Materialism as a religion

I’m not limiting anything which is why we should keep on looking, and ponder the mystery of chemistry. 

In the meantime we know the chemical breakdown of a human:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composit...human_bodygd

I’m not strongly averse to these elements being little ‘bits (projections?) of mind’ rather than ‘little bits of matter’ in line with your idealistic view. I’m not sure whether that really explains those ‘big questions’ more satisfactorily though... I guess individuals can decide on their preferred pragmatic worldview to get things done/get them through the day etc.

Funny how threads intertwine. We both contributed to that thread about Shakespeare in the Conspiracy forum and that got me thinking about chemistry and its roots in alchemy. There is a popular view of alchemy which involves "primitive and superstitious" old men trying to convert base metals into gold. Of course, as usual, the popular view is not the whole story and those who are interested will know all too well that many of the founding fathers of modern science (including Newton) were indeed alchemists and that their calling was every bit as spiritual as it was empirical.

Again, a little synchronicity pops up here. The man giving the talk in the video I posted above is the science historian and chemist, Lawrence Principe, and the same Lawrence Principe appears in this article on Alchemy from the Smithsonian web site. Still, that article refers to the transformation of base metal to gold but fails to mention the parallel spiritual endeavour which is the transformation of the "base" self to the enlightened spiritual being. 

It seems to me that the alchemists were aware of something that their heirs either forgot or wilfully ignored: that science without spirituality is like an aeroplane with a wing missing (or maybe a wing with the aeroplane missing?).

I'm always a bit bemused by these discussions. Admittedly there's no satisfying explanation of how consciousness can arise in a materialistic world. But is there a satisfying non-materialistic explanation of how consciousness arises? Or is it just essentially a matter of saying that there's a non-material entity which is somehow intrinsically conscious?

I guess it depends on what will satisfy you. We have at least two competing assumptions at large: one that assumes that the material universe came into being ex nihilo and that all phenomena - including mind or consciousness - arise and evolve from that material. Another assumption is that mind is all there is and that what our individual minds perceive as external and separate material objects are nothing more than mind manifested into form. That the form appears to be solid (material) is an illusion. How the mind came about in the first place remains beyond our understanding but it might be that it is a moot question because it assumes the same constraints that the material world is subject to: time and space. If time is also an illusion then the question of a beginning (or "before" the beginning) doesn't arise.

I think my problem is that I find it as unsatisfying to say consciousness is an intrinsic attribute of a non-material entity, which either we can't understand or is beyond our understanding in principle, as it is to say that consciousness arises from the material world in a way we don't understand.

And if the non-material entity is beyond our understanding, I'm not sure how we can be sure that it would have a greater degree of free will than a purely material entity, or that its life would necessarily be more "meaningful".

I think my problem is that I find it as unsatisfying to say consciousness is an intrinsic attribute of a non-material entity, which either we can't understand or is beyond our understanding in principle, as it is to say that consciousness arises from the material world in a way we don't understand.

Chris, you’ve clearly missed the memo. Not only is an immaterial ‘reality’ more satisfying, but so self-evident that it requires an organised, systematic, religious-style conspiracy to deny it (for some vague notion of patch protection apparently). Hence this thread.

I think my problem is that I find it as unsatisfying to say consciousness is an intrinsic attribute of a non-material entity, which either we can't understand or is beyond our understanding in principle, as it is to say that consciousness arises from the material world in a way we don't understand.

And if the non-material entity is beyond our understanding, I'm not sure how we can be sure that it would have a greater degree of free will than a purely material entity, or that its life would necessarily be more "meaningful".

It might be that we can't explain it all empirically - that we can't reduce consciousness to particles or some kind of energy - but we possibly can have a subjective understanding. I think that was Jung's approach. 

This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.

Carl Jung: General Aspects of Dream Psychology (1928)

From my point of view, I find it incredibly unsatisfying to rely on strict materialism as being the only path to the "truth". That's what we are told by the resident materialists here and also by the orthodoxy in science and academia. I really can't imagine how a collection of atoms, organised by arbitrary chemical laws into molecules and then, by some unbelievably freakish accident into living matter can somehow contrive to produce a single thought or subjective experience, not to mention ponder on the nature of God or the universe.

It might be that we can't explain it all empirically - that we can't reduce consciousness to particles or some kind of energy - but we possibly can have a subjective understanding. I think that was Jung's approach. 


From my point of view, I find it incredibly unsatisfying to rely on strict materialism as being the only path to the "truth". That's what we are told by the resident materialists here and also by the orthodoxy in science and academia. I really can't imagine how a collection of atoms, organised by arbitrary chemical laws into molecules and then, by some unbelievably freakish accident into living matter can somehow contrive to produce a single thought or subjective experience, not to mention ponder on the nature of God or the universe.

"I can't imagine how"  What's right with this line of logic?

Chris, you’ve clearly missed the memo. Not only is an immaterial ‘reality’ more satisfying, but so self-evident that it requires an organised, systematic, religious-style conspiracy to deny it (for some vague notion of patch protection apparently). Hence this thread.

And this is why discussion here is ultimately pointless. Everything that has gone before in this thread reduced to a sneering put-down.

What is self-evident is the organised, systematic, religious style approach of the materialist orthodoxy. As I said earlier, it is good that more scientists and academics are recognising and openly criticising scientism but we have a long way to go before the die-hard faithful accept it. To add to what has been offered so far, here are a couple of articles from that bastion of New Age woo, the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/oliver-...s-elephant

And this: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/a...uage-poole

"Scientism" describes the practice of making wildly inflated claims for what modern science is able to explain, while denigrating other modes of understanding. For instance, popularisers of neuroscience who claim that it can solve the mystery of who we really are have no scientific basis for such claims. They are overreaching and indulging in false advertising. That is what I and others have called "neuroscientism", a discipline-specific subset of scientism in general.
<snip>
Pinker's essay poses as a gesture of reconciliation between the two cultures, but is really a thinly veiled demand for total surrender by non-scientists. It thus perpetuates the idea that science and the humanities are hermetically distinct entities.

Malf sneers at the suggestion of an organisation but what are we to make of these:

https://www.csicop.org/

https://www.skepticsinthepub.org/

http://guerrillaskepticismonwikipedia.blogspot.co.nz/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brights_movement

and other too numerous to mention. The very essence of, in Malf's words, "an organised, systematic, religious-style conspiracy".

And this is why discussion here is ultimately pointless. Everything that has gone before in this thread reduced to a sneering put-down.

What is self-evident is the organised, systematic, religious style approach of the materialist orthodoxy. As I said earlier, it is good that more scientists and academics are recognising and openly criticising scientism but we have a long way to go before the die-hard faithful accept it. To add to what has been offered so far, here are a couple of articles from that bastion of New Age woo, the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/oliver-...s-elephant

And this: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/a...uage-poole



Malf sneers at the suggestion of an organisation but what are we to make of these:

https://www.csicop.org/

https://www.skepticsinthepub.org/

http://guerrillaskepticismonwikipedia.blogspot.co.nz/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brights_movement

and other too numerous to mention. The very essence of, in Malf's words, "an organised, systematic, religious-style conspiracy".

Or perhaps these organisations are fuelled by the need to counter those who, in order to promote unscientific ideas and agendas, seek to discredit the entire field of scientific inquiry?

Or perhaps these organisations are fuelled by the need to counter those who, in order to promote unscientific ideas and agendas, seek to discredit the entire field of scientific inquiry?

That reads like a prepared statement, Malf. Do they print it on your membership card?

Who decides what is unscientific?

Precisely who is trying to discredit the entire field of scientific enquiry? Are we still talking about those who complain about scientism - including the working scientists, philosophers and academics already mentioned? Or those who wrote the Guardian articles?

Or maybe this guy - a prominent atheist and supporter of Darwinism.

This kind of intellectual hubris is known as scientism, the idea that science is the ultimate arbiter of any question, or indeed even of what counts as a meaningful question. Taken to its logical extreme, scientism leads to nihilism, and as such is both scientifically untenable (nihilism is a philosophical position, not an empirical one) and philosophically sterile. And if there is one thing that secular humanists do not want , it is to be associated with nihilism, both because it is intellectually uninteresting and because it plays into the worst stereotype of the “godless atheist” that most people still unfortunately hold.

Or, perhaps John Horgan writing in that noted anti-science rag, Scientific American?

Mr. [Jerry] Coyne repeatedly reminds us that science, unlike religion, promotes self-criticism, but he is remarkably lacking in this virtue himself. He rejects complaints that some modern scientists are guilty of “scientism,” which I would define as excessive trust—faith!—in science. Calling scientism “a grab bag of disparate accusations that are mostly inaccurate or overblown,” Mr. Coyne insists that the term “be dropped.” Actually, Faith vs. Fact serves as a splendid specimen of scientism. Mr. Coyne disparages not only religion but also other human ways of engaging with reality. The arts, he argues, “cannot ascertain truth or knowledge,” and the humanities do so only to the extent that they emulate the sciences. This sort of arrogance and certitude is the essence of scientism.

It might be that we can't explain it all empirically - that we can't reduce consciousness to particles or some kind of energy - but we possibly can have a subjective understanding. I think that was Jung's approach. 

Of course, the other question is whether something being non-material implies that it can't be investigated empirically. There sometimes seems to be an assumption that the scientific method can be applied only to the material world. I don't see why that should be so, and I think much of experimental parapsychology relies on its not being so - except where the idea is only to prove the existence of psi by demonstrating that the current scientific understanding of the material world is inadequate.