Posted on 07/19/2011 5:07:06 AM PDT by spirited irish
LOL!
Your battlelines are drawn clearly in your own mind, but they are a delusion.
You are not battling atheism by making futile arguments against science.
Science is not atheism. Science is based upon presupposing natural causes for natural phenomena and has shown its worth. It is not “psychological” for scientists to reject supernatural causation any more than it is “psychological” for a chess player to insist that bishops move only on the diagonal.
Science without methodological naturalism is nothing but the half baked loony tunes “spirit guide” soft headed mushy nonsense you seem to prefer.
Science need not address the “immaterial” mind, the spirit, the soul, spirit guides or any such immaterial fancies. Science addresses the “material” mind - the one that needs blood, consumes a large amount of our nutritional resources, and must be of a large size in order to be physically capable of human level cognition.
[ Gnosticism rather than Christian theism is dominant today. Your disparaging remarks regarding “flesh” are very Gnostic. ]
My disparaging remarks regarding flesh is very biblical..
Some, maybe most, chistians are very fleshly..
All sheep pens are fleshly.. John ch 10...
Thats why Jesus calls them “out” of them..
Some sheep pens are not sheep pens at all...
BUT Pig, Vampire, Vulture, Lion, and Goat pens..
masquerading as sheep pens..
The Gnostic’s may not been wrong about literally everything..
The Gnostics were just some kind of pen themselves..
You know just a denomination.. a sect...
Could be sheep pens are just spiritual “holding tanks”.. i.e. drunk tanks..
Many are drunk on the wine of a fleshly world..
They need to sober up...
My disparaging remarks regarding flesh is very biblical..
Some, maybe most, chistians are very fleshly..Could be sheep pens are just spiritual “holding tanks”.. i.e. drunk tanks..
Many are drunk on the wine of a fleshly world..
They need to sober up...
Spirited: We are in agreement.
Science addresses the “material” mind - the one that needs blood, consumes a large amount of our nutritional resources, and must be of a large size in order to be
physically capable of human level cognition
Spirited: The brain is material. The mind is immaterial. The brain and its’ processes can be observed. Dreams, memory, thought, will, etc., cannot be seen, measured, or “sensed” in any way. But then like Kant you really do know this. Like him, you pretend to be “caused and determined” by “physical phenomena.”
Your resistance has nothing to do with “science.” Your pretense is psychological.
They can poke around in the memory center of someones brain and trigger memories.
Someone without a particular section of the brain loses syntax.
Etc.
A God of the gaps argument with the physical processes of cognition.
My resistance to what exactly? Resistance to adopting holistic “spirit guides” and quackery into science? Resistance to accepting a God that perforce must work in the ‘gaps’ of reality of what we do not yet understand fully? Resistance to rejecting a God who the Heavens proclaim the glory of?
Consider such foolishness resisted.
Empirical and/or natural science is but one way of knowing. There are many others, philosophy being one. Yet you zealously cling to the one way in exclusion to all others, even going so far as to hope that one day empiricists will finally be able to “see” the unseen.
This one way of knowing which people like you have enthroned is like a pass to an inner-circle of the supposedly best and brightest. Therefore to speak of this one way of knowing with anything less than total reverence and awe is to be accused of blasphemy.
Antony Flew came to see this, and when he dared to elevate philosophy above empiricism the “inner circle” immediately turned upon him and like ravening dogs conceptually “gnawed” him to death.
For all whose conception of self rests upon empiricism, this one way of knowing is in every meaning of the word a religion....a natural religion of science whose deities are “empiricism” and/or dogmatic materialism (matter) and Pride.
Fundamentally, Darwinism is materialist monism and as the pillar of natural science is the devilish idea by which naturalist god-men have "decapitated God" and seized control of the order of being.Darwinism has never been the "pillar of natural science." Darwinism is the Johnny-come-lately of natural science. Its proponents are a very small tail-if that-desperately trying to claim that it has caused each and every movement of the dog. Darwinism is not "materialist monism." It may be that its proponents wish it could explain everything and claim it explains everything, but that's not the same as monism. It may be materialist, but assertions to the contrary, it is not monism, applying only to matters of biology and, except in a fanciful sense, to nothing else at all.
Your angry reaction is understandable, for the author dared touch upon your salvation system, which for you is sacred.
That you deny that Darwinism is monism merely displays your lack of knowledge. Monism is reductionism, which means that it reduces all else to one thing, in the case of Darwin to mindless matter. In the case of Kant to his own mind.
Buddhism is monism. It reduces the material realm to form and self to nothingness.
Buddha did not want God to exist, for which reason he built his monist system with heavy reliance upon the Upanishads. As Ravi Zacharias notes, Buddha’s system proposes a nowhere land for non-beings.
God the Father endowed all men with free will. Thus we are free to choose Him and the salvation He offers or we can reject His offer and choose instead the offer proposed by Buddhism, Marxism, Scientology, Theosophy or any number of man-made systems.
In case you did not understand the connection between Darwinism, the Upanishads, the ancient Greeks, and Erasmus Darwin, here it is: spiritism.
Spiritism, that is contact with and revelations from spirits, was widespread before and after the time of Erasmus Darwin and his grandson Charles. In fact, since the age of Nimrod, men have been receiving revelations from the spirit dimension.
You have a mind, allmendream. Mind is spirit, and it is open to influence from the unseen realm. In fact, the Early Church Fathers were extremely knowledgable in all things spiritual for the times in which they lived were earmarked by spiritism.
Dreams, especially nightmares, are caused by spirits, noted the Church Fathers. In this light, how very Kantian, and peculiar, that you call yourself allmenDREAM.
Mind is matter. Spirit is spirit. I AM a soul. I have a mind and a body. Age diminishes the mind - Age doesn't diminish the soul. Physical damage diminishes the mind - it doesn't diminish the soul.
Spirtisim and Spirit guides may be your religious fixation, but it is not now and never will be science, or replace science as a way of gaining useful knowledge about the physical world.
It is, and will remain, the domain of cranks, loons and con-men who, for a nominal charge, will put you in touch with your “spirit guides”.
A ridiculous God of the gaps argument is all you have.
It is amusing that you think such loony tunes nuttery is equivalent to science or will ever replace it, or that science itself is dependent upon “revelations from the spirit dimension”.
You are peculiarly insistent on abolishing yourself.
Materialism is an ancient superstition, thus the scientism based on it abolishes man in the same way as it abolishes reason. Your very stance nullifies your own reason, but your pride blinds you to this reality.
In the words of Michael D. Aeschlimann:
“By implicitly undercutting the validity of rational thought, the modern naturalists render meaningless and self-contradictory all that they have to say..”
In other words, by “materializing” your mind you undercut and render meaningless all that you say.
Methodological naturalism is the method of science.
Presupposing physical causes for physical phenomena has led to scientific and technological advancement and knowledge.
Presupposing supernatural causes for physical phenomena is an ancient superstition, the most ancient (Thunder is caused by the battles of the Gods donchaknow). It is absolutely worthless and has led nowhere but to delusion and quackery and “spirit guides” and looking for “revelations from the spirit dimension” rather than logic reason and evidence.
Nice gig if you can find enough credulous people to lap up your claptrap - but other than charlatans and con-men - nobody has ever benefited thereby.
“Presupposing physical causes for physical phenomena has led to scientific and technological advancement and knowledge.”
Spirited: The mind is not reduceable to “physical phenomena,” for which reason Flew utterly rejected this stupid claim and Sir John Eccles labeled it a superstition.
Those who cling to the materialist superstition do so for psychological reasons. For some, it is the allure of belonging to an “inner circle.” Many are they who sell their souls for admittance to the inner circle. Some cling for religious reasons. Submerging self (soul/mind) into the monist one-thing, be it matter or form (i.e., cosmic ocean) is salvific. For others, it is all about the heady power that comes from manipulating the minds of others.
Like Kant, your publicly stated belief of being caused and determined by nature does not jive with your private spiritual interaction.
Materialism is the opposite of superstition. Superstition is that there are ‘magical’ causes for physical events, not that there are understandable and predictable physical laws behind them.
I was created by God “from dust” and “to dust” I will return. I was also created through physical cellular processes involving DNA. No magic was necessary. The physical processes involving DNA were both necessary and sufficient to create my physical body and my physical mind.
Your superstitious nonsense about “spirit guides” and “revelations from the spirit world” will never replace science, because that crap is absolutely useless - the domain of nutjobs and the undereducated. Science, meanwhile, has a million and one useful applications, and only grows more useful as we figure out more and more about how physical processes are responsible for physical phenomena.
Maybe I'm missing your point, but if we honestly look around, faith in God has brought quite a bit of good into the world, such as Mother Theresa (and those who served with her), Billy and Franklin Graham, The Salvation Army. So it would seem these 'supernatural explanations' do have some very positive ramifications.
None of the good Mother Theresa did was dependent upon her ascribing supernatural causation to physical phenomena.
She didn't say that people were hungry because the devil lived in their bellies - she fed people real physical food to alleviate their real physical hunger.
Science supposes that there are physical causes to explain physical phenomena. That is a big no no to those who would rather rely upon a supernatural explanation - Magic, god (a lower case ‘god of the gaps’), “spirit guides”, etc, etc.
The “god” you describe is an immanentist dead-god of forces and energies. In “causing” you to come into existence it made you like itself: mindless. Where there was to be an embedded soul and its’ citadel mind, there is only the interaction of chemicals and the firing of neurons.
For you, liberty has been purchased at the price of your immortal soul. But in willfully choosing “liberty” you are now cursed by the knowledge of Yahweh’s Universal Moral Law and your own immortal soul, which you are compelled to deny. I doubt not that you are tormented by the yawning void of nothingness just below your feet.
That is exactly what you fail to comprehend with your infantile ‘god of the gaps’ theology - I do not deny the soul that God gave me - nor do I need “spirit guides” or “revelations from the spirit dimension” in order to know things about the physical world.
I doubt not that you are tormented by the fact that what you call knowledge is useless and leads nowhere, while science grows by leaps and bounds enriching us in our commerce and our knowledge of of the ultimate glory of God.
The less educated someone is, the more likely they are to be a creationist.
“The mind is most certainly reducible to physical phenomena”
In other words, there is no “you.” There is only the movement and interaction of chemicals and the firing of neurons empowered and moved by the unseen energies of nature to which all things are reduceable.
In other words, the material body and materialized “mind” of the machine-man called allmendream is possessed by unseen energies.
There is nothing new about any of this. Early Church Father Athanasius described the condition of the souls of the ancients as “materialized.” This means that because their souls were for the most part closed to the transcendent personal, living Triune God, they had become materialized——filled with darkness and disorder, for which reason they believed very peculiar ideas. Ideas that bear a striking resemblance to those you believe.
In fact, when you claim that your mind is material, you are unwittingly confessing that your soul is at least partially closed to God the Father Almighty.
This does not have to be a terminal condition. The remedy for saving your soul still lies within reach.
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