Souls/spirits do not exist - hence religions are irrelevant.

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Cris

Cris

In search of Immortality
Valued Senior Member
For easy of notation I’ll use the term “soul” instead of saying soul/spirit each time.

There has been much discussion about the existence of gods and proof/evidence of such; however, such arguments are irrelevant if souls do not exist.

If a human has no such thing as a soul then who cares if a god exists or not? The worst that can happen to us would be that we would die (cease to exist). And the evidence so far is that everyone dies anyway, whether there is a soul or not.

So rather than try to prove or disprove the existence of a single super entity shouldn’t it be easier to prove the existence of at least one human soul since these are in the billions, and presumably much closer to home, i.e. we are all really souls.

If souls do not exist then ALL religions have no relevant basis.

My understanding is that there is no such thing as a soul since all cognitive functions, memories, emotions, feelings, thoughts, are all stored and generated by the brain. This I believe is confirmed through thousands of clinical studies where patients have suffered some degree of brain damage and the studies show missing function depending on the damage.

If a soul exists and can carry awareness from one state of existence to another then it must be able to hold memories at least. If a brain is damaged and all memory is destroyed then if a soul is present why can’t the person remember anything? This implies that the memory is in the brain and is entirely physical.

We also know that damage to the brain can also result in impairments to abilities to think, to reason, to experience emotions, etc. The same argument applies to these properties as to memory. If these are all physical then what is a soul if it doesn’t have these?

For a soul to have any type of awareness or identity then it must be able to retain some if not all of the properties that we know are controlled by the brain.

So why is a person seriously impaired by brain damage if a soul exists? The obvious answer is that there are no such things as souls.

Does everyone agree?
 
Good answer m0rl0ck, that confirms the idea that atheists are anti-christian. Unless Cris would like to rephrase the question that is.
 
Morlock,

Which ones?

The definition of religion includes a belief in a supernatural component of some kind.

But the term soul can be extended to include any concept that revolves around a survival of some kind beyond physical death.

The idea is that YOU are somehow seperate from physical existence.
 
One entry found for religion.


Main Entry: re·li·gion
Pronunciation: ri-'li-j&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English religioun, from Latin religion-, religio supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice, perhaps from religare to restrain, tie back -- more at RELY
Date: 13th century
1 a : the state of a religious <a nun in her 20th year of religion> b (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith
- re·li·gion·less adjective
 
Stu,

that confirms the idea that atheists are anti-christian.
Click to expand...
Two thirds of the world are not Christian. Of the remaining third only a small number understand the issues.

You should not assume that every atheist has something against your particular set of cults. The thread is not specifically targeting Christianity; there are other ideas in the world.

Do you have anything useful to add or are you here only to show your ability to be sarcastic and use ad hominem attacks?

If you are capable of courteous discussion then please use that ability.

The thread offers a serious question and I have stated my opinions and their basis. Can you offer any serious response?
 
Stu,

Regarding the definition of religion: Thanks. That’s good enough. Did you have a point though?
 
Stu,

I think you are only trying to find alternative ways to dicredit Christianity.
Click to expand...
The issue of souls is equally applicable to Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, as well as Christianity, and others.

Note that the issue isn’t an atheist/theist argument either but instead cuts to the heart of dualism and dialectical materialism.

I am not trying to specifically attack Christianity here. My point is that if souls do not exist then the major religions of which Christianity is just one face a fundamental dilemma.

If you want to argue as if you are a Moslem, then the same argument applies. The fact that you are a Christian is not important to my argument. Please don’t take the issue personally.

And I am not trying to attack you but have politely requested that you refrain from ad hominem style remarks that you have used elsewhere. My request is that you address the argument and not attack the person or his intentions. This is the essence of civilized debate.

So the real question for you then is can you show that you have a soul that I believe is essential to your particular religion?

With respect
Cris
 
ghost in a machine

Dr. Wilder Penfield and epilepsy

This (stimulation of the temporal lobe) has produced the surprising and remarkable experience in the subject of a form of double consciousness, as Penfield termed it. The patient only fully aware of his immediate surroundings, operating room, the surgeon and his assistants--whole local scene in fact--but also of the suddenly reenacted scene from the past, a scene so vivid that it includes sounds, and in one case even included the odor of coffee being brewed!

He records one such occasion in which "a young South African patient lying on the operating table exclaimed, when he realized what was happening, that it was astonishing to him to realize that he was laughing with his cousins on a farm in South Africa, while he was also fully conscious of being in the operating room in Montreal." Penfield observed: "The mind of the patient was as independent of the reflex action as was the mind of the surgeon who listened and strove to understand. Thus, my argument favors independence of mind-action."

Penfield was thus driven to conclude that the stimulus of the electrode was responsible in effect for a kind of TV program which the subject was watching objectively, while the subject's own mind was directing the production of an equally complete record of the events occurring in the room around him. Just as we can objectively watch a TV program in the company of others whose presence we are fully conscious of, so here were two different kinds of consciousness. The mind was observing by its own will a program presented to it mechanistically by electrode stimulation much as the TV operated independently of the viewer. As Penfield put it, if we liken the brain to a computer, man has a computer, not is a computer.

This discovery was totally unexpected. But it was in no way singular. It was repeated again and again for hundreds of patients, each of whom could identify the scene recalled with ease and virtually instantaneously. Patients could elaborate on what they saw and explain the circumstances, much as a TV viewer seeing a serial program might explain the circumstances to a watching companion who was ignorant of the previous events. In such a situation there are clearly two elements. The viewer is not part of the TV program but an observer. Yet he is more than an observer insofar as the viewer can adjust the set, clarify the image, change the program, and (in a recall situation) shut it off at will under normal circumstances by a shifting of attention (i.e., turning to another program). Here, then, we have a dualism of object and subject, of brain and mind.

It is no longer safe to view the mind as a computer, though the brain is indeed a computer of extraordinary refinement. But this computer has a programmer and an operator who is using it as a tool of recall and of motor control.



Since there is no evidence for such action, Penfield concluded that the only explanation must be that there is indeed another basic element and another form of energy, that as a programmer acts independently of his computer, even if he depends on the computer's action for certain things, so the mind seemingly can act independently of the brain.

If the dualistic view is never explored, we shall never design experimental tools to uncover the mechanism of interaction between the two elements. It before seems logical to allow dualism as a working hypothesis and to see whether new avenues of approach to the problem may not be invented in the more open climate that such an allowance would generate. Penfield was convinced we must broaden our hypothetical base.

Laying the Experimental Foundations


Sir John C. Eccles and interactionism

Eccles sees mind and brain as a clear-cut dichotomy and goes so far as to equate self-conscious mind with an entity called soul. He rejects the parallelist view as an evasion of the problem. The mind is merely a viewer of a TV screen who has no control of the TV program. The mind is an active observer which can select the program, change the channels, adjust color, and even take part in the original programming. There is, he believes, substantial evidence of an active influence of the self-conscious mind upon the neuron machinery. The mind has no interest in the firings of individual nerve cells any more than the viewer is concerned normally with the functioning of resistor transistors, condensers, or the circuitry of his own TV set. Such firings of individual nerve cells provide the mind with no useful information in themselves, though another mind may be deeply concerned in the event of malfunctioning of the mechanism. It is the collective communal operation of the large number of neurons that has to be the basis of the intelligible and useful readout. This readout is normally a readout upon demand and is integrated by the mind into a meaningful message. The brain's TV "picture" is only a picture because the mind makes it one.


"Our coming-to-be is as mysterious as our ceasing-to-be at death. Can we therefore not derive hope because our ignorance about our origin matches our ignorance about our destiny? Cannot life be lived as a challenging and wonderful adventure that has meaning yet to be discovered?

If [mind] is an emergent derivative of simply a brain developed to the highest level in the evolutionary process, then I think, we give way finally to a view that makes the self-conscious mind simply a spin-off from the highly developed brain...

My position is this. I believe that my personal uniqueness, that is, my own experienced self-consciousness, is not accounted for by this emergent explanation of the coming-to-be of my own self. It is the experienced uniqueness that is not so explained...

So I am constrained to believe that there is what we might call a supernatural origin of my unique self-conscious mind or my unique selfhood or soul; and that gives rise of course to a whole new set of problems.

By this idea of supernatural creation I escape from the incredible improbability that the uniqueness of my own self is genetically determined. There is no problem about the genetic uniqueness of my brain. It is the uniqueness of the experienced self that requires this hypothesis of an independent origin of the self or soul, which is then associated with a brain, that so becomes MY brain."

Mind is Autonomous and in Control

The Mysterious Matter of Mind


*my soul/spirit acknowledges no god

;)
 
Cris,

Couldn't agree more. See my thread "from the bottom of my frontal lobe" in the general philosophy forum.
 
I also agree. Many people attribute NDE's to souls, however people experience NDE's at (surprise surprise) near death. We don't even fully comprehend how out mind functions normally, how can we begin to guess at what should happen when it is near death? My personal theory on NDE's is that the subconscious is most likely involved. The subconscious part of your brain has stored the idea that when close to death, people often experience the bright lights, tunnels and so forth. Since it is the most relavent thing it can find you experience this as well.

If the person is, say, Christian then this becomes even more pronounced. Christians come to expect these things (lights, tunnels) when they die, again the subconscious actually generates these images at near death simply because you expect it to happen.

If souls exist, what are they made of? Pure energy? If so why can't we detect them? If they are made of something physical (energy) we should be able to detect their presence. If they're made of something supernatural where do they reside? Inside our bodies? How are they attached to our bodies? To be completely undetectable they must be completely non-interactive with our universe. If this is true then how do they react with our brains? How do they copy the experiences (memories) from our brains to bring to the afterlife?

There are so many questions and practically no answers. Since theists claim this is true about macro evolution, and dismiss it on this premise, they should also dismiss the existance of a soul. But of course, it fits into their scheme of things, so it is held to a completely different standard; namely 'evidence doesn't matter, it's right even if there isn't any'.
 
Unfortunately, most theists call this "faith." Yet faith in science is "ignorance."
 
"Unfortunately, most theists call this "faith." Yet faith in science is "ignorance.""

I call it an ignorant double standard. "You must provide evidence for your theories to be correct, but my theories are right even if I have no evidence."... pleease.
 
Yes, Elvis is really dead. No his sould does not live on. He lives on through his music, and the people he affected, but nothing more. Why is this so hard to accept?
 
Cris,

Since that you're one of the board's biggest advocates for cybernetics & transhumanism, you often champion the idea of plugging one's brain into a computer, or transferring one's mind into a computer. If it is indeed possible to accomplish this, wouldn't it suggest that a person's consciousness is seperate from it's body? Forgive my ignorance on the matter.

BTW, I agree with your points on the soul, so don't mistake me for a christian or some such thing.
 
Delinking it from the religion bit for a minute, I feel the quote by spookz hits the point.

If brain is really the seat of all memory and there is nothing beyond the physical mass, then it should be possible to extract what all the brain has stored, like in those fiction movies. And may be even to produce material with all the functionality that brain has, if it is just a large neural network. I never heard of that happen. And how can a dead brain lose all the memory?

Brain could be more like the Hard disk in the computer, and the soul could be the RAM. The RAM can never store all the data by itself, and has to physically store it on the hard disk. If a part of the hard disk is damaged, you lose data. But all action has to happen in the RAM. And the RAM loses all the data once the power goes off (life), and may be a small bit lingers at times- reason for the feeling of dejavu in some strange locations at times!

And hardly can we discount the first hand experiences of so many Sciforums members with the ouija board!
 
When the neurosurgeon applies an electrode to the motor area of the patient's cerebral cortex causing the opposite hand to move, and when he asks the patient why he moved the hand, the response is: 'I didn't do it. You made me do it'...It may be said that the patient thinks of himself as having an existence separate from his body.

Once when I warned a patient of my intention to stimulate the motor area of the cortex, and challenged him to keep his hand from moving when the electrode was applied, he seized it with the other hand and struggled to hold it still. Thus one hand, under the control of the right hemisphere driven by an electrode, and the other hand, which he controlled through the left hemisphere, were caused to struggle against each other. Behind the "brain action" of one hemisphere was the patient's mind. Behind the action of the other hemisphere was the electrode (penfield).


on a side note......

anecdotal evidence

most scientists are wise enough to understand that anecdotal evidence always precedes and leads to the collection of "scientific evidence". in the history of science, "scientific evidence" has never been collected or even pursued until there has been enough anecdotal or indirect evidence at hand to merit an effort to collect the testable evidence. this is the intrinsic relationship between anecdotal evidence and scientific evidence
 
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