Dreams and the Existence of God

We've all had dreams. What are dreams? Well, they are these constructs-these fantastical worlds-we inhabit during sleep. That's how I'm defining it. They can be wonderful, or quite terrifying. But maybe they're more than just midnight fantasies...can they tell us something about the nature of reality? I think so. 

Leibniz Law

Who was Leibniz? Well, he's an old dead dude. But he came up with a lot of neat math stuff...you know, Calculus? He was one of the key people in advancing mathematics to the modern place. He was also a kick-butt philosopher. He came up with a very intuitive law called "Leibniz Law" (-_-). It goes like this:

Let A be some entity/property/process. A = whatever placeholder you want it to be.

If A = A, then whatever is true of A will be true of A. Shocked? It goes on.
If A = A, whatever is possibly true of A will be possibly true of A. Shocked yet? Just wait.

Really quick, we need to understand what philosophers mean by "possible worlds". Possible worlds are the way the world could have been, or the way the world may be. They are semantic tools for philosophers to describe possibility. So, for example, if I say "it's possible that in the future, I may buy a dog", I can say that because in my mind, that's a perfectly coherent scenario. That is, there is nothing internally contradictory about the possibility that I may buy a dog sometime in the future. Thus, because this is possible, there is a possible world where I own a dog. Let's make one more application. Suppose I say "it's possible that God exists." That's because I can envision that as a possible scenario in my mind, and there's nothing logically incoherent about that possibility (all attempts to prove God to be logically incoherent have been abject failures). Hence, there is a possible world where God exists. This is the essence of modal logic-the logic of possibilities. So let's apply that Leibniz Law. If A = God, whenever I talk about God, God must be God in all possible worlds (duh). I can't envision any non-God entity and call that God (duh). So here's what that means for Leibniz's Law:

If A = A, then whatever is true of A will be true of A.
If A = A, then whatever is possibly true of A will be possibly true of A.
If A = A, in all possible worlds, A will always be A.

This is intuitive enough. As a side note, if something is true in all possible worlds, it is necessarily true. That is to say that there is no other possible way it could have been. For example, take 1 + 1 = 2. We could have had any symbols we wanted to represent that, but as for the concept itself-one object plus another object equaling a consistent quantity of two objects-there is no other way the world could have been. One object could never have equaled two objects, etc. Back to Leibnuts, suppose you have A and B. If someone claims they are identical, then this is what should follow:

If A = B, whatever is true of A will be true of B
Whatever is possibly true of A will be possibly true of B
In all possible worlds, A = B

So this is where the fun begins :)

Dreams

Interestingly, when I dream, you do not find the subjective experience of the dream in and of itself inside the brain chemistry. At best, you can only find biological neuro-correlates. However, this tells us something extremely important...namely that materialism is false. What?? That's right-dreams DISPROVE naturalistic materialism...and even atheism. How? Well, remember Leibniz Law. If it were true that consciousness were reducible to brain chemistry, it should be fully describable in terms of brain chemistry (that's what it means to be reducible). That would mean all the functions of consciousness-including dreams-must be reducible. But they're not. I'm not saying consciousness is not correlated to brain chemistry-it most certainly is. But I'm saying that it's not reducible to brain chemistry; it is something distinct from the brain. 

A word about Strong Emergence

Emergence is the general principle that a whole system can have properties that "emerge" that it's parts do not have. Think of a bird's ability to fly. That ability cannot be predicated of any individual wing or feather or cell. When the system is put together, however, new properties emerge. In this case, however, the new ability (flight) is still completely reducible to its constituents (if we really really wanted to, we could describe flight in terms of the motions of the individual "parts"). Strong emergence, however, was invented solely for consciousness. It's the idea that perhaps consciousness is a property that emerges from the brain chemistry, but is nevertheless distinct from it. This to me seems highly implausible-in fact incoherent. It fails to escape the interaction problem. What is the interaction problem? How can an immaterial entity, such as the mind, interact with a material body if they are two completely different things? Two entities only interact if they share a common property...yet in this case, if the mind is something that is completely different from the brain, then they can share no common property. Hence, they could not interact.

It's the issue with an immaterial object interacting with a material object. For all my atheist friends out there who want to believe this is coherent when we're talking about strong emergence, consider dualism (which I reject as incoherent). Dualism is the position of many Christians. It says that we have an immaterial soul that interacts with a material body. How is that coherent though? How is it possible for a soul/mind, which is supposedly wholly other and thus non-reducible to matter, to interact with a body? This seems to be a favorite argument against dualism from my atheist friends, and I actually agree with it. Yet it's for the same reason that I feel obligated to reject strong emergence. It does not escape the interaction problem. 

Additionally, strong emergence is a case of special pleading. For every other emergent phenomena (hurricanes, the Krebbs Cycle, etc), we can describe them in terms of their constituent parts. Yet somehow (dare I say...magically?), in this one special case something ontologically distinct just pops into existence. My friend Animating Rebel has highlighted further problems here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuqP6pxpe6o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEONoJ5-8tQ

Back to Dreams
Dreams, however, tell us something even more important. They in fact, tell us two things. First, they tell us that the mind cannot be reduced to matter. I'll formulate it in terms of premises so this can be easily seen. We will define the Grey matter of your brain as M, and Dreams as D. If M = D...then whatever is true of one should be true of the other.

1.) The content of D cannot be reduced M
2.) The content of M can be reduced to M
3.) Therefore, there is something true of D that is not true of M  (it's irreducible to M, whereas M is reducible to M)
4.) Therefore, D is not reducible to M
5.) D is a function of consciousness
6.) Therefore, consciousness is not reducible to M

They also tell us something more-namely, that consciousness cannot be a property of the brain. Once again, it's surely correlated-but this argument will demonstrate that consciousness is not generated by the brain, and thus is not a process. To understand this argument, consider a dream world. The contents of the dream exist solely in your mind. They are not made of real "matter" per the argument above; rather, they are made up of your consciousness. It seems wholly conceivable that idealism is true; namely, that this world is the projection of a much larger consciousness, and we all exist in that Mind. It seems conceivable that there could be a world where only consciousness exists (i.e a dream world). So:

1.) It is possible that consciousness is the only thing that exists (justification: idealism is possibly true-there's nothing internally incoherent about it)
2.) There is a possible world where consciousness is the only thing that exists
3.) Possible worlds cannot contain properties or processes alone (you can't have "tall" without there being anyone tall, for example)
4.) There is something true of consciousness (can conceivably exist in a possible world alone) that is not true of a property or process (cannot exist in a possible world alone).
5.) Therefore, consciousness is not a property/process

The Last viable option
This excludes metaphysical naturalism. As I've argued above, the problem of two fundamentally different substances interacting excludes dualism (i.e the interaction problem) and property dualism/strong emergence. I think the interaction problem demonstrates that a type of monism must be true. Only one substance can exist in reality. I will re-post the argument for idealism from an earlier blog post here: 

Introspective Argument
Premise 1: The Mind exists
Justification: No one who's thinking can deny this.
Premise 2: The properties of the mind are not that which matter has.
Justification: Above arguments.
Conclusion 1: Mind is not reducible to matter-because they are not identical. The properties of the mind don't reduce to physical properties of matter. Hence, by Leibniz Law, they are not identical.
Premise 3: Substance dualism is false.
Justification: This will probably be most controversial among Christians, but I think the materialist actually knows what's up here. If, as the dualist says, there is an immaterial soul interacting with a material body, how should they interact?

Here's what I mean. We know square circles don't exist because those are logically incoherent entities-that is, squares and circles have properties that are directly opposed. They could never be joined together as one shape. How can something that's fundamentally immaterial interact with something material? They would just go through each other. Thus, if the soul is immaterial, how could it ever interact with a material body?

Interaction requires that the two things interacting share a common property. But if the immaterial soul (i.e consciousness) shares a common property with matter, then they can't be two separate substances. Either mind shares a physical property with matter, making mind physical, or matter shares a mental property with mind, making matter actually mental. The common property can't be a combination of matter and mind, because otherwise, you have the same interaction problem arising. Thus, either everything has to be mind, or everything has to be matter. There is no middle ground.

But if we've already established that the mind exists, and mind is not reducible to non-mind, then mind is a non-physical entity. However, if substance dualism is false, then no other substance can exist. Mind wouldn't be able to interact with any other substance...yet it clearly interacts with our bodies. Hence, the conclusion follows:
ALL IS MIND.

Idealism is true. This leads us to accept one of two conclusions.

SolipsismSolipsism is the view that only your mind exists and everything is a projection of it. But there's a strong defeater for solipsism. For one, if this world were really a projection of my mind, the moment I become aware of that possibility, I should be able to manipulate it (ever had a lucid dream?).There's an even stronger defeater though. If this world were a projection of my consciousness, then the external world (that is, the environment external to me) is built of my consciousness. The consciousness that exists "out there" is self-reflexive. That is, it exists with respect to me. However, any consciousness that exists with respect to me (to my own self), must be self-conscious. It is, after all, my consciousness. Then the obvious question arises: how can I be unconscious of my own consciousness? The consciousness in the environment must be self-conscious, since it only exists with respect to the self. So I should be omniscient if solipsism were true. I cannot be unconscious of something that is allegedly part of my own consciousness. That's a contradiction in terms. Hence, we are left with only one other alternative.

Theistic Idealism
One of the obvious questions asked of idealists is this: if the world truly exists as fundamentally mental, why can't I manipulate it by just thinking of it? Easy. This world isn't solely my consciousness. The alternative to solipsism is this: this world exists in a much larger mind, and we're all projections of that mind. This Mind we can call "God". Therefore, the reason I can't manipulate the structure of the world is because God Himself-the much larger Mind-is in control of the structure of the experience. We are His creations-thus, we exist in the environment He Himself has projected with His mind. Given that the premises of the Introspective Argument are self-evidently true, and solipsism is self-evidently false, we are left with no other alternative. Given how consciousness cannot be identical to brain chemistry via Leibniz Law, we are left with the conclusion that there is a much larger Mind that contains our minds. This has exciting implications for theology, philosophy-man, how you live your life in general. I will flesh those out later. This post is meant to be an introduction to idealism, and the reasons that led me to accept it over substance dualism. For anyone who cared enough to read, I hope you got a lot out of this argument. I will link some helpful resources for further investigation. Thanks for reading! :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l1lQMCOguw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBsI_ay8K70&list=UU5qDet6sa6rODi7t6wfpg8g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=720zEnzgTyM

The first two may be really helpful. For scientific evidence from quantum mechanics, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C5pq7W5yRM


And if you're interested in how idealists envision the interaction between brain and mind, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBsI_ay8K70

Friendly Atheist Easter Contradictions

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/04/03/before-you-celebrate-easter-check-out-this-infographic-showing-how-the-gospels-got-it-all-wrong/

I will be responding to that article. First of all, it should be noted that even if these were genuine contradictions, that still wouldn't impugn the Resurrection. The sources could be flawed and the Resurrection would have still happened. In fact, most historical sources from antiquity do have contradictions and errors; that doesn't mean the whole source is bunk! In any case, I do believe in inerrancy (someone who thinks that the documents in their original manuscripts are without any error in the truths that the author intended to affirm, historical, theological, whatever). SO. What do I do about these? Challenge accepted :)

For Judas: http://www.gotquestions.org/Judas-die.html
https://carm.org/bible-difficulties/matthew-mark/how-did-judas-die-hanging-or-falling-down

Who bought the potter's field: http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=6&article=755

As for the women: did they stand from afar or close enough that Jesus could talk to them? This betrays a sort of ignorance about how ancient biographies were written. What we have in the Gospels aren't transcripts, nor are they meant to be a sort of "video-like" recording of the events. They're basically summaries; the Gospels were written so that the early Christian community could easily memorize it. So different writers might include different details depending on what their community knew, and what the authors themselves didn't know. But that one author adds more detail than another actually doesn't impugn the account or imply a contradiction. Mark may well not have known that Jesus talked with the women on the Cross; that's not a contradiction. Jesus could have spoken to them, and then they could have stood from afar. That's not ad-hoc harmonization either; just think about this scenario. Suppose you have two friends named Bobby and Dr. Mario. They both went to a water park, and you wanna hear all about it. Well Bobby tells you that they went down the raging vortex of water park death, and after that went on a water slide. Dr. Mario tells you that you went on the vortex, then you went on a funnel of water park death, then you went on a water slide. Contradiction!!! Well...not really. One person is just supplying more detail than the other. Now suppose Bobby and Dr. Mario are relating to you who went with them that you would know. Bobby gives one set of people, and Dr. Mario gives another. Depending on the type of information the people are trying to convey, the information can vary-however, Bobby and Dr. Mario wouldn't be contradicting each other. One would just be supplying more detail.

Similarly, in the Gospel accounts, some authors just supply more details, while others leave it out-either because they didn't know about it, or because it wasn't relevant to their purposes. For example, take the list of women witnesses. Some writers would include those women which their audiences would have known-and thus, depending on the audience, the list of women will change. This isn't a contradiction. 

Stay or Leave?: Again, not a contradiction. In Luke 24:36-49, Luke was describing what went down in Galilee (he didn't need to say that this was Galilee because they lived in a high context society. Details that were well known in a community didn't need to be repeated; hence why arguments from silence aka "one Gospel mentions X and another doesn't" aren't actually indicative of contradictions). 

Famous last words: This is an argument from silence. Because one Gospel doesn't record those words doesn't mean that the author intended to say that this was all Jesus ever said on the Cross-that's silly. In fact, I've already related how dialogue in the ancient world was recorded. They were paraphrase/summary statements of a larger dialogue, not word for word recitations. Hence, one Gospel can have a condensed version of a saying of Jesus, and another can word it in a different way, and both could be right, since both would be accurate summaries of what Jesus said. In any case, there's no reason why He couldn't have said those things while on the Cross-to argue that because one Gospel doesn't record it, that therefore there's a contradiction is strange to me. 

Finding the Tomb: I think I addressed this above. Different authors recorded different women depending on their audience.In Mark 16:8, obviously the author doesn't mean to say that the women never told anybody at any time; otherwise how would he know about? That's silly-he's saying that they didn't initially tell people when the news was told to them. It's similar to how I might say that I didn't do my homework when I got home; I don't mean I never ever did my homework. The idea that the disciples don't go to the tomb in Matthew is once again, an argument from silence. That the author doesn't mention it certainly doesn't mean that he wasn't aware of it, nor is he contradicting the author account. One account is simply supplying more detail. 

Greeters at the Tomb: Once again, it's a case of an account supplying more detail. And for the record, angels in the old testament could sometimes manifest as men (see Genesis 18:2). "Angel" often just means a messenger from God-it doesn't always mean a winged dude. 

True Colors?: https://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=6&article=300

Gospel Truths:
1.) Gospels were written anonymously? 
Eh. Yes and no. It's true that they weren't originally written as "The Gospel according to Mark" or whatever. But the tradition really isn't random; if you could attribute a Gospel to anyone, why choose Mark instead of Peter? Mark was known as a chronicler of Peter-why not cut out the middle man? In fact, in the second century, we KNOW Gospels were forged in the names of popular disciples. So it doesn't really make sense to use relatively obscure ones when it comes to the synoptics. As to John, he was more popular-but there's good reason to think John either wrote parts of it, or was a source. The grammar of the Gospel of John and 1 John are so similar that many scholars infer a common source.
2.) The Gospels were undated
Yet scholarship-not just those darn conservative fundamentalists!-but people like Bart Ehrman can generally pin them down. We have quotations from the Gospels from church fathers like Ignatius and Clement, who were writing at the end of the first century. Justin Martyr calls them the "memoir of the Apostles" in his writings. Hence, the Gospels had to be written before the turn of the second century. The most liberal dating puts Mark at around AD70, Matthew and Luke at AD70-AD85ish, and John at around AD90. These are still well within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. The twelve disciples weren't the only disciples Jesus had-the Gospels record accounts of a lot more than just the twelve. Hence, these Christian communities would have been getting their information from eyewitnesses. For more on this, see Richard Bauckham's "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses", or look at one of his lectures on youtube. 
3.) Gospels written in Greek, not Aramaic. So what? If you're bilingual (which the disciples definitely were-they grew up under the Roman Empire, and hence had to learn koine Greek), then this really isn't a problem.
4.) Sure, they're not written in first person. Why does that mean that they're not eyewitness accounts? As Bauckham argues, there are clear tell-tale signs actually that the accounts were using eyewitnesses. Think about the naked man who randomly flees in Mark when Jesus was arrested. He serves practically no purpose in the narrative itself...but as Bauckham suggests, channeling a German NT scholar Gerd Theissen, some characters in the Gospels (who serve no purpose in the narrative) are there to indicate them as sources. Some are named, but others are unnamed for the sake of protective anonymity. 

Hand-Washing Pilate: Would this have been well known? Not really. It again depend on the sources the writers of the Gospels were using. That one Gospel supplies more detail about the trail than another does NOT imply a contradiction here. 

Guard at the tomb: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/reply-to-evan-fales-on-the-empty-tomb-of-jesus

Did Pilate Punt to Herod: Once again, high context society here. The Gospels were written to be preachable. Think about how human memory works-we often need only a small line from a particular event to jolt our memories about what happened. Hence, if the trial was well known, the writers would have only needed to give a small account of the trial to jolt the memory of their community. 

Ascension of Jesus: Well, if John didn't give as much centrality/drama to it as Luke, that just kind of ruins the whole evolutionary development thing! Of course, if different authors have different emphases, one wonders why this implies a development or a contradiction or even a noteworthy objection....

Spear to the Side: Actually, this was just a common roman practice of checking to see if a victim was dead. See Martin Hengel's work on Crucifixions in the Ancient world. In Mark, when the soldiers go to check if Jesus is dead, what do you think that entails? Secondly, it's false that there was an objection about Jesus surviving. In the first century, the only objection raised by the Jewish opponents were: the disciples stole the body (which, interestingly, means that the tomb was empty!). Lucian of Samosata, a Greek critic of Christianity, made the same sort of remark. No one was thinking that Jesus could have survived crucifixion. In fact, we only have 

We don't have one record of ANYONE surviving crucifixion. It comes from Josephus; he was an influential Jew who had capitulated to the Romans. Three of his friends were crucified, and Josephus used his influence to get them down and give them the best medical attention available. Two of them still died. You really think anyone would object that Jesus could survive getting flogged with a cat-o-9, being beaten, and having nails pierced through his hands and feet? (and btw, we know that was a common roman practice in Judea too. Yehonnan is the remains of a crucifixion victim-the people who found his body found a nail stuck in his foot with a piece of wood still attached. It was a brutal process, to say the least. The Romans knew how to kill people)

Magical Powers: Actually John doesn't say that Jesus walked through the wall. He could have appeared on the inside, to be sure-He certainly is invested with what we would call "supernatural" powers. But I can think of a reason Jesus would want the stone rolled away-the fact that the tomb was empty would be obvious to those who wanted to seek His face. The crowd that arrested him wasn't "knocked down" by the way; they backed away and bowed down because they thought he was claiming deity.  Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, “Whom do you seek?” They answered him, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus said to them, “I am he.” Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.
(John 18:4-6 ESV)

Why do they back down and fall to the ground? "I am he" is a greek phrase: ego eimi. It was YHWH's self-identification in Exodus 3:14 and frequently throughout Isaiah (particularly chapters 40-55).

To the charge that the Gospels are like religious hero accounts, see Richard Burridge's treatment on the genre of the Gospels. Ehrman (an agnostic critic of Christianity) sees them as Greco-Roman biographies. So no. Also, why think we would have contemporary records of what went down in Judea? Not a whole lot of people actually cared about Jerusalem (besides Israel). This wasn't the 21st century-reporting of events wasn't wild and widespread.

How did the women expect to gain access if the guards were there: Excuse me, the purpose of the guards was to prevent the disciples from stealing the body. Clearly, the women with their spices weren't going to do that. And if they tried, the guards could have stopped them. Nowhere are the guards commanded to prevent anyone from getting in the tomb.

Why was the tomb found open: I've addressed that-easily so that there would be clear evidence of an empty tomb.

Was Pilate actually reluctant to convict: Yup, which actually makes good historical sense. Pilate had gotten in trouble for slaughtering a bunch of Jews, and was removed in AD36 as the Roman prefect for more bloodshed. So get this: 3-6 years after Jesus's crucifixion, he was in a spot where one act of mass bloodshed would have gotten him removed. If he released Jesus (who the Jews were claiming had set himself up as the messianic King/Lord of the world), then Tiberius would have gotten suspicious of him. He would have been releasing someone who had allegedly challenged Caesar. And yet, his reputation was also on the line here. If he condemned Jesus without finding clear evidence for a guilty charge, he would be known as someone who capitulated to Jewish requests. He was ruthless; but even in our historical sources about him (Josephus and Tacitus and Philo), he still acts for what he sees to be a viable reason. So he was in a dilemma; in the end, he chose to kill Jesus to preserve his job, rather than bringing in a bunch of Roman soldiers to kill everyone on Passover.

Now I just want to address 5. It's getting popular from the New Atheist community to claim that Jesus didn't exist. First of all, even if it were true that the sources we have about Jesus were all Christian sources, that wouldn't matter. A lot of sources about a lot of figures from the ancient world are saved from the followers of that figure. There are ways to sift out embellishments from facts (though I don't think there are actual embellishments in the Gospels). But moreover, there isn't one scholar who teaches at an accredited institution of higher learning-atheist, Muslim, Jew, agnostic, liberal Christian, whatever-who thinks that Jesus didn't exist. See this clip from Bart Ehrman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4q3WlM9rCI

Nor are these troubling facts. In fact, this is exactly what we'd expect to see from independent eyewitness sources. Now, as to the issue of "embellishment", see this article from Lydia McGrew: http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2015/03/debunking-claim-of-development-in.html

Barbosa, Booty, and God

"I feel....cold!" 

Barbosa stares blankly into the distance as he falls over and dies. The premise of the first Pirates movie is that Barbosa's crew had taken a piece of cursed gold. Now, they can't feel jack diddly squat. All the pleasures of life they normally enjoy are stripped-the crew feels nothing. That is, until Jack Sparrow drops the last piece of Aztec booty (and by booty I mean gold) in the chest. Boom. Barbosa's been shot and starts feeling again-and feels cold. And drops dead. 

Coldness
Today was a beautiful day outside-breezy. Last Friday, that was not the case. I was spending the night at Wheaton College, where it was rather cold. However, a dude from Hawaii was also there...he called the air "crisp". No joke. I kind of like that :)

What is sensation though? Think about it. When cold air hits my skin, the neurons in that area send a signal to the brain. But is the signal (or the resultant chemistry) identical to the sensation? I'm going to ask a weird question. Can you find coldness in the brain chemistry? Sure, you can find signals that correlate to the feeling of coldness...but can you find the sensation itself in the brain chemistry? Check this out: 

Leibniz Law
Who was Leibniz? Well, he's an old dead dude. But he came up with a lot of neat math stuff...you know, Calculus? He was one of the key people in advancing mathematics to the modern place. He was also a kick-butt philosopher. He came up with a very intuitive law called "Leibniz Law" (-_-). It goes like this:

Let A be some entity/property/process. A = whatever placeholder you want it to be.

If A = A, then whatever is true of A will be true of A. Shocked? It goes on.
If A = A, whatever is possibly true of A will be possibly true of A. Shocked yet? Just wait.

Really quick, we need to understand what philosophers mean by "possible worlds". Possible worlds are the way the world could have been, or the way the world may be. They are semantic tools for philosophers to describe possibility. So, for example, if I say "it's possible that in the future, I may buy a dog", I can say that because in my mind, that's a perfectly coherent scenario. That is, there is nothing internally contradictory about the possibility that I may buy a dog sometime in the future. Thus, because this is possible, there is a possible world where I own a dog. Let's make one more application. Suppose I say "it's possible that God exists." That's because I can envision that as a possible scenario in my mind, and there's nothing logically incoherent about that possibility (all attempts to prove God to be logically incoherent have been abject failures). Hence, there is a possible world where God exists. This is the essence of modal logic-the logic of possibilities. So let's apply that Leibniz Law. If A = God, whenever I talk about God, God must be God in all possible worlds (duh). I can't envision any non-God entity and call that God (duh). So here's what that means for Leibniz's Law:

If A = A, then whatever is true of A will be true of A.
If A = A, then whatever is possibly true of A will be possibly true of A.
If A = A, in all possible worlds, A will always be A.

This is intuitive enough. As a side note, if something is true in all possible worlds, it is necessarily true. That is to say that there is no other possible way it could have been. For example, take 1 + 1 = 2. We could have had any symbols we wanted to represent that, but as for the concept itself-one object plus another object equaling a consistent quantity of two objects-there is no other way the world could have been. One object could never have equaled two objects, etc. Back to Leibnuts, suppose you have A and B. If someone claims they are identical, then this is what should follow:

If A = B, whatever is true of A will be true of B
Whatever is possibly true of A will be possibly true of B
In all possible worlds, A = B

So this is where the fun begins :)

Back to Booty
When Barbosa wanted to steal the gold from the chest, he definitely felt excited. But think about this carefully: is the subjective experience identical to the brain stuff? Let's define mental state as MS, and brain state as BS (brain state being the grey stuff and the chemistry and whatnot). If MS = BS, then by Leibniz Law, whatever is true of MS should be true of BS. Is that true?

Well, put yourself in Barbosa's shoes and think of booty. And by booty I mean the chest. Form a mental image of it in your mind. So if it's true that your mental state IS a brain state (i.e is identical), then everything that is true of your MS should be true of the corresponding BS. However, we can note something interesting here: you won't find the mental picture in the brain chemistry. You don't find subjective sensation in the grey matter that corresponds to our experience. But that means there's something true of MS (namely, the property of subjective experience) that's not true of BS. Hence...MS ain't BS. Let me reiterate a few other arguments, and then flesh out the implications (this will be mainly a restatement of stuff I've written elsewhere on this blog): 

Idealism
As mentioned earlier, you won't find subjective experience in the brain chemistry. You will find correlates to subjective experience-perhaps dopamine or whatever. But you won't find the subjective experience itself. This is important to note. Philosophers call your subjective experience "qualia". Qualia are all subjective sensations you experience-knowledge, sensation of color, sensation of taste, etc. Any subjective sensation you have is qualia. So if everything that exists is fundamentally consciousness, it means that nothing exists outside of perception. If you think about it, we have no evidence that anything exists outside of perception-observing evidence itself requires the existence of perception (since the act of "observing" is an act of perceiving). This is the view I take. Most Christians are probably dualists-they believe that soul and body are fundamentally different. I don't. Though I'm not the only Christian to hold that view. What follows is a proof of idealism.

Why Idealism is Irrefutably true
The relevant points to keep in mind are these:
-Leibniz Law
-Subjective experience vs neurological correlates to subjective experience. What I mean by this is simply that there are certainly correlates to subjective experience in the brain. Thinking really hard results in higher brain activity. However, correlation does not equal causation, and causation doesn't equal identity. Let me discuss those points.

Suppose event X is correlated to event Y. If Y happens after X, that doesn't always mean that X caused Y. If my heater konks out after some dude moves in with me, that doesn't necessarily mean he's the reason the heater konked out. He could be, but he's not necessarily the reason. Also, if X and Y are causally linked, that doesn't imply that X is identical to Y. So if a chemical causes a certain subjective experience, that doesn't imply that that chemical is identical to that experience. If brain activity and consciousness are correlated (which they undeniably are), that doesn't imply that consciousness reduces to reactions going off inside your head.

In fact (and this is where Leibniz Law comes into play), it emphatically isn't. Leibniz had a thought experiment called "Leibniz mill". If you look into your brain, you'll see a lot of chemicals. You'll see electrical impulses. You will not see subjective experience. You will see the correlates to subjective experience. But you will not see the sensations themselves. So ask yourself, is consciousness identical to material processes going off inside your head? If it were, why is it that I cannot do neuroscience by pure introspection? As Sam Harris admits, "there's nothing about introspection (that is, closing your eyes and looking within) that leads you to sense that your subjectivity is at all dependent or even remotely related to voltage changes going off inside your head." If consciousness were identical to these processes, why is it that I do not have access to said electrical signals?

Some at this point will accuse me of committing the fallacy of composition. That is to say that I am taking what applies to the parts, and applying it to the whole. If consciousness is the result of a bunch of neurons going off, then what is true of consciousness won't be true of those individual neurons. However, the key thing to note about the fallacy of composition is that the parts don't just disappear. Take an airplane jet engine. It is true that there are things that are true of the airplane that aren't true of the jet engine. However, the parts of the airplane don't just disappear. The jet is still part of the airplane. However, if you do introspection, you will not find neurons anywhere. You won't find electrical signals. They practically vanish. Again, I am not suggesting that consciousness isn't correlated to brain activity. However, I am saying that it is not reducible to brain activity.

Let me illustrate this point further. Take Mary. Mary is a Color scientist who for whatever reason loves to study color. She lives in the future, where we have the whole brain mapped. She learns all the physical facts there are to know about how brains process color. She spends countless hours learning these facts. What's the catch? She's colorblind.

So though she knows all the physical facts there are to know about color, and about how the brain reacts when it perceives color, she has no idea what people actually see when they see "redness". She knows the correlates to redness, but she doesn't know what red looks like (because she's colorblind). What does that mean? It means that physical facts about the brain aren't identical to mental facts...and thus, there is something true of subjective experience that's not true of the physical facts surrounding that subjective experience. Hence, subjective experience-consciousness-is not reducible to brain chemistry.

David Chalmers, a philosopher of the mind, came up with a neat thought experiment. For all you know, I might be a meat bag reacting to electrical signals, but may have no subjective experience at all. I might say I do, but that's just my wiring causing me to say that. Really, I'm a zombie-what Chalmers calls a "p-zombie" (a philosophical zombie). I look and talk like you people with subjective experience, but I have none. Why does that matter? You can know all the physical facts about my brain, but that wouldn't prove I'm conscious. You cannot know what I'm subjectively experiencing without asking me about my subjective experience. Here's where Leibniz Law and modal logic come into play:

1.) It's possible that p-zombies exist (they are conceivable-I could be one for all you know)
2.) There is a possible world where p-zombies exist. (Modal possibility)
3.) You could learn all the physical facts about the p-zombies' brains, and that wouldn't tell you about there subjective experience (because they have none)
4.) There is a possible world where physical facts don't equal mental facts (since you could learn the physical facts about the p-zombies' brains, and that wouldn't tell you about their subjective experience)
5.) Conclusion: Mental facts and physical facts are not identical (since if they were, they'd be identical in all possible worlds given Leibniz Law. bam.)

Oh wait. There's more.

Let's consider the fact that there are some animals that can perceive ranges of light we cannot. We must use machines to do it-the machines capture the light (infared, for example), and convert it into a color we can see. However, try imagining a color you can't perceive. Oh wait, you can't. My AP Bio teacher was talking about her sister (or someone she knew) who can look at two apparently red sheets of paper. Her sister can perceive the different shades of red present in those paper sheets, whereas to us, it would just look like the same color. You could learn all the facts about how a bird's brain is processing a particular range of light we can't see, and still not know what the bird is seeing. You can learn all the physical facts about the brain of my AP Bio teacher's sister, and still not know what it's like to see those different shades of red. So check this out:

1.) You can learn all physical facts about how bird/sister's brain is processing color, and not know what they're seeing.
2.) There is something true of subjective experience that's not true of mental facts (because you could learn everything there is to learn about the physical facts, and not know the subjective experience of your subject)
Conclusion: Physical facts are not identical to mental facts via Leibniz Law.

Oh, but I'm not done yet. Consider what I said about Leibniz Mill. Nowhere in the brain chemistry will you find the subjective experience itself. You will find chemical correlates, but you won't find the experience itself. Hence:

1.) Brain chemistry exists.
2.) You will not find subjective experience in the brain chemistry (since you won't find the sensations themselves)
Conclusion: There is something true of consciousness (namely, consciousness has the property of subjective experience aka qualia) that's not true of the brain chemistry (you won't find subjective experience itself in the brain chemistry)

One more just to hammer the point home:

It is possible that this world is an idealist world. It's possible that this world emerges from consciousness-namely, what we think of as matter is really just perception. The world exists as perception + the perceiver. Again, we have no evidence that anything exists outside of perception. When we look at the world around us, we must describe the world in terms of consciousness. By this, I mean we must describe the world in terms of some sort of experience-be it color, shape, feeling, knowledge, etc. All of those are descriptions of our own experiences. And all of those are perceived in consciousness (since we're consciously aware of all of them). So let's apply this to brain chemistry. Let a particular neurological state be BS (for brain state). Let consciousness/conscious experience be MS (mental state). If BS = MS, then if the two are identical, they should have ALL things in common. Clearly, however, this is false. It's possible that idealism is true-unless anyone can prove that idealism is logically contradictory, it remains a possibility. Modal logic will be important here. Thus:

1.) It's possible that idealism is true. (it's conceivably true)
2.) There is a possible idealist world (modal logic)
3.) In a possible idealist world, matter does not exist as fundamental.
4.) In a possible idealist world, mind exists as fundamental.
Conclusion: Since there is something true of mind (can exist as fundamental in a possible idealist world) that's not true of matter (can't exist in an idealist world as fundamental), MS ain't BS. 

Remember that identity is a necessary property-that is, if A = A, it will be so in all possible worlds. But clearly, this is not the case.

And here's where I make my case for idealism, and in turn, theism.

Introspective Argument
Premise 1: The Mind exists
Justification: No one who's thinking can deny this.
Premise 2: The properties of the mind are not that which matter has.
Justification: Above arguments.
Conclusion 1: Mind is not reducible to matter-because they are not identical. The properties of the mind don't reduce to physical properties of matter. Hence, by Leibniz Law, they are not identical.
Premise 3: Substance dualism is false.
Justification: This will probably be most controversial among Christians, but I think the materialist actually knows what's up here. If, as the dualist says, there is an immaterial soul interacting with a material body, how should they interact?

Here's what I mean. We know square circles don't exist because those are logically incoherent entities-that is, squares and circles have properties that are directly opposed. They could never be joined together as one shape. How can something that's fundamentally immaterial interact with something material? They would just go through each other. Thus, if the soul is immaterial, how could it ever interact with a material body?

Interaction requires that the two things interacting share a common property. But if the immaterial soul (i.e consciousness) shares a common property with matter, then they can't be two separate substances. Either mind shares a physical property with matter, making mind physical, or matter shares a mental property with mind, making matter actually mental. The common property can't be a combination of matter and mind, because otherwise, you have the same interaction problem arising. Thus, either everything has to be mind, or everything has to be matter. There is no middle ground.

But if we've already established that the mind exists, and mind is not reducible to non-mind, then mind is a non-physical entity. However, if substance dualism is false, then no other substance can exist. Mind wouldn't be able to interact with any other substance...yet it clearly interacts with our bodies. Hence, the conclusion follows:
ALL IS MIND.

Idealism is true. This leads us to accept one of two conclusions.
SolipsismSolipsism is the view that only your mind exists and everything is a projection of it. But there's a strong defeater for solipsism. For one, if this world were really a projection of my mind, the moment I become aware of that possibility, I should be able to manipulate it (ever had a lucid dream?).There's an even stronger defeater though. If this world were a projection of my consciousness, then the external world (that is, the environment external to me) is built of my consciousness. The consciousness that exists "out there" is self-reflexive. That is, it exists with respect to me. However, any consciousness that exists with respect to me (to my own self), must be self-conscious. It is, after all, my consciousness. Then the obvious question arises: how can I be unconscious of my own consciousness? The consciousness in the environment must be self-conscious, since it only exists with respect to the self. So I should be omniscient if solipsism were true. I cannot be unconscious of something that is allegedly part of my own consciousness. That's a contradiction in terms. Hence, we are left with only one other alternative.
Theistic Idealism
One of the obvious questions asked of idealists is this: if the world truly exists as fundamentally mental, why can't I manipulate it by just thinking of it? Easy. This world isn't solely my consciousness. The alternative to solipsism is this: this world exists in a much larger mind, and we're all projections of that mind. This Mind we can call "God". Therefore, the reason I can't manipulate the structure of the world is because God Himself-the much larger Mind-is in control of the structure of the experience. We are His creations-thus, we exist in the environment He Himself has projected with His mind. Given that the premises of the Introspective Argument are self-evidently true, and solipsism is self-evidently false, we are left with no other alternative. Given how consciousness cannot be identical to brain chemistry via Leibniz Law, we are left with the conclusion that there is a much larger Mind that contains our minds. This has exciting implications for theology, philosophy-man, how you live your life in general. I will flesh those out later. This post is meant to be an introduction to idealism, and the reasons that led me to accept it over substance dualism. For anyone who cared enough to read, I hope you got a lot out of this argument. I will link some helpful resources for further investigation. Thanks for reading! :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l1lQMCOguw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBsI_ay8K70&list=UU5qDet6sa6rODi7t6wfpg8g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=720zEnzgTyM

The first two may be really helpful. For scientific evidence from quantum mechanics, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C5pq7W5yRM

Conclusion
Barbosa-and all people-have desires. Yet those desires tell us something very interesting about the nature of reality. It's true that our consciousness and the brain chemistry are linked-brain states affect mental states. However, it's equally true that our sense of "self" does not reduce to the brain chemistry...the desires and emotions we have, while correlated to the grey stuff, does not reduce to it. And hence, idealism follows from the above argument. We live through a Mind much bigger than our own. We live through God.