From Humanoid Faults to Manipulated Consensus, 21

But the point here is that even far from such excesses the reasonableness on the part of the religious persons is not at all immune from deep consequences.
Passing off as demonstrated what is not yet demonstrated at all, passing off as the premise what is not yet the proven conclusion, taking for granted what is not, is so commonplace a cheating technique that every one of us should be trained to spot and reject it unflinchingly.
When a shrink indoctrinates a religious person about how the individual is a brain, the shrink is using that technique, and the religious person is letting the shrink get away with it. More and more, little by little, piece by piece, the religious person is allowing a creeping hollowing out of his/her basics about what the world and the individual are: the core foundation of existence is being stolen from the spirit in favour of the brain.

The point is not choosing a side in a challenge of faiths: that’s useless or rather harmful. The point is preventing anyone from playing dirty. Materialism these days passes off itself as taken for granted just as metaphysics did in the past, and if one inspects a little closer one sees how materialism is at least as much an article of faith and a dogma as metaphysics is and even more, an example of inspection being in terms of statistics: just compare the probabilities that life evolved from the inanimate elements of physical universe by chance to the probabilities that it did so by intention, whatever that intention may be and come from.

So the point is enforcing honesty: materialism and metaphysics must compete on equal terms and by nothing else and nothing more than demonstrating their theses true. The point of contention is: what is the individual, a spirit or a brain? Where is the individual located, in no material location or in the brain? Or, more specifically: how much of the individual is where? How much in the soul, how much in the brain? And above all, who can demonstrate what and how?