If there is a soul what does it do in an afterlife

We know the brain is needed for thinking, emotions, and memory so when the body dies and the soul moves to an eternal afterlife what would be its characteristics?

It would have no memory and hence no identity.

No ability to think, so the notion of "I think therefore I am" would not operate.

And no emotions.

So what useful things could be said about such an entity?

 

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This is too easy for a theist to answer. They can just invent an answer, like the brain is useless without the soul.

 

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Yes but is the soul useless without a brain.

 

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The bible doesn't descibe the afterlife as only a static fixed existence of all points at once eternity...

It in fact describes various dimensions where time still flows, just much more slowly,or faster, where the "children of God" are "quickened" to see the kingdom of God.
Heaven above may be right here so fast we can't perceive it like the air, Hell below so slow it's like solid rock....

Strange how many "heathen" religions pray to their gods they carved of stone.
When this tabernacle be dissolved, it's said we have one already waiting in one of these other dimensions.

Take the actual meaning of the words used in the bible like "everlasting" and "forever" ect....
You'll find they're not the same as "Eternity".

The "Heavens and Earth" to come may last a long time but still will someday pass away, and be replaced by a new "Heavens and Earth".
Look it up in the book of Revelations.

 

TheVisitor,

OK but that doesn't really address my questions. Although there was a theist here some years ago who had studied Revelations fairly closely and concluded that Heaven was where everyone who had qualified would be ressurected into perfect bodies in a new Eden like Earth. In which case the soul was something like a lifeforce only and couldn't do anything unless there was a physical body.

 

Cris

we know that the brain is required for corporeal existence - the exact nature of how we exist in a conscious state within the body (where does the sense of "I" come from, as indicated by descartes "I think therefore I am) is a matter of speculation

memory is a very perplexing thing to grasp - at the very least to say that the brain is the final last word in this regard cannot be said with full confidence by empiricism

“
"Brain research has shown that systems occupying the posterior convexity of the cerebral hemisphere are innvolved in organizing Brentano's duality. When the parietal lobe systems are injured, the patient may no longer feel the arm on th e side opposite the brain injury to be his own. One of my students who sufferred such an injury dubbed her arm "Alice" and stated "Alice doesn't live here any more". Despite the loss of belongingness, the arm routinely performs many tasks , such as bringing a cup of coffee to the person's mouth, much to the surprise of the person when she realizes what has happened. Damage further back in the convexity produces "blind sight". Here again the person can perform many rountine tasks that demand an optical input from the blind side, but the patient is unaware of, is blind to, the input. With an intact brain , we are aware of ourselves as "seers" and of what is being seen.

In these and similar instances, awareness of one's bodily self and the environment is impaired. "Alice" isn't any longer part of me; this blind-sighted optically guided behavious isn't "mine". From such observations one can infer that ordinarily these brain systems operate to allow awareness of a corporeal "me" to occur. When impairment takes place, the distinction in awareness between perceiver and perceived no longer exists - much as a colourblind person cannot differentiate between red and green. In the absence of difference between perceiver and perceived (hand and cup; eye and colour) neither of them exists.

My main idea is to show where the different viewpoints come from, and then to have not only just an ontological monism, but also an epistemological pluralism. And the ontological monism comes essentially from one's experience"
”
-Karl H Pribram

“

Pribram's holonomic model, developed in collaboration with quantum physicist David Bohm, theorizes that memory/information is stored not in cells, but rather in wave interference patterns. Pribram was drawn to this conclusion by two facts:

1. There are visual cortex response functions that correspond to Gabor functions, which in turn are related to hologram image functions.
2. Drastic lesions can be made in animal brains which reduce, but do not extinguish memories (training), as demonstrated by Karl Lashley in the 1920s.
”
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_H._Pribram

what you discern as the presence of emmotions or intelligence is actually the expression of these things through the corporeal body - if there is a realm of existence that is more subtle than the gross body (such as advocated with the soul) it stands to reason that it has the option of either expressing itself through a corporeal body (which would be apparent to current paradigms of empiricism) or through its own subtle nature (which would not be apparent to empricism)

First of all you have to determine that your ways of seeing are sufficient to determine a complete and holistic view of the phenomena you are referring to (like emmotions, intelligence, consciousness etc).
Regardless of what you do or do not believe, I think empiricism has a very difficult task ahead of it if it wants to see what it is seeing with (after all, empiricist conclusions are verified by the senses, which are corporeal)

 

Maybe this will be closer than my last explanation.
The bible records two separate creative acts of man in Genesis.
These aren't the same story being repeated.
Ever notice that?

The first was the creation of the "Soul man"....the second creation the fleshly bodies in this dimension to receive them.

This Soul is a piece of God from His own genes.
God is a spirit, so these are spirit too.

However these genes of God, or "theophanies" manifest in this dimension through man, but have physical substance in other dimensions....and is what "grows" to maturity when you're born again of the kingdom of God.
Paul went into great depth on this subject in the New Testament.

 

LG,

I don't think you actually answered any of the questions.

So how does a soul in an afterlife function without a physical brain? Does it have memory and can it think? And if so how does it do those things without a brain?

 

TheVisitor,

OK but why then do we have physical bodies at all. God doesn't appear to have one and if we are a piece of him why do we need a body?

 

Really? I'm shocked.

What LG isn't telling you is that he's in contact with the virtual particle ectoplasmic realm, as we speak. All of your questions can be answered by realizing that the quantum entanglement of virtual particle pairs can be extended to encompass an unlimited number of particle sets thus creating an aware and eternal ectoplasmic matrix that provides the structure for consciousness in the afterlife.

I thought this was all pretty obvious stuff.

 

Cris

I felt that you were jumping the gun by assuming that the soul required a brain . There is empirical evidence to suggest that the brain is not the final last word for such our sense of self (ie the mind, what to speak of the soul)- or even if you want to reject this, there is no empirical evidence that our current understandings of the brain is sufficient to explain all that is apparent with the mind/self.

the same way a person functions when their car breaks down - in other words the soul is the active principle that charges life - a body without a soul is just like a puppet without a hand

anything movement of a puppet can also be performed by the hand without the puppet

suppose a car with a limited turning space drove into a narrow laneway that made it impossible for it to turn around and for some reason reversing was not possible - if you asked how could the driving force behind the car (ie the driver, or in this case soul) get out of the laneway the answer is that they could just open the door and walk back where they had come from - in other word sthe restrictions of the vehicle (ie the body) do not affect the driver (soul)

 

They visit cemeteries and spooky houses...

 

Lg,

That doesn’t address the topic issues. You seem to be trying to answer questions from another debate. The questions here relate to how a soul functions. How does it do what you claim it does?

That doesn’t answer the question. How does a soul function? If the brain requires a soul how does the soul interact with and drive the brain?

That also doesn’t answer the question. Does a soul have memory and can it think and if so how does it do it?

Again that analogy doesn’t answer the question. How does a soul function without a brain?

 

nothing is useless.
As to were souls goes after death, to another life.

 

The souls of the courageous dead will be spirited away by the valkyries to feast before Odin or his wife every night, eating from a pig that regenerates the next evening, whilst they will fight, dye, and be reborn every day. This will end when the Gotterdamerung, the twilight of the Gods, comes with Ragnarok. Following such devestation, the world will be renewed under Baldur, son of Odin, and the men and Gods will live together. Following such, nothing is known.

 

-OR-...you can go to a land of mist and darkness, where only the cackle of Crom can be heard.

He'll send you dooms, not fortunes!

 

There is a soul, and there is also an immaterial mind (cittam). The soul is unchanging, eternal, inexhaustible, reality itself, Brahm.

The mind (cittam) contains all of our memories of previous lives, thoughts, etc....the brain is nothing without the mind, but the physical brain (which is part of the material body) determines how much of the mind we use.

There is no eternal afterlife, as nothing in the material world is eternal.

 

Once the earthly host becomes useless, the main server shifts the network connection to another new host in the netherworld and the client software is copied on to the new host alongwith old data. The new host continues the job of the old host. So goes the afterworld business continuity.

 

Vital,

How and where is all this information stored?

The afterlife is assumed to not be material so I’m not sure you are making a point here but it does seem to be in contradiction to your earlier statement of --

The speculation and assumption in the thread topic is of duality and that when the physical body dies the soul continues into an afterlife. Are you suggesting an alternate speculation?

 

Everneo,

Where do new new souls come from and how are they created? What is the influence of genetics and hereditary on this mechanism? How is it decided when to create a new soul for a host as opposed to a transfer? What would happen in a nuclear war where most of the world population is killed such that there would be far more dead souls floating around than hosts to take them.

Actually there are countless flaws with this idea, the list could go on.