On Theism & Immaterial Minds

[FallentoReason]

But aren't we all essentially immaterial minds "floating" somewhere else? Why do we need to go through this tedious process of living a temporary material life when we all go to heaven anyways..?

Ah right. 1. What difference did heaven make? Why wasn't it the same with heaven and hell as final destinations? 2. Angels are what you describe.... purely spiritual beings. We are supposedly superior. I like your point though and that's a problem with my position. I think it's our choices that define who we are. Without our material existence all of that is theoretical. Our choices determine how soon we reach heaven. There's only one right answer, and some of us take a lot longer to realise it than others. The point of our existence is that choice.

This is certainly a unique take on things, and I respect that. I just don't think the Bible allows for such a liberal p.o.v...

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For the purposes of this thread, I will assume materialism about the self to be false and substance dualism to be true.

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This means that I will be speaking of the mind as an immaterial thing that is intimately related to what we call our physical bodies. Under this view, I'll now move on to some things that we can conclude immediately by virtue of accepting the notion of an immaterial mind.

Animals have immaterial minds

If us humans display signs of consciousness by feeling pleasure and pain, being joyous or fearful and experiencing things through our senses, then surely it can be said that animals also display signs of consciousness. They too show these signs even if it seems to be to a lesser extent. As far as we can tell, they are closer to what we are than what a rock or water is. Therefore, it seems like animals also have a mind, and since materialism is false, their minds must also be immaterial like ours.

If animals don't have immaterial minds, then the only other conclusion is that they have material minds. That means that it would be a case of confirmation bias to say that our minds can't possibly be such that they are purely materialistic. An example would obviously be animals of this being possible.

The nature of the mind with respect to our bodies

We know that our minds are immaterial, but clearly our brains play a huge role in how our minds perform in this reality. If someone receives a serious blow to the head, they can lose consciousness. They could even wake up and have a different personality or be mentally impaired. These effects are known to be correlated with specific parts of the brain responsible for that particular mechanism; be it our rational thinking, ability to speak, ability to learn etc. therefore, it seems reasonable to think that the way in which our immaterial minds function is dictated by the content of our brains in this reality.

We also see a correlation between intelligence, psychology and varying abilities in animals and how developed their brains are. Therefore, their immaterial mind is only capable of so much in this reality depending on the body they are attached to, much the same as we are only capable of so much depending on the content of our brain.

From the two conclusions above, it seems like a case where every immaterial mind has the potential to be any sort of species in this reality. All it requires is that it be intimately connected to a specific sort of body, and thus that mind will live out its "life" on this earth as whatever species/body it's attached to. This brings me to a fatal conclusion about three concepts: a god, its intention for its creation and the events that follow after this "life".

If all sentient beings on this planet are simply immaterial minds that aren't different to one another when not incarnated into a body, then why is it that some of us got placed into a human body and others into bodies of animals who don't have culture and religion? Presumably, when animals die, there won't be a judgement by a god which will determine their residing place for eternity. For humans, those two things apply.

I'll leave you with an argument detailing this critical problem:

1) God is just
2) If (1) is true, then God created all immaterial minds equally
3) Immaterial minds have been incarnated and there now exists self-aware beings (humans) and non-self-aware beings (animals)
4) God will only judge humans
C) Therefore, a just God does not exist

We can go further and then conclude that immaterial minds weren't created by a god. Therefore, substance dualism is false and our consciousness is a product of our brain. More precisely, a combination of substance dualism and a personal god will produce a defeater for such a collection of beliefs.

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Hi Fallen, why the complication? It's much more simple than this: all the evidence that we have indicates that the mind is an emergent property of brain function. Further, there is no evidence in support of dualism. So I simply can't accept your first premise because if we were to assume dualism, we can speculate pretty much anything we like because there's no evidence for any dualist position.

Sorry if I'm missing the point!

I partly agree with you. I'm not so quick to dismiss dualism because I think the debate between materialism and immaterialism about the mind is fairly even. But what I was aiming to do was that if we accept immaterialism about the mind and we believe in a just, personal God, then we have a defeater for our combination of beliefs.