But everyday experience declares that this is absurd. What the artist intended to convey is personal, not material. The paint and canvas are just tools to express the personal.
Some atheists may at this point be objecting, “you are using God-of-the-gaps reasoning. Just because science doesn’t yet know how brains can produce consciousness and the personal, doesn’t mean that it never will. We can’t just give up and say, ‘God did it.’” But this is circular reasoning because if consciousness (God’s mind) is the ultimate reality, then THERE ARE NO GAPS TO BRIDGE. God’s mind as the ultimate reality would be a case of “the God of the whole show,” not a case of God filling in explanatory gaps. It is only if matter is the ultimate reality that there are explanatory gaps to bridge. So an atheist making the accusation that “God of the gaps” reasoning is being committed is starting with the assumption that matter is the ultimate reality as a means of reasoning back to the conclusion that matter is the ultimate reality.
And a philosophical system that insists that matter is the ultimate reality (materialism/naturalism) can only continue running into a brick wall when it comes to explaining the existence of properties that are clearly not material…properties such as consciousness and personhood. Watching materialists/naturalists try to explain consciousness and personhood reminds one of watching someone feverishly trying to hammer square pegs into round holes…it just doesn’t fit. As the philosopher John Locke, who was one of the most important Enlightenment thinkers, put it: “It is as impossible to conceive that ever pure incogitative matter should produce a thinking intelligent being, as that nothing should of itself produce matter.”
Believing atheism requires an enormous amount of faith that material explanations can account for the existence of consciousness and personhood (or intelligence, or life, for that matter). The assumption that science will eventually provide satisfactory material explanations for everything was mockingly referred to as “promissory materialism” by the eminent philosopher of science Karl Popper. Is it not ironic that the atheist credo (stated at the beginning of this essay) declares that atheism does not rely on faith, and yet, atheism places faith in the notion that science can provide material explanations for properties which are clearly not material?
Ward continues with regards to the difficulty of citing a mindless cause for mind, and an impersonal cause for the personal, etc.:
“…there is force in the classical philosophical axiom that, for a truly explanatory cause to be intelligible, it must contain its effects potentially in itself. As the classical philosophers put it, the cause must contain more reality than its effects.”
When Ward cites the axiom that a cause “must contain its effects potentially in itself,” he is simply stating (in philosophical language) that the cause of conscious, personal, intelligent beings must itself be conscious, intelligent, and personal. Mindless matter cannot eventually cause conscious, personal, intelligent beings because it does not contain the potential to do so. In order to have the potential to do so, mindless matter must have some sort of mechanism to bring about this gradual evolution. What is this mechanism? Was it the laws of physics? Ok, fine. Why is it that matter so consistently follows such laws? What causes it to do so? The theistic explanation for why matter follows physical laws (such as the laws of physics, thermodynamics, etc.) is simple…the same mind that creates matter also directs it. As Robert Boyle, the founder of modern chemistry, put it: “The nature of this or that body is but the law of God prescribed to it [and] to speak properly, a law [is] but a notional rule of acting according to the declared will of a superior.” [italics added]
When atheism is asked the question of how it is that matter can be compelled to follow such physical laws, it is stuck with an it just does answer. But “it just does” is not an answer. Rather, it is an avoidance of a question that atheism cannot answer. Atheism is a faith constructed of it just does and just so assumptions. Norman Geisler coins the term “just-so storytelling” in his book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. I highly recommend it.
I conclude by calling attention to the principle known as Ockham’s Razor, which states that, other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one. In order to do away with a number of facts which are inconvenient to the atheist ideology, atheism must resort to a large amount of elaborate explaining away. This makes atheism much less simple than theism. Below I cite several examples of this elaborate (and often ridiculous) explaining away.
1) In Why Life Could Not Have Emerged Without God, I describe how prominent atheist biologists have resorted to citing intervention from space aliens (as well as a couple of other real humdinger explanations) to explain the origin of life.
2) In God Is Real…Why Modern Physics Has Discredited Atheism, I describe how modern physics strongly supports the mind-as-ultimate-reality model, which contradicts atheistic materialism/naturalism. Does this mean that all physicists believe in God? Of course not. But what it does mean is that physicists who cling tenaciously to atheism must make absolutely embarrassing philosophical errors in doing so, as describe in Who Is Playing Make-Believe? (Atheists or Theists). In this essay, I also describe how atheist physicists must resort to extremely elaborate explanations for the origin of the universe (such as the existence of 10 to the 500th power universes) in order to do away with God.
3) I detail how many thousands of people have claimed to have met God in what is known as a Near-Death Experience, in Has Anyone Met God and Returned to Tell About It? The NDE phenomenon has become so convincing and so difficult to ignore that atheists have had to resort to explaining the phenomenon away as a result of hallucination…even though this explanation clearly does not fit since hallucinations are too unique to the individual to share such consistent similarity.
4) Doesn’t Evolution Prove the Biblical Account of Creation to Be False? illustrates how remarkably similar the biblical and scientific accounts of creation are. The essay includes a video featuring the MIT physicist and biblical scholar Gerald Schroeder (which is very highly recommended). As far as I can tell, the only atheist replies to Schroeder’s arguments are that the similarities are a coincidence.
See larger image Why There Almost Certainly Is a God: Doubting Dawkins (Paperback) By (author): Keith Ward Pronounced atheist Richard Dawkins has claimed that no theologian has ever produced a satisfactory response to his arguments that there most likely is not a God. In this open-minded and innovative philosophical challenge, theologian David Ward addresses Dawkins’s various ideas with sharp, clear arguments. He points out that when Dawkins?a scientist?enters the world of philosophy and religion, his passion often leads his argumentation to descend into stereotyping, pastiche, and mockery. Stimulating and thought-provoking, this study both locates the flaws in Dawkins's arguments and makes a perfectly rational case for the existence of God. List Price: $14.95 USD New From: $5.86 USD In Stock Used from: $2.78 USD In Stock
See larger image The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force (Paperback) By (author): Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Sharon Begley A groundbreaking work of science that confirms, for the first time, the independent existence of the mind–and demonstrates the possibilities for human control over the workings of the brain.
Conventional science has long held the position that 'the mind' is merely an illusion, a side effect of electrochemical activity in the physical brain. Now in paperback, Dr Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley's groundbreaking work, The Mind and the Brain, argues exactly the opposite: that the mind has a life of its own.Dr Schwartz, a leading researcher in brain dysfunctions, and Wall Street Journal science columnist Sharon Begley demonstrate that the human mind is an independent entity that can shape and control the functioning of the physical brain. Their work has its basis in our emerging understanding of adult neuroplasticity–the brain's ability to be rewired not just in childhood, but throughout life, a trait only recently established by neuroscientists.
Through decades of work treating patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), Schwartz made an extraordinary finding: while following the therapy he developed, his patients were effecting significant and lasting changes in their own neural pathways. It was a scientific first: by actively focusing their attention away from negative behaviors and toward more positive ones, Schwartz's patients were using their minds to reshape their brains–and discovering a thrilling new dimension to the concept of neuroplasticity.
The Mind and the Brain follows Schwartz as he investigates this newly discovered power, which he calls self–directed neuroplasticity or, more simply, mental force. It describes his work with noted physicist Henry Stapp and connects the concept of 'mental force' with the ancient practice of mindfulness in Buddhist tradition. And it points to potential new applications that could transform the treatment of almost every variety of neurological dysfunction, from dyslexia to stroke–and could lead to new strategies to help us harness our mental powers. Yet as wondrous as these implications are, perhaps even more important is the philosophical dimension of Schwartz's work. For the existence of mental force offers convincing scientific evidence of human free will, and thus of man's inherent capacity for moral choice.