A Ghost Story

Whatever may be true of you, Gentle Reader, I don't have the option to be an atheist --

Even were it not the case that I know as a matter of logical reasoning that all variants atheism -- the denial that there exists a Creator, who is a person -- are false, I still would not have the option, rationally or morally, to be an atheist simpliciter.

Unadorned atheism -- the denial that there is a personal Creator -- implies 'materialism' and 'naturalism', and indeed implies 'eliminative materialism.'


Now, even if it were not the case that 'eliminative materialism' is itself absurd, the little "ghost story" I'm about to relate is contradictory to 'materialism' (and to 'naturalism') -- thus, if one accepts this story as true, then logically one has rejected 'eliminative materialism,' general 'materialism,' and 'naturalism.'

The reader, of course, has the option of simply rejecting this story; I do not have that option. To be more precise, I may rationally reject the story only by asserting either that my parents were stupid or that they lied to me.


Here's the story:

When I was an infant, my parents went to visit an older couple form their church.

I was placed on a bed in an upstairs room, with pillows around me to keep me from rolling off the bed, and with a dry-cleaning bag, the wispy plastic film things, under me for obvious reasons. You have to understand, at that time people hadn't really given much thought to how dangerous that is.

So, my parents and their friends are downstairs talking and laughing ... and the tiny little baby is upstairs, asleep.

Suddenly, my father turned white as a ghost, as the saying goes, and then dashed up the stairs. He grabbed me off the bed, and ran back down the stairs and outside, to "give me some air" (silly, yes, as though there is more or better air outside than in, but panic will do that to you).

You see, I was suffocating. Somehow, I had turned over onto my stomach and I was "breathing" the plastic film on which I lay.

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Understand, I don't present that story as any sort of evidence that Christianity is true; but rather that 'materialism,' and therefore simple atheism, is false.

As I said earlier, the reader is free to reject the story; I am not: not unless I am willing either to assert that my parents were outright lying to me about the incident; or to assert that my mother was too stupid to properly remember whether my father did indeed suddenly panic and *then* run up to rescue the baby, and that my father was too stupid to properly remember whether when he got upstairs I was indeed on my stomach with the plastic film blocking my breathing.