I have heard quite a few arguments against the existence of a “soul”. Some of them are solid, some are… well… let’s just say that some people perhaps don’t express themselves as well as others. I am really not interested in having someone trying to disprove the existence of the soul to me. If that is your intention, please save your time and effort.

I would like to read people’s arguments - sound, analytical, pragmatic arguments – FOR the existence of a soul – preferably an eternal soul.

I know a lot of people will read this and the first thing that will jump to mind is, “define soul”.
No, YOU define soul.

What I am looking for, essentially, is someone to offer, not proof, not qualified objective evidence, but simply convincing arguments that there is some part of us that exists beyond the simple mind and body. A part that will transcend this physical plane and continue on to Heaven, Nibbana, Shangri-La, what-have-you.

I probably don’t need to say it, but please don’t bother with such inane arguments as, “Well (insert holy book of choice here) says so.”

I am not looking to discount your beliefs. I don’t want to prove you wrong (though I will argue if either it doesn’t fly for me, or I think it is missing something and want to explore it further). I am not looking to score one for the Atheist camp. This is nothing like that. I am working on a book, and want to find a reason that a reasonable pragmatic character who does not subscribe to any religion would believe in an eternal soul and the concept of reincarnation. Since I have never found a solid reason to believe in the soul (though the romantic side of me would LIKE to believe, to be honest) I can’t find a reason for him to believe. I was hoping there was a believer that could help me out. Perhaps even a non-believer that has heard some compelling argument that at least made you take a step back and re-evaluate your position. I want to know what makes this character tick, and why he, who is essentially an Atheist, would believe in the soul.

Thanks for any help you might offer.

THE HUMAN BODY HAS AN ELECTRICAL AURA...

it is directly the result of.. and represents the fields of energy which are surging threw our bodies.... as our nervous system... for example.. not to mention the brain and all of its complex fields of energy.. all of which form the aura.

when we die... the aura colapses... and what happens when an electromagetic field colapses????????????????????????????????????
it converts into electrostatic potential..............

so when the brain shuts down.... all the fields convert.. alll the patterns.. in the mind could then.. in this way.. be downloaded in a rapid, generation and conversion process...

so.. it becomes a question of where this electrostatic energy goes.. and connects to.

which is a question of polarity.

if you are polarized with your imagined god in heaven... then the posibbility exists that the potential energy discharged could align itself in that polarity at death.

t=cr is the timing constant formula.. and it tells us.. that for tiny capacities.. in situations where the actual current and so resistance is negalable... the timing rate for the establishment of a field... across vast distances... can happen instantaniously.
literallly... from the center of your brain to heaven.. instantly. instant downloading.... assuming you are polarized and can make the connection.


if you are not.. then the energy which was you... and all your memories.. can covert into anything.... such as.......... free lost radiation in space....
or , as is more likely... conversion into heat.

-MT

This "Electricl Aura", if it even exists, could easily be dismissed as a physical phenomena by a rational atheist.

As I think further on this, I keep returning back to bliss.
Nature is very efficient.
Evolution is very efficient.
The collection of emotions we refer to as “love” serves to propagate the species and foster familial connections and compassion. Without attachment to other human beings, without compassion we would not have cooperation. Without cooperation, an animal as weak and vulnerable as the human being will not survive.
We feel fear in order for us to be aware of potentially dangerous situations. Pain teaches us avoidance of those situations. Again, these things benefit us through helping to ensure survival and safety.
All our instincts are there for a reason, a purpose - a benefit to the individual or species. If that's true, then what is the purpose of ecstasy? What is the purpose of man's capacity to feel rapture? There is no direct survival benefit of the feelings of pure ecstasy that man feels related to his senses and emotions. Why does man have the capacity to experience extreme ecstasy over the taste or smell of a food, over a touch, over a piece of music, over art? There is no survival benefit from having the capacity for such immense and overwhelming pleasure. If anything an argument could be made for the detriments of our ability to fall into abandon over such elated bliss.

Perhaps this could be an atheist's argument for the existence of a soul?
Could bliss be evidence of the existence of a soul to an atheist?

but simply convincing arguments that there is some part of us that exists beyond the simple mind and body.
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We would say we have a mind and a body, but how do we perceive this mind and body?

Well the body is easy it is perceived by mind, but what about mind? Can mind perceive itself? Is it self illuminating? Well parts of the mind are certainly analysed by other part i.e. memory may be interrogated. But what is it that sits behind the mind that is aware of mind?

There is something there certainly, but can we call it a soul, that is not so certain. What we can say is that there is this ‘other’ that has awareness of mind. Some call it a self, an ‘ego’ , some call it a soul, some say it is just another part off the mind.

In the west they say soul, in the east they may say jiva or atman (depending on interpretation), Buddhists of course deny soul but posit another part of mind called alaya vijnana. Yes there is certainly confusion as to what it is , but it is something..




A part that will transcend this physical plane and continue on to Heaven, Nibbana, Shangri-La, what-have-you.
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As soon as you say physical plane you straightway imply that there is a non physical plane. If not then there is only one plane, so why define it as the physical plane?


Well mind is certainly non physical – are we just talking about continuation of mind. Obviously many who believe in souls would say not. But if there is existence of a non physical other - has it not already transcended the physical plane, or suely has it never been part of the physical plane in the first place?

Well it does depend on your definition...

If you want to call our sensory impulses a 'soul', then a 'soul' very much exists.

I would like to read people’s arguments - sound, analytical, pragmatic arguments – FOR the existence of a soul – preferably an eternal soul.

Those arguments, as you want them, don't exist. We believe in the existence of the soul not because we have been presented with sound, analytical, pragmatic arguments for it. It's rather that we were presented with unsound, shallow, irrelevant arguments against it.

Materialism seems solid on the surface, but that is all it is. There is no depth to it. Materialism prohibits you from engaging in metaphysical speculation; it outright denies the existence of things beyond the reach of our senses, not because it has conclusively proved they don't exist, but simply because it cannot withstand such kind of intellectual inquiry. Materialism is not knowledge, it is a denial of our ability to know. It is, in a sense, anti-human, because it is against human nature.


What I am looking for, essentially, is someone to offer, not proof, not qualified objective evidence, but simply convincing arguments that there is some part of us that exists beyond the simple mind and body.

"Simple mind and body"? Why mention mind? Even you realize that you can't understand a human being in its entirety if your knowledge is limited to what you can observe - the body.

Now since we definitely have a mind, which is of a different nature than the body, the only meaningful question is not whether we have a soul; that argument can be easily settled by properly defining what "soul" means - even you foresaw that. The really meaningful question is, can some aspect of ourselves - call it soul or something else - transcend the physical body?


I probably don’t need to say it, but please don’t bother with such inane arguments as, “Well (insert holy book of choice here) says so.”

I'd say it is the whole of human experience that tells you that. The "holy book of choice" is not as simple a matter as you think it is. And to call it an inane argument is mere prejudice. Of these alone I think any honestly intellectual person can be convinced.

The problem here is one of historical myopia: nobody lives long enough to understand what being human is. The human experience has begun long before writing was invented, so we have no record of most of it. And the little portion of history that has been recorded, the precious record of the last few thousand years of human experience, is for the most part meaningless, as it's little more than a long list of murderers and their crimes. Such is our state of ignorance about ourselves.

But there is more to history than that. Just a little bit more, but what a precious little bit! While the powerful were busy promoting mass murder for wealth and personal glory, as they still are to this day, the common man was trying to live according to some principles whose source he was completely ignorant of, but whose authority he recognised as supreme. Those principles are what is loosely called "morals".

So this is what we have of history, this is all we know about the human experience: that people have fought a lot, but also that they have submitted to principles they could neither understand nor reject. And while the former aspect of the human experience, the struggling aspect, has been codified in what we call history, the latter aspect, the moral one, has been codified in what we call religion.

Now unless you believe religious scriptures have been dictated by God, and men had no choice but to accept it even against their will, you should realize the obvious: a civilization chooses, among the many written embodiments of its moral principles, that which best reflects its own historical experience. It has to be written down so it survives the short life of individuals. It has to deal with morals because of its very nature. And it has to deal with cosmology, because we need to know the source of our morality so we are not tempted to reject it.

I'm sorry I can't say it with less words, but it's not reasonable to expect simple explanations to such extremely complicated matters. The point is, whatever it is you want to know about yourself, including whether you have a soul or not, people have reflected on those questions for millenia. You cannot, contrary to what you may be lead to think, have original answers to those questions. All the answers are in front of you, they have been found a long time ago, and they have been corroborated by the best authority you can possibly find: history.

So, unfortunately, the only sensible answer that can be given to your question is: yes, the soul exists and it can transcend the body, because that is what my father told me, and that is what his father told him, and so on back from the beginning of time.

We can always choose to deny the wisdom of humanity. But a man who goes against what everyone believes to be true is either a genius or a lunatic. And the latter are far more numerous than the former.

I have heard quite a few arguments against the existence of a “soul”. Some of them are solid, some are… well… let’s just say that some people perhaps don’t express themselves as well as others. I am really not interested in having someone trying to disprove the existence of the soul to me. If that is your intention, please save your time and effort.

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I think (a thought not a belief) that it might be possible (might be, not is) that what most people consider to be the 'soul' is in fact a formless entity (another life form) which lives symbiotically with the human animal. So we have in effect two life forms and not one. When the human animal body dies it is therefore possible that the formless life form continues it's existance in either it's natural state or until another 'animal' host is ready for habitation.

:)

This would explain the 'afterlife', reincarnation, aura's, OBE's, and all manner of other alleged 'supernatural' things.

Oh yes, and my grandmothers 'soul' exited the building via the cat flap when my nan died, if you don't believe me 'ask the cat, he got quite a fright.

Oh yes, and my grandmothers 'soul' exited the building via the cat flap when my nan died, if you don't believe me 'ask the cat, he got quite a fright.

*************
M*W: Even as an atheist, I've always thought that theists called the "soul" was nothing more than bioelectric energy.

TOR, when I read your post, it reminded me when my father died. I was living in Germany (my parents were in Texas), and it was so unexpected. Even considering the time difference, I was sitting in my living room when the wind started blowing, my children were in their beds, but through the front door came a blue light that proceded down the hallway to the bedrooms. I was sort of frozen on my couch wondering what the heck it was! One by one, my children stirred. When this blue light reached my youngest daughter's room (she was about two-years old), she woke up and made some noise, then went back to sleep. This blue light came back through my living room and paused a moment before leaving out through the door again! Still in awe from this brief occurrence, I got up to check my children, and they were all fine. The next day at 1:00 PM, I got the call from my in-laws that my father had died in his sleep. I'll never forget that experience. I believe my dad must have just died when his energy appeared to me. I don't believe in ghosts, but there is something to be said for our biomedical-bioanatomical energy field, at least for a period of time after death, but it has nothing to do with god or the supernatural.

For the benefit of Confutatis, who is rehashing old arguments, a post written by a member long ago; Boris.

The issue of whether souls exist or not is an essential consideration for theism, since if souls do not exist then an afterlife does not exist which is the domain for theism to reward or punish. I.e. without an afterlife who cares whether gods exist or not.

Argument from interaction

Clearly, for a soul to have a meaningful connection to the body, it must be capable of interacting with matter. Yet, souls are defined as immaterial and not subject to the laws that govern matter. Hence, the paradox arises: by its definition, a soul must be both capable of interacting with matter, and not capable of interacting with matter. To elaborate,

Matter affects matter through interactions. For example, you can push a desk, or bludgeon a man, or dig a river. It is because matter is so "interactive", that we can make measurements, conduct experiments, and observe phenomena associated with matter. The soul, on the other hand, is by definition immaterial. Hence, with our scientific instruments we cannot detect it. If we could detect it, we could then determine its properties and structure and we would be able to materially interact with it, which would make the soul material.

But that's a funny thing, considering that the soul is supposed to interact with the body. After all, we are only aware of our world through our senses; and our conscious decisions directly translate into physical actions -- e.g. if I wanted to clap my hands together, I could do it. So it seems that material information must have a way to enter the soul, and material information must have a way of emanating from the soul and travelling to the body.

The latter of these phenomena has a definite effect on the body, and hence must be indirectly detectable. This is because the body is indeed material, and any changes introduced within it are thus immediately detectable with proper instruments. Thus, were the soul to feed information back to the body, scientists ought to be able to find the spot where information from the soul enters the body for the first time. (Of course, despite centuries of searching no such spot has been found.) But this again contradicts the notion that the soul is not detectable through material means (of course, this contradiction arises out of the already contradictory notion that the soul interacts with the body.)

Then there is the question of the very mechanisms through which the exchange between the soul and the body takes place. By definition, a soul is 100% immaterial. On the other hand, the body is 100% material. How do we build a bridge between the two? Does there exist a "something" that is both partly material, and partly immaterial? But anything like that would not make sense, since the idealist concepts of matter vs. essence are incompatible. Matter is temporary, while the soul is eternal. Matter is corrupt, while the soul is perfect. Matter possesses extension, density, mass, color, temperature, etc. -- while the soul has none of those properties. Matter can be subdivided, yet the soul cannot. How can "something" exist that possesses a mix of these contradictory properties? How can something be corrupt and perfect at the same time? How can something be massive and massless, colorful and colorless, extended and shapeless? So it seems there is no reasonable way that the gap between the immaterial and the material can be crossed so as to enable the communication between the soul and the body.

To sum up, two distinct points are raised here: first, the definition of the soul and its relationship with the body are contradictory, and second, there is no satisfactory explanation of how the soul can exchange information with the body.


Argument from neuroscience

For the purposes of this argument, we must first determine that of all the body parts, it is the brain that makes us who we are. After all, you can take a normal human, amputate all of her limbs, and she will still be defined as a human being. You can take a human being and cut out his heart, lungs, kidneys, bowels, etc. and he would still be a human being (for as long as surgical machines can do the work of the missing organs.) If you cut off somebody's head, and somehow manage to keep it alive, then it's the head we would point toward when we discuss that person; the headless body will no longer be ol' Joe -- since here's ol' Joe's head that speaks in Joe's voice and thinks and feels like Joe, and possesses all of Joe's knowledge, etc. So we can keep imaginatively (and nonchalantly) stripping Joe of body parts until only the brain is left floating in a jar. At this point, we can still safely point to the brain and say that it's Joe; we can incinerate the other body parts, but as long as the brain is alive, Joe is alive too. Incidentally, that's why clinical death is defined as brain death. Any other failed organ can be replaced, at least in principle; however a brain cannot be replaced. Even if Joe clinically died, and you transplanted Brent's brain into Joe's skull, all you would have done is transplant Brent's persona into Joe's body; Joe would still be dead as a doornail.

Now then, it seems that the brain is the crucial part of us that makes us who we are. Incidentally, the brain also physically controls the body. If you want to bend a finger, a train of signals has to travel from your brain down your spinal cord and through your peripheral nervous system all the way to the muscles of that particular finger, so that they contract or expand so as to bend the finger in the way you wanted. If the pathway between the brain and any particular part of the body is breached even at one spot, you will lose your control over that part of your body. Hence, the brain is not only the defining part of what it is to be human -- it is also the part that actually controls the body! So, if the soul is to interact with the body, it is clear that the soul must interact with the brain.

But where in the brain does this interaction with the soul occur? It turns out that there is no possible answer. As you may or may not know, the brain can be crudely subdivided into an old brain and the new brain, the latter composed of the left and right cerebral hemispheres. The old brain consists basically of the brainstem, and in humans is more or less a mere interface between the new brain and the spinal cord, as far as cognitive function is concerned. This is not to say that the old brain is insignificant, since it contains physiologically crucial centers controlling everything from heart beats to breathing to sleep-wake cycles. However, it is the new brain that is responsible for any behavior that we would consider above comatose. The new brain possesses vast tracts processing and combining information from the five senses, it possesses structures that plan, initiate, and control movement, it possesses structures responsible for emotions, it possesses structures involved in memory, attention, spatial navigation, object recognition, production, perception, and comprehension of speech, etc, etc, etc. In fact, brain damage studies show that every last bit of the new brain in adult humans is involved in at least one, and often several, cognitive tasks. So, it would seem that the soul must be in contact with the entire brain if it was to account for all of our human faculties. However, this does not hold when we consider abnormal physiology.

Certain birth defects cause some children to be born with only one cerebral hemisphere; other children lose a hemisphere to surgical intervention very early in life. Despite the fact that for an adult to lose a hemisphere would be absolutely devastating in terms of loss of function and aspects of personality, these children grow up to be nearly normal in all respects. This is just one example where the amazing plasticity of the brain shows itself in full glory. Thing is, the plasticity is lost early in life as the brain becomes increasingly organized, since for a highly structured brain plastic change would actually mean loss of function rather than gain. Yet, the very fact that people are alive who function normally with only one hemisphere (and a brain that is organized vastly differently!), as opposed to the "normal" people who have two hemispheres and a totally different brain organization -- poses difficulties for any proposed mechanism of interaction between the soul and the brain. Already, it would seem that the mechanism is not dependent on the soul, but must adapt to the developing brain on-the-go, so as to connect the soul to the brain correctly, whatever the final architecture of the adult brain may be.

The functional portion of the brain is composed of vast and very complex networks of a total adult average of 10,000,000,000 special cells called neurons (the bodies of these cells contain pigment and are often collectively referred to as "gray matter"). Each neuron sends out slender connections to other neurons, and an average neuron is connected to about 10,000 others (these interconnection fibers are wrapped in other special cells that form an electrical insulation around these "wires"; as a result the connections look white to the eye, and en masse are referred to as "white matter"). Of course, there are trillions of other cells in the brain besides neurons, which compose blood vessels, provide insulation and scaffolding for the connections between neurons, nourish neurons and clean up their waste, fight invading pathogens, etc -- but neurons are what actually does all the work of cognition. Neurons work by sending electrical impulses to other neurons, and accepting similar messages. Without going into too much gory detail, the effect of the messages on any particular neuron is mediated by a slew of factors from the actual chemicals used to pass the message between neurons, to the actual characteristics of the voltage signals that neurons send to each other. But the great and overriding point here is that neurons are literally billions of independent cells, communicating among each other, and every now and then sending impulses through your peripheral nervous system to affect what your body does. It seems that to control the body, the soul would have to connect individually to every last neuron in the brain and control what it does. But neurons die all the time, and new neurons are born also (although at a much slower rate.) Furthermore, the actual connections between neurons change constantly, and so the role any particular neuron plays in the overall function of the brain varies with time. So, how does the soul know what each neuron's current function is? Additionally, it seems that scientists can predict neuronal behavior precisely, based purely on the electrochemical impulses it is receiving from other neurons. So it appears that there is no mysterious soul behind the curtains telling this neuron to fire and that one to hold off once every millisecond; behavior of neurons is determined exactly by the input they receive from other neurons. And some of those other neurons receive a lot of their input from sensory organs, such as the pressure, pain, temperature, etc. (in other words, somatosensory) receptors on your skin and other organs, or from your eyes, ears, nose, or tongue, or from the vestibular apparatus in your inner ear, etc. So it seems that the brain is a deterministic machine that is driven by inputs from its environment. And all of those receptors and organs have also been studied in detail, and found to be purely biochemical and physically deterministic. There is no place left for the soul to operate!

There is no end to the problems that neuropathology brings for the soul, and I am not going to attempt to list even a small portion of such problems. However, I already mentioned the conundrum posed by neural plasticity. I'll present just one more "problem", and then move on to the next argument. The problem has to do with the split-brain patients.

Some people are subject to debilitating seizures, which are uncontrollable through drugs. A seizure is really a runaway chain reaction where a bunch of neurons starts firing chaotically, and the chaos spreads across the cortex, disrupting any cognitive function in its wake. Seizures can sometimes be combated through drugs, which help regulate neuronal activity and stop it from crossing a vital threshold above which it spins out of control. Newer methods include electrodes implanted directly into the particular brain region where seizures originate, so that an implanted computer can detect an onset of the seizure and apply a mild electric current between electrodes, which in effect "resets" the surrounding neural tissue and stops a seizure in its tracks. However, a while ago such advanced treatments were not available, and in extremely debilitating cases the only recourse was surgery. Most often, the small brain region where seizures originate was surgically removed (the mild loss in cognitive function was a small price to pay for the freedom from frequent seizures, and was especially tolerable for children whose brains are still plastic enough to compensate for the injury). However, in a few cases the offending region was crucial to certain treasured faculties, such as for example production or comprehension of speech, or control of posture. In other cases the offending region was just too large. In these cases, the surgeons did the next best thing to excising the part of the brain -- they selectively cut some of the connections between this brain part and other parts of the brain, so that the seizures would only occur locally and would not spread.

Seizures can occur in relatively localized regions of the cortex, but for some unfortunate people they occur globally, spreading from one hemisphere to the other like wildfire. In these cases, where excision was not an option, surgeons used to sever the huge bundle of fibers (called "corpus callosum") that connects the right hemisphere with the left. The corpus callosum is the major connection between the hemispheres, and although there are other small communication channels via which certain parts of the two hemispheres exchange information, when the corpus callosum is severed for all practical purposes the hemispheres are cut off from each other. For this reason, the patients that underwent this type of surgery came to be known as split-brain patients. And they permanently exhibit the weirdest behaviors. They really do have two separate, almost independent brains in their skull. Most of the time, the brains coexist peacefully. However, sometimes they don't agree with each other and the results can range from comic to absurd to horrible.

Because of the way the brain is wired up to the body, each hemisphere controls the opposite half of the body. So, the right hemisphere controls the left arm, leg, etc., while the left hemisphere controls the right half. One patient had a problem with his left hemisphere: apparently, it just couldn't stand his wife. At the mere sight of his spouse, his right hand would immediately form a fist, his right leg start making valiant attempts to get the body closer to the wife, and his right arm start violently swinging at the wife with a clear intent to do damage. With his left leg he would fight his right leg, and with his left hand try to restrain his right hand, all the while displaying a grimace of rage on the right side of his face while the left side of the face expressed clear alarm and distress. Another lady had an even more serious problem, with the two halves of her body engaging in a vicious feud. She literally beat herself up, tried to choke herself in her sleep, tore her own hair out, and all of that occurred in the context of the right side of her body doing damage to the left side, and vice versa. Fortunately, such horrible side effects tend to mellow out as time passes, but the patients never return to normal -- to the end of their lives, they literally remain split in half. Yet, if a single, indivisible, unified soul was controlling the brain, then surely cutting the link between the hemispheres would not preclude them from functioning in harmony! At the very least, they shouldn't be trying to kill each other! But contrary to all common sense as we used to know it, the two hemispheres literally turn into two distinct personalities. Each of them is capable of independent emotion, independent knowledge, and independent interaction with the world. For example, questions can be asked of the right hemisphere, and it will answer them (though not verbally, because in most people the right hemisphere is incapable of language) -- but the left, verbal, hemisphere will never know about either the questions or the answers, and will in fact tell you so when asked. Even more poignantly, the right hemisphere possesses knowledge that the left hemisphere doesn't, and vice versa. Both hemispheres exhibit structured thought and problem solving abilities, independent of each other. Both of them express feelings and emotions, again independently of each other. Each has its own stream of consciousness, again independent of the other hemisphere. So indeed, the two hemispheres are in most respects separate, distinct, independent human beings! Yet, they originally only had one soul. How would the doctrine of souls explain such a phenomenon?

Yet another difficulty lies in the transfer of memory or knowledge between the brain and the soul. For example, you might remember what you did during the last Christmas, and when asked you would tell us a story describing what happened. This process of recalling facts and then verbalizing them involves many crucial faculties that are just about as central to our stream of consciousness as anything -- so presumably at least a large part of the process occurs in the soul and not in the physical brain. However, it is well known that the brain contains certain regions specifically dedicated to memory. When these regions are damaged, the result is amnesia -- loss of memory -- despite the fact that all other cognitive functions remain intact. Now, what happens when an amnesic is asked to describe something they knew prior to the brain damage, but of which they now have no recollection? The request gets correctly processed and understood by the subject, as can be verified by questioning him about it. Presumably, such higher understanding resides in the soul, so the soul indeed knows what is being asked. The patient is also perfectly able to verbalize other facts, and to tell stories not connected to the particular lost memory -- so these faculties are preserved as well. Therefore, if the soul still retains the memory whose representation is lost in the physical brain, it should have no problem verbalizing that memory and telling stories about it, and thus in fact amnesia would never even be observed! Yet, amnesia is real and very predictable based on which regions of the brain are damaged. So, it seems that destroying a part of the physical brain utterly destroys the memories it used to help encode. This means that the soul does not possess memory; memory is purely a property of the brain. Which means that when the brain dies, all memories die with it. Which means that the entire personality dies with the brain, since memory includes, in addition to explicit facts, everything from learned skills such as language, coordinated movement, or art, to such things as preferences, attitudes, beliefs, etc. Which comes into a huge clash with all the claims of afterlife where the souls are supposed to retain memory of earthly existence and even maintain their pre-death personality.


Argument from neuropsychology

This gets to the reason why we conjecture the existence of the soul in the first place. In the old times, when people knew very little about the nature of life or cognition, it baffled them that certain objects were indeed alive, and other weren't. It baffled people even more why certain living creatures, such as humans, have civilizations, art, language, religion, etc. while other living creatures have none of the above. People also wondered what happened to them when they slept, as they often seemed to depart the regular world for other bizarre realities, inhabit bodies other than their own regular body, fly, and do all sorts of amazing things that other normal things just aren't seen to be doing. And then, people wondered what it would feel like to die, and what happens to their friends and family once their bodies are destroyed, and they also wondered where their stream of consciousness came from, and how come they can't remember anything prior to their early childhood. Thus came around suggestions that what all life has is something special, some kind of a "living essence” that separates it from non-life. You will find that particular idea in every single culture that ever existed, which goes to show just how natural such a conjecture is, and how easily it arises. It may have been a reasonable suggestion, until relatively recently when science began to unravel the true mechanisms of life and cognition.

Today, we know that the simplest forms of life contain no "living essence" at all -- they are merely very complicated chemical structures that are able to obtain energy and material from their environment, and to reproduce themselves. Thus, in one deft blow the pre-existing void between matter and essence is bridged. It stands to reason that if unicellular life does not possess a soul, same holds for multi-cellular life -- since multi-cellular organisms are nothing more than intricately organized and coordinated colonies of single specialized cells.

But what of the stream of consciousness, the emotions, the awareness, the sensations, the knowledge, the reasoning power that we all possess as humans? How do all of these weird qualities derive from mere cells? Well, the answer has not yet been entirely completed, and I personally hope to play a part in completing it. But the beta version goes something like this.

In what may at first glance appear to be a grotesquely oversimplified analogy, consider modern computers. What you see on your screen is a pretty complex visual image representing an attempt at a simple, elegant, and easy to comprehend User Interface. Behind that interface lies complex functionality that enables you to create documents, exchange information with other people, play games, create art, listen to music, render computer movies, simulate collisions of galaxies, analyze data, design other computers, and in general do an amazing variety of things. Most of those applications depend on arcane algorithms and complex protocols to work, of which you as a user have no knowledge or comprehension; all you work with is a friendly (or at least not as arcane as the source code) UI, which abstracts you away from all the hair-raising complexity that dwells on your CD-ROMs and inside your particular beige box.

The brain presents a somewhat analogous picture. What we observe is the outside, equipped with a "user interface" consisting of the body. We can interact with the body, we can communicate through it to the brain, and receive replies from the brain through the body. In essence, the body abstracts the brain from us, and as generic "users", we are not aware of how exactly the brain does what it does -- nor do we particularly care, as long as the brain does its job, and does it well. However, the analogy with computers is not complete, since whereas with computers we at least have engineers and programmers who understand exactly how the computer does the things it does, with the brain, at least at the outset, we possess no such knowledge. Thus, the problem of figuring out how the brain works can be compared to the following hypothetical situation: imagine that the enlightened ancient Greeks happen to chance on a complete modern computer system, loaded with all the software, connected to an uninterruptible power supply that will last for decades, and programmed so that its user interface is in ancient Greek (so they can at least partially decipher what it is that it does.) Now imagine just how hard it would have been for the poor Greeks to figure out how all that graphical splendor and functionality arises from that box cluttered with weird metallic and non-metallic parts. Heck, they'd have to develop the theory of quantum mechanics before they could understand how a single transistor works, and they'd have to develop ultra-powerful microscopes to even find those transistors. They'd have to develop an entire theory of computation before they could understand how the mysterious box is able to exhibit such strangely life-like interactivity. Then, they would have to reverse-engineer all the circuits of the computer, and understand exactly how they interact and tie together into a working system. Then, they'd have to reverse-engineer all the binary machine code on the computer's hard drive, and determine how it affects the CPU and other components to do the things that they do when various programs are run. Then they'd have to find ways to de-compile the machine code into a human-readable language, so that they may finally understand how the programs are put together, and how they work. Only then will they finally understand that the computer is not a magic or cursed item, that it is not a living organism or a gateway into another dimension, that it is not a God in disguise and not a fundamental key to all creation -- but that it is what it is, a machine that processes information according to certain pre-set algorithms.

An equivalent claim is made for the brain: it is a machine that processes information according to certain pre-set algorithms. And we face a horrendous task of reverse-engineering the brain in order to understand it, in a way very similar to the plight of the unfortunate ancient Greeks. Only the brain is even more daunting than the most complicated computer in existence. It sports an equivalent of 10,000,000,000 processors interconnected in complicated ways, all working simultaneously at 50 Hz in a cacophony of communication. It is fluid, and constantly changes its very structure. It computes not only with electricity, but also in a large way with biochemistry, which makes the behavior of its individual CPUs much more complicated to unravel than the behavior of a typical circuit. It is inexorably tied to the body throughout its development and function, and so to understand the brain we must also understand the workings of the body in all of their intricate detail. The brain is shaped by genetics as well as sensory and chemical input as it develops and matures, so we must understand all of those processes with a high degree of confidence and in great detail over time spans lasting well over a decade from birth to maturity -- if we are to understand how the brain acquires its structure and generates its circuits. And then, once we unravel the story of the hardware, we must understand how it translates into the actual behaviors that we observe -- in essence, we then must reverse-engineer the brain's algorithms and put them into plain English before we ever hope to claim that we completely understand how the brain works. The task is clearly not for the weak of heart. In fact, it can be argued that unraveling the human brain is among the few most difficult challenges science has ever faced. And the task will clearly take at least decades, if not centuries, to complete. But we are already making the first brave steps, and so far we have learned enough to very crudely describe what lies behind our various and wonderful cognitive powers.

In the course of our studies, we have localized regions of the brain, or "nuclei", that either by themselves or in concert with other nuclei directly correspond to various human faculties. For example, there is a clearly defined subsystem in the brain that is linked to emotion. Lesioning the lymbic system will turn a person into an automaton incapable of generating or expressing absolutely any kind of affection for anything. Such patients even talk in rhythmically perfect monotone, like robots from cheap sci-fi flicks. As another example, the memory subsystem has been located in another brain structure, the hippocampus and the parahippocampal and entorhinal cortex regions. Damage to these areas predictably results in various forms of amnesia, with the exact symptomology dependent upon exactly which parts of the system were damaged, and how extensively. As another example, take the ability to understand spoken speech. This capacity is at least in part dependent on a part of the cortex called Wernicke's area, damage to which instantly turns the speech a patient hears into meaningless gibberish, and has the same effect on the speech actually produced by the person (though they are not aware that they make no sense to the others; in fact they are usually quite distressed at the fact that the others are talking gibberish and can't understand what the patient is saying.) Amazingly enough, in a fully organized adult brain there even are regions devoted specifically to reading written text, or specifically to writing text. Damage to these regions results in strange symptomology, such as for example a person being able to read, but no longer able to write, or being able to write, but not being able to read back what they just wrote. Such study of neural pathology has produced an innumerable flood of findings like these, and the deluge has yet to show signs of subsiding.

Additionally, computational modeling and animal research have been providing insights into other crucial powers of cognition. For example, the faculty of vision has been, is, and will be studied with utmost intensity. As examples, we have discovered cells in the brain that respond to lines of various orientations in the visual field, or variously oriented and scaled gratings of alternating light and dark regions; we have found cells in the visual cortex that respond to local motion in a certain direction, or to a contraction or expansion of the local texture (indicating approaching or receding objects); we have found cells higher up in the processing hierarchy that combine those basic features into more complex items, such as corner, or circle, or crosshatch patterns, and we've found cells yet higher up that respond to entire objects only of a certain type, such as faces for example. We've tentatively began to trace the diverging pathways in the visual processing stream, where one pathway specializes in recognizing objects, while the other pathway specializes in determining the location of objects in space around the observer, or the observer's relative coordinates with respect to objects. We are currently constructing rather successful computational models of how rats tell where they are, based exclusively on the rat neurophysiology and actual electrical recordings from individual cells in rat brains. We have constructed a very successful neuro-computational explanation of how barn owls determine the direction of the sounds they hear. People are digging in on all levels, from planning, coordination, and initiation of motion, to hearing, somatosensory perception, mastication, memory, emotion, mechanisms of attention, to cognitive and neurobiological development, to language, etc, etc, etc. Slowly but surely, the brain's enigma is giving way and grudgingly surrendering territory. And absolutely at no point anywhere within this extensive and burgeoning research field has any research group ever found even a remotest hint of anything supernatural.

But what we actually do, at this time, know about the link between brain and cognition -- is that the various cognitive faculties that in the past could not even be imagined to stem from mere matter, derive from specific regions in the brain, and the relationships between these brain regions and how linked regions combine to create cognition, are very physical and well-defined indeed. Additionally, severe damage to a brain region (in adults) connected to some cognitive ability completely and permanently destroys that ability; no hint of its past existence can be recovered through the use of other faculties, as should have been the case if the "lost" faculty actually resided in the soul.


Argument from evolution

Well, this one's short and sweet, and will work against only a narrowed selection of various doctrines. It basically says that since, obviously, simple life forms do not have souls, and we are merely evolved forms of the same thing, then surely we don't have souls either. At a deeper level, the argument challenges the believer to define at which point living beings acquire souls. Do only humans have souls? But then you have problems with primates, since they are so incredibly similar to us both physically and behaviorally. Do only primates have souls? But then you have a problem with the simians, since monkeys are so similar to apes both physically and behaviorally. Do only primates and simians have souls? But then you have a problem with the prosimians, etc, etc, etc. Eventually, you are forced to retreat to a generalization over all mammals, then over all animals, and finally over all life -- at which point you arrive at a stark contradiction with a clearly observable fact -- that the lowest forms of life do not have souls.


Argument from development

This is somewhat similar to the argument from evolution. Here, you are challenged to define just at what point during development a human acquires a soul. It couldn't be at the point of egg fertilization, since at that time everything is still purely biochemical, and the fertilized embryo has no properties normally associated with a soul. It couldn't be during early embryonic development, since an early human embryo is anatomically and functionally indistinguishable even from fish embryos. So when is it that a human acquires a soul? The answer to that question is impossible similarly to how it is impossible to define a cutoff across different lifeforms -- because just as the spectrum of lifeforms on earth is fairly continuous in terms of their capabilities, form and function, the development of an embryo is similarly continuous. At no point during development does the embryo suddenly make a quantum leap and exhibits some feature it didn't have a second ago. This continuity makes it impossible to define a cutoff at which the soul definitely must be there. From another (and more mathematical) perspective, since a fertilized egg has no soul, then by induction over this smooth continuum of development we arrive at the conclusion that even a fully developed adult human doesn't have a soul.


Argument from objectivity

This calls into question the very need to have a concept of souls or afterlife. Neither are objective, in that neither are tangible, measurable, or independent of observer (e.g. neither can be detected by "brainless", mechanical scientific instruments that don't have a propensity for misinterpreting things like humans do). Neither can be tested, neither provides any tangible evidence for its existence. In fact, if one starts out with a (still futuristic) complete physical explanation of cognition, then one is not going to be likely to conjecture the existence of souls or afterlife -- simply because there would be no remaining evidence available that would prompt such a conjecture. Hence, objectively, the theories of "vital essence", or souls, or afterlife are outdated and superceded by modern science. As any invalidated theory should, therefore, the ideas of soul or afterlife properly belong in the history books, but no longer in the domain of serious discourse.


Argument from equivalence

This is where we assume that the brain has, at some point in the future, been scientifically unraveled to the point that absolutely everything is known, understood, and explained about its form and function. Then, we can imagine that the scientists of the future endeavor to replicate a complete human brain, but not in flesh in blood, but as a program running in some blindingly powerful supercomputer. The brain is simulated down to the last atom, complete with information input from simulated eyes that mimic human eyes, and simulated ears that mimic human ears, and all other sensory modalities equally well implemented, with a simulated body providing feedback to the brain, and a simulated ultra-detailed environment for that body to roam and interact with. Because the simulation replicates the function of a real human brain to the last detail, and it replicates a realistic environment for that simulated brain to mature in, the simulated human will certainly develop its own conscious stream of awareness, learn the details and workings of its environment, exhibit emotions, intelligence, sensations -- it will be altogether equivalent in all of its functions to an actual physical human. But it is painfully obvious that the simulated human does not have a soul, because in reality he is nothing but a pattern of bits in the memory banks of our supercomputer. Ironically, if we were to simulate not one such human, but an entire tribe living in some virtual jungle, and allow the simulation to progress across many generations, the humans will develop language, culture, and even religion, and likely one of their first metaphysical conjectures will have to do with the fundamental distinction between life and nonlife -- the "vital essence".

Is anyone gonna bother reading that by Q? as a moderator you should know better.

I tried really hard to come up with a reasonable argument and I failed. Sorry, but I did want to let you know that I gave it serious consideration.

So, unfortunately, the only sensible answer that can be given to your question is: yes, the soul exists and it can transcend the body, because that is what my father told me, and that is what his father told him, and so on back from the beginning of time.

Ah, parental religious brainwashing, you either love it or hate it.

Did your father not also tell you about Santa and the Tooth Fairy?

Is anyone gonna bother reading that by Q? as a moderator you should know better.

Clearly, you won't read it as it might knock down your little house of cards.

Clearly, you won't read it as it might knock down your little house of cards.

I won't read it and guess what Q, that is THE only thing you will EVER be right about. NOTHING you parrot off from someone else or an original thought of your own (although I know there is NO such thing) will tell me diffrent to what I know to be correct, which in fact isn't a lot. You have ZERO clue what my house of cards is, ZERO clue. And this is the way it shall stay.

I won't read it and guess what Q, ...I know to be correct, which in fact isn't a lot.

Then, you admit to not wanting to learn anything and remain ignorant. Too bad, your loss.

Then, you admit to not wanting to learn anything and remain ignorant. Too bad, your loss.

pot calling the kettle there Q, you are in the dark and always will be.
Why would I read about the grass being blue when my own eyes have told me its green?

What I am looking for, essentially, is someone to offer, not proof, not qualified objective evidence, but simply convincing arguments that there is some part of us that exists beyond the simple mind and body.
its what the scientific community calls "energy". energy is an inherent part of ourselves, its most commonly known form is the carrier for our consciousness, and it transcends our physical existence, continuing eternally. electromagnetic energy is tied directly to our mental states and is like the river through which the waves of our consciousness travel. the sides of the river are like the energy of the chemical processes--the limitations of our physical bodies which shape the state of our minds, though they can erode and change with time. upon death, all the water of that river flows at once into the ocean, to be diffused in chaos and diversity so that pieces may one day flow back down another river.

Nice post, Roy.

I think (a thought not a belief) that it might be possible (might be, not is) that what most people consider to be the 'soul' is in fact a formless entity (another life form) which lives symbiotically with the human animal. So we have in effect two life forms and not one. When the human animal body dies it is therefore possible that the formless life form continues it's existance in either it's natural state or until another 'animal' host is ready for habitation.

:)

This would explain the 'afterlife', reincarnation, aura's, OBE's, and all manner of other alleged 'supernatural' things.


isn't anyone going to 'prove' that this idea of 'soul' is not possible?

Nice post, Roy.
thanks :cool:


Is anyone gonna bother reading that by Q? as a moderator you should know better.
i read most of it. it would really help to knock down some of the bullshit people associate with their misconsceptions of the possibility of a 'soul' and i thank Q for at least trying. soul is only a word anyways and i doubt anyone here has taken nearly enough introspective time to define that word adequately. the soul is nothing like most people predict it is; it cannot be simply because there is no such thing as 'you' as an individual. you are always part of the universe around you, you always have energy flowing through you that determines your actions as a result of your physical being. so when you die, that energy is only being released back into chaos--entropy in action. but if it helps you sleep better at night, you can look at that energy as your soul because it ultimately leaves your body in a state as a result of your unique form and structure. but it is selfish to think that it belongs to you, because you belong to the universe; you are part of it as it is part of you.

thanks :cool:


i read most of it. it would really help to knock down some of the bullshit people associate with their misconsceptions of the possibility of a 'soul' and i thank Q for at least trying. soul is only a word anyways and i doubt anyone here has taken nearly enough introspective time to define that word adequately. the soul is nothing like most people predict it is; it cannot be simply because there is no such thing as 'you' as an individual. you are always part of the universe around you, you always have energy flowing through you that determines your actions as a result of your physical being. so when you die, that energy is only being released back into chaos--entropy in action. but if it helps you sleep better at night, you can look at that energy as your soul because it ultimately leaves your body in a state as a result of your unique form and structure. but it is selfish to think that it belongs to you, because you belong to the universe; you are part of it as it is part of you.

just ignore the seperate life form possibility why don't you...cos you can't argue against that can you :) funny that

isn't anyone going to 'prove' that this idea of 'soul' is not possible?

“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” ~~ Victor Hugo

For the benefit of Confutatis, who is rehashing old arguments, a post written by a member long ago

"For the benefit of Confutatis, who is rehashing old arguments, here is a rehashed old argument"

Man, you're funny.

Is that your final answer?

just ignore the seperate life form possibility why don't you...cos you can't argue against that can you :) funny that
you're right, i can't argue against your imagination; its all in your head, i don't even know what you're talking about.

you're right, i can't argue against your imagination; its all in your head, i don't even know what you're talking about.

what part of two seperate lifeforms living symbiotically do you not understand? Do you know the meaning of word 'symbiotic' the meaning of 'life forms' the meaning of word 'two'? Which part of that simple idea is hard for you?

Too plausible for you to dispute so you alledge you don't understand. Why advertise your inability to understand plain English?

Is that your final answer?

I think my final answer is that you don't seem to have an interest in debating with people as much as you seem to have an interest in debasing them. But I'm still reading your posts hoping you will prove me wrong.

What if the soul is something that could be said to be, like, conscience? Something that surpasses the irrational actions made by impulse, and condemn it within ourselves. A soul then would be something that ultimately knows right from wrong. Our free will makes us not obligated to do what "the soul" feels is right, even though it ultimately is right. Basically, everybody knows (or the soul knows, but, I think everybody is born with a soul, either they're destined to be a good person or not) what's basically right or wrong, but our personality bases the impulse of our actions, and the way we think to define what we percept as right or wrong. I'm speaking for myself when I say that within me there are different voices, making and controlling the impulses that is making me act and think the way I do. Some voices are greedy, jealoux, lazy, and angry and some are rational, reasonable, nice, comforting, cheerfull, funny and so on. They are all me, or fractures of what is ultimately my personality, and it describes why I sometimes act reasonable, sometimes stupid. I can do what the impulses (voices) tells me to. Or. I can listen (one would have to search for it and wanting to find it to know that it is there) to the deepest, hidden, but clearly obvious, spiritual and universal voice of judgement towards the actions and thoughts made by me, and the actions made towards me, things which I face every day in the thing that is my reality, and continuosly use it to be a better person, and be righteous judge of myself and others. It is always right, has never told me wrong, and is a guidance in the knowledge and the experiences I seek in my life.

As I said earlier, I believe everybody basically has this universal, judgemental voice within them, and has the choice, like everybody else, to make the decision to listen to it and live by it. The only problem with this voice is that if at one point in life, one chooses to ignore it and live by the actions and thoughts made by the impulses, it simply fades away, and one becomes the person the impulses has set one out to be. Once one has exceeded the souls limitations and boundaries of right and wrong, the only way of turning back, is through repent and remorse in consultation with the consciences standards of good and righteous actions.
Lets use the example of the conscience. A serial-killer, or a child rapist that has no remorse for the victims and the family of those he has killed or raped, is mostly said to be insane (or criminally insane that is), and gets sentenced by a judge and a jury to live a life in penitentiary. There he gets the time to think and his way of thinking (impulses) will either be just like before or gradually worse if he has no remorse, or he will get a revelation and actually regret what he has done and change his way of thinking according to the standards of the universal. judgemental conscience. Let's say he does get this revelation: my point is, that up to the point where he changed his way of thinking, for him, the conscience (or soul) was gone. He didn't realize that it was only up to him to change it, but when he did, when he searched for it, found it, and listened to it, the conscience returned, and he was filled with anger, remorse and sadness over his victims and the families to those he had killed. The rest of his life, he would have to spend in prison reflecting upon the nature of his impulses and try to change them in order to have stable, healthy mind.

An extreme, but not an unlikely example. The principle goes for every human regarding mind and impulses. And it also serves as a remarkable example regarding my defintion of a soul.

I think my final answer is that you don't seem to have an interest in debating with people as much as you seem to have an interest in debasing them. But I'm still reading your posts hoping you will prove me wrong.

Who gives a flying f*** what you think of me? Can you refute the post from Boris or have you even read it? Ignore me if you wish, but do read that post.

isn't anyone going to 'prove' that this idea of 'soul' is not possible?

The purpose of the thread is to provide a logic argument for the existence of a 'soul'. The evidence against the notion is thousands of years of claim with not even a shred of supportive evidence.

The purpose of the thread is to provide a logic argument for the existence of a 'soul'. The evidence against the notion is thousands of years of claim with not even a shred of supportive evidence.

Actually, if anything the evidence is in favour of the existence of a soul, and the only refuttal of that evidence is a dogmatic belief that any evidence in favour of the soul must be false, because souls do not exist. Mostly the evidence is in the form of human experiences that cannot be account for by materialism.

Actually, if anything the evidence is in favour of the existence of a soul, and the only refuttal of that evidence is a dogmatic belief that any evidence in favour of the soul must be false, because souls do not exist. Mostly the evidence is in the form of human experiences that cannot be account for by materialism.

I'm sorry, did you just say that the fact that humans experience reality is evidence that their consciousness persists after death?

The purpose of the thread is to provide a logic argument for the existence of a 'soul'. The evidence against the notion is thousands of years of claim with not even a shred of supportive evidence.

I put forward a theory that this 'soul' could be a seperate life form (without form) living symbiotically within the human, what is wrong with this idea? How is it NOT possible? Is life with 'form' we cannot see impossible? Are 'symbiotic' relationships impossible?

Actually, if anything the evidence is in favour of the existence of a soul, and the only refuttal of that evidence is a dogmatic belief that any evidence in favour of the soul must be false, because souls do not exist. Mostly the evidence is in the form of human experiences that cannot be account for by materialism.

Or was it that science hasn't uncovered what consciousness is therefore it persists after death?

I get where you're heading ToR, and it's a theory that is very plausible, and I very much agree with you.

Actually, if anything the evidence is in favour of the existence of a soul, and the only refuttal of that evidence is a dogmatic belief that any evidence in favour of the soul must be false, because souls do not exist. Mostly the evidence is in the form of human experiences that cannot be account for by materialism.

What human experiences? What evidence is there for the soul?

If you read Boris' post, you wouldn't have posted that nonsense.

what part of two seperate lifeforms living symbiotically do you not understand? Do you know the meaning of word 'symbiotic' the meaning of 'life forms' the meaning of word 'two'? Which part of that simple idea is hard for you?

Too plausible for you to dispute so you alledge you don't understand. Why advertise your inability to understand plain English?
I seemed to have missed a previous post of yours which explains my ignorance to your points. But i still do not agree with it and i also think that a more calm and mature attitude would better fit you.

So it is your stance that our bodies are merely vessels of another being's intelligence, and that what we call the soul is actually this other entity? Sounds like sci-fi to me, but many times sci-fi has predicted the future accurately (though many times not as well). It reminds me of an article i read recently about how a lot of the human genome is there because of retro-virii and that it isnt actually human dna, but is still passed on from parent to offspring. wouldn't neccessarily tie into your idea, but its similar, in a way.

I would find it more plausible, though, that our body is a vessel for a non-living intelligence. perhaps 'intelligence' is not the right word for it though, maybe 'entity', or 'force' is better fit. I would posit that the naturally occuring energy flows through our systems and causes us to interact with the world as determined by our physical structure and form. In exactly the same way, the size, shape, and structure of a horn determines what frequency of vibrations are created when wind is blown through it--the wind is the inherent energy of the universe and the horn is the organism.

Everything has an effect on everything else--we can't think of ourselves as being individuals; it is selfish. Even still, i do not disagree with the notion of a soul, i just disagree with peoples' naive interpretations of the idea. A soul does not belong to a person--we all belong to the same soul and that soul is energy.

I put forward a theory that this 'soul' could be a seperate life form (without form) living symbiotically within the human, what is wrong with this idea? How is it NOT possible? Is life with 'form' we cannot see impossible? Are 'symbiotic' relationships impossible?

Again, the answer to that lies in Boris' post. Read it.

I put forward a theory that this 'soul' could be a seperate life form (without form) living symbiotically within the human, what is wrong with this idea? How is it NOT possible? Is life with 'form' we cannot see impossible? Are 'symbiotic' relationships impossible?

I wouldn't call it a theory unless it was backed up by quite a bit of supportive evidence :). As a pure idea it sounds allright. If we had some sort of seperate symbiotic life form in us that allows our consciousness to persist after we die then it would have a relationship with us to gain information about our personality and memory. If we couldn't see it, I'm sure we could create something that could (to interact with us it would have to obey the laws of physics and thusly be detectable). Cool idea.

I get where you're heading ToR, and it's a theory that is very plausible, and I very much agree with you.

You are the only one who understands me...weep weep. ;)

Note when I put my God = 'project Earth' theory in the other thread, that was ignored too as NO ONE could argue it was not possible. How could it be when we are making it possible ourselves :)

Anyway, never mind, you read that pm yet?

I seemed to have missed a previous post of yours which explains my ignorance to your points. But i still do not agree with it and i also think that a more calm and mature attitude would better fit you.

So it is your stance that our bodies are merely vessels of another being's intelligence, and that what we call the soul is actually this other entity? Sounds like sci-fi to me, but many times sci-fi has predicted the future accurately (though many times not as well). It reminds me of an article i read recently about how a lot of the human genome is there because of retro-virii and that it isnt actually human dna, but is still passed on from parent to offspring. wouldn't neccessarily tie into your idea, but its similar, in a way.

I would find it more plausible, though, that our body is a vessel for a non-living intelligence. perhaps 'intelligence' is not the right word for it though, maybe 'entity', or 'force' is better fit. I would posit that the naturally occuring energy flows through our systems and causes us to interact with the world as determined by our physical structure and form. In exactly the same way, the size, shape, and structure of a horn determines what frequency of vibrations are created when wind is blown through it--the wind is the inherent energy of the universe and the horn is the organism.

Everything has an effect on everything else--we can't think of ourselves as being individuals; it is selfish. Even still, i do not disagree with the notion of a soul, i just disagree with peoples' naive interpretations of the idea. A soul does not belong to a person--we all belong to the same soul and that soul is energy.


Roy, being mature is irrelevant as I have found. Being femme invalidates any points I make. Oh and I am ahead of my time. I am glad you note that sci fi quite often becomes sci fact.

There is nothing implausible about my idea (idea not belief!) plausible on basis that there are millions of life forms we cannot see and numerous life forms that live symbiotically with others. I am merely offerring the thought that if we were to view the 'soul' as a seperate life form, it would explain the phenomena that others believe in, life after death, OBE's, voices from the grave, whatever...the whole shebang explained in an instance.. no more in the realm of fantasy or paranormal or supernatural, but ALL made entirely possible by one little thing, a serpate life co-existing with the human animal, I am that other life, my body is my temple...literally. My house and I are not one, but I make it look lived in! ;)

For the benefit of Confutatis, who is rehashing old arguments, a post written by a member long ago; Boris.

The issue of whether souls exist or not is an essential consideration for theism, since if souls do not exist then an afterlife does not exist which is the domain for theism to reward or punish. I.e. without an afterlife who cares whether gods exist or not.

Argument from interaction

Clearly, for a soul to have a meaningful connection to the body, it must be capable of interacting with matter. Yet, souls are defined as immaterial and not subject to the laws that govern matter. Hence, the paradox arises: by its definition, a soul must be both capable of interacting with matter, and not capable of interacting with matter. To elaborate,

Matter affects matter through interactions. For example, you can push a desk, or bludgeon a man, or dig a river. It is because matter is so "interactive", that we can make measurements, conduct experiments, and observe phenomena associated with matter. The soul, on the other hand, is by definition immaterial. Hence, with our scientific instruments we cannot detect it. If we could detect it, we could then determine its properties and structure and we would be able to materially interact with it, which would make the soul material.

But that's a funny thing, considering that the soul is supposed to interact with the body. After all, we are only aware of our world through our senses; and our conscious decisions directly translate into physical actions -- e.g. if I wanted to clap my hands together, I could do it. So it seems that material information must have a way to enter the soul, and material information must have a way of emanating from the soul and travelling to the body.

The latter of these phenomena has a definite effect on the body, and hence must be indirectly detectable. This is because the body is indeed material, and any changes introduced within it are thus immediately detectable with proper instruments. Thus, were the soul to feed information back to the body, scientists ought to be able to find the spot where information from the soul enters the body for the first time. (Of course, despite centuries of searching no such spot has been found.) But this again contradicts the notion that the soul is not detectable through material means (of course, this contradiction arises out of the already contradictory notion that the soul interacts with the body.)

Then there is the question of the very mechanisms through which the exchange between the soul and the body takes place. By definition, a soul is 100% immaterial. On the other hand, the body is 100% material. How do we build a bridge between the two? Does there exist a "something" that is both partly material, and partly immaterial? But anything like that would not make sense, since the idealist concepts of matter vs. essence are incompatible. Matter is temporary, while the soul is eternal. Matter is corrupt, while the soul is perfect. Matter possesses extension, density, mass, color, temperature, etc. -- while the soul has none of those properties. Matter can be subdivided, yet the soul cannot. How can "something" exist that possesses a mix of these contradictory properties? How can something be corrupt and perfect at the same time? How can something be massive and massless, colorful and colorless, extended and shapeless? So it seems there is no reasonable way that the gap between the immaterial and the material can be crossed so as to enable the communication between the soul and the body.

To sum up, two distinct points are raised here: first, the definition of the soul and its relationship with the body are contradictory, and second, there is no satisfactory explanation of how the soul can exchange information with the body.


Argument from neuroscience

For the purposes of this argument, we must first determine that of all the body parts, it is the brain that makes us who we are. After all, you can take a normal human, amputate all of her limbs, and she will still be defined as a human being. You can take a human being and cut out his heart, lungs, kidneys, bowels, etc. and he would still be a human being (for as long as surgical machines can do the work of the missing organs.) If you cut off somebody's head, and somehow manage to keep it alive, then it's the head we would point toward when we discuss that person; the headless body will no longer be ol' Joe -- since here's ol' Joe's head that speaks in Joe's voice and thinks and feels like Joe, and possesses all of Joe's knowledge, etc. So we can keep imaginatively (and nonchalantly) stripping Joe of body parts until only the brain is left floating in a jar. At this point, we can still safely point to the brain and say that it's Joe; we can incinerate the other body parts, but as long as the brain is alive, Joe is alive too. Incidentally, that's why clinical death is defined as brain death. Any other failed organ can be replaced, at least in principle; however a brain cannot be replaced. Even if Joe clinically died, and you transplanted Brent's brain into Joe's skull, all you would have done is transplant Brent's persona into Joe's body; Joe would still be dead as a doornail.

Now then, it seems that the brain is the crucial part of us that makes us who we are. Incidentally, the brain also physically controls the body. If you want to bend a finger, a train of signals has to travel from your brain down your spinal cord and through your peripheral nervous system all the way to the muscles of that particular finger, so that they contract or expand so as to bend the finger in the way you wanted. If the pathway between the brain and any particular part of the body is breached even at one spot, you will lose your control over that part of your body. Hence, the brain is not only the defining part of what it is to be human -- it is also the part that actually controls the body! So, if the soul is to interact with the body, it is clear that the soul must interact with the brain.

But where in the brain does this interaction with the soul occur? It turns out that there is no possible answer. As you may or may not know, the brain can be crudely subdivided into an old brain and the new brain, the latter composed of the left and right cerebral hemispheres. The old brain consists basically of the brainstem, and in humans is more or less a mere interface between the new brain and the spinal cord, as far as cognitive function is concerned. This is not to say that the old brain is insignificant, since it contains physiologically crucial centers controlling everything from heart beats to breathing to sleep-wake cycles. However, it is the new brain that is responsible for any behavior that we would consider above comatose. The new brain possesses vast tracts processing and combining information from the five senses, it possesses structures that plan, initiate, and control movement, it possesses structures responsible for emotions, it possesses structures involved in memory, attention, spatial navigation, object recognition, production, perception, and comprehension of speech, etc, etc, etc. In fact, brain damage studies show that every last bit of the new brain in adult humans is involved in at least one, and often several, cognitive tasks. So, it would seem that the soul must be in contact with the entire brain if it was to account for all of our human faculties. However, this does not hold when we consider abnormal physiology.

Certain birth defects cause some children to be born with only one cerebral hemisphere; other children lose a hemisphere to surgical intervention very early in life. Despite the fact that for an adult to lose a hemisphere would be absolutely devastating in terms of loss of function and aspects of personality, these children grow up to be nearly normal in all respects. This is just one example where the amazing plasticity of the brain shows itself in full glory. Thing is, the plasticity is lost early in life as the brain becomes increasingly organized, since for a highly structured brain plastic change would actually mean loss of function rather than gain. Yet, the very fact that people are alive who function normally with only one hemisphere (and a brain that is organized vastly differently!), as opposed to the "normal" people who have two hemispheres and a totally different brain organization -- poses difficulties for any proposed mechanism of interaction between the soul and the brain. Already, it would seem that the mechanism is not dependent on the soul, but must adapt to the developing brain on-the-go, so as to connect the soul to the brain correctly, whatever the final architecture of the adult brain may be.

The functional portion of the brain is composed of vast and very complex networks of a total adult average of 10,000,000,000 special cells called neurons (the bodies of these cells contain pigment and are often collectively referred to as "gray matter"). Each neuron sends out slender connections to other neurons, and an average neuron is connected to about 10,000 others (these interconnection fibers are wrapped in other special cells that form an electrical insulation around these "wires"; as a result the connections look white to the eye, and en masse are referred to as "white matter"). Of course, there are trillions of other cells in the brain besides neurons, which compose blood vessels, provide insulation and scaffolding for the connections between neurons, nourish neurons and clean up their waste, fight invading pathogens, etc -- but neurons are what actually does all the work of cognition. Neurons work by sending electrical impulses to other neurons, and accepting similar messages. Without going into too much gory detail, the effect of the messages on any particular neuron is mediated by a slew of factors from the actual chemicals used to pass the message between neurons, to the actual characteristics of the voltage signals that neurons send to each other. But the great and overriding point here is that neurons are literally billions of independent cells, communicating among each other, and every now and then sending impulses through your peripheral nervous system to affect what your body does. It seems that to control the body, the soul would have to connect individually to every last neuron in the brain and control what it does. But neurons die all the time, and new neurons are born also (although at a much slower rate.) Furthermore, the actual connections between neurons change constantly, and so the role any particular neuron plays in the overall function of the brain varies with time. So, how does the soul know what each neuron's current function is? Additionally, it seems that scientists can predict neuronal behavior precisely, based purely on the electrochemical impulses it is receiving from other neurons. So it appears that there is no mysterious soul behind the curtains telling this neuron to fire and that one to hold off once every millisecond; behavior of neurons is determined exactly by the input they receive from other neurons. And some of those other neurons receive a lot of their input from sensory organs, such as the pressure, pain, temperature, etc. (in other words, somatosensory) receptors on your skin and other organs, or from your eyes, ears, nose, or tongue, or from the vestibular apparatus in your inner ear, etc. So it seems that the brain is a deterministic machine that is driven by inputs from its environment. And all of those receptors and organs have also been studied in detail, and found to be purely biochemical and physically deterministic. There is no place left for the soul to operate!

There is no end to the problems that neuropathology brings for the soul, and I am not going to attempt to list even a small portion of such problems. However, I already mentioned the conundrum posed by neural plasticity. I'll present just one more "problem", and then move on to the next argument. The problem has to do with the split-brain patients.

Some people are subject to debilitating seizures, which are uncontrollable through drugs. A seizure is really a runaway chain reaction where a bunch of neurons starts firing chaotically, and the chaos spreads across the cortex, disrupting any cognitive function in its wake. Seizures can sometimes be combated through drugs, which help regulate neuronal activity and stop it from crossing a vital threshold above which it spins out of control. Newer methods include electrodes implanted directly into the particular brain region where seizures originate, so that an implanted computer can detect an onset of the seizure and apply a mild electric current between electrodes, which in effect "resets" the surrounding neural tissue and stops a seizure in its tracks. However, a while ago such advanced treatments were not available, and in extremely debilitating cases the only recourse was surgery. Most often, the small brain region where seizures originate was surgically removed (the mild loss in cognitive function was a small price to pay for the freedom from frequent seizures, and was especially tolerable for children whose brains are still plastic enough to compensate for the injury). However, in a few cases the offending region was crucial to certain treasured faculties, such as for example production or comprehension of speech, or control of posture. In other cases the offending region was just too large. In these cases, the surgeons did the next best thing to excising the part of the brain -- they selectively cut some of the connections between this brain part and other parts of the brain, so that the seizures would only occur locally and would not spread.

Seizures can occur in relatively localized regions of the cortex, but for some unfortunate people they occur globally, spreading from one hemisphere to the other like wildfire. In these cases, where excision was not an option, surgeons used to sever the huge bundle of fibers (called "corpus callosum") that connects the right hemisphere with the left. The corpus callosum is the major connection between the hemispheres, and although there are other small communication channels via which certain parts of the two hemispheres exchange information, when the corpus callosum is severed for all practical purposes the hemispheres are cut off from each other. For this reason, the patients that underwent this type of surgery came to be known as split-brain patients. And they permanently exhibit the weirdest behaviors. They really do have two separate, almost independent brains in their skull. Most of the time, the brains coexist peacefully. However, sometimes they don't agree with each other and the results can range from comic to absurd to horrible.

Because of the way the brain is wired up to the body, each hemisphere controls the opposite half of the body. So, the right hemisphere controls the left arm, leg, etc., while the left hemisphere controls the right half. One patient had a problem with his left hemisphere: apparently, it just couldn't stand his wife. At the mere sight of his spouse, his right hand would immediately form a fist, his right leg start making valiant attempts to get the body closer to the wife, and his right arm start violently swinging at the wife with a clear intent to do damage. With his left leg he would fight his right leg, and with his left hand try to restrain his right hand, all the while displaying a grimace of rage on the right side of his face while the left side of the face expressed clear alarm and distress. Another lady had an even more serious problem, with the two halves of her body engaging in a vicious feud. She literally beat herself up, tried to choke herself in her sleep, tore her own hair out, and all of that occurred in the context of the right side of her body doing damage to the left side, and vice versa. Fortunately, such horrible side effects tend to mellow out as time passes, but the patients never return to normal -- to the end of their lives, they literally remain split in half. Yet, if a single, indivisible, unified soul was controlling the brain, then surely cutting the link between the hemispheres would not preclude them from functioning in harmony! At the very least, they shouldn't be trying to kill each other! But contrary to all common sense as we used to know it, the two hemispheres literally turn into two distinct personalities. Each of them is capable of independent emotion, independent knowledge, and independent interaction with the world. For example, questions can be asked of the right hemisphere, and it will answer them (though not verbally, because in most people the right hemisphere is incapable of language) -- but the left, verbal, hemisphere will never know about either the questions or the answers, and will in fact tell you so when asked. Even more poignantly, the right hemisphere possesses knowledge that the left hemisphere doesn't, and vice versa. Both hemispheres exhibit structured thought and problem solving abilities, independent of each other. Both of them express feelings and emotions, again independently of each other. Each has its own stream of consciousness, again independent of the other hemisphere. So indeed, the two hemispheres are in most respects separate, distinct, independent human beings! Yet, they originally only had one soul. How would the doctrine of souls explain such a phenomenon?

Yet another difficulty lies in the transfer of memory or knowledge between the brain and the soul. For example, you might remember what you did during the last Christmas, and when asked you would tell us a story describing what happened. This process of recalling facts and then verbalizing them involves many crucial faculties that are just about as central to our stream of consciousness as anything -- so presumably at least a large part of the process occurs in the soul and not in the physical brain. However, it is well known that the brain contains certain regions specifically dedicated to memory. When these regions are damaged, the result is amnesia -- loss of memory -- despite the fact that all other cognitive functions remain intact. Now, what happens when an amnesic is asked to describe something they knew prior to the brain damage, but of which they now have no recollection? The request gets correctly processed and understood by the subject, as can be verified by questioning him about it. Presumably, such higher understanding resides in the soul, so the soul indeed knows what is being asked. The patient is also perfectly able to verbalize other facts, and to tell stories not connected to the particular lost memory -- so these faculties are preserved as well. Therefore, if the soul still retains the memory whose representation is lost in the physical brain, it should have no problem verbalizing that memory and telling stories about it, and thus in fact amnesia would never even be observed! Yet, amnesia is real and very predictable based on which regions of the brain are damaged. So, it seems that destroying a part of the physical brain utterly destroys the memories it used to help encode. This means that the soul does not possess memory; memory is purely a property of the brain. Which means that when the brain dies, all memories die with it. Which means that the entire personality dies with the brain, since memory includes, in addition to explicit facts, everything from learned skills such as language, coordinated movement, or art, to such things as preferences, attitudes, beliefs, etc. Which comes into a huge clash with all the claims of afterlife where the souls are supposed to retain memory of earthly existence and even maintain their pre-death personality.


Argument from neuropsychology

This gets to the reason why we conjecture the existence of the soul in the first place. In the old times, when people knew very little about the nature of life or cognition, it baffled them that certain objects were indeed alive, and other weren't. It baffled people even more why certain living creatures, such as humans, have civilizations, art, language, religion, etc. while other living creatures have none of the above. People also wondered what happened to them when they slept, as they often seemed to depart the regular world for other bizarre realities, inhabit bodies other than their own regular body, fly, and do all sorts of amazing things that other normal things just aren't seen to be doing. And then, people wondered what it would feel like to die, and what happens to their friends and family once their bodies are destroyed, and they also wondered where their stream of consciousness came from, and how come they can't remember anything prior to their early childhood. Thus came around suggestions that what all life has is something special, some kind of a "living essence” that separates it from non-life. You will find that particular idea in every single culture that ever existed, which goes to show just how natural such a conjecture is, and how easily it arises. It may have been a reasonable suggestion, until relatively recently when science began to unravel the true mechanisms of life and cognition.

Today, we know that the simplest forms of life contain no "living essence" at all -- they are merely very complicated chemical structures that are able to obtain energy and material from their environment, and to reproduce themselves. Thus, in one deft blow the pre-existing void between matter and essence is bridged. It stands to reason that if unicellular life does not possess a soul, same holds for multi-cellular life -- since multi-cellular organisms are nothing more than intricately organized and coordinated colonies of single specialized cells.

But what of the stream of consciousness, the emotions, the awareness, the sensations, the knowledge, the reasoning power that we all possess as humans? How do all of these weird qualities derive from mere cells? Well, the answer has not yet been entirely completed, and I personally hope to play a part in completing it. But the beta version goes something like this.

In what may at first glance appear to be a grotesquely oversimplified analogy, consider modern computers. What you see on your screen is a pretty complex visual image representing an attempt at a simple, elegant, and easy to comprehend User Interface. Behind that interface lies complex functionality that enables you to create documents, exchange information with other people, play games, create art, listen to music, render computer movies, simulate collisions of galaxies, analyze data, design other computers, and in general do an amazing variety of things. Most of those applications depend on arcane algorithms and complex protocols to work, of which you as a user have no knowledge or comprehension; all you work with is a friendly (or at least not as arcane as the source code) UI, which abstracts you away from all the hair-raising complexity that dwells on your CD-ROMs and inside your particular beige box.

The brain presents a somewhat analogous picture. What we observe is the outside, equipped with a "user interface" consisting of the body. We can interact with the body, we can communicate through it to the brain, and receive replies from the brain through the body. In essence, the body abstracts the brain from us, and as generic "users", we are not aware of how exactly the brain does what it does -- nor do we particularly care, as long as the brain does its job, and does it well. However, the analogy with computers is not complete, since whereas with computers we at least have engineers and programmers who understand exactly how the computer does the things it does, with the brain, at least at the outset, we possess no such knowledge. Thus, the problem of figuring out how the brain works can be compared to the following hypothetical situation: imagine that the enlightened ancient Greeks happen to chance on a complete modern computer system, loaded with all the software, connected to an uninterruptible power supply that will last for decades, and programmed so that its user interface is in ancient Greek (so they can at least partially decipher what it is that it does.) Now imagine just how hard it would have been for the poor Greeks to figure out how all that graphical splendor and functionality arises from that box cluttered with weird metallic and non-metallic parts. Heck, they'd have to develop the theory of quantum mechanics before they could understand how a single transistor works, and they'd have to develop ultra-powerful microscopes to even find those transistors. They'd have to develop an entire theory of computation before they could understand how the mysterious box is able to exhibit such strangely life-like interactivity. Then, they would have to reverse-engineer all the circuits of the computer, and understand exactly how they interact and tie together into a working system. Then, they'd have to reverse-engineer all the binary machine code on the computer's hard drive, and determine how it affects the CPU and other components to do the things that they do when various programs are run. Then they'd have to find ways to de-compile the machine code into a human-readable language, so that they may finally understand how the programs are put together, and how they work. Only then will they finally understand that the computer is not a magic or cursed item, that it is not a living organism or a gateway into another dimension, that it is not a God in disguise and not a fundamental key to all creation -- but that it is what it is, a machine that processes information according to certain pre-set algorithms.

An equivalent claim is made for the brain: it is a machine that processes information according to certain pre-set algorithms. And we face a horrendous task of reverse-engineering the brain in order to understand it, in a way very similar to the plight of the unfortunate ancient Greeks. Only the brain is even more daunting than the most complicated computer in existence. It sports an equivalent of 10,000,000,000 processors interconnected in complicated ways, all working simultaneously at 50 Hz in a cacophony of communication. It is fluid, and constantly changes its very structure. It computes not only with electricity, but also in a large way with biochemistry, which makes the behavior of its individual CPUs much more complicated to unravel than the behavior of a typical circuit. It is inexorably tied to the body throughout its development and function, and so to understand the brain we must also understand the workings of the body in all of their intricate detail. The brain is shaped by genetics as well as sensory and chemical input as it develops and matures, so we must understand all of those processes with a high degree of confidence and in great detail over time spans lasting well over a decade from birth to maturity -- if we are to understand how the brain acquires its structure and generates its circuits. And then, once we unravel the story of the hardware, we must understand how it translates into the actual behaviors that we observe -- in essence, we then must reverse-engineer the brain's algorithms and put them into plain English before we ever hope to claim that we completely understand how the brain works. The task is clearly not for the weak of heart. In fact, it can be argued that unraveling the human brain is among the few most difficult challenges science has ever faced. And the task will clearly take at least decades, if not centuries, to complete. But we are already making the first brave steps, and so far we have learned enough to very crudely describe what lies behind our various and wonderful cognitive powers.

In the course of our studies, we have localized regions of the brain, or "nuclei", that either by themselves or in concert with other nuclei directly correspond to various human faculties. For example, there is a clearly defined subsystem in the brain that is linked to emotion. Lesioning the lymbic system will turn a person into an automaton incapable of generating or expressing absolutely any kind of affection for anything. Such patients even talk in rhythmically perfect monotone, like robots from cheap sci-fi flicks. As another example, the memory subsystem has been located in another brain structure, the hippocampus and the parahippocampal and entorhinal cortex regions. Damage to these areas predictably results in various forms of amnesia, with the exact symptomology dependent upon exactly which parts of the system were damaged, and how extensively. As another example, take the ability to understand spoken speech. This capacity is at least in part dependent on a part of the cortex called Wernicke's area, damage to which instantly turns the speech a patient hears into meaningless gibberish, and has the same effect on the speech actually produced by the person (though they are not aware that they make no sense to the others; in fact they are usually quite distressed at the fact that the others are talking gibberish and can't understand what the patient is saying.) Amazingly enough, in a fully organized adult brain there even are regions devoted specifically to reading written text, or specifically to writing text. Damage to these regions results in strange symptomology, such as for example a person being able to read, but no longer able to write, or being able to write, but not being able to read back what they just wrote. Such study of neural pathology has produced an innumerable flood of findings like these, and the deluge has yet to show signs of subsiding.

Additionally, computational modeling and animal research have been providing insights into other crucial powers of cognition. For example, the faculty of vision has been, is, and will be studied with utmost intensity. As examples, we have discovered cells in the brain that respond to lines of various orientations in the visual field, or variously oriented and scaled gratings of alternating light and dark regions; we have found cells in the visual cortex that respond to local motion in a certain direction, or to a contraction or expansion of the local texture (indicating approaching or receding objects); we have found cells higher up in the processing hierarchy that combine those basic features into more complex items, such as corner, or circle, or crosshatch patterns, and we've found cells yet higher up that respond to entire objects only of a certain type, such as faces for example. We've tentatively began to trace the diverging pathways in the visual processing stream, where one pathway specializes in recognizing objects, while the other pathway specializes in determining the location of objects in space around the observer, or the observer's relative coordinates with respect to objects. We are currently constructing rather successful computational models of how rats tell where they are, based exclusively on the rat neurophysiology and actual electrical recordings from individual cells in rat brains. We have constructed a very successful neuro-computational explanation of how barn owls determine the direction of the sounds they hear. People are digging in on all levels, from planning, coordination, and initiation of motion, to hearing, somatosensory perception, mastication, memory, emotion, mechanisms of attention, to cognitive and neurobiological development, to language, etc, etc, etc. Slowly but surely, the brain's enigma is giving way and grudgingly surrendering territory. And absolutely at no point anywhere within this extensive and burgeoning research field has any research group ever found even a remotest hint of anything supernatural.

But what we actually do, at this time, know about the link between brain and cognition -- is that the various cognitive faculties that in the past could not even be imagined to stem from mere matter, derive from specific regions in the brain, and the relationships between these brain regions and how linked regions combine to create cognition, are very physical and well-defined indeed. Additionally, severe damage to a brain region (in adults) connected to some cognitive ability completely and permanently destroys that ability; no hint of its past existence can be recovered through the use of other faculties, as should have been the case if the "lost" faculty actually resided in the soul.


Argument from evolution

Well, this one's short and sweet, and will work against only a narrowed selection of various doctrines. It basically says that since, obviously, simple life forms do not have souls, and we are merely evolved forms of the same thing, then surely we don't have souls either. At a deeper level, the argument challenges the believer to define at which point living beings acquire souls. Do only humans have souls? But then you have problems with primates, since they are so incredibly similar to us both physically and behaviorally. Do only primates have souls? But then you have a problem with the simians, since monkeys are so similar to apes both physically and behaviorally. Do only primates and simians have souls? But then you have a problem with the prosimians, etc, etc, etc. Eventually, you are forced to retreat to a generalization over all mammals, then over all animals, and finally over all life -- at which point you arrive at a stark contradiction with a clearly observable fact -- that the lowest forms of life do not have souls.


Argument from development

This is somewhat similar to the argument from evolution. Here, you are challenged to define just at what point during development a human acquires a soul. It couldn't be at the point of egg fertilization, since at that time everything is still purely biochemical, and the fertilized embryo has no properties normally associated with a soul. It couldn't be during early embryonic development, since an early human embryo is anatomically and functionally indistinguishable even from fish embryos. So when is it that a human acquires a soul? The answer to that question is impossible similarly to how it is impossible to define a cutoff across different lifeforms -- because just as the spectrum of lifeforms on earth is fairly continuous in terms of their capabilities, form and function, the development of an embryo is similarly continuous. At no point during development does the embryo suddenly make a quantum leap and exhibits some feature it didn't have a second ago. This continuity makes it impossible to define a cutoff at which the soul definitely must be there. From another (and more mathematical) perspective, since a fertilized egg has no soul, then by induction over this smooth continuum of development we arrive at the conclusion that even a fully developed adult human doesn't have a soul.


Argument from objectivity

This calls into question the very need to have a concept of souls or afterlife. Neither are objective, in that neither are tangible, measurable, or independent of observer (e.g. neither can be detected by "brainless", mechanical scientific instruments that don't have a propensity for misinterpreting things like humans do). Neither can be tested, neither provides any tangible evidence for its existence. In fact, if one starts out with a (still futuristic) complete physical explanation of cognition, then one is not going to be likely to conjecture the existence of souls or afterlife -- simply because there would be no remaining evidence available that would prompt such a conjecture. Hence, objectively, the theories of "vital essence", or souls, or afterlife are outdated and superceded by modern science. As any invalidated theory should, therefore, the ideas of soul or afterlife properly belong in the history books, but no longer in the domain of serious discourse.


Argument from equivalence

This is where we assume that the brain has, at some point in the future, been scientifically unraveled to the point that absolutely everything is known, understood, and explained about its form and function. Then, we can imagine that the scientists of the future endeavor to replicate a complete human brain, but not in flesh in blood, but as a program running in some blindingly powerful supercomputer. The brain is simulated down to the last atom, complete with information input from simulated eyes that mimic human eyes, and simulated ears that mimic human ears, and all other sensory modalities equally well implemented, with a simulated body providing feedback to the brain, and a simulated ultra-detailed environment for that body to roam and interact with. Because the simulation replicates the function of a real human brain to the last detail, and it replicates a realistic environment for that simulated brain to mature in, the simulated human will certainly develop its own conscious stream of awareness, learn the details and workings of its environment, exhibit emotions, intelligence, sensations -- it will be altogether equivalent in all of its functions to an actual physical human. But it is painfully obvious that the simulated human does not have a soul, because in reality he is nothing but a pattern of bits in the memory banks of our supercomputer. Ironically, if we were to simulate not one such human, but an entire tribe living in some virtual jungle, and allow the simulation to progress across many generations, the humans will develop language, culture, and even religion, and likely one of their first metaphysical conjectures will have to do with the fundamental distinction between life and nonlife -- the "vital essence".

I would just like to let everyone know that I have read every post on this thread except this one..

I would just like to let everyone know that I have read every post on this thread except this one..

and for this I applaud you! Amazing what moderators get away with eh?

What exactly is wrong with a long post and why can't moderators make them?

Just out of curiosity..

What exactly is wrong with a long post and why can't moderators make them?

Just out of curiosity..

I don't make the rules...just abide by them or feel the wrath of moderators on 'delete' spree!

I think long posts that are deleted are just when someone copy/pastes an entire webpage.

Personally I think you should take the 5 minutes to read it. It wont kill you, and you might just find it interesting.

I think long posts that are deleted are just when someone copy/pastes an entire webpage.

Personally I think you should take the 5 minutes to read it. It wont kill you, and you might just find it interesting.

NEVER, life is too short :eek:

What exactly is wrong with a long post and why can't moderators make them?

Just out of curiosity..

There is nothing wrong with a long post. If it were his own I would read it.

He is quite welcome to post a link to another site - I might read it
He is quite welcome to post a link to another thread, I might read it
If he wants to post a link to another thread, with a note on whos posts to look out for - thats fine too.

But this is ridiculous, where will it end. We could all just start cut and pasting huge tracts from other websites or other threads.

It is better to just not read it.


But mainly becauise every thread here is different. Even when they are about the same subject each one is slightly unique. If we just keep regurgetating old stuff we may as well have no new threads at all, because lets face it every subject imaginable has come up before. ;)

But this is ridiculous, where will it end. We could all just start cut and pasting huge tracts from other websites or other threads.

Ah I see, thought I'd read it before

Still, thanks for copy/pasting the whole thing one more time.. gave me another chance of reading it all over again. :D

I have my own beliefs and didn't know anyone like them 'til Q's post with the argument from neuropsycholoy. That's pretty much how I see the brain, as a machine, nothing else. No 'magic' involved, just a raw data machine. I used to think the energy inside of us that we get from what we eat was the soul but once the body dies, all energy is
expended and unconverted, there is no aura of energy leaving the body, it is all used before we die and converted to heat/work, or our last supposed 'kick'.
I think when we die, we cease to exist but only in the mind of God. A precognition in God's mind before we live and an afterthought in His mind after we die. I see it as our DNA and our 'equation' after we die. Our DNA combined with our life experiences to know who we are and what we done. Our DNA can be likened to a number and our brain summed up in a number when we go. Just as a computer program can be ran and all the information of variables can be stored as logic bits, so can the brain. At the end of our lives, God can recreate us and our experiences using the final equation, a summation of our DNA and memory, along with the variables involved in our past to judge us. And if we have done good in God's eyes and He wishes to resurrect us, he can just recreate us using that formula. Our DNA if He so wishes or the body as a whole, experiences and all. The whole universe is logic, all can be translated into numbers. Everyone should know this.

Just as a computer works by on/off switches using logic gates, so can decisions and everything in the universe be equated to two functions in it's most simplest format, and that is yes/no, on/off, and/not, etc. Even down to the atomic function or quantum, an atom can either be attracted, or repulsed. On anything that is, can all be equated to logic. That is the law of opposites, or two. Don't know if it's a real law or not, but what I use, that everything must have an opposite to be part of the universe, an opposing force, or else it's existance in the universe would be just utter waste, to not react with anything, and that defeats the law of perfection (again, no real law, I'm sure but I use it), stating that one is not perfect without two, but each in an individual state aren't perfect until combined, as a universal state can it only be called perfect, the simplest, most efficient state a working component can be in. But the brain also uses the same logic even in it's most complex functions using the simple on/off function. To send an electrical pulse or not to. The brain and all it's functions can be equated to logical calculations just as the universe is. There is no magic going on, it is all mathematical data. But the calculations going on or that can go on can seem like magic or miracles to us, it's all logic in God's eyes. Magic is chaotic and illogical which makes for imperfection.
Anyhow, that's a little more than I planned to post but my thoughts on the subject.

I am really not interested in having someone trying to disprove the existence of the soul to me. If that is your intention, please save your time and effort.
.

Did some people not read the opening post or simply not care what its author had to say?

But OK I read this in the end, and here’s what I think of it




Argument from interaction

Clearly, for a soul to have a meaningful connection to the body, it must be capable of interacting with matter. Yet, souls are defined as immaterial and not subject to the laws that govern matter. Hence, the paradox arises: by its definition, a soul must be both capable of interacting with matter, and not capable of interacting with matter. To elaborate,


To sum up, two distinct points are raised here: first, the definition of the soul and its relationship with the body are contradictory, and second, there is no satisfactory explanation of how the soul can exchange information with the body.
".

The soul has no connection with body – where is it stated that it has. In eastern religion the soul Atman is part of Parusha, which is the observer of prakriti (nature , matter), it does not interact with it. (Bhagavad Gita.)

Matter interacts with matter, the transcendent soul (observing) believes itself to be caught up in matter, which is only an illusion, liberation from the mortal cycle occurs from the ‘self realisation’ that we are soul and not mind and body.

This part of your argument is invalidated.







Argument from evolution

Well, this one's short and sweet, and will work against only a narrowed selection of various doctrines. It basically says that since, obviously, simple life forms do not have souls, and we are merely evolved forms of the same thing, then surely we don't have souls either. At a deeper level, the argument challenges the believer to define at which point living beings acquire souls. Do only humans have souls? But then you have problems with primates, since they are so incredibly similar to us both physically and behaviorally. Do only primates have souls? But then you have a problem with the simians, since monkeys are so similar to apes both physically and behaviorally. Do only primates and simians have souls? But then you have a problem with the prosimians, etc, etc, etc. Eventually, you are forced to retreat to a generalization over all mammals, then over all animals, and finally over all life -- at which point you arrive at a stark contradiction with a clearly observable fact -- that the lowest forms of life do not have souls.
".

Eastern definition of soul – all lifeforms have soul, hence comes doctrine of ahimsa (non harm to all sentient beings) and the hindu belief that re-incarnation can take place in the form of animals. All beings have same essence.

This part of your argument is invalidated.




Argument from development

This is somewhat similar to the argument from evolution. Here, you are challenged to define just at what point during development a human acquires a soul. It couldn't be at the point of egg fertilization, since at that time everything is still purely biochemical, and the fertilized embryo has no properties normally associated with a soul. It couldn't be during early embryonic development, since an early human embryo is anatomically and functionally indistinguishable even from fish embryos. So when is it that a human acquires a soul? The answer to that question is impossible similarly to how it is impossible to define a cutoff across different lifeforms -- because just as the spectrum of lifeforms on earth is fairly continuous in terms of their capabilities, form and function, the development of an embryo is similarly continuous. At no point during development does the embryo suddenly make a quantum leap and exhibits some feature it didn't have a second ago. This continuity makes it impossible to define a cutoff at which the soul definitely must be there. From another (and more mathematical) perspective, since a fertilized egg has no soul, then by induction over this smooth continuum of development we arrive at the conclusion that even a fully developed adult human doesn't have a soul.
".

Here you have it completely the wrong way round. The soul is the human, therefore the soul acquires a body not vice versa.

This part of your argument is invalidated.




It seems clear to me that boris has developed his theories and then defined a version of soul that fitted his theories. Boris should try to clearly define where his definitions of soul are coming from and then apply his theories not vice versa. (oh but then his theories might not fit so well). At least my arguments are based on actual real religious concepts of soul.



The main question for me is whether Q actually read this rubbish before posting it?

Light Travelling,


The main question for me is whether Q actually read this rubbish before posting it?

He most probably did, saw it was anti-God/spirituality, and thought...."this will do as an argument". :)

Jan.

But OK I read this in the end, and here’s what I think of it

Why? After repasting the entire post, and making a puffed-up response that you didn't read it, what gives?


The soul has no connection with body – where is it stated that it has. In eastern religion the soul Atman is part of Parusha, which is the observer of prakriti (nature , matter), it does not interact with it. (Bhagavad Gita.)

Matter interacts with matter, the transcendent soul (observing) believes itself to be caught up in matter, which is only an illusion, liberation from the mortal cycle occurs from the ‘self realisation’ that we are soul and not mind and body.

This part of your argument is invalidated.

Sorry, but that bit of mumbo-jumbo horsepucky does not invalidate anything other than your credibility. You've said nothing but the opposite of what is exhibited in reality.


Eastern definition of soul – all lifeforms have soul, hence comes doctrine of ahimsa (non harm to all sentient beings) and the hindu belief that re-incarnation can take place in the form of animals. All beings have same essence.

This part of your argument is invalidated.

Reincarnation is also complete horsepucky as there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest it.


Here you have it completely the wrong way round. The soul is the human, therefore the soul acquires a body not vice versa.

This part of your argument is invalidated.

Too funny, have you any evidence whatsoever to suggest anything you've asserted or are we to simply believe you?

So, where do souls float around until they find a body? How many souls are there in total? Where do the souls come from? Do souls think? What are souls made of exactly and how can they interact with the physical world?


It seems clear to me that boris has developed his theories and then defined a version of soul that fitted his theories. Boris should try to clearly define where his definitions of soul are coming from and then apply his theories not vice versa. (oh but then his theories might not fit so well). At least my arguments are based on actual real religious concepts of soul.

That's hilarious, "real religious concepts of soul" is an oxymoron.


The main question for me is whether Q actually read this rubbish before posting it?

I've read it many times. It's only rubbish to those who are unable to understand it. It makes sense and easily refutes any notions of a soul theists might have.

He (Q) most probably did, saw it was anti-God/spirituality, and thought...."this will do as an argument".

Jan,

Thank you for once again raising the bar of stupidity to new heights. I know you don't comprehend anything written in that post so your response was well expected.

You're batting a thousand!

NEVER, life is too short

I wouldn't expect you to read something with so many words and syllables, and it's not likely an elementary grade version will be available anytime soon.

So, I'll provide the short version for your pea brain to hash over the next few days:

Souls don't exist.

Why? After repasting the entire post, and making a puffed-up response that you didn't read it, what gives?
.

Curiosity got the better of me. And if you didn’t like my re-post what does that tell you about your first re-post of Boris’s original post.



Sorry, but that bit of mumbo-jumbo horsepucky does not invalidate anything other than your credibility. You've said nothing but the opposite of what is exhibited in reality.

Reincarnation is also complete horsepucky as there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest it.

Too funny, have you any evidence whatsoever to suggest anything you've asserted or are we to simply believe you?

So, where do souls float around until they find a body? How many souls are there in total? Where do the souls come from? Do souls think? What are souls made of exactly and how can they interact with the physical world?

It makes sense and easily refutes any notions of a soul theists might have.

But you deliberately avoid the point, which is that Boris is doing no more than knocking down straw men.;

Where does the idea of soul come from - religion. Religion has put forward the idea of a soul, different religions having different ideas as to what this may be.

Boris seeks to refute the religious notion of a soul. So first he must identify what notion of a soul he seeks to refute – Hindu, Muslim, etc. and probably address them individually. Preferably referencing the source texts from where he gets his definition.
Boris has done none of this, he has created a definition of a soul himself (as far as I can ascertain) and then he proceeds to refute his own definition. So he is basically refuting an idea of soul that has never been put forward by religion in the first place.

He sets up a row of half a dozen straw men , then eloquently knocks them down to the applause of his fellow materialists. Sorry but its just academic masturbation on the part of Boris (and you like to watch – yuk).

spiritualism vs materialism

Materialists always ask the illogical question that the spiritual must be proven by material means i.e. the material senses, or equipment that translates to the material senses.

The spiritual is by definition that which is not material i.e. of matter. Therefore, if the spiritual were to be provable by the senses it would (by definition) cease to be spiritual. The proof would only be of a material thing. By false logic the materialist deduces that by not having material proof the spiritual is also proved not exist.

It is like the witch ducking of the 17th C. If the accused drowns they were not a witch, if they didn’t drown they were a witch – so burn them.

If the spiritual is objectively proven, it is material not spiritual. If not proven it is said not to exist.


All arguments of logic between spiritualist and materialist come down to this and therefore end before beginning. That is not to say though that discourse should not take place between the two groups - but proving right and wrong will never happen. ;)

I heard of an argument for the existence of the soul as follows.
'We' are not our body because the atoms and molecules that make up our body will all be replaced through metabolism over the years. So what am 'I'? A soul.

I once found this argument reasonable, but I have other views now.
What is a soul? Maybe it is the temperary organization/complexity associated with a person.
Or it is similar to knowledge and information, something measured with information entropy.
It is non-physical, but it affects matter by affecting the statistical probability of events, thereby "interacting" with matter.
Maybe it is the arrangement of the neural network making up your brain, giving you your memory and defining you. Some people lost all their memories through accident or old age, are they still the same persons? Common sense says yes, but you cannot prove he is the same man.
And when a person dies, this organization (organism) breaks down and the entropy (randomness) increases.

The above are just some random ideas that come to my mind.

I think (a thought not a belief) that it might be possible (might be, not is) that what most people consider to be the 'soul' is in fact a formless entity (another life form) which lives symbiotically with the human animal. So we have in effect two life forms and not one. When the human animal body dies it is therefore possible that the formless life form continues it's existance in either it's natural state or until another 'animal' host is ready for habitation.As you seem to be so desperate for a response, ToR, here goes:

You are right, in that it seems plausible given that noone is able to disprove your idea.

It is also not a valid scientific theory - in that it can not be falsified.

To have a chance of being falsified, this other entity would have to be measurable / observed.
Until that time it remains as plausible as anything else that is immaterial, and logically consistent with something that doesn't exist.

That doesn't mean it isn't plausible - but then an infinite things are plausible. So why should this be any better than those other infinite?

So, just as it entirely possible that this Universe sits inside a jar on God's bookshelf, it is possible that you are right.

However, it lacks credibility due to the very fact that it is logically akin to the non-existent and to the infinite other things for which there is no evidence. And as such your idea is not plausible.

spiritualism vs materialism

Materialists always ask the illogical question that the spiritual must be proven by material means i.e. the material senses, or equipment that translates to the material senses.

The spiritual is by definition that which is not material i.e. of matter. Therefore, if the spiritual were to be provable by the senses it would (by definition) cease to be spiritual. The proof would only be of a material thing. By false logic the materialist deduces that by not having material proof the spiritual is also proved not exist.

It is like the witch ducking of the 17th C. If the accused drowns they were not a witch, if they didn’t drown they were a witch – so burn them.

If the spiritual is objectively proven, it is material not spiritual. If not proven it is said not to exist.


All arguments of logic between spiritualist and materialist come down to this and therefore end before beginning. That is not to say though that discourse should not take place between the two groups - but proving right and wrong will never happen. ;)

Sounds just as effective as the 'God' virus. I claim 'Spirit' exists, 'Spirit' encapsulates all your thoughts, memories, emotions, and allows your consciousness to persist after death, 'Spirit' by it's very definition is not part of this reality therefore it cannot be detected in any way, 'Spirit' magically has a link to people, belieeeevvvee ... now go and propagate this virus, tell the non-believers that they are illogical when asking for evidence and if they logically question the necessarily measrable link between people and spirit, then tell them 'God' does it with his will (therefore non-measurable again) and that he works in mysterious ways. :rolleyes:

. But you deliberately avoid the point, which is that Boris is doing no more than knocking down straw men.

Sorry, you'll have to point out exactly where he does that or else you're just blowing smoke.


Where does the idea of soul come from - religion. Religion has put forward the idea of a soul, different religions having different ideas as to what this may be.[/'quote]

I now see the problem, you're under the delusion that religion introduced the concept of the soul, that is incorrect. You have much to learn, grasshopper.

[quote]Boris seeks to refute the religious notion of a soul. So first he must identify what notion of a soul he seeks to refute – Hindu, Muslim, etc. and probably address them individually. Preferably referencing the source texts from where he gets his definition.

That is where you're wrong again, grasshopper. He doesn't need to address anybody's version of the soul at all, he addresses the concept of a soul and how it pertains to humans.



Boris has done none of this, he has created a definition of a soul himself (as far as I can ascertain) and then he proceeds to refute his own definition. So he is basically refuting an idea of soul that has never been put forward by religion in the first place.

Wrong again, Boris did not create a definition of a soul - please show exactly where he states such.


He sets up a row of half a dozen straw men , then eloquently knocks them down to the applause of his fellow materialists. Sorry but its just academic masturbation on the part of Boris (and you like to watch – yuk).

Well, rather then standing their crowing, why don't you point out exactly those straw men and refute them, can you???

*************
M*W: The soul is made up of bioelectric energy. When a person dies, this bioelectric energy disperses but never dies.

Well, this is interesting! No "arguments" to share... not even sure about the "eternal" soul... but, during my half-century on this planet, I have been with a number of people at the time of their death and I have had interactions with people who have passed away so I'm quite certain that a part of us continues to exist... For how long...? I don't know.

Well, this is interesting! No "arguments" to share... not even sure about the "eternal" soul... but, during my half-century on this planet, I have been with a number of people at the time of their death and I have had interactions with people who have passed away so I'm quite certain that a part of us continues to exist... For how long...? I don't know.
I and mr randi will both give you a million dollars if you can prove that.
http://www.randi.org/

(Q)


Thank you for once again raising the bar of stupidity to new heights.

There is nothing stupid about pointing out your fanatical, anti-God attitude.


I know you don't comprehend anything written in that post so your response was well expected.

The only thing you know, is that you are anti-God, and boy, you don’t half let us know. :rolleyes:


Sorry, you'll have to point out exactly where he does that or else you're just blowing smoke.

You point it out.
He already knows what the definition of “soul” means. He told you in his last post. Go and study the Bhagavad Gita (CHAPTER 2), then maybe you’ll know also.


That is where you're wrong again, grasshopper. He doesn't need to address anybody's version of the soul at all, he addresses the concept of a soul and how it pertains to humans.

Of course he does.
How else can we discuss whether the soul is existent or not.


Wrong again, Boris did not create a definition of a soul - please show exactly where he states such.

So where did he get the idea that the spiritual soul should be detected by material means, as evidence of proof of its existence? :confused:


Well, rather then standing their crowing, why don't you point out exactly those straw men and refute them, can you?

HELLO!! :D

He’s already done that. Did you fail to read his post? Or is it that you don’t understand.
Do some research and get back to us.

Jan.

There is nothing stupid about pointing out your fanatical, anti-God attitude.

Of course its stupid, I can't be out of favor or fanatical about something that doesn't exist. That would better describe you, fanatical about the non-existent.


The only thing you know, is that you are anti-God, and boy, you don’t half let us know.

But, you still don't understand what was written in the post.


You point it out.
He already knows what the definition of “soul” means. He told you in his last post. Go and study the Bhagavad Gita (CHAPTER 2), then maybe you’ll know also.

So, you have nothing of value to offer.


So where did he get the idea that the spiritual soul should be detected by material means, as evidence of proof of its existence?

He didn't, he simply offered up the explanation that IF the soul were material, it should be detectable, like anything else that is material. Seems like a pretty simple concept, don't ya think?


He’s already done that. Did you fail to read his post? Or is it that you don’t understand.
Do some research and get back to us.

No, he did not, LT merely made assertions; "the soul has no connection with the body, all lifeforms have souls, the soul is the human." Boris had already taken these concepts in hand and explained them away as not being possible. LT backfilled his assertions with mumbo-jumbo as opposed to actually argue the points made and then added that his mumbo-jumbo somehow invalidated Boris' argument.

You don't seem to understand that religioius dogma and superstitions are useless when arguing those points, since it is not the dogma that is being refuted, it is the concept of the soul.

since it is not the dogma that is being refuted.

So you are not arguing against the religious concepts of soul. The Hindu concept for example.



since it is not the dogma that is being refuted, it is the concept of the soul.

Well would you be so kind as to describe for us what this 'concept' of soul is that you are talking about?? :confused: Because it must be clear to you by now that those of us with religious / spiritual beliefs are not familiar with this concept you seem to have.

So if you would be so kind - describe this "concept of the soul" that you talk of for us.....

So you are not arguing against the religious concepts of soul. The Hindu concept for example.

What would be the point of that? The argument must first establish whether or not the soul is material, which of course cannot be established, however an argument for both is available.


Well would you be so kind as to describe for us what this 'concept' of soul is that you are talking about?? Because it must be clear to you by now that those of us with religious / spiritual beliefs are not familiar with this concept you seem to have.

I cannot, since souls do not exist.

However, 'soul' comes from the Greek word meaning 'breath, wind or air' while the word 'spirit' comes from the Latim word 'spiritus' meaning 'breath.' It essentially allowed the primitive mind to understand the difference between a live person and a dead body.

Edited

Let's face it and stop with all the magic and mysticism, when we die, we have no energy left in us, therefore, we're nothing. The soul is just as an indention in the framework of time/space. It is the rock in the pond. The rock has gone from that space and time but has left ripples on the pond to show something has been there. It is no more and has left it's mark on the present. What makes us what we are, our soul, is us being alive, transferring energy, and when we die, it is no more. Nothing more is created when we are created, other than the thought in God's mind, to put it in lamen's. We are just a means to transfer energy. And once we're done transferring energy, to do God's work, there is no 'soul' energy that we typically know. You won't live on in the state you are now. We are not immortal. We can only live on with God.

Our body is merely a factor in the equation. And our 'soul' merely the presence of a dead useless number that helped to arrive at the final equation. It is no longer, but you can tell by mathematical deduction that something has been there, it leaves a record. And I believe it can only be resurrected by God if He deems the body to have done good.

I and mr randi will both give you a million dollars if you can prove that.
http://www.randi.org/

Oh! Thanks for the offer. I'll take you up on it if someone can tell me how one goes about proving the content of unplanned conversations...?

No matter... The knowledge that I gained during conversations with people who have passed sometimes saved a life and/or brought comfort to someone who was in severe emotional distress ... In my book, money is not what's important in such instances.

I`ll say one thing for you Patriot, thats an interesting perspective. I love the ripple analogy. But I sense you need to put a name to that god. And it has to be a Biblical name?

I just feel the biblical God, and perhaps the Islamic God, maybe even Buddhist God is perhaps the same God I believe in. I feel most of the prophets I read who speak of God, not precisely, but summarily speak of the God I feel. There are only two decisions we can serve in life, and that is good and bad. Therefore, only two Gods. That which speaks of love, tolerance, forgiveness, and empathy, and that which is hateful, careless, unmerciful, and for the wrong choice. So really, when I look at it, I only have a choice between two sides.

Then you don`t need religion at all? Seems to just get in the way for me.

[QUOTE]Of course its stupid, I can't be out of favor or fanatical about something that doesn't exist.

You believe God/soul does not exist, which of course is your purogative. The problem lies in the fact that you try and force your belief by damning every opposing belief, without actually understanding what their beliefs are based on.
In other words your completely ignorant but want everyone to believe like you.


That would better describe you, fanatical about the non-existent.

Being fanatical about something has nothing to do with the actual belief, or non-belief, it is about the attitude of individuals. Your attitude is one of complete intolerence of anything outside your extremely narrow zone of perception. And your insistence that your understanding is right and all others wrong, and failure to even attempt to understand how others percieve life shows that you act like a fanatic.


But, you still don't understand what was written in the post.

What's not to understand?


So, you have nothing of value to offer.

To you and others like you, I doubt it, as I do believe in God, and you are totally intolerent of me (biggots). But I think I have value to offer to someone who is capable of using basic intelligence, instead of some simpleton reactionary mechanism, based on nothing but intolerence.



He didn't, he simply offered up the explanation that IF the soul were material, it should be detectable, like anything else that is material.

Where did he get the idea that the soul is "material."


Seems like a pretty simple concept, don't ya think?

A simpleton concept, yes.


No, he did not, LT merely made assertions; "the soul has no connection with the body, all lifeforms have souls, the soul is the human."

In every scripture, this is the understanding of what constitutes "soul". This is what is taught, just like we are taught that water has 1 atom of hydrogen and 2 atoms of oxygen.


Boris had already taken these concepts in hand and explained them away as not being possible.

Then that is his conclusion .
He cannot prove that they are not possible, he can only assert it because he cannot sensually detect it, neither does he seem capable of understanding why and how it could be possible, but not within the range of the senses.


LT backfilled his assertions with mumbo-jumbo as opposed to actually argue the points made and then added that his mumbo-jumbo somehow invalidated Boris' argument.

Well if you regard that as "mumbo jumbo" without actually trying to understand what he means, then you are an ignorant fanatic as I stated above.

Why do you post in this forum?

When will blockheads try and open their minds? :rolleyes:


You don't seem to understand that religioius dogma and superstitions are useless when arguing those points, since it is not the dogma that is being refuted, it is the concept of the soul.

Learn what the concept is first, then argue against it.
Don't be frightened.
Yours and Boris idea of the soul is a strawman, so please don't bring it up again. :cool:

Jan.

On the 29th of May my newborn son James entered this world traumatically after birth complications, He was perfect physically and at 38 weeks gestation but prolonged hypoxic brain injury effectively meant that he was 'brain dead.Kept alive by modern medicine where was his soul?

Where does the soul reside within? A 45yo younger relative suffers a massive heart attack & brain injury again is kept alive via modern medicine? How do we know when the soul has 'left the building'?

Obviously in the case of James when he took his last earthly breath in my hands & I felt his last heart beat he physically died, as with all humans the memory of his short life lives within our hearts NOT mind.Why do we feel this pain & suffering within, NOT in the mind as we perceive it through the senses but in the heart & physical body. Interesting, I dont know the answer...

I can comprehend the Aura as a an bio-electrical field through the Kirillian effect, that we all originated from the parodoxical original 'source of everything' of which light and its waves & colors define our physical world & resonate at many levels in our mind, bodily function etc,

Is 'the soul' a very small part of this 'source of everything' that via light speed over vast lengths of time filters back to 'the source' & allows it to somehow experience this physical life in all it pleasure & pain?

Before light, time matter & space what could have existed?
Nothing, yet it appears paradoxically that within nothing indeed did the 'something' originate.

Do we delude ourselves about a soul that transcends our death or is it a part of this universal origin?

I think (a thought not a belief) that it might be possible (might be, not is) that what most people consider to be the 'soul' is in fact a formless entity (another life form) which lives symbiotically with the human animal. So we have in effect two life forms and not one. When the human animal body dies it is therefore possible that the formless life form continues it's existance in either it's natural state or until another 'animal' host is ready for habitation.

:)

This would explain the 'afterlife', reincarnation, aura's, OBE's, and all manner of other alleged 'supernatural' things.

If this is true then our souls would have to be around to pick out their current body, out of choice. Why would the soul pick out a body that is deformed or born in poverty. Lessons? Growth? I sometimes wonder about the luck some people have or their place in life. Maybe next time I could get with a family with a last name like Gates.

I hate to answer a question with a question, but the way I view the argument is like this:

Say I were to go over to your house one day with my bud, a neurophysician. He freezes both of us (neglect problems with cryogenic freezing) and cut open both of our heads. Say he then cut both of our brains straight our of our heads, and placed my brain in your body. Say, for sake of an easier argument that you are a girl. Now he unfreezes you. What would you say would happen in this case? Would I be controlling your body, a male literally in a females body? Would it still 'be' you, but with my thinking capacity, trained responses, skills etc? Would you have my memories? Would you be in control, but have my tendencies, likes and dislikes? If you would still be you, under any other conditions, then the soul exists. If I would be controlling your body, again under any other conditions, then the soul doesn't exist. I believe that you would be controlling you, but you would have my tendencies, thinking processes, skills, and likes and dislikes. I believe that the soul is real, it's what literally controlls your body. Your brain holds memories and such, and is responsible for influencing the soul to make decisions based on experiences, preferences, and trained responses. The soul still commands the brain. The amount of control your soul has over your brain is willpower.

I think the soul does not interact with matter (or if it does, it can not be perceived or proved because of its non material nature), i also think the soul has nothing to do with memories or emotions, since these things are just cognitive processes, chemicals, etc.
Now the soul could be just the fact of our existance, it fulfills the "requirements", its eternal, goes beyond the material plane, and these fact or chunk of space/time is real and fits the world of quantum physics, which say that all times are equally real (do the research yourself, to lazy to explain it now, its late here =P) so if you existed one moment, you left a "blueprint" of your existance, now you may say: "Dats d pazt, it iz not real rite naaauuu", wrong, like i said all the times are equally real. That could be the soul, or maybe its soemething thats not material and doesnt affect us in a material way (in other words, no feelings, no emotions, no memories has nothing to do with our soul, it doesnt matter whic of these 2 cases its true, if one of these are true of course). Thats what i think (idea, not belief, just stating a probability).
ps: remember that everything is posible if we say its beyond the material plane (with material plane i mean all the facts, including mind, cognitive processes, etc.), so even the most twisted and, like Q likes to say, mumbo jumbo belief of a god with a white beard with maracas could be true, as long it doesnt iterfere with facts of the material plane (altough even these facts can be questioned because we percieve them, and our perception its not absolute, so almost nothing could be sentenced as completly real or unreal)
there is my grain of knowledge, destroy/re-create/manipulate as you want as long as we find someting that can be called a truth about this theme =D

You believe God/soul does not exist, which of course is your purogative. The problem lies in the fact that you try and force your belief by damning every opposing belief, without actually understanding what their beliefs are based on.
In other words your completely ignorant but want everyone to believe like you.

Here Jan, let me turn this back at you so you can understand how ridiculous your statement is:

"You believe The Flying Spaghetti Monster does not exist, which of course is your purgative. The problem lies in the fact that you try and force your belief by damning every opposing belief, without actually understanding what their beliefs are based on.
In other words your completely ignorant but want everyone to believe like you."

See how it works, Jan?


Being fanatical about something has nothing to do with the actual belief, or non-belief, it is about the attitude of individuals. Your attitude is one of complete intolerence of anything outside your extremely narrow zone of perception. And your insistence that your understanding is right and all others wrong, and failure to even attempt to understand how others percieve life shows that you act like a fanatic.

You perceive life as magical and mystical, full of myth and superstitions, from the perspective of your religion, a religion that has murdered millions and is intolerant to anyone who is not a follower, and I am supposed to tolerate that?


To you and others like you, I doubt it, as I do believe in God, and you are totally intolerent of me (biggots).

No, I am intolerant to the ideology of Christianity, not you, personally. You should at least take the time to understand the difference, Jan.


But I think I have value to offer to someone who is capable of using basic intelligence, instead of some simpleton reactionary mechanism, based on nothing but intolerence.

Yet, you've not shown an ounce of intelligence, as yet.


In every scripture, this is the understanding of what constitutes "soul". This is what is taught, just like we are taught that water has 1 atom of hydrogen and 2 atoms of oxygen.

That's fucking hilarious, Jan. Do you do stand up comedy, too?

So, since you can demonstrate the make up of water, what is the exact make up of the soul and what exactly is the mechanism it uses to interact with the body? Come on, Jan, just like you were taught... hilarious...


Then that is his conclusion .
He cannot prove that they are not possible, he can only assert it because he cannot sensually detect it, neither does he seem capable of understanding why and how it could be possible, but not within the range of the senses.

No Jan, he offers complete and rational explanations, you offer only myth, superstition and magic.


Well if you regard that as "mumbo jumbo" without actually trying to understand what he means, then you are an ignorant fanatic as I stated above.

The fact that LG only spouts "mumbo jumbo" at the best of times has nothing to do with me.


Why do you post in this forum?

When will blockheads try and open their minds?

Actually Jan, you are the blockhead and I post here to point that out.


Learn what the concept is first, then argue against it.
Don't be frightened.
Yours and Boris idea of the soul is a strawman, so please don't bring it up again.

You're such an amazing idiot, Jan. The concept of a soul, as asserted by theists, is not a concept at all, but a faith-based delusion. There is no concept, that is, unless you're able to fully describe a soul?

Can you, Jan?

Hello Raven,

A soul is a person's intangible attributes. It includes their emotional aspects, their wants and desires, and their intellect. Animals have some of these qualities as well. The question becomes, then, what of these intangible features might exist after the physical body dies? Obviously they do not continue on in this physical universe, but is this physical universe all of reality?

Many rationally thinking people would agree that this physical universe is not all of reality, because it has not always been here, and came from something else. Nobody knows the aspects of this "other" reality that the universe came from, and there is no way to know it without external influence from outside.

I believed in the never dieing human soul before I ever believed in the form of a supernatural being. How can we know for sure what reality "is"? Ever had a very realistic dream that just seemed so real -- you believed it was real while you were dreaming then woke up to find out it was not?

That's the best way I can describe a spiritual awakening, where this world is a subset of a larger reality, and the "new" information comes from inside, rather than outside. I believe death is the awakening process from this world to the next. I just believe there is an afterlife. My belief is based on what is inside, rather than what is outside.

As the human mind is a subset of this physical universe, this physical universe is a subset of a larger reality. The larger reality is where the soul exists apart from this physical body. I believed this before I ever came to a religion -- that eternality is the only reality.



I have heard quite a few arguments against the existence of a “soul”. Some of them are solid, some are… well… let’s just say that some people perhaps don’t express themselves as well as others. I am really not interested in having someone trying to disprove the existence of the soul to me. If that is your intention, please save your time and effort.

I would like to read people’s arguments - sound, analytical, pragmatic arguments – FOR the existence of a soul – preferably an eternal soul.

I know a lot of people will read this and the first thing that will jump to mind is, “define soul”.
No, YOU define soul.

What I am looking for, essentially, is someone to offer, not proof, not qualified objective evidence, but simply convincing arguments that there is some part of us that exists beyond the simple mind and body. A part that will transcend this physical plane and continue on to Heaven, Nibbana, Shangri-La, what-have-you.

I probably don’t need to say it, but please don’t bother with such inane arguments as, “Well (insert holy book of choice here) says so.”

I am not looking to discount your beliefs. I don’t want to prove you wrong (though I will argue if either it doesn’t fly for me, or I think it is missing something and want to explore it further). I am not looking to score one for the Atheist camp. This is nothing like that. I am working on a book, and want to find a reason that a reasonable pragmatic character who does not subscribe to any religion would believe in an eternal soul and the concept of reincarnation. Since I have never found a solid reason to believe in the soul (though the romantic side of me would LIKE to believe, to be honest) I can’t find a reason for him to believe. I was hoping there was a believer that could help me out. Perhaps even a non-believer that has heard some compelling argument that at least made you take a step back and re-evaluate your position. I want to know what makes this character tick, and why he, who is essentially an Atheist, would believe in the soul.

Thanks for any help you might offer.

I have heard quite a few arguments against the existence of a “soul”. Some of them are solid, some are… well… let’s just say that some people perhaps don’t express themselves as well as others. I am really not interested in having someone trying to disprove the existence of the soul to me. If that is your intention, please save your time and effort.

I would like to read people’s arguments - sound, analytical, pragmatic arguments – FOR the existence of a soul – preferably an eternal soul.

I know a lot of people will read this and the first thing that will jump to mind is, “define soul”.
No, YOU define soul.

What I am looking for, essentially, is someone to offer, not proof, not qualified objective evidence, but simply convincing arguments that there is some part of us that exists beyond the simple mind and body. A part that will transcend this physical plane and continue on to Heaven, Nibbana, Shangri-La, what-have-you.

I probably don’t need to say it, but please don’t bother with such inane arguments as, “Well (insert holy book of choice here) says so.”

I am not looking to discount your beliefs. I don’t want to prove you wrong (though I will argue if either it doesn’t fly for me, or I think it is missing something and want to explore it further). I am not looking to score one for the Atheist camp. This is nothing like that. I am working on a book, and want to find a reason that a reasonable pragmatic character who does not subscribe to any religion would believe in an eternal soul and the concept of reincarnation. Since I have never found a solid reason to believe in the soul (though the romantic side of me would LIKE to believe, to be honest) I can’t find a reason for him to believe. I was hoping there was a believer that could help me out. Perhaps even a non-believer that has heard some compelling argument that at least made you take a step back and re-evaluate your position. I want to know what makes this character tick, and why he, who is essentially an Atheist, would believe in the soul.

Thanks for any help you might offer.

The soul as it is understood in modern times does not exist according to the bible. There is no immaterial part of the human body that survives death.

The bible uses the word Ne'phesh (Hebrew) for soul, "that which breathes" or more precisely "the blood".

The soul according to the bible dies. There are numerous scriptures to support it.

You perceive life as magical and mystical, full of myth and superstitions, from the perspective of your religion, a religion that has murdered millions and is intolerant to anyone who is not a follower, and I am supposed to tolerate that?

Can you find anything wrong with someone that lives like the Jesus described in the bible? That character didn't kill anybody, regardless of whether you believe He existed or not. He is still the example. Human failures are just that. The Jesus of the bible not only tolerated them, but tried to help them too. :shrug:



No Jan, he offers complete and rational explanations, you offer only myth, superstition and magic.

The bible offers the ideal example of a human, by the name of Jesus. Can you find anything wrong with somebody that's just like Him? It seems like you are being awfully judgmental and condescending.


You're such an amazing idiot, Jan. The concept of a soul, as asserted by theists, is not a concept at all, but a faith-based delusion. There is no concept, that is, unless you're able to fully describe a soul?

Can you, Jan?

Jesus is the soul that Christians strive to emulate. Is there anything wrong with loving, helping, and ministering to other people unselfishlessly like this personna? By the way, when you start calling people names you have pretty well forfieted your points, however right you may feel you are -- you aren't offering to help them.

So tell me, what is the purpose of this forum, other than to lambaste religion? Religion is not a science, and was never meant to be. Religion is an alternative to the emptiness of atheism. It's a second perspective for those who believe, and often it tells us a lot about human nature and human character.

Can you find anything wrong with someone that lives like the Jesus described in the bible? That character didn't kill anybody.
The bible offers the ideal example of a human, by the name of Jesus. You mean the person that has nothing against people keeping slaves, beating or killing people, including children, dishonours his mother, and steals, etc...

Jesus is the soul that Christians strive to emulate. Hence why there are, and have been so many killings because of him.

You mean the person that has nothing against people keeping slaves, beating or killing people, including children, dishonours his mother, and steals, etc...

Jesus did none of these things. The people that do these things violate His only commandment: that we love one another. I don't think you can blame human failure on Him. I ask again, what's wrong when a person tries to be like the Jesus of the Bible? The Jesus of the Bible, whether you believe He existed or not, did none of these things you mention.


Hence why there are, and have been so many killings because of him.

For the same reason that he was himself killed by religious leaders. The murderers thought they were serving God, and Jesus told them they were only serving themselves. Jesus said love one another, and he helped somebody on the sabbath. What was wrong with that? Did it deserve a death sentence?:shrug:

Personally, I felt a lot more ill will and resentment toward people before I became a Christian, than after. Jesus says forgive, and I try to obey. :)

Most people would agree that the character, Jesus, portrayed in the Bible is an ideal human type. The question I ask you, is why no human lives up to it? We think we are in control, but we aren't. What's wrong with us?

Jesus did none of these things.Then I suggest you reread your bible and try not to cherry pick this time.
The people that do these things violate His only commandment:As did he.
that we love one another. I don't think you can blame human failure on Him.I don't blame anything on him it is a fictional concept, I 'm only pointing out that this character is not squeeky clean.
I ask again, what's wrong when a person tries to be like the Jesus of the Bible? The Jesus of the Bible, whether you believe He existed or not, did none of these things you mention.And I give you the same answer "You mean the person that has nothing against people keeping slaves, beating or killing people, including children, dishonours his mother, and steals, etc..."(reread your bible)

Personally, I felt a lot more ill will and resentment toward people before I became a Christian, than after. Jesus says forgive, and I try to obey. :)I wouldn't wave that as a flag of goodness, the fact you had ill will towards people and still harbour it under the guise of religion is very telling of your character.
My brother a devote christian said to me "if it wasn't for his fear of god, and love of jesus he could easily kill someone" I said "I hold no such beliefs and could not hurt a fly"
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion" Steven Weinberg
If the bible is a so called book to teach you morality, it is an epic fail.
a book that professes love should not contain words like enemy, kill, beat, slave, etc...
Most people would agree that the character, Jesus, portrayed in the Bible is an ideal human type.No a majority of christians not most people.
The question I ask you, is why no human lives up to it?I for one most certainly do not condone killing, beating, slavery, child abuse stealing, or disrepecting my parents, etc.. So why would you think living up to that is a good thing.

Can you find anything wrong with someone that lives like the Jesus described in the bible?

I believe Mis-t-highs is doing a wonderful job at refuting your claims.

Then I suggest you reread your bible and try not to cherry pick this time.

ok. Where would you like me to start reading in the bible? It's a long book.


As did he.

If somebody just like Jesus was alive today, would you wish they were dead?


I don't blame anything on him it is a fictional concept,

What do you find wrong with the conduct of this Jesus character. Maybe you could pretend it's like a drama play or something where somebody made up this character named Jesus. In this drama, what's wrong with this character called Jesus?


I 'm only pointing out that this character is not squeeky clean.

but you gave no examples where the Jesus character in the bible, that you believe is fiction, actually did something bad. Until you provide an example, you haven't really made a point in my opinion. And if Jesus didn't say something about a subject, that doesn't automatically mean He approved of it. The argument from silence is really no argument at all.


And I give you the same answer "You mean the person that has nothing against people keeping slaves, beating or killing people, including children, dishonours his mother, and steals, etc..."(reread your bible)

I'm sorry, I read the passages, and Jesus doesn't want me to do these things. I don't think that conduct shows love toward other people. Do you? :shrug:

If you read the bible and you believe it tells you to do these bad things then stay away from the bible, by all means.


I wouldn't wave that as a flag of goodness, the fact you had ill will towards people and still harbour it under the guise of religion is very telling of your character.

I am imperfect, but I have forgiven people. That means I no longer harbour ill feelings toward them for what they did wrong. I feel a lot better as a result. Negative emotions are a bad thing to live with.


My brother a devote christian said to me "if it wasn't for his fear of god, and love of jesus he could easily kill someone" I said "I hold no such beliefs and could not hurt a fly"

Well good for both of you. ;)

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion" Steven Weinberg

So what did a Christian do to you personally that leaves you feeling this way? I'd just like to know how you justify your hatred of Christians. What did they do to you?


If the bible is a so called book to teach you morality, it is an epic fail.
a book that professes love should not contain words like enemy, kill, beat, slave, etc... No a majority of christians not most people.I for one most certainly do not condone killing, beating, slavery, child abuse stealing, or disrepecting my parents, etc.. So why would you think living up to that is a good thing.

I'm not taught to do those things, rather the opposite. I guess I just don't fit your stereotype.

I believe Mis-t-highs is doing a wonderful job at refuting your claims.

but I asked you.

ok. Where would you like me to start reading in the bible? It's a long book.Obviously the NT, but do actually read it don't just scan it. And you needn't worry about reading the parables, they are there as jesus said to confuse.
If somebody just like Jesus was alive today, would you wish they were dead?No, but I would wish him incarcerated for his crimes, unfortunately we cant arrest people for condoning a thing, so the slavery, killings and beatings he condoned, and even the disrespect would go untouched, but the stealing, now thats a different story.
What do you find wrong with the conduct of this Jesus character.His conduct is not so different to many human being, but as I would not put Saddam Hussain or Hitler or even Bush on a pedestal, nor would I put a person like the jesus character.
Maybe you could pretend it's like a drama play or something where somebody made up this character named Jesus. In this drama, what's wrong with this character called Jesus?The jesus character is a mix of all the previous god-heroes, so the concept is already a drama play, and all the christian merely drama queens.
but you gave no examples where the Jesus character in the bible, that you believe is fiction, actually did something bad.What! you want me too educate you, ok but only this once, you do really need to reread your bible. The jesus character broke the 5th (or the 4th if catholic) commandment (KJV, John 2:4) and the 8th (or the 7th if catholic)(KJV, Luke 19:30)
Until you provide an example, you haven't really made a point in my opinion. And if Jesus didn't say something about a subject, that doesn't automatically mean He approved of it. The argument from silence is really no argument at all.Lol! so to stand by a watch whilst someone his beat to near death and do nothing, doesn't say anything about the persons character, ok got you. lol! (remember that jesus loved his people so much he gave up his life)why was it that he only intervened when it suited the story line.
I'm sorry, I read the passages, and Jesus doesn't want me to do these things. I don't think that conduct shows love toward other people. Do you?lol! again we are talking about the character of jesus not you.
If you read the bible and you believe it tells you to do these bad things then stay away from the bible, by all means.When I read the bible I read it with an unbiased view, and most certainly don't believe it tells you anything, it's a book of fiction, belief doesn't come into it. Aesops fables have better moral content.
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion" Steven Weinberg

So what did a Christian do to you personally that leaves you feeling this way? I'd just like to know how you justify your hatred of Christians. What did they do to you?Oh! the arrogance of the christian to think the sun revolves around you. Steven Weinberg stated Religion, we are discussing jesus and if you like christianity. I as every non religious person have no grievance with any religious person be they christian, muslim, hindu. but what I do think is abhorrent is religion per se.

I'm not taught to do those things, rather the opposite. I guess I just don't fit your stereotype.Well you would be the first, Oh you are special, lol! if jesus appeared to you in a vision, and told you to steal fred's bike or beat your neighbour, etc.. you would do it. and please don't come back and say jesus would never tell me to do that, he told his disciples to.

That is a lot of quoting going on there...

Good thread.


A soul is a person's intangible attributes. It includes their emotional aspects, their wants and desires, and their intellect.

I agree. However, if there really is life after death, this same 'soul' must be immortal.

This then creates a rather interesting paradox.

What of those who are involved in accidents and suffer severe personality changes? Or those who lose their long-term memory so irreversibly that they have to be taught to walk and talk again - as if they were infants? Next consider an elderly lady, almost wholly consumed by Alzheimer's disease, and a completely different person to who she was twenty years ago.

These examples prove that our wits, intellect, memory and even entire personality can be damaged irreversibly by disease and injury. This in turn begs the question: is our soul actually mortal? Does it in fact die with us?

and please don't come back and say jesus would never tell me to do that, he told his disciples to.

He's saving souls, and kickin' ass!

http://video.google.com/videosearch?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGQD_enUS274US275&q=kung+fu+jesus&um=1&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title#

Obviously the NT, but do actually read it don't just scan it. And you needn't worry about reading the parables, they are there as jesus said to confuse.

I think they were rather illuminating though they were just analogies.


No, but I would wish him incarcerated for his crimes, unfortunately we cant arrest people for condoning a thing, so the slavery, killings and beatings he condoned, and even the disrespect would go untouched, but the stealing, now thats a different story.

Where did Jesus condone slavery? chapter and verse please.


His conduct is not so different to many human being, but as I would not put Saddam Hussain or Hitler or even Bush on a pedestal, nor would I put a person like the jesus character.The jesus character is a mix of all the previous god-heroes, so the concept is already a drama play, and all the christian merely drama queens.What! you want me too educate you, ok but only this once, you do really need to reread your bible.

I don't think that's it at all. It's really on you to show what you are talking about. I'm not a mind reader.


The jesus character broke the 5th (or the 4th if catholic) commandment (KJV, John 2:4)

Jesus called his mother a woman and then turned water into wine at her request. My step-dad used to call my mother "woman" a lot when he bossed her around.. I can't say that I particularly liked it when he did that.


and the 8th (or the 7th if catholic)(KJV, Luke 19:30)

The colt thing. Jesus apparantly had this worked out before hand with the owners (verses 33 and 34). They agreed. And you told me that cherry picking the verses wasn't allowed. hmmmmm.....



Lol! so to stand by a watch whilst someone his beat to near death and do nothing, doesn't say anything about the persons character, ok got you. lol!

I can't find the verse that says Jesus used his cord whip on the money changers. Can you show it?


(remember that jesus loved his people so much he gave up his life)why was it that he only intervened when it suited the story line.lol!

He saved others but not himself -- yeah I remember -- that's what the self-righteous pharasees said too.


again we are talking about the character of jesus not you.When I read the bible I read it with an unbiased view,

I read the Bible from a biased view -- I'm just being honest. :D


and most certainly don't believe it tells you anything, it's a book of fiction, belief doesn't come into it.

Yet the Bible tells you to do all these terrible things to people that you keep talking about. I don't have that issue.


Aesops fables have better moral content.Oh!

I liked the fox and the grapes. Good story about human nature. I learned a lot from it ;)


the arrogance of the christian to think the sun revolves around you.

I don't know a christian that thinks that. I don't know anybody that thinks that. Do you think that???


Steven Weinberg stated Religion, we are discussing jesus and if you like christianity.

When you die I don't think he'll be there.


I as every non religious person have no grievance with any religious person be they christian, muslim, hindu. but what I do think is abhorrent is religion per se.

Yet atheists are incredibly outnumbered. Why is atheism so unattractive?


Well you would be the first, Oh you are special, lol!

Forgiveness brings peace. Try it.


if jesus appeared to you in a vision, and told you to steal fred's bike or beat your neighbour, etc.. you would do it.

Jesus can make His own bicycle.


and please don't come back and say jesus would never tell me to do that, he told his disciples to.

He also had a message for the disciples to share with anybody that asked about the colt he borrowed. I'm just reading my bible like you told me. I tried to include everything instead of just cherry picking. I apologize for being honest.

I have heard quite a few arguments against the existence of a “soul”. Some of them are solid, some are… well… let’s just say that some people perhaps don’t express themselves as well as others. I am really not interested in having someone trying to disprove the existence of the soul to me. If that is your intention, please save your time and effort.

I would like to read people’s arguments - sound, analytical, pragmatic arguments – FOR the existence of a soul – preferably an eternal soul.

I know a lot of people will read this and the first thing that will jump to mind is, “define soul”.
No, YOU define soul.

What I am looking for, essentially, is someone to offer, not proof, not qualified objective evidence, but simply convincing arguments that there is some part of us that exists beyond the simple mind and body. A part that will transcend this physical plane and continue on to Heaven, Nibbana, Shangri-La, what-have-you.

I probably don’t need to say it, but please don’t bother with such inane arguments as, “Well (insert holy book of choice here) says so.”

I am not looking to discount your beliefs. I don’t want to prove you wrong (though I will argue if either it doesn’t fly for me, or I think it is missing something and want to explore it further). I am not looking to score one for the Atheist camp. This is nothing like that. I am working on a book, and want to find a reason that a reasonable pragmatic character who does not subscribe to any religion would believe in an eternal soul and the concept of reincarnation. Since I have never found a solid reason to believe in the soul (though the romantic side of me would LIKE to believe, to be honest) I can’t find a reason for him to believe. I was hoping there was a believer that could help me out. Perhaps even a non-believer that has heard some compelling argument that at least made you take a step back and re-evaluate your position. I want to know what makes this character tick, and why he, who is essentially an Atheist, would believe in the soul.

Thanks for any help you might offer.

There is no convincing material evidence obviously.

What kind of evidence do you want for your book?

If there was any you would make a million.

Why not be more realistic and write a book about how little we know of the brain and how thoughts are generated?

Maybe research ancient texts, because modern science has no place for the soul, and theists explanations are brushed aside as nonsense because of science.

Catch 22.

Where did Jesus condone slavery? chapter and verse please.Using his analogies as you call them, he does, which would have been the perfect opportunity for jesus to condemn the slavery and its abuse of slaves. Isn't it more telling that he never once does.
I don't think that's it at all. It's really on you to show what you are talking about. I'm not a mind reader.Shouldn't you have a greater knowledge of the bible than I, if you knew your bible you would know what I was talking about.
Jesus called his mother a woman and then turned water into wine at her request. My step-dad used to call my mother "woman" a lot when he bossed her around.. I can't say that I particularly liked it when he did that.Exactly it's very demeaning and disrespectful. Thus he breaks the commandment.
Thank you for having the good sense to see that. It's refreshing to find someone of a christian ilk, admit his mistake.
The colt thing. Jesus apparantly had this worked out before hand with the owners (verses 33 and 34). They agreed. And you told me that cherry picking the verses wasn't allowed. hmmmmm.....lol, so lets see what was said shall we
KJV LUKE 18,29: And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, (note: it never once says that jesus had been to bethphage and bethany before)
30: Saying, Go ye into the village over against you; in the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither. (Note:lets translate, untie him/take him/steal him.)
31: And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him.
32: And they that were sent went their way, and found even as he had said unto them.
33: And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? (note:why are you taking my colt/stealing my colt)
34: And they said, The Lord hath need of him. (note:so it seem they stood there dumbfounded, or were beaten down, or anything else but most certainly not through jesus arranging it earlier, unless he sent a message by pony express.)
So we can gather that jesus as the instigator of the crime sent his disciples to steal a colt. it is as clear as day. If it was prearranged then why ask "why are you taking my colt" the owner would know, wouldn't he.
I can't find the verse that says Jesus used his cord whip on the money changers. Can you show it?Irrelevant strawman. has no bearing on the subject in question, as I said before why was it that he only intervened when it suited the story line. would it have something to do with the authors. I wonder.
He saved others but not himself -- yeah I remember -- that's what the self-righteous pharasees said too.Was that your attempt at an insult, lol.
I read the Bible from a biased view -- I'm just being honest.That also would be a first, the religious are basically intellectually dishonest.
But having said they are victims of a mind virus, so it could be a little unfair to call them dishonest, as they haven't got the good sense to know what reality is.
Yet the Bible tells you to do all these terrible things to people that you keep talking about. I don't have that issue.No the bible tells me nothing it's a book of fiction, I don't use it to guide my life, that would be foolish. and you saying you don't have that issue is a lie, as you do use it to guide your life.

Oh! the arrogance of the christian to think the sun revolves around you. Steven Weinberg stated Religion, we are discussing jesus and if you like christianity. I as every non religious person have no grievance with any religious person be they christian, muslim, hindu. but what I do think is abhorrent is religion per se.
I don't know a christian that thinks that. I don't know anybody that thinks that.But you do else you would not have said, "So what did a Christian do to you personally that leaves you feeling this way? I'd just like to know how you justify your hatred of Christians. What did they do to you? Do you think that???"
When you die I don't think he'll be there.Another insult.
Why would I want a fictional character to be there.

Yet atheists are incredibly outnumbered.Yes this is due to the lack of education for the masses.
Why is atheism so unattractive?It isn't it is just the fact that the majority of people are weak minded, easily lead, uneducated, when we correct this the rest shall follow.
Forgiveness brings peace. Try it.Lack of guilt brings peace too.
Any non-religious person is always morally superior, to any religious person, due to his propensity to be moral regardless of any beliefs in gods/god or hope of reward.
No deities are required. Ever!
jesus can make His own bicycle. then why didn't he make his own colt.
He also had a message for the disciples to share with anybody that asked about the colt he borrowed.You mean the colt he stole and didn't return, I think when you borrow something, you usually return it.
I'm just reading my bible like you told me. I tried to include everything instead of just cherry picking. I apologize for being honest.So your idea of being honest is stating that the taking of the colt was prearranged. Yeh! thats honesty, making things up because you don't like the way they read. Yeh your honest. lol.

Using his analogies as you call them, he does, which would have been the perfect opportunity for jesus to condemn the slavery and its abuse of slaves.

As pointed out before, the argument from science is no argument at all. Jesus gave one commandment -- that we love others. I think that pretty well covers it for slaves.


Isn't it more telling that he never once does.Shouldn't you have a greater knowledge of the bible than I, if you knew your bible you would know what I was talking about.Exactly it's very demeaning and disrespectful. Thus he breaks the commandment.

Jesus knew what some people would do with Mary, by making a god out of her. We can clearly see that she is just a woman, and not "the mother of God", as some claim can't we? :shrug:


Thank you for having the good sense to see that. It's refreshing to find someone of a christian ilk, admit his mistake.lol, so lets see what was said

Jesus always referred to Mary as "woman", as He did while on the cross, and he asked the disciple John to take care of her.




shall we
KJV LUKE 18,29: And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, (note: it never once says that jesus had been to bethphage and bethany before)
30: Saying, Go ye into the village over against you; in the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither. (Note:lets translate, untie him/take him/steal him.)
31: And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him.
32: And they that were sent went their way, and found even as he had said unto them.
33: And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? (note:why are you taking my colt/stealing my colt)
34: And they said, The Lord hath need of him. (note:so it seem they stood there dumbfounded, or were beaten down, or anything else but most certainly not through jesus arranging it earlier, unless he sent a message by pony express.)

They could say "no". The disciples apparantly had the right password since Jesus wasn't there.


So we can gather that jesus as the instigator of the crime sent his disciples to steal a colt. it is as clear as day.

Stealing is rather clandestine isn't it? Like you don't go around making announcements.


If it was prearranged then why ask "why are you taking my colt" the owner would know, wouldn't he.

the password.


Irrelevant strawman. has no bearing on the subject in question, as I said before why was it that he only intervened when it suited the story line. would it have something to do with the authors. I wonder. Was that your attempt at an insult, lol. That also would be a first, the religious are basically intellectually dishonest.

Jesus's death was convenient for those that had him killed. I can agree with that.


But having said they are victims of a mind virus, so it could be a little unfair to call them dishonest, as they haven't got the good sense to know what reality is. No the bible tells me nothing it's a book of fiction, I don't use it to guide my life, that would be foolish.

So to you, a proverb means something kind of dumb.


and you saying you don't have that issue is a lie, as you do use it to guide your life.

But the bible doesn't make me think about killing people as it does you.



But you do else you would not have said, "So what did a Christian do to you personally that leaves you feeling this way? I'd just like to know how you justify your hatred of Christians. What did they do to you? Do you think that???" Another insult.

I am sorry that you are insulted. Maybe some christian beat you nearly to death while quoting bible verses and that would give you a very real reason to be seething with hatred toward them, as you are.



Why would I want a fictional character to be there.Yes this is due to the lack of education for the masses.

but they are many different religions, all trying to fill a need that atheists deny.


It isn't it is just the fact that the majority of people are weak minded, easily lead, uneducated, when we correct this the rest shall follow.

THe same information is available to everyone. Nobody is writing a new bible.


Lack of guilt brings peace too.

Forgiving others is bigger than personal perfection.


Any non-religious person is always morally superior, to any religious person, due to his propensity to be moral regardless of any beliefs in gods/god or hope of reward.

It's just that non-religious people are so "me-centerred"


No deities are required. Ever! then why didn't he make his own colt.You mean the colt he stole and didn't return, I think when you borrow something, you usually return it.So your idea of being honest is stating that the taking of the colt was prearranged. Yeh! thats honesty, making things up because you don't like the way they read. Yeh your honest. lol.

Being that the bible is fictional as you say, we can assume the right ending though authors did not spell it out. In the right ending the owners got their colt back. It's not like they didn't know where to look. and all those people cutting down plam branches and casting them before Jesus --- that was vandalism too wasn't it?

isn't anyone going to 'prove' that this idea of 'soul' is not possible?

What's the point. You ain't gonna read it anyway.

What's the point. You ain't gonna read it anyway.

Exhibit A.

Exhibit A.

Wot ?

Exhibit B:


I won't read it and guess what Q, that is THE only thing you will EVER be right about. NOTHING you parrot off from someone else or an original thought of your own (although I know there is NO such thing) will tell me diffrent to what I know to be correct, which in fact isn't a lot. You have ZERO clue what my house of cards is, ZERO clue. And this is the way it shall stay.


Then, you admit to not wanting to learn anything and remain ignorant. Too bad, your loss.


pot calling the kettle there Q, you are in the dark and always will be.
Why would I read about the grass being blue when my own eyes have told me its green?

Using his analogies as you call them, he does, which would have been the perfect opportunity for jesus to condemn the slavery and its abuse of slaves. Isn't it more telling that he never once does.As pointed out before, the argument from science is no argument at all. What!
Jesus gave one commandment -- that we love others. I think that pretty well covers it for slaves.Irrelevant, strawman. There should be no slaves to cover.

Shouldn't you have a greater knowledge of the bible than I, if you knew your bible you would know what I was talking about.Exactly it's very demeaning and disrespectful. Thus he breaks the commandment.Jesus knew what some people would do with Mary, by making a god out of her. We can clearly see that she is just a woman, and not "the mother of God", as some claim can't we?However, that does not take away the fact, that it's disrespectful, and demeaning, does it.

Thank you for having the good sense to see that. It's refreshing to find someone of a christian ilk, admit his mistake.lolJesus always referred to Mary as "woman", as He did while on the cross, and he asked the disciple John to take care of her.What has that to do with the above statement, surely your referring to the previous quote.

so lets see what was said shall we
KJV LUKE 18,29: And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, (note: it never once says that jesus had been to bethphage and bethany before)
30: Saying, Go ye into the village over against you; in the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither. (Note:lets translate, untie him/take him/steal him.)
31: And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him.
32: And they that were sent went their way, and found even as he had said unto them.
33: And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? (note:why are you taking my colt/stealing my colt)
34: And they said, The Lord hath need of him. (note:so it seem they stood there dumbfounded, or were beaten down, or anything else but most certainly not through jesus arranging it earlier, unless he sent a message by pony express.)They could say "no". The disciples apparently had the right password since Jesus wasn't there.They probably did we have no way of knowing what was in the authors mind when he wrote it, we can only go by what is written, and that clearly shows that the owner was unaware of any previous arrangement.

So we can gather that jesus as the instigator of the crime sent his disciples to steal a colt. it is as clear as day.Stealing is rather clandestine isn't it?Al Capone had people killed, Hitler had people killed, Saddam had people killed, however that most likely never killed anybody themselves, are that not murderers?.

If it was prearranged then why ask "why are you taking my colt" the owner would know, wouldn't he. the password.Is that the password that the owner never knew. if the owner knew he would have had it ready, and been there waiting, instead it was done with stealth.
take the rose coloured glasses off, and read the paragraph again, but try not to extrapolate, and add to it, read it as is. Don't assume.

Irrelevant strawman. has no bearing on the subject in question, as I said before why was it that he only intervened when it suited the story line. would it have something to do with the authors. I wonder. Jesus's death was convenient for those that had him killed. I can agree with that.How so, he was martyred wasn't he, it was more convenient for his followers.

Was that your attempt at an insult, lol. That also would be a first, the religious are basically intellectually dishonest. But having said they are victims of a mind virus, so it could be a little unfair to call them dishonest, as they haven't got the good sense to know what reality is. No the bible tells me nothing it's a book of fiction, I don't use it to guide my life, that would be foolish.
So to you, a proverb means something kind of dumb.No, I mentioned Aesops fables earlier, the NT is not a book of proverbs, it's a book of all sorts including a lot of evil doings.

and you saying you don't have that issue is a lie, as you do use it to guide your life. But the bible doesn't make me think about killing people as it does you.It doesn't make me think about killing, it is about killing, as is the quran. There is nothing to think about it's there in black and white.
You however see it with blinkers on and when you do things you don't consider, that you may be imposing your will on other, abusing them etc.. No the mind virus that is religion, causes you not to think about killing, you just just do it in gods name with impunity.



Oh! the arrogance of the christian to think the sun revolves around you. Steven Weinberg stated Religion, we are discussing jesus and if you like christianity. I as every non religious person have no grievance with any religious person be they christian, muslim, hindu. but what I do think is abhorrent is religion per se.
I don't know a christian that thinks that. I don't know anybody that thinks that.But you do else you would not have said, "So what did a Christian do to you personally that leaves you feeling this way? I'd just like to know how you justify your hatred of Christians. What did they do to you? "I am sorry that you are insulted. Maybe some christian beat you nearly to death while quoting bible verses and that would give you a very real reason to be seething with hatred toward them, as you are.Perhaps you cant read, well you certainly don't read the bible properly, so it's to be expected.(see above quote, in regard to the religious and religion. And try to understand it, it's not hard, it's not rocket science)

Why would I want a fictional character to be there.Yes this is due to the lack of education for the masses. but they are many different religions,Irrelevant.
all trying to fill a need that atheists deny.To deny a thing, you do need some assemblance of a belief in a thing.

It isn't it is just the fact that the majority of people are weak minded, easily lead, uneducated, when we correct this the rest shall follow.THe same information is available to everyone. Nobody is writing a new bible.Yes but some of them cant read or understand any book, some even have no idea how to gather knowledge or what is real or not.

Lack of guilt brings peace too.Forgiving others is bigger than personal perfection.
Who said it wasn't.

Any non-religious person is always morally superior, to any religious person, due to his propensity to be moral regardless of any beliefs in gods/god or hope of reward.It's just that non-religious people are so "me-centerred"How so, they are not after personal gain like the religious.

then why didn't he make his own colt.You mean the colt he stole and didn't return, I think when you borrow something, you usually return it.So your idea of being honest is stating that the taking of the colt was prearranged. Yeh! thats honesty, making things up because you don't like the way they read. Yeh your honest. lol.Being that the bible is fictional as you say, we can assume the right ending though authors did not spell it out. In the right ending the owners got their colt back. It's not like they didn't know where to look.No thats the point you should never assume, and where did they need to look. can you point to the scripture, please. lol.
and all those people cutting down palm branches and casting them before Jesus --- that was vandalism too wasn't it?Why was it, and what does it have to do with jesus stealing.

Good thread one_raven!
Possibly this may help with your book writing...


This may have been specifically mentioned by someone else but if so I apologies for repeating in this thread.

When we look at the mind / body issue we can clearly say to ourselves that both mind and body exist, the mind exists only because we can tell we are thinking, creating, moving, dwelling etc etc...but can we observe the mind directly? No.

Yet we assume the mind exists with out a problem. We also can observe the physical body and so we assume it exists too.

However we know that we use a unproved aspect [ the mind] to observe a body with, so how much credibility do you think the observation of a body is?

As credible as the awareness of a mind by proxy. By it's effect and by it's feeling would be my answer.

If one can accept the human mind exists then one can also do the same for the soul, except the soul is our ability to feel what we experience and it grounds our minds and bodies in to this reality. [ It could be said the soul grants our thoughts and experiences value.]
So evidence for the existence of the soul is the same as evidence for the existence of the mind and onto by extension, the body....
Of course this supposes no evidence for after life experience, heaven or any other more eseoteric issues however as far as the souls existence is concerned there appears to be no doubt...

my 2 cents [mind]...worth...[soul]:) [ and a smiley just for fun ]

I was bruised and battered and I couldn't
feel what I felt...
I was unrecognisable to my self....
Saw my reflection in a window and didn't know my own face...
Oh Brother are you going to leave me
wasting away...
on the streets of Philadelphia........


Streets of Philadephia....Bruce Springsteen.

Quantum,


If one can accept the human mind exists then one can also do the same for the soulWell, no. Mind is to brain as program is to computer. Both are entirely dependent on a physical medium for their existence. A soul though is considered independent of a physical medium and has no precedent for existence.

Perhaps the comparion with mind is not a good choice, perhaps a comparison with consciousness might be better, but that again appears not to be cohesive outside of a phsyical medium, i.e. a brain.

While we can see purpose for mind and consciousness and they fullfill the human condition, I see no purpose for soul, a proposed entity that appears to be of no value and has no basis for existence.

Quantum,

Well, no. Mind is to brain as program is to computer. Both are entirely dependent on a physical medium for their existence. A soul though is considered independent of a physical medium and has no precedent for existence.
And why do we have to suggest that the soul is somehow independent of the physical medium? Why consider the soul to be something other than a part of that physical medium?

Of course we are referring to historical religious/spirituality normally when referring to the soul but I question why we need to continue doing so?
The soul could for all intents and purposes be seen as the endocrine system of the human body and how that feels when it changes and flows.

The biggest question however is not so much how the soul may manifest in our physical forms but how it is deemed to dis-attach it self upon death and other similar scenarios. This is a bigger question and certainly a harder one to find evidence for [ if at all] But the soul can be said to exist by the same criteria that the mind can be said to exist using the same level and credibility of evidence available. A question of extent and limitations in the definition I feel.


Perhaps the comparion with mind is not a good choice, perhaps a comparison with consciousness might be better, but that again appears not to be cohesive outside of a phsyical medium, i.e. a brain. again premised on religious thought concerning transcension, heaven, death etc etc. However for the moment just limit to the living and the soul can make quiet good sense IMO.

"ëven an athiest has a soul" ~ Jazz Muso once said. anon.

However, I appreciate your concerns and yes tend to agree in a way.

While we can see purpose for mind and consciousness and they fullfill the human condition, I see no purpose for soul, a proposed entity that appears to be of no value and has no basis for existence.

The soul could be said to provide us with the ability to feel what we feel to find value in those feelings and whilst the mind may see meaing the soul grants it value to us.

Of course the soul is defined in so many different ways and cannot be pinned down. So it is easy to rely on relgious attitudes for definition.
Apart from chat and talk I have seen no evidence that supports heaven or re-incarnation in the material world. However I see plenty of evidence of a soul in our behaviour, expression, moods, attitudes and personalities.
Something a program can never give a computer....life...

Of course the soul is defined in so many different ways and cannot be pinned down. So it is easy to rely on relgious attitudes for definition.
Apart from chat and talk I have seen no evidence that supports heaven or re-incarnation in the material world. However I see plenty of evidence of a soul in our behaviour, expression, moods, attitudes and personalities.
Something a program can never give a computer....life...Define this "soul" that you see evidence for, please, that differentiates it from other terms such as "consciousness", "personality" etc.
Why do we need to use the term "soul" when it has so many potentially unwarranted connotations?

If you consider "soul" to be one aspect of someone's personality - e.g. the judgement aspect rather than meaning, as you suggested, then okay - but everyone will have their own understanding and usage that it makes the term more or less pointless / useless unless adequately defined up front.

And why do we have to suggest that the soul is somehow independent of the physical medium? Why consider the soul to be something other than a part of that physical medium?

Why has it then NOT been detected?


However I see plenty of evidence of a soul in our behaviour, expression, moods, attitudes and personalities.
Something a program can never give a computer....life...

Have you seen WALL-E? :D

Define this "soul" that you see evidence for, please, that differentiates it from other terms such as "consciousness", "personality" etc.
Why do we need to use the term "soul" when it has so many potentially unwarranted connotations?

If you consider "soul" to be one aspect of someone's personality - e.g. the judgement aspect rather than meaning, as you suggested, then okay - but everyone will have their own understanding and usage that it makes the term more or less pointless / useless unless adequately defined up front.
The same approach can be used as a counter...
define "body" that does not imply soul.
Define mind? What exactly is it?
It is a luducrous situation that we have...in this subsetting of the human form into these silly little groupings IMO.

body
mind
soul

When IMO they are all one and the same thing and just conveniences of inquiry to use as part of our need to reduce the whole into component parts.
The biggest problem with the mind / Body problem is that we have distinguished between the two aspects of the one being. When there is actually no way you can actually do that, mind and body being the same thing and so to is the soul which is just another aspect of that same being. IMO

The issue, though, really comes down to the old artificail intelligence 'AI' or what is the difference betweeen a clever machine and an organic living thinker such as a human.

The answer is simply soul. [ wrap what ever definition you want around it but the conclusion is the same]
The soul allows us to expereince meaning. It allows us to find value in what we do and who we are. It gives meaning to our personality and languages.

A computer can be said to have a mind and even a personality. It can be said to be intelligent and even clever but it can not be said to be alive and have "meaning unto itself". It has no way to find value in it's own activities that has meaning. It is dead and not alive.
Evidence of the soul is every where there is life....

Comparison between
Android - Human

The android can never have self meaning or feel self meaning where as the human can. The human experiences life as self meaning which is why he is alive and not a machine.
Go through life devoid of meaning and purpose and you become our android working as a machine and not an organism...it is in our literature all over the place....

So life itself could be used as evidence for the existence of a soul.
Define life?
That woud take a few more books other than the one One_raven is writing to do.

Why has it then NOT been detected?





And I counter by saying why hasn't the mind been detected ?

however you assume that it exists yes?
well detect it?
Show evidence of it's existence at the same degree you are requiring of proving the existence of a soul?
Prove the mind exists?

Now there's a challenge that seems absurd doesn't it?
well...Q and Sarkus...prove the mind exists in the same way you expect the soul to be proved.....
after all I could argue that:
The mind and intellect and our ability to imagine and cogitate and self animate are all neurologically wired and have nothing but neurology/ hormones to blame.
There is no mind the scientists scream only boddddddyyyyyy!!!!!
Body /mind problem is now solved......philosophy is now a defunct and obsolete field of enquiry.....ha

Have you seen WALL-E? :D

nope..... but from what I gather it shows evidence of the soul as well in our imaginings of soul driven robots!:)

The film "Shortcircuit" was an excellent film along similar lines.

The way Beta is used in Star trek is also. [ I think the androids name was Beta but not sure]

nope..... but from what I gather it shows evidence of the soul as well in our imaginings of soul driven robots!

Only if you consider "sentience" to be equivalent to the soul, as that is what was inferred by the film.

Only if you consider "sentience" to be equivalent to the soul, as that is what was inferred by the film.
and is this not what drives philosophy in the first place? The questions or should I say the "question":
what is sentience?
what is free will?
what is the meaning of life?
what is purpose that has no meaning?
what is meaning that has no purpose?

and so on.......

Take away the soul and there is no philosophy, as there would be nothing "worth" talking about....
no poetry , no music, no meaning to existence..

Only if you consider "sentience" to be equivalent to the soul, as that is what was inferred by the film.
I would consider sentience to be a significant aspect of the soul and the way the soul expresses value and meaning....via the use of will....

another way of looking at this issue [a bit off topic but I think One_raven wont mind]

take a human being and take a snap shot using a camera and have a look at that snap shot os suspended animation and make some critical assessments?

What do you see?
I see a body and only a body...
What is it doing?
Absolutely nothing. not thinking, not moving and certainly not finding value.
Is it dead?
may as well be....
The photo shows a dead person yet we know temporally that it is one of a living person.
But how can we tell if the photo is not of a dead person with out some prior information?
We can't.
For they are essentially one and the same thing when time is frozen like this. What you see in the image is a lump of inanimated carbon, water and a bit or other stuff and nothing more...in the form of a person.
So whats the difference when you look at a video instead?
none except one is living and the other could very well be dead.
Think along these lines for a bit and I feel you will start to see what I am getting at....

And I counter by saying why hasn't the mind been detected ?I think people are pretty sure where the mind resides, unless of course you think it's in the big toe. http://www.insidestory.iop.org/mri.html.

I think people are pretty sure where the mind resides, unless of course you think it's in the big toe. http://www.insidestory.iop.org/mri.html.
so they can detect magentic resonancing? How does that prove that the mind exists?
All they have proved is that the body is resonating magnetic fields....yes?
And btw is not the big toe part of the mind? [ unless it is amputated it is part of the will is it not?

so why distinguish by isolating the big toe?

It is part of the whole being is it not?


see what I mean by this reducing the whole to smaller parts .....it can be such a trap....

Given that the brain works on a continuous info feed back system the big toes existence is essential for the brain to work it.
so why remove the big toe from the brain...[ I know you meant it as humor etc but what you have doen in jest is exactly why we have a problem with these sort or issues ]

the questions then comes up:
what is brain?
and what is body?
why distinguish between the two?
when it takes a body for the brain to function and it takes a brain for the body to function. Are they not one and the same thing?

However one clue that may help us here:

A persons heart can still beat with the brain not functioning - thus technically still alive even with brain death.
However if the heart stops beating it's all over red rover, finit-e
so one could argue that the centre of the body [material] is the brain [mind] and the centre of life is the heart [ soul ]

And I counter by saying why hasn't the mind been detected ?

It hasn't? :bugeye:


philosophy is now a defunct and obsolete field of enquiry.....ha

Philosophy is pretty much worthless as a field of inquiry.

and is this not what drives philosophy in the first place? The questions or should I say the "question":
what is sentience?
what is free will?
what is the meaning of life?
what is purpose that has no meaning?
what is meaning that has no purpose?

and so on.......

Philosophical claptrap such as questions to the meaning of life and purpose are for those who can't create their own purpose in life and need others to tell them what to do. The term "Sheeple" comes to mind.


Take away the soul and there is no philosophy, as there would be nothing "worth" talking about....
no poetry , no music, no meaning to existence..

One can easily talk about poetry and music without injecting philosophical claptrap.

It hasn't? :bugeye:





well...what proof of the mind do you have other than what it does or allows you the ability to do?

can you "see" your mind directly? Can you detect your mind directly?

nope!

so apply the same evidencial requirements to a soul and you have your answer.

Philosophical claptrap such as questions to the meaning of life and purpose are for those who can't create their own purpose in life and need others to tell them what to do. The term "Sheeple" comes to mind.



One can easily talk about poetry and music without injecting philosophical claptrap.
I am sorry but my android programming disallows me to see any meaning in your post what so ever...however as far as gramma is concerned .........

and

definition of "sheeple" bleep! Bleep! Bleep! [ sorry B-eeep! syntax error; string 12-a394 at line 100000000036 ]:D
[and you think I am joking yes?]

well...what proof of the mind do you have other than what it does or allows you the ability to do?

can you "see" your mind directly? Can you detect your mind directly?

nope!

so apply the same evidencial requirements to a soul and you have your answer.

Oh, I get it now, you're treating this as a belief. In other words, the fact that all of YOUR questions don't get answered to YOUR specifications, you immediately defer to a strawman argument and present the mystical and magical as a conclusion.

Nice try, but it won't fly.

Oh, I get it now, you're treating this as a belief. In other words, the fact that all of YOUR questions don't get answered to YOUR specifications, you immediately defer to a strawman argument and present the mystical and magical as a conclusion.

Nice try, but it won't fly.
I suppose the mind and body are both rather magical and in some ways a mystery yes?
If you can't provide evidence of the mind as you want for the soul then you will need to recant your strawman arguement..... [ oops! was that a strawman or was that a strawman' ]:)

[and you think I am joking yes?]

No, you're presenting a strawman.

Can you demonstrate to me the software inside of a computer? Pick up a harddrive, take it apart and have a look for the software, do you see it? I guess it doesn't exist, then. :shrug:

I suppose the mind and body are both rather magical and in some ways a mystery yes?

Not at all.


If yu can't provide evidence of the mind as yu want fro the soul then youwill need to recant your stawman arguement..... [ oops! was that a strawman or was that a strawman']

So, do you want to call the mind "the soul"? Is that what you're after?

No, you're presenting a strawman.

Can you demonstrate to me the software inside of a computer? Pick up a harddrive, take it apart and have a look for the software, do you see it? I guess it doesn't exist, then. :shrug:
of course it does in the form of magnetic imprintation on a ferrous surface...[aka files and data - 1's and zeros]

Not at all.



So, do you want to call the mind "the soul"? Is that what you're after?
If the mind is capable by definition of deriving self meaning then why not call it mind, but then again why not call the mind, a soul and seeing as we can observe neither directly and only by effect we are obliged by science to call it a Body...

so in the final wash the choice of which battle you want to fight
is yours...

there is a major flaw in my arguement of course...have you picked it yet?

One can easily talk about poetry and music without injecting philosophical claptrap.
but one needs soul to do it....

of course it does in the form of magnetic imprintation on a ferrous surface...[aka files and data - 1's and zeros]

Kinda like neurons and biochemical ions in the brain?

but one needs soul to do it....

Nope.

there is a major flaw in my arguement of course...have you picked it yet?

Your lack of definition of a soul?

The credibility of the notion "soul" is determined by it's most commonly used definition or meaning.
And like the definition of the word or title "God" most of that definition requires faith and belief in something that can not be evidenced directly but only by effect which we attribute to these titles and labels.
One Raven has specifically asked about evidence for a soul that he has clearly defined by default as one that includes an afterlife, re-incarnation and other more mystical qualities. He isn't after evidence of our ability to find meaning or purpose but more specifically the nature of something that can only be put down to faith and belief based most often on circumstantial experiences of a few and rudimentary logic by others.

"Gotta be something after this?" type logic
"Other wise it is all in vain?" type logic

However I could contend that it is the soul that is saying these things in the first place as it requires purpose and meaning to to understand the fact that we die in the first place.
So my major flaw is one of contextual shift, I have deliberately limited my argument only to that which is known rather than that which is based on unknown and unknowable.

So I have redefined the definition of Soul away from the OP that One_raven established.

so therefore the credibility of the notion soul according to One_Ravens OP is very much in jeopardy

Your lack of definition of a soul?
yes and no but more the manipulation of that definition to focus on the more earthy aspects of our so called "soul". This doesn't prove the souls' existence but merely attempts to limit it's existence to the Material world so to speak....which is a falacious arguement when one considers One-Ravens OP

yes and no but more the manipulation of that definition to focus on the more earthy aspects of our so called "soul". This doesn't prove the souls' existence but merely attempts to limit it's existence to the Material world so to speak....which is a falacious arguement when one considers One-Ravens OP

I believe post # 10 deals with that scenario.

I believe post # 10 deals with that scenario.
ha...OMG thats the [post that I didn't read because it was...uhmmm big

sorry Q, shall give it a read now...I take it it is your original compilation ?:)

or is it just Boris's

So far in the read it fails to deal with th eissue of preconceptions that arrise such as:


So we can keep imaginatively (and nonchalantly) stripping Joe of body parts until only the brain is left floating in a jar. At this point, we can still safely point to the brain and say that it's Joe; we can incinerate the other body parts, but as long as the brain is alive, Joe is alive too. Incidentally, that's why clinical death is defined as brain death. Any other failed organ can be replaced, at least in principle; however a brain cannot be replaced. Even if Joe clinically died, and you transplanted Brent's brain into Joe's skull, all you would have done is transplant Brent's persona into Joe's body; Joe would still be dead as a doornail.

this presumes that because the legal system has determined that brain death is in fact death we are now left with an extension of that into the arguement against the soul.
The courts do not know what death is and at exactly what moment or what has to happen to cause death but we have allowed this ruling to determnine our arguement. We do know howver what 8s recoverable from and what isn't. [hope vs no hope]

It also states that we know that the personality resides in the Brain and makes other significant assumptions....

any ways....back to reading...

Now then, it seems that the brain is the crucial part of us that makes us who we are.
totally a presumption based on what?
on the limitations of what we know and think we know...an arrogant position IMO

So we can keep imaginatively (and nonchalantly) stripping Joe of body parts until only the brain is left floating in a jar. At this point, we can still safely point to the brain and say that it's Joe; we can incinerate the other body parts, but as long as the brain is alive, Joe is alive too. Incidentally, that's why clinical death is defined as brain death. Any other failed organ can be replaced, at least in principle; however a brain cannot be replaced. Even if Joe clinically died, and you transplanted Brent's brain into Joe's skull, all you would have done is transplant Brent's persona into Joe's body; Joe would still be dead as a doornail.
the other funny thing about this is:
a persons body can maintain it's existance even after the brain has clinically ceased to live....but the brain cannot live with out the heart beating....hmmmmm interesting conuption that is....


brain dead - person still alive due to heart beating - legally dead - but still body still alive.
heart dead - brain dead - person dead. final

yet the brain is not able to be transplanted but the heart can be....reasonably successfully...

hmmmmm.....

this presumes that because the legal system has determined that brain death is in fact death we are now left with an extension of that into the arguement against the soul.
The courts do not know what death is and at exactly what moment or what has to happen to cause death but we have allowed this ruling to determnine our arguement. We do know howver what 8s recoverable from and what isn't. [hope vs no hope]

It also states that we know that the personality resides in the Brain and makes other significant assumptions....
no, it states that because that's the logical conclusion based on our observations. no other part of the body has ever been observed to have a personality. it has nothing to do with what the law states. the law is altered because of scientific conclusions, not the other way around.

the other funny thing about this is:
a persons body can maintain it's existance even after the brain has clinically ceased to live....but the brain cannot live with out the heart beating....hmmmmm interesting conuption that is....

* brain dead - person still alive due to heart beating - legally dead - but still body still alive.
* heart dead - brain dead - person dead. final

yet the brain is not able to be transplanted but the heart can be....reasonably successfully...

hmmmmm.....
what? a body cannot sustain itself without the brain, unless you consider organ transplants/supportive machinery. but then your second point is false. you didn't actually address the point of the paragraph you quoted, which is that the brain is where the individuality resides. would you really consider your mom as your mom if she had someone else's brain?

no, it states that because that's the logical conclusion based on our observations. no other part of the body has ever been observed to have a personality. it has nothing to do with what the law states. the law is altered because of scientific conclusions, not the other way around.

what? a body cannot sustain itself without the brain, unless you consider organ transplants/supportive machinery. but then your second point is false. you didn't actually address the point of the paragraph you quoted, which is that the brain is where the individuality resides. would you really consider your mom as your mom if she had someone else's brain?

Actually I always considered my mom when she was alive as being her love and her affection, her heart....oh sure the name she was given by her parents may rest as knowledge somewhere in that brain she had but my mom the person I cared about lived right smack bang in the middle [ slight of centre] of her chest.

hmmmmm....
The thing is you cannot limit notions of these things only to scientific observations of the body as we know no where nearly enough to even know what to look for.
It is only through behavioural sciences that is the thorough observation of human behaviour whihc of course is far from great as regarding evidence that you can conclude most about this issue.
Do a survey as to where people feel the person they care about resides in their body and find out what common belief is...

How does this manifest in behaviour generally? Does behaviour confirm the belief? etc etc
When you give a person a hug are you hugging their brain ? Or are you hugging their chest?
When you kiss someone what are you hoping for...a flutter of neurological activity or an increase in heart rate....?
When people are facinated with spiritualism and soul stuff etc etc why is this so and what drives it beyond fear of mortality?

An endless circular discussion yes?
and on that note I am done....

it is obvious that feelings are not stemmed at all from the heart. some people have their heart replaced with a mechanical one. they do not turn into heartless crazies (woohoo a pun)

scientists know a lot about the human body actually. and your questions do nothing to strengthen your position. some of them aren't even relevant. i don't hug peoples' brains because it's difficult and not very comfortable, and people feel a "flutter" in their heart because of the neurological activity that tells your glands to release chemicals. this isn't a circular discussion as much as it is dealing with logic and misconceptions of how the body works.

it is obvious that feelings are not stemmed at all from the heart. some people have their heart replaced with a mechanical one. they do not turn into heartless crazies (woohoo a pun)

scientists know a lot about the human body actually. and your questions do nothing to strengthen your position. some of them aren't even relevant. i don't hug peoples' brains because it's difficult and not very comfortable, and people feel a "flutter" in their heart because of the neurological activity that tells your glands to release chemicals. this isn't a circular discussion as much as it is dealing with logic and misconceptions of how the body works.
so you feel that the scientists know what they are doing regarding the human body?

name one illness that they have actually cured with medical intervention?

[not talking about changes to hygene, lifestyle, ongoing treatmenrts or behaviour...]

Name one illness they have cured....

so you feel that the scientists know what they are doing regarding the human body?

He also doesn't understand what is going on with his own body enough to know the difference....

Signing out...

hee hee...I was just thinking...the common cold has been around how long now?

name one illness that they have actually cured with medical intervention?

[not talking about changes to hygene, lifestyle, ongoing treatmenrts or behaviour...]

Name one illness they have cured....
what has curing a disease have anything to do with our understanding of the functions of the human body?

and meningitis

anyways, this has strayed from the existence of the soul. if all you have to say to my previous post is "so you feel that the scientists know what they are doing regarding the human body?" then i don't see much else to discuss with you

what has curing a disease have anything to do with our understanding of the functions of the human body?

and meningitis

anyways, this has strayed from the existence of the soul. if all you have to say to my previous post is "so you feel that the scientists know what they are doing regarding the human body?" then i don't see much else to discuss with you
well it was you who wanted to throw medical sciences knowledge down my throat as evidence of no soul.....wasn't it...or am I mistaken...?
the simple fact is that you [medical science] have not the knowledge necessary to make a judgement on the issue in fact given the current state of failure I would be reluctant to grant credibility to it even if they did.
You have entered the debate by pursuing the "we [the medical scientists] find no evidence for the existence of a soul" arguement but I wonder if you are qualfied to even bother looking for evidence.

do you see my point?

well it was you who wanted to throw medical sciences knowledge down my throat as evidence of no soul.....wasn't it...or am I mistaken...?
actually it was post 10 that did it :P


the simple fact is that you [medical science] have not the knowledge necessary to make a judgement on the issue in fact given the current state of failure I would be reluctant to grant credibility to it even if they did. You have entered the debate by pursuing the "we [the medical scientists] find no evidence for the existence of a soul" arguement but I wonder if you are qualfied to even bother looking for evidence.
you shouldn't critique my posts based on your assumptions about me, but by what i say (which is consistent with the findings of many scientists you would probably say are qualified). the brain has been the only place in the body that is able to do things such as hold memories and induce emotions. the heart cannot do any of those, and you can tell by interviewing anyone who has gotten a heart transplant.

for what reason do you believe we have souls? and can you define "soul" for me?

actually it was post 10 that did it :P


you shouldn't critique my posts based on your assumptions about me, but by what i say (which is consistent with the findings of many scientists you would probably say are qualified). the brain has been the only place in the body that is able to do things such as hold memories and induce emotions. the heart cannot do any of those, and you can tell by interviewing anyone who has gotten a heart transplant.

for what reason do you believe we have souls? and can you define "soul" for me?

Posts

#106,107,109,112,113,114,116 and so on.....

the nature of forums where the threads get long is that most jump in with out reading the prior posts...I am as guilty as any one of this...however I don't normally attack with [woohoo arguements] with out reading them first...

your concept of soul doesn't seem to be contradictory, but i believe it to be an unnecessary assumption because emotion can be explained through perfectly natural processes. you also seem to be under the assumption that a computer cannot theoretically be programmed to be advanced as a human when according to our current findings in science, that's all we are - very, very advanced computers.

your concept of soul doesn't seem to be contradictory, but i believe it to be an unnecessary assumption because emotion can be explained through perfectly natural processes. you also seem to be under the assumption that a computer cannot theoretically be programmed to be advanced as a human when according to our current findings in science, that's all we are - very, very advanced computers.

this is an incorrect assessment IMO we are certainly a lot more clever in build than a mere binary computer.

I would argue that you coudl build as much programming into a compueter as you like and spend eternity doing it but yu will never achieve one importnat aspect...that being life.
And to be honest it is the soul that allows us to find self meaning and purpose in a way that is self justifying. [ unto ourselves ]
A computer program can never do this on the fly but woud need not only to be self aware and conscious but also self meaning and self purposeful in a way that is free of programming.
How a computer can be given consciousness is an interestiing question yes?
Free will requires improvisation and creativity which a computer can never do.

So the materiallist arguement fails in the final wash...
That is not to say that the soul is some sort of spiritual entity as I have deliberately avoided this aspect of common definition and thus my arguement is invalid relative to the threads OP.

However by focussing on what we can determine we might shed light on the issue.... is my justification

Itis not the presence of emotion that is in question. It is the meaning and value of thatemotion to ourselves that is.

Like wise Knowledge can be stored sure. But finding meaning and value is not so simple.

the soul allows us to feel what we are feeling and apply meaning to what we are feeling. values can then be determined by those feelings about what we are feeling. [ sort of like the body in reflection ]


Without soul we are nothing more than an organic computer or machine....as literature has described for thousands of years.
And as suggested the soul coud very well be our reflected awareness of our endocrine system, our hormones [ in reflection] which is how it interacts wth the material world.
So it is very much in this context of material possibility until death of course then we can consider all sorts of scenarios but evidence is far form available to conclude anything.

you can program a computer to program itself. theoretically, it can be every bit as advanced as a human. we are composed of the same matter that makes everything else. so why should we be "special"?

our feeling of purpose is not a compelling argument for the existence of a soul. people feel many things, but it doesn't make the feelings true

you can program a computer to program itself. theoretically, it can be every bit as advanced as a human. we are composed of the same matter that makes everything else. so why should we be "special"?

our feeling of purpose is not a compelling argument for the existence of a soul. people feel many things, but it doesn't make the feelings true

and consciousness that has meaning?

build and AI with consciousness, and self awareness using a program and machinery....

people feel many things, but it doesn't make the feelings true
Try telling that to a machine :rollseyes:

Seriously, lixluke, your arguement is drifting down the stream. How do you pretend to make such claims? If you ask me, the soul exists, because he said how it exists, several posts back, and you are comming up with insane and rediculious arguements such as:


you can program a computer to program itself. theoretically, it can be every bit as advanced as a human.
Come now, how do you expect to understand his arguements if you are going to refute them? This is refutation. Refute the arguement, and believe that it is true what you are saying, when it is actually totally rediculious.

oh, posted too slow. will edit soon

the dilemma is this:
how do you make a lump of steel love a flower in a garden?
How do you make a lump of steel feel like it's a lump of steel?
How do make a lump of steel know of it's mortality?
Can't be done with out some sort of organic interface or living entity to do it with ~soulTo feel suffering is what the soul does in all it's various forms. How do you make a computer know what suffering is or pleasure for that matter?What is self awareness afer all but the awarenes of all these things? Especiallly the suffering bit.

build and AI with consciousness, and self awareness using a program and machinery....
here is an article explaining how the brain works similar to a computer: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061005222628.htm

define consciousness for me and tell me why it is impossible for computers to have it

although i'll assume it has something with it not being "alive" so it can't have a soul. if so, define "life" for me, and tell me where the cutoff point is between life and non-life. is an ape alive? is a dog alive? is a fish alive? is a sponge alive? is a cell alive? is a mitochondria alive?


Try telling that to a machine :rollseyes:

Seriously, lixluke, your arguement is drifting down the stream. How do you pretend to make such claims? If you ask me, the soul exists, because he said how it exists, several posts back, and you are comming up with insane and rediculious arguements such as:


Come now, how do you expect to understand his arguements if you are going to refute them? This is refutation. Refute the arguement, and believe that it is true what you are saying, when it is actually totally rediculious.
i know how much you love lixluke, but i'm not him

tell me how my points are "rediculious"

here is an article explaining how the brain works similar to a computer: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061005222628.htm

define consciousness for me and tell me why it is impossible for computers to have it

although i'll assume it has something with it not being "alive" so it can't have a soul. if so, define "life" for me, and tell me where the cutoff point is between life and non-life. is an ape alive? is a dog alive? is a fish alive? is a sponge alive? is a cell alive? is a mitochondria alive?


i know how much you love lixluke, but i'm not him

tell me how my points are "rediculious"

I've already told you how your points are rediculious.

Here let me help you:

Try telling that to a machine :rollseyes:

Seriously, lixluke, your arguement is drifting down the stream. How do you pretend to make such claims? If you ask me, the soul exists, because he said how it exists, several posts back, and you are comming up with insane and rediculious arguements such as:


Come now, how do you expect to understand his arguements if you are going to refute them? This is refutation. Refute the arguement, and believe that it is true what you are saying, when it is actually totally rediculious.

defining life in absolute terms is not that easy however in the context of this thread I would stat by saying that it is anything that has self awareness and as far as I am aware all living things be it a single cell has self awareness.

However it is not possible to test a single cell for this...etc etc


what is self awareness and how is it acheived?
the million dollar question however the word soul says it pretty much all I reckon.

Here's another reason:


define consciousness for me and tell me why it is impossible for computers to have it

although i'll assume it has something with it not being "alive" so it can't have a soul. if so, define "life" for me, and tell me where the cutoff point is between life and non-life. is an ape alive? is a dog alive? is a fish alive? is a sponge alive? is a cell alive? is a mitochondria alive?

the dilemma is this:
how do you make a lump of steel love a flower in a garden?
How do you make a lump of steel feel like it's a lump of steel?
How do make a lump of steel know of it's mortality?
Can't be done with out some sort of organic interface or living entity to do it with ~soulTo feel suffering is what the soul does in all it's various forms. How do you make a computer know what suffering is or pleasure for that matter?What is self awareness afer all but the awarenes of all these things? Especiallly the suffering bit.
a computer is not just "a lump of steel." that's equivalent to saying people are just a lump of atoms. and we are, but we are also organized very specifically. just as that organization gives us emotion, it can give computers it too.

a computer is not just "a lump of steel." that's equivalent to saying people are just a lump of atoms. and we are, but we are also organized very specifically. just as that organization gives us emotion, it can give computers it too.

:roflmao: Lixluke, you've got it backwards as usual
.
.
.
.
:rolleyes:

I am not going to say what i know to be true just to fulfill a fishing expedition.
Consciousness and self awareness harken back to the very fundamentals of how this universe is built....

So you would not understand what I would answer to it any way...
so I shall pass it back and ask how any anything can have self awareness with out soul?

defining life in absolute terms is not that easy however in the context of this thread I would stat by saying that it is anything that has self awareness and as far as I am aware all living things be it a single cell has self awareness.

However it is not possible to test a single cell for this...etc etc


what is self awareness and how is it acheived?
the million dollar question however the word soul says it pretty much all I reckon.
you do understand the definition that is officially recognized by biologists is arbitrary, right? they understand that there is actually no real difference between "alive" and "not alive," but they continue to use these words because of practical reasons.

my problem with how you approach this is that you claim we have emotion, but then you claim that the only possible reason for this is because we have a soul. and computers cannot have a soul because they're not alive. but then you cannot even give me a rigorous, non-arbitrary definition of life. you even admit that it is impossible to test for the existence of souls in things you label as alive, but you continue to believe it has a soul anyways, but then what's the difference between claiming a cell has a soul and a computer has a soul? see, it's confusingly circular.

Consciousness and self awareness harken back to the very fundamentals of how this universe is built....
how is this?


So you would not understand what I would answer to it any way...
so I shall pass it back and ask how any anything can have self awareness with out soul?
having a complex enough control center? you say "something cannot be self-aware without a soul." i simply disagree. i don't know how to adequately answer your question.

did you read that link i sent you? the more we find through science, the less "supernatural" there seems to be.

you do understand the definition that is officially recognized by biologists is arbitrary, right? they understand that there is actually no real difference between "alive" and "not alive," but they continue to use these words because of practical reasons.

my problem with how you approach this is that you claim we have emotion, but then you claim that the only possible reason for this is because we have a soul. and computers cannot have a soul because they're not alive. but then you cannot even give me a rigorous, non-arbitrary definition of life. you even admit that it is impossible to test for the existence of souls in things you label as alive, but you continue to believe it has a soul anyways, but then what's the difference between claiming a cell has a soul and a computer has a soul? see, it's confusingly circular.
no I didn't claim as you say.
I suggested that the soul may allow us to find meaning to our emotions I didn't say that the soul grants us our emotions...the endocrine system can provide emotion but it takes the soul to find meaning in them.

So when you are grieving you know that you are and not just standing there crying your eyes out wondering about nothing....
actually I make no claim but merely make suggestions about what "could" be considered as valid.

The problem is we are talking from very differnet perspectives.

You assume that each human being body is somehow in isolation from another human being, That they stand alone and that their brain computes their existence.

This is fundamentally an incorrect position IMO.
So we are at odds to begin with.

The soul IMO not only grants meaning but empathy as well. It allows us to share an relatively objective reality that would other wise have to be computed individually on a massive scale by every thinking being and yet arrive at almost exactly the same results. This is theoretically impossible to achieve given the huge diversity of humans and other animals alone....

Imagine 8 billion brains all arriving at the same "objective' reality, you couldn't even build 8 billion robots to do that. The margin for error would rule it out.
So IMO the soul provides the interconnection between all living things thus the ability to arrive at meaning that is shareable [and in human case comprehendable] by all living things.

So yes we are at odds simply because the current scientific view is exclusionary and not inclusionary.
I was actually going to show a "model" in diagram form about how you could actually build a robotic analogy of universal consciousness but this would never be life persee...it would still be a simulcrum or simulation of living and not the real deal.
So I have taken this issue quite seriously in the past and looked at some really tough and "out there" concepts to arrive where I have.
The first thing to realise is that the brain and it's sensory system does not work in the way that we tend to think it does according to conventional thinking...and whilst the brain does form some computational work it is more a reflector of reality and not a computation of reality.
Straight away we have significant conflict with existing thought.

So I wont go down there any further and if I get the time I will set up the universal consciousness thread with the diagrams as suggested.

He is very deep in the beginnings of epistemology,

(Beginning as in novice):

The problem is we are talking from very differnet perspectives.

You assume that each human being body is somehow in isolation from another human being, That they stand alone and that their brain computes their existence.

This is fundamentally an incorrect position IMO.
So we are at odds to begin with.

And, it is simple to compute the simple reqs of there being a soul. Discussion of the very thing which allows us to die, there is no alternative when someone faces an authority that they were speaking wrongly from to begin with, plus he hardley ever considers anything you are saying QQ so, he can't very well begin to discuss it.

did you read that link i sent you? the more we find through science, the less "supernatural" there seems to be.
two things:
1] I have a great respect fro our scientists eve though I believe they are greatly mistaken.
2] I don't believe in the supernatural as for me it is all natural and physical. There is no no-material or paranormal or supernatural eixstence. it is all material and all physical.
It is interesteing that they have foudn evidence of binary functions in the frontal lobe however I guess this would not be surprising as binary systems certainly have their uses however from what I understand most systems are infinitely variable which means essentially trinary and not binary which I might add will be the future of computers if and when we go down that path.
trinary systems will actually bring the computer closer to being a super intelligent and "thinking" entity rather than just a programmed reactor of data.
Anothrer thread perhaps?

He is very deep in the beginnings of epistemology,

(Beginning as in novice):


And, it is simple to compute the simple reqs of there being a soul. Discussion of the very thing which allows us to die, there is no alternative when someone faces an authority that they were speaking wrongly from to begin with, plus he hardley ever considers anything you are saying QQ so, he can't very well begin to discuss it.
actually Sisyphus I haven't really articulated myself all that well either. My excuse was that I was sitting in a coffee shop trying to have conversations with both my lap top and others simultaneously....ha
a bit of a war going on you know....

no I didn't claim as you say.
I suggested that the soul may allow us to find meaning to our emotions I didn't say that the soul grants us our emotions...the endocrine system can provide emotion but it takes the soul to find meaning in them.

So when you are grieving you know that you are and not just standing there crying your eyes out wondering about nothing....
actually I make no claim but merely make suggestions about what "could" be considered as valid.
well of course you know why you're crying. the endocrine system is not going to induce crying unless there was something to make it do that. people don't normally cry out of random


The problem is we are talking from very differnet perspectives.

You assume that each human being body is somehow in isolation from another human being, That they stand alone and that their brain computes their existence.

This is fundamentally an incorrect position IMO.
So we are at odds to begin with.

The soul IMO not only grants meaning but empathy as well. It allows us to share an relatively objective reality that would other wise have to be computed individually on a massive scale by every thinking being and yet arrive at almost exactly the same results. This is theoretically impossible to achieve given the huge diversity of humans and other animals alone....

Imagine 8 billion brains all arriving at the same "objective' reality, you couldn't even build 8 billion robots to do that. The margin for error would rule it out.
So IMO the soul provides the interconnection between all living things thus the ability to arrive at meaning that is shareable [and in human case comprehendable] by all living things.
reality is not computed by conscious beings. reality is not dependent on anything. it's what actually exists. what we observe is dependent on reality.


So yes we are at odds simply because the current scientific view is exclusionary and not inclusionary.
I was actually going to show a "model" in diagram form about how you could actually build a robotic analogy of universal consciousness but this would never be life persee...it would still be a simulcrum or simulation of living and not the real deal.
i've asked this before, but you haven't given me an answer. where is the cutoff between "alive" and "not alive"?

yes, a robot world that can imitate human action can exist. they would be able to act out what we do so there is no observable difference between them and us if we only observe with sight and sound. but a robot world that is composed of robots with emotion and "meaning" can also exist.


So I have taken this issue quite seriously in the past and looked at some really tough and "out there" concepts to arrive where I have.
The first thing to realise is that the brain and it's sensory system does not work in the way that we tend to think it does according to conventional thinking...and whilst the brain does form some computational work it is more a reflector of reality and not a computation of reality.
Straight waway we have significant conflict with existing thought.
how do we think the brain works according to "conventional thinking"? why do you say that the brain creates the reality? do you know that if you take that assumption, then any discussion about anything is meaningless?

yes, a robot world that can imitate human action can exist. they would be able to act out what we do so there is no observable difference between them and us if we only observe with sight and sound. but a robot world that is composed of robots with emotion and "meaning" can also exist.
imitation is one thing being real is another....no observable difference means jack sh"t if you don't mind me saying so.

so we have robots acting as if they are alive and conscious...sheesh...thats a real use that is....I guess I can act like a robot too...
Meanign ony exists if it can be appreciated with feeling.

Tell me how do you make a robot feel?
feel the sensationof heat or cold or smell a flower in spring time or taste a cucumber that is chilled and loaded with vinegar and salt.
Taste the diference between sweet and sour or get sore eyes from staying out too late boozing on vodka spiked with extasy?

Actually theres you r key differeces already.

we have yet to work out how to create a machine that can actually smell or taste anything...

sure we can do chemical analysis and reaction devices but to actually smell the salt air or the scent of a woman....hmmmm ha I don't think so....ha

but a robot world that is composed of robots with emotion and "meaning" can also exist.
as an imitation but do you know how to do a simulation of universal consciousness to make it complete?

And, it is simple to compute the simple reqs of there being a soul. Discussion of the very thing which allows us to die, there is no alternative when someone faces an authority that they were speaking wrongly from to begin with, plus he hardley ever considers anything you are saying QQ so, he can't very well begin to discuss it.
as i've implied before, there is no real difference between alive, not alive, and dead. if you can tell me what the difference is without straying into the supernatural or being arbitrary, i'd like to hear it.


I have a great respect fro our scientists eve though I believe they are greatly mistaken.
in what way are they mistaken?


I don't believe in the supernatural as for me it is all natural and physical. There is no no-material or paranormal or supernatural eixstence. it is all material and all physical.
in what way does the soul physically affect the brain to cause meaning and thought? and why is that impossible through neural connections alone?

I suppose you can also build a robot that can dream and have visons etc etc....

imitation is one thing being real is another....no observable difference means jack sh"t if you don't mind me saying so.
actually no observable difference means everything. if something is not observable, it's as good as nonexistant. there could be invisible spiders crawling all over us that we cannot observe, but since we cannot observe them, they cannot affect us so relevant to us, it's the same as them not existing

but you misinterpreted what i wrote. if you read more carefully, i said no observable difference through sight and sound. i was agreeing with you that imitation of the real thing is not the real thing.


Tell me how do you make a robot feel?
feel the sensationof heat or cold or smell a flower in spring time or taste a cucumber that is chilled and loaded with vinegar and salt.
Taste the diference between sweet and sour or get sore eyes from staying out too late boozing on vodka spiked with extasy?
by making it as complex as we are

you say a soul is physical, so what is it composed of? where can we find it, and how can we observe it? not its effects, but the actual thing.

look I didn't get into this thread to put forward an entire hypothesis nor even argue about souls or not. I simply put forward a suggestion for One_ravens benefit as to how he may approach the issue for his book.
I 'm not going to answer an inquisition and I am not going to bother trying to support any of it...

I suggested that the same evidencial requirements for the existence of a soul be used to prove the existence of the mind....that was and still is my main point.
You can't prove the existence of the mind so why bother even trying to prove teh existence of the soul.
All you have is a brain and body to work with...well stick to that and state categorically that the mind deos not exist only the body does....

actually no observable difference means everything. if something is not observable, it's as good as nonexistant. there could be invisible spiders crawling all over us that we cannot observe, but since we cannot observe them, they cannot affect us so relevant to us, it's the same as them not existing
you miss one important point and that being the failure of the observer to be able to observe. or the limitations of the observer.

we could see very little compared to when we started to look with the aid of the hubble telescope.
what have we discovered since we improved our observation ability?
heaps I bet...

Place a pc with a web cam in front of a mirror and wait until the computer prints on the screen the question: "is that me in the mirror?"

and then you will find part of your answer to what the soul is....
my guess is that you will be waiting an awful long time.....

And that was my 8000th post thanks wizard you have made my day....hee hee

now where were we....hmmmmmm

you miss one important point and that being the failure of the observer to be able to observe. or the limitations of the observer.

by observe i mean any interaction between the observer and what is observed. i do not mean understanding of what is observed. in that sense, the limitations of the observer doesn't have to be considered, because it will go unnoticed. it does not matter if there is another dimension if it is impossible for it to interact with us. what is relevant to us is only what we can observe.

And that was my 8000th post thanks wizard you have made my day....hee hee

now where were we....hmmmmmm
time to celebrate!

although you did just quintuple-post

by observe i mean any interaction between the observer and what is observed. i do not mean understanding of what is observed. in that sense, the limitations of the observer doesn't have to be considered, because it will go unnoticed. it does not matter if there is another dimension if it is impossible for it to interact with us. what is relevant to us is only what we can observe.
well good for you!

it don't interact with us as it IS us...

it isn't separate to the body it is the body....just as the mind IS the body...it is only for conveniance we are reducing the whole to it's smaller parts...an abstraction is all we are talking about....

an important abstraction true but still an abstraction of the whole..

time to celebrate!

although you did just quintuple-post
yeah well thinking on the fly does that sometimes....ha:D

any part of you should interact with you

what do you mean the mind IS the body? if the mind IS the body, then why not call it the body?

I was posting at JREF skeptic forum a while ago and the flamers accounted for at least 50% of the posts...ha...

with in 7 days I had got up 1500 posts....
learned a lot about nasty human internet behaviour and how to deal with flamers....had a lot of fun I must admit...

any part of you should interact with you

what do you mean the mind IS the body? if the mind IS the body, then why not call it the body?
exactly my point well done...

We have a body that is comprosed of: muscles, bone, neurology etc etc and this manifests what some call a mind and soul.... as to what happens after we die well thats another story yet to be written properly.

so this is based on existing evidence ok as observed by todays scientists....that of course does not make it correct but simply the best we can do at the time...
Personally I believe other wise but that is my personal belief which is not supportable by evidence that your scientists would agree to... end of story...next!

seems like we've come to a conclusion for now

and i need to sleep

flaming is fun :]

thanks for giving me an excuse for posting my 8006 th post sheesh! Some flamer you are.... :)

Quantum:

Do you believe the soul to be, the idea of a continuous stream of consciousness, which is a representation of the individual, which continues after life has extinguished. If this idea is an accurate representation of the soul's existence, it must by default, exist for everyone.

However in certain cases an accurate representation of the soul cannot exist. the mind is altered due to disease, or chemical imbalances, and these new state of consciousness are no longer accurate. Dementia, Split brain syndrome, Multi personality disorder, Alcohol abuse(Korsakof'f's syndrome), Drug abuse. These include severe memory loss, invented memories, lack of insight, and apathy. It's not the individual symptoms, but noticeable changes due to the chemical imbalance.

This continuous stream of consciousness, which is representative of the individual which is used to define the soul, has been influenced, thus changed from its original state. The soul is now, not the soul it originally was.
The consciousness that results from these illnesses is clearly not an accurate representation of the individual.

How does one preserve an accurate representation of the individual's consciousness, at what stage do we extract the soul, lol. when the individual loses one one characteristic, or two, or maybe three. Any change incur a state of consciousness that is no longer an accurate representation of the individual.

To the extreme in regard to these illnesses.

Do you also believe the soul to exist at the moment of conception. If so could you explain twins, triplets, quads, etc. which clearly are not present at conception these occur some time later, in the zygote's existence. does a creator place an immaterial soul in at the begin or later or not at all. Go for the latter it's much wiser.

Quantum:

Do you believe the soul to be, the idea of a continuous stream of consciousness, which is a representation of the individual, which continues after life has extinguished. If this idea is an accurate representation of the soul's existence, it must by default, exist for everyone.

However in certain cases an accurate representation of the soul cannot exist. the mind is altered due to disease, or chemical imbalances, and these new state of consciousness are no longer accurate. Dementia, Split brain syndrome, Multi personality disorder, Alcohol abuse(Korsakof'f's syndrome), Drug abuse. These include severe memory loss, invented memories, lack of insight, and apathy. It's not the individual symptoms, but noticeable changes due to the chemical imbalance.

This continuous stream of consciousness, which is representative of the individual which is used to define the soul, has been influenced, thus changed from its original state. The soul is now, not the soul it originally was.
The consciousness that results from these illnesses is clearly not an accurate representation of the individual.

How does one preserve an accurate representation of the individual's consciousness, at what stage do we extract the soul, lol. when the individual loses one one characteristic, or two, or maybe three. Any change incur a state of consciousness that is no longer an accurate representation of the individual.

To the extreme in regard to these illnesses.

Do you also believe the soul to exist at the moment of conception. If so could you explain twins, triplets, quads, etc. which clearly are not present at conception these occur some time later, in the zygote's existence. does a creator place an immaterial soul in at the begin or later or not at all. Go for the latter it's much wiser.
ok I'll take you post as a serious one..ok..it appears to ask very valid questions and has been seriously considered and is not spurious.

ok talk about what I believe and if you want me to supoprt this with evidence then the convo is over...ok?
The best way is to take an extreme situation such as someone who has due to illness or accident become totally immobile and for all intents and purposes a vegitive state exists.

The person in this example has been found and has no identity that we can discover, has no way of communicating his identity or any other aspect of self. No facial expression no movement can be discerned. say for this example we allow his eyes to be open but only because the nureses thought this woudl be better during the daytime but as far as they can tell they are still and unmoving although reactionary to changes in light conditions. Pupil dialation, blinking but no movement of the eye ball. etc...
so you get the picture...yes?

I believe very much so that the soul is not determined by that which is considered it's tools such as memory or intellect or even expression, the soul orintrinsic identity, personality is not dependent on the body for it's existance however it is dependant on the body for it's expression.
In the case of the patient who is vegative his soul is still eixsting even though it has not vehicle for expression and no memories available due to inaction to apply conditions to that expression.

However that person still exists as a living but severely handicaped person.
Years ago I worte a story /poem from a similar perspective that may aid in your enquiry:

Final smile:

After opening my eyes
for another day of smelling
urine soaked sheets and the stench
of a soiled napkin.
I see the nurses smile
As she asks “ How are we
this morning Mr Rogers”
Of course she wasn’t expecting me to reply
In fact I haven’t said a thing for nearly a year now.
As she goes about her chores, changing the sheets
and attending to the other areas of undignified waste,
I notice the pain on the base of my spine,
excruciating ulcerations due to lying in bed for so long.
I try to tell her but my lips wont move,
I try to lift my hand but it just sits limp like so much else about me.
As she rolls me over she sighs, upon seeing the necrotized flesh, the smell over comes her for just a moment as she struggles to understand why I am still alive.
The morning tasks done food arrives
and a nurses aid with gentle words and patience
spoons food into my mouth
and wipes the excess dribbling out the side.
Chatting as if to herself about the weather
and her young children at home.
I want to join in but of course my mouth is impotent.
As she is finishing she looks just for a moment, a look of curiosity, looking for signs of cognizant awareness, a tear shows in my stationary eyes,
oh Lord, I can’t even cry the tears I need to cry.
Finished she leaves only to be replaced by Gloria, my wife of 40 years.
In her hands as usual she carried pictures of our grown up children,
which she placed on the little table next to the bed.
She would pick up each picture and tell me the latest gossip about that child.
She told me of my daughters up coming wedding and told me how she wont come to see me any more because her heart breaks every time she does.
Intuitively she knows that something is listening to her but of course she can not see any sign of it.
Eventually she hold up a picture of the two of us enjoying one of our holidays down the beach. Her eyes are wet but she is brave, her courage is astounding as she talks of loving times past.
The monitor next to the bed lets out a loud continuous beep, I look at her eyes one last time and slowly she fades as focus is lost, her voice yelling “Nurse! Nurse! fades also as I drift in to oblivion, smiling with in for the first and last time in years.


so yes in my opinion the soul exists as perfect regardless of the material conditions it has to endure.

As to what happens after death this is something I can not discuss as my words may cause serious confusion to some.

However suffice to say that because I believe that all persons are connected via the soul then all living persons have reflections if you like of all those souls with in themselves.
So in his particular level one can conclude that indeed one lives on after death but only as a reflection in all those you have touched and all they go on to touch etc etc...so in a sense a continuous stream of consciousness is present and never lost. and because memories are also reflective they too are never lost.

however there is much more to it than just this simplistic level.


Do you also believe the soul to exist at the moment of conception. If so could you explain twins, triplets, quads, etc. which clearly are not present at conception these occur some time later, in the zygote's existence. does a creator place an immaterial soul in at the begin or later or not at all. Go for the latter it's much wiser.

I believe it is the first and most important task of a newly conceived child to create his own soul by reflecting of every one around him through out his entire life. The child developes a soul as he matures. And does so quite deliberately however it is not refered to as soul building persee, it is referred to as character building or personality maturation or other similar growth type words...culturally this is shoewn in traditions of maturation such as the comming of age [ puberty ] adult hood and later mature age....
This of course implies there is more than just the soul involved as somethng is doing the soul building yes? And it is that something that is unknown to the world at this stage and probably never will be known....
So your question is not quite answerable in it's current form however I have taken the liberty of addressing it as if asked correctly.

Again this is another simplistic level of it all...as per my belief.


How does one preserve an accurate representation of the individual's consciousness, at what stage do we extract the soul, lol. when the individual loses one one characteristic, or two, or maybe three. Any change incur a state of consciousness that is no longer an accurate representation of the individual.
This is couched in so many preconceptions about the nature of death and what is presumably transmitted or in your words extracted...that it is impossible for me to answer in any way that would be useful to you...

I suggested that the same evidencial requirements for the existence of a soul be used to prove the existence of the mind....that was and still is my main point.
You can't prove the existence of the mind so why bother even trying to prove teh existence of the soul.
All you have is a brain and body to work with...well stick to that and state categorically that the mind deos not exist only the body does....Adequately define "mind" and "soul" and we'll start from there.

Throughout your wonderful(?) discourse with lixluke wizard, I'm still not sure I understand what your notion of "soul" is, QQ.
Would you care to elaborate, and define for us your understanding / concept of what the "soul" is, and how it differs to other aspects of a living person etc?


Edit - okay - just missed your post above... :)

Adequately define "mind" and "soul" and we'll start from there.

Throughout your wonderful(?) discourse with lixluke wizard, I'm still not sure I understand what your notion of "soul" is, QQ.
Would you care to elaborate, and define for us your understanding / concept of what the "soul" is, and how it differs to other aspects of a living person etc?


Edit - okay - just missed your post above... :)
he wasn't Lixluke....unless Lix has a multiple personality disorder, their writing voices are very different as is the attitude....[chuckle]

Adequately define "mind" and "soul" and we'll start from there.

Throughout your wonderful(?) discourse with lixluke wizard, I'm still not sure I understand what your notion of "soul" is, QQ.
Would you care to elaborate, and define for us your understanding / concept of what the "soul" is, and how it differs to other aspects of a living person etc?


Edit - okay - just missed your post above... :)
Sarkus I am caught in a bit of a dilemma because yes I do know the truth about the human soul. I had to build one as an adult so I know what I am talking about.....[ don't need to believe me ok but this is how it is from my perspective]

The problem is that to just go straight into a proper definition would be terribly unwise for me to do.

Somethings need to be maintained as a mystery as part of the souls purpose relies on this.

So to just come out with it would be very unwise at this stage.
I am using this thread as a way of working through the issues of such revelations to the public and I am not convinced that going down that path is the right thing to do.
Unfortunately there is too much at stake for any ridicule or flaming to be useful to any one

Al Capone had people killed, Hitler had people killed, Saddam had people killed, however that most likely never killed anybody themselves, are that not murderers?

red herring -- the subject was stealing, and you changed it. I said that stealing wasn't something a burgler announces.


Is that the password that the owner never knew. if the owner knew he would have had it ready, and been there waiting, instead it was done with stealth.

Jesus knew the colt was going to be there and waiting -- yet you claim Jesus had not been there before. You proposed "pony express mail" as the method of communication.


take the rose coloured glasses off, and read the paragraph again, but try not to extrapolate, and add to it, read it as is. Don't assume.How so, he was martyred wasn't he, it was more convenient for his followers.

At the time it was most expedient for the pharisees. Obviously their finances were being impacted when people left them to follow Jesus. As said in the bible, the love of money is the root of all evil. I feel theree is a lot of truth to that statement, even today, though you may disagree.


No, I mentioned Aesops fables earlier, the NT is not a book of proverbs, it's a book of all sorts including a lot of evil doings.It doesn't make me think about killing, it is about killing, as is the quran. There is nothing to think about it's there in black and white.

You wrote off the entire bible as a book of fables and foolishness. The book of Proverbs is in the Bible. Hence, my logical conclusion is that you think the book of Proverbs is also foolish.



You however see it with blinkers on and when you do things you don't consider, that you may be imposing your will on other, abusing them etc..

Loving others is taking of the blinkers.


No the mind virus that is religion, causes you not to think about killing, you just just do it in gods name with impunity.

I don't kill people, yet you say I'm personally a murderer. You ask me to consider others which I try to do, and then accuse me with murder which I have not done. I think you are being very unkind. As Jesus said, if you think unkind things toward other people, you have committed murder in your own heart. I am not thinking unkind things, but you are.


To deny a thing, you do need some assemblance of a belief in a thing.Yes but some of them cant read or understand any book, some even have no idea how to gather knowledge or what is real or not.Who said it wasn't.How so, they are not after personal gain like the religious.No thats the point you should never assume, and where did they need to look. can you point to the scripture, please. lol. Why was it, and what does it have to do with jesus stealing.

Here's the deal -- you think atheism implies a higher intellect, and it looks like arrogance. People get doctorates in divinity and religion just like any other arts degree. They are not uneducated. It required more intelligence than the average person just like any other doctorate requires. I think if you were being honest you could agree.

The thing atheists seem to completley miss is the concept of a soul which this thread is about. They have this pre-programmed do-loop that goes into denial, like other atheists. I can even see it in the last post you made. You have to constantly remind me that you think Jesus is fictional, and I gave you that point from the very beginning. So why do you keep saying it? It's irrational to keep repeating this when it isn't part of the debate. My only conclusion is that you can't be objective or even rational when you examine religion. :shrug:

it doesn't help your credibility to describe atheists as having a "pre-programmed do-loop that goes into denial." especially when you follow such a contradictory religion.

it doesn't help your credibility to describe atheists as having a "pre-programmed do-loop that goes into denial." especially when you follow such a contradictory religion.

So tell me why you have to keep saying "Jesus didn't exist", when I conceded on that point for this entire thread. You explain the reason so you can have credibility. It constantly interferes with a rational discussion. It's not logically connected.

i'm not mis-t-highs

i'm not mis-t-highs

So tell me, can you discuss the character of Jesus as described in the Bible, without getting hung up on whether he really existed or not (when that point has already been conceded)? If so then Kudos -- you'll be the first atheist I've met that can do so.

If you have to constantly remind me that he did not exist, when I've already clearly conceded that point, then I think it shows irrationality and an inability to be objective.

red herring -- the subject was stealing, and you changed it. No sorry wrong, that reply was to point out that jesus may not of stole the colt, but he instigated it. as you said "Stealing is rather clandestine isn't it? "
I said that stealing wasn't something a burgler announces.Where?
Jesus knew the colt was going to be there and waitingAnd your evidence for this is where.
yet you claim Jesus had not been there before. Thats because it doesn't say anywhere that he had, it is only logical to go by what is actually written.
You proposed "pony express mail" as the method of communication.Given it does say when, of if jesus had ever been to bethany anywhere else in the bible, that was just a little bit of sarcasm.
You wrote off the entire bible as a book of fables and foolishness. The book of Proverbs is in the Bible. Hence, my logical conclusion is that you think the book of Proverbs is also foolish. Yes it is but not in the NT, which I specified. Heres the quote again
No, I mentioned Aesops fables earlier, the NT is not a book of proverbs, it's a book of all sorts including a lot of evil doings. Oh and yes I do think the book of proverbs in the OT to be fiction, when I said the bible is a book of fiction, I did mean all of it, not cherry picked parts.
Loving others is taking of the blinkersSorry not when your religious.

I don't kill people, yet you say I'm personally a murderer. You ask me to consider others which I try to do, and then accuse me with murder which I have not done. I think you are being very unkind.Sadly you are a victim of the mind virus, and as such have no control, of what you might do, you have the potential to be a killer because of your illness, it's not your fault, you just need to be cured before you, do any harm, your literally a walking time bomb. And yes we all have a similar potential, but yours is made a thousand times worse because of the mind virus.
As Jesus said, if you think unkind things toward other people, you have committed murder in your own heart. I am not thinking unkind things, but you are.I've tried to explain on several occasions that I hold religion up as evil not it adherents, you are just a victim. Hence why I am a humanist, people come first, I don't follow fantasies.
Here's the deal -- you think atheism implies a higher intellect,No, not at all, just more able to use the sense reason and intellect, there minds are fit and healthy, tis all.
The thing atheists seem to completley miss is the concept of a soul which this thread is about.No it's not missed, it's just classed as another irrational belief. Thus is not considered viable.
They have this pre-programmed do-loop that goes into denial, like other atheists. I can even see it in the last post you made. You have to constantly remind me that you think Jesus is fictional, and I gave you that point from the very beginning.Where?
So why do you keep saying it? It's irrational to keep repeating this when it isn't part of the debate. My only conclusion is that you can't be objective or even rational when you examine religion. :shrug: I did say I find religion abhorrent. But as for objective and rational, your the one who holds subjective and irrational beliefs not I. I think you might have that a bit back to front.

*************
M*W: Jesus didn't exist, because he and everything that has been written about him, is a myth regardless of who wrote it, what they wrote, when they wrote it, where they wrote it, why they wrote it, and how they wrote it, is still and always will be, a myth.

*************
M*W: Jesus didn't exist, because he and everything that has been written about him, is a myth regardless of who wrote it, what they wrote, when they wrote it, where they wrote it, why they wrote it, and how they wrote it, is still and always will be, a myth.

This is what I mean.

We already know you believe Jesus is fictional, so why do you keep repeating it? :shrug:

Character is both real (like in real life) and fictional like in a Shakespere play. In a fictional work, the author makes up a character that the audience relates to in some fashion, but somehow an atheist just can't get past this. Somehow, after they call the Bible a fictional work (and this point is conceded) they still can not discuss the character of Jesus Christ rationally without going into this kookie denial routine.

It always goes this way. ALWAYS.

This is what I mean.

We already know you believe Jesus is fictional, so why do you keep repeating it? :shrug:

Character is both real (like in real life) and fictional like in a Shakespere play. In a fictional work, the author makes up a character that the audience relates to in some fashion, but somehow an atheist just can't get past this. Somehow, after they call the Bible a fictional work (and this point is conceded) they still can not discuss the character of Jesus Christ rationally without going into this kookie denial routine.

It always goes this way. ALWAYS.
this is only because Jesus and other prophets that have been debunked offer something that they refuse or do not wish to accept.
To accept Jesus as an example, means you have to reliquish control of something [ your life ] which you have no control over in reality.

It is simply a power struggle one between God and those who aspire to become God.

The use of the word "God" is just an analogy for those who believe they should have full and unfetted control over their own lives, ....ahh.... such is the way our Western culture is tending towards the "me" generation and individualism...
The rise of athiesm in Western culture is simply a power struggle and that is all and one that makes the notion of inner peace foreign and worthy to fight against which promotes growth towards the ambition of becoming all powerful in controling your own lives and those lives of lesser Gods around you ...
The posts that demonstrate the desire to control the thoughts rather than nurture the thoughts of others are clear demonstrations of this suggestion.
So why athiests argue the way they do is simply because they have ambitions to do better than what they are argueing against is doing. Which in many ways is a good thing yet one that leads to discord and inner conflict thus promoting change.
My assessment take it or leave it....and no offense intended towards any one.

taken from notes ~ The Human God Complex... yet to be published.

No sorry wrong, that reply was to point out that jesus may not of stole the colt, but he instigated it. as you said "Stealing is rather clandestine isn't it? "

You changed the subject to murder, to satisfy Godwin's law, by using Hitler as an example. Why did you feel this was necessary?


And your evidence for this is where.

Your original claim was that Jeus had not been in town to see the colt or talk to the owners. Yet Jesus knew there was a certain colt that had never been ridden before and the disciples could find it in a certain place. Jesus did not ask for just any horse. There was only one that would do. So you tell me how he knew about it.



Heres the quote again Oh and yes I do think the book of proverbs in the OT to be fiction,

The book of proverbs is a look through the human character eyepiece, the same way Confucious does it. Are you telling me that nothing Confucious ever said regarding human nature has any value? Are you telling me likewise about proverbs?



when I said the bible is a book of fiction,


Hamlet by Shakespere is a book of fiction, hence it would be irrational and unintelligent to go to a Shakespere play -- this line of reasoning just sounds kind of kookie.



I did mean all of it, not cherry picked parts. Sorry not when your religious.Sadly you are a victim of the mind virus, and as such have no control, of what you might do, you have the potential to be a killer because of your illness, it's not your fault, you just need to be cured before you, do any harm, your literally a walking time bomb.

I think anybody is capable of murder, and they will rationalize it -- take abortion for example. and like Jesus said, if you think ill toward someone you are already a murderer.


And yes we all have a similar potential, but yours is made a thousand times worse because of the mind virus.

I haven't aborted anyone, and I don't approve of it. Do you? If so then I believe you are a murderer. I believed this even when I was an agnostic. The abortion debate places the woman's right to chose above the right of the unborn to live. So go ahead and rationalize it away. That's what murder is all about.


I've tried to explain on several occasions that I hold religion up as evil not it adherents, you are just a victim. Hence why I am a humanist, people come first, I don't follow fantasies.

I think you do follow a fantasy. You think your view comes from a position of more knowledge and it doesn't. You have no more knowledge than anyone else.


No, not at all, just more able to use the sense reason and intellect, there minds are fit and healthy, tis all. No it's not missed, it's just classed as another irrational belief.

If something works to make somebody a lot healthier, happier, and live longer, do you consider it irrational? I think that would be irrational.


I did say I find religion abhorrent. But as for objective and rational, your the one who holds subjective and irrational beliefs not I.

If so, then why do you keep bringing up that "Jesus did not exist" when nobody is debating that point? For some reason you keep doing this. It just doesn't look rational. I'm sure you'll defend it, but it just looks like denial from here.

this is only because Jesus and other prophets that have been debunked offer something that they refuse or do not wish to accept.
To accept Jesus as an example, means you have to reliquish control of something [ your life ] which you have no control over in reality.

That's the point QQ. How can somebody be objective when their own interests are a stake? I admit I have a biased point of view just like everybody else -- I'm just being honest. Anybody that thinks they are objective about religion is just being dishonest. ;)


It is simply a power struggle one between God and those who aspire to become God.

and denial produces no change.


The use of the word "God" is just an analogy for those who believe they should have full and unfetted control over their own lives, ....ahh.... such is the way our Western culture is tending towards the "me" generation and individualism...

Did you read the recent article about people with religious views? They are much more likely to break the "me-centerred" paradigm that characterizes humanism and atheism.


The rise of athiesm in Western culture is simply a power struggle and that is all and one that makes the notion of inner peace foreign and worthy to fight against which promotes growth towards the ambition of becoming all powerful in controling your own lives and those lives of lesser Gods around you ...

Have you noticed the fall in accountability as well?


The posts that demonstrate the desire to control the thoughts rather than nurture the thoughts of others are clear demonstrations of this suggestion.

It's self-centerred isn't it?


So why athiests argue the way they do is simply because they have ambitions to do better than what they are argueing against is doing. Which in many ways is a good thing yet one that leads to discord and inner conflict thus promoting change.

Denial doesn't produce change.

My assessment take it or leave it....and no offense intended towards any one.

taken from notes ~ The Human God Complex... yet to be published.[/QUOTE]

Woody:

You are a genuine Christian.

Thank goodness for people like you.

This is what I mean.

We already know you believe Jesus is fictional, so why do you keep repeating it? :shrug:

Character is both real (like in real life) and fictional like in a Shakespere play. In a fictional work, the author makes up a character that the audience relates to in some fashion, but somehow an atheist just can't get past this. Somehow, after they call the Bible a fictional work (and this point is conceded) they still can not discuss the character of Jesus Christ rationally without going into this kookie denial routine.

It always goes this way. ALWAYS.
*************
M*W: The problem is you and your compadres is that you talk about Jesus as if he had been a real person and not just a fairy tale character. Nobody cares who or what you believe in or whether it's real or fictional. That's your privilege. It would seem that you and others who believe in Jesus should have been able by now to provide the indisputable truth of the existence of your chosen hero, but you have not been able to do so.

You are expecting atheists to discuss Jesus as if he existed. Therefore, Jesus cannot be discussed rationally by anyone, including you and other believers. You are under the impression that believers discuss Jesus rationally, but you do not. You only assume you do. You can't discuss Jesus any more logically than you can discuss Santa Claus. No matter which way you look at it, it's apples and apples, myth and myth. You can't handle it, because we poke a little hole in your balloon.

Woody:

You are a genuine Christian.

Thank goodness for people like you.
*************
M*W: Hi Dave. I was just beginning to really get into your posts, because they were of a much higher order than other christians who have been on the forum, but you just lost me.

Jesus is as real as you mm, and one day he will be even more real, when he says "poof" and you'll be gone.

Cesspool James?

You changed the subject to murder, to satisfy Godwin's law, by using Hitler as an example. Why did you feel this was necessary?I feel like saying something derogatory, but I will refrain.
I'll instead give you another scenario, to try to get you to understand the point. Al Capone sent his cohorts out to steal for him, does that make him, any less a thief than they. That was the point.

Your original claim was that Jeus had not been in town to see the colt or talk to the owners.This is what the scriptures says it's no claim of mine, it's how it reads.
Yet Jesus knew there was a certain colt that had never been ridden before and the disciples could find it in a certain place. Jesus did not ask for just any horse. There was only one that would do. So you tell me how he knew about it.I don't know, but I not going to assume, anything else, that would be foolish, the facts remain the owners according to the scripture were asking why the colt was being stolen. how jesus got the information is not for you or me to assume, we can only go by what is written, we should not extrapolate, and add to it.
Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield in such a way that it had a happy ending, he could have wrote it with a sad ending but he didn't. we can only read it, the way it is written.
The book of proverbs is a look through the human character eyepiece, the same way Confucious does it. Are you telling me that nothing Confucious ever said regarding human nature has any value? Are you telling me likewise about proverbs?all books have some moral value, but that is no reason to base your life on them.
Hamlet by Shakespeare is a book of fiction, hence it would be irrational and unintelligent to go to a Shakespeare play this line of reasoning just sounds kind of kookie.No why! it's called entertainment, that's what fiction is written for.

Sadly you are a victim of the mind virus, and as such have no control, of what you might do, you have the potential to be a killer because of your illness, it's not your fault, you just need to be cured before you, do any harm, your literally a walking time bomb. And yes we all have a similar potential, but yours is made a thousand times worse because of the mind virus.I think anybody is capable of murderI've bolded and blue what you seem to have a problem reading.

I've tried to explain on several occasions that I hold religion up as evil not it adherents, you are just a victim. Hence why I am a humanist, people come first, I don't follow fantasies.and they will rationalize it -- take abortion for example. and like Jesus said, if you think ill toward someone you are already a murderer.Again bolded and blued.
I haven't aborted anyone, and I don't approve of it. Do you?No.
I think you do follow a fantasy. You think your view comes from a position of more knowledge and it doesn't. You have no more knowledge than anyone else.Never once said I had, now did I. My point of view merely comes from having a clear and critical mind. I don't take things on board, without solid evidence. There lies the difference.

If something works to make somebody a lot healthier, happier, and live longer, do you consider it irrational?If that very thing that makes them healthier, happier, and live longer, causes them to abuse, kill, etc then yes I do.
I think that would be irrational.I don't.
If so, then why do you keep bringing up that "Jesus did not exist" when nobody is debating that point? For some reason you keep doing this.Strawman: I don't, you however have for the last few posts, All I've stated is that the bible is a book of fiction.

Why not drop your pretentious IQ MISS.

as i've implied before, there is no real difference between alive, not alive, and dead. if you can tell me what the difference is without straying into the supernatural or being arbitrary, i'd like to hear it.


You are asking for the impossible. There is no acceptance for any of what is not already proven by science, on this entire board there is none. Or should I say what is not accepted by science....

There is no way that I can mannage to say, "There is a soul. You're being abritary." Without you running away thinking I'm a fool or a moron out to body snatch you.

Your very dismissal of any of the possibilities of such things are total mockery BS, there is plenty of difference in being alive not alive and dead if there is a difference to those things other than your own BS context lixluke.

Straying into how people work would allow you to have a more open understanding. You know, like a

[QQ would probably enjoy this immenesly]
Psychologistician : (link) (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Psychologistician)
A person who controls how and where information is present in the brain. Like a Psychologist but rather specializes in controlling the inner workings of the brain. Works in the profession of Psychologistics. Common tactics include reverse psychology, hypnotism, and cranial abuse"Often in cases the reptillian complex will overtake the limbic system, and abuse it physically, emotionally, sexually, mentally... the neocrotex stands idly by of course, not daring to interfere are the risk of being injured," says Dr. Max McRage, a leading member of the Worldwide Society of Psychologisticians.
My brain has been hurting ever since I went to my psychologistician...I wonder why Dr. McRage refused to comment on where he obtained his PhD.

Would refer to certain aspects of self as referenced to nature. Relying on science is always philosophys and religions most drastic downfall lixluke you know this more than others do.

Of course though the soul is only evidenced by death and afterlife completely reverse to your claims lixluke. Of course though the soul is only evidenced by how death and the afterlife are not proven lixluke.
Your entire debate and discussion is irrelevant to any of the points considered so I have no reason to continue discussion with you and your ignorance/arragance.

Your very dismissal of any of the possibilities of such things are total mockery BS, there is plenty of difference in being alive not alive and dead if there is a difference to those things other than your own BS context lixluke.
like abut 2 lbs I think or was it 2 kilos....hmmmm can't remember....:)

Would refer to certain aspects of self as referenced to nature. Relying on science is always philosophys and religions most drastic downfall lixluke you know this more than others do.

Yes philosohy has always led the way for science. It is in the ability to formulate ideas and concepts that are pointed towards greater truths with open mindedness and blunt frankness that alllows mankind to escape the necesssary pragmatic demands for evidence and proofs of science yet to be established.
To dare to say: Light does not travel as supposedly proved, is what philosophy can allow.

It allows us to stretch the boundary and keep us all from falling into a trap of self deception [ arrogantly saying : ah ha we have all the answers that are there to be had]

Philosophy says other wise...and keeps you boffins from getting too stuck in your own egos.

The Greeks founded that Quantum.

Psychologistician : (link)
A person who controls how and where information is present in the brain. Like a Psychologist but rather specializes in controlling the inner workings of the brain. Works in the profession of Psychologistics. Common tactics include reverse psychology, hypnotism, and cranial abuse"Often in cases the reptillian complex will overtake the limbic system, and abuse it physically, emotionally, sexually, mentally... the neocrotex stands idly by of course, not daring to interfere are the risk of being injured," says Dr. Max McRage, a leading member of the Worldwide Society of Psychologisticians.
My brain has been hurting ever since I went to my psychologistician...I wonder why Dr. McRage refused to comment on where he obtained his PhD.

sounds a bit like cranal proctology!:)

The Greeks founded that Quantum.
founded what? Cranal proctology?! [chuckle]

philosophy [chuckle]

It could be said I guess that:
philosophy screws around with the mind and science uses the mind to screw around with philosophy.:D
Either way it's a mind....****.... anyways!:)

Keep your mind friend, it's a good one.

Keep your mind friend, it's a good one.
why thank you my good man! so where were we? ahhh yes cranal proctology.....:)

lol :) i'm a big fan iof yours!

Well.... lixluke/wizard?

Sounds confusing dear, Quantum Quack is actually a great philosopher :)

You have no idea...

He was responding to my post I think if thats what you mean.

It must be some secret language you want to talk? Quantum, isn't very secrective.

I don't know, but I not going to assume, anything else, that would be foolish, the facts remain the owners according to the scripture were asking why the colt was being stolen. how jesus got the information is not for you or me to assume, we can only go by what is written, we should not extrapolate, and add to it.

Yet you extrapolated when you said the owners were too shocked to say anything when the disciples told them "the Lord has need of the colt." If the Lord in this play is God as the same scriptures said, then the colt belonged to him anyway didn't it? I think the owners believed this (assuming this is a play), as did the all people that threw down palm branches before him saying "Hosanna in the highest." The play intended Christ to be a hero not a crook... If Jesus was God in the play, then nobody had to explain to God about the colt. This is a play .... remember? Is the concept too much for you?


all books have some moral value, but that is no reason to base your life on them.

Moral value is learned, but you see no reason to base your life on moral values that you learn -- that's what I take away from this conversation.


No why! it's called entertainment, that's what fiction is written for.

So there is a need for entertainment isn't there?


I've bolded and blue what you seem to have a problem reading.Again bolded and blued.No. Never once said I had, now did I. My point of view merely comes from having a clear and critical mind.

You think you aren't biased, but I don't agree.


I don't take things on board, without solid evidence. There lies the difference.If that very thing that makes them healthier, happier, and live longer, causes them to abuse, kill, etc then yes I do.

Speaking of solid evidence, there are more than 40 million aborted babies in the USA. Christianity doesn't cause people to abort babies. Abortion alone, trumps all other causes of murder combined.


All I've stated is that the bible is a book of fiction.

Wait a minute -- you are an atheist -- everybody knows this -- and you feel like you need to say it yet again?

If that's all you have to say, then you're a waste of time. bump. ignore.

Forget about her Woody, YOU are too good.

It must be some secret language you want to talk? Quantum, isn't very secrective.

lmao. You don't understand my last few posts?



Today 06:42 PM
sisyphus__ Well.... lixluke/wizard?

davewhite04 Sounds confusing dear, Quantum Quack is actually a great philosopher


What do you mean secret language?



You have no idea...

He was responding to my post I think if thats what you mean.
Today 06:47 PM
davewhite04 Sounds confusing dear, Quantum Quack is actually a great philosopher

Is this confusing you?
What is confusing you?
Who was you responding to other than me? This is the defination of what I hate.


davewhite04 It must be some secret language you want to talk? Quantum, isn't very secrective.
Today 06:48 PM
sisyphus__ You have no idea...

He was responding to my post I think if thats what you mean.

Sry btw im a bit distraught.

You are confusing.

Why are you distraught?

I hate to tell you this dave but you are more confusing than I am.

Sorry, you have a greek avatar, are you from greek origin?

No. Why? Have you got something important to tell me?

ok, I have deleted a post.
You mean usertitle?

This is irrelevant a little bit but...
I'm from Greek Origin, yes, so are you and everyone else (maybe). Anyways, I use the title sisyphus because it has a special meaning to me. And only me. I am a theif of knowledge, a posessor of all sorts of off hand forms of wisdom, and an extremely arragant bastard.

I love you, and you know that right?

ok, I have deleted a post.
You mean usertitle?

This is irrelevant a little bit but...
I'm from Greek Origin, yes, so are you and everyone else (maybe). Anyways, I use the title sisyphus because it has a special meaning to me. And only me. I am a theif of knowledge, a posessor of all sorts of off hand forms of wisdom, and an extremely arragant bastard.
and according to legend a character doomed to repetitive futility!

stealing Zeuses secrets where you.....hmmmmmm....see that round rock over there...see that hill...go for it!:D

I know who it is Quantum, stay out of this.

of course sisyphus you know how this relates to your particular gift - [cryptic side note and secretive message for sisyphus]
and another one bites the dust....as the song lyrics say....

I know who it is Quantum, stay out of this.

okey dokey...how though is the question? any ideas Dave?