Sunday School
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Sunday School March 1st 2020
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That podcast was a little painful to listen to. After that description of the soul…the only meaningful interpretation you could give is “animacy”. That is something is “animate” if it is an active organism that isn’t dead. Yes…that’s a quality that non-living things don’t have. Is that because of a ghost in the machine or is that simply because we are turned on and have the potential to keep functioning? I could go along with them if this was what they meant by the soul (animacy). But they really mean ghost in the machine. once you use the term “soul” or “spirit” you add a whole slew of unfalsifiable nonsense whether you want to do that or not.
The fact that there were neuro-surgeons that became dualists doesn’t help at all in convincing me about dualism. “Penfield noted that in probably hundreds of thousands of stimulations he never stimulated the intellect”. As though he had the ability to stimulate every part of the brain (he didn’t) or that the only way to access this was through the method of stimulation he used. His conclusion is “a lack of evidence is evidence that…”. Yuck.
The second: that a seizure only stimulates the body as opposed to the intellect doesn’t prove anything. Why are there no intellectual seizures? Because seizures don’t work that way. There are all sorts of brain defects that DO hinder the intellect.
The argument about about tricking the patient also doesn’t make sense because when you move the arm you use multiple parts of the brain which you cannot all stimulate at once. And if you cannot stimulate the inner parts of the brain you cannot conclude there is no where in the brain where the intellect could be stimulated. That’s assuming that just stimulating one area could stimulate the intellect which isn’t a given.
Three terrible horrible arguments.
The argument that becoming an atheist is unlikley if you are a dualist. Very strange argument. There are billions of dualist who don’t believe in a bearded man in the sky.
Take Raymond Tallis a neuro-surgeon who was at the top of his field is a prominent atheists who has written two books which deals with the ridiculousness of dualism.
For over 2000 years the theistic interpretation of the reality of the natural (material) world has held sway, even at the heart of academia. But it has always offered the wrong answers because the natural world does not require supernatural explanations. It requires natural explanations. Who would have thought that! 🙂
Nerve energy in the brain is electrical energy. The brain is part of the material world. It is matter and the mind is the manifestation of this highly evolved and specialized matter at work. There is no duality because the mind and matter are one. They are not separate entities and when the brain dies it stops using energy so the mind is no longer “broadcasting” (my term). It just ceases to be.
It is that simple. There is no duality.
It is just that because the theistic idea has held such sway for so long that is difficult for many to step away from it. All supernatural explanations come from egotists. Atheism emancipates the mind from mysticism and fables and teaches us to stand on our own feet. Atheism is the final step to becoming a mature person. The theist still thinks in terms of childish fancies. Atheists rely on facts while theists debase themselves before imaginary supernatural entities, just as they did when we once, as a species, worshiped rocks.
Some more here.
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