A Theistic God - On Balance - Does NOT Exist

May the Maker watch over you. Thanks Philosurfer (clever name by the way) It appears there may have been some misunderstanding with my argument. I did not use dualism at all. What I was implying was that premise 2 leaves open dualism. Refuting dualism closes that hole, leading us to idealism. Just to clear that up. Premise one Pro agrees Premise two Pro disagrees here. He brings up mind body correlations. However he doesn’t address my argument that correlation doesn’t equal identity. He just brings up that there is mind body correlations and that the mind may be a byproduct of the brain. First, I already responded to the idea that the mind is some emergent byproduct and second this doesn’t actually address my argument. One could say the same about mass and gravity. Gravity could just be a byproduct of mass. Maybe DNA and species are the same thing, but species is just a byproduct of the DNA. The only thing mind body correlations can tell us is that there’s a relationship between the two. This entails a monistic ontology. Pro is only arguing for a monistic ontology, but so am I. The only thing we disagree with is which one that is. Idealism can have mind-brain correlations too because the mind and the brain are the same substance. So his whole talk about death, animals and correlations are moot, idealism doesn't mean a dead body must be aware or have any phenomenal experience. Pro also did not respond to my argument from both correlates. The only way we know correlations are there is because we trust the person to tell us what he is experiencing. There still must be a first person subjective realm in these correlations, so it cannot be used to show the physical is the mental. Otherwise, we could just look at the neurons and know what red is. He cites a 24 minute TED Talk video of Dan Dennett showing how our brains fool us. However, Pro never explains how this relates to what I said. No where in this section did I make some claim about our brains and consciousness being perfect. My argument was from modal identity claims and the analogy of correlations. Anyway, the argument seems to be self-refuting. Dennett argues we cannot trust our brains or introspection as the actively fool us. How can you conclude that using your errant and fooled brain? Essentially, what’s critical here is that he refutes my zombie argument. However he does not. He concedes zombies are easily conceivable. The idea of a mind existing without a body is irrelevant and Pro doesn’t show why the zombie argument doesn’t support premise two outside of a bare assertion fallacy. The zombie argument attacks physicalism because it’s attacking the claim that the mental is equal to the physical. A disembodied mind world is irrelevant to the argument. Dr. Torin Alter (Professor of philosophy from UCLA) says. “.....most agree that if zombies are metaphysically possible, then physicalism is false.” [1] So, Pro’s objection here is ignoring the real problem. The argument still holds. In fact, Pro agreed zombies were conceivable, so he technically is conceding premise two, rather he knows it or not. Premise three Pro does not attack it. So it is conceded until further notice. My main argument still holds. Pro concedes premise one, the concedes the conceivability of zombies (which confirms P2) and three. The premises are still sound. While he attacks P2 from mind body correlations, he ignores that idealism can have these correlations too. Pro’s questions Q1 and 5: Problem of interaction Every analogy breaks down somewhere. The Casper analogy isn’t that good with idealism, because Casper would just be a person in the world rather than the Maker projecting it. Anyway, Pro strawmans idealism. The ball is not physical. The ball is essentially another part of Casper. It is made of the ghostly substance. So Casper affecting the ball is no different from Casper affecting himself. This is analogous to how the Maker can affect the world. The world is an extension of him. Everything physical is simply a projection of his mind, affecting it is as easy as affecting himself. Which he can do as it’s the same substance. Pro attacks this idea in question 5, which is pretty much the same as 1. He first states it seems obvious that there is an objective reality and said even George Berkeley said this. Well, yes it does seem obvious that there is an objective reality. However, this doesn’t make it true. The very fact I made an argument against this shows it’s not obvious. All this shows is that if my argument fails, we should accept the existence of an objective reality as likely. But first he must refute my argument. For example, local realism is a highly intuitive and obvious view of quantum mechanics. This is view that these particles are local (they cannot travel faster than light) and they are real (exist regardless if they’re measured). However, John Bell proposed a way of testing this idea and other experiments showed this position is false [2]. We cannot simply brush off the experiment by saying it seems obvious and likely. So his argument here ignores pretty much everything I’ve said in round 2. Next he talks about the possibility of reality being mental, but not from the Maker. Like being “conceived in the minds of a race of super intelligent multi-dimensional beings from outside our universe”. This would seem like polytheism. However, if there are super intelligent beings out there that transcend the universe, this means it’s more likely that there is a God who intervenes than one that doesn’t. Since we’ve already assumed transcendent beings exist that can control reality, it wouldn’t be that far off from saying at least one is personal. What about a highly complex simulation? The two aren’t mutually exclusive. The Maker could be running this simulation within his mind. This is what idealist Johanan Raatz argues for [3]. Maybe this simulation is from something not mental. If this were true, then this would be dualism. How could they interact? So that is thrown out too. It still must be from a grand mind. Q2 and 3: Epistemology of the supernatural These questions are irrelevant. There may be an epistemology gap between the two. However, this doesn’t mean there is an ontological gap. Q4: Amputees Pro never responds to my rebuttal here. He just states his opinion of it. Saying it’s easy and simple doesn’t show anything. He also commits a strawman fallacy. I am not bound to the idea that every claim of healing is true. So the fact that we have no documented evidence and tons of anecdotal evidence is just fine. It doesn’t contradict my argument Conclusion Ultimately, my argument remains standing. Pro has agreed to P1, P2 is shown by the zombie argument which remains standing, and P3 has not been addressed. Pro tried to attack my conclusion in his question 5 by appealing to simulations, polytheism, and the intuitiveness of naive realism, but these fail to support Pro. Pro’s other questions also fail to demonstrate atheism. I’ve argued that question one is misunderstanding idealism, questions 2-3 are irrelevant, question 4 is a strawman and an opinion. The resolution is negated. Back to Pro Sources [1] http://www.disputatio.com... [2] http://www.nature.com... [3] Blessings of Andraste