Posted on 10/28/2010 10:49:08 AM PDT by betty boop
An Open Letter to My Physicist Friend RE: Darwinism and the Problem of Free Will
By Jean F. Drew
Dear A —
Regarding the discussion of “free will” at www.naturalism.org, you wrote: “I am surprised to find a ‘scientific naturalism’ so similar to the utmost banality, shallowness and false superficiality of the ‘scientific materialism’ that I [had] to learn in … school [during] the communist regime.”
I think this is a very striking statement; and I understand what you mean. I read in your Book of the Living Universe long ago that you were aware of the problem of “tampering” with human consciousness, by people and institutions with social and/or political agendas to be carried out, usually without consideration of what is good and true in the real world of human experience.
Once upon a time, the natural sciences were understood to be above all else engaged in the search for the truth of reality. Nowadays, it seems people don’t want to do such searches anymore, they just want to protect and defend their personal investments in this or that ideological orthodoxy….
Speaking of a powerful orthodoxy, it seems pretty clear to me that Darwin’s theory, as it has come to be widely understood and accepted, is entirely premised on the doctrine of “scientific materialism.” As such, I regard it as an epistemological and ontological nightmare!!!
Moreover, the account of “free will” at naturalism.org can be true only if Darwin’s theory is true. But I believe it is not. For it holds that everything in biology “supervenes on the physical”; everything that happens is “determined” on the basis of Newtonian mechanics. There is only matter in the universe, nothing else; only that which is directly observed/measured is real. [Already such a view casts doubt on the reality of the universal laws of nature, which are never directly observed: They are “non-phenomenal,” intangible, immaterial. Not to mention that so is all of mathematics, logic, reasoning.] And this non-living, dumb matter, via an evolutionary process driven by random mutation and natural selection, somehow manages to become alive and — more — to develop some form of psyche.
But HOW does one get to this result by means of a random process??? In only ~14 or so billion years?
How does low algorithmic complexity (i.e., of the physical laws) generate the astonishing complexity of living systems, not to mention of the universe at large? My “trial” answer: It doesn’t; and can’t.
Darwinism, moreover, doesn’t even have an explanation of what life IS. All of it is, to me, a “just-so” story, a myth. It is riddled with self-contradictions. Not a word of its fundamental tenets can be tested by means of real-world investigations/experiments, let alone “proved.” It is an “historical” science, like archeology, not a “hard” science, like physics. It seeks to tell us what life does, but cannot tell us what life is.
But how can we be sure that our impressions of what life does are truthful, if we don’t know what life is? Don’t we have to understand what life is, first — before we can produce a reliable understanding of the how and why of its behavior? It’s like saying, “Birds fly” without bothering to elucidate what a bird is….
But the “Cartesian split” is manifestly being defended by most Darwinists nowadays. To them, the “purity” of science somehow depends on its sticking to the “objective” physical, material, phenomenal. Thus they prohibit any discussion of, for instance, final causes in nature — even though the very term “survival of the fittest” necessarily implies a final cause: “fitness” for survival! (As do all biological functions, by the way.) Yet the Darwinist says “survival of the fittest” is the very goal and purpose of evolution! But you cannot “call a spade a spade” and say that this is a final cause; it’s just an illusion…. It only “looks like” a final cause, but it isn’t really one. Such equivocation is, to me, indefensible.
But let’s look at what the article at naturalism.org has to say. “As strictly physical beings, we don’t exist as immaterial selves, either mental or spiritual, that control behavior. Thought, desires, intentions, feelings, and actions all arise on their own without the benefit of a supervisory self, and they are all the products of a physical system, the brain and the body. The self is constituted by more or less consistent sets of personal characteristics, beliefs, and actions; it doesn’t exist apart from those complex physical processes that make up the individual. It may strongly seem as if there is a self sitting behind experience, witnessing it, and behind behavior, controlling it, but this impression is strongly disconfirmed by a scientific understanding of human behavior.”
What “scientific understanding of human behavior???” I don’t see any understanding here at all! Just the deliberate elimination of certain kinds of intractable, non-conforming evidence….
If “science can’t address the problem, then there is no problem” seems to be the motto of the day.
In short, the “self” must be a fiction; it is really only an epiphenomenon of physical processes proceeding more or less in a random, linear, irreversible (past to present to future) manner that itself has no “objective” reality (or purpose of goal) and thus cannot serve as a cause of anything in the physical world. That is, the self has zero ontological status: It is simply defined away as not really existing.
Instead, we find that the cause of human willing is simply what “arises out of the interaction between individuals and their environment, not from a freely willing self that produces behavior independently of causal connections…. Therefore individuals don’t bear ultimate originative responsibility for their actions, in the sense of being their first cause. Given the circumstances both inside and outside the body, they couldn’t have done other than what they did.” [So human beings just can’t help what they do; their behavior is utterly determined. I.e., they are programmable robots and nothing more.]
So it seems rather cruel (and unjust) that under this set of circumstances, “Nevertheless, we must still hold individuals responsible, in the sense of applying rewards and sanctions, so that their behavior stays more or less within the range of what we deem acceptable. This is, partially, how people learn to act ethically.”
Question: Who is this “we” in the above statement?
Another question: If individuals don’t bear “ultimate originative responsibility for their actions,” then what is the cause of suicide? Does brain function and/or the “environment” cause this ultimate act of self-destruction? If so, then why aren’t there more suicides? Or how about acts of heroism, where a person puts his own physical survival at risk to come to the aid of another person in danger? What is the “naturalist” explanation of a man who throws his body onto a live grenade, so to spare his fellow soldiers from being blown to smithereens, well knowing that his own death would be the likely price of his decision? Did not his self-sacrifice “cause” (or at least permit) his mates to continue living, when otherwise they may likely all have been killed?
Then there is this pièce de résistence [with my comments in brackets]:
The source of value: Because naturalism doubts the existence of ultimate purposes either inherent in nature or imposed by a creator [final causes either way], values derive from human needs and desires [oh, for instance the desire to kill one’s self, which desire must arise in nature/environment according to Darwinist theory, as in the above?], not supernatural absolutes. Basic human values are widely shared by virtue of being rooted in our common evolved nature. [That wipes out all individuality right there.] We need not appeal to a supernatural standard of ethical conduct to know that in general it’s wrong to lie, cheat, steal, rape, murder, torture, or otherwise treat people in ways we’d rather not be treated [Oh? HOW do we know this? As I said earlier, Darwinist orthodoxy is an epistemological nightmare!]. Our naturally endowed empathetic concern for others [as alleged —in face of the fact that people frequently choose to conduct themselves evilly towards others — and if that is not “naturally endowed,” then where did that come from?] and our hard-wired penchant for cooperation and reciprocity [how did that get to be “hard-wired???”] get us what we most want as social creatures: to flourish as individuals within a community. [Tell that to the person who intends to commit suicide! He could care less for “flourishing as an individual,” let alone in a community]. Naturalism may show the ultimate contingency of some values, in that human nature might have evolved differently and human societies and political arrangements might have turned out otherwise. [Well they might have; but what’s the point? Reality is what we have. All else is pure speculation.] But, given who and what we are as natural creatures [please define “natural creatures” — the statement seems oxymoronic to me], we necessarily [???] find ourselves with shared basic values [??? — which ones? And tell me how did they become “shared” when Darwinist theory itself is premised on conflict and competition for the available finite environmental resources necessary for survival?] which serve as the criteria for assessing moral dilemmas, even if these assessments are sometimes fiercely contested and in some cases never quite resolved. [The very fact that there can be conflict, contestation, suggests that the uniformity of “natural creatures” that we would expect to see on Darwin’s theory is a total fiction, something simply not borne out by the facts on the ground of real experience, as contrasted with the reductionist abstractions of naturalistic evolution theory.]
It seems to me that Darwinist orthodoxy really doesn’t explain very much. The problem seems to be its utter rejection, in principle, of any immaterial component of reality. Although might I point out that a “principle” is itself “immaterial?” Even the concept of Reality is immaterial. These people routinely, blithely shoot themselves in the foot; and then blithely pretend that it didn’t happen.
In any case, we’re NOT supposed to notice this. Indeed, to notice this is “forbidden.”
Shades of Karl Marx here — and also I imagine your school experience back in the day of Soviet domination of your country. Marx absolutely forbade all questions about his “system.” You either bought it whole cloth, or you didn’t. What you couldn’t do was question it in any way. But if you didn’t buy it, then you were probably some kind of “enemy”….
Is seems to me the biological sciences need a restoration of sanity! Today, all the truly interesting work on life problems is being done by physicists (like you, dear friend!) and mathematicians….
The other day I came across some highly interesting passages in The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library [by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler, editor; 1987, Phanes Press] that go straight to the point of what I believe is needed for science to renew itself, to rededicate itself to its ancient mission, the quest for Truth. What is principally involved is the “healing” of the artificial and unnatural “Cartesian split”:
Pythagoras, no doubt, would have disapproved of the radical split which occurred between the sciences and philosophy during the 17th century “enlightenment” and which haunts the intellectual and social fabric of Western civilization to this day. In retrospect perhaps we can see that man is most happily at home in the universe as long as he can relate his experiences to both the universal and the particular, the eternal and temporal levels of being.
Natural science takes an Aristotelian approach to the universe, delighting in the multiplicity of the phenomenal web. It is concerned with the individual parts as opposed to the whole, and its method is one of particularizing the universal. Natural science attempts to quantify the universal, through the reduction of living form and qualitative relations to mathematical and statistical formulations based on the classification of material artifacts.
By contrast, natural philosophy is primarily Platonic in that it is concerned with the whole as opposed to the part. Realizing that all things are essentially related to certain eternal forms and principles, the approach of the natural philosopher strives to understand the relation that the particular has with the universal. Through the language of natural philosophy, and through the Pythagorean approach to whole systems, it is possible to relate the temporal with the eternal and to know the organic relation between multiplicity and unity.
If the scientific spirit is seen as a desire to study the universe in its totality, it will be seen that both approaches are complementary and necessary in scientific inquiry, for an inclusive cosmology must be equally at home in dealing with the part or the whole. The great scientists of Western civilization — Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, and those before and after — were able to combine both approaches in a valuable and fruitful way.
It is interesting that the split between science and philosophy coincides roughly with the industrial revolution — for once freed from the philosophical element, which anchors scientific inquiry to the whole of life and human values, science ceases to be science in a traditional sense, and is transformed into a servile nursemaid of technology, the development and employment of mechanization. Now machines are quite useful as long as they are subservient to human good, in all the ramifications of that word — but as it turned out, the industrial revolution also coincided with a mechanistic conceptualization of the natural order, which sought to increase material profit at the expense of the human spirit….
Today, in many circles, to a large part fueled by the desire for economic reward, science has nearly become confused with and subservient to technology, and from this perspective it might be said that the ideal of a universal or inclusive science has been lost…. [p. 43f]
Still I know that you have not lost this ideal! Yours is an “integrative science” approach, integrating not only the natural sciences themselves, but also integrating them with the natural philosophy approach; i.e., of whole systems.
You wrote:
“I realized the importance of our mail exchange about God and the Universe. Indeed, … free will is not explained by present day science, not by physics, of course. As far as I understand it, it is not explained by the mechanical application of the biological principle. It requires more: a deeper understanding of the biological principle, and even more, a deeper understanding of the Universe as a whole. I wrote you that even the laws and principles of Nature can have a ‘soul-like’, animate aspect. Ultimately, our free will dwells in ‘the Universe as a whole’, and as such, [is] omnipresent, as far as I understand it. If so, the question of free will is a deep question, going beyond the present conceptual framework of science. Free will is rooted in the animate and animating biological principle, in [the] eternal Life of the Universe.”
Oh, A — I so agree!!!
And I’m so looking forward to reading your new article, “The Logic of Reality: a model-independent approach towards the self-contained logic of the Universe”!
May God ever bless you, dear friend, and your labors!
©2010 by Jean F. Drew.
I had an involved mental ‘hiccup’ this morning. It occurred to me to wonder what are the implications if one of two scenarios is correct: 1) the spirit is a spacetime phenomenon and we just have yet to define the variable expressions fo the continuum in which spirit originates; 2) spirit is a none spacetime phenomenon and we have an impasse because it ‘appears’ that all there is in either in God or in the universe God created and not ‘in God outside of the universe God created’. I mean, think of the ramifications! We already sense that the self is not strictly ‘in the biological electromagnetic impulses’ so we already sense that there is a where/when within the Created universe which is oh so close yet oh so unacknowledged ... the information of a thought may have electromagnetic impacts but the thought, the essence of the thought conveyed in this sentence is outside of the elctromagnetic realm. What if the spirit that God breathed into humankind is also inside the created universe and we aren’t even ‘up on the thing in which spirit is carried’, the soul or behavior mechanism? How many spatio-temporal realms ahve we yet to discover?
No, MHGinTN, you're not the only one. If their materialist view of reality were actually taken to it's logical conclusion, knowledge, science and reason itself would be impossible. So very time they use these immaterial laws of thought, though they do not acknowledge it, they are unwitting testimonials to the greatness of the transcendent Creator, the great Coder, if you will, to Whom they refuse to give thanks and to worship.
Cordially,
Truly, a random event has no deterministic cause.
Mutations are unpredictable but they are not random. Existing biological systems and physical-chemical elements must pre-exist a mutation. Ditto for space/time, physical laws/constants, etc.
Which . . . sooner or later . . . is virtually always
nature with a
Nature . . . capital “N.”
Truly, when we speak of the space/time continuum we rarely finish the sentence - namely, that space and time are observables to humans. There may be other types of dimensions that we cannot detect either directly or indirectly.
Spirit/soul/mind might "be" a dimension - or it might occupy space/time like a field (fields occur at all points in space/time.)
In math/physics jargon though, it might instead be called information (Shannon, successful communication.)
Borrowing from my post on another thread:
God’s physical creation is enormous and physical man is but a miniscule part in relation to it. In the strictest terms, no physical man is the center of the physical universe. God, on the other hand, sees all of it, all at once – and not just a cosmic overview but all the way down to the quantum fields or particles.
But that is just the physical man.
And neither his form (geometry of his autonomy) nor his constituent molecules sum up to who the man “is.” Indeed all of his molecules are replaced every seven years as I recall. And his form is relative over space and time. It is all quite dynamic in this physical creation.
Man is not the sum of his physical parts.
Indeed, I aver that who a particular man “is” – whether physically or spiritually as a living soul - is information, i.e. a particular message being communicated.
Bear with me…
Physically speaking, the message is DNA – a message unique to each one of us. The message is “who” a man physically “is.” As long as the message is being communicated throughout his autonomous physical body, the man is physically alive. When it ceases to be communicated, he is physically dead. He is physically dead not because the message disappears (DNA doesn’t yield to entropy right away) but because the message is not being communicated.
Moreover, by the very fact of his existence on some finite worldline of the space/time continuum, the universe has been physically “informed.” Physically, who he is and his entire life is “on the record.” God sees all of it.
And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought [them] unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that [was] the name thereof. – Genesis 2:19
And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. – Genesis 3:22-24
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. – Matthew 10:28
We are rescued by a message being communicated to us. And that message is not who we are but rather, Who Christ IS. Spiritually speaking, we Christians are that message being communicated to us, in us and through us.
He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed [it] unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. - Matthew 16:15-18
Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and [that] no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. –I Corinthians 12:3
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: - John 10:27
So then faith [cometh] by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. - Romans 10:17
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. – Romans 10:9
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and [of] the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. - John 3:5-8
What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [which is] in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? - I Corinthians 6:19
But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. - Romans 8:9
For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: So we, [being] many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. – Romans 12:4-5
But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
But God hath revealed [them] unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned.
But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. II Cor 2:6-16
Give us this day our daily bread. – Matt 6:11
I am that bread of life. – John 6:48
It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, [they] are spirit, and [they] are life. – John 6:63
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. - Galatians 2:20
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, [even] to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. – John 1:12-13
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with [him], that we may be also glorified together. – Romans 8:15-17
By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. - Psalms 33:6
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. [There is] no speech nor language, [where] their voice is not heard. – Psalms 19:1-3
I am certain there is nothing of which anything can be made but God's will - either His creative will or permissive will. And I am of the first understanding because what is space/time to the Creator of it? Or to put it another way, "beyond" space/time is only meaningful to those "in" space/time.
God's Name is I AM.
Another wonderful essay saved on 3 drives. Thanks.
betty to OldNavy, “If we think something occurring in nature, as it appears to us as human “observers,” is “an extremely unusual or extraordinary thing or occurrence,” could this possibly mean that we don’t understand the natural system — the context in which all phenomena occur — as well as we need to, if the truth of reality is our main concern?”
Spirited: By way of osmosis, trusting contemporary Americans have-—without question-— absorbed the counterintuitive teachings of naturalism. The inability to logically answer the questions posed by betty and Alamo-Girl for example, is the direct outcome of trust misplaced in babbling fools and charlatons like Dawkins, Lewontin, Haeckel, et al.
When I say they cannot answer logically, I mean that their responses cannot and in fact never do come wholly from within the edifice of naturalism for the reason that:
“Naturalism effectively nihilizes man’s spiritual endowments by making him a part of something else in the way that grains of sand are merely parts of a beach (materialism) or drops of water are merely parts of a cosmic ocean (pantheism). Because we are parts of the system, we cannnot logically “know what the system “is” anymore than a drop of water can know about the ocean of which it is a fractional part.”
In short, if naturalism is true, then why bother heeding anything naturalists say, for by their own admission their “thoughts” (theories and all else) are the emergent product of unseen irrational forces of nature.
Insider-naturalists like Lewontin, Dawkins, etc. resolve their embarrassing problem of “mindlessness” by being worldview fence-straddlers. One leg is in naturalism while one leg is in the mind-body dualism of the Biblical worldview.
However, either man is both material (body/brain) and spirit (mind/soul/spirit) or he is not, as naturalism teaches. It cannot be both.
If he is, then his spiritual endowments from God the Father allow him to reason, imagine, remember, will, and feel guilty (conscience) and by extension, the supernatural Creator is not dead but very much alive.
However, if God is dead as naturalists wish Him to be, and by extension, man is a part of nature, ie. a grain of sand or a drop of water, he does not...further cannot... possess an individual mind/soul/spirit for the reason that he is “one-with” (a part of) nature and there is No Source within irrational, unconscious nature for mind,free will, conscience, etc.
When Aristotle famously quipped: “What do rocks dream?... nothing” he was commenting on the conundrum posed by naturalism, which can be phrased thus: “How and why do we know, will, and dream? (but rocks cannot?)”
Ideas have consequences, and what is desperately needed in our time are people willing to take on the difficult work of “unpacking” and critically analyzing the underlying presuppositions, assumptions, etc. of naturalism. During the discovery process, the analyst will always find the tiny grains of truth that leaven the whole lump. Truth must be separated out before the deceptions can be exposed.
Well put.
It seems to me for evolution to occur, DNA's copying mistakes (mutations) must add new information that natural selection can capitalize on. But if in fact these copying mistakes represent a degradation of existing information — i.e., they are "noise" in the communication channel that is deleterious to successful communication of DNA's "message" — then how do they contribute to species fitness?
Since DNA most often "corrects" for these copying mistakes by wiping out the organism in which they occur — then why are we speaking of this process as if it were "evolutionary?" An organism that is wiped out because of copying errors is one that will never breed and have progeny. Assuming it manages to survive for a time nevertheless, so to breed and transmit this degraded information to its offspring, then how can this be thought of as any kind of fitness improvement in the species? This looks to me more like devolution than evolution....
FWIW.
Just to begin with, let's address the term "random," as it really ought to be used. A "random" event need be neither "extremely unusual," nor "extraordinary." For an event to be "random," requires only a couple of conditions:
1) There must be more than one possible outcome2) The outcome of any particular instance of the event is not deterministic; i.e., the result cannot be completely predicted beforehand.
We're quite familiar with the idea of randomness as it's manifested in coin tosses or rolls of the dice -- the results of which can hardly be classified as extraordinary or unusual.
But we also note that these are really only "quasi-random" phenomena -- physical analogs to a mathematical ideal. For example, the results of a dice roll are affected by the velocity of the dice at the time they were tossed; the characteristics of the table (e.g., friction of the surface, length of table, etc.), the shape and composition of the dice, and so on.
We can say that results are "effectively random," but really that's only because we do not have the means to properly measure the initial conditions, nor account for all of the physical variables that affect the roll.
And this takes us to the original point about "randomness" vs. "knowing the system" in which the event takes place. If we talk about physical random events, we're really talking about events that are "effectively random" from our perpective. We often have no way of gathering information sufficient to describe the physical processes that led to the outcome we observe. Lacking that knowledge (which may be, per Heisenberg, intrinsically unavailable to us), we can still deal with effective randomness through mathematics, via statistics -- we can grapple with probabilities, even if deterministic answers elude us. And it works very well. (As an aside, many important theories of modern statistics are due to one William S. Gosset, who was employed as a statistician by the Guinness brewing company. Further proof that beer is good.)
Now on to a broader topic. The essence of the argument here boils down to the efficacy of the "materialist" worldview as an explanation for what we can observe -- in this context as an explanation for biological processes, but really it's a more general question.
According to Wikipedia (yes, I know...), "the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions." The source of matter and the means by which interactions first began are carefully avoided.... and there is a great deal of controversy over the exact scope and definition of "matter."
It's easy to get bogged down in those sorts of discussions (as seems to be the case on this thread). But there's another piece of the puzzle, which has been touched on several times on this thread, but it hasn't really been addressed in any depth.
To begin with, one thing that appears to be the case, is that "meaning" is not part of a truly materialist universe. Material interactions cannot "mean" anything -- they just happen. For a phenomenon to have "meaning," implies "purpose," or at least awareness, that at some level necessarily exists outside the materialist universe.
Thus, if there is "meaning" in any phenomenon, materialism pretty much has to collapse.
So let's look at that.
When we observe a supposedly materialist universe, we realize that it operates according to "rules." (And here, already, materialism begins to totter -- what is realization, if not evidence of awareness?)
When we describe those rules, modern science generally does so by means of logic and mathematics, and deductions and conclusions drawn from them. We can create tools that measure -- assign quantitative values -- to phenomena, based on our understanding of the rules governing the phenomenon we're trying to measure.
But note: we live in a universe that can be described, including predictively, through mathematics, logic, "rules," quantitative systems ... and "universals" such as pi, e, and so on. These have all the appearance of being based on ideals, as opposed to physical phenomena.
And we make deductions -- if this happens, it implies something else. This is not just an exercise of mind -- though it is that, as well. We are also an inventive lot, so that we use our deductions to create tools by which we control the material interactions of the universe in order to achieve some desired end; and "desired end" implies meaning. Materialism looks pretty shaky by now, but it's still possible (one supposes) to assert that these are all just byproducts of the physical, material process called consciousness.
The key to the problem of materialism, really depends on the nature of these apparently non-material concepts. The principles of mathematics, for example, appear to be discovered, as opposed to invented. And mathematics is at root a descriptive discipline -- might it not embody a form of meaning?
Beyond that, let us suppose that our consciousness is nothing but a material process, and even our own understanding of a problem might be described that way. But we also pass on our understanding to others -- we have the ability to communicate, through purposeful action, the understanding in our own mind, to other minds. We have language, and the means of describing concept.
It becomes extremely difficult, at that point, to exclude "meaning" from the universe. And the materialist worldview seems as a consequence to be fatally flawed.
There ya go agin.
trying to be logical with the irrational.
LOL.
Flacid pseudo-intellectualism
is the best folks can do
who deny God and His Creation.
As Scripture says . . . the fool has said in his heart, there is no God.
The first time a human's unique DNA structure was formed was when their parents' DNA was randomly shuffled together.
Well I certainly agree with your first statement, allmendream! But what is this "random shuffling" of the parents' DNA? Do not the parents choose each other (i.e., male–female bonding, leading them to mate) before they have offspring?
Can a choice be classified as a random phenomenon?
Are you arguing that mating behavior is random — "haphazard, purposeless" — at the parents' level, because choice implies free will, and free will is an illusion? That procreation is an utterly "blind," mechanistic, deterministic process in nature? That the DNA inheritance an offspring receives is purely a matter of accident (i.e., of "random shuffling")?
Interestingly . . . partners TEND to pair up in lasting mating relationships . . .
who
—somewhat resemble the opposite sex parent
—have as good a bi-symetry as ‘the market’ can purchase
—opposite pheremone signals
—which correlate with opposite DNA factors
—which correlate with maximum immune system robustness in the offspring.
Sounds like design, to me.
It would seem that anything emitting from a black hole would have to somehow be exempt from the law of gravity, as presently understood.... Problem is, gravity is not all that well understood!!! To this day!!!
Two ways to go in solving the gravity problem, it seems: the quantum gravity approach (with "gravitons"), or the conception of gravity as an interdimensional phenomenon....
I doubt your speculation would "work" on the basis of the quantum gravity scenario. But jeepers, my dear friend, it might well work if the latter scenario proves to be the case....
Thank you ever so much for writing!
When a man makes sperm or a woman makes an egg, the DNA they got from mom and dad (soon to be grandma and grandpa) that in their body are separated into mom's chromosome #1-23 and dad's chromosomes #1-23 - are shuffled randomly together.
If there are two genes close to each other on the same chromosome there will be a genetic “distance” calculated in centi-Morgans that will reflect how likely there is to be a “crossing over” event swapping the DNA between the two.
If, for example, there is a 70 centi-Morgan distance between two linked genes, then in 70% of the offspring the two genes will not go together and in 30% of the offspring the genes will still be associated together.
Obviously nature loves randomness. Random shuffling of the variable region of an antibody enables the body to “search” the design space of 3-D structure such that it can create an antibody that can bind to every conceivable 3-D structure.
Obviously random changes with an associated selection process (whereby self binding antibodies are eliminated) is a very POWERFUL mechanism.
On the subject you raise (not at all what I was talking about) Geneticists have LONG known that you cannot assume that two people that are mated/married are going to be as genetically distinct as two random people.
People mate assortively for a host of traits that include the obvious (height, intelligence, education) but also things like mid digital hair and incisor length.
I have checked out many a fine woman over the years, and yet I have NEVER said “did you check out the incisor length on THAT babe?”
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