--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <authfriend@> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@> > > wrote: > > (snip) > > > > You might try Thomas Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos: Why the > > > > Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost > > > > Certainly False." > > > > > > > > Nagel got in a lot of trouble with the big-time materialists; > > > > the book really upset them, so he must have hit close to the > > > > bone. > > > > > > LOL. > > > > Is that a tic of some kind you've got there? > > Yes. > > I made a > > perfectly reasonable statement, regardless of what you > > think of Nagel. The leading materialists don't tend to > > come out in droves to burn a heretic unless they're > > afraid serious people may find the heretic convincing. > > > > Have you read Nagel's book, BTW? > > No, and I can tell you haven't. That's what made me laugh, > defending something you haven't read using other peoples > dislike as evidence that he's on to something.
Ah, but you're very much mistaken, I did indeed read it, have it on my Kindle, in fact. I don't think you quite got what I meant by "he must have hit close to the bone," even after I tried to explain it to you. Let me try again: See, hard-core materialists are very unlikely to come out in force against a book that makes a weak argument against materialism. So the fact that they *did* come out in force against Nagel's book is evidence that his argument was strong enough to make them nervous. They wouldn't have bothered otherwise. (By "nervous," I don't mean afraid he's right, but rather afraid that, as I said, his argument is strong enough to convince those who aren't already convinced of materialism.) That has nothing whatsoever to do with *my* evaluation of the book. I don't need much convincing, so my opinion of his argument isn't evidence that it's a strong one. That's why I cited the response of the materialists. Get it now? > I haven't read any "materialist" critiques of it either. Hooboy, there's a ton of 'em. > I think Darwinism is doing a fine and dandy - if currently > incomplete - job of explaining things, to say there are > irreducible structures in nature - whatever your angle - > is another way of saying "I don't believe it because I > don't understand it" until we reach the end of possible > exploration and there are unexplainable gaps. *Then* we > can get all theological about other entities involvement. Oh, gracious, no "other entities" in this book. Nagel is a very determined atheist. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "irreducible structures in nature," unless you're referring to mind as a structure. Now, when you say, "another way of saying, 'I don't believe it,'" what is the antecedent of "it"? If you're suggesting that Nagel doesn't understand Darwinism, I suggest you think again. Nagel's argument is basically philosophical, i.e., he shows logically how neo-Darwinism cannot *in principle* account for the human mind. He suggests one potential (nontheistic) solution to fill the explanatory gap, but he offers it only as a possibility, not as a firm conclusion. His main focus is on why there *is* a gap. > Or maybe Nagel has done just that and provided science with > an argument it can't explain. Until one of us reads the book > we won't know. LOL. Well, *you* won't know until *you* read the book, that's for sure. LOL.
