I do. Just take the logic of what I wrote forward.
If this is true:
So this raises a question. If we were reincarnated from a past life, why don’t we have any memory of it? Which bring us here:
Choosing B, that our personhood is an illusion, with zero memories of past lives (except in special cases), gives a critical justification for why the theological does not match the readily apparent experience of individuals in society. We don’t remember our past lives, because in essence we are not persons. Our sense of personhood is not part of the continuity of “who we are.”
Now we are just a short step from here towards Buddhism.
Eastern religions do not have theological systems the same as western religions. There is far more diversity, and they are better understood as historical and social phenomenons, not theological positions. They can have a theological pattern, nonetheless, that is taken down the path to different degrees, and different ways.
The thing is that hinduism is fundamentally a particular sort of religion of conquest. It induces a theology in response to questions. As we take that path, we end up at Buddhism, aspiring to a radical denial of the self. Essentially, it aspires to the opposite of solipsism (radical denial of world outside self). Of course no one actually at nirvana, so our remaining sense of self is explained as “attachment,” analogous too karma in some ways.
You might enjoy this book. It is quite good.
It gets quite a bit right. Both Christianity and Buddhism are responses to suffering, and Jesus and Buddha offer entirely opposite answers.
Let’s not fixate on whether we “know” God exists or not. I think this is not relevant to the version of the argument we’re discussing. In a theistic framework, you assume that God exists, and that God has certain properties. So if you want to understand this argument, you have to assume (for the sake of argument) that God exists. After you assume this, I think it is clear that now have a much better explanation for how consciousness can exist: God must have had a hand in creating it. Perhaps God, being a conscious being, wants similarly conscious beings to love and fellowship with him. (This gives the existence of consciousness a purpose, even if we can’t explain it fully from an evolutionary point of view.) God, being a conscious and omnipotent being, should have the power to create and sustain consciousness. (This explains how consciousness is possible.)
This doesn’t remove the mystery entirely of how consciousness works at the granular level. That’s still a puzzle to be solved by scientists, philosophers, possibly theologians as well. But now we have an entity that can possibly explain why it came about. We have the ingredients, even if we don’t know how they mix together. That’s the part of the mystery that is now eliminated.
Postulating new hypothetical entities to explain data is not uncommon. Yes, here we don’t know the detailed mechanism by which this entity results in the data. But as I extensively argued above, there’s no reason why we should expect such a mechanistic explanation to exist in the case of consciousness.
This same approach could be used to explain anything. Why does the Sun shine brightly? Well, it makes sense that God makes the Sun shine. How does dew form in the morning? It makes sense that God makes dew form.
This approach also forces God into ever narrowing gaps in our knowledge. As we discover natural processes for what was once explained by God’s actions then God shrinks. What if natural explanations are found for the creation of consciousness? What then? Does God get even smaller?
It would still be evidence for Theism… no one here is understanding the inductive nature of these arguments. We are asking if Theism is true what should we see? Does this fact fit better with Theism or Naturalism? Consciousness isn’t evidence for Theism because we can’t explain it… I recommend Paul Draper and Richard Swinburne to better understand the structure of these arguments. Because not a single person on this thread is getting it
It still sounds like consciousness is evidence for Theism because natural processes wouldn’t produce it. I don’t see anyone claiming the existence of stars are evidence for theism, and I think that has to do with us knowing how stars can naturally form. If we fully understood how nature can produce beings with consciousness, would it still be evidence for theism?
I do. All the time. A lot of the fine-tuning arguments are about the universe expanding at the right rate for the right type of stars to arise and evolve.
Yes. Naturalism can still be true and consciousness not exist. Consciousness must exist for Theism to be true. So the fact that there are conscious beings just isn’t that surprising on Theism. But then the naturalist can turn around and say well, the fact that consciousness is dependent on a physical brain is more probable on naturalism than theism. That’s the way it has to be on naturalism. Not so on Theism. It’s all about weighing the various lines of evidence.
You misunderstand the nature of the argument. It is not meant to be a god-of-the-gaps argument in place of a scientific explanation. Rather, it’s a reflection of the nature of consciousness and how different it seems to be from anything else we’ve encountered in nature. The mystery of origin of life is a comparatively trivial problem compared to the origin of consciousness, and this is something that several non-theistic philosophers have agreed.
The material ingredients that possibly contribute to consciousness (e.g. neurons) could one day have a perfectly coherent scientific explanation without reference to God. But it’s almost inconceivable what kind of mechanistic account of nature could satisfactorily explain consciousness (for example, see the famous China brain argument).
Secondly, your objection can basically be launched at any sort of argument for God. It takes the form of the following:
Theist: Feature X of the universe seems best explainable by the existence of God.
Naturalist: But what if one day a scientific explanation could be found?
In other words, you need to flesh out your objection more coherently than simply saying, “Future science!”
This leads to this comment:
None of these statements are necessarily contrary to the need of a scientific explanation. Many theists would endorse a statement like “God makes the Sun shine brightly”. Such a statement does not exclude the legitimacy of a scientific explanation for the Sun’s shining: “God makes the Sun shine through the process of nuclear fusion of helium into hydrogen.”
Well, we have no evidence of conscious processes that do not need energy to be sustained.
Try to be conscious without eating if you do not believe me.
So, I think it is mind boggling that anyone would use consciousness to make an argument for theism, when it should be obvious that there is no consciousness without a constant intake of materialistic calories.
I suspect consciousness, or the origin of life, two things we still ignore, are used as an arguments for theism because of the historical liaison between theism and ignorance. The same liaison my ancestors had between lightings and Thor.
I appreciate the effort you have made to communicate this other “world view”.
However, I am stuck at one particular place: my “stereotypical Westerner” would be prone to REJECT
reincarnation if there is no ultimate unveiling of all the lives that a person has experienced.
And some Westerners don’t even take seriously any “Eastern assertion” that there is no such unveiling.
So I find it oddly ironic that the home turf of reincarnation appears to be the East … where karma is the least personal in content … while in the West, where karma has a much lighter grip on culture, is where the “cult of personhood” is felt the strongest.
This would only be evidence that energy is necessary for consciousness. Not necessarily sufficient. (And do we even know that? Do we know for sure that consciousness disappears upon death, for example?)
On naturalism, there really is no good explanation for consciousness. Evolutionary explanations are not adequate, as they only show, at most, that consciousness would be beneficial for survival if it existed. (And even this is not clear, as @gbrooks9 pointed out - advanced zombie brains could just be as good as advanced brains with consciousness.) It does not explain for how consciousness arose in the first place.
I don’t believe many “after death experiences” involve eating a bowl of Heavenly Hash ice cream, or a slice of Angel’s Food cake… or whipping up a bowl of Ambrosia.
And based on the wide variety of anecdotal stories and information, the energy supply you are worried about is for the body … not the mind.
I suspect so … and for one particular reason that Joshua has specifically explained:
“I think, therefore I am” is not just a catchy slogan … it also concisely presents the ultimate problem - - how can we ever be sure that all our fellow humans also have consicousness?
Just because they react to pain stimuli … or laugh … there is no way to know! Solipsism, a raging beast of our dreams… may be a lonely philosophy, or an engrandizing one where the one conscious thing in the whole Universe is … God!
Based on the fact that Jesus’ resurrected body was capable of eating and drinking (Luke 24:42-43), our bodies in heaven will probably be able to absorb calories. I don’t know if it will need them, though, as Paul says that the resurrected body will be very different from the earthly body (1 Corinthians 15:42-49).
The Greek word for resurrection doesn’t just mean “being revived from the dead”.
It is also used to mean “getting up from a chair”, “getting up from the ground”, as well as “the rising up of the soul/person as a spiritual entity”… either shortly after death (and thus before the End of Days), or many eons into the future - - in connection to the general resurrection of the dead associated with the End of Days.
As you can see, there’s only a few meanings that are connected to the “mind-only” scenario discussed above.
