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  1. Dominic Bunnell

    Mod+ 275. MARK VERNON, IS CHRISTIANITY WORTH SAVING?

    But the point is, many philosophers would argue that meaning and value in life REQUIRE that there is no afterlife and no immortality. It's the reality and finality of death that gives urgency, significance and purpose to our life. A symphony or a story is meaningful and valuable precisely...
  2. Dominic Bunnell

    Mod+ 275. MARK VERNON, IS CHRISTIANITY WORTH SAVING?

    I'm also interested in the pragmatist philosophers and Whitehead, and I agree that from a practical point of view we have no choice but to believe in free will, meaning and value. But would a pragmatist make dogmatic metaphysical statements about these things? I doubt it.
  3. Dominic Bunnell

    Mod+ 275. MARK VERNON, IS CHRISTIANITY WORTH SAVING?

    I'm pretty sure they all know very little about the science of NDEs and psi. But notice, this really doesn't matter. The question for the philosopher is, if such things as the afterlife, reincarnation and immortality were real, what implications would this have for meaning, value, freedom...
  4. Dominic Bunnell

    Mod+ 275. MARK VERNON, IS CHRISTIANITY WORTH SAVING?

    I think Alex is simple-minded and dogmatic when he gives a simple yes to the question of whether we have free will and moral responsibility. But this is just through ignorance on his part as much as anything else. If he'd actually read people like McGinn, Nagel and Strawson on these issues, then...
  5. Dominic Bunnell

    Mod+ 275. MARK VERNON, IS CHRISTIANITY WORTH SAVING?

    Yes and no. I've read most of McGinn's books and I agree with him on many points, but I think he's too sure of himself on some issues. For example, he seems pretty sure that the brain does produce consciousness and that there is no afterlife or immortality. I'm much less sure about all of this...
  6. Dominic Bunnell

    Mod+ 275. MARK VERNON, IS CHRISTIANITY WORTH SAVING?

    I interpret him as saying that, when it comes to mysteries like free will, the self, the afterlife, moral responsibility and objective moral values, we shouldn't be giving a simple-minded and dogmatic yes or no answer. Rather we just have to live with the mystery.
  7. Dominic Bunnell

    How can Alex be so firm in his stance? Objectivity has gone out the window

    Yeah, but I'm not ruling out dualism. I just tend to prefer something like panpsychism. The only one I'm ruling out is eliminativism. Some days I'm a realist, other days I'm an idealist. Some days I'm an emergentist materialist, other days I'm a panpsychist and maybe even a dualist. The point...
  8. Dominic Bunnell

    How can Alex be so firm in his stance? Objectivity has gone out the window

    I prefer panpsychism (or something like panpsychism) because it avoids the interaction problem of dualism and the magical emergence problem of materialism. As for idealism, yeah maybe Berkeley is right and there is no external world but just a super mind (=God) making it look like there is. Who...
  9. Dominic Bunnell

    How can Alex be so firm in his stance? Objectivity has gone out the window

    Yes, it is. It's the same old problem of spooky or magical emergence. How can the experiential emerge from the utterly non-experiential? I say it can't and so something like panpsychism is probably true. So in a sense Craig and others here are correct to say that the reality of...
  10. Dominic Bunnell

    How can Alex be so firm in his stance? Objectivity has gone out the window

    By the way, yes you did. You do seem to think that if we accept the reality of consciousness then we are also committed to the reality of meaning and free will (and value too, I assume). You wrote the following: Consciousness necessarily includes free will, (the ability to think for...
  11. Dominic Bunnell

    How can Alex be so firm in his stance? Objectivity has gone out the window

    Another example of people mischaracterizing materialism is when they suggest that there's a contradiction between saying "The universe is meaningless" and "We do have meaning in our lives". Alex himself often uses this argument. A charitable reading shows that there is no contradiction. When...
  12. Dominic Bunnell

    How can Alex be so firm in his stance? Objectivity has gone out the window

    Atheists and materialists should take their fair share of the blame here though. They themselves often come out with very vague and ambiguous statements like "The universe is meaningless." It's only natural then that the enemies of atheism and materialism will jump all over this and say, "Hey...
  13. Dominic Bunnell

    How can Alex be so firm in his stance? Objectivity has gone out the window

    This is just my take on what atheists and materialists generally mean when they say we live in a meaningless universe. I think you're misunderstanding their position.
  14. Dominic Bunnell

    How can Alex be so firm in his stance? Objectivity has gone out the window

    Do we live in a meaningful universe? It depends what you mean by 'meaningful universe'. Materialists and atheists typically deny that there is one single objective meaning of life or purpose to life. They also reject the idea that everything happens for a reason and that everything we do has...
  15. Dominic Bunnell

    How can Alex be so firm in his stance? Objectivity has gone out the window

    Just in this short post you've used the word 'meaning' in two or three different ways, and that's the problem here. When atheists and materialists say that we live in a meaningless universe, they are attacking a very specific, usually Christian, idea of a meaningful universe. This is a...
  16. Dominic Bunnell

    How can Alex be so firm in his stance? Objectivity has gone out the window

    Whatever we happen to think about philosophical materialism in all its varieties, it's still extremely dogmatic to say that we definitely have libertarian free will and moral responsibility and that we definitely live in a meaningful universe. The existence of objective values. meaning, free...
  17. Dominic Bunnell

    How can Alex be so firm in his stance? Objectivity has gone out the window

    Yeah, well I guess that's true. He certainly did a good job of exposing the ignorance of the skeptics and atheists when it comes to NDEs and psi. And I'm sure he was just as shocked to discover this as the rest of us were. It also seems like he's softening his stance somewhat on the issue of...
  18. Dominic Bunnell

    How can Alex be so firm in his stance? Objectivity has gone out the window

    Bill, I like your post. One thing you might want to bear in mind is that Alex has been absolutely certain from the get-go that we live in a meaningful universe and that we have libertarian free will and moral responsibility. Given that this is his unshakeable starting point, he can't help...
  19. Dominic Bunnell

    Mod+ 275. MARK VERNON, IS CHRISTIANITY WORTH SAVING?

    I was very impressed with Mark Vernon in this interview, so much so that I went and read his book Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life. Unlike Alex, he strikes me as someone who's serious about living with agnosticism, mystery and doubt. Take a look at the following passages on death and...
  20. Dominic Bunnell

    Mod+ 274. DR. BERNARDO KASTRUP, WHY OUR CULTURE IS MATERIALISTIC

    But that doesn't really answer the question. The question is, why do so many New Atheists and skeptics think philosophy is a waste of time and of no value? They certainly don't think that about music, art, dance or literature. It's philosophy in particular that they have it in for. I just...
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