I recently noticed a thread on an internet forum discussing why more psychics don't agree to be tested. One of the reasons psychics are reluctant to be tested by materialists is because psychics don't trust materialists. It is quite a reasonable opinion.
Materialism is not a rational philosophy because it is self-refuting in a number of ways (see Notes below).
Another reason materialist's rationality is suspect is becuause, 21% of American atheists believe in God.
I think the materialists need to work on their own issues first. When they get their act together, maybe more psychics will trust them.
Notes (See the links below for the full arguments. Also, the most up-to-date version of this section can be found on my web site on the page on Skeptical Fallacies, in the section Materialism is not a Rational Philosophy.)
Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him? By ANDREW FERGUSON
Neo-Darwinism tells us that we have the power of reason because reason was adaptive; it must have helped us survive, back in the day. Yet reason often conflicts with our intuition or our emotion—capacities that must also have been adaptive and essential for survival. Why should we “privilege” one capacity over another when reason and intuition conflict? On its own terms, the scheme of neo-Darwinism gives us no standard by which we should choose one adaptive capacity over the other. And yet neo-Darwinists insist we embrace neo-Darwinism because it conforms to our reason, even though it runs against our intuition. Their defense of reason is unreasonable.
Edward Feser: Popper contra computationalism
4. So if materialism is true, then there is nothing about our thought processes that can make one thought a rational justification of another; for their physical and causal relations alone, and not their semantic and logical relations, determine which thought follows which.
5. So if materialism is true, none of our thoughts ever is rationally justified.
6. But this includes the thoughts of materialists themselves.
7. So if materialism is true, then it cannot be rationally justified; the theory undermines itself.
Why Darwinist Materialism is Wrong BY ALVIN PLANTINGA
Given materialist naturalism, the probability that my cognitive faculties are reliable with respect to metaphysical beliefs would be low. So take any metaphysical belief I have: the probability that it is true, given materialist naturalism, cannot be much above .5. But of course materialist naturalism is itself a metaphysical belief. So the materialistic naturalist should think the probability of materialist naturalism is about .5. But that means that she cannot sensibly believe her own doctrine. If she believes it, she shouldn’t believe it. In this way materialist naturalism is self-defeating.
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