In hmolscience, John D. Brey (1963-) is a Christian (Ѻ) anti-materialism paradox philosopher noted for his 2002 Tautological Oxymorons, wherein he digresses on absurdities embedded in things such as the chemistry professor paradox.
Overview
In 2002, Brey, in his Tautological Oxymorons: Deconstructing Scientific Materialism, attempts to show that "natural selection" is an oxymoron via the logic that negative entropy, in Schrodinger's language, is a state of order, e.g. a person, and is unnatural according to the second law, which tends to select for states of higher or greater entropy, in short.
Brey seems to give a critique of what seems to be “thermodynamic materialism” in collision with Darwinian evolution based survival of the fittest based models of human existence; an interesting section of which is as follows: [1]
“Our bodies represent a particular state of entropy. I our bodies were destroyed, the energy would now be in a new state of entropy. The point is that our physical body represents energy in a particular entropic state. While the heart is beating, the body guards its low entropy state, and when the heart stops beating, the entropy of the body rapidly increases as the energy (within the body) tries to find equilibrium with the environment outside the body. When we speak of ‘survival’, we are speaking of the desire to protect a low state of entropy (whether we’re speaking of the universe itself, or a human body). But if ‘survival’ has positive meaning, then it would appear that low states of entropy are more desirable than high states of entropy, since all that is truly ‘survived’ is rising entropy.
Why should low states of entropy be ‘good’, so that we guard low states of entropy with our life? And if low states of entropy are preferable to high states of entropy, wasn’t the universe at its best, at or before the big bang, and won’t it be at its worst at the heat death where entropy is in an absolutely ‘high’ state. Therefore, isn’t the universe going from ‘good’ to ‘bad’—from a low state of entropy, to a high state of entropy. Now if survival is good, then the universe is bad, for the universe will not survive the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the universe will eventually find itself in a state that is the antithesis of ‘survival’ (where survival is the retention of low entropy). If the universe is bad, the so is the human body, since inevitably the human body will not survive the second law of thermodynamics.”
This is a variant of the chemistry professor paradox.
Common terms and phrases found in the book include: Arthur Schopenhauer, consciousness, Darwinism, Karl Popper, laws of physics, Ludwig Wittgenstein, matter, mechanisms, metaphor, natural selection, negative entropy, Newton, Nietzsche, Richard Dawkins, second law, soul, quantum, among others.
In 2005, Brey was theorizing about how, in his own words, “what the Bible calls ‘sin’, physics calls the ‘second law’.” [2]
In 2010 to 2013, Brey seems to have launched a “Tautology Wiki” (Ѻ), on Wikia.com, wherein he penned 324+ pages, seemingly on the topic that the “uncaused cause” argument for the existence of god is a tautological argument, i.e. circular reasoning.
In modern hmolscience terms, the subject Brey seems to be digging at above, regarding "our bodies represent a particular state of entropy", is human free energy of formation (see also: free energy table), in the sense that at any given state of existence, a molecule, such as a human, can be assigned a measure of entropy and enthalpy and hence a free energy of formation for that given state at specified conditions, typically standard temperature and pressure (STP), but more specifically what seems to be a search for a system of directionality that the older religio-mythology systems offered and that Darwinian evolution upgraded to some extent, but one consistent with modern physical science.
Quotes
The following are representative quotes:
“Materialists, on the other hand, want to deny blind faith [blind faith] and even the Jungian ‘will of god.’ They want to escape the tyranny of the laws of physics in the programming of the ‘selfish genes and selfish memes.’ They don’t want to be mere cogs in the laws of physics, they want so badly to transcend the gene and the meme, which they claim, is all there is. They accuse the believer of practicing mysticism in his hopes of transcending the gene and the meme, when it’s clear that it’s they who so badly want to transcend the flesh (replicating information) in a way that is the natural course for those who exercise ‘blind faith’ in the one who underwrites the laws of the flesh (replicating information). This serpentine desire to rise above the laws of physics and become like the laws of physics, without any faith in him, is pure religion for the materialist.”
— John Brey (2002), Tautological Oxymorons; cited on reddit (Ѻ)
References
1. Brey, John D. (2002). Tautological Oxymorons: Deconstructing Scientific Materialism: an Onto-theological Approach (quote, pgs. 44-45; thermodynamics, 21+ pgs). iUniverse.
2. Brey, John D. (2005). “Newton, Science, Theology”, Tread, TheologyWeb.com, Dec 10
External links
● John D. Brey (profile) – Blogger.com.
