The Raving Athiest continues ask really interesting questions.

In this case he responds to a reader's comment about how personality can be altered by neurochemistry.

Where will it lead the Raving Athiest (whom many believe is falling ill with a terrible case of "Belief"? And will his athiest readership die from choking on all that frothing in the mouth as the Raving Athiest... well, as he puts it,
"will continue to believe in you as something more than the sum of your quarks. I have never seen your bodies but I know you by your thoughts. The words transmitted to my computer, seen through a screen darkly, are sufficient evidence of your existence. You will never convince me that you are just sparks emanating from gray matter; I would no more equate you with that than I would equate you with the sparks which transmit your words through my computer's memory. You may try to convince me otherwise, but your efforts will only further prove my point."
What's really freaky is that the example argument that the Raving Athiest uses near the beginning of his post that I link to is the foundation for deconstructionists views that separate meaning, value, and any sort of morality from the human being. The essence of the argument is that man is no longer sentient, no longer a being at all, even in adult form - so killing the unborn, which not yet capable of sentience, is a no-brainer (no pun intended). But that's only where it starts. When the divorce of being and existence from personhood and humanity is complete, there no longer exists an imperative that says life must be protected, any more than a cow or a bacterium churning happily through your stomach should be protected; these lives are sacrificed for our personal gain, say, to prevent infection of ourselves or to make a hamburger. In other words, life is reduced to matter, neurochemistry becomes our pathetic god, life is no longer anything other than some objective and ultimately meaningless drive that we are enslaved to.

At any rate, the ideas are fascinating, and the Raving Athiest needs any prayers that you guys would want to offer up for him. We've all been in his place in at least some measure - wondering about those ginormously huge transcendental questions: personhood, transcendental reality, etc etc etc.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Limits.

Here is a draft I found of something I wrote back in 2007. ................... I'm going to take this moment to sort of speak aloud. Which is really what blogs are for, am I right? A medium of one-sided discussion. I talk, and you listen. Only three or so people ever comment on my blog, so it really is like a one-way conversation. Google Analytics tells me I average about 11.5 (or so?) unique visitors a day, and about half of those are regular readers, and half are people that randomly get to my blog from a Google search or something. On a weekly basis, I end up having about 50 unique visitors. At any rate, the point is that I get to talk, and say stupid things, and you read, smirking to yourself while drinking your coffee. So, what's this post going to be about, Chris? This post is going to be about how awesome I am. Wait, wait - no I'm being serious. I really am awesome. But there will be some humility in this post also, because the second part of thi...
Read more

YES! YES! YES!

One of my favorite books is being released as a blockbuster movie - The Gates of Thermopylae . The movie will be called 300 - the supposed number of Spartans who held the narrow pass of Mt. Thermopylae for a number of days knowing they would eventually be smashed and killed to the last man, giving the Greek civilization a time to amass an organized defence from the well nigh million-strong marching force of Persians seething into the region. It's said that the events at Thermopolae were a hinge on which human history itself turned on for a day. Greek thought, very much a part of our foundation as Westerners - rationalism and belief that man is a logical being and can recognize the Truth through correct use of his noodle - survived the attempted murder by superstitious barbarism. You can read up on the Battle of Thermopylae here . It's probably one of the most inspiring stories I know. Told the Persian archers numbered so many that their arrows would blot out the sun, a so...
Read more

Australia gets progressive...

I read a story like this and I think to myself about how and why they chose 14 days as the limit. Think about it. It's completely arbitrary. Why not 15 days? Or 16? Or 20? Or 30? Or 100? Or how about 270 days? Wait, that's nine months. That would be barbaric! Really, the only thing that changes is the look of the human after conception. Wouldn't want to allow embryos to be farmed at 15 days! Oh, no! That would be bad! Maybe even... murder! Wait, when does it become murder? After it's born? Or wait, maybe right before it's born... hmm... but nothing changes in the 10 minutes it takes to exit the womb... so it's gotta be before that. Well, 6 months it looks too baby-like, like an actual person, and it cries and squirms as it gets ripped apart during abortions... so maybe like 3 months, or 9 weeks... yeah, something like that. Let's go with 14 days, because it's really small then and doesn't have arms or a head yet. Sounds good. W...
Read more