There are four podcasts in this series of talks between Casey Luskin and Michael Egnor.
About Dr. Egnor:
Dr. Michael Egnor is a Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at The State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he specializes in Pediatric Neuroscience. An award-winning neurosurgeon and a widely-published researcher, Dr. Egnor writes regularly at Evolution News & Views.
Podcast one details:
On this episode of ID the Future, brain surgeon and ID blogger Michael Egnor talks with CSC Research Coordinator Casey Luskin about his internet debates with Jerry Coyne and the trends and dynamics he sees in the ID/evolution blogosphere. Dr. Egnor also speaks briefly on the evidence he sees for intelligent design in the brain.
On this episode of ID the Future, Dr. Michael Egnor and Casey Luskin continue their conversation, speaking on Dr. Egnor’s recent experience in an online debate on free will with evolutionary biologist Dr. Jerry Coyne. Listen in as Dr. Egnor explains why the argument against free will is self-refuting and shows how determinism as a theory in physics is dead.
On this episode of ID the Future, hear more of Dr. Michael Egnor and Casey Luskin’s discussion on free will. If there is no free will, and humans are merely following our chemical instructions, than how can we recognize evil and good? Tune in as Dr. Egnor explores the societal and political consequences of denying free will.
On this episode of ID the Future, Dr. Michael Egnor is on the show again to talk more about his recent debates with atheist evolutionary biologist Dr. Jerry Coyne. Listen in as Egnor and Research Coordinator Casey Luskin discuss recent efforts that Jerry Coyne has made against open discourse on intelligent design and evolution, looking at two recent incidents of censorship at Ball State University and the LA County Museum of Natural History.
This podcast is a must-listen. Please take the time to download this podcast and listen to it. I guarantee that you will love this podcast. I even recommended it to my Dad and I almost never do that.
Details:
In this podcast, J. Warner examines the evidence for the existence of the mind (and inferentially, the soul) as he looks at six classic philosophical arguments. Jim also briefly discusses Thomas Nagel’s book, Mind and Cosmos and discusses the limitations of physicalism.
Atheist Thomas Nagel’s latest book “Mind and Cosmos” makes the case that materialism cannot account for the evidence of mental phenomena
Nagel writes in this recent New York Times article that materialism cannot account for the reality of consciousness, meaning, intention and purpose
Quote from the Nagel article:
Even though the theistic outlook, in some versions, is consistent with the available scientific evidence, I don’t believe it, and am drawn instead to a naturalistic, though non-materialist, alternative. Mind, I suspect, is not an inexplicable accident or a divine and anomalous gift but a basic aspect of nature that we will not understand until we transcend the built-in limits of contemporary scientific orthodoxy.
When looking at this question, it’s important to not have our conclusions pre-determined by presupposing materialism or atheism
If your mind/soul doesn’t exist and you are a purely physical being then that is a defeater for Christianity, so we need to respond
Traditionally, Christians have been committed to a view of human nature called “dualism” – human beings are souls who have bodies
The best way* to argue for the existence of the soul is using philosophical arguments
The case:
The law of identity says that if A = B’ if A and B have the exact same properties
If A = the mind and B = the brain, then is A identical to B?
Wallace will present 6 arguments to show that A is not identical to B because they have different properties
Not everyone of the arguments below might make sense to you, but you will probably find one or two that strike you as correct. Some of the points are more illustrative than persuasive, like #2. However, I do find #3, #5 and #6 persuasive.
1) First-person access to mental properties
Thought experiment: Imagine your dream car, and picture it clearly in your mind
If we invited an artist to come and sketch out your dream car, then we could see your dream car’s shape on paper
This concept of your dream car is not something that people can see by looking at your brain structure
Physical properties can be physically accessed, but the properties of your dream care and privately accessed
2) Our experience of consciousness implies that we are not our bodies
Common sense notion of personhood is that we own our bodies, but we are not our bodies
3) Persistent self-identity through time
Thought experiment: replacing a new car with an old car one piece at a time
When you change even the smallest part of a physical object, it changes the identity of that object
Similarly, your body is undergoing changes constantly over time
Every cell in your body is different from the body you had 10 years ago
Even your brain cells undergo changes (see this from New Scientist – WK)
If you are the same person you were 10 years ago, then you are not your physical body
4) Mental properties cannot be measured like physical objects
Physical objects can be measured (e.g. – use physical measurements to measure weight, size, etc.)
Mental properties cannot be measured
5) Intentionality or About-ness
Mental entities can refer to realities that are physical, something outside of themselves
A tree is not about anything, it just is a physical object
But you can have thoughts about the tree out there in the garden that needs water
6) Free will and personal responsibility
If humans are purely physical, then all our actions are determined by sensory inputs and genetic programming
Biological determinism is not compatible with free will, and free will is required for personal responsibility
Our experience of moral choices and moral responsibility requires free will, and free will requires minds/souls
He spends the last 10 minutes of the podcast responding to naturalistic objections to the mind/soul hypothesis.
*Now in the podcast, Wallace does say that scientific evidence is not the best kind of evidence to use when discussing this issue of body/soul and mind/brain. But I did blog yesterday about two pieces of evidence that I think are relevant to this discussion: corroborated near-death experiences and mental effort.
You might remember that Dr. Craig brought up the issue of substance dualism, and the argument from intentionality (“aboutness”), in his debate with the naturalist philosopher Alex Rosenberg, so this argument about dualism is battle-ready. You can add it to your list of arguments for Christian theism along with all the other arguments like the Big Bang, the fine-tuning, the origin of life, stellar habitability, galactic habitability, irreducible complexity, molecular machines, the Cambrian explosion, the moral argument, the resurrection, biological convergence, and so on.
This is one the top 4 best debates that William Lane Craig has done in my opinion. (The other two are Craig-Millican debate and the first and second Craig-Dacey debates) This one doesn’t seem to get a lot of play on the Internet: there’s no video, transcript or anything. But it is a great debate, and on a problem we are all concerned about: the problem of evil and suffering. One other thing – Sinnott-Armstrong is also a very courteous, respectful and intelligent scholar and he is very good at defending his side. This is a very cordial and engaging debate, and because it was held in front of a church audience, it was targeted to laymen and not academics.
There is also a book based on this debate, published by Oxford University Press. I was actually able to find a PDF of it online. I should also remind people that you can get the wonderful Craig-Hitchens debate DVD from Amazon.com if you are looking for a debate to watch, or show in your church.
Evil is incompatible with the concept of God (three features all-powerful, all-god, all-knowing)
God’s additional attributes: eternal, effective and personal (a person)
He will be debating against the Christian God in this debate, specifically
Contention: no being has all of the three features of the concept of God
His argument: is not a deductive argument, but an inductive/probabilistic argument
Examples of pointless, unjustified suffering: a sick child who dies, earthquakes, famines
The inductive argument from evil:
If there were an all-powerful and all-good God, then there would not be any evil in the world unless that evil is logically necessary for some adequately compensating good.
There is evil in the world.
Some of that evil is not logically necessary for some adequately compensating good.
Therefore, there can’t be a God who is all-powerful and all-good.
Defining terms:
Evil: anything that all rational people avoid for themselves, unless they have some adequate reason to want that evil for themselves (e.g. – pain, disability, death)
Adequate reason: some evils do have an adequate reason, like going to the dentist – you avoid a worse evil by having a filling
God could prevent tooth decay with no pain
God can even change the laws of physics in order to make people not suffer
Responses by Christians:
Evil as a punishment for sin: but evil is not distributed in accordance with sin, like babies
Children who suffer will go straight to Heaven: but it would be better to go to Heaven and not suffer
Free will: this response doesn’t account for natural evil, like disease, earthquakes, lightning
Character formation theodicy: there are other ways for God to form character, by showing movies
Character formation theodicy: it’s not fair to let X suffer so that Y will know God
God allows evil to turn people towards him: God would be an egomaniac to do that
We are not in a position to know that any particular evil is pointless: if we don’t see a reason then there is no reason
Inductive evil is minor compared to the evidences for God: arguments for a Creator do not prove that God is good
WLC opening speech:
Summarizing Walter’s argument
If God exists, gratuitous does not exist.
Gratuitous evil exists.
Therefore, God does not exist.
Gratuitous evil means evil that God has no morally sufficient reason to permit. WSA doesn’t think that all evil is incompatible with God’s existence, just gratuitous evil.
Everyone admits that there are instances of evil and suffering such that we cannot see the morally sufficient reason why God would allow it to occur.
The claim of the atheist is that if they cannot see that there is a moral justification for allowing some instance evil, then there is no moral justification for that instance of evil.
Here are three reasons why we should not expect to know the morally sufficient reasons why God permits apparently pointless evil.
the ripple effect: the morally sufficient reason for allowing some instance of evil may only be seen in another place or another time
Three Christian doctrines undermine the claim that specific evils really are gratuitous
Walter’s own premise 1 allows us to argue for God’s existence, which means that evil is not gratuitous
Christian doctrines from 2.:
The purpose of life is not happiness, and it is not God’s job to make us happy – we are here to know God. Many evils are gratuitous if we are concerned about being happy, but they are not gratuitous for producing the knowledge of God. What WSA has to show is that God could reduce the amount of suffering in the world while still retaining the same amount of knowledge of God’s existence and character.
Man is in rebellion, and many of the evils we see are caused by humans misusing their free will to harm others and cause suffering
For those who accept Christ, suffering is redeemed by eternal life with God, which is a benefit that far outweighs any sufferings and evils we experience in our earthly lives
WINTERY KNIGHT 