You seem to have a serious problem with those words, dear allmendream. I wonder why.
So wondering, I thought maybe your problem with "transcendent" and "mystical" is that they refer to things which are not "physical." But all kinds of things in human experience are not "physical." For instance, mathematics and logic, reason, biology as a body of science, the laws of nature, universals of all descriptions, qualia, and so forth.
Evidently you believe there is nothing "transcendent or mystical" about "our" biology. I tend to disagree with you there, for two reasons.
(1), Increasingly scientists have come to recognize that DNA is more than a chemical specification for the construction of proteins, it is
... a tightly woven, highly efficient language that follows extremely specific rules. Its alphabet, grammar and overall structure are ordered by a beautiful set of mathematical functions.In short, DNA is relentlessly nonphysical in this sense. Does this make it metaphysical, or transcendent or mystical in some way? Even if it did, still we have to note that beyond doubt DNA is effective physically, empirically. It is definitely part of the phenomenal world we observe.
(2) To me, life itself is "transcendent" in the sense that its Source is not directly to be found in the field of its physical manifestation. The ancient Greek idea was that all existent things are participations in divine Being. Creatures have no "being," no life in themselves; their mortal life is a temporary participation in the Being of God, Who is Life. Existence is relentless change; Being is utterly changeless....
Of course, the great Greeks are not noted for their overall sensitivity to the time problem.... Perhaps because they were so interested in discovering universals (which are by definition timeless and spaceless).
"Life comes only from life." (I think it was Schröedinger who first posited that observation.) Which tells me that experiments with abiogenesis are likely to continue to disappoint their designers....
You wrote,
My “reductionist view” is that physical phenomena have explainable physical causes. This is the view that has led to all scientific advancement.It seems to me the physical laws do not "cause" things to happen so much as they constrain what kinds of things can happen. Yet in either case, there would be a natural (material or physical) phenomenon produced/modified by a nonphenomenal (non-physical) cause.
Are the latter what you mean by "transcendent" or "mystical?"
Speaking of which: You speak of the physical brain. But I never hear you speak of mind. Of soul you do; but not mind. What gives? Just wondering my friend.
Thank you so much for writing!
If DNA does something other than code for proteins, and allow for the coding of proteins, there is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE for it.
You think a chemical structure is now transcendent and mystical? If you think a chemical structure is transcendent and mystical it would follow that there is little in this world that you do not think is as well.
The physical brain is necessary to explain our brain (or mind if you will) - a defect in the physical brain causes a defect in cognition - because cognition is the product of the operation of our physical mind.