067 - Dawkins' Selfish Gene vs. Hegel's Geist: No Contest!

Biologist Richard Dawkins is the poster child for the materialist doctrine and the new atheism.  His paradigm boils down to a mechanical replicator, that somehow appeared by chance, which no one can explain how (a miracle?), that goes by the name "gene."  He sees us all as mere robots, zombies, propagating the gene's replication.  

The materialist doctrine stands on three assumptions - that all is matter, that the laws of nature are fixed, with us from the beginning, and that there is no inherent purpose in matter.  While this may be true for matter, what about Mind? 

Materialists use their doctrine as a sword against religion and philosophy.  Yet their paradigm is misguided.  There is a huge difference between being true and not being proven false.  Hegel showed how matter and mind are combined, both a part of Geist, Spirit, and are one fundamentally.  This episode explores the many problems with the pure materialist doctrine. 

Transcript

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Hello, this is Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist episode 67. Welcome back. It's really good to be back with you all again. The purpose of this podcast is to explore philosophy, psychology and science with an emphasis on the great 19th century philosopher, George William Friedrich Cagle. And the aim of this podcast is to establish that pure materialism is only half the story. And this aim is precisely what I'll be focusing on in this episode. The dominant worldview today held by most scientists, at least in public. Is it matter? And the physical laws that direct it is all that there is. And this is the attitude that's taken by the media. And by most in academia. And as such, it's what people today around the world hold to be true. Religion today is viewed often more is just something old fashioned, something that belongs to one's ethnic group, but it's not really part of them today, something of the past. Perhaps it provides a nice collection of stories and. Memories. that may contain some wisdom. But there are certainly no hard scientific truths there and hard science is what our modern world is built on. And this scientific attitude, materialistic attitude I should say has, has had a brutal effect and not just religion, but on philosophy as well. With the likes of Stephen Hawking, declaring that philosophy is dead. And it's interesting to note that this quote is from Hawking's book entitled the grand design. And it's a little bit weird for a pure. Materialist like Hawking. Because the title suggests there is a designer, the grand design suggests a designer. In a similar vein Richard Dawkins' book, the selfish gene, which we'll be discussing in some depth. Also has an interesting title, implying a human motivation to the gene. That he presents as being purely mechanical. The selfish gene description is in fact anthropomorphic. But more in this later. Specifically in this episode, I will attempt to show. That the modern theory of materialism, the materialistic doctrine. Is an assumption. It's an assumption only. It is not a proven fact. I will show how it has not been proven. What I want to present is how the notion of mind of spirit of consciousness, whatever you want to call it. Could no longer be ignored as not being fundamental to the universe. They're just too many anomalies in the materialist physicalist view of things. And a new scientific paradigm that contains both my din matter is one. Is now a required. Now I've certainly touched on this issue. And many of the episodes so far. This very, the second episode that we ever did, contrasted Hegel's philosophy to the views of modern science. And episode 12, I looked at the issue of panpsychism versus materialism. I looked at non-duality specifically in episode 23 and 24. Episode 28 dealt with quantum physics and its impact on materialism. Episode 31 was about scientism versus a Gaylene ism. And finally the hard problem of consciousness was discussed in detail in episode 45. So now in this episode, episode 67, I hope to bring some new ways of looking at the problem and build from what we've previously discussed. The first thing I want to look at to explore. Is the fact that, as I said, the materialistic doctrine is an assumption only. It is not a proven fact. But to do this, to present my proof. When did it step back just a moment and define just what I'm talking about. Obviously, I'm not talking about materialism is some value system where one finds more comfort in money and material possessions as opposed to values or higher level beliefs. By materialism, I'm referring to the doctrine that there is nothing existing apart from matter. And the matter operates in a mechanical cause and effect way under fixed laws. That have no one hearing purpose, no direction. So. Per the pure materialistic doctrine only matter exists. It operates by mechanical fixed laws and has no one here in purpose. This materialistic doctrine states that matter is not alive. It's as dead as a stone. All things, according to this view. I have a F this is a foundation, a foundation of blind, dead mechanical matter. And this includes ourselves and all organisms, all life. Now I also include physicalism under the definition of materialism. And then physicalism, which is another term here sometimes entails more of a complicated. Um, review of physics that underlying matter force and. Gravity and things like that, but essentially physicalism is no different than materialism. It presents the same worldview. It's just that it now sees that it sees physical processes, which are mechanical operating by fixed laws with no inherent purpose. So when I use the term materialism, I'm including physicalism because it's essentially the same thing. Materialism. As a doctrine developed in various forms throughout the world in ancient times. However, in the west many point to an obscure book by the Roman Epicurean philosopher, Lucretius and his work entitled on the nature of things written in the first century BCE. As the beginning of this materialistic doctrine in the Western world. His work was a poem that described the principles of atomism that all in everything could be reduced to elementary particles that have always existed. And they operate by existing laws. Lacretia's also postulated as certain random motion to these particles. Was she called the swerve, which accounts for the mechanical evolution of things. And this gives the appearance of freewill. When in fact there really is no freewill, it's just a random swerve. Now. Very interestingly. This work of Lacretia's. This poem was essentially lost for over 1400 years and it was rediscovered by an Italian monk who translated it. And some scholars claim to pave the way for a new, more scientific way of looking at the world. Which is basically an atheistic, materialistic deterministic view, but no one here in purpose or meaning. The scientific revolution and the enlightenment arrived around the same time as Lacretia's poem was, was rediscovered. And so this poem was latched on to bye bye everyone. And the rest is history, as they say. Now, back to the question, has the doctrine of materialism been proven scientifically or is it just an assumption? And if it is just an assumption, does it have a high probability of being true, say 99% or is it just a hypothesis? Uh, belief with no ability to determine the probability of its correctness. Is the materialistic doctrine beyond a reasonable doubt. Can someone reasonably doubt materialism as we've defined it? Well, I believe one can't easily. There were three reasonable doubts that I can come up with right away. First life exists. Self-propelling organisms. Exist. Materialism does not state how or why. Life appeared at all. Second. Is that mind and self-consciousness exists. Abstract thought exists reason and rationality exists. Materialism does not explain why this consciousness exists. Does not explain why we actually perceive colors. Why we hear sounds are often called Qualys. And quality. It cannot be materialistically explained. Third. Materialism is not a complete doctrine. It does not explain why the laws of nature exist in the first place. It doesn't say where they're even located. And they're written down somewhere. What. It does not explain why life seems to have a purpose. Why don't we seem to be goal directed human beings. It does not explain. 96% of the known universe. 96% of all, and everything is completely unknown. To scientists. It's not known as it's called dark matter and dark energy, but nobody knows what, what, what does is. the materialistic doctrine does not explain the forward motion of time or why we perceive time in the first place. It is not explained the weirdness of quantum physics where particles do not exist until they are measured. And these particles can only be known by either position or momentum, but not both at the same time. Or where they randomly choose to appear. When measured. Now the usual retort to all these unexplained items is that, wow, these may be reasonable doubts now. These doubts will no doubt be explained in the fullness of time under the materialistic paradigm. However it's clear. This is just another assumption. The, uh, A belief. Uh, though something will be found in the future that supports the doctrine. Well, that's just a, an assumption, a belief, a hope, a prayer. Now. Any one of those items that I just discussed could confidently be given as a reasonable doubt today, yet the materialistic doctrine persists. Why. Well, I believe there are several reasons for this and it's complicated, but I think a general reason is that. The materialistic doctrine is first and foremost, a, an attack on religion. And the materialists do a subtle shift of the argument that they believe that their materialistic doctrine is the rational counter-argument to superstitious belief and faith. The materialist demands, physical material approved, which religion cannot provide. So there's not so much life or mind or purpose that they denied, but, but religion. Is what is, is. It's what they have. The problem with the materialist is not going to take anything on faith alone except its own materialistic belief. And it sees religion is leading to all sorts of problems. And, now. On top of that scientific materials is provided no doubt, great benefits to humanity. so. but what I'm saying is the materialistic doctrine is, is more of a counter argument to religious faith as opposed to an original argument in and of itself. And I think that's how it developed. Now it, the materialistic doctrine developed as part of the enlightenment. And, people started putting more faith in science in less in church. And the materialistic doctrine says don't tell me about gods and miracles and heaven. I only believe what I can touch and see and feel. Now note that the reasonable doubts that I just mentioned before do not include God miracles in heaven. My reasonable. That's a life, mind and purpose. And one can even take this a step further into philosophy. The materialistic doctrine sometimes presents a counter-argument to pure idealism. Which is the belief that nothing. Is material and that all is mine. And by the way, this is not Hagen's belief at all, which, which we'll get to. He very much believed in mind and matter. So. What I'm saying is I believe this opposition of materialism to religion and philosophy is a false choice. It's not an either or situation. It's, it's not T as an example, it's not the only one half of the in yang symbol is correct. It's not either pure materialism or pure idealism. The in yang symbol contains both in one, they are within one circle is the circle. That's important. Now since they cart. Cartesian dualism has worked as a way of looking at things by scientists and others. and this was developed during the enlightenment period and it said, okay, each of these has its own domains, its own world. There's the world of the mind. And there were the word. World of the body and the two shall never meet. And. Scientist. Have recognized the separation and it's worked for centuries. However, the key point here is science. Materialistic science still backs into the materialistic doctrine. As their fundamental belief system, the mind and all that other domain is just an epiphenomenon of the brain, a product of the physical forces of the neurons bouncing around in the brain. That's it. And all that consciousness and life and all that good stuff. That's just an effect of these. Uh, these forces bouncing around. No. Let me stress a key point here. Materialism for what it does is not wrong. What is wrong is when it assumes that it is all that there is, that's where the big problem is. Then it becomes a faith in assumption. It becomes a religion in its own, right? Some call it scientism. and this one is what I believe is going wrong to me. It's wrong when materials and tries to subsume life and consciousness into its materialistic paradigm. This is an erroneous assumption in my view. Now. You may ask why can't life and consciousness spring from blind materialistic causes. Well, to me, that seems like a bigger leap of faith and proposing that life and consciousness is somehow baked into the universe. All life, as we know, comes from other life. And why is there need to propose some miraculous beginning? Uh, that somehow. Some forces in mud came together in life. Sprang up. You need this miracle to keep the materialistic faith alive. And, it don't have to call it a miracle, but, but something materials claim happened. They created life. Eh, materialistically and I'm saying. I think there, whatever that was, was already inherent in, in matter. Now. What I'm saying here is that materialism alone is not the answer. And the answer is not idealism Colonia there. And the answer is not dualism, Cartesian, dualism. The answer is both mind and body creative, rationality and nature existing as one whole. And this to me is a Gaylene ism in a nutshell. I'm also not saying that science will not discover someday ways to combine the two. For example, it, as scientists continue to study quantum mechanics. That brings observation into the picture. They may find some clue here to, to bringing mind in matter together. It's a start. Right now, however scientists are perplexed. They cannot get the macro picture of spacetime gravity to line up with the micro picture of quantum physics. So it's an incomplete picture. I say, keep an open mind. It is okay for a scientist to say, we don't know it is okay for science to recognize that many peoples over the world need their religions. They need their stories. They need their missed their narratives. And that religion, even with all the harm that is brought over the centuries, it. on the other hand, it has been a major civilizing force on the planet. No question about it. And we're also continuing to evolve. Mentally is the species. we're continuing to have greater awareness. Slow, but it, their progress is being made. So science must keep an open mind. And they must stop rejecting the obvious like life and consciousness. And an effort to eliminate all myth and superstition. And as I said, it's not an either or situation. Now, one of the key points of Hegel's philosophy is that spirit is the sublimation of mind and nature. And this is what, what Hagle teaches. Do more on Hegel in a moment. But let's first, let's now discuss. Richard Dawkins. I mentioned darkens before in his book, the selfish gene. Darkens has become the poster child for the new atheism movement. So he has a perfect subject to show what the materialistic doctrine consists of. And how this camp deals with the emergence of life, mind and consciousness. In this book, darkens proposes that somehow gene was created that was able to replicate itself. This occurred by blind chance. And this started the whole process going. This is the one miracle that darkens needs. And this. This process is blind chance process ended up with civilization with Hegel's philosophy, with Beethoven symphonies, with people on the moon with rock and roll. Everything else. Under the sun. You know, there's an old expression, garbage in, garbage out. How in the world could an accidental material occurrence create life. As we know it. How could it create consciousness? It's important to recognize that strategies for replication not lead necessarily to abstract thought and reasoning. Mainly the power perhaps. Uh, and power over others. Uh, but it, it's not what we see all about us in terms of life and love and origin and religion and philosophy. But unfortunately darken sees us nothing more than robots. And I've often felt that this is in fact, the hidden appeal of zombie movies. Science is proposing a zombie world. And we as individuals feel frightened because we know that more is going on. The mind and life were going on. And that's the essential terror of the, of the zombie world. That we're drawn to. Now here's a quote I'm going to read, which essentially states doc and his entire thesis. And here he is, speaking of genes, the replicators, and he says, quote, Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside, gigantic lumbering robots. Sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by torture is indirect routes. Manipulating it by remote control. They are in you. And in me, they created us body and mind and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way. Those replicators. And they go by the name of genes and we are their survival machines and quote. So that that's a lot. We are just machines. And it's interesting. Darkens here has replaced God with genes. Even mimics this when he says cool, they created us body and mind in quote. And he is clearly presenting his materialistic concept as an attack on traditional theism here. I believe. And as we've seen. This materialistic view is not a proven fact, but merely a really big assumption. And it's an assumption that goes against common sense. And let me explain. The essence of darkens argument can be boiled down to the following. And here I'm taking from Alvin plant Tinker's review of darkens book self is Jean. Alvin Plantinga is a contemporary philosopher. And. The way he puts it as he boils down, darkens argument is follows that. First, there was no valid or irrefutable objection to blind Darwinian evolution. Therefore. Darwinian evolution is true. Now let's take a hard look at this line of thinking and abstract, this argument a bit further. The argument is saying that there is no valid and irrefutable. Objection to premise P. Then. Premise P is true. So, if you can't find any reasonable. Uh, way to. Object to the premise. Then the premise must be true. Hold on here. Is that an accurate. I say it's not accurate at all. For example. I could say there's no proof. Then I did not do 25 pushups and lone in my room last night before I went to bed. And that therefore I certainly must absolutely positively have done 25 pushups as a matter of absolute fact. You see how this form of argument falls apart. In fact. This difference is the basis of most of the world's legal codes. There's a presumption of innocence and yes. It's an, an assumption of innocence. It's not a proof of innocence, but it's an assumption of innocence that, that people have when, when, when. Going into a trial. If you've ever served on jury duty, you've been instructed over and over again by the lawyers and the judge that you must find the defendant guilty or not guilty. And if, if they are found guilty that there is valid and then irrefutable evidence that they did commit the crime. And there's no reasonable doubt that they did not commit the crime. And one is presumed innocent. Until proven guilty again, it's an assumption of instance. But the key thing here is you're not there to prove the defendant's innocence. You don't have to prove the defendant does not have to prove their innocence. All they have to do is show that there's no. Proof that they did the crime. so they may be guilty in actuality. But that's not what the trial is all about. If there's not enough valid and irrefutable evidence to convict, then the defendant is found not guilty. So, again, it's not a question of guilt or innocence. It's a question of guilty or not guilty. That's what it is. We're not dealing with the truth of what happened here. We're just saying, are there enough facts? To say the person. Did it beyond a reasonable doubt or did not do it? There is reasonable doubt that they did it. So. The defendant comes in and does assumed from the start to be not guilty. Again, we don't know if they're guilty or not, but we start with that assumption as one attorney, put it on a trial that I was on. The defendant comes in with their innocence, assumed like wearing a suit of clothes. The prosecution may prevent evidence, which tears some of the clothes off. But if the defendant is left with even just their socks on that can count as a reasonable doubt and the jury must find the defendant not guilty. What is key here is that. Lawyers drum this into you. You're not saying that they are factually innocent. That's not what you're there for. You were saying in delivering the verdict is whether there's enough evidence for guilt. Guilt has to be proven. Innocence does not. And here is the big difference. And here's how it corresponds to the weakness of Dawkins approach. Dawkins is saying that if there is no valid irrefutable argument against proposition P then P is true. However, what actually occurs is this. If there is no valid irreputable argument against proposition P then P has not been proven false. That's it. It may not be true, but it's not been proven false. See the difference here. It's subtle, but it's big. As I said, it's at the heart of our jurisprudence system. So darkens is saying that pure materialism is not been shown to be false. And that is correct. Um, even though there's not one grand unifying theory of materialism. but basic materialism that all that exists is composed of matter has not been proven false. Proven through false through materialistic means. Now it's very important to recognize though that the argument for mind and consciousness. And Hegel's philosophy is not contending. That materialism is false. It's not an either or. It's just that materialism alone. When it tries to answer everything is false for the reasons stated earlier, the many, many reasons stated earlier. Life itself. And her consciousness suggests we are more than dead robots, more than zombies with no free will. And of course you can equally turn the argument around and say that there is no valid and irrefutable proof that we do not have free. Will. That we do not have true consciousness in life. It's hard to prove that that. That is not a part of life. That's why they call it the hard problem of consciousness and it's still around. And it consciousness cannot be proven away. So you can. Look at this from either side and you don't get a definitive proof. You get an assumption. And. If I may be so bold, I believe this whole problem is a result of the left brain either or thinking. That it goes like this and materialism is true. The opposite must be untrue. No metaphysics, no higher power is no higher anything. And is this an earlier, in many ways, the atheistic materialistic doctrine is an anti-religious response. However is the Russian ESOS terraces. George Gurdjieff said people are third force blind. One of Gurdjieff's pupils, John Bennett put it this way. Quote. We are third force blind, our perceptions, our thoughts, our feelings are all essentially dualistic. Our mental processes are almost entirely based on affirmation and negation comparison of like, with like, like with unlike our feelings are dominated by the pleasure. Pain principle, attraction and aversion rule. Our effective lives. This is not mean that reality is itself dualistic and that our limited perceptions feelings and intellectual processes dualistic in themself. Graft a false dualism. Upon the world. And quote. This false dualism keeps people from seeing the larger context of which both are a part. And this is opening yourself up to the third force. Uh, this ablation, if you will, of mind in nature. Hagle teaches that mind and body are United in spirit and his spirit that is undergoing and historical process of coming to know itself through both mind and body. This hearkens back to the beginning of Hegel's logic. We're being in nothing or both moments of becoming. Being here with correspond to mind, to thoughts and nothing would correspond to. Beings. Negation finite materialism, but no mine. Both are brought together and becoming which here corresponds to the historical struggle of spirit. In history coming to know itself. So Dawkins. And the materialists are third force blind. They believe only material substance is real and that any consciousness life mind is just, uh, an epiphenomenon of matter. A result of manner. They miss the bigger picture that both mind and material are real. And continually becoming continually evolving as one. Now. I shouldn't put all scientists in the same boat here. Many modern physicists have recognized this problem. Let me, let me quote you a few of them. First Freeman Dyson quote. I think the consciousness is not just a passive epiphenomenon carried along by the chemical elements on our brains, but it is an active agent forcing the molecular complexity to make choices between one quantum state and another. In other words, mind is already inherent in every electron and the process of human consciousness, different only in degree, but not in kind from the process of choice between condom states, which we call chance. When they are made by an electron and quote. And also this from Freeman Dyson quote. To me to worship. God means to recognize in mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether surpasses our comprehension and quote. Let me quote, physicist, Edwin Schrodinger of Schrodinger's cat fame. He says, quote. Uh, living matter while not alluding the laws of physics as established up to date is likely to involve other laws of physics, hitherto, unknown, which are ever once they have been revealed will form just in as integral a part of science as the former and quote. Physis is David Boehme wrote a whole paper on this entitled a new theory of the relation of mind and manner where he argued for information mind, if you will, at the quantum level. Uniting mind and matter. And finally, let me go out. Contemporary physicist. Roger Penrose quote. We need a major revolution in our understanding of the physical world in order to accommodate consciousness. The most likely place, if we're not going to go outside physics altogether. Is in this big unknown, namely making sense of quantum mechanics. I'm not even sure what materialistic means. Quite honestly, quantum mechanics behaves in ways that one thinks are certainly at odds. With the view we have used to have an element of prodo consciousness takes place. Whenever a decision is made in the universe. I'm not talking about the brain. I'm talking about an object, which is put into a superposition of two places. Say it's a speck of dust that you put in. To two locations at once now in a small fraction of a second, it will become one or the other. Which does it become well? It's, that's a choice. Is it a choice made by the universe? Does the speck of dust make this choice? Maybe it's a free choice in quote. Penn rose is saying that consciousness is not a formula. It's not a computer computation. That we need a new paradigm, something I've been saying here in this podcast for nearly three years. So to summarize. We have seen that there are plenty of default reasons to suspect that life and consciousness and mind are not produced. From fundamentally random blind, lifeless, replicators, gone mad. And no, this is not implying a God or supernatural being or something outside ourselves. There's nothing about our own life, our own minds, our own rationality, our own consciousness. And we have some freedom of choice and creativity in time and space within our life. We have seen that the absence of arguments against a proposition does not necessarily mean that the proposition is true, just it is not been proven false. So this is a key thing to remember. It is key to understand the materialism can be true as well as mine being true. They do not negate each other. There is the third way to look at it. Like the circle that surrounds the yin-yang symbol, the Chinese eating does not just present a ying and a yang symbol separately. It combines them into hexagrams for a full picture, a full picture. Is needed today more than ever. So that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Please follow the podcast. Facebook page at cunning of Geist, all references will be posted there in a few days. And they also post their regularly as do others. So check it out and follow the page. I think you'll like it. You can also follow me on Twitter at cunning of Geist. And you can now provide support for this podcast through Patrion and no amount is too small and no. Uh, mine is too big for that matter either. It's up to you, but if you don't want to participate, that's fine. But the link should be under, each episode. This will allow me to recoup some of the costs involved in producing the podcast. And I will be planning to provide some extras in there in time. Please share links to these episodes on social media and tell your like-minded friends about it. Help spread the word. Thanks. This is Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist. CNX time.