Challenging the medical materialists
BMJ 2011; 343 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.d5017 (Published 10 August 2011) Cite this as: BMJ 2011;343:d5017
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I don't agree with the assertion that "the origins, psychological or
otherwise, of an opinion have nothing whatever to do with their truth or
falsity".
For one thing the courts have very definite feelings about what makes
a reliable witness. For another, when someone is invoking supernatural
explanations for events is it not reasonable for the burden of proof to
lie with them?
Williams James opinion that the medical materialists are "belated
dogmatists" has echoes in the current trend to label those without
religious beliefs as "fundamental atheists". This stands as a desperate
attempt to make both sides equivalent in a "scientific" debate. When one
side is reliant on the supernatural I suggest that this cannot be the
case.
Competing interests: No competing interests
A similar but more complex argument was developed by C. S. Lewis in
his "Miracles" to show that the existence of reason disproved a
materialistic explanation of life. The argument is summarised at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_Reason for those interested.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: Challenging the medical materialists
Scientific studies and official research in the field of Psychology have already proven that human consciousness remains intact, even after the death of the body/cardiac arrest/zero electrical brain activity/etc.
Hospital studies in thousands of patients, with complete recording of clinical data, demonstrated the indestructibility of "human consciousness". [1][2][3][4][5]
Memories, emotions, experiences, thoughts, persist intact, in an immaterial form, even after the recorded death of the brain/heart/body, and furthermore, new experiences can be recorded and persist, beyond somatic mortality.
Indeed, individual human consciousnesses interact and communicate to form a global consciousness, with significantly recordable universal responses. [6]
Materialists, Atheists, Agnostics, etc, will have difficulty to explain "life after death", eternal immaterial existence of human consciousness, long range interacting human emotions, etc.
Religions of the World, on the other hand, had been spreading this knowledge for Millennia, the design of an immaterial immortal eternal human soul.
References
[1] http://www.resuscitationjournal.com/article/S0300-9572(14)00739-4/fulltext
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25301715
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17416449
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24994974
[5] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/first-hint-of-life-after-d...
[6] http://noosphere.princeton.edu/gcpintro.html
Competing interests: No competing interests