Day 237 of 1000

Christian and I went to our church meeting together without Lorena and Kelly (they have a bug of some kind).  Among other things, we talked about why strict materialism is not true.  One manifestation of that is the mind brain problem.  I could not explain the problem very well although I had read about it a little, so I looked up some stuff when I got home.  A guy I follow named Michael Egnor writes on the subject every now and then.  Here are three articles that describe his thoughts and why this is such a problem for materialists:

Here is a good one:  http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/06/the_hard_and_easy_problems_in006891.html
Here is another good one:  http://intelligent-sequences.blogspot.com/2008/06/turning-tables.html
Here is a third good one:  http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/10/the_battle_for_your_mind012701.html

That prompted me to run over to Egnor’s blog where the top article touched on the subject we discussed as well as a topic Kelly and I have discussed over the last few weeks:  The fact that sin is a black and white thing, not a gray thing.  Here is the money quote from Terry Pratchett as quoted by Elizabeth Scalia in an article that appeared in First Things:

“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.

“It’s a lot more complicated than that –”

“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”

“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes –”

“But they starts with thinking about people as things …”