That Ghost in the Machine - New English Review

by Rebecca Bynum (August 2011)

Why seek ye the living among the dead? (Luke 24:5)

I also watched a NOVA program on dreams in which Sigmund Freud was briefly mentioned only to be thrown overboard by scientists (the new priests of our age) who ridiculed the very idea of mind, let alone that mind could contain levels like a subconscious. After watching an hour of mice, cats and humans all fitted out with electrodes on their heads while they dreamt, it was deduced that mice dreamt about a typical mouse day like running a maze. Cats dreamt about typical cat day of catching mice and humans were similarly rehearsing their own hypothetical futures. Evolution, you see, has equipped animals like us with the ability to practice in our dreams the problems we will encounter in our waking life.

explains how neuroscience cannot even account for the basics of perception for it cannot explain how the gaze proceeds outward, let alone explain the personhood of the one who does the gazing.

Clearly, we are dealing with a situation much like the time when the Church was confronted with facts which did not conform to its approved model of reality and was forced to deny those facts and to suppress them. Materialism can never be an adequate model for the whole of reality because it cannot account for consciousness, much less the person who is conscious of his consciousness and who values it.

The larger question is, why should scientists continue to insist that we look for the higher realities among the lower and to deny the reality of mind and value? For their model of the world to work, there would be no difference between the dead and the living and yet they cling to that model with brute tenaciousness, belittling all who might point out its inadequacies as unrealistic dreamers.

It is true because, while the values (Truth, Beauty and Goodness) are absolute, the human pursuit of value is inherently progressive. As one pursues Goodness, one becomes more moral (personally possessing more good), and the same is true for society at large. When man rejects the reality of value, the reality of Goodness, then the pursuit of that reality ceases, and moral progress comes to an end and degeneracy begins.

tiny drones which look and fly like hummingbirds[2] and can hover near windows or perch upon windowsills in order to peer into homes, or follow their subjects around undetected, and there are unconfirmed rumors of drones being able to peer through walls entirely. Since drones are already being used on our Southern border, it will take a strong government to be able to resist the temptation of turning this technology on its own citizens. Unfortunately for us, America has had an almost unbroken succession of weak and divided governments with vacillating leadership since the end of the Second World War. A brave new police state will be within the grasp of our government soon and our scientific philosophers will have offered no defense, indeed have offered encouragement of it. For if we are will-less machines to begin with, we have no freedom to lose.

The majority of scientists will continue insist that Truth can be found in matter as though the mere accumulation of facts alone could account for the integration and meaning of mind, the prioritization of value, and the persistence of personhood amid the continually changing nature of the material brain and body. This is not to suggest that science itself must be overthrown, simply that scientist have to realize their area of specialty (matter) is not he whole of reality. Philosophers and theologians are beginning to reassert their own ascendancy within their dominions and to push back the encroachment of this brand of pseudo-science. The whole of man is not found in the material mechanism of the body, and ultimately, human truth must be sought in that which is higher than mind – not lower. Once again the age old struggle between life and death, freedom and bondage is playing out. For freedom to prevail, man must begin to grasp the nature of free will, reject the ridiculously confident assertions of materialism and once again begin to marvel at the ghost within the machine.

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