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Cover of Why Materialism Is Baloney. |
Today I want to share with you an overview of my upcoming fourth book, tentatively titled
Why Materialism Is Baloney: How true
skeptics know there is not death and fathom answers to life, the universe, and everything. The manuscript is currently complete and discussions with potential publishers are ongoing.
For far too long has the cultural debate been framed as materialism versus religion. Materialism has, unjustifiably, gone unchallenged as the only viable metaphysics as far as clear rational thinking.
Why Materialism Is Baloney seeks to change this and reframe the cultural debate. It uncovers the internal contradictions and absurd implications of materialism, and then presents a hard-nosed, non-materialist metaphysics substantiated by hard empirical evidence and clear logical argumentation. In this, it is a unique and much needed work that closes a glaring hole in today’s cultural dialogue.
Why Materialism Is Baloney articulates a surprising and compelling way of looking at nature, the laws of physics, and our condition as conscious beings. From that basis, the book lays out a coherent and logical framework upon which one can model, interpret, and explain every natural phenomenon and physical law, as well as the modalities of human consciousness, without the unlikely assumptions of materialism.
If the hypotheses and formulations of the book are correct, consciousness does not end at death, the brain being merely the image of a process by which mind localizes its own flow. Physical death entails a de-clenching or delocalization of awareness. The brain is in mind, not mind in the brain. And there is no abstract, strongly-objective universe outside of mind.
Unique in the modern intellectual discourse, the book challenges materialism on the basis of reason, empirical evidence, and skeptical argumentation, articulating ideas in clear, matter-of-factly, and direct language, with no use of loaded spiritual or religious terminology and concepts.
The book starts by laying out the key premises and implications of materialism and highlights materialism’s influence in our culture and value systems. The following chapter discusses the mind-body problem, offering a coherent view of the relationship between mind and brain according to which the brain is merely a localization mechanism of mind, a view that is substantiated with abundant empirical evidence. Thereafter, the book presents a modern and powerful formulation of the philosophy of idealism, according to which all reality is fundamentally mental. A series of metaphors are then discussed, each with an increasing level of complexity and explanatory power, which seek to make sense of all natural phenomena in terms of an idealist framework. The metaphors explain the division of the medium of mind into conscious and ‘unconscious’ segments, the origin of the laws of nature, and why they feel so separate from us. They explain the relationship between different individual minds, the nature of altered states of consciousness, mystical experiences, and many other phenomena. These metaphors are the main contribution of the work, for they offer a compelling new way of thinking about reality, scientific discoveries, and personal identity. The book closes with a series of more speculative ideas regarding the afterlife state, psychic phenomena, and other subjects of general popular appeal.
These are the topics covered in
Why Materialism Is Baloney:
- The materialist worldview and its counter-intuitive, absurd implications.
- The influence of materialism in the cultural zeitgeist.
- The mind-body problem: the relationship between the brain and the mind.
- A powerful explanation for the undeniable correlations between mind states and brain states that does not entail that the brain generates the mind.
- A powerful and modern formulation of the philosophy of idealism, according to which all reality is an essentially mental phenomenon.
- A compelling articulation of a metaphysics according to which the body is in the mind, not the mind in the body.
- The relationship between the laws of physics and idealism.
- An explanation for the division of mind between conscious and ‘unconscious’ segments, as well as an elaboration of the fundamental nature of the ‘unconscious.’
- An explanation for how, if reality is a projection of mind, the world seems so separate from us and governed by seemingly objective laws.
- Coherent and compelling explanations for altered states of consciousness, mystical experiences, psychic phenomena, near-death experiences, etc.
- A coherent and compelling way of thinking about reality that is consistent with all empirical evidence and yet denies the key assumptions and inferences of materialist philosophy