{"id":44943,"date":"2017-11-18T11:58:48","date_gmt":"2017-11-18T18:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=44943"},"modified":"2017-11-18T11:58:48","modified_gmt":"2017-11-18T18:58:48","slug":"the-astonishing-hypothesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/11\/the-astonishing-hypothesis.html","title":{"rendered":"“The Astonishing Hypothesis”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\"Crocker<\/a>
A Wikimedia Commons photo of the Chicago skyline, by J. Crocker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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In his 1994 book The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul<\/em>, Sir Francis Crick (1916-2004; co-discoverer with James Watson of the double helix structure of DNA) declares\u00a0his thorough-going naturalism and reductionism very clearly:<\/p>\n

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\u201cA person\u2019s mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make them up and influence them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Astonishing Hypothesis is that \u2018You,\u2019 your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll\u2019s Alice might have phrased it: \u2018You\u2019re nothing but a pack of neurons.'\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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***<\/strong><\/p>\n

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By contrast, here\u2019s a good passage from the admirable Catholic physicist and thinker Stephen Barr:<\/p>\n

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To a materialist, we are just congeries of atoms; and atoms must go whithersoever they are driven by the laws of physics and blind chance. . . .\u00a0 There is no place for intellectual or moral freedom in a universe that is mere matter in motion.\u00a0 That is why Sir Francis Crick, Edward O. Wilson, and many others who share Dawkins\u2019 basic views call free will an illusion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dawkins contrasts ideas that are just memes, mindlessly and slavishly copied from brain to brain like computer viruses, with scientific ideas, which he likens to useful software that is critically evaluated by potential users and adopted or rejected on rational grounds.\u00a0 Such a distinction may be valid, but it is not a distinction that a materialist can make.\u00a0 It is based on there being an essential difference between machines, which can only do as they are told, and intelligent and free users of those machines, who can decide for themselves what to do.\u00a0 In the materialist\u2019s universe, however, all users are themselves just machines, and are therefore as much driven by physical necessity (or chance) as everything else is.\u00a0 As the great mathematician and physicist Hermann Weyl observed,<\/span><\/p>\n

There must be freedom in the theoretical acts of affirmation and negation:\u00a0 When I reason that 2+2=4, this actual judgment is not forced upon me through blind natural causality (a view that would eliminate thinking as an act for which we can be held answerable) but something purely spiritual enters in.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The inescapable conclusion is that Dawkins and materialists of his sort do not in fact \u201cstand up full-face into the keen wind of understanding.\u201d\u00a0 They don\u2019t face the implications of their ideas.\u00a0 If they did, they would have to dismiss all talk of morality, rebellion against nature, and intellectual freedom as so much sentimentality.[1]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Stephen M. Barr, \u201cThe Devil\u2019s Chaplain Confounded,\u201d First Things<\/em> 145 (August-September 2004): 29.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Posted from Chicago, Illinois<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 \u00a0 In his 1994 book The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, Sir Francis Crick (1916-2004; co-discoverer with James Watson of the double helix structure of DNA) declares\u00a0his thorough-going naturalism and reductionism very clearly: \u00a0 \u201cA person\u2019s mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"The Astonishing Hypothesis"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    In his 1994 book The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, Sir Francis Crick (1916-2004; co-discoverer with James\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/11\/the-astonishing-hypothesis.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""The Astonishing Hypothesis"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"    In his 1994 book The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, Sir Francis Crick (1916-2004; 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