Posted on 04/25/2009 7:33:14 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
25 April 2009
Materialist Poofery
Barry Arrington
From time to time we see materialists raising the “poof objection” against ID. The poof objection goes something like this: An ID theorist claims that a given organic system (the bacterial flagellum perhaps) is irreducibly complex or that it displays functional complex specified information. In a sneering and condescending tone the materialist dismisses the claim, saying something like “Your claim amounts to nothing more than ‘Poof! the designer did it.’”
I have always thought the poof objection coming from a materialist is particularly ironic, because materialists have “poofery” built into their science at a very basic level. Of course, they don’t use the term “poof.” They use a functional synonym of poof – the word “emergent.”
What do I mean? Consider the hard problem of consciousness. We all believe we are conscious, and consciousness must be accounted for. For the ID theorists, this is easy. The mind is a real phenomenon that cannot be reduced to the properties of the brain. Obviously, this is not so easy for the materialist who, by definition, must come up with a theory that reduces the mind to an epiphenomenon of the electro-chemical processes of the brain. What do they do? They say the mind is an “emergent property” of the brain. Huh? Wazzat? That means that the brain system has properties that cannot be reduced to its individual components. The system is said to “supervene” (I’m not making this up) on its components causing the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts.
And what evidence do we have that “emergence” is a real phenomenon? Absolutely none. Emergence is materialist poofery. Take the mind-brain problem again. The materialist knows that his claim that the mind does not exist is patently absurd. Yet, given his premises it simply cannot exist. So what is a materialist to do? Easy. Poof – the mind is an emergent property of the brain system that otherwise cannot be accounted for on materialist grounds.
Ping!
You seem fixated with poofting.
LOL! Poofery. That is great.
I have yet to see a materialist provide a really good reason why that's *necessarily* a bad argument.
As opposed to materialist poofery, where the brain slowly develops through random processes over millions of years and then “poof!”...out pops the mind shouting HAPPY BIRTHDAY like Frosty the Snowman.
Is isn’t an argument at all. It is an assertion, that can not be verified, or falsified.
Hence, it is meaningless, and thus a subject for religious studies, rather than a subject for science.
Like the Trinity, you can not do a meaningful and repeatable experiment. Religion has often tried to coopt the method of science.
When St Helen went to the Middle East to look for the True Cross, the city fathers of Jerusalem were well prepared. They happily were able to direct her and her group to the site of the cruxifiction. They dug, and dug up not one, not two, but three crosses. But which cross was the True Cross? A woman was produced that complained of headache. They applied cross number 1 to her. She reported no change. They applied cross number 2 to her. She reported no change. They applied cross number 3 to her. She miraculously reported that her headache was HEALED. So, that settled that, Cross number 3 was accepted as the True Cross, and is still on display in the Vatican. Samples have not been made available for recent scientific testing, since the methods of the 4th Century prove its origin beyond any doubt.
Don’t think it cruel that the Church denies healing to all those people around the world with migrain headaches?
It is obvious that some Christians are still sadly lacking in consiousness.
Especially the ones who think Genesis and Darwin’s materialist creation myth are compatible!
Or the ones who think that the new and old testament are compatible.
The evos constantly go poofing around here stinking up the place.
Rule #1: No Pooftahs!
The poof objection goes something like this: An ID theorist claims that a given organic system (the bacterial flagellum perhaps) is irreducibly complex or that it displays functional complex specified information. In a sneering and condescending tone the materialist dismisses the claim, saying something like “Your claim amounts to nothing more than ‘Poof! the designer did it.’”
This is not the comeback proponents of the Theory of Evolution, what you seem to call "materialists", use. Instead, it is pointed out that 'irreducible complexity' has been thoroughly debunked through demonstrations and examples of separately evolving subcomponents of so-called irreducible mechanisms (like your aforementioned flagellum).
Additionally, the term 'emergent property' has nothing to do with a lazy attempt to dismiss the question of how a given ability developed. No evolutionary scientist has ever said "Sentience is unexplainable, so it must have just emerged out of nothingness". Feel free to cite a source if you have one. What this article is claiming is a totally incorrect definition of what an emergent property is.
An emergent property really is an ability derived from multiple systems working in concert, performing a task that none of the individual parts could do individually. A simple example would be the ability for you to jump. This is achieved through the cooperative use of muscles and bones. Muscles alone cannot do it - they would have no leverage. And bones certainly could not propel you into the air on their own. Together though, they can accomplish the job - an emergent property.
Now, looking at consciousness - the 'mind', if you will - it is derived from the combined efforts of many different process centers of the brain. These subcomponents, including memory, motor control, reasoning, recognition, and others, all have clear evolutionary histories. As they developed, the tendency for them to work together to enhance the chances of the host population's survival was favored by natural selection. As a result, the members of the population that improved on the 'emergent property' of consciousness were rewarded with a better chance of contributing to the next generation of the species. Apply this principle down through the millennia and it is no mystery how this emergent property developed.
No poofery required.
Thanks for the ping!
They aren’t?
“. These subcomponents, including memory, motor control, reasoning, recognition, and others, all have clear evolutionary histories.”
Enlighen us on the evolutionary history of memory, for a start. Nothing complicated, just a brief description of how evolution produced memory.
“First off, this argument starts with a strawman:” [excerpt]Not necessarily.
Malarkey. There is not one shred if evidence that demonstrates that consciousness is somehow “generated” by the brain. We know that the brain is involved with consciousness, and that changes in the brain can affect consciousness, but materialists can’t show the brain’s “consciousness generator” in action — or even agree of a working definition of consciousness. In fact, there have been several medically documented cases of people with little or no brain tissue being fully conscious — an impossibility if the brain were nothing more than a consciousness machine.
It may be difficult for “materialists” to prove that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain (although, considering how much we can affect consciousness by doing things to the brain, it doesn’t seem farfetched), but that certainly doesn’t lend weight to any other explanation of where it comes from.
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