Not a book for light reading. Interesting worldview to ponder. Scientific and philosophical thoughts

Interesting thoughts on both archaic and modern philosophies on multiple branches of science and their relationships/non-relationships with religions.

Special thanks to NetGalley for sharing this digital ARC with me in exchange for my honest review.

This book offers a thought-provoking exploration of the intersection between science, philosophy, and faith, challenging the prevailing notion of scientific materialism. Siegel presents compelling arguments against materialism, inviting readers to reconsider their perspectives on the nature of reality and the existence of the spiritual realm.

This book has been a great reading experience. Thanks to the author and the publisher for bringing this book to life.

This was certainly a compelling read! It was a mostly-unbiased look at dogma from both sides of the matter of, well, matter and spirituality. I like that Siegel weighs the evidence equally and holds nothing back about his opinion on the facts presented. So much was debunked and scrutinized and it was very obvious some serious research and thought went into the making of this book. I think it makes an excellent conversation/debate starter, for sure.

I really enjoyed this volume on faith and religion. Mr. Siegal does a great job of explaining his thoughts and philosophy and comparing it to opposing views. It is an interesting analysis of some of the current prevalent philosophies and their high and low points. A thought provoking book.

This book was interesting in trying to use science as a way to explain faith. I felt that it definitely tried to use religion more than science in its approach. Faith, for me, is a very personal approach to understanding the world and its actions. Faith assists me in finding reasons and paths for my own reactions to events and people. Mr. Siegel tends to want to only use religion to understand faith, but for me, it's more of my little voice that shows me a path to faith.

A super interesting book about the intersection of science and religion that really got me thinking about some of my core and established beliefs and values. Easy to read and follow.

This book makes the impressive claim that it may change your worldview. Personally, I did not find my worldview changed very much at all by the ending of the book, as I was already in line with the author’s viewpoints from the beginning. That said, some of the points delved into within chapter four almost brought on a mini-existential crisis. So rest, assured, parts of this book will take you to some deep places of philosophical thought.

The main point of this book is to take a fairly critical look at materialism - the belief that only matter exists and mind/spirit is a byproduct of that matter - and then provides the answer of dualism as a more plausible concept.

While the book was a fairly interesting read, I am convinced that its final iteration could have contained more. Namely, at the very least, some sort of conclusion. The abrupt end to the text left me feeling like the ends of various points and ideas weren’t tied together very neatly at all.

Among other topics, this book discusses computer consciousness, near-death experiences, reconciliation of science and religion, and then a thorough examination and evisceration of the “Four Horsemen of New Atheism” - Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Dennett. I found this section to be the most interesting. It’s rare to see this kind of pushback from likeminded atheists. I was pleased with how Siegal handled his arguments against such prominent atheist figures. The author is far more of a skeptic than many of these men claim to be and has firmly established himself as someone who would debate such men phenomenally, following science and evidence rather than materialist (and self-contradictory) dogmas.

A special thanks to #NetGalley and #OmoPress for providing me with an early review copy of this book.

Those who think there may be continuance of consciousness after bodily death will find in this book an analysis of the proponents of the opposite view. Charles Siegel critiques the views of six well publicized atheists viz. Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Edward O. Wilson, Steven Pinker. Who is Siegel?
"Charles Siegel is the author of books on a variety of subjects, including The Politics of Simple Living, Unplanning: Livable Cities and Political Choices, and Classical Liberalism. He is currently editing a three-volume collection of writing by Hellenistic Philosophers." -- https://www.cnu.org/charles-siegel

Charles Siegel's philosophy is that current science is incomplete - there must be more to the nature of man than materialists propose. His is a light overview - an introduction to the debate. His science is shallow in some spots and not current with recent research e.g. in Chapter 2
The Mind-Body Problem where he states "Scientists have not explained the physiological basis of consciousness." He obviously is unaware of "Conscious Mind, Resonant Brain How Each Brain Makes a Mind" by Stephen Grossberg.

All in all this is a fair treatment of the debate and worth reading.

This is really a book about science and philosophy, not faith. In it, author Charles Siegel begins by identifying himself as a skeptic. He then compares materialism — the belief that only matter exists, and the conscious mind is just a byproduct of the brain, to dualism — the belief that mind and body are separate. To do this he examines and criticizes a number of the “new atheists”, including Steven Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and others. He also includes a chapter about near-death experiences. His conclusion is that dualism is more plausible, and that it is possible to accept dualism and also be religious.

He points out that many proponents of atheistic philosophies are just as dogmatic as religious fundamentalists. They also start with certain tenets that they believe without questioning. I can certainly agree on these points. However, Mr. Siegel seems blind to his own set of doctrines — evolution and natural selection. He seems blind to anything that contradicts these theories.

I found much of his reasoning tedious, circular and repetitive. There was no clear summary, and no statement of what Mr. Siegel believes. He simply says he is a person who cannot believe something without some reason to think that it is true. What would that reason be? I still don’t know.

This book turned out not to be what I thought it was.
The author just threw out the idea of God or a higher power that created the universe.
The remainder of the book seemed to argue between materialism (matter is all there is) and dualism (the mind cannot come from matter).
Dualism is his answer. Also, since there is no reason to believe that science, especially physics, has all the answers, there must be more scientific discoveries in the future that will provide the answer to the mind-body problem.
I read the whole thing, and it didn't teach me much except this author's opinion.
So, the skeptic's faith is in future discoveries, but it cannot be God.
Well, that's his opinion. What a waste of time!

The trouble with what science and religion believe about materialism (matter) is thoroughly investigated in this philosophical book written by a well-educated philosopher, who is willing to become a skeptic of faith and of science.

Such case studies as, do computers have the ability to have a consciousness, are explored. The book explains the difference between a materialist view and a dualist view of the existence of the matter of the mind (or spirit) versus the matter of the body as we understand matter to be defined.

I found the book intriguing because I often find myself saying, "I don't know," as to where the lines blur between what religion says is absolute truth and where science seems to be sure of the opposite points of view. I also was pleased with the amount of research this book must have required. The conclusion of the book leads to a belief that materialism is no more correct than the idea of dualism. I would read this book again and love to see it in an audiobook version because I am more of an audiobook fan.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me review this book. This book was somewhat hard to get in to but did have some interesting points. A bit more in-depth than I thought it would be.

Okay. I finished this a month ago and finally have enough outside information to finish this - reading Pinker's tome, How the Mind Works, David Ray Griffin's Unsnarling the World-Knot (a very tedious word salad ostensibly about the mind-body problem), Pinker's 1997 three page essay "CAN A COMPUTER BE CONSCIOUS?", some of Siegel's other references, and more on materialism vs dualism. A lot of extra reading for one so-so book. But I did learn things, so I've got that going for me.

Where do I start? How do I finish? A thorough response would be longer than the book. The other reviews so far are largely praising, which means I’m probably going to get the standard “You don’t get it” responses. If you subscribe to the ghost in the machine view, you’ll probably like this book. It’s like a god of the gaps argument all over. “I can’t explain how a mind comes into existence and can control physical interactions, neither can the materialists [to which I say, yet…], so they must be wrong.” If you like apologetics, you’ll probably like this book. If you’re into philosophers who imagine what they consider fundamentally unanswerable pseudoquestions … and then imagine they have the answers, or that no one does, you might like this book. And when did "lover of wisdom" become a BOGSAT*? Siegel thinks his philosopher quotes are the final say in the matter (he uses phrases like "Many philosophers have shown that the scientific knowledge we have today cannot [Siegel really likes his absolutes] explain how we can have inner experience, such as our experience of the color red, of the smell of a rose, or of an abstract idea."

It’s books like these, short though they may be, that involve so much outside reading, because I am a true skeptic and don’t take Mr. Siegel’s arguments “on faith”. He cites a reference, I go find it and see if his distillation or (mis)representation was accurate - a couple of examples below show the answer is no more than not, and given they were from just the first page, that means I have to suspect everything. And that is exhausting. But enlightening.

I do need to say that I concurred with Mr. Siegel’s second and third paragraphs:

“As a congenital skeptic, I am not capable of this sort of faith [religious faith without evidence]. Even if I try, I cannot believe something unless I have some reason to think that it is true. Not because the belief is good for society. Not because the belief is good for me. Not even because someone says the belief will bring me eternal bliss. It seems that, centuries ago, most people could take religious dogmas on faith, but today more and more people cannot. I certainly cannot.”

Bam. Spot on. And then… it went downhill. Just two paragraphs later, he hits Steven Pinker in How the Mind Works (HTMW), who says that computer models will help us understand the mind, but…
“He [Pinker] goes a giant step further by saying that, because our consciousness is a by-product of the brain, computers that modeled the human brain would have consciousness like ours—which is something like a climate scientist saying that his computer model of the rising ocean is actually wet, that people should keep away from it to avoid drowning.” Hyperbole much? It gets, uh, … better: [Pinker] says that he believes it because the idea that computers can have minds is “as fundamental to cognitive science as the cell doctrine is to biology and plate tectonics is to geology.”

No. I had to take a detour and read that book, which was on a list of mine anyway. Pinker presents a theory of thinking called "the physical symbol hypothesis system", or "computational" or "representational" theories of mind. The quote is taken out of context:
"The way the elements in the processor are wired up would cause them to sense and copy pieces of a representation, and to produce new representations, in a way that mimics the rules of reasoning. With many thousands of representations and a set of somewhat more sophisticated processors (perhaps different kinds of representations and processors for different kinds of thinking), you might have a genuinely intelligent brain or computer.
[...]
This, in a nutshell, is the theory of thinking called “the physical symbol system hypothesis” or the “computational” or “representational” theory of mind. It is as fundamental to cognitive science as the cell doctrine is to biology and plate tectonics is to geology. Cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists are trying to figure out what kinds of representations and processors the brain has. But there are ground rules that must be followed at all times: no little men inside, and no peeking. The representations that one posits in the mind have to be arrangements of symbols, and the processor has to be a device with a fixed set of reflexes, period. The combination, acting all by itself, has to produce the intelligent conclusions. The theorist is forbidden to peer inside and “read” the symbols, “make sense” of them, and poke around to nudge the device in smart directions like some deus ex machina."

Later Siegel said: For example, ancient Roman culture placed a high value on military courage. Mothers told sons going to war, “Come back with your shield or on it” Actually, it was the Greek Plutarch, writing about Spartans - three hundred years earlier. And Plutarch said he did not write political history, rather created a narrative to illustrate his points. Meaning, of course, that it is probably anecdotal at best. And meaning I’ve got to check everything here, which would take months away from other reading. Because…

On the same first page, Siegel says, from Pinker’s The Language Instinct (one I have already read before this), “Pinker thinks the computer model will be able to feel an itch even though it does not have a body to scratch. What evidence does he give for this belief? He believes it without evidence because it is a fundamental doctrine of cognitive science—which is not much different from believing without evidence that God created the universe because it is a fundamental doctrine of your religion.”

Wow. Twisting words to support a theme. Pinker is saying that representational theory is core to cognitive science, not that he believes something without evidence (Siegel says it again later in the book, doubling down, I guess.) Now, some amputees feel an itch, or pain, without a limb to scratch, but that undermines Siegel's argument. Not that it matters, I was not impressed with The Language Instinct. I thought Pinker had a way of complicating concepts with extraneous details. Siegel, on the other hand, obfuscates with philosophy. Have to watch him hard.

With respect to Pinker, Siegel gives a ref to a book, (ex: HTMW), with page numbers in the note and a reduction with a generous license of something he claims Pinker says. A problem is that the page numbers don’t quite align with editions of the book I can find and trying to find the wordings of Pinker, which also don’t quite align with Siegel’s misrepresentations, is challenging. I want to see what Pinker actually said, and how Siegel changes it to fit his agenda. Example: Siegel says “Steven Pinker is the most prominent advocate of this [mysterian] view: he says that consciousness exists but how it emerges from matter is a mystery that we will never understand. We saw at the beginning of this book that Pinker believes that computers can be conscious, because it is a fundamental doctrine of cognitive science. Yet Pinker also believes that it is incomprehensible how matter can produce subjective experience, free will, or knowledge. [he references How the Mind Works here in a note]
This is obviously a very weak position. Pinker admits that he believes computers can be conscious as a matter of doctrine, and he also admits that he does not understand how they can possibly be conscious. His beliefs are pure doctrine-faith-based rather than scientific.”

We already know that Siegel misrepresents Pinker wrt the doctrine, so off I go to check this. The note points to HTMW pp 558-565. Pinker: “And perhaps we cannot solve conundrums like free will and sentience.” And “The computational aspect of consciousness (what information is available to which processes), the neurological aspect (what in the brain correlates with consciousness), and the evolutionary aspect (when and why did the neurocomputational aspects emerge) are perfectly tractable, and I see no reason that we should not have decades of progress and eventually a complete understanding—even if we never solve residual brain-teasers like whether your red is the same as my red or what it is like to be a bat.” If you read Pinker, you know he uses cautious words - “may”, “perhaps”. This doesn't come through in Siegel's rewording.
In Part 1, Siegel writes a fantasy play of three acts (three standard materialist positions) wherein his players are right because “common sense” and everybody else doesn’t have any. Part 2 - he goes after he decides to go after six specific famous people he thinks represent all materialists (mistake there, of course). Four seem to be his other big enemies: Dennett, Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens - ostensibly because they are the modern skeptics’ gods? And everything they say is accepted as skeptic gospel? At least that’s how Siegel comes off. Please. Of those four, I’ve met and talked with Dawkins. I like Dawkins, and I don’t like Dawkins. Same with Harris and Dennett. Some of what they say makes sense, and some just doesn’t. I’ve read too little of Hitchens to have an opinion. But, I’m not sure why Siegel includes any of them. He undermines his arguments with petty nit- and cherry-picking. He calls Dawkins ignorant of religion in his chapter rant against him (while pulling aside the thin veil not hiding at all his own religious biases.) E. O. Wilson gets a treatment, and of course, Pinker bringing it home.

So, yeah, not even off of page one and I had to watch Siegel hard. He says "Evolutionists have not thought much about what reason is, because they talk only about the evolution of intelligence." Really? Rupert Reidy wrote Biology of Knowledge: The Evolutionary Basis of Reason in 1984. Another example why: "It makes no sense to say, 'I have faith, so I am sure intelligent life exists on other planets even though there is no evidence.' And it makes no sense to say, 'I am a skeptic, so I am sure that intelligent life does not exist on other planets even though there is no evidence.'”

I have encountered a lot of the faithful being “sure”, and some, but far lower percentage, skeptics being sure. Ray Nayler, in his The Mountain in the Sea had two characters exchange:
“So, I understand your skepticism - but there is skepticism, and there is naysaying.”
“Oh,” Dr. Mínervudóttir-Chan said, “I believe you. I’ve believed it all from the start. The skepticism is automatic— it is the voice all scientists need to convince in their own heads. It is my mind, trying to put the brakes on.”

Siegel says: "By contrast, the nature of mind—of consciousness and reason—is a real gap in scientific knowledge, and it gives us a real opportunity to reconcile science and religion." Why? He doesn't answer, but the implication is his religious position. I’ll quote from another fiction author, James Morrow in his Only Begotten Daughter: “Science does have all the answers. […] The problem is that we don’t have all the science.”

Yet.

2.5 stars
*BOGSAT - Bunch of Guys Sitting Around Talking
----
Too many notes, too little space. Here are a few:

"Dualism is actually based on a common-sense view of our experience"
{Materialism is based on even more sensical common sense. He’s dismissed materialism, but the evidence: consciousness exists. Just because he (and science, yet) doesn’t know how, positing that it cannot be is absurd. Meanwhile, dualism relies on mysticism...check your science at the door.}

"When we look at the problem of knowledge, we will see something even more startling, that it is impossible for the evolution of matter to produce reliable knowledge—including scientific knowledge."
{And yet it has. And the next sentence makes no sense:}
"We can justify a morality that says we should treat all people justly, even if it is not to our advantage, if evolution tapped into something that transcends matter."
{So, altruism or empathy have no place in evolutionary survival? I only survive by running away?}

"Contemporary physics and biology cannot explain how consciousness arises from matter."
{That sounds like a closed mind absolute. Did he actually mean… “yet”? I doubt it.}

"Of course, both of these groups [cognitive scientists and neuroscientists] have a vested intellectual interest in believing that contemporary science gives a complete understanding of the mind, since their own work is based on this science.}
{No. They "believe" that science will...eventually. No one is saying "complete".}

"One plausible alternative to physicalism is what we can call “new-physics materialism,”"
{I had to go read the reference. Found it here.}

"The best known thought experiment about [subjective] understanding is John Searle's "Chinese Room"."
{Pinker refutes it easily, but you won't find that here.}

"Though these thought experiments seem decisive to anyone with common sense, physicalists refuse to accept them."
{Now that’s rude. “Common sense” is the purview of only those buy into the bought experiment? Pardon, you bias is showing.}

"Evolutionary theory can explain why the Nazis wanted to exterminate the Jews, but it cannot explain why Wallenberg worked to save the Jews despite the danger to himself."
{Okay, what, then, can explain why? Oh my Thor, this guy likes out there examples.}

"Because we have reason, we can understand universal moral principles, as we can understand universal mathematical principles."
{"Universal" moral principles? There's that bias again.}

"The best evidence for dualism is based on near-death experiences."
{Oh dear. He actually said this. And...}
"...seldom in these experiences does death seem to have negative consequences"
{Also, never in the history of humans has a near dead person met a god of a different religion.}
"Of course, there have been many attempts to explain away the near-death experience, since people try to explain away anything that challenges their preconceptions."
{Or other peoples’s conceptions and deductions. Why is it that Siegel, and all of the other mystics and even scientists don’t see the intuitively obvious? Commonalities of so called NDEs are due to … wait for it… commonalities in brain chemistry.}

"There is no conclusive proof that nothing exists except matter. The materialist believes this purely as a matter of dogma."
{And…? There is no proof of anything existing except matter. Must not be deliberately deceptive in our obfuscation, now.}

"What consolation can we get from the idea that nature is often cruel, and that our reason lets us see that this cruelty is an evil?"
{Evil? Really? Why? Why ascribe an anthropomorhpic term? Nature can’t be cruel. We might call what we see cruel, but that doesn't change the fact that nature just is.}

"The Aztecs were surprised to find that Cortes and his party were disgusted by this offering [of human blood to drink}."
{No mention of the evils wrought in the name Christianity? Destroying cultures (and peoples?) and other religions, including flavors of its own?}

"After studying philosophy, Harris went on to do graduate work in neuroscience, and his books suffer from the idea that ethics and religion are nothing more than properties of our brains that can be studied by scientists."
{And they are. Religion is a by product of pareidolia. Ethics are a by product of thinking.}

"The most obvious thing about [Dawkins's] writing is that he begins by believing that nothing exists except what is known to today’s physics, that he tailors his arguments to lead to this conclusion, and that he simply ignores any evidence that gets in the way."
{Um… Pot? Kettle?}

"Hitchens is incapable of thinking seriously about philosophical questions that he mentions."
{Part 2 is littered with Siegel's sneers. It really casts him in a vindictive sort of light, and at the least, reduces his credibility.}

"If you believe what Hitchens says about religion, you probably also believe him when he says that the Federal Reserve Bank is like the Boardwalk press of Atlantic City."
{And now he insults the reader. Again.}

"...evolution limited us so we cannot understand how matter can produce mind, then it also limited us so that we do not know whether matter produces mind..."
{This is a logical flaw. It does not follow that we do not know whether matter produces mind. And there is no evidence supporting the premise that we cannot understand how. That is speculation. We don’t have all the science, yet.}

"Dualists can justify humanistic ethics. They can say that reason lets us understand the moral principle of impartiality because reason transcends nature, so it can get us beyond our evolved tendency to spread our own genes and let us see that we should treat all people as ends in themselves."
{He just drops this here. No explanations. As such, it's just his opinion.}

"We only know our own sensations, and there is no reason to add the hypothesis that material objects cause them. Thus, Berkeley said that nothing exists except ideas in our own minds and in the mind of God, with God managing everything to coordinate different people’s perceptions. This is a simple solution to the mind-body problem, but it does not sound plausible to us today and it is beyond the scope of this book."
{There is no reason to add a hypothesis of a spook causing them (the Razor of Occamm). Clearly, material objects interact with the material objects of our bodies, which have nerves, which transmit the sensations to the brain where neurons interact to interpret and respond to them.}

"If matter moves only when it is bumped or pushed by other matter, it is problematic to explain how a thought in my mind can cause my arm to move—or can cause my material body to do anything."
{Really? That argument applies to your dualism as well."}
---
For the editors:
"Static electricity is the cause of lightening,"
{should be "lightning"}

I recently had the opportunity to read A Skeptic’s Faith by Charles Siegel. This book provided a good overview of the two main propositions to the mind-body conundrum: dualism and materialism.

The book is divided into two parts. In Part 1, the author argues against materialism using subjective experience, knowledge and universal morality as evidence. He claims that the “greatest evidence” can be found in Near Death Experiences (NDEs) and devotes an entire chapter to this. Part 2 examines the works of various atheists (specifically the “four horseman of the non-apocalypse”, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens) and outlines the flaws in their reasoning.

I found this book to be a good introduction for the novice. However, I was a bit dismayed that the author thinks the greatest evidence for dualism are NDEs. I think morality provides much better evidence and thought the author’s discussion contrasting morality vs. natural selection to be illuminating. Overall, an interesting read.

The author takes the reader through a comparison of the brain and material science and relates science to the various philosophical views of religion, the soul and the divine. Each chapter attempts to answer this question of religious faith vs. science and his views critique the various disciplines of materialism, dualism or blind faith. In the last few chapters he confronts the well known writers on the subject and points out their errors and blind spots. I found that part of the book very interesting and I like that he did it at the end after he addressed the schools of thought. And took the reader on a critical journey. I think this book will be of interest to the right audience. It is not easy reading but I learned a great deal and I like the way he laid out his premise. It is extremely thought provoking and the author does a fine job of making a complex subject interesting.

I wasn't expecting to have this book delve into the idea of faith so technically.
I have to admit that it was above my head and I didn't completely understand quite a bit of it. I skimmed over some areas that were too much for me and read the parts that I was interested in. I didn't agree with a lot of the book, but again, a lot of the concepts were above my head. So perhaps I am not as well read on this subject as I thought I was.
I have read a lot about faith and have lived in a fundamentalist religion, left that religion. I've read a lot on cults and the science behind the belief and how we can get trapped in them. So I thought I would enjoy this book, but I really didn't at all. It was far too technical and not at all what I expected.

I'll be honest, I think I misunderstood this book. I thought there would be discussions about faith and religion instead as the opener to materialism but there was not much. The first part of the book discusses the ideas behind materialism. This was mostly objective though the tone was judgemental. I learned a lot in this section. The second section soured the book for me. Charles Siegel just uses it to tear down people who believe in materialism. The name-calling and tone were juvenile and the author commits the same sins he is degrading other people for.
I won't be reading any more of his work.

Charles Siegel cannot accept religion by faith alone. Instead, in A Skeptic’s Faith, he puts religious belief to the test through scientific methods and philosophical ideas. He argues that materialism can explain matter but not the mind-body connection, subjective experience, knowledge, or morality like dualism can.

Siegel challenges some traditional tenets of Christianity because they don’t scientifically hold up, like creationism versus evolution. However, he does find examples that suggest a higher consciousness exists, most notably in near-death experiences. Halfway through the book, Siegel concludes that “successful reconciliation of science and religion must be based on spiritual experience.”

The second half of the book provides arguments against “prominent proponents of new atheism” who rely on materialism. Here, Siegel explains their major ideas and refutes them. But at the same time, he claims these writers are in denial, ignorant, dehumanizing, narrow-minded, bigoted. As readers, we don’t need Siegel’s judgments thrown at us—it actually weakens his own voice.

Curiously, Siegel’s book ends abruptly with the “Idealogues” section, giving the materialists the last word. Instead, he should have reiterated dualism as a better way to explore religion and faith.

Fortunately, you don’t need a degree in science or philosophy to follow Siegel’s reasoning, nor do you need to read the new atheism books he writes about to follow his counter-argument. This is a weighty book, containing nuggets that may resonate with skeptics and believers.

Prerelease book provided by NetGalley and Omo Press for review consideration.