A friend at ProgettoCosmo, the Italian ID site, writes to remind us of J. P. Moreland’s dictum: “There will never be a natural explanation for consciousness from matter, period.”
Moreland is arguing from principle, that is, putting forward an argument from impossibility: “There will never be…” is not “it is unlikely…”.
But what happens when Moreland, or any ID advocate, defends similar positions by arguing from principle. When debating materialist supporters of scientism/evolutionism, they usually faces a Kafka-esque situation:
[Early 20th century Czech writer Franz Kafka wrote about hopeless impasses with irresponsible bureaucracies, thus lending his name to the increasingly frequent situation.]
1) The evolutionist puts on the table evolution’s claims that are totally absurd (consciousness from matter, organization from disorder or self-organization, universe from nothingness, etc.).
2) The IDer objects that such claims disagree with basic a priori truths (more doesn’t come from less, quality doesn’t arise from quantity, “ex nihilo nihil”, “nihil agit se ipsum”, etc.).
3) The evolutionist asks the IDer to prove such a priori truths because a priori truths don’t exist.
4) The IDer says that they are self-evident and asks the evolutionist why he in turn hasn’t to prove his own claims and why there is a double standard.
5) Answer: because evolution is true.