Church Voices

8 Responses to “Infinite Regress and the Supernatural”

1. Bill Says:
   January 2nd, 2005 at 8:34 pm

   No, we can also conclude that we don’t know, without postulating anything supernatural. Leave it as an open question beyond our current knowledge. An all-powerful God that creates the Universe immediately leads to problems of theodicy.

2. tim Says:
   January 3rd, 2005 at 2:32 pm

   Let me get this straight. You’re unwilling to concede that something supernatural started the universe despite the problem of infinite causal regress, yet you’re unwilling to posit the supernatural because of “theodicy” (BTW, theodicy is the defense against the problem of evil, not the problem itself). I find it troubling, to say the least, that you find the problem of evil so compelling you’re willing to live with a logical absurdity in real life.

   IN addition the problem of evil has been pretty much vacated in its absolute sense. At best you can construct a probablistic problem of evil, but even that is problematic.

3. Tim Reed Says:
   December 14th, 2005 at 12:22 am

   To say the universe is infinitely old is to say that it had no beginning—not a beginning that was infinitely long ago.

   A distinction without a difference. Please elaborate on the difference between a universe with no beginning a universe that is infinitely long.

   Even if your argument were sound, it would undermine the idea of an infinite and eternal God.

   No. Infinite regress applies only to entities that are within time. Of course that assumes you’re within the camp of people who believe the generally accepted theory of the Big Bang. Which in The Nature of Space and Time, Stephen Hawking stated, “Today virtually everyone agrees that the universe and time itself had a beginning at the Big Bang.”

   By the way, all of the “arguments for God” offered on this site (cosmological, teleological, moral, etc,) have been extensively critiqued by both atheistic and theistic philosophers. I strongly urge you to consult these works, published both as articles available on the web and in books. Many of these criticisms are not new. Some can be traced back to Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

   And I would strongly urge you to present a single one of these arguments, or perhaps even a citation of them. A simple drive by blanket statement will not suffice. Especially in the area of theistic philosophers given the arguments presented were 1) basic and 2) cited back to these same theistic philosophers you claim debunk them (ie Craig, Moreland, Plantinga etc.).

   “And the evidential problem of evil is still very much a problem. “

   Not really. Its certainly not nearly as strong as you’ve stated given every single debate in which I can find the problem of evil being argued the atheistic view argues a probabilistic problem of evil, not an absolute one. You can start here and I can probably dig up the audio for them if I peruse my links long enough.

   Thanks for your input, but something other than declarative statements are required for a discussion.

4. Tim Reed Says:
   December 14th, 2005 at 4:38 pm

   Just because a God is possible does not mean that one is probable. In general, the idea of a disembodied mind is highly improbable given what we know about the dependence of minds on physical brains. The burden of proof is on theists to show the plausibility of disembodied minds, never mind omniscient ones.

   I’m so glad you brought this up. Let’s back up just a moment. Keep in mind that we’re not arguing a vague hyper-spiritualist theism. We’re dealing with theism which posits a creator-God. As a result the dependence on the physical brain for certain functions within this life is not a threat to theism. Only to hyper-spiritual theism, such as the gnostics adhered to. If God created humanity I would expect he put our brains in our skulls for some other reason than to keep our skulls from collapsing in on themselves. In fact, if there were no dependence on the physical brain for any mental functions I would begin to question, if a creator-God did exist why he bothered with brains in the first place.

   But, things get very sticky for the atheistic worldview when it comes to the discussion of the mind. JP Moreland asserts there are four features of the mind that are non-physical. I will quote him from here:

   First, there is a raw qualitative feel — a “what it is like to have it” — to a mental state. For example, pain hurts. A physical state may cause pain, but the physical state itself can be completely described in the vocabulary of physics and chemistry, or in the commonsense vocabulary of the physical world. Being hurtful, however, is not describable in the vocabulary of any of these.

   Second, many mental states have intentionality — “ofness” or “aboutness” — which is directed towards an object. A thought, for instance, is about the moon. But no physical state is about anything. The brain is a physical object, but a brain state cannot be about the moon any more than a rock or a cloud can be about the moon. Only a state of mind can be about the moon.

   Third, mental states are internal, private and immediately accessible to the subject having them. A scientist can know more about my brain than I do. But I have direct knowledge of my mind which is not available to anyone else.

   Fourth, mental states fail to have crucial features that characterize physical states. Unlike physical states, they have no spatial extension (it doesn’t make sense to ask how tall or wide someone’s thoughts are) and they have no location either (which is why it doesn’t make sense to ask where someone’s thoughts are). In general, mental states cannot be described using physical language.

   This presents a distinct dilemma for a materialist. If materialism is true, how can the mind possess these non-physical characteristics? I will conclude this section with a simple syllogism.

   (1) If we are merely the result of naturalistic, evolutionary processes, then we are wholly physical beings.
   (2) We possess nonphysical conscious minds, so we are not wholly physical beings.
   (3) Therefore, we are not merely the result of naturalistic, evolutionary processes.

   Also, talking about infinite regresses, God cannot provide an ultimate explanation for the existence of order, intelligence, morality, and why there is something rather than nothing. This is because God presumably possesses all of these attributes (order, intelligence, morality, ’somethingness’ rather than ‘nothingness’). He too then would require an intelligent designer to explain his attributes, ad infinitum.

   I think you misunderstand the standard cosmological and teleological arguments. These arguments are built through observations about the physical universe. The same arguments cannot be applied to God without knowing what “his universe” so to speak is like.

   If one wants to believe in a God to satisfy a personal desire or on the basis of ‘faith’, that’s certainly one’s right, but let’s not pretend that the existence of God is supported by reason or independently verifiable evidence. It is not. If it were, Nobel prizes would surely be awarded for the remarkable discovery. On the contrary, the best explanation of all the available evidence is that we live in a godless and wholly natural universe.

   This entire statement is a non-sequitur, it simply does not follow from the evidence you’ve presented.

5. Tim Reed Says:
   December 14th, 2005 at 11:10 pm

   Considering you may not want to carry a double conversation, I’ve confined my comments to particularly the problem of evil, concepts regarding infinity, and physicalism.

   I agree that the Argument from Evil has taken a turn in recent years toward the evidential version. But still, just because God is not necessarily incompatible with evil, the existence of apparently pointless suffering still counts as strong evidence against the existence of a tri-omni deity.

   No, not at all. For some suggestions of my own, I will refer you to Plantinga’s God, Freedom, and Evil as well as his trilogy on warrant where he deals rigorously with both the logical and evidential problems of evil. But as for your point, this is just false, or at least still a blanket statement in need of some kind of support.

   The theodicies are little more than ad hoc excuses that attempt to save the god hypothesis from falsification. Just because a God is possible does not mean that one is probable.

   Right, I agree that the evidential problem of evil, as contemporarily proposed by thinkers such as Rowe and Draper advance it, cries for much more attention than the theodicy response. Which, of course, isn’t an argument I’d appeal to. Rather, as Plantinga points out, it’s much more an epistemological question: Given that there are no logical inconsistencies in believing the coexistence of God and evil, does knowledge of the facts of evil at least provide a defeater for this belief? Ok, if this is indeed your position (for you’ve failed to specify as to what exactly your argument is, be it probabilistic or evidential) so let me try to deal with this in short.

   Suppose you were right in saying that evil does constitute evidence, of some kind, against theism: what follows from that? Nothing really. There are many propositions I believe that are true and rationally accepted, and such that there is evidence against them. For example, when you were only three months old, this would be certain evidence against your weighing nineteen pounds; nevertheless, I might rationally (and truly) believe that’s how much you weighed. Is this idea, instead, that the existence of God is improbable with respect to our total evidence, all the rest of what we know or believe? Well, for you to have a case here you’d have to likewise look into the total evidence for the existence of God and conclude them inadequate; which, suffice to say, you haven’t and I don’t think you could.

   As for the probabilistic argument, lets again suppose theism were improbable with respect to the rest of what I believe about the world (namely evil); alternatively, suppose the rest of what I believed (unbeknownst to the me, the theist) again offered evidence against theism and none for it. What would follow from that? Again, not much at all. There are many true beliefs I hold (and hold in complete rationality) such that they are unlikely given the rest of what I believe. So either way, evidential or probabilistic, these arguments from evil at best show a counterbalance between theistic and nontheistic defeaters. I still think these arguments are weaker than I likened them, but instead of attacking straw men, I’ll just wait to show you that once you actually offer some.

   In general, the idea of a disembodied mind is highly improbable given what we know about the dependence of minds on physical brains. The burden of proof is on theists to show the plausibility of disembodied minds, never mind omniscient ones.

   So what your advocating is physicalism, in short. Apart from the fact that physicalism, at a worldview level, is self-refuting; in order for you to have an argument here you have to prove that mental events are identical to physical events. And if you choose to make an argument here, I’d greatly appreciate it if you were to be mindful of the logic involved (indiscernability of identicals: (m) (b) [(m = b) –> (P) (Pm↔Pb)]. That is to say, for any entities m and b, if m and b are really the same thing, then for any property P, P is true of m if and only if P is true of b. In other words, in your case, if m is the mind (or mental phenomena in question) and b is a physical part of state of the body (particularly the brain), then you must prove that m is identical to b.) so as to keep the argument understandable and concise.

   Also, talking about infinite regresses, God cannot provide an ultimate explanation for the existence of order, intelligence, morality, and why there is something rather than nothing. This is because God presumably possesses all of these attributes (order, intelligence, morality, ’somethingness’ rather than ‘nothingness’). He too then would require an intelligent designer to explain his attributes, ad infinitum.

   So what you’re claiming is there there’s literally no such thing as a necessary being? (For the purposes of this discussion, I’ll use the terms necessary, eternal, and infinite synonymously unless something calls for a distinction). By necessary being I mean a being whose existence is self-sustained and as such as never not-been. If you’re really claiming the like, I’d be interested in what you think about the universe—is it infinite (necessary) or did it have a beginning? I’m still a bit confused as to what you’re trying to argue. For by definition, if an infinite regress is a logical impossibility, then one much therefore posit a necessary existent of some kind that escapes the clenches of the infinite regress.

6. Tim Reed Says:
   December 14th, 2005 at 11:11 pm

   That last comment was by Chad, BTW, he was having trouble getting it to post.

7. Chad McIntosh Says:
   December 15th, 2005 at 1:23 am

   “In fact, if there were no dependence on the physical brain for any mental functions I would begin to question, if a creator-God did exist why he bothered with brains in the first place.”
   Good point, which is why theistic dualism makes no sense. If we are just “ghosts in the machine” why did God bother with creating a machine at all?

   First of all, this is a purely theological question, and as such, isn’t concerned with persuasive evidence for or against dualism. Therefore you’re claiming that ‘theistic dualism makes no sense’ isn’t appealing to anything scientific or logical regarding the validity of said view. Rather, theological. In other words, theistic dualism could still be true whether or not you can make theological sense of it. So your question, I presume, doesn’t really achieve what you wanted it to; that is, evidence against dualism. But as for a theological response, which, as I pointed out is totally unrelated to the validity of said belief (dualism could still be true if my theological response weren’t), I would say that God bothered creating with bodies for purposes of ensuring circumstances in which we’d exercise the ability to freely choose whether or not we wished to come into communion with him. Such would, as existence suggests, include physical evidence of sorts. If we were merely nonphysical realities, I’m not sure what room that would leave for said entity to begin a process of rationally choosing a belief about the nature of reality—there’d be no plurality of options we could have access to, which there would be on a dualistic paradigm.

   As for your points about qualia and the like, you might want to consult books and articles by Dennett and Papineau. Also, Richard Carrier has a helpful section on qualia in his new book, Sense and Goodness Without God.

   As a matter of fact, I just read an article in which Moreland deals with this specific issue. For a downloadable version of it, go to http://www.epsociety.org/ and it should be available.

   “Mental states are internal, private and immediately accessible to the subject having them. A scientist can know more about my brain than I do. But I have direct knowledge of my mind which is not available to anyone else.”
   But this is not true. Modern neuroscientific methods can predict with striking accuracy what you will perceive and what decisions you will make, indicating that the mind is caused by brain activity and that a 3rd person perspective can indeed have access to one’s mental states.

   First, while this may be true, it still doesn’t impact the argument from private access (or the first person point of view—aware that menial differences exist between the two, but such are in essence ineffectual for the sake of this discussion). In fact, you’ve actually provided an argument that lends itself supportive of first-person private access. Even if a neurophysiologist could know about my mental states by reading an instrument that somehow measured my brain states, this still doesn’t achieve a formidable objection. In order for a the scientist to do such a thing, he would have to come up with an elaborate set of correlations of mental and brain states, and these would allow him to infer a certain mental state when he read the presence of a certain brain state. But unfortunately, such correlations themselves would rely on first-person psychological reports because the scientist would only have access to one side of the correlations, namely, the brain states. Far from replacing such first-person awareness and the reports of them, such correlations actually presuppose them.

   Second, no amount of third-person descriptions captures my own subjective, first-person acquaintance of my own self in acts of self-awareness. In fact, any their-person description of me would always be an open question as to whether the person described in third-person terms was the same person as I am. I do not know myself because know some third-person description of a set of mental and physical properties and I also know that a certain person satisfies that description. I know myself as a self immediately through being acquainted with my own self in an act of self-awareness. I cannot express that self-awareness by using indexical terms such as I. I refers to the immaterial component of my being responsible for personal identity. It does not refer to any mental property or bundle of mental properties I am having, nor does it refer to anybody described from a third-person perspective. I is a term that refers to something that exists, and I does not refer to any object of set of properties described from a third-person point of view. Rather, I cannot refer to anything but my own self with which I am directly acquainted and which, through acts of self-awareness, I know to be the substantial possessor of my mental states and physical body.

   The mind is what the brain does. It is not identical to brain anatomy, but to brain physiology (which in turn is dependent upon anatomy). Qualitative feels are the result of perceptual discriminations, which are instantiated in patterns of neural activity. Put another way, ‘the mind’ is identical to patterns of neural activity (i.e., processing of information). But these patterns still are instantiated in physical brains. There is no evidence or need to posit additional ’soul stuff’. All the scientific evidence strongly supports the idea that the mind is a product of the physical brain.

   I see what you’re saying. But given this resultant scenario, it is extremely hard to see what sense can be made out of intentionality. How is it that a certain mental state/mind activity (such as my conscious awareness of seeing an apple), if merely the byproduct of the physical brain/neural activity, could be of or about anything? For my mental state in this case would just be a dummy, a free rider on the brain state. At best, the brain state associated with producing or instantiating the mental state (conscious awareness of seeing an apple) would just be a state caused by light waves from the object which the mental event is processing (the apple). Because of such, it’s hard to see how this scenario would cause or allow perceiving the apple to be really a state about that apple. Even if it were, what difference would it make? Any further body states (the act of touching the apple or eating it) would be caused totally by brain states and make no reference to mental states at all.

   Damage the brain and the mind is damaged, including features that we associate with defining our personal identity. Nothing mental happens without something physical happening. So again, the burden is on the theist to show that minds can exist without physical brains.

   I don’t think so. The burden of proof I think in this case is on he who denies dualism, not on the dualist. I say this primarily because of the incorrigibility of our mental states. If we are having a green sensation or a thought, then we are in a position to know these things with certainty (our mental states are self-presenting). Now we know by simple introspection that we are mental selves that remain the same through change (which includes personal identity), act freely, and have physical aspects to which we are not identical. In light of this knowledge, the burden of proof is on any view that tries to defeat dualism, which alone can burden such notions.

8. Chad McIntosh Says:
   December 21st, 2005 at 3:37 pm

   Professor Fishman,

   Thank you for your response! I sincerely apologize for the length of this reply. You certainly touched on a lot! Likewise, I realize there may be a lot to touch on here. I hope you consider the content. If you prefer to break it up into sections, that might do us well.

   As I have argued, Naturalism is the best explanation of all the evidence currently available (e.g., for why the mind depends on the physical brain, for why there is apparently pointless and horrific suffering in the world, both of humans and non-human animals, its extent and apparently random distribution across individuals irrespective of moral status, the ‘design flaws’ in animal and human bodies and in human nature, the overwhelming convergent evidence for naturalistic evolution, the unnecessarily vast scale of the universe, etc.).

   Perhaps this discussion would be much more engaging had you actually offered evidence supporting your three hypotheses. But you haven’t. You’ve made a lot of general statements and the occasional counterexample far from anything debilitating. As for your ‘arguments,’ you claim that naturalism is the best explanation of all the evidence currently available on three accounts: 1) why the mind depends on the physical brain; 2) why there is apparently pointless and horrific suffering in the world; and 3) several ‘other’ arguments appealing to design flaws and the naturalistic evolution. Now, if you know anything about logical fallacies, you’ll notice that all three of your points, as stated in your opening paragraph, are already guilty of begging the question. But leaving that aside, I’ll try to address each in order.

   Your first point is appealing to evidence in support of the mind depending on the physical brain, but you’re yet to give any. In fact, we’ve cited four evidences showing that this is not the case, only one of which you bothered to respond to; the argument from private access/indexical notions. You tried countering this by claiming that “neuroscientific methods” could predict or stipulate my actions and perceptions as well as grant third-person access to one’s mental states. Despite the fact that you neither cite a reference Tim or myself could peruse nor any sort of corroborative data from such neuroscientific methods, I’m rather skeptical. (On the other hand, I’ll cite both a reference to and data from an experiment that illuminates quite the opposite conclusion below.) I responded to this by showing that such scenarios do nothing to the argument from private access other than strengthen it. Your response, however, notwithstanding:

   Concerning the issue of qualia and 1st vs 3rd person perspectives: The fact that there can be phenomena described from both 1st and 3rd person perspectives does not entail dualism. Mind-brain monism is fully compatible with this position.

   It may not entail dualism per se , but it certainly gives physicalism a hard pill to swallow. That’s exactly what the article I liked you to above was about—how in his new book Physicalism, or Something Near Enough, physicalist Jaegwon Kim basically admitted physicalism’s lack of adequate explanation pertaining to the problem qualia presents, concluding that physicalism can yet survive by simply ignoring it. Hardly a solution, one should think, leaving ‘physicalism, or something near enough,’ persisting nonetheless. Did you read that article?

   As for the first-third perspectives issue: A complete physicalist description of the world would be one in which everything would be exhaustively described from a third-person point of view in terms of objects, properties, and their spatiotemporal locations. In other words, it doesn’t leave much room for first person points of view because those points of view would be used to describe the world from one’s own perspective. They refer to the self that he or she knows by being acquainted with his or her own consciousness in acts of self-awareness. And according to physicalism, there simply are no irreducible, privileged first person perspectives, as you admit. But my argument was that no matter how much explanation could be given by way of entertaining a third person perspective, something would always be left out of that description—a first person perspective derived from the very nature of one’s own subjective experience. Take the following example:

   Suppose a deaf scientist became the world’s leading expert on the neurology of hearing. It would be possible for him to know and describe everything there is to the physical aspects of hearing. Nothing physical would be left out of his description. However, something would still be left out: the experience of what it is like to be a human who hears.

   Or, as Howard Robinson puts it: “The notion of having something as an object of experience is not, prima face, a physical notion; it does not figure in any physical science. Having something as an object of experience is the same as the subjective feel or what it is like of experience.” —Robinson, Matter and Sense, p. 7

   All this really shows is that descriptions of reality can be perspectival, not that there exists a non-physical soul.

   Exactly. Perspectival—first-person subjectivity, with which physicalism will have nothing to do with. And yes, this does necessitate the existence of a non-physical aspect to one’s being, call it a soul or not. Because if these perspectives can’t be exhaustively explained away in third person modes of language, physicalists got lots of ‘splainin’ to do!

   I see no reason to believe that an artificial intelligence constructed of physical elements and displaying all the outward signs suggesting conscious awareness (e.g., such as we observe in our fellow humans) would not also have a 1st person perspective. So there doesn’t appear to be a substantive difficulty here.

   This reasoning makes a fundamental error. You are equating artificial intelligence, of which computers would be examples, with intelligence itself. Computers themselves are designed by intelligent minds to imitate mental states. But computers do not think, see, hear, feel, love, or have any consciousness at all. Computers do not think though a logical syllogism and draw a conclusion (a process which demands nonphysical mental activity, by the way). Now you should recall from earlier in this discussion when I asked you to be mindful of the logic here that if A is identical to B, then there is no possible situation where you can have A without B or vice versa. This applies here by understanding that if we can find a case where all of the artificial intelligence operations are present (the reception of certain inputs, syntactical manipulation of symbols, and the production of certain outputs), but we do not have real intelligence (the semantic understanding necessary for real thinking, such as that granted by a rational agent), then we will have shown that intelligence which the dualist claims to be a feature of the mind and not of the brain (nonphysical as opposed to the physical), cannot be reduced to and identified with artificial intelligence. And I think this is rather easily demonstrable in light of John Searle’s famous illustration known as the Chinese Room.

   On the contrary, where the difficulty lies is in explaining how a non-physical soul can interact with a physical brain. At the very least, in order for dualism to be taken seriously, this obvious and vexing problem needs to be addressed. It was not solved by Descartes, and to my knowledge, it has not been solved by anyone since. Dualists have got some ‘splainin’ to do!

   Admittedly, with this point I am somewhat sympathetic. However, I don’t think this objection is strong enough to do marginalize dualism in the least, especially given the failures in alternative theories and lack of real potency this argument boils down to. And since it’s explaining you want, it’s that I shall try to give:

   First, this argument assumes that if we do not know how A causes B (such as how the soul could cause something to happen to the body or vice versa), then it is not reasonable to believe that A causes B, especially if A and B are different. But this assumption is a poor one, for we often know that one thing causes another without having any idea how that happens, even when the cause and effect are different. As C. D. Broad argued long ago:

   “One would like to know just how unlike two events may be before it becomes impossible to admit the existence of a causal relation between them. No one hesitates to hold that draughts and colds in the head are causally connected, although the two are extremely unlike each other. If the unlikeness of draughts and colds in the head does not prevent one from admitting a causal connection between the two, why should the unlikeness of volitions and voluntary [bodily] movements prevent one from holding that they are causally connected?” (C. D. Broad, The Mind and Its Place in Nature)

   Second, there are several cases where we know that one thing causes another even though we do not know how causation works and even though the causes are different from the effects. Some interactions are simply taken as Platonic in nature (in which cases only theism has explanatory power, whereas atheism does not). Furthermore, we have overwhelming that causal interaction takes place, so there is no reason to doubt it on the basis the fact that we cannot explain the technicalities of such. For example, episodes in the body or brain (being stuck with a pin or having a head injury) can cause things in the soul (a feeling of pain, loss of memory), and the soul can cause things to happen in the body (worry can cause ulcers; I can freely and intentionally raise my arm).

   Third, it may even be that a “how” question regarding the interaction between mind and body cannot even arise. A question about how A causally interacts with B is a request for a description of the intervening mechanism between A and B. You can ask how turning the key in the ignition starts your car because there is an intermediate electrical system between your key and your car’s running engine that is the means by which turning your key accomplishes an act of starting your car. Your “how” question is a request to describe that intermediate mechanism. But the interaction between mind and body may be, and most likely is, direct and immediate. There is no intervening mechanism, and thus a “how” question describing that mechanism is misplaced at best, meaningless at worst. It has no application the phenomenon under investigation.

   And lastly, this objection usually only reveals nothing but an expression of physicalist bias. Just because the physicalist (or anyone) cannot understand how dualism fits into his view of the world, this does not mean it is unreasonable or ought to be rejected. For if you do this, you again beg the question by assuming the truth of physicalism, which is the very thing I question.

   For philosophy’s sake, I urge you to check out Paul Churchland’s work on this subject (the substance dualist understanding of interactionism), Matter and Consciousness, pp. 18-20.

   As far as the ‘aboutness’ issue, I don’t see what the big problem is. Brain states are representational states: they are models of the world (and of other internal states). There is no reason why a brain state cannot be about an object in the world.

   I’m not sure you entirely understand the notion of intentionality. While physical objects can stand in various physical relations to or with other physical objects, (such as to the left or to the right of, larger or smaller than, harder or softer, etc.), physical objects cannot be of or about another as intentionality grants the mental, despite the fact that certain physical things may appear to exercise semblance to such (a computer and its operations). For example, when I sit here at the computer, I can relate to it in many ways: I can be two feet from it, taller than it, bump into or lick it. These are examples of physical relations I sustain to the computer. But in addition to these, I can be a conscious subject that has the computer as an object of various states of consciousness I direct toward it. I can have a thought about it, a desire for it (perhaps I want one like it), I can experience a sensation if it, and so forth. These are all mental states, and they have intentionality (ofness, aboutness) in common. Perhaps more simply, while the computer, as a physical object, can sustain physical relations to other physical objects, it cannot be of or about anything as a person can. Hence, mental states possess intentionality, while physical states do not. Again, mental states are not identical to physical states. There are at least six main differences between intentionality and physical relations that I’d like to expound upon, but because I know you have a life besides that of sitting here reading this (as I do, too), I think it’d be best to keep my responses at a reasonable length. Hopefully we’ll have the opportunity to look into them shortly.

   As for corroborative data from experimentation that shows that the mind does not depend on the physical brain, contemporary studies in brain physiology have yielded data in support dualism. Here’s my scientific case for dualism:

   Case #1: You may recall Penfield’s experiment when he “mapped” the brain during surgery by electrically probing the appropriate areas while the patient was fully conscious. By probing these areas, Penfield could cause the patient to move his arms or legs, turn his head or eyes, talk, or swallow. But interestingly, the patient would “invariably” respond by saying, “I didn’t do that. You did.” Or sometimes, if the right arm were moved, for example, the individual would reach over with his left arm in order to stop his right from moving. Yet no matter how much probing Penfield did, even in the cerebral cortex (where the highest level of human consciousness is located), he testified: “There is no place . . . where electrical stimulation will cause a patient to believe or to decide.” Which, being a neurologist, you should know to be a huge blow to materialism/physicalism, as it was for Penfield. For if physicalism is true, all the “neuronal action within the brain must account for all the mind does.” Penfield could not establish this. If anything, his research contradicted it.

   —Wilder Penfield, The Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brian, pp. 76-78

   Case #2: Recent brain research has done much to validate Penfield’s conclusion, such as Roger Sperry and his associates work on the differences between the left and right brain hemispheres. They discovered that the mind has a causal power independent of brain activity. This actually led Sperry to rejecting physicalism as false. Afterward, he noted the recent shift in neuroscience, in which many scientists think that the latest research indicates scientific evidence for an independent mind as the dualist has always claimed.

   —Roger Sperry, “Mind-Brain Interaction” and “Changed Concepts of Brain and Consciousness.”

   Case #3: German neurophysiologist Hans Kornhuber and his associates demonstrated that the way we think changes the neuronal activity of the brain. “His experiments reveal that simply by thinking, one can will action that is not initiated by external stimuli.”

   Case # 4: In a ten-year test, B. Libet demonstrated that there was a delay between a electrical impulse’s being applied to the skin, its reaching the cerebral cortex, and the self-conscious perception of it by the person. This research strongly suggests that the self is more than just neuronal machinery that reacts to the stimuli as it receives them.

   For details, sources, and an excellent summary of recent research such as this (including the above cases #3 and #4, see Laurence Wood’s “Recent Brain Research and the Mind-Body Dilemma.”

   In fact, Wood argues in the same article that all of this data are “so remarkable that many scientists have been compelled to postulate the existence of an immaterial mind…” and “the dogmatists now appear to be the reductionists…Thanks to the recent research in neurophysiology and computer-based psychology…Philosophical materialism seems both scientifically and philosophically indefensible.” Most of the scientists above, and more, have abandoned their physicalist views because of these data. So, speaking for many, Penfield concluded: “For my own part, after years of striving to explain the mind on the basis of brain action alone, I have come to the conclusion that it is simpler (and far easier to be logical) if one adopts the hypothesis that our being does consist of two fundamental elements.” That’s quite a mouth full.

   Even if all the challenges of the problem of evil could be satisfactorily met by theists, and I believe that they have not, c.f. Weisberg’s book, Suffering Belief, Drange’s book, Nonbelief and Evil, and Ian Tattersall’s article, The Evidential Argument from Evil,
   http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nicholas_tattersall/evil.html
   the evidence could be equally consistent with the existence of a supremely EVIL god, e.g., one who designs diseases to afflict children and who condemns humans (his supposedly beloved creation) to eternal suffering in hell.
   So while the evidence is not necessarily logically incompatible with the existence of a tri-omni God, it is difficult if not impossible to reconcile with the god of Christian theism without invoking a host of additional ad hoc explanations. In short, theists have got lots of ’splainin’ to do!

   I’ve already explained to you how both the evidential and probabilistic forms of the argument from evil don’t do much of anything regarding the existence or nonexistence of God, to which you never responded. And so long as you’re willing to admit that these arguments can’t excel beyond the scope of merely calling into question God’s moral character, then we can shorten this discussion a few pages by writing this one out. My aim here is to show that there are good reasons for believing that God/the soul exist, including shooting down arguments that posit a negative assertion to those conclusions, which this particular argument does not. However, if you want to pick up an actual argument and lay out a syllogism, that’d be another story.

   In my view, the evidence taken together (that is, without cherry picking) is sufficient to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the tri-omni God of Christianity does not exist.

   Lay it on me, big brother. Let me feel the fiber of your fabric!

   There is no independently verifiable evidence for a supernatural realm (a fact that is best explained by Naturalism).

   The inability of scientists to fully account at the present time for some phenomena, e.g., the origins of the universe, consciousness, the origins of life, and the like, does not mean that supernaturalism wins by default. As you probably recognize, ‘god of the gaps’ arguments are theologically unwise given the impressive track record of science in providing natural and agency-free explanations for phenomena that were once considered to be convincing evidence for supernatural agents.

   What do you constitute as “independently verifiable evidence?” If you mean “that which is empirically verifiable by way of scientific methodology,” you have a real problem in your inquiry of whether or not God exists. For if science only studies the natural world, how could science possibly prove that there is nothing beyond the natural world? The only way you could hold this is by faith, but then you’d contradict your own view that says you should only believe that which is scientifically proven. And that latter claim, “believe that which is scientifically proven/provable” is demonstrably false for more reasons than I’m sure you’d wish to hear right now. Again, rather than attack straw men, I’ll just wait to show you that once you try to further your defense of scientific naturalism. Moreover, as you probably know, I’ve never once appealed to such a ‘god of the gaps’ argument. Rather, just the opposite. All of my argument rest on the best current evidence available, not lack thereof.

   Also, the claim that ‘physicalism is self-refuting’ is certainly news to me. Makes one wonder why scientists all haven’t tossed in the towel and become clergymen;) This claim, if it were true, would be one of the most extraordinary discoveries of human civilization, certainly deserving of a Nobel Prize. But somehow I don’t see the Nobel committee getting too impressed by it.

   It would be a mistake to think this is not just my observation. In fact, it has been largely published in the works of opposing mind/body theories. Moreland is strong on this point. My claim the physicalism is self-refuting is analogous to how nihilism is self-refuting. While there varying degrees of each, the basic worldview assumption of each is literally self-refuting; that is, the claim that only the physical exists cannot be physically verified is to the denial of all meaning presupposes meaning in the denial. When a statement or view fails to satisfy itself (i.e., to conform to its own criteria of validity or acceptability), it is self-refuting. A number of philosophers have argued that physicalism must be false because it presupposes determinism and determinism is self-refuting. Determinism, like physicalism, is a view that purports that only the physical exists. Determinism, in short, is self-refuting, for if my mental processes are totally determined, I am totally determined either to accept or to reject determinism. But if the sole reason for my believing or not believing X is that I am causally determined to believe it, I have no ground for holding that my judgment is true or false.

   By this very notion, both determinism and physicalism make rationality impossible, for if one is to be rational, one must be free to choose his or her beliefs based on reasons. One cannot be determined to react to stimuli by nonrational physical factors and remain a rational agent who can freely choose in the process. If a belief is caused by entirely nonrational factors, it becomes a literal impossibility to rationally embrace such a view because it’s reasonable or true, for if a belief is to be a rational one, I must be able to deliberate about whether or not I accept it as true according to evidence and logic. I must be free to choose it, and I must enter into such a process as a genuine agent with self-determinate causal powers. But physicalism doesn’t give that option; it stultifies it. Physicalism simply leaves no room for nonphysical factors such as agents, evidence, reasons, or rational insight to affect beliefs or the course of the world.

   It follows then, if what the physicalist says is true, it’s merely the result of his heredity and various environmental factors and of nothing else. He does not (or rather, cannot) hold to his physicalist views because he thinks they’re correct (or even if they objectively are or aren’t), but because he has such-and-such stimuli; that is, not because the structure of the universe is such-and-such but only because the configuration of only part of the universe, together with the structure of his determined brain, is such as to produce that result. Physicalism, ergo, cannot be true, because if it was, we should not take a physicalist’s arguments as being really arguments, but as being only conditional reflexes. In other words, physicalist’s statements, no matter how frivolous, should not be regarded as really attempts at making truth claims, but rather only as seeking to cause us to respond in some way desired by them.

   On much the same merits, if one claims that physicalism is a rational position that should be chosen on the basis of evidence, then physicalism is self-refuting, because on the physicalist view, we cannot rationally choose anything at all. By this it seems physicalism denies the possibility of rationality. In fact, physicalism can’t even permit one’s simple use of logic. The connection between premises and conclusion is not a physical relation between cause and effect, but rather a logical relation of inference that can only be surveyed by one who possess the necessary mental capacities to do so, namely, rationality. Reasons, propositions, thoughts, laws of logic, evidence, and truth must exist and be capable of being instanced in people’s minds and influencing their thought processes, which would preclude a physically determinate causal sequence of necessary conditions and preconditions. Not to mention the fact that physicalsm eliminates one’s capacity to make significant moral judgments that imply notions of “ought and “ought not.” And “ought” implies a moral standard, something physicalism has not account for.

   In sum, it is self-refuting to argue that one ought to choose physicalism because he or she should see that the evidence is good for it. Physicalism cannot be offered as a rational theory because it does away with the necessary preconditions for there to be such a thing as rationality. If in a discussion with one who wants to argue such a view as physicalism, it would just seem odd if first words out of his mouth were ones voicing the admission that both he and his arguments should not be taken as rational! More can be said on this issue.

   On “Necessary Beings”:
   In general, the idea of a necessary being is suspect.

   All I mean by ‘necessary being’ is an entity whose existence be taken as factually necessary, that is, eternal and uncaused, a notion to which you could hardly object, since this is exactly what you (and most atheists) think could be true of the universe (which I pointed out earlier in this discussion).

   Even many theists and theologians find the ontological argument to be questionable, strange, or at best, weak.

   Well, that claim it all depends on which ontological argument you’re referring to. If you’re referring to most traditional Anselmian-based arguments, I’ll grant you that. But if you take a look some of the more contemporary revivals of the argument, such as Plantinga’s, I’m sure you’d find it much harder to write off after honest reflection.

   One can’t simply define something into existence. One can certainly conceive of a universe existing without a God existing, unlike trying to conceive of a square circle. So there is no inherent contradiction in the notion of a godless universe. Thus, the assertion that God exists by necessity is hardly compelling. But even if the idea of necessary being is coherent, why can’t the necessary being be the universe itself, or some impersonal state of affairs that preceded the universe, e.g., a quantum void that gave rise to the universe?

   This is clearly a straw man, for you must have missed it when I said “If you’re really claiming [there’s no such thing as a necessary being], I’d be interested in what you think about the universe—is it infinite (necessary) or did it have a beginning?” You never responded to this or tried to defend the possibility of an infinite regress (which would be your only way of making a case for an infinite universe).

   Concerning your question regarding the duration of the universe, the big bang is generally thought to be the beginning of *our* universe, but there is no compelling reason to believe that it is the beginning of the universe as a whole.

   Of which Big Bang model are you speaking (for there are many)? What would you consider to be a ‘compelling reason to believe that it is the beginning of the universe as a whole’?

   As you may know, many cosmologists now believe that our universe is not the only one- that there are and have been big bangs happening all the time (i.e., a multiverse of bubble universes). These theories (which stem from inflationary cosmology) are still speculative, but are nonetheless grounded in empirical data. Our pocket universe may have tunneled from a prior universe or some other state of matter.

   As a first note, not to over-generalize, but inflationary theory (out of which a lot of fluctuation models come) has not only been criticized as unduly “metaphysical”; it has also been crippled by various physical problems (such as getting inflation to transition to the current expansion). We have seen come and go old inflationary models and new inflationary models, none of which are currently that significant among cosmologists, so I’ll firstly dispute your claim that “many cosmologists” hold to them as you say they do. So if you will, please share with me what has lead you to that conclusion. On the other hand, I have plenty of sources showing that the Standard Model is by far the most widely held cosmological theory currently on the market and has more support in more areas than all other cosmological theories in history combined. It has been the overwhelming verdict of the scientific community that no theory is more probable than the big bang theory. There is no mathematically consistent model that has been so successful in its predictions or as corroborated by the evidence as the traditional big bang theory. In sum, according to Hawking himself: “Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang.” Contrarily, inflationary models are so promiscuous that by 1997 Alan Guth counted over fifty competing inflationary models in the scientific literature, most of which died or changed shortly after his report.

   As for some objections to inflationary cosmology as a whole, in 1994 Arvind Borde and Alexander Vilenkin showed that a universe eternally inflating toward the future cannot be geodesically complete in the past. There must have existed at some point an initial singularity at which ‘the universe as a whole’ came into being:

   “A model in which the inflationary phase has no end . . . naturally leads to this question: Can this model also be extended to the infinite past, avoiding in this way the problem of the initial singularity? . . . this is in fact not possible in future-eternal inflationary spacetimes as long as they obey some reasonable physical conditions: such models must necessarily possess initial singularities. . . the fact that inflationary spacetimes are past incomplete forces one to address the question of what, if anything, came before.”

   —A. Borde and A. Vilenkin, “Eternal Inflation and the Initial Singularity”

   Moreover, given that the total energy of the universe is thought to be zero, the universe could have even tunneled out of ‘nothing’ without any violation of energy conservation and thus with no need for supernatural intervention.

   As for a more specific critique of the theory you’re proposing, a sort of vacuum fluctuation model, most of these theories didn’t even outlive the 80s for reasons both physical and philosophical. Physical—being the many unresolved theoretical problems with the production mechanisms of matter, and perhaps even more lethal, philosophical—a deep internal incoherence within the theory. According to such models, it is impossible to specify precisely when and where a fluctuation will occur in the primordial vacuum that spawns each universe (such as our own). Within any finite interval of time there is a positive probability of such a fluctuation occurring at any point in space. Thus, given infinite past time, universes will eventually be spawned at every point in the primordial vacuum, and, as they expand, they will begin to collide and coalesce with one another. Thus, given infinite past time, we should by now be observing an infinitely old universe as a whole, not a relatively young one. The funny thing about this is that the only way to avert this problem would be to postulate the expansion of the primordial vacuum itself; but then we are right back to the absolute origin at the singularity that the Friedman-Lemaître model demands. According to quantum cosmologist Christopher Isham, this problem proved to be “fairly lethal” to vacuum fluctuation models; hence, these models were “jettisoned twenty years ago” and “nothing much” has been done with them since.

   —Isham, “Creation of the Universe”

   For more details on this scenario, see physicist Victor Stenger’s site:
   http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/

   From what I gathered off of that site, Stenger doesn’t reason for either an inflationary model or a vacuum fluctuation model, but a quantum mathematical model. Suffice to say, such models merit their own critique. At this point, I’m sort of curious: which cosmological theory are you advocating, exactly? Is there a specific one or just any and all that do not identify an absolute origin of the universe ex nihilo?

   Concerning Craig’s Kalam cosmological argument:
   Based on what I discussed above, it’s clear that Craig’s Kalam premise 2 (that the universe began to exist) is questionable, especially in light of modern cosmological theories.

   Hardly. Of Craig’s argument, you’ve only attempted to counter one of four sub-arguments given under premise (2): Big Bang cosmology. You’ve addressed none of the following arguments that lend themselves toward confirming (2) (the universe began to exist): 2.1 Argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite. 2.2 Argument based on the impossibility of the formation of an actual infinite by successive addition. And 2.4 Argument from thermodynamics. The former two I find harder to dispute than either of the two scientific arguments.

   His 1st premise (that everything that begins to exist has a cause) is questionable as well: quantum mechanics strongly suggests that events can occur without cause, e.g., radioactive decay.

   This and other alleged examples of entities that begin to exist without cause usually hinge on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which is merely concerned with science’s ability to predict/measure causality at quantum levels. But the causal proposition at hand here is not concerned with predictability at all. What principle is at work in Craig’s argument is, if you’ll remember, whatever begins to exist has a cause. The motions of subatomic particles described by statistical quantum mechanical laws, even if uncaused (which I do not think they are), do not constitute an exception to this principle. In Craig’s debate with Quentin Smith (Smith, being in my opinion one of the finest intellectual atheists of our time) this came up wherein Smith himself admits these considerations “at most tend to show that acausal laws govern the change of condition of particles, such as the change of particle x’s position from q1 to q2. They state nothing about the causality or acausality of absolute beginnings, of beginnings of the existence of particles”

   And as Craig later notes, such appeals as this to avert premise (1) are usually ‘infected with positivism, so that it is predicated upon a notion of causality that is drastically inadequate. . .[they assume] uncritically the positivistic equation between predictability in principle and causation. But this verificationist analysis is clearly untenable, as should be obvious from the coherence of the position that quantum indeterminacy is purely epistemic, there existing hidden variables which are in principle unobservable, or even the more radical position of die-hard realists who are prepared to abandon locality in order to preserve the hidden variables. Clearly, then, to be “uncaused” does not mean, even minimally, to be “in principle unpredictable.”’ In other words, radioactive decay such as of a uranium atom, isn’t even remotely a challenge to premise (1) on the basis that 1) a different causal principle is being applied and 2) this causal principle has nothing to say about being coming from nonbeing (or as Smith put it, “They state nothing about the causality or acausality of absolute beginnings, of beginnings of the existence of particles”).

   Seeing as this attempt to counter premise (1) I think utterly fails, I’m interested in what else you’d bring to the table on this. In fact, I’d accuse you of special pleading if you tried sustaining a defense here, for this principle is perhaps the most verified empirical fact based on the widest sampling of human experience. The empirical evidence in support of the proposition is absolutely overwhelming; so much that Humean empiricists could demand no stronger evidence in support of any synthetic statement. So to reject this causal proposition is completely arbitrary, usually only in question when it serves as the ground of an argument whose conclusion doesn’t sit well with one’s current worldview. We could go much further into this principle if you like, but my fear is that since it is so intuitively obvious in itself, it would perhaps be unwise in doing so, for one ought not to try to prove the obvious via the less obvious.

   Even if Craig’s Kalam argument were sound, at best it would only demonstrate that the universe had a cause.

   What do you mean “at best” demonstrate the universe had a cause? That’s precisely the conclusion: “Therefore, the universe had a cause.” And what do mean by saying if his argument were “sound?” Do question the logic involved or merely the veracity of the two premises? (The argument can still be logically sound, which it is, if the premises are false.)

   However, the entity or state that caused it need not be a personal, intelligent being; it could just as well be an impersonal physical force or prior state of affairs. For these reasons (and others that I have not mentioned) the argument fails to prove the existence of God.

   Then you’re certainly a poor logician. From the nature of the case involved, that cause must have transcended that which it cause, being ontologically prior to its effect. If the cause is responsible for the inception of space, time, and matter (at least sans the universe) it must therefore be uncaused, changeless (things only change in time), immaterial, and enormously powerful (having brought the entire universe into existence out of nothing). Moreover, it can be argued that the cause is most plausibly construed to be personal because the only way in which a temporal effect could originate from an eternal, changeless cause would seem to be if the cause is a personal agent who eternally chooses to create an effect in time. A changeless, mechanically operating cause would produce either an immemorial effect or none at all; but an agent endowed with free will can have an eternal determination to operate causally at a (first) moment of time and thereby to produce a temporally first effect. Therefore, the cause of the universe is plausibly regarded as personal. I’m interested in your other arguments as well, as you’d suspect I have more of my own.

   Further, the kalam argument isn’t at all concerned with the cause’s intelligence (though I think such could be easily demonstrable). Logically deducing the cause’s degree of intellect goes beyond what the conclusion of this argument entails, if we should be mindful of keeping it concise. If you want to talk about reasons for taking the cause to be intelligent, we certainly can. But for now, I’m content in showing that an uncaused, changeless, immaterial, enormously powerful, and personal entity exists—some of the central attributes theists have always claimed when referring to “God.”

   For further critiques of Craig’s Kalam argument, see the Kalam section at the Secular Web:

   http://www.infidels.org

   For a further defense of Craig’s argument, see his sections on the existence of God, divine eternity, and debates on Craig’s page, a lot of which are direct replies and/or debates with the authors whose articles are published on infidels.org.

   So in conclusion, your three hypotheses (hopefully reduced to only two now) as to why naturalism is superior to theism I think are seriously lacking. I hope to see more arguments from you and perhaps a further defense on the ones you’ve already tried to propose. Lastly, if I might ask you a question to which I eagerly seek as honest as possible an answer: why aren’t you a Christian?

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