What is your idea of "the argument presented," dear tacticalogic?
Oh never mind. We never seem to be able to get on the same page it seems, my longtime, dear FRiend.
I'll only add that the "logical consistency" you require seems to be available only on the basis of the reductionist model, with which so much of contemporary science seems to be embroiled.
On my understanding the reductionist model goes back to two principal sources: Newton and Descartes.
So I got to thinking about those guys and their world-changing ideas; but then very soon, Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger, Russell, Hilbert, Cantor, and Rosen showed up for the party. (The only two names on that list that are "reductionists" are Russell and Hilbert.)
You inspire me to work on problems like this, dear tacticalogic. I'm thinking it through....
Thank you so much for writing!
Knowlege tends to accumulates along paths of logical consistency so it seems intuitive that you'd want to follow them. I don't understand what it is about that you object to.
betty: I’ll only add that the “logical consistency” you require seems to be available only on the basis of the reductionist model, with which so much of contemporary science seems to be embroiled.
Spirited: Methodological naturalism or natural science requires from the outset the exclusion of the supernatural or unseen half of reality: Jehovah God, creation ex nihilo, miracles, Imago Dei, Heaven, hell, holy angels, unholy angels.
Reductionism is the method of reducing the supernatural to the natural (biological), i.e., spirit (mind and its abilities) to firing of neurons and movement of chemicals. Thus it can be said that man has no soul/spirit because it cannot be weighed, measured, tested, touched, etc.
The Biblical view of reality posits two interfacing, interacting halves of reality: seen (body, brain) and unseen (soul/spirit and abilities of mind).
After much thought C.S. Lewis concluded that natural science and its primary doctrine evolution is devised not to seek truth but to keep God (and the supernatural half of reality) out:
“More disquieting still is Professor D.M.S. Watson’s defense. “Evolution itself,” he wrote, “is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or...can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.” Has it come to that? Does the whole vast structure of modern naturalism depend not on positive evidence but simply on an a priori metaphysical prejudice. Was it devised not to get in facts but to keep out God?” (CS Lewis, The Oxford Socratic Club, 1944)
Eric Voegelin addresses the following fallacies: immanentism (pantheist conception of God), evolution, biological reductionism in general and tacticalogic’s reductionist ‘reasoning’ in particular:
“...the biological theorists don’t know that Kant has analyzed why one cannot have an immanentist theory of evolution. One can have empirical observation but no general theory of evolution because the sequence of forms is a mystery; it just is there and you cannot explain it by any theory. The world cannot be explained. It is a mythical problem, so you have a strong element of myth in the theory of evolution.” (Eric Voegelin, CW Vol. 33, The Drama of Humanity Conversations, III, Myth as Environment, p. 307)