{"id":17283,"date":"2012-09-03T20:26:20","date_gmt":"2012-09-04T00:26:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=17283"},"modified":"2012-09-03T20:26:20","modified_gmt":"2012-09-04T00:26:20","slug":"atheism-and-the-bodymind-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/atheism-and-the-bodymind-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Atheism and the body\/mind problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2012\/aug\/31\/mortality-christopher-hitchens-review\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> about Christopher Hitchens quotes him saying: &#8220;I don&#8217;t have a body, I am a body.&#8221; This is a proposition that all atheists would affirm, but how rational is it?<\/p>\n<p>Alvin Plantigna argues for dualism \u2013 that the mind and body are separate entities. The argument goes along these lines:<\/p>\n<p>I can imagine a possible scenario where my mind exists separate from my body. I can even imagine that it is possible that my mind continues to exist if my body is destroyed.<\/p>\n<p>I cannot imagine the possibility of my body existing  separately from itself; if my body is destroyed, it is gone and I cannot imagine the possibility of it continuing to exist.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, my mind cannot identical to my body because I can imagine something is possible for it that I cannot imagine is possible for my body.<\/p>\n<p>You can see Alvin Plantigna discussing the argument below and for a formal presentation of it go <a href=\"http:\/\/philosophy.nd.edu\/people\/all\/profiles\/plantinga-alvin\/documents\/AGAINSTMATERIALISM.pdf\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WOTn_wRwDE0?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recent article about Christopher Hitchens quotes him saying: &#8220;I don&#8217;t have a body, I am a body.&#8221; This is a proposition that all atheists would affirm, but how rational is it? Alvin Plantigna argues for dualism \u2013 that the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/atheism-and-the-bodymind-problem\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,1],"tags":[370,2085,1097],"class_list":["post-17283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-uncategorized","tag-alvin-plantigna","tag-christopher-hitchens","tag-modal-argument-for-dualism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}