Materialism Out; Spirit In

Long ago I read several books by Ayn Rand in which she proposed "emotions are not the means of cognition." Rand was a "pop" philosopher disdained by the intellectual elites so the only contact most people have had with her is through their high school assignment to read and discuss her book "The Fountain Head."

Objectivism, her philosophy underpinning  her books, and atheism were Rand's springboard to notoriety.  She believed that all a human needed to live the good life was available to him through the evidence of his senses coupled with a strong obedience to the necessary materialistic application of that evidence.

What Rand never dealt with, as I recall, was the animating activity on men by the cascade of chemicals in the brain. By that, I mean, I don't recall reading anything about her dealing with consciousness, or to put it in my simple language: how is it possible for anything or anyone to be self-aware?

Now comes the hint of a new strain of thought prying at the door of the materialistic-evolutionary lock-box. Some are beginning to question the cant of the likes of Rand and Richard Dawkins which is; we think because that's the way we evolved - accept it as fact and move on.

In Section 5, devoted to neuroscience, Staune conscientiously explains that contemporary research is far from being unanimous on a number of key issues, most notably the exact correspondence between neuronal phenomena and mental events, and particularly conscience. He patiently argues that in humans the animating force cannot find expression without neuronal activity, but is not a mere result of such an activity. Boldly he puts forward the possibility that much current rationalist and scientific research offers again acceptable space for a dualistic hypothesis (body and spirit).

My-oh-my! What will science do once it is cornered by popular demand to explain why we are able to think merely because a bunch of chemicals in our brains fire synapses in a particular order? What/Who decides the order of firing from which abstract thought is derived?  In other words can evolution explain why it is I'm able to ask that particular question? I don't think so.

Materialism appears to be increasingly ruined and “passé.” A spiritual and religious alternative, for the moment mostly akin to Platonism (presented in some detail), seems to him the most plausible replacement; in any case divine presence and intervention in one form or another have again become, he maintains, fully plausible. I will not enumerate here the powerful voices adduced by Staune to support his conclusions.

The article the quotes came from here. It is an interesting read.

Hat tip to Remonstrans for pointing me to the article. Read their post - Humor In Unbelief.