Wayne D Rossiter - Mind Over Matter: The Necessity of Metaphysics in a Material World

Mind over Matter:

The Necessity of Metaphysics in a Material World

by Brian M. Rossiter and Wayne D. Rossiter

Copyright 2015 by Brian M. Rossiter and Wayne D. Rossiter

Published by Athanatos Publishing Group

www.athanatosministries.org

ISBN: 978-1-936830-80-0

Quotations of the Old and New Testament are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

First, we would like to extend thanks to Casey Luskin for providing insightful feedback on the original manuscript. We would like to extend a special thanks to Anthony Horvath and Athanatos Ministries for publishing the book and for working with us to develop the finished product. We thank Jeremy Finch, Quincy Hathaway and Corey Rugh for reading the original manuscript and giving us helpful suggestions from different vantage points. I (BR) also want to thank my wife, Jessi, for allowing me the time and lending me the support needed to create this book. I (WR) thank the numerous apologists on the ground for their hard work and support (you know who you are). I also thank my family and friends for their support, especially my wife, Melissa.

Mind over Matter:

The Necessity of Metaphysics in a Material World

Introduction

In 2008, John Lennox (a mathematician) and Richard Dawkins (a zoologist) met to debate the topic, Has science buried God? In fact, the fields of geology, paleontology, mathematics, philosophy, evolutionary biology, cosmology, history, and a good many other ologies, have found their way into this great discussion. And make no mistake, the fact that trained professionals from all of these academic backgrounds are meeting, writing, and rallying their respective sides tells us something very important. Chiefly, it tells us that all of these thinkers believe that their fields of study have something to say about both the existence of God and the metaphysical implications that would necessarily arise from Him. Many feel the existence of God can be falsified based on arguments from science and philosophy. As Peter Atkins once put it,

I have to set myself an honest target, which is nothing less than complete explanation. Nothing fudged. Nothing forgotten. The atheist argument fails, if in the end, it turns out that the universe had to be designed. It fails if any aspect of it had to be made.... The atheist argument begins to corrode if there are aspects of the human condition that science cannot touch.

For others, the very same subjects are thought to provide strong foundational evidence for the existence of God. The general idea is that, if a creator God exists, then His hand should be imprinted upon something that science (in the broadest usage of the term) can report. So as not to fall into a classic trap, consider the fact that a physicist who believes physics has something to say about the existence or nonexistence of God does not call his physics a religion. Given this observation, it is immediately clear that theists working in these various fields are not practicing religion, but are arguing that their respective vocations can potentially contribute evidences for or against one. We might do well to identify the fact that, when atheists use evidences from their fields of study to make a case against the existence of God, they do not consider themselves to be acting on religious motives, but when a theist does similarly in defense of God, they are accused of religious bias. And so, we (BR and WR) reject the premise that creation science and Intelligent Design (ID) are just examples of religious creationism dressed in a cheap tuxedo of science. As we will discuss shortly, science (among other fields) seems to be very much in the business of informing us about the utility or uselessness of the God Hypothesis.

An old and overused saying is that there are two things we should never discuss: religion and politics. The justification for this view is that broaching such topics will lead to heated quarrels and the deterioration of relationships. The point is not that those two items must be discussed, but that there is a very particular reason why they are not. These topics strike at the core of our being. The age of political correctness has taught us to avoid offending others at all costs, and apparently disagreeing with others on these touchy topics is very offensive. But, if in avoiding uncomfortable conversations, we are left talking with others about hockey and cheese curls, what kind of relationships do we really have? We have largely decided to avoid discussing the meaningful things of life, and to occupy ourselves with the most meaningless ones.

But not all have assumed the supine position of ignoring the weighty topics of life. In specific, the issue of God has been front-and-center in public discourse, from the halls of Oxford, to the pub down the street, to social networking outlets like Facebook. On this front, one side of the ledger has been relentless and full-bore in advancing its perspectives. Anyone with their ear to the ground in this arena will concede that the loudest and most aggressive advances are attributable to the so-called New Atheists and secular humanists (the members of which are largely overlapping). Folks under these banners have decided that playing nice is unnecessary, and the tone of discourse ceased being colloquial some time ago. In a recent article in The Atlantic , Emma Green writes,

[T]he tone taken toward organized religion, especially recently, has been more shout-y than shrug-y. At the 2012 Reason Rally in Washington, D.C., for example, a band fired up the crowd with a rousing song that lampooned the belief in Jesus coming again, mixing it with sexual innuendo,... Attendees sported T-Shirts and signs with slogans like I prefer facts and religion is like a penis.

As reported, one of the major impetuses at this rally was to ridicule faith. William Lane Craig has offered that, ridicule, mockery, and insult are their modus operandi .

Today, we see public espousal of views like those of Dawkins, who believes that, faith is one of the worlds great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.

Those who do not share the view that faith is a great evil should take these examples seriously. The tactics of Dawkins, Boghossian and the rest are working. For example, a recent episode of NPRs Morning Edition covered the rise of the Nones, which are people who self-report as having no faith whatsoever. Referencing the most recent findings from the Pew Research Center, the show reported that this subgroup of the citizenry has increased from 2 percent in 1950, to 16 percent in 2010. The last five years have seen geometric growth in this group. More than 7.5 million Americans have abandoned their faith since 2012, and the proportion of the population self-identifying as Nones presently (in 2015) is 21 percent.

The faithful have buy-in-large bought into the sentiment. For example, Denis Lamoureux (a Christian) has argued that Science deals with the physical world.... establish[ing] laws to describe what nature is made of and how it works... In contrast, religion (and philosophy)... deals with ultimate reality behind or beyond the physical world.

This book is not an apologetics treatise on defending the faiththough both of us are Christians. However, in final analysis, it is a defense of the existence of God. It is a defense on the many fronts that are most active in the public sphere, and thus incorporates arguments from science, philosophy, logic, history, and many other areas of thought. The purpose of this book is to arm people with the knowledge, logical arguments, and debate tactics needed to combat methodological and philosophical naturalism in situations where their encroachment is in error. Rather than ignoring the discussion, or returning rhetoric with rhetoric, we have produced a short, tactical guide to addressing the most common arguments philosophical and methodological naturalists use to supplant supernaturalism (or any metaphysics that assumes nonphysical action). Peter Boghossian argues for what he calls street epistemologists, which are everyday people, trained and equipped to take rational thinking to the streets. In this book, we attempt to seriously engage the on the street discussions, and to meet arguments head on. Thus the responses we offer are succinct but highly effective, and user-friendly in that they should be accessible to just about anyone. Rather than getting too bogged down with jargon, or attempting to offer comprehensive discussions on each topic, we offer logical points that are intended to expose the core problem with each opposing argument, bypass messy and drawn-out conversations, and get at the heart of the matter.