AB,
I feel inspired…
How thrilling!
…to summarise what I have learnt from this forum, and particularly from the posts on this thread.
Okaaayyy…
This is what seems to be the secular view of our existence:
No matter what degree of complexity we discover in the life forms on this earth, and in particular the unfathomable workings of the human brain, it all must have been generated by natural selection of random mutations because any form of intelligent intervention is not possible in a godless universe.
No – two fails there. First, it’s not a “must” but rather, a “that’s what all the available evidence is telling us”.
Second, “because any form of intelligent intervention is not possible in a godless universe” would be circular reasoning.
Our conscious awareness must be an emergent property of the deterministic activity of our physical brain cells because human scientific investigation indicates that there is nothing else involved.
Again that “must” is wrong, but broadly you’re on the right lines.
But there is still no definition of how conscious awareness is defined by reactions of material particles.
Actually there’s a lot more known about consciousness than you realise, but yes – much of it remains yet to be discovered. That gap in knowledge does not however allow you to pop in whatever explanatory narrative happens to take your fancy.
Science shows that specific brain activity occurs prior to a person becoming aware of an apparent conscious decision, which leads to the conclusion that our conscious decisions must be generated in our sub consciousness before we become aware of them, leading to the claim that conscious free will is not free because it is determined by prior physical events. So our perception of free choice must be an illusion.
Do you know, I think you’re finally getting the hang of it!
If I challenge the viability of these secular views, I get accused of personal incredulity.
No, challenge in general does not necessarily entail an argument from personal incredulity. That is though a specific error you make a lot (“I can’t imagine how X happens naturally, therefore Y” etc).
If I suggest that there is a considerable degree of personal optimism in these views I am told I do not understand.
Rightly so. Evidence leads where evidence leads – optimism has nothing to do with it.
If I deem to suggest that alternative explanations can show evidence of God, this gets equated with evidence of Leprechauns.
That’s because the arguments you attempt for “God” sometimes work equally well for leprechauns – which should tell you something about the quality of those arguments.
So in the light of this experience, my belief in God becomes stronger than ever…
For pity's sake, why?
… and I become aware of the disturbing logic expressed by the writer CS Lewis in concluding that evil powers have conspired to hide God’s existence from many people on this earth. But of course you may counter that evil cannot possibly exist in a deterministic universe where everything is just an unavoidable consequence of previous events.
That’s what the evidence suggests, yes. Incidentally, yours is not the only religion to get its retaliation in first. Various of them deal with legitimate challenge by ignoring the argument and assigning authorship to nefarious celestial baddies.
And some of you may well ask how I come to write all this rubbish…
Well…
…when I am driven entirely by the uncontrollable deterministic events in my physical brain. I will leave you to ponder this. But then how can anyone ponder this if they have no control over their own thoughts?
Easily. “Pondering” is what thinking
feels like.
So I will finish with the concept that I do not see people as biological machines, but controllers of biological machines. And by definition, control cannot exist in a deterministic universe, so how and where does it originate?
You are of course welcome to see things that way. If you want to evangelise for your opinion though, you must expect it to be falsified by the logic and evidence that undoes you.
