You claim their is no such things as a "soul" and you seem certain about it.

My first response will be-PROVE IT!

I know your going to say to me, "Prove their are souls" well why should I not beleive in souls?

Unicron,

I'm going to through my glove into the ring here, hope you don't mind.

It's not realy that you shouldn't belive in souls. It is more of the fact that it hasn't realy been proven one way or the other. What you belive is what you belive. What it boils done to is, do you accept the fact the fact that it is not proven and may be wrong? That seems to be the real question at hand!



------------------
All I know is what I understand. All I understand is what I know. :)

Noooooooooooooooooooo.......im melting!!!!!

someone help me here!

[This message has been edited by Unicron (edited March 11, 2000).]

PROVE IT!


All rightie, I will. Bwahahahaha...

Well... Actually, I'll just argue the snot out of it. :)

<hr>
<center><h3>Argument from interaction</h3></center>

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. For if we could detect it, we could then determine its properties and structure; 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. essense 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.

<hr>
<center><h3>Argument from neuroscience</h3></center>

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 pont 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 combatted 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, independnt knowledge, 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.

<hr>
<center><h3>Argument from neuropsychology</h3></center>

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, inabit 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 essense", 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 essense" at all -- they are merely very compicated 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 essense is bridged. It stands to reason that if unicellular life does not possess a soul, same holds for multicellular life -- since multicellular 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 essense, 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 wereas 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 anscient 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 anscient 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 anscient 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 elictricity, 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 essense, 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 sybsystem 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 exaclty 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 detemining 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.

<hr>
<center><h3>Argument from evolution</h3></center>

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 lifeforms 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 probem 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.

<hr>
<center><h3>Argument from development</h3></center>

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.

<hr>
<center><h3>Argument from objectivity</h3></center>

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 essense", 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.

<hr>
<center><h3>Argument from equivalence</h3></center>

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 mimick human eyes, and simulated ears that mimick 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 essense".

<hr>

Ok, that's it for starters. Maybe I'll recall/construct more arguments later.

BTW, sorry for such an enormous post. But you did ask me to "PROVE IT!" So be careful what you ask for. ;)

<H3>NOTE:</H3> I've deleted my old message and posted this new version, after re-reading the stuff and correcting a few lexical and spelling errors.

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I am; therefore I think.

So then, if you dont beleive in God or a creator, how do you think we humans came about? What about the stars, planets and such? Who/what made those?

Boris,

Thankyou very much for your superb and extensive reply in this topic and in fact for all your informed and intelligent posts over the last few months in this debate. I have been following them daily. I share all of your fundamental views but I have learnt a great deal more from your recent posts than from years of debate elsewhere. I hope you have the energy and time to continue your excellent contributions.

You give me hope that humanity will eventually become enlightened through rationality.

Boris, Unicron,

This is the way I see it, and experience the objective measurable proof of my soul. The soul seems to be the part of me which allows me to be influenced biologically and neurologically by the spiritual world. It is that part of me that "interacts" with God and with Satan. It is what converts their influence into the mental and biological results that are readily and easily measured. Again Boris is trying to say "this is how it works", and not at all answering the question "this is why it works". Boris, let me assure you that there is nothing, not one thing on this earth, not one person, not one emotional crisis, not one loss, not one mistake, not one book, learning experience, relationship or person on this earth, including myself, that could possibly be responsible for my REAL change of heart and change in my life other than Jesus Christ and His influence on my soul. NO OTHER. I KNOW this, you do not, because you don't know what it's like. You don't even understand the magnitude of the change. The terminology of being "born again" is not some trite BS. That's exactly what it feels like. It's not that the same old "demons" don't still tempt you, but you are a totally new person in your perspective when confronting them. It comes from knowing the truth in their identity, and the truth in who Jesus is. But the "measurable" and "observable" and "quantifiable" effects are all over the place, just ask my friends and family as of late. I've been getting that "what the hell has gotten into her?" or "she's an alien for sure" look lately a lot. :D LOL! But I think everyone would agree that it's a good thing. Even if they don't want to believe it. Even my atheist brother. :D

------------------
You may think I'm a nut, but I'm fastened to the strongest bolt in the universe.

Oh, and I almost forgot....my soul is also the part of me that "knows" Jesus very well, even though I don't really remember knowing Him before. It's like you can feel a bond, as if He is a long lost parent or something that you've finally found after searching and searching, and thinking that He didn't exist, or that He didn't love you. And realizing that He always has. It's VERY bizzare, but that's how it feels when you really get to know Him. And OF COURSE that's exactly what it says in the Bible as well. You definately know and love Him from long ago, the most intense and unconditional love, you just don't quite remember what it was really like, the details and circumstance, and what we would consider memories. They aren't there, but the "bond" is. It's bizzare, but it's TRUE! :)

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You may think I'm a nut, but I'm fastened to the strongest bolt in the universe.

Boris...you cool geezer!

It's ironic, but I'd already written my new topic 'conscience, conciousness and spirituality', before I'd even read this post and it seems to be a perfect follow up to this thread.

Boris -

What Cris said, double.

FyreStar

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 anscient Greeks.

I feel compelled to make a stand, and say that the task of understanding the brain is best acheived, not through deconstruction and reduction, but through construction. It would seem that knowing the particulars about the human brain is rather unimportant, except from the standpoint of a sociologist or psychiatrist. I don't think anyone would claim that the human brain is anything more than an a specific example of a more general class of "intelligent systems".

Deconstruction is fine, to a certain degree, as a method of discovery. But when you speak of modelling the human brain in a supercomputer using a physical model to map every atom, you are perhaps confusing the issue. The brain is not capable of awareness and thought because of its specific characteristics, but rather because of general patterns in how information is represented and processed. These data storage patterns and algorithms can be easily replicated and generalized. With enough computing power, we should be able to induce and intelligent system fairly easily.

It should also be noted that the human brain is not necessarily efficient as an intelligent system. Evolution introduces a huge amount of garbage which interferes with any attempts to deconstruct to specfic algorithms. It is far easier and far more efficient to build up in a theoretical foundational manner.

Howdy folks. I've posted here before but as someone else. Guess what? I'm back.

First I'd like to say that Boris answered very thoroughly and long windedly, but thoroughly nonetheless. About that post I'd like to say that the soul does not have to be defined by how it interacts with matter because the definition of a soul is one of an intangible unempirical nature. Just like when I was talking about the intangible laws of physics and mathematics and geometry-- These things do affect the physical world yet are themselves intangible so you can't actually prove that they exist except that they give evidence of themselves through the way the physical world is governed by them.

Secondly I'd like to say that once I gave a hypothetical example to show a POINT, but Boris replied that it was hypothetical so it didn't matter. Yes, you did say that; I remember because it was so stupid. Anyway, hypothetical situations are used to portray IDEAS. Einstein did not go out into space and perform those fast as light experiments did he? He always used hypothetical situations to prove a point. Neither did Newton actually shoot a cannonball so fast that it went into orbit around the earth, but that theory and hypothetical scenario was proved with rockets and other satellites put into orbit.

Thirdly, we can now make chemical computers that can simulate how our brain works and with nanotechnology, we will be able to re-create a human brain exactly without having to grow the human body. Dave touched on this and I will elaborate. I believe that we are more than the sum of our parts. That you can create a computer with actual self-awareness and creativity and logic, etc. but does it have a soul? That's not what God said. He said that beasts were created first, including dinosaurs, neanderthal and cro-magnon man as well as others such as apes, etc. We are the only ones that were created in His image. Yes, there were other races walking around on the earth way before Adam and Eve; we can see evidence of this when Genesis talks about when Cain left the Garden of Eden to go east to the land of Nod. God put a mark on his forehead so that no one who found him would kill him. Cain met his wife in Nod and they had children. A few generations passed and in Genesis 6 it states that the evil spirits (the fallen angels along with Satan) were having sexual relations with the people of this earth. We who are the descendants of Adam and Eve are the only ones to have souls. All the other types of people-- the neanderthals, cro-magnon, etc. didn't. Oh yeah, and there's still a missing link between us and them. They'll never find it because there is none.

Yes, we have the ability to adapt and change our physical attributes. Look how different our physical attributes are among the races of people. But we are not just physical machines that change and adapt and grow. No, we are much much more than that. The ability to creatively understand that our reality is not what we perceive it to be. In other words, we have gained knowledge of our physical universe and how we interact with it, but more than that, we have learned that the intangible laws of how things work (which we still don't fully understand yet) are as real as the physical tangible world we live in.

To put it into simple terms, we as a people understand that things such as faith, vision, understanding, selflessness, relativity, physics, motive, truth, lies, opposites (without darkness what would be light, and vice versa, without reaction, what would action be, without up/down, without in/out, betrayal/loyalty, near/far, love/hate, large/small, etc. etc. etc. and so on and so forth are all things that are intangible things yet so very very real. I'll repeat it again. Things that are intangible, yet very very real. Again, thats: intangible, yet very very real.

Yes, we are physical mechanical systems, but we are also more than that.

[This message has been edited by Feenix9 (edited March 11, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Feenix9 (edited March 11, 2000).]

Lori,



Again Boris is trying to say "this is how it works", and not at all answering the question "this is why it works".


Again Boris is trying to show Lori the obvious: in the context of cognition, "how" is equivalent to "why". You still don't see it, but I'll point you to the computer analogy. Is there a real difference between asking how the computer determines that 2*2=4, and asking why the computer outputs 4 when given the problem of 2*2?

And Lori, you ignore all the reasoned arguments, and keep persisting with the "I feel it to be true." Reason is superior to feelings when it comes to determining truth. By brushing aside reason and choosing to trust your gut, you are being simple-minded and shallow. Gut feeling is good when there is no other alternative; however when there is an alternative of structured knowledge and reason, the gut is always inferior.

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I am; therefore I think.

DaveW,

I sympathize. In fact, I don't know if you are aware of it, but there's been a debate raging for decades between eliminative reductionists and functionalists. I tend to side with the former, while your view is representative of the latter. Functionalism basically argues that form is not important; what truly matters is function. Thus, the same cognitive machine implemented biochemically or in silicon has the same properties mapping inputs onto outputs, and is therefore equivalent in either implementation. I have nothing against that, except that this particular stance is not very productive either empirically or philosophically in debates such as this one.

First of all, just like any particular function can be computed in a variety of ways, so can one construct machines that are behaviorally similar to the real brain. Functionalists argue that if a machine is constructed that by mere external characteristics and behavior is indistinguishable from human behavior and characteristics, then that machine is indeed conscious and human. This philosophy has provided much of the impetus for classical AI research, where people thought they will be approaching human intelligence by replicating its capabilities piece by piece. Thus, for example, there were massive efforts to design chess programs that can beat even the best humans at the game, with the claim being that such success brings us closer to understanding and/or replicating human cognition. As another example, people built programs like ELISA, which fake a psychiatrist -- you've probably seen such programs in action. You type in a sentence, and the program produces a response, to which you respond, and so forth -- and you develop a dialogue. The claim was, that if you sat in a closed room with a terminal, and either the program or a real human being sat on the other side of the wall responding to your speech, you will not be able to tell the difference (as long as you staid within the programs domain of discourse.) However, upon examination neither programs like ELISA, nor even the chess program that beat Kasparov, share even an iota of inner function that humans utilize when performing the same tasks. Clearly, such programs do not even begin to capture humanity. So there is a deep problem with purely functional approaches -- while they may produce good "fakes", you can never be sure that what you are looking at is the real thing.

Secondly, there is a difference between building systems that are comparable in performance to the human brain, and understanding how the brain actually works. Through analogy with computation of functions, you can see that one can construct a wild infinity of various functionalist accounts of cognition, all of which agree with empirical observation. But how do we determine which one of them is the real McCoy?

By allowing a hypothetical simulation at an atomic level of detail, I intended to counter all such potential objections, since indeed the simulation will have both precise physical and functional one-to-one mappings onto the real human brain.

Finally, you did mention that reductionism is a great methodology for discovery. I wholeheartedly agree, and this is precisely why I tend to favor reductionist cognitive science. This is not to say that I see no role for functional descriptions in this great enterprise; in fact a good deal of my study has to do with computer science, theories of computation and information, and both hardware and software engineering. In all likelihood, we will need both approaches working in harmonious tandem to crack the nut, so to speak.

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I am; therefore I think.

Feenix9,

I don't know who you are, and I don't know what previous arguments you refer to. So I'll just have to resort to answering your post as if this was the first time we met.



These things do affect the physical world yet are themselves intangible so you can't actually prove that they exist except that they give evidence of themselves through the way the physical world is governed by them.


It is a contradiction to say, especially in the same sentence (!), that something is simultaneously intangible and manifests itself in the physical world. Any law that is determined through empirical observation, is an empirical law. And whereas laws, thoughts, feelings, knowledge or concepts don't have the concrete existence of matter, that is but a shallow linguistic distinction. That which is a description of matter or material phenomena, that which is defined purely in terms of matter and its states, is entirely tangible, and empirical indeed.



Secondly I'd like to say that once I gave a hypothetical example to show a POINT, but Boris replied that it was hypothetical so it didn't matter. Yes, you did say that; I remember because it was so stupid. Anyway, hypothetical situations are used to portray IDEAS. Einstein did not go out into space and perform those fast as light experiments did he? He always used hypothetical situations to prove a point.


Why do you consider it necessary to expound the value of thought experiments to me, of all people??? In case you haven't noticed, I've used at least two thought experiments of my own in the original post on this thread -- one dealing with trying to determine which part of our bodies defines who we are (see "Argument from neuroscience"), and another under the rubric of "Argument from equivalence". And actually, I've used more than two thought experiments, but I'll leave it to you to find the rest -- as an exercise.

And believe it or not, I have no idea what "hypothetical example" you are referring to, or why my alleged reply was "so stupid".



I believe that we are more than the sum of our parts.


You mean, like a regular computer is more than the sum of its parts? Where's the fundamental nomological difference between the human brain and a computer?



That you can create a computer with actual self-awareness and creativity and logic, etc. but does it have a soul? That's not what God said.


Are you going to blindly believe what Godot said, or are you going to use your own (Godot-given, allegedly) epistemic engine to figure out the answers?

Also, I'll take this particular excerpt that you indeed concede the feasibility of building a computer capable of self-awareness, creativity, and logic. Call it "observation 1", as I'll refer to it again in this post.



We who are the descendants of Adam and Eve are the only ones to have souls. All the other types of people-- the neanderthals, cro-magnon, etc. didn't.


See the "Argument from Evolution", above. Also, browse the Evolution vs. Creation thread before you start re-inventing the wheel. And if you want to specifically dispute evolution, it'd best be done on that thread -- so that we don't digress on tangents.



But we are not just physical machines that change and adapt and grow. No, we are much much more than that. The ability to creatively understand that our reality is not what we perceive it to be. In other words, we have gained knowledge of our physical universe and how we interact with it, but more than that, we have learned that the intangible laws of how things work (which we still don't fully understand yet) are as real as the physical tangible world we live in.


Given observation 1, an appropriately built and programmed computer will be capable of all the same achievements. Yet, it will not have a soul.



To put it into simple terms, we as a people understand that things such as faith, vision, understanding, selflessness, ... etc. etc. etc. and so on and so forth are all things that are intangible things yet so very very real. I'll repeat it again. Things that are intangible, yet very very real. Again, thats: intangible, yet very very real.


Repetition gains you nothing, except perhaps a certain fretful air. Believe me, I can read; and I can understand you even if you only say the same thing once.

And once again, all of these accomplishments are equally attainable by artificial machines, due to observation 1. Therefore they provide no evidence, and indeed no argument, for a soul.

And once again, you seem to have a problem with definitions of intangible vs. real. Thoughts and ideas are as real as the matter that generates and encodes them, despite the fact that you can't measure their color or density. In the same way that temperature, despite being an "intangible" quality, is nevertheless a direct property of matter. So to wrap up, let me reiterate this time: faith, vision, understanding, selflessness, ... etc, etc, etc. are all properties and behaviors of matter. And so is life.

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I am; therefore I think.

Unicron,



So then, if you dont beleive in God or a creator, how do you think we humans came about? What about the stars, planets and such? Who/what made those?


Let's see...

We humans came about through evolution of life on Earth.
Stars and planets came about through condensation of energy into matter, followed by subsequent gravitational corralling and collapse, followed by subsequent supernova explosions that seeded interstellar gas clowds with heavy elements, followed by more gravitational collapse, rinse, load, wash, repeat, and a few billion years later yet another gravitational collapse, where a gas clowd forms the Sun and its accretion disk, from which condense the nearby astronomical bodies we all know and love.

So if you want to know "what" made all that, you're going to have to educate yourself in particle and quantum physics, as well as general relativity, astronomy, paleontology, and biochemistry -- for starters, that is. (Mind you, you don't need to get a PhD in all of those disciplines to get the point; you simply have to learn just enough to get the point. Subscribing to Science News, and once it becomes too simplistic, to Scientific American -- will get you a good deal down that path.)

Now, wouldn't you agree that all of that makes for a better approach than: "Godot did it"?

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I am; therefore I think.

[This message has been edited by Boris (edited March 12, 2000).]

Boris,

Why does 2*2=4?

And what you don't understand Boris is these are NOT subjective feelings that I am witnessing. This is real. As real as the nose on my face. As tangible TO ME as the nose on your face is to you. You cannot see or feel or measure the tangible effects in me, only because you are not in a position to. If you knew me well, were familiar with my life, and we were close, you may be able to get a big wiff of it, but you would see it as something "contrived". Only when you yourself come to know Jesus in your heart, can you really understand that this is not contrived, and there is much more to you and to this world than you are aware of. Knowledge in truth is just waiting for a mind like yours. You should pray. You're missing out man!

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You may think I'm a nut, but I'm fastened to the strongest bolt in the universe.

Let's see...

We humans came about through evolution of life on Earth.


Last time I checked, Evolution was still a theory.




Stars and planets came about through condensation of energy into matter, followed by subsequent gravitational corralling and collapse, followed by subsequent supernova explosions that seeded interstellar gas clowds with heavy elements, followed by more gravitational collapse, rinse, load, wash, repeat, and a few billion years later yet another gravitational collapse, where a gas clowd forms the Sun and its accretion disk, from which condense the nearby astronomical bodies we all know and love.

So if you want to know "what" made all that, you're going to have to educate yourself in particle and quantum physics, as well as general relativity, astronomy, paleontology, and biochemistry -- for starters, that is. (Mind you, you don't need to get a PhD in all of those disciplines to get the point; you simply have to learn just enough to get the point. Subscribing to Science News, and once it becomes too simplistic, to Scientific American -- will get you a good deal down that path.)

Now, wouldn't you agree that all of that makes for a better approach than:"God did it"?


Yes, but who created the 'energy' and the 'matter'? It's better to say God did it than to say it came out of nowhere, because something dosn't come out of nothing!

As tangible TO ME as the nose on your face is to you. You cannot see or feel or measure the tangible effects in me, only because you are not in a position to.

These effects you speak of are as tangible to you as delusions are to a psychotic. The only difference is that your delusions are socially acceptable.

Lori,

I was about to mention schizophrenics and the voices they hear -- in terms of how "REAL" it is to them -- but DaveW beat me to it.

As to the question of why 2+2=4 -- my answer is: because that's what we observe at the large scale. Note that 2+2=4 is not true at all times and all scales; for example, at the quantum level you could say that 2+2=4 with a certain probability, and 2+2=4000 with a certain other (but smaller) probability, etc. It seems that statistical averaging of quantum indeterminacy results in the predictable behavior of matter at the large scale. As to why even at the quantum level there is a certain probabilistic bias for 2+2=4, we don't yet know. Though the M-theory may eventually provide answers. Beyond that, we simply have no information at this time.

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I am; therefore I think.

Unicron,



Last time I checked, Evolution was still a theory.


Everything is just a theory. But some theories are better than others, for a variety of reasons that I'd covered repeatedly in numerous posts before.



Yes, but who created the 'energy' and the 'matter'? It's better to say God did it than to say it came out of nowhere, because something dosn't come out of nothing!


Well, first of all nobody is claiming that spacetime and its matter/energy content came out of nothing. What we are saying is that currently there is no known evidence to point to the precursor of the universe. In consequence, we cannot make any kind of an educated guess as to where it all came from. To say that God did it is not "better" than to say any other random thing -- because in absense of all evidence, and without ways to test hypotheses, all theories are equiprobable at this time (all, therefore, having a 0 chance of being correct).

Though I'd say that given how the workings of everything inside our universe are observed to be mechanistic, many people (including myself) tend to be biased toward a suggestion that the precursor to the universe also was entirely mechanistic. Such a complex and in many respects self-contradictory entity as God, with no evidence to support even one of God's many purported attributes or actions, as the origin of the universe just rings like a very contrived and unlikely scenario. Remember, all things being equal the simplest explanation tends to be the right one; and since in this case all theories are equally likely, and since God is about as complex and incomplete a theory as you can propose -- it is highly unlikely that God is indeed the correct explanation.

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I am; therefore I think.

There are a whole lot of topics raised (as usual) so I will pick a few.

First of all there is a way out of the discussion where does a soul first becomes a soul. It was proposed by Teilhard in the first part of this century. He proposed that in 'dead' matter 'life' and 'consciousness' is already there but in a dormant state. He further proposed that consiousness, in order to become awake, made matter evolve into complexer structures until it could manifest itself in modern man. He further proposed that man was not the end of this evolutionary chain but merly a stepping stone to even more complex and more conscious matter that he called the point omega. This point omega was some kind of convergence in which man would find its true furfilment and could be termed as God. So what he is saying is that there is a fourth dorment mode in us namely the 'divine' which is working its way through evolution to become active.

About who or what created the universe (here we go again) there is a very simple question one should ask after answering the first with 'God' : Who or what created God ? This question is as valid as the former, if you say it has no answer then why bother answering the former one ?

About holistic philosophies :
I think it is quite clear that humans are more then simply a collection of cells or leptons and hadrons. The magic lies in the ordering : for example take three strait lines. Throw them together and thay are just a pile, put them in a certain configuration and they become a triangle ! Suddenly the amount of information gets increased, of the lines you only have lengths to worry about, of the triagle you suddenly have angles between the lines, certain angles can even lead to more information like the theorem of Pythagoras.
Here you have a small example of what Teilhard meant by a dorment mode of complexity : the line has the potential of becoming something more, something complexer : a triangle for example.

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"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants."
Isaac Newton

Hello everyone!

Interesting, interesting...

Okay, so the human brain has been compared to a computer a couple of times in these threads. I think that's a terrible comparison to make, really. Our brains are so much more complex, so much less straight-forward... Human beings cooked up the computer, so it is necessarily within our current grasp. I can walk down to the local JC and learn everything I could possibly need, pop into Radio Shack & build a PC, write my own darn operating system and be up and running in a couple of days. (Theoretically, of course. Reality-wise I hate programming) I cannot hop on down to the local body-mart, pick up a couple legs, arms, various organs, brain matter and veins, hook 'em up in my garage and write a personality for this body, not even theoretically. I doubt humans will EVER have the ability to create a sentient, organic being from scratch. We might be able to make a close copy, we may even be able to create a very good emulation of sentience, but somehow I'm not really convinced "Artificial Intelligence" will ever be truely alive.

Perhaps my definition of a "soul" is a bit different than what we're talking about here, but I don't think us silly humans are the only ones with a "soul". My opinion is that the soul is our "living" part - it's the part of us that isn't there when we're dead, and by that reasoning, I believe every living thing, from the single-cell floaties I found in the kitchen sink this morning, to earthworms, to palm trees, to turtles, to humans has a soul. Your soul is the continuity of that spark that animated you way back in the womb. If that continuity is lost, or divided, the body dies, or changes.

Boris -

As always, I have great respect for your knowledge. But I might ask this - if you can't measure something, does that necessarily mean it's not there? Maybe we're just using the wrong instruments! Maybe the "soul-meter" just hasn't been discovered yet. I would weigh just as much dead as I do alive - if you were using only a scale to measure, you would say there was no change in my status, right? I know that's an overly simplistic example, but I think it will suffice.

Those split-people you described earlier is very interesting, I hadn't realized there were cases so extreme. I think it makes perfect sense, though. Think of it more like a river maybe. The river has a source (conception). It flows along the terrain, changing in size and shape, but still recognizable as the same river. Suppose it splits - half flows east, half flows west. The east river is very rocky and tumultuous, the west river is wide and serene. Still the same river, though, right? You can trace the tributaries back to the source, and if you could dig a new channel somehow, you could link the two back together into the original form.

I am also inclined to say that personality is independant of the soul. INDIVIDUALITY is part of the soul, but the personality you have is (to my mind, anyway) a manifestation of your physical body, your upbringing, your friends, your environmet, etc. DNA and the soul are not part of eachother, in my opinion, so this isn't a "nature vs. nurture" type question.

I have said that comparing humans to computers isn't very accurate, so please pardon me, but I'm going to tromp on my own words and use it again anyway. I think the soul is more equivalent to the power supply on the PC than it is to the RAM, hard drive or chip. :)

Hey MoonC,
remember this? I am reposting it because it naturally follows your last post and I know that Boris wasn't around to read it back in December '99.


Quote:
SkyeBlue,
-I believe in a general life-force that permeates the entire universe. We are animated by that same life force, just as all the other animals, alien life, and even the stars and comets.-
unquote.


Yes, I agree with that, absolutely!
In my mind, the life force is like an invisible light which continually sweeps through the universe, at a speed faster than light. It is like string. Its source is at the beginning of time itself and it connects every single thing, including time (past/present/future) as each lifeform has its own share of the light within it.
The invisible light enters a life form at the moment of conception. The lifeform lives its physical life and dies, the invisible light then leaves the physical plane, hurtles through space, is re energised and goes on to give new life somewhere in the cosmos, most probably near the place it was at before.
During its life, the lifeform acquires an invisible aura, containing information which is an accumilation of all its thoughts, deeds, needs, wishes and actions. This aura is actually existing in the invisible light and is therefore 'outside of time'.
Auras exchange their information with each other continually and I believe play a crucial role in phenomena such as wish fulfilments, the power of prayer, affective curses, divination, prophecy, karma, reincarnation and evolution to name but a few.
I suppose what I've been describing could also be called the 'spirit'.
Chill!

Dave, Boris,

You know, you may very well be correct in what you say regarding schizophrenics and the voices that they hear in their heads. I guess it all boils down to who it is that's talking to you, and how inclined you are to hear it. We all have those little voices in one form or another. A weak form you call intuition. A strong for you call schizophrenia, I call demonic. Or if it's the right voice, I guess you would have the same answer, and I would call it the Holy spirit. And 2*2=4 because God said so, and that's the only reason. If he had said that it equalled 5.25, then it would. But that's just not how He designed it. I don't see how it is that you can discover soooooo much beauty and miraculous wonder and order in this universe, and especially in regards to us as humans, and think that it all just exploded and landed this way by chance.

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You may think I'm a nut, but I'm fastened to the strongest bolt in the universe.

Tab'-

*whistles and stomps* Yes! That's just the kind of thing I'm talking about. :D

It's very slippery to describe - invisible light, soul, life force...I think we're all talking about the same energy, we all just perceive it slightly differently depending upon our differing experiences, our differing frames of reference. My perception differs in detail, but overall, I think we're touching the same elephant. :)

For example - you see it as rushing about, I think I would describe it more like a big lake, or cloud - it is all places at once, yet each individual atom is in its' own distinct spot (body). Neither is really correct, but that's just the way we describe it - we don't have the proper words, so we have to use words like "force", "energy", etc. Electricity and gravity are both "forces" and "energies", but they aren't the same thing, this makes it even more confusing. So we clumsily gesture at what we're trying to describe, with varying degrees of success. I'm glad you were able to understand my thrashing arms on this one! :) :)

I wanted to chime in on the 2+2=4 debate, if that's OK. Perhaps I'm simplifying this, but doesn't 2+2 equal 4 because we, humans, say so?

Let the O stand for a stone, a coin, or any object.

O O

How many objects are there? We arbitrarily assign a word, "two", and a "numerical" representation of "2".

"Plus" is a word we have, in the mathematical sense, which conventionally refers to combining the two, getting another arbitrary word, "sum".

Thus, if we designate that there are two objects, and apply "plus" another two objects, a quantity exists which we have chosen to call 4.

That any quantitative distinction at all is made is purely of consequence to living systems. My cat seems to recognize three, but that could be Pavlovian. But if we see a number of coins on the ground ...

O O

... and call that quantity "three", then 3+3 equals whatver number we choose to represent O O combined with O O so that we have O O O O.

The mathematics are our artificial way of explaining what simply is. The universe continues without the concept.

So I would have to assert that 2+2=4 is a human fiction that well-enough represents what most of us agree is real.

But that's just me, and it doesn't help anything at all.

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

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The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur eggs was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet. (Good Omens, Gaiman & Pratchett)

MoonCat,

Be very, very careful when you say that the comparison of a brain to a computer is "terrible." Claims like that will suck you down into the netherworld of information processing and computation -- where you will find yourself slowly consumed by demon spawn of Shannon and Turing. For now, lest you ignore my fair warning, I will reseve myself to the following observation. The modern computers are a manifestation of what is more generally known as a universal machine -- they are specifically built, and mathematically assured, to be capable of simulating any other process in the universe. This means that a general-purpose computer is indeed fully capable (at least theoretically, provided we build the right hardware) of fully emulating every single process of the brain. This means that as a machine that processes information, the brain is not quantitatively different from a computer -- the difference is merely qualitative, and in the enterprise of computation you don't judge anything by mere appearances.



I doubt humans will EVER have the ability to create a sentient, organic being from scratch. We might be able to make a close copy, we may even be able to create a very good emulation of sentience, but somehow I'm not really convinced "Artificial Intelligence" will ever be truely alive.


Well for one, you may be right with respect to creating a sentient, organic being from scratch. Though I'd wager that we indeed will engineer our genome, possibly create entirely new genomes from scratch (thus in effect creating new beings, but not by hooking legs to arms or anything like that), as well as create sentient, inorganic beings from scratch.

As to your latter comment, I'd ask you to consider a rather plausible hypothetical situation. You are faced with an android, who claims to be alive in all the same respects that you are. He claims to have replicated all of your cognitive mechanisms to a 100% level of detail in his hardware. He is even able to reproduce and mature in much the same way that you do (say, for example, that his body is composed of self-replicating nanobots, which are the equivalent of your cells.) Your task is to demonstrate to him that while you are alive, he isn't. Question: how do you proceed? Should you take up this challenge, I will agree to play the role of the android, and answer all your challenges from his perspective. The first move is yours...



My opinion is that the soul is our "living" part - it's the part of us that isn't there when we're dead, and by that reasoning, I believe every living thing, from the single-cell floaties I found in the kitchen sink this morning, to earthworms, to palm trees, to turtles, to humans has a soul.


All right then, let's get down to the real basics. Do viruses have souls, in your opinion?



But I might ask this - if you can't measure something, does that necessarily mean it's not there? Maybe we're just using the wrong instruments! Maybe the "soul-meter" just hasn't been discovered yet. I would weigh just as much dead as I do alive - if you were using only a scale to measure, you would say there was no change in my status, right? I know that's an overly simplistic example, but I think it will suffice.


If you can't measure something, you cannot be aware of it. If souls cannot be measured, then how do you know of them?

And if you do propose a possibility of a "soul-meter", then you propose that the material interact with the immaterial. This brings us back to the "Argument from Interaction".

Finally, there is indeed a difference between being dead and alive -- and we don't need a "soul-meter" to detect it. Activity in the brain means life; absense of activity in the brain means death.



Those split-people you described earlier is very interesting, I hadn't realized there were cases so extreme. I think it makes perfect sense, though.


So, in your opinion, the soul can indeed be split into independent halves (and through material means, no less)? Notice that the two halves have no remaining point of contact at all -- unlike the rivers in your example, which still flow from the same source. Which makes me wonder -- if we can split the soul in two, maybe we can split it in 10? Or, how about 10^100? Does that not conflict even a little bit with the general sovereignty ascribed to the soul?



I am also inclined to say that personality is independant of the soul. INDIVIDUALITY is part of the soul...


Could you please clarify what you mean by "INDIVIDUALITY"? Do the unicellular slime in your sink have "INDIVIDUALITY"?



I think the soul is more equivalent to the power supply on the PC than it is to the RAM, hard drive or chip.


If the brain is to be compared to the PC, then the equivalent of the power supply consists of the sugars stored in your body and carried through the circulatory system (which would then be the equivalent of the electrical power grid.)

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I am; therefore I think.

Lori,



A strong for you call schizophrenia, I call demonic.


Funny how demonic influences can be mitigated by psychoactive drugs, and manifest themselves as an abnormal arrangement of pyramidal cells in the fourth layer of the cerebral cortex, as well as undersized thalamic nuclei...



And 2*2=4 because God said so, and that's the only reason. If he had said that it equalled 5.25, then it would. But that's just not how He designed it.


I love the stubborn conviction. It's even cute in a way. Say, if you take two apples, and place them next to two other apples, and then count the bunch, what will the total be?



I don't see how it is that you can discover soooooo much beauty and miraculous wonder and order in this universe, and especially in regards to us as humans, and think that it all just exploded and landed this way by chance.


See, that's the difference between you and a scientist. To you, it's miraculous. To a scientist, it's merely complex. To you, it's beautiful. To a scientist, it merely has structure. To you, it's order. To a scientist, it's growing disorder. To you, we just exploded and landed here. To a scientist, we are just a tiny part of the evolution of matter/energy within the universe. It's funny how your perspective changes when you actually understand the causes behind the phenomena -- they are no longer magical, but they are also far more real.

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I am; therefore I think.

Boris,

As a fellow scientist, I would disagree that finding out how things work takes out the 'magic', it just makes it more detailed. What I love about gaining scientific knowledge is that the most important thing you learn is how ignorant you are; every good experiment should lead to more questions than answers. This is my magic (albeit, a non-theist magic).

Unicron,

In this post you continually ask of science 'why', 'who', and 'prove it'; all three of these questions in the tense you are using them are meaningless to science. Why (as Boris mentioned) translates to 'how' in most scientific theories. As to fundamental reasons behind creation and the universe, these are issues beyond science because any possible answers are based on too great leaps of faith (including induction). The question of 'who' assumes that there must be a who; i.e. a final personification of the universe. This again is a leap of faith and more in the realm of theology and philosophy (although philosophers often avoid this issue too since deus in machina is a weak philosophical foundation).

My favorite pet peave (as those who remember my posts prior to my hiatus); science does not PROVE anything! Experimental design is such that one determines a hypothesis, and carefully designs experiments to attmept to disprove the null hypothesis. Indeed, the lack of proof in science makes it a difficult pill to swallow sometimes. However, continous experimental data disproving a null hypothesis leads to the assumption that the hypothesis is a fact (e.g. the law of gravity). However, such unilateral laws are rare (albeit significant) advances in science.

Further, even though science has no real solid answer for the questions you pose (although Boris did a great job giving examples of data that do not support your hypothesis), Unicron, it does not 'prove' your points. I mean your logic smacks of Neanderthalic thinking ['me not understand, must be God(s)'].

Lastly, I would like to point out that science is not necessarily 'atheist', I would more likely consider 'non-theist'. The difference being is that in modern science, the issue of whether there is a god or not is almost irrelevant, we are busy enough trying to figure out what's going on between two cells, proteins, molecules, subatomic particles, etc., to keep us busy for a long, long time.




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Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
-Mark Twain

Back to the 2+2 debate (are you guys sick of this yet)

I think that 2+2=4 can be used more conclusivley to prove that God and creationism doesn't exist then to say it does. Let me clarify the idea before I lose it.

OK According to natural laws which we have quantified and proven to be true, matter can not be created or destroyed it can only be manipulated. So if 2+2=5.25 then I would say thats a good argument for the existance of God. For it would be clear that a natural law of this universe was manipulated and an extra 1.25 was infact created from nothing. Something had to make that happen. However what ever the universe was before it evolved into its present state it still had the same amount of matter it does now, and when you SUM any two quantities you will always end up with no more or less then what you started with. It demonstrates that nothing is being created all that happens is we interpret the result as a new quantity, this is evident in every science, every action, every natural process...its like a lifeless unintelligent process with absloutley NO EVIDENCE OF INTEVENTION. So I say 2+2=4 because of the abscence of devine creation, and not the design of a God....do you guys follow what I'm trying to say.

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work to LIVE...don't live to WORK.

Boris,

Thanx for posting up your thesis for us, what did your prof give you as a mark ? I’ll bet my bottom dollar that you burnt the midnight oil in the wonderfully resourced library at the big university you attend when putting this one together for all our enlightenment

Only thing is that in the intro under Argument from interaction it starts to unwind and I’d be surprised if your prof didn’t pick it up.

Quote:

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.

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. For if we could detect it, we could then determine its properties and structure; we would be able to materially interact with it, which would make the soul material.


And this is where it starts to unravel.

You make a statement that claims to be fact that a soul is immaterial, what references can you quote to support this argument? What scientific evidence is there of this? I’m just turning things around a bit and asking you to substantiate claims like you normally do to us believers.

You then go on to state that due to this it is not subject to natural laws. A statement of fact again based on assumption of fact.

OK so now its by definition immaterial and hence unmeasurable. Umm, ever stopped to consider that we may just not be quite advanced enough with our measurement apparatus to do so? Example point being we don’t have devices capable of entering the suns core but based on mathematical calculations which include assumptions about surface temp, gravitational forces, density, mass etc we guesstimate a result for the core temp, pressure, energy consumption and transfer rates……. Blah, blah blah. And hold to them as gospel truth, but the thing is we’ve never measured it, and probably never will. Yet we swear black and blue that its true.

Just because the soul has not been measured according to your knowledge don’t assume a stance which is the common held definition that it is not measurable. I thought you were much more througher than to just regurgitate the common held text book views and notions about these things.

So you then go on to reinforce your stance from various view points and I’m sure that if I had the time we could burn up a lot more time and find some assumptions about them also that we could argue through. Unfortunately I don’t have the luxury of that time.

So have fun spitting chips at this lack of respect for your genius :D and I’m sure you’ll have a stab at trying to make it look utterly silly.

In good humour and fun…… :D

Tony H2o

Out of body experiences are great ways to explore the unknown non-physical worlds. These experiences require a soul. These experiences can often put you in contact with spiritual forces and entities that can help you enhance your psychic skills, learn more about yourself and others, and expand your awareness of the universe. Many first out of body experiences dramatically change the individual's perception of the world and of life and death, and bring about a kind of comfort, with knowledge that anything is possible in the universe.

A so called outer body experience is not a proof for a soul because we are dealing with very fluid definitions here.
First of all there needs to be proof that the outer body experience is true and valid. If this is the case there is still no connection between this experience (that is experienced while you are alive) and a soul which is supposed to be the left over when you are dead.

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"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants."
Isaac Newton

Boris~

Boy, you sure went through my post, didn't you? Have some peach tea while I work on this. c(_) :)

Okay. Lesse. Do viruses have souls? I haven't really thought about it, but I suppose they might. They are alive, so I guess if a houseplant has one, the virus would also.

"If you can't measure something, you cannot be aware of it" - now I have to disagree with that one. Cave man was surely aware of gravity, but I doubt he had any way of measuring it. I doubt he even would have had the concept that gravity originates with the earth, instead of thinking it's the weight of the club in his hand that draws it downwards. Romans were aware of the sun, but they were convinced it was a god on a chariot. So no, I don't think you have to be able to measure something to be aware of it. You just have to feel, see, taste, or any other way sense something to be aware of it. I think you're too much of a scientist, Boris, you want to be able to stick a thermometer up the beast's rear and get it's temperature before you'll say it's real or not. (My husband is the same way sometimes, I'm not picking on you, by the way.) :)

Regarding the soul splitting - yup, I think it could be split even more, take schizophrenea for example.

I think I'll have to ask you to clarify what you mean about the "soverignty" of the soul - perhaps that is something that others believe in relation to the soul...the "soul" I believe in is called that just for convenience's sake, it's not the "soul" a Christian would believe in. My general feeling is that outside of a lifetime (lifetime meaining when the soul is attached to an individual body) the "souls" of all the currently non-living mix and mingle with eachother, and rarely remain 100% intact from incarnation to incarnation. Does that help any?

What I meant by individuality is this: individual as in seperate from the others, as in a discrete entity, at least for the duration of life. Yes, those single cell gobs in my sink are individuals, you can take one and take a second one, and you can clearly see that they are seperate from eachother. They might behave identically, but that behavior what I meant when I said "personality". I'm probably using the wrong words, but that's part of this whole problem - I think the words I would like to use just don't exist yet, or I'm just not aware of them.

Coming around to your android...well, as soon as you can ACTUALLY present me with an android that can argue the state of his soul, I'll take up that argument. My argument is that I don't think it will happen (building a sophisticated enough machine that it becomes "self-aware"). If it DID happen, as you describe...I don't know, actually. That is definitely a tough question. Would that android be alive? Would he be aware of mortality? Would he HAVE mortality?? Could programming create genuine feelings, emotions, etc?

I don't know, I'm thinking about this, and it seems to me that an android wouldn't have a soul, the way I believe a soul exists. I think their version of a "soul" would be simple electricity. Electricity behaves in much the same way as I believe souls behave - though I must admit I don't know a whole lot about electricity as it interacts with the earth. So perhaps an android would have somethink LIKE a soul, just as he has something LIKE a brain, LIKE a circulatory system, LIKE cells. Similar in function, but different from our setup just like their bodies.

Have you ever heard the saying "only a being with a soul would wonder if they had one"? Of course that doesn't prove anything, but still, food for thought.

Hi, boy Boris you really have a way with words and knowledge! But how do you reconcile the cold, loveless universe that you consistently describe with the love that you surely must have felt for another person, whether they are your family or your girl? Is this gift just the organisation of another set of neurones? Nothing more? Love is a tangible emotion, yet almost impossible to describe. But it is definitely real. I`d prefer to live in my slightly delusional world of love and the ongoing discovery and the awe of the milk of human kindness. (which is very difficult at times)
But at least one finds a sense of purpose.

Cheers.

Boris..
I'm ridin' into the sandstorm with the Moon Cat on this one.

Imagine the possible existence of an invisible type of energy, one with even smaller molecules than light.
Imagine that the invisible energy travels faster than light. Like the light is a body of water and the invisible energy is the wind.

Imagine this energy present everywhere and reverbarating through the whole of time.Relatively quickly.
(like the winds above the oceans)

Now imagine that each molecule of this energy is like a very sophisticated and advanced self powered/programming computer program and each one is connected to the others like a wireless internet.Collectively the invisible energy has total knowledge and wisdom.
Next, just assume that every single lifeform in the universe (from anaerobic bacteria to viruses to Boris and beyond)is like a (biological?) computer!

At the moment of conception or generation of any lifeform, a single grain of invisible energy enters the originating cell and proceeds to grow with the body.
Like a computer getting booted up and connecting to the www.

The invisible energy in a lifeform, while being within and without the body, is always connected to the universal energy and constantly transmitting and receiving information. From time itself.
I think that this intelligent energy is what might prompt individual genes to evolve. Perhaps explaining the occassional rapid pace of evolution one witnesses from time to time.

The power (if any) of prayer, wishes, curses, blessings and genuine supernatural phenomena probably works by the same medium.

I don't think that souls can have memories but what they might contain is the 'essence' of 'you', the real you, whether you're in touch with the real you or not.Perhaps explaining child prodigies.

Probably, the more self aware, gifted and spiritually peaceful a lifeform is, the more its invisible energy/soul can control the outcome its next incarnation. Perhaps explaining the dogma of karma, heaven and hell.

Well, it's all possibly maybe isn't it?
Chill!

Now I know how Lori feels when a whole gang piles up on her. :)

Before I start responding to individual posts, I thought I needed to clarify something. It seems that we don't all agree on the definition of a "soul". In retrospect, that's not at all surprising, and it's probably my fault for not defining my own terms from the start.

When I speak of a "soul", I indeed speak of the classical, dogmatic soul that is involved in the mythos of afterlife. The "standard doctrine" would be something like this:

Each human being is linked to a distinct soul. This soul is what embodies our consciousness, thought, knowledge, feelings, and many other aspects of the mental human experience (i.e. under this doctrine, mind = soul). When the body dies, the soul persists, and so we don't really die -- rather, we "exit" our body, and move on to whatever awaits us next (depending on religion). The transition is supposed to be rather smooth, in that what we internally perceive of ourselves as individuals does not change when we leave our bodies (except for the part that we no longer feel or need our bodies) -- ala out-of-body experience.

Given that definition, which is, at least as far as I perceive it, the opinion of the overwhelming majority of those who believe in souls -- it should be a little more clear what I've been and will be talking about.

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I am; therefore I think.

Tony, MoonCat (for latter part of the post),

This is to Tony:

Well, actually my professor would be rather peeved if he found out how much time I'm wasting on this board. ;)
And no, I am not here to prove my genius, or to boost my ego; I've been past that kind of a motivation since the high school days. Quite frankly, it's been a long time since I cared what other people think about me -- my life is mine to live, and I shall do so according to what I believe at any particular time is the right way.

As to your criticism, I have several things to say before I start splitting chips. First, I really would like you to read the rest of that post and critique it, if you ever do find the time. Secondly, some of your objections may be addressed by another post I just made to this thread, where I clarified what I meant by "soul". Remember that this thread started as a reply to Unicron, and I do believe that what I assumed is meant by the word "soul", is pretty close to what Unicron means by that word. Now, on to the chips.



You make a statement that claims to be fact that a soul is immaterial, what references can you quote to support this argument? What scientific evidence is there of this? I’m just turning things around a bit and asking you to substantiate claims like you normally do to us believers.
You then go on to state that due to this it is not subject to natural laws. A statement of fact again based on assumption of fact.


Well, I have indeed seen it in many places and by many people assumed that the soul is immaterial -- although I can't quote the sources since I simply don't remember them. The reason I arrived at such a conclusion is based more on how the soul is constrained by its alleged attributes than by what others say. To wit:

This is to both of you:

The soul is indestructible (immortal, eternal -- choose your favorite adjective). This is clearly not the property of matter. Matter is a condensed and frozen form of energy, and thus it slowly evaporates (similar to how ice sublimes). This "evaporation" is the ponderous decay of all elementary particles into photons, as predicted and measured in quantum physics. But even on the far shorter time scales, nothing made of matter persists forever. Anything made of matter is atomic, and is as such susceptible to accumulation of defects over time as the object comes under various stresses. If the soul was material (or indeed divisible, and thus made up of constitunents), it would similarly age and deteriorate, which would render it quite mortal. Additionally, in Biblical terms (as well as in many other religions) the soul transcends matter, in that it exists even prior to the existence of matter, and will continue to exist when all matter is gone. Traditionally, the soul is invoked to account for the properties that dead matter does not possess. The claim is that the mind is a manifestation of the soul, since matter does not possess the properties exhibited by minds. Next, the soul is commonly assumed to be made of the same "stuff" that God is made of, and God is assumed to be immaterial. Then, there is the problem of energy conservation. If the soul is to exist (and function!) forever, it will need to consume an infinite amount of energy to do so -- if the soul were material, that is. Clearly, not even God can thus sustain himself or the souls of his creations indefinitely, if either exhibit the inertial properties of matter/energy. Yet, inertia is a cornerstone of what it is to be material or to be able to interact with matter -- since matter in fact interacts <u>only</u> due to its inertia (if matter/energy had no inertia, they would simply pass through each other like ghosts, and never be able to affect each other's state -- since in fact, one way to describe inertia is as a state.) (On further reflection, this appears to be yet another problem with souls and even with God -- given that they are immaterial, they cannot possess or maintain a state. Thus, they are unable to possess a stream of consciousness, or in fact a stream of anything (in other words, they are unable to carry out computation). This would also mean that they are unable to interact with anything causal.)

All right, that's enough for now. Tell me what you think...

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I am; therefore I think.

Boris--

I'll stand for you, though my tack takes a slightly different wind.

I cannot deny the soul ... though I cannot write it carte blanche, either. It seems to me, though, that the soul is purely a matter of faith, as intangible as "soul" when played well on a 1959 Fender Strat.

It seems that we have two starting places: One assumes the existence of the soul and seeks proof against, the other notes that it cannot quantify the soul and seeks any empirical indications.

If I have a rock in my hand, it is difficult to prove or otherwise demonstrate that the rock doesn't exist without invoking Descartes, at least, as well as a host of others.

It seems even more difficult for me to prove that there is a rock in my open palm when only empty space decorates the flesh. I'm holding out the rock for you in my empty hand--prove it doesn't exist.

What are the physical dimensions of a thought? Presently, they are very difficult to measure; though they have an electrical charge and most likely some sort of mass. But unless you can quantify it for me, thoughts are fictional, so to speak. But someday, with the right instruments, we will be able to determine the mass, velocity, and exact composition of thoughts.

Thus it might be with the soul. But for now, affirming the soul is like finding the rock in an empty hand. If you start out assuming that the soul exists, it is virtually, if not completely, impossible to disprove. If your presuppositions are as objectively neutral as you can manage, then it is very difficult to prove the soul's existence.

I tend to stay ambiguous. Whereas I would normally expect that certain pieces of knowledge (about the universe in general)would reduce my fancy for the spiritual, they have only begged deeper questions.

But the people who generally claim that the soul exists generally aren't looking very hard; most of them have cause to believe that their soul will be safe with God.

And the people who generally argue against the soul, or at least the idea that we know it exists, also happen to be the people who spend their time challenging the riddles of God so we can know exactly what those answers are.

But who here, arguing for the existence of the soul, disbelieves it?

Rather, before we advocate the existence of the soul, should we not establish first exactly--or as near-to as we can get--what it is? After all, religious definitions of the soul are, literally, dime-a-dozen.

* * * * *

All said, though, you're doing just fine, and I think you know that. My feelings on the soul may differ from yours, but I'd rather know that when/if I do determine the nature of the soul, it's because humanity actually found it, instead of simply finding something and calling it a soul.

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

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The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur eggs was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet. (Good Omens, Gaiman & Pratchett)

MoonCat,



Okay. Lesse. Do viruses have souls? I haven't really thought about it, but I suppose they might. They are alive, so I guess if a houseplant has one, the virus would also.


Uh-oh. But are viruses alive, truly? Until a virus finds its way, as a lifeless particle, into a living cell, it is just a dormant piece of DNA or RNA wrapped up in a sheath of proteins. In fact, if we strip the virus of its protein coat, it is still equally viable, although it will be vulnerable and might need our help penetrating a host cells' membrane. So are you now claiming that chemical molecules have souls?



"If you can't measure something, you cannot be aware of it" - now I have to disagree with that one. Cave man was surely aware of gravity, but I doubt he had any way of measuring it.
...
You just have to feel, see, taste, or any other way sense something to be aware of it.


You do not seem to understand that observation itself is measurement. In fact, in the lingo of quantum mechanics, observation is synonymous to measurement (which is where quantum indeterminacy comes from -- while observing something, you are interacting with it, and as a result it no longer has the same state following observation as it had prior to observation, and even having measured it you still don't know its current state.) The senses we possess are merely natural measuring devices. Our retinas measure impinging photons. Our ears measure changes in air pressure. When you say that something can be observed, it is synonymous to saying that something can be measured. In science, we merely extend our natural sensory apparatus with artificial senses, so as to be able to see beyond our natural limitations. To help us interpret the output of artificial sensors, we quantify the process of measurement -- but that does not detract from the fact that measurement remains merely an observation. The other distinction between sensory and instrumented perception that may be confusing you, is that the first is subjective while the second is objective -- scientific instruments merely report measurement; they do not have a capability of interpreting their result beyond what we've programmed into them. Thus, at the core, scientific instruments are unbiased, and any observer will agree on what the readings of an instrument are, none of which is true for measurements made through our senses. But again, despite all of these qualifications, measurement is still observation, any way you cut it.

Now, given that we currently have scientific instruments far outstripping every single human sensory faculty in all respects including range, accuracy, and sensitivity -- our instruments should be able to measure everything including what our senses can sense, and far beyond. Therefore, if a phenomenon had not yet been measured through instruments, you cannot claim that it has been around and can be measured through your senses -- because collectively, world-wide and over several centuries, there have probably been made more, and more accurate, empirical observations through scientific instruments than you will make in your entire lifetime.



Regarding the soul splitting - yup, I think it could be split even more, take schizophrenea for example.


Then you have problems with immortality, as outlined in a paragraph addressed to both you and Tony in a previous message.



My general feeling is that outside of a lifetime (lifetime meaining when the soul is attached to an individual body) the "souls" of all the currently non-living mix and mingle with eachother, and rarely remain 100% intact from incarnation to incarnation. Does that help any?


All right, so you don't subscribe to the classical doctrine -- this much seems certain. But, what you describe is not much of an afterlife, since identity is not preserved. Also, I'd love to hear your grounds for such a "general feeling".



What I meant by individuality is this: individual as in seperate from the others, as in a discrete entity, at least for the duration of life. Yes, those single cell gobs in my sink are individuals, you can take one and take a second one, and you can clearly see that they are seperate from eachother. They might behave identically, but that behavior what I meant when I said "personality".


I'm still confused. If bacteria and humans have the same souls, then what is left of a human after death is nothing more than what is left of a bacterium after death? Everything relating to our human behavior is lost? Gee, not very reassuring :D (at least as far as afterlife is concerned)

Also, dead bacteria are just as individual as live ones. They don't seem to lose their individuality through death; conversely they don't gain their individuality when being constructed from individual atoms. So, again, what is it exactly that the soul captures of living matter, that dead matter does not possess?



Coming around to your android...well, as soon as you can ACTUALLY present me with an android that can argue the state of his soul, I'll take up that argument. My argument is that I don't think it will happen (building a sophisticated enough machine that it becomes "self-aware").


Clever evasion, but you and I both know that this is probably not going to happen within our lifetimes (though it might...) What I ask you to do is pretend as if you are already faced with such an android, whom I will represent, and consider what attributes he doesn't have that a soul would give him (that you have, for example).



I don't know, I'm thinking about this, and it seems to me that an android wouldn't have a soul, the way I believe a soul exists....


So, I'm the android. Convince me that my soul is different from yours. I don't see a problem with my body pumping electricity while yours pumps blood -- I can still think, feel, emote, believe, introspect, meditate, and perceive like you do. If you lost your body below the neck to an accident, and had an android body attached to your head as a prosthesis, would you have any less of a soul than you do now?



Have you ever heard the saying "only a being with a soul would wonder if they had one"? Of course that doesn't prove anything, but still, food for thought.


Well, you could say that only a being with superman's powers would wonder if they had them. Of course that doesn't prove anything either.

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I am; therefore I think.

Boris~

Ah-Ha! I see maybe part of where you and I are differing in our definition of "soul" - this part: "...what we internally perceive of ourselves as individuals does not change when we leave our bodies... "

I WISH for it to be true, that I would know who I was after death, be able to recognize fellow "souls" that had died previously...but I can't convince myself of it.

Going back to my "lake" or "cloud" analogy, I think dying is somewhat akin to dumping a cup of water into the lake - it mixes with the rest of the water and loses it's identity as THAT cup of water, and merely becomes a part of the rest of the water. Then again, I also believe that it may be possible that the personality might be strong enough to "freeze" those particular water molecules that were in that cup in a fair semblance of it's original form, and thereby retaining most of the sense of self, at least for a time. This is the only way I can explain visits from deceased family members and such (which my father's side of the family seems to have a strong ability in this area, and I believe these are real occurances, not just wish-fufillment, etc).

As far as the soul consuming an infinite amount of energy, I think it's more like it IS a form of energy in and of itself. Cycling through body after body, incarnation after incarnation, ad infinitum.

Whops, gotta run. More later. :)

Stretch,

Well, I have a number of things to say. First of all, I don't think we should believe what's convenient -- but what's most reasonable. As I've been arguing so consistently, my cold and loveless universe is a far more reasonable thing to accept than some fantasy. I understand your dreams and your desire for mystery and magic, and I've shared these when I was young and naiive. Thing is, I grew up and found that there is no magic, only mystery. In my opinion, mystery alone is good enough, though. But if you just can't live without magic, then you have my sincere condolences.

With respect to love, yes indeed it is just an aspect of human emotional response. That doesn't make love any less enjoyable or overwhelming, it just explains love's true nature.

And as for sense of purpose, I beg to differ. I don't believe any religion or faith whatsoever present anywhere near a convincing case -- in fact they are all just systems of fables. If you find a sense of purpose through taking a fable literally, then I'd seriously question the worth of such a discovery.

------------------
I am; therefore I think.

Tab,

It's all very cute. You may very well have the beginnings of the next big religion in your hands. Be careful, before they start calling you Tablariddim the Great, or attempt to crucify you or something! :D :D :D

Though as usual, from me personally you can expect nothing less than an emphatic shrug. Until you lay out the reasoning through which you arrived at this "theory", a shrug is all you'll get.

But, even before you try, already there are difficulties.



Imagine the possible existence of an invisible type of energy, one with even smaller molecules than light.
Imagine that the invisible energy travels faster than light. Like the light is a body of water and the invisible energy is the wind.
Imagine this energy present everywhere and reverbarating through the whole of time.Relatively quickly.
(like the winds above the oceans)


Ok, so far what you describe is not all that different from the "luminiferous ether" of the 19th-century physics. There's never been found any supporting evidence for this type of a phenomenon. (though originally it was indeed a valid theory, endeavoring to explain the medium through which electromagnetic disturbances such as light propagate. It held up until Einstein proved that everything is relative, and Maxwell's equations were recast in terms of fields and vector potentials.) So far, what you describe is still somewhat plausible, although extremely questionable at this point in time. And, to reiterate, there is absolutely no supporting evidence left for this idea to stand on.



At the moment of conception or generation of any lifeform, a single grain of invisible energy enters the originating cell and proceeds to grow with the body.


Now we hit a real problem. Just how does this little "molecule" of your energy know that a conception is taking place, and where? If you remove our human cognitive filter, the entire universe is just a jumble of constantly interacting particles and atoms, with no shape or structure at all. It is only when you allow the inductive human mind to start observing and forming generalizations, that a structure emerges. But it's still only present in our minds, not in reality, and definitely not where non-sentient entities are concerned!



The invisible energy in a lifeform, while being within and without the body, is always connected to the universal energy and constantly transmitting and receiving information. From time itself.


Ok, now you are getting vague beyond vague. What do you mean, "from time itself"? Time is a complex notion that combines the notions of rate and growing entropy. But it's not a "place" from which you can receive anything.



I think that this intelligent energy is what might prompt individual genes to evolve. Perhaps explaining the occassional rapid pace of evolution one witnesses from time to time.


Evolution is not an intelligent, nor a deliberate process. It does not have any goals, and it does not have any sense of direction. It simply happens, similar to how the water simply circulates through Earth's atmosphere and surface. The circulating water does not intend to produce cyclones or build glaciers or supply the needs of freshwater organisms; all of those effects are merely a result of totally mechanistic processes of the water cycle. The same is true of evolution -- it is merely a process. Somewhere, I've compared life to crystals, and even said that life can be considered as a special type of crystal. Well, I am beginning to think that it's actually a great analogy. Just as crystals do, life perpetuates itself through the energy and materiel it gets from its environment. Just like crystals, life is complex and can change its properties depending on environmental factors. The only two major distinctions between life and crystals may be that life is organic and much more complex -- but the complexity can be seen merely as a result of first chemistry and then evolution as well as the much greater functional flexibility that organic molecules possess when compared to crystal lattices. We are still, just like crystals, dependent upon a proper supply of materiel to grow and multiply, and upon a steady inflow of energy from our environment to drive those processes. Maybe, this analogy will help you gain intuition about the nature of evolution -- in that it is not much less blind or mechanistic than the processes through which crystals emerge and grow.



The power (if any) of prayer, wishes, curses, blessings and genuine supernatural phenomena probably works by the same medium.


It's good that you qualified that statement with the "if any". Otherwise, you'd be in for trouble ;). But seeing as you don't profess any concrete evidence for any of those phenomena, one only has to question the reality or indeed even the need for such an proposal.



I don't think that souls can have memories but what they might contain is the 'essence' of 'you', the real you, whether you're in touch with the real you or not.Perhaps explaining child prodigies.


It's true that I'm not aware of any studies on child prodigies (not my area of interest) -- though I'd be very surprised if there aren't some theories about it already. Though I wouldn't hold my breath for real explanations until we know much more about the brain and cognition than we do even today. But were there a purely neuro-computational explanation available today, what other possible evidence would lead you to such a suggestion?

Also, what you say isn't compatible with out-of-body experiences, nor with paranormal phenomena -- since in both cases the "souls" seem to retain memory. Am I to take it to mean that you don't believe in either class of phenomena?

I'm also not at all clear on what you mean by "essense of you, the real you". Sounds much too vague and elusive; perhaps you could qualify a bit?

And above all, remember what I said at the beginning of this post. I want not just idle speculation, but your reasoning behind your suggestions. Other than that,

Welcome to the sandstorm! :)

------------------
I am; therefore I think.

MoonCat,



Going back to my "lake" or "cloud" analogy, I think dying is somewhat akin to dumping a cup of water into the lake - it mixes with the rest of the water and loses it's identity as THAT cup of water, and merely becomes a part of the rest of the water. Then again, I also believe that it may be possible that the personality might be strong enough to "freeze" those particular water molecules that were in that cup in a fair semblance of it's original form, and thereby retaining most of the sense of self, at least for a time.


But personality is entirely a property of the brain, and not the soul. Even the split-brain example ought to have convinced you of that. In general, brain trauma can alter personality in all sorts of ways -- sometimes even to the point that even close relatives don't recognize the person. But beyond neuropathology, you ought to be aware that drugs, for example, can alter personality (sometimes permanently!) -- and in general, any psychoactive substances in your body, from medication to hormones, directly impact your personality. Are these not all redundant enough indications that personality is singularly a property of the brain, and directly depends on the particular state of the brain at any instant in time? But if so, when the brain dies, personality dies with it -- there's no imprinting on anything, since otherwise we wouldn't observe personality changes in response to brain trauma, among other examples.

Oh, and about that energy tidbit. It doesn't matter if the soul is more like matter or more like energy. What matters is that it takes an expenditure of <u>additional</u> energy to <u>change state</u>. Inertia, in my opinion, can be best understood as persistence of state; without such persistence no process could occur (since any process implies a progression from state to state, and therefore states must be defined in order for processes to exist.) However, if matter, or energy, or whatever spiritual stuff that the souls are made of, naturally persist in their state -- they will need additional energy to overcome that persistence and change state. Thus, if the souls are to exist indefinitely, and actually function (as opposed to being completely frozen) -- they will need an infinite amount of <u>extra</u>, external, energy.

------------------
I am; therefore I think.

[This message has been edited by Boris (edited March 14, 2000).]

Hey Boris ya driving me nuts.
Joke OK.

Unlike you I'm hard pressed to find the time to type this let alone keep up with the flow of the conversation. And yep I think the profs angrrrrrrry.

Sorry buddy I was just playing a bit of a game with you and stirring the pot. I have breezed over your original post and do wish I had more time to talk to you about it.

In essence you already know my stance as a believer on this without me dialoguing in great detail.

Someone said something along the lines of cells, bacteria and androids and their soul capacity (if I can coin a phrase). I believe if you look at what Tiassa and I are mulling over in her sundry mumbles post that you will get a hint of why I believe we stand alone amongst all creation (yuk, big bad dirty word to Boris) as beings with a soul. And yes it comes back to the creation debate, in summary:

We were created by God to have meaningful dialogue with Him. For this to be the case he endowed us with attributes and abilities beyond that of the creatures that surround us. We have the capacity to decide beyond basic survival instincts, we have the ability to forward plan, we have the ability and choice of free will, we have the capacity for recognition of right and wrong. And from my knowledge I don't think we have yet discovered a creature that was created with these same abilities.

Sorry Boris a lot of the "C" swear word was used, LOL.

God created this wonderful creature for a meaningful and purposeful relationship with him. These are some of the intangible aspects of our abilities that define what the soul is.

Take care all

Hydromann (ex Tony H2o)


I edditted thus nute so that nobuddy wood thank thut I cant sppell propper. :D

[This message has been edited by Tony H2o (edited March 14, 2000).]

Tony,

Yeah, I understand about the time thing. Sorry bud!

(And by the way, we've both already tried to tell you before, but apparently you missed it: Tiassa is a male. As in man, guy, him -- you catch the drift? :))

As for souls, it's clear that not everyone who even believes in them agrees about what they are or who has them. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to try and live with this confusion (what choice is there?)

In your case, only humans have souls due to our unique abilities. Well, I'd like to hear what you think about my reduction of our unique abilities to mere physiology. The fact that on Earth we may be the first species to exhibit certain higher cognitive functions, does not invite a conclusion that such functions are not due to our brain architecture, but in fact owe their existence to some "soul".

And, actually all of the abilities you mentioned are not unique to humans. Even crows can forward-plan, as you put it. And all apes both operate on more than just instinct, and are capable of choice and free will. Additionally, even dogs can recognize right from wrong (as any dog owner will tell you.) What is unique to us is abstract thought in the form of language (at least it is unique so far as we are aware; we still aren't sure about dolphins, though.) And, Homo Sapiens does not seem to be the first species of the genus to exhibit abstract thought. Even neanderthals were capable of building and using sophisticated tools -- which testifies strongly toward abstract thought.

------------------
I am; therefore I think.

Boris,

(And by the way, we've both already tried to tell you before, but apparently you missed it: Tiassa is a male. As in man, guy, him -- you catch the drift? :))

Slow uptake speed :D

Boy = Doodle
Girl = No Doodle
Boy = Doodle
Girl = No Doodle
Boy = Doodle
Girl = No Doodle
Boy = Doodle
Girl = No Doodle
Boy = Doodle
Girl = No Doodle

Tiassa = Boy
Lori = Girl
Tiassa = Boy
Lori = Girl
Tiassa = Boy
Lori = Girl
Tiassa = Boy
Lori = Girl
Tiassa = Boy
Lori = Girl

Boris = ????? :D


Yep, I think I got it now.

Later on the rest of it OK.

All care

Tony H2o

Oh my GOD!!!!!!!!.......DON'T GIRLS HAVE DOODLES?????? How do they wee?
:)

------------------
work to LIVE...don't live to WORK.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Rambler:
[B]Oh my GOD!!!!!!!!.......DON'T GIRLS HAVE DOODLES?????? How do they wee?
:)

Geez, another sad case of a topic with some merrit going to the wall of slap happy humor.

And by the way Rammbler don't you know anything?????

Girls don't wee they urinate just like the queen dosen't fart she passes wind. And besides that my mom told me that it comes out their belly buttons. :D

Man, and Boris thought I was thick.

All care,

Tony H2o

:D :D :D :D :D

Hi Boris,

Later as promised but very rushed and not greatly thought out. Have fun.......

Quote Boris:
In your case, only humans have souls due to our unique abilities. Well, I'd like to hear what you think about my reduction of our unique abilities to mere physiology. The fact that on Earth we may be the first species to exhibit certain higher cognitive functions, does not invite a conclusion that such functions are not due to our brain architecture, but in fact owe their existence to some "soul".


Yes, mere physiology. As before I have only breezed over it but knowing your stance on a number of issues this "mere physiology" was attained through evolution of the Homo........ various species. Now I don't quite remember saying that our unique and higher cognitive functions were not related to our brain architecture, so I will assume that you are not trying to put words into my mouth. In fact I would agree that the way our grey matter has been assembled is phenomenal and that a lot of functions, emotions etc are as a result. But I come across a snag in assuming that evolution played the role of our higher cognitive functions. Now as an example I'm going to do the Dinosaur v's Human thing and without the time to check numbers I am really rounding off.

Dinosaurs: Pea brained, muscle bound Goliaths who according to evolutionary theory roamed the face of terra firma for millions of years. Now notice the pea brained aspect, but that's being unkind and discriminating against the dino dudes. In reality some were fairly cluey such as pack hunters like raptors and had basic problem solving capacity. These creatures "evolved" over a significant time frame into bigger and meaner beasties. I mean they evolved supposedly over millions of years of fairly stable climatic conditions and we haven't yet dug up an ancient VW hippy dino dude bus. Get the picture? Millions of years to become a highly evolved killing machine regardless of size and still incapable of higher cognitive functions. I mean their brains are like what Boris referred to as our old brain which controls the subconscious things such as heart beats, breathing, bladder retention........ What ! No new brains evolved over the sizeable time domination of the planets surface?

Homo.......various: Very brainy, (except when muscle bound :D ). Now according to evolutionary theory again, we have had the wonderful honour of being the dominant species on the face of the earth for thousands of years, NOT millions. And in that significantly smaller time frame for evolutionary processes to take place...... Hey presto, the VW hippy homo various dude bus. But wait there's more.......for a once off deal we will even throw in higher cognitive function than the dino dudes ended up with.......and get this, in a shorter time frame. WOW WHAT A DEAL, how could any pond scum bacterial slime refuse such an offer?


Now I know Boris is going to point out physiology differences etc, and yeah some of the above is tongue in cheek. But stop and think outside of established circles for a second and regardless of physical variance the sheer capacity of time variation should easily make up the difference according to evolutionary thinking anyway.

Well go figure hey?


Quote Boris:
And, actually all of the abilities you mentioned are not unique to humans. Even crows can forward-plan, as you put it. And all apes both operate on more than just instinct, and are capable of choice and free will. Additionally, even dogs can recognise right from wrong (as any dog owner will tell you.) What is unique to us is abstract thought in the form of language (at least it is unique so far as we are aware; we still aren't sure about dolphins, though.) And, Homo Sapien does not seem to be the first species of the genus to exhibit abstract thought. Even neanderthals were capable of building and using sophisticated tools -- which testifies strongly toward abstract thought.


Yeah, my dog knows right from wrong when she's caught raiding the trash can. Ask any dog trainer and they will tell you the same. Dolphin clickity lingo, OK read this..

Click....click....squeak.....squeak....clickity, click.......squeeeeeeeek, wirrrrrrrrrr.

And no I did not say... Blankity, blank, blank. :)

But seriously folks, I don't doubt in the slightest that they have good cognitive functions and do posses communication capacity. However I still believe that we as humans have a capacity above and beyond that of these most wonderful creatures in God's creation. The capacity to realise and comprehend the vastness of all of creation and to reflect upon this in a unique way, unique to human kind and imparted by God.

Body, Soul and Spirit.

All care...

Tony H2o

Tony,
What the hell was that?????? (On the previous page)


P.S. the queen doesn't even pass wind, too many heads up there for anything to pass :))
------------------
work to LIVE...don't live to WORK.

[This message has been edited by Rambler (edited March 14, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Rambler (edited March 14, 2000).]

Hi Rambles,

I assure you my friend it was all in good humor and jest. A moment of light hearted frivilous stupidity directed at building upon your good humor.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Thus the cheesy grinners.....

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

And let the world go sane as we all go nuts.


P.S Sorry about the outbursts I sometimes get overhappy.

Ram man (or woman, because I sometimes get that bit wrong).

Heads up ....HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH SCREEEEEMMMMMINNNN OUTRAGEOUS.

And to think I'm a monarchist, what would Elizabeth and Charles say?

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

H2o

Cool, I thought that was the case, I'm a little slow when it comes to subtle humor :)

P.S. I am equiped with a doodle.
Are you really a monarchist? you know one of the heads in that royal BEEE-HIND is our very own PM (aus I mean)....useless tool rect the whole referendumn (better stop before I get out of hand)
How do you add the cheesy grins?


------------------
work to LIVE...don't live to WORK.

So Ram man,

I know this is going way off topic but you don't love King Johnny Howard?

BTW I am a monarchist but not of the right royaly outrageous British royals.

As you may have picked up from other posts of mine I'm a follower or a monarchist for the King of Kings. In simple terms I'm a God loving, BA disciple of Christ.

:D now go to the edit button at the top of my message and you will see how its done. Boris taught me that one.

All care

Tony H2o

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D WOOOOO HOOOOOOO I have progressed *impressed with self* thanks for the help.

Johny...#$%#@%&&&^^%*))_)_*^^, and *^^&(())^%$#, oh and lets not leave out *&*^%$*)_

no I'm not a fan. Are you in Aus or UK?

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work to LIVE...don't live to WORK.

Rambler,

I'll pass on your comments to my little uncle Johnny back here in the land of Oz.

Now why the heck would a dinkum Aussie want to live in Pommy land? Rain, cold and crowded v's wide open spaces and 40deg C summer days.

Ahhhh the Great South Land that none can match.

Wide open plains and driving rains.

Rugged coastal shore and rich folk lore.

What other place would one rather be?

Heaven?

All care....

Tony H2o

Indeed, alot of my friends are moving to the UK to work. I can't understand it, sure I could go there and make 3 times more then I am here (wife wouldn't be too happy) but money isn't everything. Sun sand and SURF is all I ask for in a country, even Johny can't take that away....except maybe charge 10% more for it.
Beside if I want to look at a pom I just have to go to bondi...LOL

:D :D :D :D :D -- bet you wish you didn't show me that one. :D

P.S. Tell uncle Johny he can *&@&*^^%%!@*(#) himself and his mate Beazley too.

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work to LIVE...don't live to WORK.

[This message has been edited by Rambler (edited March 15, 2000).]

Yeah....Now we are talkin. Sun, sand and surf what more could a person want, well except for a mortgage, car loan, 50 hrs a week job, a wife and kids to feed, keep dressed and schooled....Awww heck the dream almost turned into a nightmare. :D (joke OK, love the misses and kids to bits)

I blame them both King Johnny and the rolly polly guy Beazley. Oh darn, I just had a terrible thought. Boris could prove that people don't have a heart or soul by using politicians as an example, especially some Aussie ones.....AGGGGHHHHH, defeted in argument by my own stupidity.

Oh boy, we could go on like this for hours while all the septic tanks are sleeping.

Bondi, I've surfed there, sewer sucking break that one with to much agro. Merewether and Dixon Park in Newcastle is where I cut my original surf teeth. Now days I'm relegated to breaks in the SW of WA. But alas not as much as I would like to be.

All care....

H2o

I've never been to WA. I reside in Brisbane, I get up to Mooloolabah pretty regularly though, nice break, doesn't really have a local element and the agro is pretty tame, Gold Coast on the otherhand talk about agro locals sheesh.....my break and all that I had a clown cut in on me untill he wrecked my board, so I don't surf down there anymore.

I wish I could cut my hours to 50 a week, I don't get to finish until after midnight most days....

morgage: Yeah what can you do,

car loan: I love my car (wife not impressed), I just got it and I don't mind the payments. Its a Jap import and apparently the 40% import duty I paid to get it here is gonna go come July this year...so I'm about 15 Grand out of pocket..thanks Johny you ^*(^%%*))_*(& -- oops I beeter just let that go,

no kids yet (phew!!, wife also not impressed).



------------------
work to LIVE...don't live to WORK.

Boris...


quote:
Tab,

It's all very cute. You may very well have the beginnings of the next big religion in your hands. Be careful, before they start calling you Tablariddim the Great, or attempt to crucify you or something! :D :D :D
unquote


Hey for only $12 a month, you too can gain enlightenment and wisdom. Discounts for large groups!!!! :D ;) Tablaridmics the great faith. For ordinary[i/] Joe.


Boris:
So far, what you describe is still somewhat plausible, although extremely questionable at this point in time.

Tab:
You say this theory is plausible..just.
Well that's ok by me.




At the moment of conception or generation of any lifeform, a single grain of invisible energy enters the originating cell and proceeds to grow with the body.



Boris:
Just how does this little "molecule" of your energy know that a conception is taking place, and where?


Tab:
The invisible energy is everywhere at all times, like a sand storm. It knows when a life is being created because (a)it's intelligent (collectively = total knowledge!) and (b)its propensity is to enter life as soon as it is created...maybe it's attracted to the 'new' energy therein. Maybe that's all it is.




The invisible energy in a lifeform, while being within and without the body, is always connected to the universal energy and constantly transmitting and receiving information. From time itself.



Boris:
Ok, now you are getting vague beyond vague. What do you mean, "from time itself"? Time is a complex notion that combines the notions of rate and growing entropy. But it's not a "place" from which you can receive anything.


Tab:
Ok, if the invisible energy is capable of whizzing around the universe at a speed much faster than light. And it goes from the moment of the 'big bang' to the ends of the universe and back again, ad nauseam, it is in effect travelling through (our concept of)time. It is continuously processing information gleaned from every living thing in the cosmos (including crystals, include every single element and atom in the universe godammit).




I think that this intelligent energy is what might prompt individual genes to evolve. Perhaps explaining the occassional rapid pace of evolution one witnesses from time to time.



Boris:
life is complex and can change its properties depending on environmental factors. The only two major distinctions between life and crystals may be that life is organic and much more complex
(edited)


Tab:
Evolution is a reaction to environmental conditions. Occassionaly it happens so fast that we can observe it. There is the case of a partircular type of bird (Jay, I think) in the industrial Midlands of England. Where a couple of generations ago the city birds were dark gray to black, as were the soot blackened buildings. Now that smokeless fuels are being used and the buildings have been cleaned all these birds have become a much lighter colour, so blending easier with their environment.(This was a serious TV doc' 10 years ago)

How can a change like this happen so quickly without some kind of unconcious or third party intelligence?


Boris there is really no ulterior motive for my theories, I'm not even convinced by them myself but they're part of my casual ongoing 'spiritual search', whatever that means.
Anyway it's a place my mind likes to wander to often, esp after the sativa.

------------------
Subscribe [i]NOW to TABLARIDMICS, it's great man!

What is Out of Body Experience?

An Out of Body Experience is the act of consciously leaving the body and perceiving the worl from outside of the physical body. Out of Body Experiences are very similar to Astral Projection, except that in Astral Projection, you are not limited to the earth plane.

What are features of OBE?

The separation of the subtle, or etheric body from the physical body is often accompanied by vibrations, tingling, electrical shock like feelings, buzzing or other strange sensations. Once the separation of the etheric body from the physical body has occurred, the way in which the world is perceived changes from that of normal waking consciousness because it is no longer limited by the physical body. Although the non-physical double usually takes a form that looks and feels like the human body, it is much lighter and less dense, therefore levitation tends to be common feature, as well as the ability to pass through seemingly solid objects. There are also several other non-physical body forms possible, but these are usually available to the more experienced. Movement while in a non-physical body can vary greatly. You may find, at times, that your ability to move is very similar to that of your physical body, but at other times you could find yourself floating, travelling at enormous velocity, or even unable to move at all without extreme difficulty. You will also find that the quality of perception and awareness varies from experience to experience, as does the amount of information recalled from the experience.

How can I induce OBE?


Imagery Techniques:

Visualisation exercises can stimulate the separation of the etheric double from the physical body by first creating an illusionary effect of separation. Persistent practise of visualisation exercise will eventually bring about an actual out of body projection. This technique takes time to develop into an out of body experience, at first the experience may involve only the mental body which is much finer than the etheric body and therefore does not feel as solid or "real".

Special Motivation Techniques:

Strong motivation can result in going an instantaneous and powerful out of body adventures. Sometimes special techniques are not necessary at all. Merely having strong desire to do something not normally possible physically, or to have an out of body experience, will cause it to happen.

Meditation and Chakra Meditation:

Simple meditation is sometimes enough to relax the body sufficiently for the etheric double to separate from the physical image. However, combining this relaxed state with energy work, by stimulating the etheric body's chakra system, can often very quickly cause a controlled out of body experience. Care must be taken with this method as some more powerful chakra, like the base centre which holds the latent kundalini energy, are not meant to be stimulated by novices. If you are not sure about stimulating your chakras, then use the simple meditation method without chakra work. Having a projection may take longer this way, but it is much safer.


Trance State Induction:

It is possible to leave the body while in a trance state. This produces the most "real" experience of all the methods because a person goes from a fully awake state to a detached, body-spirit state and then leaves the physical body without losing conscious awareness. Trance induction can be done during the day or before sleep (falling asleep consciously). For achieving a trance state it is important to be relaxed and to stay conscious while your body falls asleep. Once in this state, you can leave the body using one of several techniques for getting out, such as climbing an imaginary rope, lifting the etheric double out by floating it above the body, having strong desire to fulfil some need, trying to touch some object that is not normally within reach, or simply getting out of your bed as you would normal. You can also request that your out of body spirit guide, who may be present at these times, pull you out of your body.

What is Astral Projection?

Any definition trying to describe Astral Projection is more or less subjective due to the nature of the phenomena. Astral Projection is an out of body experience where the person projects his consciousness off the earth plane and into the astral plane, which is a far vaster dimension than the earth plane. Some parts of the astral plane overlap those of the physical world, but that overlapping is just the beginnings of its scope. From the astral plane the out of body traveller can gain access to the mental plane, or for the more advanced, the spirit plane. Each of these dimensions offers the out of body traveller varying experiences and learnings.

What are features of Astral Projection?

A mysterious light has been reported as an entrance way into the astral world. The astral plane is full of symbolism, as in this environment, thoughts take on solid and tangible forms. You may also meet non-physical entities who may appear as guides, helpers or even strange creatures. During an astral projection people usually travel in what is called the astral double. This is similar to the etheric double, except it is much finer and has some added abilities. In an astral projection it is possible to see the tiny silver cord which connects the astral double to the physical body. Occasionally you may find that you have no body at all. In this case you are traveling as pure spirit, inhabiting a body of light that possesses limitless possibilities.

How can I induce Astral Projection?

The techniques for inducing an astral projection are the same as those for inducing an out of body experience. Once out of body you must lighten the etheric body by a process similar to floating out of a dream. When in this lighter body the astral plane will seem to take shape around you, although you may experience the sensation of traveling at high speed before the environment forms. This is merely your out of body spirit guide taking you somewhere in the vast astral plane.

What can I expect from Astral Projection?

Traveling to higher dimensions through astral projection is an extremely good way of advancing yourself. There are places that you can go that can put you in direct contact with knowledge and energies that can transform your body, mind and spirit in a matter of months. Remember however that these skills, knowledge and advancements are meant to be used for personal growth and to bring us all back to the one source of love: God. Misuse of the skills and knowledge obtained by astral projection can result in negative karma that may have you wishing you had never touched the subject. Make sure that your intentions are good and honourable and you will never go wrong, you will always have the universe and all of its powers to aid you.

Near Death Experiences
A near death experience is an out of body experience that occurs during the process of physical death or in a life threatening situation.

Mental Travel

Good visualisation ability is required for mental travel as it is rather like traveling without a body, as though watching a movie, it tends to lack the solidity of actually being there.

Aura Sensing

The aura is the energy field that surrounds the physical body. It has seven different layers which correspond to the seven chakras. Once you are able to sense or see auras, with practice it is possible to assess the physical, emotion and mental states of a person and if there are any blockages which need to be cleared. Sensing auras also allows you to observe the energy which passes between people.

In order to see auras, hold your hand up against a pale or plain background. Gaze 'through' rather than at your hand, de-focusing a little, you should see a haze around the edge of your hand and fingers. With practice you will eventually be able to see more. It's easier to sense the first three layers of an aura because they are more dense than the others. The first layer is known as the etheric body and extends a half to two inches from the skin. The second layer, the emotional body, is one to three inches wider than the physical body. The third layer, the mental body, is three to eight inches beyond the skin. The fourth layer, six to twelve inches - and so on.

Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance is the ability to see situations, people, spirits or symbols that are not physically visible to the eye. Non-physical energy or information may be seen or sensed in visual images and then interpreted by the clairvoyant. Everybody has clairvoyant experiences at some time during their daily lives, for example, have you ever, for no apparent reason, thought of a person you haven't seen for some time, and then met that person or received a phone call form them soon after? Using clairvoyance allows you to be forewarned and affords you the opportunity to tune in to events that may happen in your life. However, due to the probable nature of the future, any information received in this way is merely an indication of what may possibly happen and not what will definitely happen.

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to perceive the emotional state of another person, without physical-sensory input from that person. To be empathic is to be open to the feelings of other people. Many times empathic people will find it difficult to distinguish between their own feelings and the feelings of other people. This difficulty in distinguishing often makes the empathy seem erratic or emotionally unstable, when in fact, they are just reacting to external sources of emotional energy. The goal of the empathy is to learn to distinguish between who's feelings are who's, and then to use their empathy to try to help the other person.

Telepathy

Telepathy is universal. Whether we are consciously aware of it or not, we are constantly sending and receiving messages to and from one another.

Many cultures have used telepathy in a routine way. Tahiti, for instance, became well-known for it's so called 'coconut radio', news would be transmitted around the island telepathically. Whenever early visitors came upon a new town they found that they were already expected.

According to Huna wisdom, everyone and everything is connected by 'aka threads' which are invisible cords of energy connected in the solar plexus area. Aka threads are much stronger between close friends, loved ones and especially married couples than between aquaintances or strangers, so telepathy between close friends is much easier. Since aka threads transcend space and time it makes no difference whether the person is standing next to you or a thousand miles away.

It is the subconscious self which sends and receives telepathic messages, so the task of the conscious self is to give clear direction (eg. 'I'd like ... to contact me') then to empower the subconscious, perhaps through breathing, relaxation or meditation, getting 'out of the way', as it were, and trusting the subconscious self to do its job.

However, it is also possible for another person (and yourself) not only to send thoughts but to also 'dump' emotion, for instance, when someone leaves you feeling great themselves but you suddenly feel as though kicked in the solar plexus. This is because 'unwanted' emotions have been transmitted along the aka threads. A very simple but effective shamanic remedy for this is to imagine a cord or energy between you and the other person joining your solar plexus to theirs, then bring your hand down as if it were a knife cutting it. Do this with the firm intention of breaking any emotional leakage from the other person.

Telekinesis

Telekinesis is the effecting of physical objects by pure thought. Moving objects and the bending of the flame of a candle are two simple examples of this power. If you want to verify this power for yourself, there is a simple method. Place a candle in front of you and light it. Then concentrate on pulling the flame to the left or to the right. With practice you can achieve surprising results.

Boris~

Woah, wait a second...regarding the viruses, it seems I made an incorrect assumption - I thought viruses WERE alive. If they are not, then no, no soul.

"...while observing something, you are interacting with it, and as a result it no longer has the same state following observation as it had prior to observation, and even having measured it you still don't know its current state"

Okaayy, I understand what you're saying, I've heard of this before in quantum mechanics, but doesn't this kind of mean that NO measurement can be 100% accurate - or rather that we cannot be 100% sure that our measurement is 100% accurate??

Example, you look at a blue piece of paper. You see it, you say to yourself "blue piece of paper". But, really, what is a color? That piece of paper only APPEARS blue to your eyes, because that's what is reflected back to you in the visible spectrum. To a dog, it's grey. To that theoretical android of yours :) , perhaps it's some color we don't have a name for because it's ouside of our experience. So what is the TRUE color of the piece of paper? Answer: ? what is color? So we can't actually nail down the color of that piece of paper, because it's going to depend upon the observer. If you tried to use some kind of scientific device to measure the color, we could get specifics on what kind of light waves are being reflected, but that's not the question being asked. We could take those light waves and say "These waves correspond to the visible color known as blue", but that's about as far as it could go, right? What about a hypothetical alien, who sees a much narrower band of visible light, might it not appear to be what we call green, or perhaps indigo depending on what parts of the spectrum it would see?

So, yeah, a scientific instrument can usually measure accurately, but a human being is always the one making the conclusions, so even a "pure" reading is going to be almost necessarily flawed, due to the human interpretation, right?

Okay, that was a lot of type for a small idea, sorry, I'm not all here today. :)

Alrighty, now let's look at this quote: "Therefore, if a phenomenon had not yet been measured through instruments, you cannot claim that it has been around and can be measured through your senses -- because collectively, world-wide and over several centuries, there have probably been made more, and more accurate, empirical observations through scientific instruments than you will make in your entire lifetime."

HUH?? Are you saying that we humans have already discovered everything? That there is NO phenomenon that exists that us humans haven't measured, taken it's temperature, and documented??? That there just couldn't possibly be a whole new frontier out there that we haven't even realized is there at all? (shaking head) I think you must have mis-stated yourself there, you are a scientist (or at least have the mind of one), you surely don't believe that! I do agree that there have been more measurements made more accurately by machines than by myself, but I seriously doubt we've measured EVERYTHING. Has our technology been able to duplicate the dog's sense of smell yet? Last I heard we hadn't.

Moving on...talking about those floaties in my sink "...what is it exactly that the soul captures of living matter, that dead matter does not possess?" Simple - life! The bodies left over from these dead little beings are of course still seperate - (perhaps (again) 'individuality' is the wrong word, but it's the best one I can think of) - but they're DEAD, so it's not the same. I mean...like take twins for example. They spawned from the same egg & sperm, so at some point (according to my thoughts) they did share the same soul, which then split between the two bodies. Yet they are inarguably individuals, right? Upon death, aren't they MORE alike than they were in life? That's what I'm trying to get across, I'm just saying it wrong.

Think of the soul more like a flame, maybe. You can light many huge bonfires from a single match. The match flame retains it's individuality from the rest of the fire, as long as it burns (lives). From mother to child, that 'flame' is divided and passed on, to be grown and fed in the body. You say there must be more energy given to the 'soul' for it to change & grow - well, people generate that energy with food, plants with the sun...so maybe there IS cohesion beyond the life-cycle - no energy from the body means the soul doesn't change in the 'afterlife', but I don't really believe that one. ;)

This kind of walks with the 'split people' in your earlier post. I don't really know, though, if the split personalities are a function of the brain, perhaps each personality does still share the same soul. I don't know.

(You do realize I'm not any kind of expert in the field of souls, right? :) Just checkin'. These are my own thoughts, my own theories, my own conclusions, and I reserve the right to learn more and change my mind later, too.)

And lastly (because I'm out of time), the infamous (by now) android. Okay, Data. :) You want to argue that A) you do have a soul, and B) it is the same as the soul I posess.

A) I am unsure on. Since there isn't a real Data I can have any kind of experience with, I don't know how I can make that judgement call. I'm not trying to be evasive, I just don't have the data (biting toungue - pun not intended) I would like to have to base the decision on. For the sake of debate, though, let me just make the assumption that if a mechanical being was complex enough, had genuine life, it would have a soul. I don't know how on earth we would judge if you (Data) are alive or not, so don't ask me that one! :)

B) If I continue with the flame analogy, I could say that the difference between our souls is that mine was lit from a flame that's been going since life appeared on the planet, whereas yours comes from a match recently struck. Does that make your (theoretical) soul any less valid, or less real? I don't think so, just different. My soul originates with an organic source, your soul originates with an inorganic source...what's the difference?

Sheesh, I don't know! I thought about it last night, and have come to the conclusion that I just don't have enough information to answer that. Androids don't actually exist, so to answer that, I'd have to basically invent them in order to understand how they work - I'm smart, but not THAT smart! Build me one, Boris, send him over to my place, and while he's not doing the dishes I'll ponder his soul and get back to you. :) (Sorry, Tony & Rambler are infectious, I'm starting to feel silly)

Okay, gotta run. Looking forward to more later. :)

Why do I have the feeling Marie and Lori are the same person?

MoonCat,

Yeah, you don't sound like you are all here today. Here, have some coffee (_)o :)



Okaayy, I understand what you're saying, I've heard of this before in quantum mechanics, but doesn't this kind of mean that NO measurement can be 100% accurate - or rather that we cannot be 100% sure that our measurement is 100% accurate??


Yes, sort of -- but not in an absolute sense. It depends on what you define by "accuracy". If you want to know a precise length of some object, then it's true that you cannot measure that length to an arbitrary precision while still being 100% accurate. But if you only want to know, say, your height in feet (+/- a foot), then the measurement will indeed be 100% accurate, since every time you repeat it you will get the same result (unless something tragic happens to you, or you hadn't finished growing -- but let's not go there...)

The point of the quantum example was just to provide one way of demonstrating the identity between measurement and observation. The other important way was through the functional identity of our sensory organs and scientific measuring apparata.



HUH?? Are you saying that we humans have already discovered everything? That there is NO phenomenon that exists that us humans haven't measured, taken it's temperature, and documented???


No, you've misread me. What I was saying, is that everything that humans have observed of the external world through their senses <u>so far</u>, has already been fully documented by scientific instruments. I'm saying nothing about the future, which is irrelevant in this debate. After all, the "knowledge" of souls comes to us from the past, and it's the past that we should be concerned with.



Moving on...talking about those floaties in my sink "...what is it exactly that the soul captures of living matter, that dead matter does not possess?" Simple - life!


You aren't out of the woods yet... So, you say that viruses are not truly alive -- but what does it mean to be truly alive? After all, through part of their life cycle viruses are just dormant molecules, but once they enter a favorable environment (such as a living cell), they spring to life, as it were. So, are they alive, or aren't they? As another example, take those same bacteria. They are normally alive, but if the environment becomes hostile, they shrivel up and acquire a tough polymer coat, and become spores. At this point, they are completely dormant -- just a static assemblage of molecules. But you put that spore into a vaforable environment, and it sheds its outer covering, unpacks itself and returns to its normal state as a bacterium. So, is the spore alive or dead? Does it have a soul? How about a frog that is frozen solid during the winter -- is it dead or alive? Does it have a soul while being frozen? What is it that's fundamentally different between a viable frog that is frozen, and a viable frog tha is thawed?

Notice that we are beginning to get into a discussion of what it means to be alive -- since you are assuming that life equals soul. It's a very old discussion, and still not entirely resolved, but be warned -- your homebrewed theories are probably about to undergo a little rearrangement... :)



Androids don't actually exist, so to answer that, I'd have to basically invent them in order to understand how they work - I'm smart, but not THAT smart! Build me one, Boris, send him over to my place, and while he's not doing the dishes I'll ponder his soul and get back to you.


But you don't understand how humans work, and yet you state that we have a soul. So why should you care how the android works? All that should matter to you is how the android behaves -- right? And I claim that the android behaves in a manner (unlike Data's) that is completely homologous to human behavior. But if that makes you uncomfortable, let's introduce a "toy version" of the problem. Our android has a pet robot, which completely mimicks the behavior of a caterpillar. Does the pet robot have a soul?

Actually, I think that your concept of a "soul" is intimately entangled with what you think it means to be alive. So perhaps, for now, you should focus on our qualification of life rather than the soul of the android.

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I am; therefore I think.

Marie,

Now, would you care to produce any scientific confirmation of <u>even a single one</u> of all the phenomena you mentioned? I can produce a whole bunch of studies that actually refute the existence of all those phenomena, and do so repeatedly and reliably. So, what kind of ground is under your feet?

Also, your thoughts on my counterarguments presented at the beginning of this thread will be appreciated... :)

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I am; therefore I think.

[This message has been edited by Boris (edited March 15, 2000).]

Rambler,

Hey a Brisy boy, yahoooo. Well I also did time there, went to none other than Shorncliff primary school from year 2 to 6. In case ya don't know where that is it's near Sandgate. And I think I've spelt both those names wrong. Rode my first waves there back in the 70's on a mal after a cyclone whipped up some waves which is about the only time you get waves around Brisy. Hey did I say 70's, opps now I'm showing up as way old.

Ya know we are way off topic of this discussion but I guess everyone out there is big enough to read around us.

Jap import?? Oh no!! Your not into souped up rice bubbles are ya? Just Kidding, personally I have a thing for the Subaru WRX but not a pay packet to match the fantasy. Lucky for me the company gives me a car to make tracks in but unfortunatly I can't get a 4WD out of them, that would really open up some remote surf breaks for me.

Anyway time to scoot.

P.S You should try the kids thing, you loose a lot of sleep and about two years of your life evaporate but what you get in return is incredible. Beats the best tube ride of your life, stoked absolutley stoked.

All care

H2o

Tab,

$12 is all it takes? Come on now, don't sell yourself over cheap! :D



The invisible energy is everywhere at all times, like a sand storm. It knows when a life is being created because (a)it's intelligent (collectively = total knowledge!) and (b)its propensity is to enter life as soon as it is created...maybe it's attracted to the 'new' energy therein. Maybe that's all it is.


All right, a few questions. 1) If the energy is invisible, then how does it express its existence through your keyboard? In other words, how do you know of its existence, if the energy is not detectable? 2) There is no new energy created through life; in fact all life ever does is consume energy from the environment. But there are a lot of other processes (which we normally wouldn't consider living) that also consume energy -- so what makes life any different from the circulation patterns in our atmosphere, for example, as far as energy is concerned? 3) Finally, what is it to "create" new life? For example, bacteria replicate through mitosis, which is a multistage process that involves movement and partitioning of organelles, duplication and partitioning of the genetic material, and final separation of the nascent organisms from each other. Just at what stage of this elaborate process, at what precise moment, is life being "created"? Analogously, the fertilization of an egg with a sperm is a complex and multistaged process, as is, of course, the subsequent development of the embryo. For much of its life, the embryo can't be said to be truly alive, since it's merely an outgrowth of the mother's body -- in the same way that any of your organs cannot be said to be truly alive, since they are entirely dependent on all other organs. So, really, at which point is it that an embryo becomes "alive" -- and how does the "energy" determine that moment?

Also, in the case of bacteria, for example, how does the "invisible energy" manifest itself? In other words, how does it affect the processes within a bacterium? So far as biochemists can tell, all processes in a bacterium are purely chemical, and as such conserve energy. Yet, if there was any intervention by your "invisible energy", then the laws of energy conservation would be broken, and such a discovery would surely be a stunning one, given how well those laws are presently established!



Ok, if the invisible energy is capable of whizzing around the universe at a speed much faster than light. And it goes from the moment of the 'big bang' to the ends of the universe and back again, ad nauseam, it is in effect travelling through (our concept of)time.


That's not correct. The reason astronomers refer to their observations as "looking back in time", is because they are observing the photons that left their respective sources billions of years ago, and crossed billions of light years of distance to get to Earth. Thus, it is precisely because of the limit on light speed that we are able to peer "back in time". However, all points in the universe have been progressing in time from the moment of the big bang; in fact, discounting minor relativistic distortion, it is roughly the same time in all corners of the universe right now.



Evolution is a reaction to environmental conditions. Occassionaly it happens so fast that we can observe it.
...
How can a change like this happen so quickly without some kind of unconcious or third party intelligence?


Well, a change like this is what is normally called microevolution. It had come up numerous times in the Evolution vs. Creation thread, so if you want detailed explanations of it, read that thread (but start at the beginning, since it got really off base near the end.)

And in fact, changes like that are explained routinely through natural genetic variation coupled to environmental pressures. There is absoluely no intelligence at work in cases like that.



Boris there is really no ulterior motive for my theories, I'm not even convinced by them myself but they're part of my casual ongoing 'spiritual search', whatever that means.
Anyway it's a place my mind likes to wander to often, esp after the sativa.


And I'm not saying that there are ulterior motives. If I seem to be picking on you as if it were personal, then such a perception is not accurate. Actually, I pick with the same intensity on anyone who disagrees with me in any way -- with the ultimate goal being either exposition of my own mistakes, or those of whoever it is I'm debating.

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I am; therefore I think.

So, ultimately what we are saying is that "life" is capable of self-replication within a certain environment. The virus needs other cells to survive. A fish needs water. Likewise, humans would do poorly in the vacuum of space.

Perhaps this is the motivation behind the need to define a 'soul'. We're incredibly insecure, and we need some reassurance that there is something eternal or universal about our existence. We'd like to think we are something more than just a virus living a life preprogrammed by its genes and its environment.

But then, if we see that life is only defined (ie. replicating) within an operating environment, it should be very simple for us to accept that algorithms designed to replicate inside the memory of a computer are in fact alive. True, they can only replicate under very strict conditions, but such is true of any life.

Let me push it one step further. Since an algorithm is just a set of instructions executed by a computer, what if we had a group of humans execute the instructions? Indeed, the word computer was first used to describe rooms of mathematicians who executed instructions in an ordered sequence in computation of a mathematical system.

So what if we have a replicating algorithm that is computed by hand. Should we consider it to be alive?? Indeed, it can replicate itself given the proper environment (the people). I will assert that this system is indeed alive.

If we accept a virus to be 'alive', then we probably should accept a replicating computer program to be alive. And if we accept that, we must accept the same program, executed by hand with paper and pencils, is also alive.

The claim that viruses are alive is not very far from the claim that bacteria are alive. The claim that bacteria are alive is essentially the same as the claim that humans are alive.

So, if you are going to claim that all living things have a soul, be very careful. But also be mindful that we cannot simply draw a line in the sand and declare "souls emerge here".

[This message has been edited by DaveW (edited March 15, 2000).]

Tony,



In fact I would agree that the way our grey matter has been assembled is phenomenal and that a lot of functions, emotions etc are as a result.


Hmmm... So does that mean I've convinced you that souls don't exist? Or, if all of our cognitive functions are due to the brain, what properties does the soul account for?

As for the dinosaur-human thingy, you are quite a ways off. We humans are merely a member of a larger classification -- mammals. And in fact, all mammals possess vastly superior intelligence when compared to reptiles. And mammals have been around for many millions of years; indeed they co-existed with dinosaurs. It is, presumably, the superior intelligence and its resultant capacity to adapt, combined with relatively small body size, that enabled mammals to survive the cataclysm that killed the huge and dumb dinosaurs. Though note that quite a few of their ilk survive to this day -- crocodiles and Comodo dragons come to mind, for example. The various species of Homo branched off from a common ancestor that links us to other subsequent species of apes, relatively recently. But even by then, both that ancestor and other species of proto-monkeys were already very advanced in their intelligence. So actually, if you trace the evolution of human cognition back to the dinosaurs, you will not find any abrupt jumps (or at least, you wouldn't if the fossil record was complete; due to missing species you, of course, will indeed find some abruptness from time to time -- but not nearly on the scale you suggested, not even remotely close to that scale in fact.)

As for the question of why high intelligence didn't evolve sooner, there are several answers, and all of them are reasonable. More answers may still be in the making. But at the present, the first answer would be yet another question: why didn't intelligence evolve later, or why did any kind of intelligence evolve at all? The point is that evolution is not a deliberate process; it does not set goals, and it certainly does not pursue them. On that level, you can consider evolution of intelligence as accidental as evolution of insects. On another level, it can be argued that in the age of the dinosaurs, since the Earth was pretty much a big never-changing jungle, one did not need vast intelligence to survive. In fact, what one needed was toughness, and large numbers and/or large size. Since then, Earth's climate has changed significantly, and much of Earth's surface is covered in lands far more variable, hostile and challenging to survival than there were at the time of the dinosaurs. It is also clear that since the dinosaurs, Earth has been in and out of ice ages every few thousand years, and such variability also demands adaptability. So, all of these factors conspire to select for better intelligence (at least among species that require a lot of energy to sustain themselves). With proto-humans, that particular adaptation became a runaway process, providing advantages beyond mere survival, and thus reinforcing itself. Note that if the dinosaurs were around a few thousand years ago, we wouldn't be here today because the human species would not have been able to survive: we are too vulnerable, and it takes us too long to compensate for individuals lost to an ultra-hostile environment. In fact, probably for such reasons, the genetic material in our chromosomes shows evidence that in the past our species had found itself teetering on the brink of extinction at least once. Thus, we truly are products of our environment. So you see, it is not so surprising that the dinosaurs didn't drive any VW's -- because such abilities were not advantageous to survival during their reign.



The capacity to realise and comprehend the vastness of all of creation and to reflect upon this in a unique way, unique to human kind and imparted by God.


Ok, there might be some debate about uniqueness to humans, especially if we consider the rest of the universe. But where did the "imparted by God" part come from? Do you agree that all of our cognition is a resultant of processing in the brain?

------------------
I am; therefore I think.

Dave--

re:"...accept a replicating computer program to be alive

General comment: compelling. A wonderful theatre of ideas. A veritable playground ... (sorry if I sound like a restaurant review, but I love those kinds of issues.)

Actually, though, all I wanted to ask was if you'd heard the theory that fire is alive? (It breathes, it consumes, it is capable of spontaneously reproducing ... something else in that criteria that I don't remember specifically.)

Anyway, virus/computer/algorithm brought that to mind.

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

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The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur eggs was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet. (Good Omens, Gaiman & Pratchett)

DaveW,

Oh, man, you spoiled it! :D

I was planning to play around a little more, and see if I couldn't get MoonCat to arrive at the same conclusions via a more Socratic method. Oh well, now it's out in the open...

The capacity to reproduce certainly seems to be a vital characteristic of life in general -- though not of organisms in particular. For example, a castrated cat is still alive (well... depending on the castration process, that is. :D) However, you could still claim that any particular living individual comes from a lineage that is, or at least was, self-reproducing.

Another vital capacity of life, IMHO, is the ability to process information. Because if it weren't for that ability, evolution itself would not be defined. Yet, interaction with environment in meaningful ways, as well as capacity to adapt, seem as crucial to what it means to be alive, as is reproduction. In these respects, not all algorithms could be considered fully alive...

Finally, for MoonCat's benefit, I include the following disclaimer: notice that nowhere within the concept of what I or Dave are mulling over, is there anything even remotely akin to a soul. Yet, the description seems to be rather complete, and quite universal. What is there missing in these concepts, that we would need a soul to capture?

P.S.

Tiassa, I don't think that fire quite fits the bill -- it doesn't have the behavioral autonomy that life has; i.e. it doesn't have any capacity for making a choice (e.g. I'll swim that way because it smells better there, or I'll grow that way because there's more sunlight.) Such decisions might be made differently depending on the exact living organism -- but fire has no such flexibility; it can behave in only one fixed way. Additionally, fire doesn't preserve any state information, and thus cannot process or accumulate information the way life can (which is related to a lack of meaningful interaction with the environment). Partly for that reason, I think it's wrong to say that fire reproduces -- since reproduction really implies duplication of information, and fire carries no information in its inherent structure, nor does it duplicate any when it spreads.

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I am; therefore I think.

[This message has been edited by Boris (edited March 15, 2000).]

It's from an article I read probably ten or twelve years ago in school. I forget the philosopher who came up with fire-as-life, but his argument was, if I recall, meant to force a better definition of "life", as you have pointed out. I think it was late 19th century, but I make no claims about my memory on that particular detail.

thanx,
Tiassa

------------------
The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur eggs was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet. (Good Omens, Gaiman & Pratchett)

Boris - You have requested scientific confirmation. Please define your terms.

gee...sorry Boris :) I just got too excited!

We must extinguish this fire-is-alive notion quickly (cough). I think Boris alluded to this somewhat already. Basically, fire is not a coherent object. Forms of life are characterizable since they exist in discrete units. Fire isn't discrete. A large fire is not a composition of some multiple of small fires. It is just a big, incoherent blob.

Boris - sorry old chap. I worked on my thoughts to your counter-arguments for probably an hour tonight. Just when I was reviewing it to get ready to post it, I got a message "thanks for posting" (even though I did not officially post it). Anyway, it does not appear on the board and it is lost to me. I did noticed that Dave, the Administrator posted a message just about the same time I got my message, so, somehow, mine got lost in the process.

It's too late and I'm too tired to start over so, maybe tomorrow.

(If it ends up appearing miraculously, please keep in mind that it was in-progress).

Thanks.

Unicron,
Knowing how Lori believes she would not have posted the following that Marie did.


Out of body experiences are great ways to explore the unknown non-physical worlds. These experiences require a soul. These experiences can often put you in contact with spiritual forces and entities that can help you enhance your psychic skills, learn more about yourself and others, and expand your awareness of the universe. Many first out of body experiences dramatically change the individual's perception of the world and of life and death, and bring about a kind of comfort, with knowledge that anything is possible in the universe.

Marie,
That was not meant to be offensive to you.

Boris..
just refining my theory.

As I mentioned in my last post, the energy exists within and without everything.'Alive' or 'dead'.
It is just that it is only able to be sensed vaguely by some sentient lifeforms.

I now think that the invisible energy is the first thing that filled the void that subsequently became the (expanding) universe. Much like the initial wide blast you notice when an atom bomb explodes.
The hot winds of the blast are the first thing that hits the area surrounding a target, right?

Well in the case of our universe, I 'just think' that the space it occupies is finite because eventually the universe will fall in on itself (like a spring)and become the size of John Holmes' balls again, probably.
Therefore that initial blast is still reverbarating within the max defined boundaries of the universe (which it knows).

Its function is to process and compute every single bit of information that it is absolutely able to extract from anything and everything. It is the intelligence and wisdom of the universe itself.

I think its real time purpose which is relevant to all lifeforms on our planet is to somehow provide evolutionary cues to their DNA or what have you.
Its ultimate purpose is probably to redesign the physics of the next big bang to come after the contraction of the universe.
But it probably has many other properties as well.

Oh, and Boris dont't forget that there is no possible way we can measure this energy (at this m i t ) so all you need is to accept that it just may be possible. For my ideas to start making logical sense.

Unless you really want to prove that it is impossible for such an invisible energy to exist.

Originally posted by DaveW:
So what if we have a replicating algorithm that is computed by hand. Should we consider it to be alive?? Indeed, it can replicate itself given the proper environment (the people). I will assert that this system is indeed alive.


I would even be more audacious and claim that ideas that humans have are very much alive ! We could call them memes, they behave very much in the same way your average bacteria group behaves.
This very messageboard shows the clash of several of the larger and also older memes alive on this planet. Like there is christanity, scepticism, atheism. The memes are using us and the net as media to live !

One could argue that the net provides a very nutricious environment because of all the minds that are interconnected with it. This means that it is in the interest of the memes that discussions like these don't get resolved because if a synthesis is achived, two or more memes are unified into one thus destroying the previous ones.
The net is actually a zoo of memes feeding on our inputs and struggeling for their place.

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"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants."
Isaac Newton

Boris~

Mmm,hmm. (nodding, trying to look wise) :)

Uhhh, lesse, guess I should start at the beginning, huh? Thanx for the coffee, I always seem to be fighting off a caffeine headache. ;)

Viruses - my feeling is that a virus is still not "alive", even when they are active in a body. I dunno, what's the scientific take on that, are they considered alive?? I would say that they are animated, yet not alive, like a furby or something.

When a bacteria is in it's spore form, I would still say it's alive. A bear hibernating is still alive too. I realize the shut-down for a bacteria is much more extreme than the hibernation of a mammal, but to me they seem similar in nature. Ditto for a frozen frog - I betcha when that frog is thawed, he's still the same frog he was before hand (excepting any damage that may have occured), he would retain his same sense of self - assuming frogs are aware of self, that is.

You're right, I don't know 100% how a human works, but I AM a human, so I feel at leat a little bit qualified to make assumptions about my own nature. Androids, on the other hand, are a complete mystery to me. Even if the android does behave in a fashion that would make it impossible to tell it from a human without disecting it, I would still have to assume that whatever soul is posesses is different from mine. I guess I don't have any solid scientific proof for any of this, so I doubt I can ever convince you, Boris. :) That's okay though, the world needs skeptics like you.

You're right, I don't think we can resolve this without getting a solid definition of life. Yes, I think the soul is the life in us. Anything that is alive, has a soul, so defining "life" would (for me anyway) most likely define the "soul" as well.

Boris, what's your definition of life? Or the scientific one, if yours differs.

Tiassa~

I've seen/heard/read about/participated in the whole "is fire alive" debate too. The answer I've come up with so far is - it's not life in the same form we are, but if you broaden your definition, perhaps it is another type of life. (What a cop-out answer, huh?) Boris' android might be yet another type. I don't know, this kinda makes "life" into an arbitrary designation, though. Is our kind of life the only kind there is? (organic bodies) What about a star - it goes through a "life" too. Could that be yet another type of life-form? I don't know, I'm just guessing, but I have a feeling it could be included as well. Perhaps these are forms with a soul and no cognition - but that's getting way out there, and maybe if I dropped some acid I could get some insights there. :) (Hey Boris - how do you feel about hallucinogenic drugs and the epiphanies one might experience while under the influence? Bogus crap born of worthless drugs, or possible true insights? You're the brain expert, I thought you might have something to say on that one. Off-topic, but what the hey.)

Boris

What is convenient and what is reasonable? Everyone has different opinions on this. What is art? Let’s say painting or music. Is it convenient, is it reasonable? What inspires mankind to create? There is no survival benefit in art. Art is not cold and loveless. Yet it is reasonable. The senses enjoy art. It plays a huge part in the human arena. But is music convenient to a deaf person? Is a painting convenient to a blind person. What is convenient to a deaf, dumb and blind person? Yet art is not a fantasy. You see what may be reasonable to you, may also be reasonable to me. Your reasonable view of the Universe equates to my reasonable view of the Universe as inspired by a creative force. My reasonable self cannot and will not believe that the incredible magnificence of our vast and intricate Universe was a fluke. That an inanimate spark in the primordial sludge triggered the complicated structure of my DNA. That is an unreasonable assumption.

Is an important aspect of human emotional response survival? If the answer to this is yes, then on the love front, what is it in me that will give my life to save my son? Love? Not enjoyable, but definitely real. Maybe this explains love`s true nature? If love were a bunch of neurones, the neurones that control survival would win the day. Is this the intervention of what may be called the soul? It`s like taking an aeroplane off autopilot to avert a collision.

Religion and faith do not need to present a convincing case to the world at large. Only to the individual in question. And I would most definitely agree that fables are part and parcel of all major world religions. Yet within all off them, is truth. Nothing comes out of nothing. In all of man`s stories and myths are the fingerprints of truth. It`s up to the individual to discern the truth and to find the hope and purpose of his existance. That is what is reasonable to each and everyone of us.

And the last thing, please prove who is young and naïve when everything is so relevant on a very personal level.

Cheers.

MC--

I would believe that stars are integral, interactive parts of the living organism of the Universe, but they--as fire--escape my own definition of life, as includes humans. Of course, when the Universe is one, will the stars and spent matchsticks be snickering in the corner about how humans thought that organic life was the only real life? (I'm always prepared--or so I would claim--for that kind of a reality.)

I'll point you to A Wrinkle in Time (Madeline L'Engel), which was wildly popular in my corner of spacetime, and still seems to affect the generation at least a little bit. But that's probably the reason so many people I know would acknowledge the idea that objects in the Universe have the theoretic potential to be "alive".

Also--Universe. Universe. As compared to Diverse. Just curious if our recognition of diversity within the Universe is a human convention. After all, if it's all one, then it could be the Magical Mystery Twinkie that is our universe truly is one, creme filling and all.

The Universe is a Joke of the Particular at the expense of the General. --Frater Perdurabo

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

PS--re: hallucinogens--if we cancel hallucinogens, there goes half the prophets, saints, and otherwise of history. While hallucinogens, per se probably play both a greater and lesser role in prophecy or hagiography than we generally acknowledge, it's worth noting that a number of "Saints" came to God after hallucinating while recovering from wounds. Robert Bellarmine, for whom my high school was named, was a pirate and rapist before his wounds reduced him to hallucinations while recovering in a room which tradition notes was empty, save for a bed, nightstand, Bible, and cruicifix; his only human contact during his recovery was with nuns.

:D

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The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur eggs was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet. (Good Omens, Gaiman & Pratchett)

RETRACTION

In my previous post I had alluded to the nefarious aspects of one Saint Robert Bellarmine. I cannot verify this story, which is not so much apocryphal as simply lost amid details I never cared to remember until too late. I have some research to do, and for the sake of my silly ego, I will note whether I ever do located the tales of the pirate Saints. In the meantime, I can only offer my apologies for the misinformation of the previous post.

In light of the continuing Spring Training for Major League Baseball, though, I might arrogantly assert that I'm closer to the right call than any of the umpires will be this year. (Aaaah ... a season without Richie Garcia; perhaps there is a god.) ;)

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

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The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur eggs was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet. (Good Omens, Gaiman & Pratchett)

Correction

From http://www.newadvent.org ; the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits:


In 1517 a change for the better seems to have taken place; Velásquez died and Ignatius took service in the army. The turning-point of his life came in 1521. While the French were besieging the citadel of Pampeluna, a cannon ball, passing between Ignatius' legs, tore open the left calf. and broke the right shin (Whit-Tuesday, 20 May, 1521). With his fall the garrison lost heart and surrendered, but he was well treated by the French and carried on a litter to Loyola, where his leg had to be rebroken and reset, and afterwards a protruding end of the bone was sawn off, and the limb, having been shortened by clumsy setting, was stretched out by weights. All these pains were undergone voluntarily, without uttering a cry or submitting to be bound. But the pain and weakness which followed were so great that the patient began to fail and sink. On the eve of Sts. Peter and Paul, however, a turn for the better took place, and he threw off his fever.

There is evidence, in Ignatius' own confessions, to a grievous history of sin, but this is not the relevant point.

The story, as taught at my Catholic high school was that, during his recovery from the cannon-blast, Ignatius received visions; I reassert the nature of his recovery site which I originally (and erroneously) attributed to events in the life of Saint Robert Bellarmine.

But it all goes toward hallucinations.

My apologies for this mess of corrections, and any and all confusion it causes.

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

------------------
The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur eggs was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet. (Good Omens, Gaiman & Pratchett)

Tony, (sorry guys just read around this)
I haven't ignored the posts -- I've been pretty ill, the last time I posted that day I got a migrane and I still have it. Its worse then I've ever had it....I'm due to be probed and zapped by machines of all kinds....see what happens I guess.

WRX ha?, I liked them at first but I like my car better, (rice bubble -- not really), its a 300ZX Twin turbo. I LOVE this car, its eats WRX's up pretty quickly so I have lost alot of respect for subaru.

Sandgate.....I know it well my wife is sandgate born and bred. Infact she was living at Braken Ridge when we met. I haven't surfed there before even after cyclones I believe its bad with sea lice...itchy (found out on a jet ski), my dog loves it though.


Again sorry guys I didn't want tony to think I'm ignoring him.

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work to LIVE...don't live to WORK.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Rambler:
I've been pretty ill, the last time I posted that day I got a migrane and I still have it. Its worse then I've ever had it....I'm due to be probed and zapped by machines of all kinds....see what happens I guess.


Migranes, probed and zapped, ouch. Sounds almost like alien abduction :D .

Hey at the risk of sounding like a nutcase let me know if its anything serious. I know your not a believer in what I believe but I'll send up a smoke signal for ya. (prayer)

300ZX Twin turbo, Hey I've driven that car!! (on my brothers playstation only). That's a pretty specy machine and I can see why it would eat a stock stannard WRX.

So your girl is from sandgate hey, here name wouldn't be Donna by any chance? I went to Bracken Ridge primary in year one, we lived in Bald Hills at that time before we went to Shorncliffe. Yeah I know about the sea lice thing, we used to swim off the end of the long jetty in the deeper water with the sharks to get away from the lice. Go figure? Young and dumb I guess. Hey is that jetty still there?

Anyways I got real work to do so its time to scoot.

Allcare

H2o


Boris,

I haven't finished with the Dino dude VW thing but am short on time to respond.

Tiassa,

I haven't forgoten about sundry mummblings and will post soon.

Allcare guys,

H2o

Tony,
Thanks for the smoke signal, I may need it, the Doc wants me to get a CT scan and see what turns up, theres talk of MRI -- which freaked me out, they don't usually do that unless its serious...cost I guess. So I'm waiting to see whats wrong with my melon.

The jetty is still there, its been fixed up and painted. I tried to fish off there once and only managed to get a toadie -- ugly mofo's I tell ya. Ever been for a surf on the surf side of Morton Isl. ? Now thats some kick arse surf, plenty of sharks too and the whole 30+ km of beach are unpatroled so it freaks me out but when in rome........

My wifes name is Katrina, she's 23....and I don't know what primary school she went to, I do know she attended Sandgate High though, finished in 93.


p.s. I've been up against alot of WRX's (every man and his dog has one in QLD) and the only time I got beat was in the rain (4WD awsome traction) I just sat there spinning my rear wheels through 1st - 5th gear...every gear spinning...not impressed, I only have high flow filter, exhaust and ECU mods..pretty small gives me about 400 ponnies at the rear wheels. The WRX STI models are cool, carbon fibre on most panels, and big turbo -- 80 grand though (over priced).
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work to LIVE...don't live to WORK.

[This message has been edited by Rambler (edited March 19, 2000).]

Rambler,

Fully equiped Ram Man with the slightly rotten melon. To much digital time?? Lets hope and pray its nothin serious on the CT or MRI. Like I said I'm a believer and the God I believe in is pretty big so keep me posted OK. (PS not trying to preach at you, just letting you know He and me both care).

Well the jetty was way overdue for a lick of paint, I suppose they still start the Boxing day boat races from her? Brisy to ??? Toadies, man alive I haven't heard them called that for a spell. All the Westies call them Blowies and no one knows what the heck I'm talkin about when I say Toadies. (and for everyone else out there they are little to large puffer fish, the kind the Jap's put in their soup and then get rushed to hospital for).

Morton Isl. such wonderful childhood memories. Yeh like the one where a 17ft Great White was swiming about 7ft behind me near the wrecks just up from Tangalooma. Never surfed there and somehow don't think I'd have the guts to try.

Katrina, she's 23....No don't know her, way young for my school years but she grew up in a good town. I finished up at Shorncliffe in year 7 and went down to Newcastle NSW after that, I think it was in 78 or there abouts.

Quote:
WRX STI models are cool, carbon fibre on most panels, and big turbo -- 80 grand though (over priced).

OVER PRICED?? compared to what? A Porsch name tag? Half the $'s and just as much fun, but I'll keep dreaming. Traction = amazing, three ticks for that but they don't got 400 ponies. Whiplash machines, ouch.

Keep me posted on the melon OK.

Allcare

Tony H2o

Tony,
I just got a call regarding the CT scan. All is clear. I have a follow up appointment with a neurologist but it appears there is nothing out of the ordinary (other then a sore head, go figure). Whatever signals you sent must have worked so with all sincerity I thank you for your concern. It humbles me to know someone I have never spoken to in person would care to know what happens to me. There's hope for this species yet.

Ram Man that is excellent news!!!! WHAAAHOOO!!! :D :D :D

See smoke signals do work, but hey it could also have been nothing in the first place.

So did they give any hint as to what made the melon feel like it was going to explode?

Humbled, hey we should all visit that spot a lot. Yeah now the preachy bit..... God does care and its His love that I have found and experienced that motivates me to let others know the same. OK exit preachy mode. :D

SSSSSSMOKIN.................

Stay healthy and get spiritualy fit.

Allcare

Tony H2o

Tab,

Well, if you are going to call it a theory, then you ought to come up with a way to test it. Otherwise, it doesn't deserve the name (and discussing it in useful ways becomes sort of increasingly hard, and ultimately pointless, as it gets increasingly abstract in reponse to challenges.)

(OT: with that atom blast thing, regardless of what analogy you were trying to make, but you didn't get it right. The first thing that hits you is the flood of radiation (simultaneously of the visible, invisible, and ionizing varieties) that sort of makes a pincussion out of your body, melts your hair and clothes into your skin, sets everything on fire, and in general gives you a heck of a suntan. The pressure shockwaves arrive next. The last thing to arrive is the radioactive dust (the fallout). Anyway -- just thought I'd educate the masses :))

As to the finite space, it depends on what you mean by "finite". Like, for example, the surface of a sphere has finite area, but no boundaries. The <u>volume</u> of spacetime is finite, at least according to modern cosmology -- as are the amounts of matter/energy contained in the volume. The volume is changing, and it will either grow forever, or shrink back to a mathematical point (with the latest evidence hinting at the former outcome.)



Its function is to process and compute every single bit of information that it is absolutely able to extract from anything and everything. It is the intelligence and wisdom of the universe itself.


Something strikes me as rather strange here. Since this cosmic intelligence is capable of computation, why does it need the matter and energy to arrive at any answers? It could just as easily compute using its own computational properties -- which makes matter/energy completely redundant and unnecessary.

Something else that's rather strange: your hypothetical energy is compressable, since you are saying that it used to be infinitely compressed together with spacetime prior to the Big Bang. This is bizarre, since your energy is not supposed to be affected by spacetime. I mean, presumably, it doesn't get sucked into and destroyed inside black holes. It circumvents the structure of spacetime by instantaneously zipping around across arbitrary distances (I mean, this "energy" is literally capable of infinite speed!). But most paradoxical, it fill the spacetime with 100% density. I mean, in your model there is a bit of this super-intelligent "thing" for every mathematical point in the volume of spacetime! And, you'd still have to explain how such a one-to-one correspondence is maintained in view of the fact that the actual volume of spacetime is growing! (I mean, where's the new "energy" coming from to cover the new volume produced by the expansion?)

And yet something else that's strange. Your "energy" would have to be capable of quantum measurement without affecting the quantum states -- thus violating the laws of quantum mechanics -- or else it would not be capable of measuring anything at the quantum (or even atomic, or even molecular) scale, which would make it ignorant of the overwhelmingly vast majority of events in this universe (it would also conflict with your assertion that this "energy" interacts with DNA. Not to mention that evolution makes perfect sense with no need for mysterious energies.)



------------------
I am; therefore I think.

MoonCat,



Viruses - my feeling is that a virus is still not "alive", even when they are active in a body. I dunno, what's the scientific take on that, are they considered alive?? I would say that they are animated, yet not alive, like a furby or something.


Well first, there is no scientific take on what it means to be "alive" -- that question is reserved for philosophy. Or, perhaps, maybe I should say that there is a scientific take -- but it basically says that life is merely a complex physical process that exhibits certain properties (information processing and reproduction come to mind.)

So fine, viruses are not alive; they are simply animated. But then what about bacteria? All a bacterium is, is a virus with a few more bells and whistles added on (like a cell wall, for example). Bacteria are purely chemical in their function. In fact, if a complete list of all chemicals involved in a minimalist viable bacterium is made (or, I should rather say "when"), it will be possible to completely simulate a bacterium on a computer, or to design and construct new bacteria like erector models, starting from atoms. For example, some of those nanobacteria are so tiny that they don't have much complexity to speak of -- just a piece of DNA (or is it RNA? --DaveW?) and a few proteins wrapped up in a wall of lipids. Bacteria are totally "dead" when not put into a favorable environment (remember that little bit of discussion we had with DaveW), just like viruses are outside of hosts. So, why should a bacterium be considered any more alive than a virus (conversely, why should a virus be considered any less alive than a bacterium?)

"Ditto for a frozen frog - I betcha when that frog is thawed, he's still the same frog he was before hand (excepting any damage that may have occured), he would retain his same sense of self - assuming frogs are aware of self, that is." Well, a virus is still the same virus when reintroduced into a host cell. And I hardly think frogs are aware of self -- any more, that is, than are viruses.



You're right, I don't know 100% how a human works, but I AM a human, so I feel at leat a little bit qualified to make assumptions about my own nature. Androids, on the other hand, are a complete mystery to me. Even if the android does behave in a fashion that would make it impossible to tell it from a human without disecting it, I would still have to assume that whatever soul is posesses is different from mine.


But you feel qualified to judge that a bacterium has a soul? Do you really think that you have more in common with a bacterium than with a sentient, human-like android -- with the commonality enabling you to judge presense or absense of a soul? Just what kind of commonality do you have in mind here? Are you saying that in order to have a soul, things must be based on carbon chemistry and possess genes?



Boris, what's your definition of life? Or the scientific one, if yours differs.


Well, as I said, there is really no such scientific discipline as the study of the nature of life vs. nonlife. And I believe I've already stated my views. Yes, in my book viruses are alive -- as are sufficiently functional robots, as are sufficiently functional programs, and as even are ideas (as suggested by Plato on another thread.)

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I am; therefore I think.

Stretch,

What is convenient and what is reasonable? Well, I guess the answer depends on what you imply by "reasonable". In this context, and in my usage, "reasonable" would imply 1) logically consistent, 2) in agreement with all replicable and impartial observations, and 3) arrived at in a reasonable way (notice the recursion here). Under such a schema, your creationist view is not reasonable for two reasons (forgive the horrible pun.) 1) it is not logically consistent (see <A HREF="http://www.exosci.com/ubb/Forum8/HTML/000175.html">Contradictions</A>), 2) it has not been arrived at in a reasonable way.



My reasonable self cannot and will not believe that the incredible magnificence of our vast and intricate Universe was a fluke. That an inanimate spark in the primordial sludge triggered the complicated structure of my DNA. That is an unreasonable assumption.


Why do you say "magnificence"? If the universe was different in any way, would it be any less "magnificent"?

Everything in the world is animate. Matter/energy is animate. It's just normally not what we would call alive (with the rare exceptions of living entities). And no, it is not a reasonable assumption that DNA was formed in a fluke; current theories posit that life started either as a single self-reproducing molecule, or a loose assemblage of mutually-reproducing molecules (but either way, much more simple, and much less vulnerable, ones than DNA). DNA and other complex structures evolved from those simpler processes, just as more complex lifeforms evolved from the simpler ones.

You can say that the universe is a "fluke" under my view, but I challenge such an evaluation based on the Anthropic Principle. Suppose the universe was even a tiniest bit different -- then either you and I would find it equally magnificent, or you and I wouldn't exist to make such an evaluation. Who is to say that other universes haven't existed, don't exist, or won't exist, where either of the two alternatives is the case?

Btw, if you want to continue this line of discussion, may I suggest Evolution vs. Creation thread (I don't like tangents if I can help it)?



Is an important aspect of human emotional response survival? If the answer to this is yes, then on the love front, what is it in me that will give my life to save my son? Love? Not enjoyable, but definitely real. Maybe this explains love`s true nature? If love were a bunch of neurones, the neurones that control survival would win the day. Is this the intervention of what may be called the soul? It`s like taking an aeroplane off autopilot to avert a collision.


Altruism is not a behavior unique to humans. In fact, a great many social species exhibit it. It is especially frequent when it comes to surrendering one's life, or one's comfort, or one's reproductive rights, to close kin so as to enable the kin's survival. Here, the altruistic behavior is in fact genetically very selfish -- since your close kin carries a large share of your own genes, and thus by helping your kin survive, you help your genome propagate (which is probably one of the primary benefits of social grouping in animals, and the reason it evolved in the first place.)



Religion and faith do not need to present a convincing case to the world at large. Only to the individual in question.


But the individual in question does not necessarily behave in a reasonable manner when he or she buys into the particular religion or faith. Nor is it apriori reasonable, at least in my book, to even entertain religion.

A psychosis may not seem like a reasonable state of mind to a normal individual. However, psychosis is perfectly normal to a psychotic.



And I would most definitely agree that fables are part and parcel of all major world religions. Yet within all off them, is truth. Nothing comes out of nothing.


And the truth in fables, when there is any, applies only to this the material world of ours. And if nothing comes out of nothing, then I guess your god is nothing too.



And the last thing, please prove who is young and naïve when everything is so relevant on a very personal level.


Reality is not personal. The sun shines equally both on you and me, regardless of our beliefs. The same applies to evolution and many other things. If you have a personal problem with reality, then I suggest you take it up with your imaginary friend.

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I am; therefore I think.

[This message has been edited by Boris (edited March 27, 2000).]

Hi all,

Boris, I have a question for you. What do you believe will become of YOU when you die?


Also in your opinion/s (not just directed at boris) if we were to build/grow all the organs etc to build a human being and then stitched it all up in the skin which we also grew (everything in its place), give the heart a jolt, do you believe that body would come to life? Would that body all of a sudden become aware of itself, intelligent and human????? I for one don't believe it would we could probably call it clinicaly alive but I don't think that just getting the chemistry right is enough to make life of any kind....the best we can do is get the building blocks (DNA) and manipulate them but we can't 'breath' life into chemistry. Maybe that key ingredient is the elusive unmeasurable entity we call our soul??? and maybe not. I don't have an opinion about god since I've come here......am in the process of making my mind up (for the millionth time), but I know that we can marvel at science and its ability to explain but here is where it fails, Boris has even said there is no scientific description of what constitutes life (or words to that effect -- I don't presume to put words in your mouth or at your fingers :) ). So what IS life it certainly isn't carbon based chemistry alone....or else we could create it, or at the very least bring a dead man back to life, after all we know the chemistry involved don't we?


Which brings me to my next question...although we cannot synthesis/create life out of fundamental ingredients, BUT all we need to set the wheels of life creation in motion is a single cell, then do you good people believe that a project like the human genome mapping will ever identify the ingredient which turns organic chemistry into life. Wheather that ingredient is a single gene, part of a gene or an interaction between genes. To make this question clearer lets look at a developing human embrio (excuse my spelling I'm hopless when it comes to spelling and grammer) it starts as a cell, divideds and divides until it starts to resemble a complex form....at some stage it becomes aware of itself, it becomes alive and human.....do you guys think science will ever identify the mechanism involved and hence be able to reproduce it? I don't want any cloning examples....cloning has ALL the necessary ingredients in the cell you start with....I'm talking about taking all those ingredients and making life purley from our scientific understanding of what is needed to create it, like reproducing a well known naturally occuring compound, or alloy etc....

[This message has been edited by Rambler (edited March 27, 2000).]

Boris,

Hey man, this is mental gymnastics, and I think I pulled a muscle! I`ve just written a long response to your context of “reasonable” within a creationist framework. But I have deleted it, as I concede, that even though I got close (in my opinion), I could not satisfy your argument 100%! But I still have some points to make, even though they might seem a bit abstract. BTW I don`t support at all the Creationist view, that the Universe is roughly 6000 years old! My view is entirely only that a creative force is implicated in the manifestation of our Universe.

Magnificent Universe?

I simply mean that, knowing the width and breadth, and incredible scale of the known universe, and even the simple visual beauty of images of galaxies etc, engenders in me a sense of the awesome, which I equate to magnificence. We could never know how it would be if the Universe were different. And, say I accept at this point that life started as a single self-reproducing molecule, or a loose assemblage of mutually reproducing molecules, I still need to question what the spark was that started this process! What … at that pivotal point made that molecule self reproduce? I can understand all the processes that came after! And I find it totally acceptable that ours may not be in the first, the last, or the only universe in existence. Or for that matter, that ours is the first, the last, or the only reality in existence.

The person buying into whatever religion or faith is still behaving in a reasonable manner – in their book. Which is what is I said. It is their conscience decision.

As far as fables and myths go, there is a vast body of myths from all cultures, and a lot of them are concerned with the unseen, the non-material, and the question of creation. Why these inclusions? Who/What started this ball of thought rolling! (the unknown is not an answer) Bearing in mind our physical locality on Earth, this was/is a logical framework to represent/elucidate these myths. Nothing comes out of nothing – this is an obvious loop-the-loop! If it were not for my parents, I would not be here. If it were not for my grandparents, my parents would not be here. Ad infinitum … does this process recede into the mists of time to that extra bright little molecule that somehow managed to replicate him/her-self? Or was there an as yet incomprehensible act of intent?

Boris, reality is personal. The sun may shine on me, but my psychotic friend sees the sun as the eye of god burning into his cranium! I have no problem with my reality, I revel in it. Yet no-one could ever share it from my exact perspective. I also (not yet) do not have an imaginary friend. I know what you are implying, but the God of my understanding has yet to reveal Himself to me in a tangible sense. What sets me apart is my belief that this is entirely possible!

“His thoughts became blind. And, having expelled his power - that is, the blasphemy he had spoken - he pursued it down to chaos and the abyss, his mother, at the instigation of Pistis Sophia. And she established each of his offspring in conformity with its power - after the pattern of the realms that are above, for by starting from the invisible world the visible world was invented.”


Take care

Boris,
firstly a little (apt)quote I read on a free coffee mug gift, I received from amazon.com this morning!!

If the idea is not at first absurd, then there is no hope for it.
A. Einstein

Finally, just a little analogy for my (non) theory (what's another word for a half baked idea that you can't really explain but which goes to making some sense to you?), because I can't really argue with your science:

Imagine a sentient underwater creature which is forced to live in the depths of the ocean by it's own physical properties.
The creature knows almost all there is to know about himself and his environment but knows nothing about dry land or air because it would be impossible for him to even imagine the probability of such dimensions.
One of the fundamental things he doesn't know
is that, the oxygen which he unwittingly extracts with his gills from the water to sustain him, can and does exist in these other dimensions, is constantly recycled there and gives life to every aerobic lifeform. Even the ones he cannot even imagine exist.

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Oh my God it's the funky shit!!!

Hello again, Boris!

Okay, lemme start here:

"But you feel qualified to judge that a bacterium has a soul? Do you really think that you have more in common with a bacterium than with a sentient, human-like android -- with the commonality enabling you to judge presense or absense of a soul? Just what kind of commonality do you have in mind here? Are you saying that in order to have a soul, things must be based on carbon chemistry and possess genes?"

Yes, I do think I have more in common with a bacterium than I would with a sentient android as far as source and type go. I would certainally have much more interesting conversations with such an android than I would with a speck of goo, and on a mental level I would sure HOPE to be closer to the android than to the bacterium, but the bacterium and I share something that an android never will - a common lineage. If you follow my ancestry and that of the bacterium back far enough, we sprang from the same stuff. No matter how far back you trace my ancestry and that of the androids, you won't find that. So as far as the nature of the life form, yeah, I do feel "more" qualified to make guesses about bacteria than I do about androids. Especially since androids don't actually exist yet! Now, whether or not my guesses are even close to right or not, that's a different story. :)

Going backwards...bacterium are just snazzy viruses. Okay. So? So are we, right? To a greater degree, definitely, but we're just built out of those same elements and molecules too.

To my mind, there's going to be a line drawn somewhere between animate organic 'things' and animate organic 'beings'. Organisms above this line are alive, organisms below this line are not. Are you just objecting to where I'm drawing the line? Perhaps I don't know enough about biology to draw the line, but I feel there is a line there somewhere.

Comparing the "soul" of a bacterium to the "soul" of a human might be like comparing a spark to a firework display, but they're still essentially the same thing. The difference is a matter of complexity, just like the main differences between my physical body and that of the bacterium is a matter of complexity - like I said, we're built out of the same blocks. Somewhere in this spectrum there is going to be a point where the organism is just too simple to be considered alive. (Maybe it's better if I stick to generic terms? I'm no biologist.) And android is built out of *most* of the same elements too, I guess, but not in quite the same way that I or a bacterium is put together, and I'm sure there are molecules that would be found in an android's body that wouldn't appear in mine, and vice-versa.

Rambler,



Boris, I have a question for you. What do you believe will become of YOU when you die?


Have you ever blacked out? Well, if you have, you will know what I think will happen to me when I die. Just like a blackout -- only you never regain consciousness.



Would that body all of a sudden become aware of itself, intelligent and human?????


You don't seem to have read my first post on this thread. The body is not what makes us human; the brain is. (Before you launch into that debate, please do read the post in question; it does provide plentiful justification for the claim.)



So what IS life it certainly isn't carbon based chemistry alone....or else we could create it, or at the very least bring a dead man back to life, after all we know the chemistry involved don't we?


Well, there has been a lot of discussion on what life is and isn't on this thread, and I think most of us agree that life is not simply carbon based chemistry. As I currently view it, life is a set of processes that processes, collects, and maintains information, and reproduces.

And no, we don't know the chemistry involved -- we don't even have a complete genome yet. I'd say you are ahead of science by a few decades at least, and likely by a century or two.

Finally, knowing how something works doesn't necessarily enable you to fix it when it breaks. For example, you may know how an atomic bomb works -- but good luck reassembling it into its prior working condition after it explodes; it would be far simpler just to build a new one from scratch.



... at some stage it becomes aware of itself, it becomes alive and human.....do you guys think science will ever identify the mechanism involved and hence be able to reproduce it?


I don't think it's correct to think of the quality of life as being resultant of some single gene or mechanism. Life is a process, and is only defined as a process -- not as any of that process' parts.

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I am; therefore I think.

Stretch,



And, say I accept at this point that life started as a single self-reproducing molecule, or a loose assemblage of mutually reproducing molecules, I still need to question what the spark was that started this process! What … at that pivotal point made that molecule self reproduce?


Well, that's a simple question to answer: that molecule's chemical properties combined with the properties of its environment made it self-reproduce. Molecules don't react for a reason; chemical reactions merely take an unstable and low-entropy situation, and convert it to a stable, high-entropy situation. It's all about quantum mechanics and thermodynamics; molecules behave in fixed ways because they are driven by fixed laws. The pivotal point is not in the moment at which the molecule reproduced for the first time; the pivotal point is the point at which the molecule was first formed (in coincidence with a favorable reproductive environment, that is.)

Also, I don't really think it's appropriate to search for the "spark that started the process" -- because in such a search you will trace back the chain of events right to the very first instant of the Big Bang. Then, you will have to ask yourself what sparked the Bang to begin with -- and that's where idle speculation can't help but set in. It's not very fruitful to engage in armchair philosophy of that sort; however what is fruitful, is to realize that no mysterious forces play games with the matter and energy of the universe -- other than the mysterious (yet quite unintelligent and rather mechanical) forces to which physical laws owe their definition.



As far as fables and myths go, there is a vast body of myths from all cultures, and a lot of them are concerned with the unseen, the non-material, and the question of creation. Why these inclusions? Who/What started this ball of thought rolling! (the unknown is not an answer)


So -- would you care to explain why "the unknown is not an answer"?



Nothing comes out of nothing – this is an obvious loop-the-loop! If it were not for my parents, I would not be here. If it were not for my grandparents, my parents would not be here. Ad infinitum …


This is only true within the universe we know, where inertia ensures that everything indeed has an origin. It's not necessary that such reasoning be applicable to any realities subsuming ours. Hence, for all we know our universe could indeed have come out of nowhere, and sprang from nothing. In either case, the danger of searching for original intent is that you resolve nothing -- if the original intent was God's, then whose original intent was God?



Boris, reality is personal. The sun may shine on me, but my psychotic friend sees the sun as the eye of god burning into his cranium! I have no problem with my reality, I revel in it. Yet no-one could ever share it from my exact perspective.


Regardless of perceptions, reality is objective. If there is a wall in front of you and me, and I claim that I don't perceive it -- I will find out the hard way when I try to walk through it, and then you will be able to say "see, told you so." Perspectives can vary from great to misguided. Reality, however, will always be present to arbitrate among them, and enable those who are interested to compare their perspectives in terms of how close they come to seeing reality without distortion.



I know what you are implying, but the God of my understanding has yet to reveal Himself to me in a tangible sense. What sets me apart is my belief that this is entirely possible!


And the question is, why do you choose to subscribe to such a belief. Why do you choose the "God of my understanding" over an infinity of other possible gods? Why do you need to believe in a God at all? Is it reasonable of you to entertain such things, or are you being irrational? Are you driven by a yearning for knowledge, or by personal insecurities?

<hr>

And anyway, what do you think of my counterarguments against feasibility or existence of souls? (Yes, that horribly long message at the beginning of this thread...) How do you construe a soul that would withstand all of the challenges I've leveled?

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I am; therefore I think.

Tab,



If the idea is not at first absurd, then there is no hope for it.
A. Einstein


Ah, but what are we to regard as absurd, and what are we to discount as merely impossible? Einstein's ideas may have been absurd in his day, but they were self-consistent. Your "theory", on the other hand, has yet to become a clean story.

My views may seem absurd to you. Does that mean that there is hope for them, then?



what's another word for a half baked idea that you can't really explain but which goes to making some sense to you?


Well, that's exactly what I would call it -- a half-baked idea. Or maybe, just "idea" for short.

As to your fishy analogy ( ;)), there is no argument that we do not know everything. However, that's no excuse to turn away in dissatisfaction from what we do know.

------------------
I am; therefore I think.

MoonCat,



... but the bacterium and I share something that an android never will - a common lineage.


Oh? But all three of you are made of the same stuff, which was cooked in the same set of stars, and coalesced into the same solar system. And if you consider yourself to be a descendant of bacteria, then why not consider the android to be a descendant of you?



Going backwards...bacterium are just snazzy viruses. Okay. So? So are we, right? To a greater degree, definitely, but we're just built out of those same elements and molecules too.


Well, yes indeed, that's my argument precisely. Glad to see you understand where I'm trying to go with all of this...



To my mind, there's going to be a line drawn somewhere between animate organic 'things' and animate organic 'beings'. Organisms above this line are alive, organisms below this line are not. Are you just objecting to where I'm drawing the line? Perhaps I don't know enough about biology to draw the line, but I feel there is a line there somewhere.


Well, first of all it's a bit odd to call something an organism when it's not alive... But besides picking on your language, I object not to just where you draw the line, but that you draw the line at all. <u>There is no line.</u> And the more biology you learn, the more clearly you will understand that.

Life is a process that exhibits certain properties; it is not an organism, it is not a particular chemical composition, it is not something that's necessarily terrestrial, or even directly composed out of atoms. Life is a special kind of process in the same way that the operating system in your computer is a special kind of process -- each possess their distinguishing attributes, but either can potentially occur in different kinds hardware, under different conditions, and even possessing some differing surface features across incarnations. Life is a process in the same way that digestion is a process, or that oxidation is a process, or that convection is a process. Life is just a little more complicated and abstract as a process than most of the other processes we normally encounter -- and thus many people have difficulty understanding that life is only different in degree, not in kind.

------------------
I am; therefore I think.

Dogs wag their tails for hours after their dead I'm tired of this conversation let's talk about something else I'm going home!!!

DR. Gary Schwartz Author of the Book: "The Living Energy Universe" : Dr. Schwartz believes that the consciousness survives death. Gary E.R. Schwartz, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology, medicine neurology, psychiatry, and surgery at the University of Arizona; director of the UA Human Energy Systems Laboratory; and director of the Bioenergy Core at the UA Pediatric Alternative Medicine Research Center. Dr. Schwartz has published more than 300 scientific papers, including six paper in the journal Science, co-edited 11 academic books, and written, "The Living Energy Universe" and "Discovering the Living Soul" with his research partner and wife Linda Russek, Ph.D. http://www.livingenergyuniverse.com

Time, the web site you quote seems to be no more than a shop window. Unfortunately it did not offer any insights into its methods or proofs for its claims. A short excerpt from the book would have been a good idea to give some credance to the claims. As it is we have to take their word for it and buy the book.

On that basis this looks like a pure profit making venture that depends on the current 'new age' fashion to attract its dupes.

I'd like to see an independent review of the book before I buy.

And if they truly had a new scientific breakthrough that shows that souls exist then I am sure they would flaunt it everywhere they could. Since they don't emphasize anything in particular I can only assume they have nothing new. This sounds like nothing more than a call to faith, again.

Chris, as you said..."I can only assume they have nothing new. This sounds like nothing more than a call to faith, again."

I have no intention to glean any asumptions here, for to "ASS-U-ME" leaves way too much room for unpleasent unceartainty.
(Read between the lines.)

Look, I only presented something here for review, it is up to your own perceptions, to decipher the translation of the author's works, but if you take in account for the credentials & experience of the Author, it must lend to some degree of "Credibility" as to what the Author was intending to describe, in relation to finding the seat of the soul, and proof of it's existence, based on his research, and the colleages & associates delegated to assist with this research, and it's findings.

How do you compete with that?
what credentials, and background experiences do you, or anyone else, have to offer up here, to lend support to research that counters this Authour's Research?

(Any Takers?)

Time,

Thanks for the references. I don't know if you are anti or pro this material and my comments were my impressions I received from the website and not aimed at you.

Most of the website is still under construction. Their first aim seems to be sell the book first. I.e. get money. Bad first impression.

A list of their papers and online documents would have been nice, but whatever. I couldn't find any links from his personal web page but I did find a number of other references to various research projects.

Here is one that looks interesting - http://www.vxm.com/link.conscsurviv.html

I cannot determine whether he is truly objective in his research or has a subjective philosophical mission. I must give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

As for me, I am certainly not qualified to judge the scientific merits of his work, but I beleive I can detect a charlatan when I meet one, and that is not my claim here.

This needs further review.

Take care
Cris