"Wordless" Proof: Materialism Fails

Note 9/30/07 3:20 pm: See the comments for corrections to this post.

Mathematicians often amuse themselves and teach their students with "wordless proofs," demonstrations of the Pythagorean theorem, for instance, or properties of triangular numbers. A little study, and if your mind is up to speed you ought to be able to just see that the theorem has to be true.

I just read something that leads to a conclusion that's just as clear and obvious--a proof that materialist theories of mind cannot be true. This proof is not wordless, for it starts with a paragraph that Time Magazine senior writer Michael Lemonick wrote. I found it in Beauregard's and O'Leary's The Spiritual Brain (page 115). But as in mathematical wordless proofs, all it takes is a close look and some reflection, and you'll see it jumping right out at you.

"Despite our every instinct to the contrary, there is one thing that consciousness is not: some entity deep inside the brain that corresponds to the 'self,' some kernel of awareness that runs the show, as the 'man behind the curtain' manipulated the illusion of a powerful magician in The Wizard of Oz. After more than a century of looking for it, brain researchers have long since concluded that there is no conceivable place for such a self to be located in the physical brain, and it simply doesn't exist."

I have to confess I've often needed words to guide me through the mathematical wordless proofs I've seen. I'll offer you some similar help with this one.

They've looked inside the brain, and they haven't found a place where consciousness could reside, where the "self" could live. Therefore, says Lemonick, the self "simply doesn't exist." This is the conclusion of more than a century of brain research, relying on the assumption that each person's entire mental life can be explained (in principle at least) just by the stuff in his or her brain. To state it another way, if we assume that mental life can be fully explained just by the stuff in our brains, we're forced to conclude that self and consciousness don't exist.

Not every materialist scientist agrees with Lemonick. If they did, that alone would stand as proof positive that materialism is necessarily wrong. For no research could overturn the experiential observation, repeated by billions and billions of subjects, that consciousness and self are real. It is so obvious it really doesn't need stating.

Note carefully: if you disagree with Lemonick here, you are not standing against conclusions of science. You are standing against assumptions of some scientists. There's a big difference.

Posted: Sun - September 30, 2007 at 09:37 AM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

"Wordless" Proof: Materialism Fails

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson