# I cannot find any objection to this argument yet



## T.A.G. (Jun 11, 2010)

If all things are reducible to matter and all things must work under the boundaries of natural laws, then our thoughts are based on natural laws.


I have asked materialists, professors etc. Can you give me the response from the other side of the argument that they would most likely give?

Theres only been a couple of books written on this as well (William Hasker the Emergent Self)
I am not even talking about C.S. Lewis's idea that Taylor also hit on, though it sure leads to the same conclusion. 

here bahnsen hits on it as well

YouTube - The Naturalist's Problem - A Clip From Dr. Greg Bahnsen


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## VictorBravo (Jun 12, 2010)

I don't exactly follow the question, are you asking what a Christian philospher would say, or a materialist?

But I have a question myself: what does the materialist mean by "natural law"?

A good materialist will acknowledge that a natural law is merely a man-made summary of observations. If pressed, he ought to acknowledge that the material world does not follow natural law so much as behave in such a manner as to suggest that there is a "law." 

Often scientists treat a natural law as a causative force rather than an empirical summary, even though they routinely acknowledge that they don't understand actual causation at all. If that is the case, they will have even greater difficulty accounting for immaterial phenomena such as thoughts.


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## T.A.G. (Jun 12, 2010)

no i am talking about this 
YouTube - The Naturalist's Problem - A Clip From Dr. Greg Bahnsen


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## jwright82 (Jun 14, 2010)

I don't quite understand your question either but if you are asking how would a materialist respond to this criticism than I think I can give it a shot.

By far the greatest work that has been done in this area, that I know of, of freedom is by Danial Dennett, in his book Freedom Elvolves. Now I have never read the whole book but I get the gist of what he is saying. He is claiming that in order for us to have a basic freedom all we need to posses is intentionality. This means that we have done something for a deliberate reason. Now the reasons can change and vary from action to action. What he proposses is that in the course of human evoloution we have developed the necessary brain functions to allow complex deliberate action or thoughts. 

So as far as thoughts go he would claim that yes our brains operate within purely natural physical laws but that the way these laws function allow for intitional thought and action. Modern materialism seems to redefine everything to better suit their evolutionary mindset. 

The obvious objection to this is for a deeper explination of how the physical processes allow for deliberate thinking and choices? This is the chink in their armour, the one thing that they cannot explain. Dennett would follow Rorty on this, I believe I could be wrong here, in propossing an eliminativist theory of the mind. What this theory basically is is a sort of Wittgenstienian attempt to resolve the problem by claiming that our problem is just in how we talk about our thoughts or freedom. We use a language game that is incompatable with materialism and eventially, they hope, science will force our language game to change to be more suited to a materialist point of view. Just as we don't use demon possession language to explain mental disseases anymore we will stop using words that are not materialistic in nature.


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## T.A.G. (Jun 14, 2010)

Thanks J


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## Philip (Jun 14, 2010)

This is part of why a lot of atheists are starting to go toward mystical or non-materialistic atheism (Pullman's _His Dark Materials_ trilogy leans this direction).


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## jwright82 (Jun 14, 2010)

I didn't give my own objections to this because I thought that it might clutter the post up but I will give them later. I am interested in how they argue for a non-materilaist atheism Pugh, is there a summery defense they would give for me to mull over, thanks!


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## T.A.G. (Jun 14, 2010)

dont give your objections later lol but now

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P. F. Pugh said:


> This is part of why a lot of atheists are starting to go toward mystical or non-materialistic atheism (Pullman's _His Dark Materials_ trilogy leans this direction).


 
also i read that you say a lot, can you name a couple or give more details


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## T.A.G. (Jun 14, 2010)

interesting I was reading reviews on how dennett tries to account for freedom in our thinking and someone wrote

"This book tells a story. A story of how human freedom could arise in a deterministic and Darwinian world. Don't be misled by the use of the term 'freedom': the story is not about how we escaped from determinism and acquired the ability of free choice. Human freedom, in Dennett's view, is the ability to deliberate about what is morally right and to act according to that insight."

I wonder if this is all Daniel Dennet does? 


Regardless, I know Michael Ruse, James Rachels etc. believe this is a major unsolved problem for their worldview.


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## jwright82 (Jun 16, 2010)

The first level of attack that I would level against Dennett and Rorty would be over their eliminatevast view of the mind. I for one love the later Wittgenstien but his views can be taken too far. This said the basic problem as I see it with this theory of mind is that in the end the person who holds to it simply hopes or wishes they are correct. They hope that science will change the way we talk about mental phenomenon but they don't know that it will. They may be able to say "well maybe it will happen", but maybe it won't happen too. They simply can't prove their assumption here. 

Also their whole argument is circuler in nature. Notice that they just assume mental phenomonon to be only psycho-chemical processess in the brain and hope that if we change how we talk about it this will what prove their original assumptiopn. That is a little to circuler for me. Also how do they know that if we change our language in this way it will not be worse than our previous ways of speaking? They don't, they simply assume that they are right and try to avoid the tough questions by appealing to ways of speaking that we no longer use as evidence that they may be right, but what do the old ways of talking have to do with the connection between thoughts and brain functions? Nothing.

Also a general criticism of an atheistic mataerialistic worldview is over the nature of physical laws. There is a book out that I cannot remember the name of tha tries to apply Darwinian notions to the universe at large. In short an attempt is being made to further destroy the teleological argument by attempting to explain the apparent desighn in the laws of nature in the same way that Darwin tried to explain away desighn in biology. The problem here is this if the universe evolved into its present form that it is perfectly logical to assume that it can or will evolve into a different universe. In fact quantum mechanics predicts all these weird things that should be happening in our universe but don't. In their universe the very laws of nature are by nature unstable because they change at any moment. But they put all their trust in these laws as if they will never change why? Regardless of how you look at this you cannot hold to both those beleifs at the same time you will be contradicting yourself.


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