Here is one of the most common objections to Intelligent Design and that comes up in discussions surrounding the existence of God. Philosopher Jay Richards offers some good insight about how to think about this intriguing question.
For more on this, check out the Case for the Creator.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
What was Jesus like as a child?
“Western culture is a Jesus-haunted culture, and yet one that is largely biblically illiterate. Almost anything can pass for knowledge of Jesus and early Christianity in such a culture.”—Be
n Witherington
Now the son of Annas the scribe was standing there with Joseph; and he took a willow branch and scattered the water that Jesus had gathered. Jesus was irritated when he saw what had happened, and said to him: “You unrighteous, irreverent idiot! What did the pools of water do to harm you? See, now you also will be withered like a tree, and you will never bear leaves or root or fruit.” Immediately that child was completely withered. Jesus left and returned to Joseph’s house. But the parents of the withered child carried him away, morning his lost youth. They brought him to Joseph and began to accuse him, “What kind of child do you have who does such things?”
Evidently Jesus didn’t play nice with the other children! Here is another interesting snap shot of Jesus’ childhood:
Somewhat later he has going through the village, and a child ran up and banged into his shoulder. Jesus was aggravated and said to him, “You will go no further on your way.” And right away the child fell down and died...The parents of the dead child came to Joseph and blamed him, saying “Since you have such a child you cannot live with us in the village. Or teach him to bless and not curse—for he is killing our children!”*
One thing is clear, “Don’t mess with Jesus!”
n Witherington Have you ever wondered what Jesus was like as a little boy? The New Testament covers Jesus’ birth, but then skips ahead to when he is 12 years old in the temple sitting with the teachers (cf. Luke 2:42-51). What about all the years in between?
Enter the lost gospels. These writings, for various reasons, tried to fill in the gaps about two periods of Jesus’ life—his childhood and the three days between his death and resurrection.
Here are two passages from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas about his childhood (judge for yourself if they ring true):
Now the son of Annas the scribe was standing there with Joseph; and he took a willow branch and scattered the water that Jesus had gathered. Jesus was irritated when he saw what had happened, and said to him: “You unrighteous, irreverent idiot! What did the pools of water do to harm you? See, now you also will be withered like a tree, and you will never bear leaves or root or fruit.” Immediately that child was completely withered. Jesus left and returned to Joseph’s house. But the parents of the withered child carried him away, morning his lost youth. They brought him to Joseph and began to accuse him, “What kind of child do you have who does such things?”
Evidently Jesus didn’t play nice with the other children! Here is another interesting snap shot of Jesus’ childhood:
Somewhat later he has going through the village, and a child ran up and banged into his shoulder. Jesus was aggravated and said to him, “You will go no further on your way.” And right away the child fell down and died...The parents of the dead child came to Joseph and blamed him, saying “Since you have such a child you cannot live with us in the village. Or teach him to bless and not curse—for he is killing our children!”*
One thing is clear, “Don’t mess with Jesus!”
Anyone who has read the NT can easily distinguish the flavors of these writings. These 'accounts' are far too late to offer us anything historically solid. The Gospels and the other writings of the NT are the best and most accurate sources of knowledge about Jesus.
For more background substantiating the accuracy of the NT message, composition, and transmission, see the excellent book Reinventing Jesus by J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, & Daniel B. Wallace
*(Quoted From) Infancy Gospel of Thomas ch. 3 in Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 58.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Chance or Design?
I came across this clip and was again reminded of how easy "design" is to recognize in everyday life; but then how ironic it is that design is a forbidden inference when we look at "really small" or "really big" stuff like the bacterial flagellum or the universe. Enjoy this clip...
Monday, December 8, 2008
Do Humans Have Minds or Brains (or Both?)
Do I have a mind, a brain or both? Am I only my physical brain states or is there an immaterial mind / soul that interacts with the physical brain in the process of thinking and reality consciousness? Related questions of free will of course enter this discussion.
The debate about Intelligent Design vs. Naturalism (cf. Neo-Darwinian Evolution) has now spread to the Mind / Body problem. Do brains / minds need a designer or are they the product of random, blind processes? Can physics and chemistry alone account for consciousness, free will, thinking etc?
In answering this question, we need an explanation that best explains all of the data.
Here is an interesting podcast by Dr. Egnor (a neurosurgeon) and Dr. Schwartz (a neuropsychiatrist at UCLA) Below is an article that I have copied and pasted by Dr. Egnor for your convenience that really sets the table for this discussion:
The Mind and Materialist Superstition by Dr. Egnor
MaterialismPhilosophy. The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
Superstition1 a: a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation b: an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition2: a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary
Mind(in a human or other conscious being) The element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges.
Materialists have taken note of the growing efforts by non-materialist neuroscientists to point out the deep problems with the inference that the brain is entirely the cause of the mind. Materialist neuroscience, like materialist evolutionary biology, is a vacuous orthodoxy, and its proponents resent threats to their dogma. Darwinian explanations for functional biological complexity are nonsense, but some familiarity with the relevant science is necessary to understand that it is nonsense. Materialist explanations for the mind are transparent nonsense.
Consider the six characteristics of the mind, generally accepted by materialist and non-materialist scientists and philosophers. Each of the six poses enormous problems for a materialistic explanation:
Intentionality
Intentionality is the "aboutness" or meaning of a mental state, the ability of a mental state to refer to something outside of itself. Ink on paper has no meaning unless it is conferred by a mind, which wrote it or read it. Matter may have intentionality only secondarily ("derived intentionality"). The problem of intentionality is believed by many philosophers of the mind to be the most serious challenge to materialism. "Meaning" is imparted to matter by a mind; matter isn’t the source of meaning. Therefore matter (brain tissue) can’t be the entire cause of the mind.
Qualia
Qualia is subjective experience, which is first person ontology. You can describe pain, using science or literature or whatever. But the experience of pain is something qualitatively different. There is nothing in science which infers subjectivity — no "Newton’s Fourth Law" by which objective matter produces subjective experience. No material law or principle invokes subjectivity, yet subjectivity is the hallmark of the mind.
Persistence of Self-Identity
We are the same person throughout our lives, despite a continual turn-over of matter in our brains. The matter that constitutes your brain today is different matter, for the most part, than the matter that constituted your brain ten years ago. Furthermore, your brain matter is organized differently now than it was ten years ago. Yet your sense of identity, which is a fundamental characteristic of minds, is continuous over time. You are you, despite profound changes in brain matter and organization. What property then is the “same” that accounts for you being the same? It’s not matter and it’s not organization of matter. Hume thought that the sense of personal continuity was the result of a continuous string of memories, but his theory begs the question. Who is it that has the string of memories? Continuity of self is a prerequisite for a string of memories, so it can’t be the result of a string of memories. Persistence of self-identity through time can’t be explained materialistically; the most reasonable explanation is that there is an immaterial component of the mind that is continuous over time.
Restricted Access
Restricted access means that I, and only I, experience my thoughts first-hand. I can choose to describe them to others, and others may be able to explain better than I some of the ramifications of my thoughts, but only I experience them. Even a lie-detector machine or a functional MRI doesn’t permit other people to experience my thoughts; they are merely material expressions of my brain activity, akin to speech. This is entirely unlike matter. I know the brain anatomy (matter) of my patients much better (usually) than they do. I know what their brains look like, whereas they have never actually seen them. Yet I have no first-hand experience of their thoughts, no matter how well I know their brain. We each have absolute restricted access to the experience of our own thoughts. Matter does not have this property, and therefore matter cannot be the entire cause of our thoughts.
Incorrigibility
Incorrigibility, which is related to restricted access, means the unassailable knowledge of one’s own thoughts. If I am thinking of the color red, no one can credibly refute that fact. Of course, I may be lying about what I am thinking, or I may be mistaken about the implications of my thoughts, but I experience my thoughts in a way that no one else does. If I say (honestly) that I like impressionist painting, it is nonsensical for someone else to assert, "You are mistaken; you don’t like impressionist painting." This incorrigibility isn’t a property of matter. I can hold an honest opinion that the hippocampus is in the parietal lobe (it isn’t; it’s in the temporal lobe). My interlocutor can point out that I am incorrect about the material issue (where the hippocampus is located), but he can’t plausibly argue that I’m wrong that I hold that opinion. Incorrigibility is a property of mind, but not matter.
Free Will
If the mind is entirely caused by matter, it is difficult to understand how free will can exist. Matter is governed by fixed laws, and if our thoughts are entirely the product of brain chemistry, then our thoughts are determined by brain chemistry. But chemistry doesn’t have "truth" or "falsehood," or any other values for that matter. It just is. Enzymatic catalysis isn’t true or false, it just is. In fact, the view that "materialism is true" is meaningless… if materialism is true. If materialism is true, than the thought "materialism is true" is just a chemical reaction, neither true nor false. While there are some philosophers who assert that free will can exist in a deterministic materialistic world (they’re called "compatibilists"), and some have argued that quantum indeterminacy may leave room for free will, the most parsimonious explanation for free will is that there is an immaterial component of the mind that is undetermined by matter.
So is the materialist inference that the mind is caused entirely by the brain plausible? Please note that materialism has failed to offer any explanation for any of the six salient characteristics of the mind. Not a single salient characteristic of the mind is a property of matter. The strict materialistic explanation for the mind — the attribution of immaterial mental acts and properties to brain matter — is, by definition, a materialist superstition, a "false irrational conception of causation in nature maintained despite evidence to the contrary."
Of course, on reflection, we wouldn’t expect neuroscience to have important things to say about the material/immaterial nature of the mind. Neuroscience studies correlations between material events and behaviors, which are third-person objective phenomena; it has provided no explanation for subjective-first person processes, which is the essential quality of the mind. The assertion that neuroscience demonstrates the material nature of the mind is an ideological assertion, a misuse of neuroscience to serve a tenuous materialist agenda.In Wolfgang Pauli’s deathless phrase, the materialist explanation of the mind ”isn’t even wrong.” It’s superstitious nonsense. Materialism can’t explain the mind, because the salient characteristics of mental states — intentionality, qualia, persistence of self-identity, restricted access, incorrigibility, and free will — do not admit material explanations.
A coherent and meaningful understanding of the mind requires a repudiation of this materialist superstition. Strict materialism offers some insight into behavioral correlations — behavioral arousal is associated with activation of neurons in the brainstem reticular activation system — but materialism offers nothing to explain the subjective properties of mental experience, which constitute the mind as we actually experience it. A genuine understanding of the mind must be open to immaterial causation, because there is nothing in materialist science (or materialist philosophy) that can account for subjective experience.
The viewpoint that matter has desires, intentions, and subjective experiences has a long history in human affairs. It was the foundation of Aristotelian natural philosophy — matter fell to the earth because it seemed to "desire" to return to its natural place. The ancient world was haunted with "sentient" inanimate objects — talismans, charms and idols. Children attribute wishes and feelings to stuffed toys. Since the dawn of man we have ascribed sentience and feelings and will to matter, and a salient triumph of modern science has been to expunge this attribution of subjectivity to matter. The work of physical science is to identify and if possible quantify regularities in the "third person objective existence" of matter. Matter has third person objective existence. The mind, as experienced, has first person subjective existence.
Superstition is “a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary.“ The foundation of the scientific revolution is the repudiation of the inference that matter has will, emotions and desires. If there is anything that modern science has demonstrated beyond dispute it is the gulf between objective and subjective ontology — between matter and mind. Yet the materialist superstition isn’t completely gone. It persists in its modern scientific manifestation — the inference that the mind is entirely caused by the brain — which is a superstition.
The debate about Intelligent Design vs. Naturalism (cf. Neo-Darwinian Evolution) has now spread to the Mind / Body problem. Do brains / minds need a designer or are they the product of random, blind processes? Can physics and chemistry alone account for consciousness, free will, thinking etc?
In answering this question, we need an explanation that best explains all of the data.
Here is an interesting podcast by Dr. Egnor (a neurosurgeon) and Dr. Schwartz (a neuropsychiatrist at UCLA) Below is an article that I have copied and pasted by Dr. Egnor for your convenience that really sets the table for this discussion:
The Mind and Materialist Superstition by Dr. Egnor
MaterialismPhilosophy. The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
Superstition1 a: a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation b: an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition2: a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary
Mind(in a human or other conscious being) The element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges.
Materialists have taken note of the growing efforts by non-materialist neuroscientists to point out the deep problems with the inference that the brain is entirely the cause of the mind. Materialist neuroscience, like materialist evolutionary biology, is a vacuous orthodoxy, and its proponents resent threats to their dogma. Darwinian explanations for functional biological complexity are nonsense, but some familiarity with the relevant science is necessary to understand that it is nonsense. Materialist explanations for the mind are transparent nonsense.
Consider the six characteristics of the mind, generally accepted by materialist and non-materialist scientists and philosophers. Each of the six poses enormous problems for a materialistic explanation:
Intentionality
Intentionality is the "aboutness" or meaning of a mental state, the ability of a mental state to refer to something outside of itself. Ink on paper has no meaning unless it is conferred by a mind, which wrote it or read it. Matter may have intentionality only secondarily ("derived intentionality"). The problem of intentionality is believed by many philosophers of the mind to be the most serious challenge to materialism. "Meaning" is imparted to matter by a mind; matter isn’t the source of meaning. Therefore matter (brain tissue) can’t be the entire cause of the mind.
Qualia
Qualia is subjective experience, which is first person ontology. You can describe pain, using science or literature or whatever. But the experience of pain is something qualitatively different. There is nothing in science which infers subjectivity — no "Newton’s Fourth Law" by which objective matter produces subjective experience. No material law or principle invokes subjectivity, yet subjectivity is the hallmark of the mind.
Persistence of Self-Identity
We are the same person throughout our lives, despite a continual turn-over of matter in our brains. The matter that constitutes your brain today is different matter, for the most part, than the matter that constituted your brain ten years ago. Furthermore, your brain matter is organized differently now than it was ten years ago. Yet your sense of identity, which is a fundamental characteristic of minds, is continuous over time. You are you, despite profound changes in brain matter and organization. What property then is the “same” that accounts for you being the same? It’s not matter and it’s not organization of matter. Hume thought that the sense of personal continuity was the result of a continuous string of memories, but his theory begs the question. Who is it that has the string of memories? Continuity of self is a prerequisite for a string of memories, so it can’t be the result of a string of memories. Persistence of self-identity through time can’t be explained materialistically; the most reasonable explanation is that there is an immaterial component of the mind that is continuous over time.
Restricted Access
Restricted access means that I, and only I, experience my thoughts first-hand. I can choose to describe them to others, and others may be able to explain better than I some of the ramifications of my thoughts, but only I experience them. Even a lie-detector machine or a functional MRI doesn’t permit other people to experience my thoughts; they are merely material expressions of my brain activity, akin to speech. This is entirely unlike matter. I know the brain anatomy (matter) of my patients much better (usually) than they do. I know what their brains look like, whereas they have never actually seen them. Yet I have no first-hand experience of their thoughts, no matter how well I know their brain. We each have absolute restricted access to the experience of our own thoughts. Matter does not have this property, and therefore matter cannot be the entire cause of our thoughts.
Incorrigibility
Incorrigibility, which is related to restricted access, means the unassailable knowledge of one’s own thoughts. If I am thinking of the color red, no one can credibly refute that fact. Of course, I may be lying about what I am thinking, or I may be mistaken about the implications of my thoughts, but I experience my thoughts in a way that no one else does. If I say (honestly) that I like impressionist painting, it is nonsensical for someone else to assert, "You are mistaken; you don’t like impressionist painting." This incorrigibility isn’t a property of matter. I can hold an honest opinion that the hippocampus is in the parietal lobe (it isn’t; it’s in the temporal lobe). My interlocutor can point out that I am incorrect about the material issue (where the hippocampus is located), but he can’t plausibly argue that I’m wrong that I hold that opinion. Incorrigibility is a property of mind, but not matter.
Free Will
If the mind is entirely caused by matter, it is difficult to understand how free will can exist. Matter is governed by fixed laws, and if our thoughts are entirely the product of brain chemistry, then our thoughts are determined by brain chemistry. But chemistry doesn’t have "truth" or "falsehood," or any other values for that matter. It just is. Enzymatic catalysis isn’t true or false, it just is. In fact, the view that "materialism is true" is meaningless… if materialism is true. If materialism is true, than the thought "materialism is true" is just a chemical reaction, neither true nor false. While there are some philosophers who assert that free will can exist in a deterministic materialistic world (they’re called "compatibilists"), and some have argued that quantum indeterminacy may leave room for free will, the most parsimonious explanation for free will is that there is an immaterial component of the mind that is undetermined by matter.
So is the materialist inference that the mind is caused entirely by the brain plausible? Please note that materialism has failed to offer any explanation for any of the six salient characteristics of the mind. Not a single salient characteristic of the mind is a property of matter. The strict materialistic explanation for the mind — the attribution of immaterial mental acts and properties to brain matter — is, by definition, a materialist superstition, a "false irrational conception of causation in nature maintained despite evidence to the contrary."
Of course, on reflection, we wouldn’t expect neuroscience to have important things to say about the material/immaterial nature of the mind. Neuroscience studies correlations between material events and behaviors, which are third-person objective phenomena; it has provided no explanation for subjective-first person processes, which is the essential quality of the mind. The assertion that neuroscience demonstrates the material nature of the mind is an ideological assertion, a misuse of neuroscience to serve a tenuous materialist agenda.In Wolfgang Pauli’s deathless phrase, the materialist explanation of the mind ”isn’t even wrong.” It’s superstitious nonsense. Materialism can’t explain the mind, because the salient characteristics of mental states — intentionality, qualia, persistence of self-identity, restricted access, incorrigibility, and free will — do not admit material explanations.
A coherent and meaningful understanding of the mind requires a repudiation of this materialist superstition. Strict materialism offers some insight into behavioral correlations — behavioral arousal is associated with activation of neurons in the brainstem reticular activation system — but materialism offers nothing to explain the subjective properties of mental experience, which constitute the mind as we actually experience it. A genuine understanding of the mind must be open to immaterial causation, because there is nothing in materialist science (or materialist philosophy) that can account for subjective experience.
The viewpoint that matter has desires, intentions, and subjective experiences has a long history in human affairs. It was the foundation of Aristotelian natural philosophy — matter fell to the earth because it seemed to "desire" to return to its natural place. The ancient world was haunted with "sentient" inanimate objects — talismans, charms and idols. Children attribute wishes and feelings to stuffed toys. Since the dawn of man we have ascribed sentience and feelings and will to matter, and a salient triumph of modern science has been to expunge this attribution of subjectivity to matter. The work of physical science is to identify and if possible quantify regularities in the "third person objective existence" of matter. Matter has third person objective existence. The mind, as experienced, has first person subjective existence.
Superstition is “a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary.“ The foundation of the scientific revolution is the repudiation of the inference that matter has will, emotions and desires. If there is anything that modern science has demonstrated beyond dispute it is the gulf between objective and subjective ontology — between matter and mind. Yet the materialist superstition isn’t completely gone. It persists in its modern scientific manifestation — the inference that the mind is entirely caused by the brain — which is a superstition.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Secrets of the Bible???
I was getting a cup of coffee at my local Barnes and Noble yesterday and came across a special magazine issue on "Secrets of the Bible" by US News and World Report. Here is an excerpt from the back:"...But even though it has been read, interpreted, analyzed, and dissected countless times, there are still puzzling omissions, murky passages, and, yes, mysteries to the Bible's origins and composition. Now Secrets of the Bible delves into these untold tales to reveal the latest theories and insights from renowned scholars...."
Now I love a good mystery....but these magazines seldom tell the whole story or give a "balanced" treatment of the issues (just look at the sampling of scholars interviewed). Now I am not saying they shouldn't be interviewed...but where are the scholars, of the the same caliber and credentials, who argue for the Bible's accuracy, historical reliability, etc.? (contrary to popular opinion, they do exist). Christian faith is not blind and we have nothing to fear from searching for the truth. Hearty discussion is good.
So, I want to recommend a full-color, short book that addresses the question of how we got the Bible. This is done by a leading NT scholar (Dr. Clint Arnold) and the images of ancient texts and other artifacts are simply amazing. In How We Got the Bible: A Visual Journey you will explore:
How did the Bible come to be?
How has it been passed down to us through the ages?
Is it still trustworthy and relevant after all these years?
"The Bible is the bestselling book of all time and the basis of faith for billions of people around the world. Encompassing the fields of archaeology, biblical studies, and history, the story of how the Bible has come to us today is a fascinating one. It is told here, accompanied by beautiful full-color photographs and illustrations."
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