PZ Watch: 10-24-08: Defending Monism

PZ Meyers, over at pharyngula, has taken on the hated dualists. In order for Atheism to have any consistency, dualism - the idea that brain and mind are not the same identical thing - must be defeated. Monism is the only acceptable Materialist position, since monism declares that the brain IS the mind, it's all one thing. In typical PZ fashion, he presents the answer first which consists largely of ridicule and denigration, and then moves to the argument, where he finally gets down to actual brass tacks.

PZ quotes newscientist.com :

"From such experiments, Schwartz and others argue that since the mind can change the brain, the mind must be something other than the brain, something non-material."

PZ's rejoinder:

"That makes no sense. The perception of mental activity is associated with detectable changes in the activity of the brain; that is not evidence for dualism. Would it be evidence for the idea that the mind is the product of the brain if our most sensitive instruments revealed that while people composed sonnets or solved calculus problems or daydreamed about Tina Fey nude, their brains were as inert as large lumps of cold silly putty? I think not. These data are exactly what we'd expect if thought were the product of brain activity, that we'd see brain activity while people were thinking. We even have experimental evidence of correlated brain activity preceding individual awareness of conscious thought…again, as we materialists would expect." [emphasis added.]

PZ's argument, stripped of sarcasm, seems to be that if the mind were not identical with the brain, then no brain activity would be necessary for the mind's operation; the brain would sit idle, like a lump of silly putty. Therefore, if there is brain activity, then the mind is the same as the brain, and monism is justified.

Could we say that the heart is the same as blood, using the same comparison? Of course the heart moves the blood, but is not itself identical with the blood. The blood needs the heart, but is not the heart. The same goes for the brain. The mind uses the brain, but is not identical to the brain, which this data shows full well. The plasiticity of the brain shows that the mind both moves about on the brain, and that the mind can actually cause the brain to rewire itself.

Brain plasticity is an area of increasing research, including recent experiments with monkeys which showed that an artificial parallel connection between a random brain neuron and the monkey's hand could result in manipulation of the hand within 30 minutes. In other words, the mind shifted the neural activity around on the brain and rapidly found a new pathway to connect the mind to the hand. What could be more clear than that the mind is not hardwired into the brain: the brain is not the mind, any more than hardware is software.

As for pre-conscious thought activation of the brain, does a computer require booting (initializing in preparation to perform logical operations) before it can run useful software? (answer = yes). And is the software identical to the microprocessor that runs it? (answer = no).

PZ has chosen a conclusion based on his desire for an outcome, a process known as rationalization.

For a more balanced view of the brain activity than PZ uses for his examples, I suggest the MIND(sci-am) magazine article this month written by skeptic Michael Shermer. Shermer, an inveterate materialist, eviscerates the argument that all the brain scans vs. thought processes has any real meaning in the monism - dualism debate. He gives empirical reasons why the brain scans are more like phrenology (cranial bumps as locators of thought) than they are science: it is what is technologically available at the moment, so it's what gets done, gets published, and gets called science. But the statistical trimming of unwanted data, coupled with questionable averaging techniques, is rampant, and Shermer concludes that no meaningful conclusions should be based on such stuff.

PZ, however has used this type of information erroneously in drawing an unwarranted conclusion: if the brain is active during a thought, it is the thought. While this is a necessary conclusion for Philosophical Materialism, it is in no way a necessary conclusion from the data. PZ places more importance on the former, than on the latter.

More Victimhood Entitlement

TheHill.com reports that riots are anticipated if Obama is not elected. With the NYT polls setting expectations high, an Obama loss might touch off race-based riots in "cities with large black populations". According to TheHill:

Police departments in cities across the country are beefing up their ranks for Election Day, preparing for possible civil unrest and riots after the historic presidential contest.

Public safety officials said in interviews with The Hill that the election, which will end with either the nation’s first black president or its first female vice president, demanded a stronger police presence.

Some worry that if Barack Obama loses and there is suspicion of foul play in the election, violence could ensue in cities with large black populations. Others based the need for enhanced patrols on past riots in urban areas (following professional sports events) and also on Internet rumors.

Democratic strategists and advocates for black voters say they understand officers wanting to keep the peace, but caution that excessive police presence could intimidate voters.

Sen. Obama (Ill.), the Democratic nominee for president, has seen his lead over rival Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) grow in recent weeks, prompting speculation that there could be a violent backlash if he loses unexpectedly.

Obama, who is half white, is marketed as a black. Blacks are energized. Conservative Colin Powell is an Obama supporter. The race issue is rampant... among Democrats. So the perceived entitlement has been rising in black areas that are somewhat used to entitlements to assuage their perceived victimhood.

Police are not expected to patrol "red" neighborhoods in anticipation of firebombing and looting if McCain loses, I suspect. Could the difference be any more clear?

Atheists and Persecution

When Atheists are asked about having been persecuted for their beliefs they have responded with items such as George Bush's comments against Atheism. Their complaints are indignation at the opinions of others, not physical attack or economic oppression. This appears to be true around the world, for Atheists, many of whom are wealthy, famous and even in governing positions in Atheist nations such as Viet Nam, China.

Here's how it is for Christians.

In Mosul, Christians are being murdered, expelled, and their homes destroyed.

In India, a Hindu revolt is massacring all Christians that can be found in the Orisa region, with hundreds of churches blown up and "many dozens of Christian tribals have been slaughtered"[source: private email from Orissa].

In Viet Nam, Catholics are imprisoned and churches destroyed.

All over S.E. Asia, Christians are persecuted, and many are killed.

In China, Christians are persecuted, jailed and never heard from again.

Many humans are persecuted who are not Christian, as well. The list is extensive, as is shown by the Human Rights Watch. There seem to be three major categories of persecutors, not only of Christians, but humans in general: Muslims, Hindus and Atheists.

But to western Atheists, it is the indignation they suffer at the mere existence of Christianity in public that amounts to discrimination and persecution. So they invest heavily in total secularization, which is the forced reduction of worldviews to one: theirs. Only the approved worldview - Atheist Secularism - is to be allowed; violation of this will result in... legal persecution/prosecution.

It is hard to imagine anything more totalitarian or less tolerant than the secularization movement. It is similar in intent to the persecution by Muslims and Hindus described above, where tolerance of differences is anathema. The frequently cited Atheist fantasy of being burned at the stake by Christians is a measure of the delusional worldview that is being installed.

In fact, the Enlightenment massacres of the French Revolution occurred much more closely to our era than burnings at the stake. And these reflected into the Enlightenment massacres of the 20th century humanist movements in the USSR, China, and the Communist wannabes such as Laos, Cambodia, Viet Nam, etc. These are all within memory, and were driven by Atheists, secularists.

Secularism will not likely be stopped in the USA, until the government is returned to its original intent, which was anti-totalitarian. And that might not be possible at this point.

The Global Fireball and Green Terrorism

The blogs are agog with the news of Bin Laden's plans to set the entire globe afire by setting forest fires in all of the hated nations around the globe. The effect of all the forests on fire simultaneously would theoretically devastate economies by bringing homelessness and permanent penury to millions and swamping the world's ability to cope.

While the Muslim nations would not be spared the effects of global environmental and economic devastation, the impending collapse of the west could be seen as worth it. After all, a return to 5th century living standards would be welcomed in some quarters.

This must be a strain on western leftists who cherish the holiness of both environmentalism and the rights of terrorists to do their thing. I can imagine heads exploding at major universities everywhere. And since Obama is all set to declare carbon dioxide a pollutant, it might strain his relationships with his Muslim supporters around the globe, who, according to Moammar Ghaddafi have pumped mucho $ into Obama's campaign. Can Obama exert enough influence with the Muslim terrorists to keep America's terrorism Green?

I'll be glad when this election is over.

Obama and Hate Crime Legislation

One thing is certain. A "President Obama" would press for a robust law against crimes he thinks are worthy of extra punishment. The Matthew Shepard Bill failed last year; undoubtedly a fully Democrat U.S. Government would pass it in its most punitive form.

Matthew Shepard was killed in a botched robbery. Because he was a homosexual the crime became famous and became the poster-crime for hate legislation. The perpetrators claim not to have known the sexual orientation of their victim.

Nearly simultaneously a similar crime was committed in Arkansas when two homosexuals raped and beat a straight boy, 13-year-old seventh grader Jesse Dirkhising, to death. This crime received almost no attention from the big media. According to Accuracy In Media's Reed Irvine,

"The front-page story in the Times by Joyce Howard Price brought the story, which had been on the front page of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on three days, out of Arkansas. But a Nexis search at the end of November found only a half dozen news stories about it outside of Arkansas and a dozen editorials, opinion columns and letters.

The contrast between the coverage of homosexuals murdering a seventh-grader in Arkansas and straights murdering Matthew Shepard, a homosexual college student in Wyoming, was striking. The Washington Post printed over 80 stories about the Shepard case since the murder last year. It has run one 59-word story about the Dirkhising murder, on Saturday, October 30, and that didn't even appear in the edition that is widely distributed in the greater Washington, D.C. area.

That was eight days after The Washington Times put the story on page one, five days after Les Kinsolving, a Baltimore radio talk show host, had asked White House spokesman Joe Lockhart if President Clinton would comment on the Dirkhising murder as he had on the Shepard case, and a day after the AP finally put the story on the national wire. The Washington Post's ombudsman explained her paper's failure to cover the story, saying, in effect, that it doesn?t report murders outside the Washington area unless, like the Shepard murder, the editors think they teach a lesson or are exceptionally newsworthy.

Jonathan Gregg, a senior editor at Time, gave this explanation in a column in Time Daily on line: "The reason the Dirkhising story received so little play is because it offered no lessons. Shepard's murder touches on a host of complex and timely issues: intolerance, society's attitudes toward gays and the pressure to conform, the use of violence as a means of confronting one's demons. Jesse Dirkhising's death gives us nothing except the depravity of two sick men. There is no lesson here, no moral of tolerance, no hope to be gleaned in the punishment of the perpetrators. To be somehow equated with these monsters would be a bitter legacy indeed for Matthew Shepard."

It is abundantly clear that "hate crimes" don't reflect the crime, they reflect the protected status of the victim. Dirkhising wasn't a protected victim; his homosexual lover "monsters" were the protected individuals, not him.

As for religion, that hate crime source is being fought in the U.N. and our Supreme Court Judges seem to think it appropriate to use such external rulings in determining the internal law for the U.S. Obama makes no reference to protecting religion in his comments.

But Canada has simultaneously protected religion and attacked it. In a decision on 8-12-97, an appellate court upheld the ruling against four bible passages that offended homosexuals: The bumper sticker in the advertisement displayed references to four Bible passages: Romans 1, Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. when these passage numbers were printed on bumper stickers, it became a hate crime. Freedom of religious speech succumbed to homosexual indignation. Religion will undoubtedly be driven into the darkened corners of the private basement, while homosexuals romp in nude perversion on city streets as they gleefully have in San Fransisco and San Diego.

A "President Obama" will bring this to fruition. It is the rational end of secularization, the process of eliminating all morality from the public venue. The singular, allowable, tolerated culture will be amorality: the tolerance of everything except morals, the triumph of indignation over reason, the totalitarianism of enforced public paganism. Such cultures are weak; a lack of character produces no will to fight. Perhaps the muslims will conquer after all...