. Anorexia is avoiding the culture altogether. On the other hand, cultural gluttony ignores how popular culture affects us, for good and evil, and takes it all in indiscriminately, consuming everything in front of us.

A third alternative for the Christian is to engage the culture: “interacting redemptively” with non-believers by understanding the good things in our popular culture and using those as a bridge to God’s truth.

Again, Paul models for us how to engage the culture when he spoke before the religious and civic leaders of Athens (recorded in Acts 17). Here we see Paul as a student of his culture; he did not try to isolate himself from it. He had studied the religious worldviews of his day, even looking “carefully” at their idols. In his speech before the Athenian leaders, he quoted from their own pagan poets and philosophers (apparently from memory). He discerned what was true in their pagan worldview and used that as a starting point to present what they had missing concerning God’s true nature, man’s true nature, and God’s redemptive plan through Jesus Christ.

Based on a biblical worldview, if our culture is tasteless and wicked it is because Christians are not doing their job! We cannot point fingers of blame at non-believers if our society is deteriorating. Non-Christians are simply living according to their view of life. Therefore, those of us who understand the truth must live it out on every level of society, from the boardroom to the classroom and the courtroom, and yes, even the sound stage. There is no area of society that is outside God’s concern. Cultural discernment and engagement are part of our Christian calling.