Poirot
"I wonder if the only dualism is between the "conscious mind" and the body. The "sub-conscious" never sleeps and, like the heart and other biological imperatives, is overseen beyond our voluntary reflexes. Perhaps this inner sanctum of past experience and knowledge is the point past which duality ceases, a kind of template, to which we are enthrall as surely as to that of our biology."

Well said. I was tring to say something like this before but I think I didn't make my point clear enough.

Consciousness is merely a manifestation of unconscious mental/physical states; it is a surface phenomenon of a thousand fold processes occuring subterraneously.
To claim consciousness maintains a "quasi-objective" or "critical distance" from the body reintroduces the mind/body split and therefore claims consciousness can somehow get outside the conditions that created it.

A bit over a week ago I let AJ Phillips get away with an accusation that I was ducking and weaving and couldn't show that his astronomer had a tenuous grasp of physics. I had other more pressing things to worry about and didn't respond.

Having a little more time on my hands now, the howler that the astronomer makes early in his YouTube video, which was the point at which I stopped watching the video, is to state that everything in the universe is just a rearrangement of other constituent parts. In fact this is incorrect and there are, for example, such things as virtual particles that pop in and out of existence. We know this happens because we can see the results although no-one has actually caught the particles themselves.

His argument, which appears to be that the universe must have always existed because the molecules that he knows are just rearrangements of other molecules is an example of incorrectly going from the particular to the general, as well as of the "compositional fallacy" that Phillips accuses Craig of.

As for the Gish Gallop - I didn't nominate anyone in particular as having used the technique, although Phillips is one who does. What is interesting is that he outed himself thus condemning himself out of his own mouth.

Aristocrat,

"Consciousness is merely a manifestation of unconscious mental/physical states - it is a surface phenomenon....."

Yes it is a surface phenomenon, however, it seems more like a conduit through which flows subjective experience which fills the subterranean vault of the sub-conscious - and leaves in this repository a sediment of subjective truths....?

(bear with me - I'm a novice :)

Thanks Aristocrat, shall think it over..

<To claim consciousness maintains a "quasi-objective" or "critical distance" from the body reintroduces the mind/body split and therefore claims consciousness can somehow get outside the conditions that created it.>

By "quasi-objective" I meant that consciousness seems to observe an illusion; I don't say this is evidence of a real mind/body split, but that humans deal with reality at a hypothetical remove--in second rather than first person. I don't necessarily take the subject/object split seriously.

Graham,

It’s a pity you didn’t bother to continue watching the video…

<<…the howler that the astronomer makes early in his YouTube video, which was the point at which I stopped watching the video, is to state that everything in the universe is just a rearrangement of other constituent parts. In fact this is incorrect and there are, for example, such things as virtual particles that pop in and out of existence.>>

Because virtual particles are precisely what the author of the video goes into next. You see, virtual particles don’t obey our familiar rules of causality and cannot, therefore, be used to defend the premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument as that is precisely what it is playing on.

Some “howler”, eh?

But to make things worse for you, the author of the video never states that everything in the universe is just a rearrangement of other constituent parts. He says that nothing can be SHOWN to be anything other than a re-arrangement of pre-existing parts.

A deceptively big difference there.

<<His argument, which appears to be that the universe must have always existed because the molecules that he knows are just rearrangements of other molecules is an example of incorrectly going from the particular to the general, as well as of the "compositional fallacy" that Phillips accuses Craig of.>>

Sorry, but the author never once says or even implies that the universe “must have always existed”. He merely points out that there is, so far, no reason to believe that this isn’t at all possible. So there’s no fallacy of composition there.

This is simply appalling, Graham. You have blatantly misconstrued what the author of the video says and the fact that you’ve used words and phrases like “states”, “just a” and “must have” suggests a deliberate intent to deceive.

<<As for the Gish Gallop - I didn't nominate anyone in particular as having used the technique, although Phillips is one who does. What is interesting is that he outed himself thus condemning himself out of his own mouth.>>

Really? Where did I do that?

Aristocrat:
<Could it not be argued that any idealism initially finds its "inspiration" from the material, and not vice-versa? It seems the cause and effect has been reversed. If idealism precedes materialism, then humans are contemplating in a vacuum>
This is an intuitively logical objection.
But Derrida--another philosopher vastly influenced by Nietzsche--has shown how idealism, in the form of the text, does indeed always already precede objective reality, that there is nothing outside of the text--which is itself a vast intertext, within which Nietzsche's will to power is reduced to one of innumerable possible readings. And this accords perfectly with Nietzsche's perspectivism, which was Derrida's post-Heideggerian inspiration.
What is interesting in all of this is the way evolutionary progress becomes untraceable, non-linear, or as Hegel would say, "sublated". There is no reason why phenomenon should be strictly derivative, or that cause and effect can't cancel each other out. Such physical "laws" are the product of our perspective, wherein time, for instance, always runs in one direction. Just so, the will to power was long since resumed (if Derrida is to have his way), and as you say sublimated, by cultural/textual forces.
For mine though, there is an extra-textual supplement--angst! How do we explain its persistence as other than the confounding of something essential? That something, for philosophers like Slavoj Zizek, is itself an illusion, but I'm tempted to put that down to his (Marxist) materialism. And so we're back to the start: a materialist/idealist premise begets a materialist/idealist solution, but it's idealism in either case. According to all this, even if idealism is the product of will to power, it has sublated the latter and is itself the dominant evolutionary/existential force.
Of course Dawkins is blissfully oblivious of all this, he just loves knowledge for its own sake--and not the kudos and material trappings etc., or the will to power..?