Materialism

Well, there's a nice bald unsupported assertion for you, sheer assumption.

Except for a few comments in that direction I haven't tried to dissociate the mind from the brain here, that is not what I've been arguing, as I've said more than once, and I don't think anybody knows enough about how mind and brain are related to make such a guess anyway. I believe the brain is necessary to our material life, the physical engine for mind, but that at death we will be temporarily separated from it and still conscious. I think it is intuitively obvious, not merely a "conventional" definition, that mind is nonmaterial and brain is material. That's just what they are by definition and common sense, and to say that just because their activities are simultaneous makes mind material in any sense at all is some kind of logical fallacy.I've made my case for this thread in my opinion and there's nothing more to say.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Nobody is taking the mind out of the body nor trying to say the mind doesn't need the brain. That is not my argument. I mention from time to time that I believe such a separation is possible and definitely will occur at death but that is based on the Bible and I'm not trying to prove it, at least not in my most recent posts. The only reason I say it is to provide a sort of context, it's not my argument. Otherwise I've affirmed the necessary connection between mind and brain.I'm objecting to the idea that mind IS somehow brain, is somehow material just because of the necessary connection, or that the brain is prior to mind or creates mind. It is always a part of mind's working, its learning, its doings of all kinds, but it isn't the initiator. You all make brain the primary thing and that's what I'm arguing with.Brain is the engine, brain can't think a thought it just does physical things, like my car does when I drive it. It doesn't know where to go, I drive it there.When I think, such as when I think what to write here, I am the one thinking, my brain isn't doing the thinking, I am or my mind is, my mind is initiating the thoughts that are conveyed here, not my brain. My brain is facilitating or empowering my thinking, and other parts of my body, eyes, hands etc., are engaged in conveying the thoughts to EvC, but the thoughts are the primary thing and the originating thing, and that is so obvious it shouldn't even have to be said.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It's a matter of logic. Mind is not material, by definition, by common sense, by intuitive recognition. Whatever its relationship to brain, this fact doesn't change, it is not material, brain is.

You are asking questions I've answered umpteen times already on this thread. I believe the relation of mind to brain is that the mind is the driver and the brain the machine, and that this is a matter we know from observation and experience. Whether the mind is physically separate from the brain or not I don't really want to argue, but because the Bible makes it clear the soul is to be separated from the body at death of course I believe it is separate. But that's a different subject from how mind and brain relate while we're in the body which is where I've been trying to keep the focus, and one thing I've focused on is that experientially mind is the mover, the driver, the originator of thoughts and actions.The problem with the materialist view is that it ignores the amazing originality and individuality of mind. Imputing that quality to the firing of neurons takes some kind of reductionistic mentality that boggles MY mind. And in fact it ignores the mind's felt reality as opposed to the total lack of felt reality of the material side of things. We are aware of our own minds and we are aware of other people's minds far more directly than we are aware of anything about brains. I am addressing my thoughts from my mind to your mind. Mind is prior, brains are just machines. This isn't to deny that mind can't function without brain, it's just to suggest that there's something immensely bigger going on here than the materialist view can explain. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Just more flat-out assertions and assumptions and statements of your own belief. One can only wonder where you get your certainty.

I shouldn't have to "point to" something every human being knows by observation and experience; OR, in fact I've already pointed to it many times. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.