Solely Material: Can It Even Vindicate Itself?
Scientists like to berate us with their ways of explaining all our cares as constructions of our neurons' imaginative patterns. They will go to their utmost to explain away any and all of them: beauty, hope, any of the things storybook heroes have in common. It's not enough for them to see these as some of the means to greater things, they have to deny there being greater things because we can see these means so well.
But I have a challenge for them: supposing we just might think it better to believe in these abstract things than in meaninglessness, what authoritative reason can they give not to?
The first thing most would say is that if they aren't true we shouldn't, which is to say we should hold to truth. But what reason do we have to hold to truth? Wouldn't that itself be, according to them, just one of our tendencies given by the configuration of our neurons?
Give me a scientific, abstractless, explanable by matter's configuration alone reason why truth itself should be of any consequence to us!
Because it's impractical to go without truth?
Um, but what is impractical? Isn't that something else we accidentally abstracted from mere neuron-firings?
And even if it means something in the purely material sphere, won't nothing be practical in the long run when entropy, which can never be countered, undoes the seeming perpetual motion machine of our universe and puts an end to everything once practical? Will it mean ANYTHING in the long run other than enjoyment for us here?
And -- uh oh -- can we know that enjoyment is a good thing based on materially demonstrable facts alone?
Well, any atheist who should happen by, you tell me, since you always think your wonderful god, Science, has the answers.
But I have a challenge for them: supposing we just might think it better to believe in these abstract things than in meaninglessness, what authoritative reason can they give not to?
The first thing most would say is that if they aren't true we shouldn't, which is to say we should hold to truth. But what reason do we have to hold to truth? Wouldn't that itself be, according to them, just one of our tendencies given by the configuration of our neurons?
Give me a scientific, abstractless, explanable by matter's configuration alone reason why truth itself should be of any consequence to us!
Because it's impractical to go without truth?
Um, but what is impractical? Isn't that something else we accidentally abstracted from mere neuron-firings?
And even if it means something in the purely material sphere, won't nothing be practical in the long run when entropy, which can never be countered, undoes the seeming perpetual motion machine of our universe and puts an end to everything once practical? Will it mean ANYTHING in the long run other than enjoyment for us here?
And -- uh oh -- can we know that enjoyment is a good thing based on materially demonstrable facts alone?
Well, any atheist who should happen by, you tell me, since you always think your wonderful god, Science, has the answers.
Labels: Common Nonsense, Musings
posted by Shakespeare's Cobbler at 11/10/2007 10:08:00 PM
1 Comments:
If we study the human brain and figure out what all the pathways mean, would that not give us a means to shape the pathways in our brain for ourselves? Think about this - us changing our inner circutry to think how we want. Isn't that like discovering a whole other element of free will?
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