EXPLAIN THIS: If We Humans Are Just Meat, What About Our Minds?

To understand the most essential issue that separates secular materialists and Intelligent Design advocates, it is only necessary to contemplate how each camp views the human mind. Here’s how Richard Dawkins, one of the most well-known figures in the former camp puts it in his book “River Out of Eden:”

“In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

Not much room in Dawkins’ universe for things like free will, purpose or principle, it’s all just blind, indifferent physical process. Similarly, as neurosurgeon Michael Egnor points out in the current issue of Mind Matters, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb posits a similar perspective in a recent essay:

“The Standard Model of physics presumes that we are all made of elementary particles with no additional constituents. As such composite systems, we do not possess freedom at a fundamental level, because all particles and their interactions follow the laws of physics. Given that perspective, what we interpret as ‘free will’ merely encapsulates uncertainties associated with the complex set of circumstances that affect human actions.”

Thus the stark choice posed in the headline above: Are we humans mere chunks of meat or independent beings blessed with non-material minds and the ability to make choices among alternatives? Egnor, who knows a thing or three about the human brain, critiques the idea that we are only meat and provides a number of additional resources for those on either side who want to dig deeper.

For example, he challenges Loeb’s understanding of the Standard Model of Physics and its implications for our understanding of human agency:

“The Standard Model, of course, in no way presumes that we are made only of elementary particles and it relates in no way whatsoever to human freedom. It is a model of elementary physical forces and particles and, of course, the human mind and human destiny transcend the elementary laws of physics.

“Very little about human behavior or thought, either on an individual basis or a collective basis, is described in any way by elementary physical laws. For example, Loeb’s argument that we have no free will is a proposition, a statement that can be either true or false. There is no state of matter — brain matter or otherwise — that is propositional, which means that no brain state can be a propositional mind state.”

This is no esoteric debate among a tiny circle of smart people debating at a level so far above the rest of us that it’s pointless to try to understand what they are each seeking to communicate. To the contrary, Eignor does a superb job of making sense of the competing arguments.

Thus, if you have any interest at all in understanding what a miracle you and your mind are, Egnor’s essay is: Highly recommended.

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BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW THIS ABOUT HEMOGLOBIN:

There is a precursor of Hemoglobin — Heme — that presents a huge problem for the secular materialist and neo-evolutionist as well. Read all about it, starting here.

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