How can our identity and memories persist when our neurological chemistry is in a constant state of death and regeneration? Well, according to McCrone, the problem is much worse than the simple regeneration cycle that goes on in the rest of the body:

The issue of molecular turnover is starting to hit home in neuroscience, especially now that the latest research techniques such as fluorescent tagging are revealing a far more frantic pace of activity than ever suspected. For instance, the actin filaments in dendrites can need replacing within 40 seconds, making microtubules look like positive greybeards (Star et al, 2002).

A turnover time of five days for NMDA receptors seemed pretty steep when it was reported a few years back. (Shimizu et al, 2000). But recently Michael Ehlers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, reported that the entire post-synaptic density (PSD) – the protein-packed zone that powers synaptic activity – is replaced, molecule for molecule, almost by the hour. Ehlers had expected the turnover to take days and when he found no labelled protein on his first 24 hour assay, he thought he must have mucked up the experiment

Myelin and RNA molecules seem to last months. And DNA is of course fairly hardy, though it still needs continual repair. But on the kinds of figures that are coming out now, it seems like the whole brain must get recycled about every other month. And certainly everything points to the synapses as being about the most dynamic part of the whole system.

–John McCrone, Dichotomistic

So, the question remains as to how, on the physicalist model, an ego is maintained in light of the chemical “boil” that goes on within our neurochemistry. If Dave is identical to Dave’s brain, how does Dave persist when Dave’s brain is dying and being reborn in it’s entirety on a bi-monthly basis? Good luck with that one.

Firstly, let me quickly give a definition of my anarchism. I believe that the state should be abolished, not government. For some clarity on what I see as the points of distinction between the two, see my series of posts on Albert J. Nock’s book called Our Enemy, The State. Ok, moving on.

To me, it’s clear that laws cannot perfectly represent the ideas they are meant to enforce. There will always be gaps which exclude some people that should have been included, and exclude people that should have been included. It’s the nature of what a law is. They are inherently imperfect analogs of ideas. Let’s take an example: drunk driving. We all would agree that driving under the influence is very dangerous and needs to stop. So, how do we make a law that stops drunk driving? There is only one way, and that is to ban cars. Anything less than that will be simply variations of ways to punish drunk driving after the fact. And that’s not the same thing as stopping it. Instead, that’s just punishing it. Those are two different things.

This inability to make laws(like our drunk driving example) that properly enforce the ideals behind them leads to a worse problem. Because no law can stop something like terrorism, the only option you’re left with is to enact laws with various levels of preemption. So, returning to our drunk driving example for a moment – we know that we can’t create a law that simply stops drunk driving without resorting to some extreme like banning cars. And, that’s not going to fly. We, therefore, decide to create a law that says “you are only allowed to buy 1 alcoholic beverage per 150 pounds of body weight per day.” That way, nobody can drink too much at any one given time.

Well, that’s not exactly accurate. What if someone decided to get drunk on a Friday night and spends all week going to the store, once per day, buying his one beer and then stockpiling it. Then, on Friday night, he drinks his 7 beers and drives down to the pool hall, drunk as a skunk. Ok, so that won’t work. What if we change the law to now say that “you are only allowed to buy 1 alcoholic beverage per 150 pounds of body weight per day, and you must drink it before leaving the premises of the store where you bought it.” Well, now that won’t work either. Now you’re enforcing that people drink before they get behind the wheel. So, we are forced to keep modifying the law over and over until we find an “acceptable” amount of preemptive inconvenience or harm in order to make the law at least somewhat effective. But, even then it will never do what it was intended to do in the first place: stop drunk driving.

At this point you may be comparing what I’m saying to scripture and wondering why I’m ignoring the fact that God handed down lots of laws. If laws are so inherently broken then why did God seem to have no problem handing them down to his people? The answer to this, is to remember, first, that it’s proper in biblical interpretation to interpret the Old Testament in light of the New Testament. And, given that principle, we must look at what the New Testament teaches with regards to laws. Let’s look at a couple of passages:

18 A ruler questioned Him, saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

19And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.

20″You know the commandments, ‘DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, DO NOT MURDER, DO NOT STEAL, DO NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS, HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER.’”

21And he said, “All these things I have kept from my youth.”

22When Jesus heard this, He said to him, “One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

23But when he had heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.

–Luke 18:18-23(NASB), via Bible Gateway

This is the familiar story of the so-called “rich young ruler.” This man first asks Jesus what he must do in order to be saved. Christ answers him and cites a few of the ten commandments. He answers and says that he’s done all of those things. Christ then gives him a new paradigm, by telling him that he needs to sell everything he owns, give that money to the poor, and follow Him. What an interesting answer. Jesus is telling the man that it’s not laws that are going to save him, because there are no laws capable of encapsulating the proper requirements of salvation. Laws were not sufficient to get across the ideas necessary. Jesus showed him this by giving him, not a law, but a principled action that He knew the young man wouldn’t be able to fulfill because of his love of money. Christ exposed the man’s sin without using an appeal to law, because laws were insufficient for the task.

This is getting long. We’ll look at another example next time.

To understand this better, let’s do Leibniz’s “thinking machine” thought experiment. Imagine for a moment a large wooden box. It’s so large, in fact, that it has a door in the side of it. This box is a thinking machine. It’s a device that is capable of thinking, just like humans do. Now, in order to see how this machine works, you enter the doorway. What will you see when you get inside? Will you see gears? Vacuum tubes? Circuits? What configuration of these parts produce the thoughts? The fact is you can’t imagine what the inside of such a machine would look like because thoughts aren’t the type of things that machines do. You can’t even sit down with a piece of paper and create a schematic of a thought producing machine, because there is no way to represent thoughts in space. They are non-physical. They can’t be mechanized, because they have no extension in space as physical objects do. And, as Alvin Plantinga says, “thinking doesn’t arise by the mechanical interaction of parts.”

And, it’s important to remember the details here. Thoughts are themselves. They aren’t representations of things. They aren’t symbols or perceptions. They are thoughts. You can diagram a syllogism after you think of it. But, what you are diagramming isn’t the thought itself. You are diagramming the thing being thought of. This is because thoughts have a property that physical things don’t have. They have the property of being “about” something. You are thinking about an argument. The argument you are thinking of isn’t the thought itself. Think of it another way. Instead of diagramming a syllogism or progression of declarations, this time imagine taking a sheet of paper and diagramming “being afraid.” You can’t. You can write down “I’m afraid of heights,” but you can’t diagram the thought of that fear itself.

I’ve blogged about this topic before, but it’s necessary to keep these things in mind as you read articles on brain science. Neurology is understandably prone to attribute all thoughtiness to the brain, and in a sense it’s understandable, since they are neurologists and not psychologists. But, that just means we have to do a good job of remembering that they are wrong when they make those conclusions. The body interacts with the soul on such a fundamental level that it’s hard to separate what one is doing from what the other is responsible for in many cases. These types of thought experiments help to reinforce the distinctions.

So, here’s the key quote:

“This is the most powerful argument I’ve ever heard. She simply walks you through… not through the argument against God, but why she herself came to this decision ([that God doesn't exist]) and why this was the right decision for her.”

This is an often used tactic employed by atheists that are committed, but haven’t had the time or fortitude to dig deep into the arguments. So, they end up falling back on cliche’d, “God is an emotional crutch” rhetoric. But, instead of just coming out and saying that, he’s obscuring that idea behind some relativism language: “this was the right decision for her.”

Now, if God doesn’t exist for you, then he doesn’t exist for me either. We both live in the same world. And, if I believe he does exist then I’m either (A) ignorant or (B)playing emotional make-believe games. Those are the only two options I’m left with, given his view. But, it’s obvious that he is compelled by the personal journey type aspect of this lady’s story. So, He attempts to soften the logical blow a little by bringing in the “…for her” bit on the end. But, the message is still crystal clear.

What he is logically saying is that theists believe in things that aren’t real. On his view, we theists play make believe games. But, he’s going to be kind and not judge us for it since he’s saying that it’s simply a personal decision. That’s like saying it’s a personal decision whether or not to believe that polka dotted rabbit people from outer space live inside of coke machines and deliver cokes out of the hole when I put in my money. Of course that’s not a personal decision. If you believe that, you are insane.

Now, just as I did before, let’s re-package what he said into a syllogism to more clearly expose the relativism:

1. God doesn’t exist.
2. Julia Sweeney realizes this.
3. Therefore, God doesn’t exist for Julia Sweeney.

Again, the conclusion is not sound. In essence, he is arguing for conditional existence based on mental awareness of the truth of a proposition. That’s complete nonsense, and I doubt that’s what he even intended at all. It’s probably just force of habit on his part. He’s not stupid. But, when you employ relativism, that’s what you are left with. Nonsense arguments disguised in emotional sophistry. Evidently that type of thing qualifies as the “most powerful argument” he’s “ever heard.” Jeez. When it comes to the God argument, he really needs to dig a bit deeper than a stage performance by a lady that had a hard life. I hate that she had hard times, but that really has nothing to do with whether certain objects exist or not. The existence of things in the real world are not conditional upon the emotions of a lady on stage.

I come here before you today to make the same proclamation—with a twist. I am thoroughly delighted by the fact that the most humane thing for me to do is to have no children at all.

–Lisa Hymas, Grist.org

The most interesting thing to me in this quote is not the analysis of her environmentalism, but how her argument doesn’t mesh with her rhetoric. They are in conflict. She says, “…the most humane thing for me to do is to have no children at all.” I see this type of language all of the time. If you think about what she’s saying, it’s completely dishonest. There is an implied “given this condition” that is missing from her statement. It should read like this:

• The most humane thing for me to do, given the current toll that overpopulation is taking on our environment, is to have no children at all.

That’s what she’s actually saying. Now, the problem is that if there really is world-wide destructive overpopulation going on in the world, how can it be only morally binding on one person? Put another way: if the conditions she describes are real enough to be morally binding on her, then they are, by definition, morally binding on the rest of us also. But, of course, she goes to great lengths at the very beginning of the article to make it known that if you do indeed choose to participate in more world destruction by having children then she is just fine with that. Huh?!

She puts it this way:

Let me get this out of the way up front: I like kids—many of them, anyway. Some of my best friends, as they say, are parents. I bear no ill will to procreators, past, present, and prospective. I claim no moral or ethical high ground.

–Lisa Hymas, Grist.org

Then I have to ask, why the crap did she write a 2000 word article on the humane obligation of being childless if she actually doesn’t care about being childless. That’s relativism language. But, not in the formal sense. Instead, it’s relativism being employed as it most commonly is: as a simple linguistic tactic, to enable the writer to smuggle morality in the back door in a non-offensive way. She’s not a relativist any more than anyone else is. Real, formal relativism is self-refuting and, as such, has been mostly discarded from the public discussion. Instead, it’s been replaced by this type of rhetorical relativism, that let’s the game continue to be played by hiding some of the premises. But it’s still just as self-refuting.

It’s her use of the word “humane” that makes the whole phrase turn. The word “humane” defines what is morally acceptable treatment of our fellow man. Therefore, when she says that childlessness is the only “humane” thing for her to do, it’s the same thing as saying that having kids would be inhumane. Thus, immoral. And, an action that is inhumane is always inhumane, no matter who does it. It’s a concrete condition. If it’s true that it’s inhumane for her to have children because it contributes to overpopulation, then the same conditions apply to me. My children are an inhumane treatment to my fellow man. There is no difference, since the conditions she gives are true for all people.

The relativism becomes obvious when you reformulate her thesis into an easier to follow syllogism. Like this:

1. Overpopulation is destroying the environment.
2. Having children is the cause of overpopulation.
3. Therefore, it’s only immoral when I have children.

Of course, this is an absurd argument. If premise A and premise B are valid, then in order for the argument to be sound, the conclusion(C) should be something like: “Therefore, it’s immoral for people to have more children than is required for a stable, low population rate.” But, of course, a statement like that has all sorts of problems. It implies an Orwellian procreation management authority that I’m sure she would rather avoid getting in to. Not to mention the fact that it’s simply impossible to achieve something like that without horrible human rights abuses, such as forced abortions and such. Thus, she employs a little relativism to soften the blow of what she’s saying, yet still get across an air of moral imperative.

I am seeing this all the time lately. I’ll give you another example of it next time.

I’m going to go with a bottom-up approach, using John Macarthur’s hermeneutic rule that you always take the plain reading of a passage as it’s actual meaning unless the passage itself forces you not to. Then you work your way out to solve any conflicts with other scripture. This may seem odd, since the usual inclination is to work from that larger context down to the smaller so as to preserve contextual meaning. But, in this case, the problem with this passage isn’t contextual.  It’s internal.  I’ll do my best to explain.

Here’s what Romans 13 says (verse numbers in [brackets]):

[1] Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. [2] Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. [3] For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; [4] for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.

[5] Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. [6] For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. [7] Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.

[8] Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.

–Romans 13, NASB

The plain, and most widely accepted interpretation of this passage is that Paul is telling us to submit to “government” because God has put “government” in place. Therefore, if we rebel against “government”, we are essentially rebelling against God’s very plan.

It’s my contention that this can’t be the meaning of this passage. The reason it can’t is because, if that’s what Paul is indeed saying, then he is lying or he is ignorant. And, neither one of those is a hermeneutical option for believers. This is one of those passages that seems to have a very clear meaning, but when you work it out in your mind, you find that the clear meaning is fraught with problems. Let me lay out the problems you will have to accept if you take the standard interpretation:

• In verse 3, the standard interpretation will require you to live in a fantasy world where good deeds are always applauded by government and bad deeds are always punished.
• Verse 4 will required you to believe that all war that is waged by the state, and all capital punishment, is justly administered.
• Verse 5 seems to indicate that taxes are the primary method by which God has chosen to fund these governments that he has put in place.

Verses 3 and 4 are what blow up the whole standard interpretation of this verse.  Paul simply can’t mean what it sounds like he means here.  If Paul is really saying that government always celebrates good and punishes evil then he is delusional.  But, we know that’s not the case.  Paul himself was unjustly imprisoned and killed by Rome, and he saw the rampant imperialistic wars that Rome waged all over Europe to enslave it’s people. He knew, more than most, how rampantly corrupt government is, and how unjustly it treats it’s subjects.

And, in our own time, we have seen one murderous regime after another during the 20th century.  From Stalin to the Holocaust to Pol Pot, we know that government doesn’t operate in the way Paul describes here.  Instead, they punish good and reward evil all the time.  He knew better than to make a statement like that.  And, that’s why I can’t accept that, that’s what he meant.  There must be some other interpretation that doesn’t require Paul to be clearly denying reality(i.e. insane).  So, what could that be?

Well, what Paul is describing here is “government.”  That word is the critical point to understanding all of this.  Remember the law of non-contradiction:  A is NOT equal to non-A.  Therefore, if the thing(government) that Paul is describing is not identical to the thing we are thinking about (government as we know it), then we aren’t talking about the same thing.  Paul is talking about something different.  Put more plainly, what Paul is talking about here is not the thing we know as government.  It can’t be, because the properties he ascribes to “government” don’t match the properties we see in “government.”  He means one thing.  We mean something else.

It’s plain to me that he’s talking about what government is supposed to be.  He’s describing government in it’s truest form.  It’s pure form.  But, not everything that claims to be a certain thing really is.  What North Korea calls it’s government isn’t a government.  It’s a gang of dictators that are holding that country hostage.  Just because they label themselves as a government doesn’t mean that they actually are one.  I can call myself the President of Uganda.  That doesn’t mean that I actually am.

And this leads to the correct interpretation of this passage:  when government fulfills it’s role, it’s ordained by God, and we are subject to it.  When government violates it’s role as Paul has defined it, that government is no government at all.  Therefore, it can’t be ordained by God, because it’s something different than what Paul describes.

This is getting really long, so I’ll pick it back up next time to talk about the problem of movement that you encounter if you accept the standard interpretation.

Let’s go through his main points:

1. State power is drawn from social power.

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it
has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from
time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be
drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with
so much less power; there is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a
corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

–Nock, Our Enemy, The State

This is an interesting comment. We all know that all state money comes from only two sources: confiscation(taxes) and inflation(printing money). But, he is saying that state power is derived the same way, through a sort of confiscation of societal power. And, just as taxes result in it’s victim being financially poorer, so does the confiscation of a citizen’s “power.” And, by power he means the citizens ability to exercise his/her efforts toward solving a personal or societal ill. Take, for instance, the beauracracy involved in starting a business. There are all sorts of papers to fill out, licenses to apply for and fees/taxes to pay. In the carrying out of these exigencies, the state has placed barriers in front of you in regards to exercising your power(in this instance, your labour) to provide for your own welfare. He expounds on that next.

2. This consumption of social power by the state robs society of the will to exercise that power.

It is largely in this way that the progressive conversion of social power into State power becomes
acceptable and gets itself accepted. When the Johnstown flood occurred, social power was
immediately mobilized and applied with intelligence and vigour. Its abundance, measured by
money alone, was so great that when everything was finally put in order, something like a million
dollars remained. If such a catastrophe happened now, not only is social power perhaps too
depleted for the like exercise, but the general instinct would be to let the State see to it. Not only
has social power atrophied to that extent, but the disposition to exercise it in that particular
direction has atrophied with it. If the State has made such matters its business, and has
confiscated the social power necessary to deal with them, why, let it deal with them. We can get
some kind of rough measure of this general atrophy by our own disposition when approached by a
beggar. Two years ago we might have been moved to give him something; today we are moved to
refer him to the State’s relief-agency. The State has said to society, You are either not exercising
enough power to meet the emergency, or are exercising it in what I think is an incompetent way,
so I shall confiscate your power, and exercise it to suit myself. Hence when a beggar asks us for a
quarter, our instinct is to say that the State has already confiscated our quarter for his benefit, and
he should go to the State about it.

–Nock, Our Enemy, The State

Here, he is fleshing out his previous idea about the depletion of social power by the state as it takes on more and more activities that are considered social issues. He gives an example that is contemporary to his own time, so I’ll do the same. This phenomenon is perhaps no more clearly illustrated than what happened in Kauai, Hawaii last year. After waiting on the Department of Land and Natural Resources to fix a park road for months, the residents of the area repaired the road themselves. The DOLNR had estimated that it would cost $4 million dollars and take two years to repair the road. Instead, the area business owners and residents did it in 8 days and with only donations.

What should have never been the business of the state to begin with had paralyzed this community for months. But, why? Why would they wait for someone else to do something for them. Because of the atrophy of will that occurs when the state absconds with power that it never should have had. The more power that is accumulates to itself, the less society desires to exercise that particular power on it’s own. Even if it legally can.

Ron Paul – Mises Circle 2010:

All in all, I would say that the speakers were excellent. We only had one bad lecture and it was from Doug Geivett. I don’t want to desparage Dr. Geivett as an apologist in any way, but his particular talk was on the verge of horrible. It was rambling, way off-topic and, most disturbingly, exposed a severe lack of understanding of economics. His basic premise(when he finally got to it) was that when the country is made up of traditional families, that somehow makes our economic outlook better. He attributed this to “long term vision” that is natural in a traditional family(i.e., mom, dad, kids, no divorce, etc.). This is woefully simplistic and just shows a non-familiarity with basic economics.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for mom, dad, kids, no divorce, etc. I think that’s the ideal situation that all families should strive for. My beef is with saying that this is a driving factor in economic stability. He actually blamed the housing bubble/recession on a lack of family values. If that was the case then think about this. The 1920′s – 1940′s was probably the era of the most widespread traditional family values the country has ever seen. And yet we had the Great Depression. It doesn’t matter what type of families dominate the landscape. If the government comes in and rapes the economy then it’s going to cause economic problems. Bad ones.

Anyway, I was just disappointed to see such a lack of economic understanding in the upper ranks of Christian Philosophy and Apologetics circles. It would do Biola/Talbot a lot of good to hook up with The Mises Institute and bring some basic economics into their catalog.