Free Will: Egnor shows neurological proof - PART ONE (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, January 04, 2021, 17:54 (1419 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Why design an independent machine when it is easy to do the job yourself? Your every intent in this vein is to reduce God's image and value.

dhw: There is no attempt to reduce God’s image and value. Do tell us more about your non-humanized image of your God, and please explain why a control freak is of greater value than an inventor who gives free rein to his invention. And why is it “easier” and more “valuable” to keep stepping in to perform operation after operation on whales’ legs and hominids’ brains and pelvises (plus giving millions of courses on nest-building and camouflage and every natural wonder you can think of) than to create a single mechanism which will enable organisms to do their own designing?

We have two very opposite views of God's personality and intentions

DAVID: And I state belief based on the evidence. I don't see the above thought experiment as substantive.

dhw: What "thought experiment"? If we accept NDEs as evidence of a soul that lives on after death, why is it more "substantive" to suggest God popping a blob of his own immaterial self into every organism rather than inventing a material mechanism which will produce an immaterial self? As you say yourself,"consciousness is an emergent product of the living brain". And consciousness is pretty important for your concept of the soul, isn't it?

I think we live in God's consciousness and He has given us some of His

DAVID: It is where the science facts lead me. They lead me to recognize the automaticity of cells and reject your cell committees. NDE's requires a two part soul. and finally I know God is nothing like a human. but you do.

dhw: […] The only part of your theory which I would agree is based on science is the claim that the complexities of life are so immense that design is a logical conclusion. This is why, in all our discussions, and in all my own alternative explanations of evolution and of life and consciousness, I allow for a designer. It is only when we go back to “first cause” that I list the other options.

DAVID: I fully understand your neutral position. And my point in this discussion is everything must come from materials. But that is only a beginning to the process to finally create life and consciousness. That requires a designer's input. There are no probable odds to support chance production.

dhw: I am not defending chance. My point is that if everything comes from materials, it is perfectly logical for your God to have created materials from which intelligence emerges. That would be a theistic compromise between dualism and materialism.

It is your logic, not mine. The cells act intelligently through God's instructions

dhw: Your bias against God-given cellular intelligence has nothing whatsoever to do with science leading you to “recognize” the automaticity of cells,

The automaticity is obvious. You invoke weak evidence of innate cellular intelligence as your gross bias.

dhw: to advocate a two-part soul (or a two-part self), or to your astonishing claim that you “know” God is nothing like a human,

You are an amazing theologian. They know God is not anything like us, Adler certainly included. From non-belief you develop all sorts of wild concepts of Him, especially humanizing.

dhw: even though you agree that he probably has thought patterns, emotions and logic similar to ours and, if I remember rightly, you even believe that our consciousness is part of his consciousness.

Yes, consciousness is a gift from God, but I fully agree it has to arise from material which lives, with life another gift from God. The chain of life from the original bacteria to us is the only reason we are here. Life only comes from life, and it is glaringly obvious it didn't pop up spontaneously from any ordinary matter.