Materialistic prejudice?

Changing things slightly to physicalism makes it clearer: physicalism is concerned essentially with that which can be described by physics. Ideas of entities that have an affect on things, but are not themselves describable or detectable through physics, could be considered 'spiritual' and not physical.Thus, a soul is a spiritual concept but that the mind is the result of the workings of the brain is a physicalist concept. The latter posits entities that are describable in principle by physics, the former posits at least one entity that is not.

Yes, for certain understandings of material, physics describes the immaterial.That is why I used the term 'physicalist', which includes all the things you call 'immaterial' that physics can in describe. This is contrary to ideas that are both 'immaterial' by your meaning and non-describable by physics. These latter ideas are more akin to the 'spiritual' or 'idealistic' or 'supernatural' that we refer to.The bottom line, if your idea can in principle be described by physics, it is physicalist and not spiritual.

Then the Bible is, according your interpretation, is not dualist but monist - assuming by 'touch on' you mean 'completely describe'. If by 'touch on' you mean something like we should find a point of contact between the soul and the brain or something, but the soul is something so different that physics will not be able to describe it, then you've gone back into dualism. As a monist, obviously it is my position that dualism is false and illusory. If you are also a monist, then that is great - you aren't a dualist - I've often thought of you as a sort of neutral monist anyway. The concepts of 'spiritual' and 'soul-stuff' and the like are insisted (by dualists) to be different or separate from the world we can describe using physics. That this claim is barely coherent is not my problem fortunately, and maybe it isn't yours.You propose that the Biblical concepts of spiritual are not the concepts of spiritual of the dualists, and I presume that means you conclude that ultimately God and the soul can be described using sufficient physics and mathematics. That ultimately, there is no 'certain something' no 'type of stuff' which cannot be described thusly.

So, at any point your theology posits something which is not describable using physics, the essence of this sustaining force or whatever, that is a 'spiritual' concept. Those parts that posit things which may well be describable by physics are 'physicalist concepts', and there will obviously be areas where it is difficult to determine which is which. If you have some entity which you insist cannot be described thusly, you are in dualist territory. If you have no such entity, you are a monist. If you are a monist that thinks reality can be described in terms of physics, you are a physicalist. If you are monist that thinks that 'spiritual'/'mental'/'physical' are all part of some single higher order construct - then you you might be a neutral monist.Given your inclinations, I'd suggest that neutral monist might be a good description of your metaphysics - but you might have a better one. Would you consider your metaphysics appeals to any dualistic ideas? Essentially then, dualism. For all those parts that can be described, that's physicalist. When physics stop being able to describe them, they become as it were ineffable when they have the property P that cannot be described in terms of physics...that's the spiritual. The rest isn't. It depends on the nature of the intertwining really. If the intertwining is that material things are special cases of spiritual things being sustained by spiritual powers in a certain way as to make them material, then that is still monism rather than dualism. If there is some seperate non-material 'stuff' that might have some kind of interaction with material 'stuff' that would be dualism.Either way, the spiritual side of things is generally obvious.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

I didn't say you had. I simply said that at any point where you theology does posit something not describable using physics...that is a spiritual concept. What you did say is that you "would expect to be able to detect an aspect of God" - and the aspect you cannot would be spiritual. You also said that "some spiritual things may be detected and described to a degree and others not.", and I'm arguing that the things that can be described by physics are not spiritual things at all. You also hinted that there might not necessarily be a "distinction between spiritual and physical" (which would be something akin to neutral monism). You opened the door to a discussion on metaphysics - what else could you expect but an esoteric or difficult to follow discussion I understand your point well enough, its a variation on Hempel's dilemma and I hoped we'd get to discussing that - but maybe we're at the end of the discussion now.