(You) “If man were merely a machine, incapable of exercising free, rational decisions (machines do not modify their own programs as a rule), then the whole idea of personal responsibility and legal sanction for wrong-doing is absurd.”
Moreover, if, as you say, the scientific mechanistic view of life (therefore of the human brain) is that of an array of unguided chemical reactions and random neuron discharges, then that sort of life-view cannot claim anything as a matter of positive knowledge beyond its physical environment, and must confess it is helpless to believe anything other than what it does believe.
If I have stated anything which is substantially inaccurate or unfair, please enlighten me.
Exactly right..
Does/Do thoughts come from the human brain?..
-OR- from the human spirit?..
They cannot originate in both.. Some(people) attack that there even "IS" a human spirit.. and ultimately(I beleive) a Spirit(God) at all.. Evolution as a concept attacks indirectly ultimately "the Spirit(God)"..
Your statement strikes me as spot-on, YHAOS. I question whether such a life-view is even capable of reasoning about its physical environment. For if everything is just random neuron discharges and unguided chemical reactions, how do logic and reason enter into the picture? How could logic and reason be the products of a long chain of antecedent accidents? Even if we could say they were (which I very strongly doubt we can), according to what principle could unguided chemistry and random neural activity access them?
Dawkins is undermining the very foundation of science itself by making the claims he does. His is an exercise in absurdity.
Thank you so much YHAOS for your excellent essay/post!