soul gain

Originally posted by Dasa
[b]The soul is the life force.

The soul is you.

The body is not you.

Dasa, if I came up to you and smacked hard your arm or stepped forcefully on your foot, if you didn't retaliate first, you would probably say something like - Stop hitting ME !" You would probably not say "Stop hitting my BODY!" but "Stop hitting ME!

Now suppose I responded by saying - "Dasa, I am not hitting YOU. I am hitting your BODY." Would you not say something like "When you hit my body you hit ME! Now stop hitting ME, before I lay you out."

The body IS part of the person.
The soul is him or her and the body is also him or her.
And they in addition have a human spirit.

The brain only functions because of the soul.

Consciousness is a symptom of the soul.

I think we are probably in agreement here.

If there is no soul there is no you and no consciousness.

Most likely. I agree.

The soul is eternal.................which means you are without beginning and without end.

The so called "immortality of the soul" was an ancient Greek philosophical idea for some thinkers. This is in addition to it possibly being a concept of India. I do not known well Hinduism.

I had a beginning. I do not believe I had no beginning.
I don't believe you, Dasa, had no beginning.

There is because of the salvation through the Son of God, the gift of eternal life. But the person receiving the gift had a beginning.

The person rejecting salvation has an existence which apparently is forever. That existence is called "the second death" I believe. It would not count as everlasting life. But it would count as some kind of existence apart from God for eternity.

You have always existed and you will never not exist.

I don't think that you practically live that way.
I had something like this as a thought when I was under the influence of some Zen Buddhist teaching by American Zen expert Allen Watts.

The day came when I was gazing out the upper story window of my college building, looking down on the street below. I saw a student step off the sidewalk and begin to walk across the street. An automobile was quickly approaching him. I noticed that he quickened his pace so as to get off the street before the car hit him.

On that day I decided that people do not live by a Buddhist concept of their human life. Had he been hit by the car he knew he would be ended as far as his life was concerned. And I would think the same way.

That is the meaning of eternal.

You have had thousands of bodies..................sometimes male and sometimes female.

There may have been thousands of bodies preceding you.
None of them was your body.
They were the bodies of other creatures of people who lived their own lives before you.

The soul is the combination of sat-cit ananda-vigraha.

You do not belong in the temporary world of birth and disease and old age and death.

We all belong in the eternal spiritual world of bliss and knowledge.

Bona fide religion conditions us with love and knowledge to return back to Godhead.

Why did we step away to begin with ?
A relatively short answer perhaps ?

Any "return" demands an explanation as to what discontinuation occurred in what was normal. Why was there a discontinuation of being joined to Godhead if being joined to Godhead is what we must "return" to ?

False religion conditions us to take birth again in the material world.

Why should there be misunderstanding and falsity to begin with ?
Who or what introduced falsity into existence ?

Originally posted by stellspalfie

i agree, its good to be skeptical. its possible accept that theory 'x' is currently has the best evidence but also accept that it is not proven.

That's pretty much where I am, asking what the current consensus theory is. And to say the consensus is so-and-so is not to insist no one else has a differing opinion.

Time, Space, Matter is to believed to have begun by the consensus of cosmologists at the so called "Big Bang".

Some shift nervously in their chairs about this because a Beginning does imply a Beginner.

We can dispense with the notion that scientists are all so objective that they do not have personal interests in defending world views. The notion of a Beginner some find offensive to their sense of autonomy. So some trained scientists are likely to fight the thought to the death. White coated objectivity and pure curiosity of all in the science community is a myth.

Some people will not want to go where ever the evidence leads.
That's just the way it is.

you seem to write like you think atheists follow everything they defend 100% regardless.

That is interesting you should say that. It seemed that you wanted me to defend that "parapsychologist" on everything he teaches. I wasn't endorsing everything the man teaches. I only offered one example of a scientist who seems to have a mind / brain dualism paradigm.

I suspect whoever I mentioned, you would probably immediately seek to dig up some reason why that person should be rejected out of hand, if not for his interest in parapsychology then for something else.

the truth is atheists will accept all evidence put forward and do not have any loyalty to any particular scientific view.

I don't think so. I think your fear of losing autonomy at the existence of a God drives you to make any "evidence" for God impossible to consider up front.

What evidence for God's existence would you accept ?

If you say you need particles of God in a test tube to examine as evidence, I would say that that is ridiculous and your concept of God is flawed from the start. What evidence would you accept to consider the existence of God?

I think there is plenty of evidence for God's existence.

The Bible as a book, I would consider evidence.
The nation of Israel, I would consider evidence.
The life of Jesus of Nazareth, I would consider evidence.
The biographies of some people who did not know or want God and encountered God in a life changing relationship, I would consider evidence.
Why there is something in existence rather than nothing, I would consider evidence.
The fine tuning of the universe's beginning so calibrated, it seems, for the existence of higher life forms like intelligent human beings, I would consider as evidence.
The existence of music, I would consider evidence.
The existence of technology and the reading OUT of nature the laws out INTO nature, I would consider as evidence.
The laws of logic, I would consider as evidence.
The longing for God, I would consider as evidence.
Even the relentless desire of some proud people to deny God, I might consider as evidence that there is something THERE to be disbelieved.

Now I know that for each of these point you have a plausible objection.
Before you inform me of your somewhat plausible alternative explanation for any of these matters, I can anticipate what you might say.

In spite of you demonstrating a man's near infinite ability to imagine some at least alternative interpretation of things, I still regard these as evidence for the existence of God.

I doubt that there is ANY evidence that you would be willing to accept as pointing to the existence of God. This would be the first thing I would do as an Atheist, make sure that all "evidence" is disqualified.

Probably the main evidence I feel informs me that I am on the right track to believe in God, is what Jesus Christ has meant to my life personally. What I could not do, and tried to do, He supplied the power to do. I know that I was not the source of this "grace."

Because I feel I know that I am not the source of this enjoyment of the enabling and empowering of grace, and because my experience very much seems to have been had by writers of the New Testament who lived before me, I am encouraged that I am on the right track to believe in God and in Jesus Christ and the indwelling Holy Spirit.

When I read the Bible I can say with enthusiasm - "I know what this is talking about. I EXPERIENCE this myself."

Expected pushback - "But a Moslem or a Bahai could say the same thing."
... an argument from the non-uniqueness of personal experience.
That's another whole discussion probably.

we do not know how the universe came into existence. there are many theories. you seem to focus on the something from nothing as if it represents scientific fact. it does not and the 'nothing' in the theory isnt really 'nothing'.

Now you are talking about language and definitions.
No space, no time, no matter, no motion, no quantum vacuum, no fields, no particles to fluctuate, no anything, "no nothing", zilch, zippo, the ith route of Nada, the qth route of diddly, "What rocks dream about", no thing, NOTHING, no existence of any universe.

Don't blame religious people for "Big Bang Cosmology".

That there are some voices thinking hard of alternatives, is acknowledged and to be expected.

Some stubborn people who seem to make conservatism an idol for its own purposes still argue that the earth is flat. I think they just are too proud not to be conservative. Conservatism is an end in itself = "The OLD way of thinking is better. Period."

Don't think that this kind of stubbornness cannot be had by at least some vocal people with science degrees.

Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin's materialistic devotion to excluding any consideration of God's influence over nature.

"It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a materiel explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. to appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen."

Expected Pushback - " Prove that he ever really said that."

do you really think the bible recounts his words and actions verbatim??

I believe that what we have is by far adequate for us to make the decisions about Him that He taught we should make.

We do not have a video or a tape recording.
I am convinced that what we do have in the New Testament is trustworthy and adequate. And this while I acknowledge that different writing styles and even apparent variety in the arrangement of certain sayings is evident.

I reject any ipso facto suspicion that the evangelists were conspiring to cheat, trick, deceive, and otherwise hoodwink audiences for generations to come.

In short I believe that there is such a thing as TRUE propaganda, though it may be intended to convince people of a certain point of view.

I do not believe that all propaganda has to be necessarily deceptive and false.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
what if your dogs grumpy and doesn't smile at all and just slobbers and drools?

then I'd call him "robbie".

Originally posted by Suzianne
then I'd call him "robbie".

LOL, Robbie is not a dogs name, its a Kings name! as in Robert Bruce, King of Scotland!

Originally posted by stellspalfie

sonship:
Can you refer me to any physics text which indicates there is something potentially conscious about matter

im not saying matter is conscious. just as i do not think matter feels. the consciousness is an effect, a function, created by the collective system. non of the individual parts are conscious, but together they create the effect. which is the brain monitoring its self and creating real-time reports of its process.

sonship:
So Mind must somehow exist in matter as a potentiality if matter emerged into consciousness. What evidence do you have that in matter, mind exists as a potentiality ?

i dont agree with your explanation and conclusion. it is not in the matter, the arrangement of the matter creates the thoughts. like a biological boolean logic, in which the boolean circuit board can grow new gates to make short cuts or new path ways .

I still think the potential for thought and consciousness should be somewhere in the property of matter for a certain level of complexity to result in consciousness emerging.

If there is not potential for consciousness in a collection of N chemicals I see no reason why N chemicals however arranged should produce consciousness. One or some of that matter must have conscious creating properties.

The dualism you propose is called by some "property dualism". What I propose is called "substance dualism."

We do have drugs which effect mood, drugs which prevent embalanced and harmful mood swings. Scientists are also developing drugs which they hope will arrest dementia or Alzheimer's disease. Because of this some jump to the conclusion that our "souls" are nothing more than bodily functions.

The mental states, the property dualist says, supervenes on matter. The arrangement of matter causes consciousness to ride upon it. It is a big subject which a few Forum posts will not do justice to.

While I admit there is deep interaction between body and soul, between brain and consciousness, the close link does not mean the soul can be reduced to these bodily functions. The correlation does not equal reduction.

The Christian believing in substance dualism between immaterial mind/soul from body/brain is no worse off than naturalistic attempts to explain the relationship between the psychological and the physical. There is no sense that what you propose is a simpler answer such that Occam's Razor favors a naturalist explanation of the origin of consciousness.

Mind and body may be inseparable. But this does not mean they are identical. Every time something happens in the mind some event may be going on in the brain which could be described by a neurologist. Let's say that in general we always see mental events correlated with brain events and vica versa. The correlation may make them inseparable such that one does not occur without the other in an embodied person. It does not necessarily have to follow that mental thought is identical to the brain event.

There is a property of a shape having three sides (trilaterality).
There is a property of a shape having three angles (triangularity).
The two properties always go together and are inseparable.
But the two properties are not identical.

Physicalists must go beyond showing that mental and brain phenomena are inserparable to establish physicalism. They must show that the two phenomena are identical.

Your OP seeks to establish that soul and body are identical. At least you challenge the notion that they are not identical. But that the two are inseparable does not mean they are identical.

There is a property of an apple we may call (redness).
There is a property of an apple we may call (roundness).
In any apple we may say the redness and the roundness
are inseparable. The redness of that apple cannot be separated from the roundness of that apple. We do not have redness in one shelf and roundness in another shelf. We do not have roundness sitting on one table by itself and redness sitting on another table by itself.

One property is a color. The other property is a shape.
But the roundness property is not identical with the redness property.

When I think of some nice music I heard yesterday some event may be going on in my brain. This does not meant that my memory event is identical with the neurological brain event.

Originally posted by sonship
[quote]
sonship: [b]
Can you refer me to any physics text which indicates there is something potentially conscious about matter

im not saying matter is conscious. just as i do not think matter feels. the consciousness is an effect, a function, created by the collective system. non of the individual parts are conscious, but together they create th ...[text shortened]... brain. This does not meant that my memory event is identical with the neurological brain event.[/b]

If there is not potential for consciousness in a collection of N chemicals I see no reason why N chemicals however arranged should produce consciousness. One or some of that matter must have conscious creating properties

a collection of N chemicals alone do not have the ability to create consciousness. we have to look at the whole evolutionary process and all the chemicals needed at each stage. this maybe a poor analogy (but its the one that springs to mind), think of a lunar module, if you had all the component parts of a lunar module, no matter how you assembled them you still wouldnt get it to the moon as you need all the other parts that were jettisoned on the way to the moon. so although its the module that lands on the moon, it requires all other stages to get to that point.


they hope will arrest dementia or Alzheimer's disease. Because of this some jump to the conclusion that our "souls" are nothing more than bodily functions.

would you describe people with dementia or alzheimers as having freewill?


While I admit there is deep interaction between body and soul, between brain and consciousness, the close link does not mean the soul can be reduced to these bodily functions. The correlation does not equal reduction.

so as we know events in our life alter the way we think, does this mean that events in our life can change our soul?

The Christian believing in substance dualism between immaterial mind/soul from body/brain is no worse off than naturalistic attempts to explain the relationship between the psychological and the physical. There is no sense that what you propose is a simpler answer such that Occam's Razor favors a naturalist explanation of the origin of consciousness.


my system is simpler. i have one system - the body and brain. your system is the same but with an added layer of complexity - the soul and as of yet no explanation as to why it is needed or how and when it operates.


Physicalists must go beyond showing that mental and brain phenomena are inserparable to establish physicalism. They must show that the two phenomena are identical.

who must they show this to? its already been proven to the satisfaction of the majority of science. there is nothing that points to something existing outside of the brain.....i think the onus is on those claiming that there is and as of yet they have produced zero evidence.

Your OP seeks to establish that soul and body are identical. At least you challenge the notion that they are not identical. But that the two are inseparable does not mean they are identical.

my op asks for a theist explanation to how and why the brain and soul operate together. if they do the same, then why have two. if they do different jobs, then what are the differences?


When I think of some nice music I heard yesterday some event may be going on in my brain. This does not meant that my memory event is identical with the neurological brain event

your 'memory event' is a neurological brain event. it will be different to when you originally listened to the music.
can you think of any 'mind' event that does not result in corresponding neurological activity?

Originally posted by stellspalfie
[b]If there is not potential for consciousness in a collection of N chemicals I see no reason why N chemicals however arranged should produce consciousness. One or some of that matter must have conscious creating properties

a collection of N chemicals alone do not have the ability to create consciousness. we have to look at the whole evolutionar ...[text shortened]...
can you think of any 'mind' event that does not result in corresponding neurological activity?[/b]

Our free will is limited. Is that what you mean?

Originally posted by RJHinds
Our free will is limited. Is that what you mean?

its one of the questions im asking.

Originally posted by stellspalfie
can anybody give an even remotely logical reason for the existence and function of a soul. what does a soul do that a brain doesnt and visa-versa?

The soul is the cause of the brain and not the other way round .............because the soul "IS the LIFE FORCE" and the catalyst to which the body depends for temporary existence.

When the soul incarnates into the womb of another mother it shall manifest a new body and a new brain and a fresh mind.

The soul "IS" the person and the life force.

The soul sleeps while the brain takes control.

The body and brain shall one day come to an end and become dust in the wind.

Originally posted by sonship

The soul is you.

The body is not you.

Dasa, if I came up to you and smacked hard your arm or stepped forcefully on your foot, if you didn't retaliate first, you would probably say something like - [b]Stop hitting ME !" You would probably not say "Stop hitting my BODY!" but "Stop hitting ME!

Now suppose I re ...[text shortened]... e misunderstanding and falsity to begin with ?
Who or what introduced falsity into existence ?[/b]

If I smashed into your car whilst you were behind the wheel and driving it you would certainly feel it ................but you would not identify with the car.

We came to this material world because we forced the hand of the Lord to come................and we did this because we were exercising our small independent will that the Lord had given us.

If we had no independence then we could not independently use our will to love the Lord.

There is falsity and misunderstanding in this world because this is a temporary world of duality and suffering.

But we must choose falsity just like we can embrace truth.

Too many people complain about this world and demand God to fix it .............but this world is not our true home and is only a temporary place for the living entities to play-act at being in control and Supreme.

Intelligent persons surrender to the real Supreme Controller who is the the Lord.......(Sri Krsna Bhagavan)

Originally posted by Dasa
If I smashed into your car whilst you were behind the wheel and driving it you would certainly feel it ................but you would not identify with the car.

We came to this material world because we forced the hand of the Lord to come................and we did this because we were exercising our small independent will that the Lord had given us.

If we ...[text shortened]... persons surrender to the real Supreme Controller who is the the Lord.......(Sri Krsna Bhagavan)

Nice platitudes but the fact is we are on our own and no god is going to come down and fix our boo boos we have done to the planet and if we all die, we all die and that is the end of it for humans. Maybe something intelligent will come along better able to shepherd our planet, since we are bollixing it up pretty badly right now.

It seems your god or any of the OTHER man made gods are not coming down to help the planet, much less humans.

So we are on our own, no gods will help us, even if they exist.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Nice platitudes but the fact is we are on our own and no god is going to come down and fix our boo boos we have done to the planet and if we all die, we all die and that is the end of it for humans. Maybe something intelligent will come along better able to shepherd our planet, since we are bollixing it up pretty badly right now.

It seems your god or an ...[text shortened]... the planet, much less humans.

So we are on our own, no gods will help us, even if they exist.

Read chapter 14 of the gospel of John. There you will see that Jesus said He was going away to be with His Father and to prepare a place and would come back again.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Nice platitudes but the fact is we are on our own and no god is going to come down and fix our boo boos we have done to the planet and if we all die, we all die and that is the end of it for humans. Maybe something intelligent will come along better able to shepherd our planet, since we are bollixing it up pretty badly right now.

It seems your god or an ...[text shortened]... the planet, much less humans.

So we are on our own, no gods will help us, even if they exist.

Your pea brain is only seeing [an existence] the size of a pea...... and outside your pea experience is an unlimited and never ending infinite creation.

This universe will end and after it does another shall take its place, meanwhile you will be born several thousand times over and over whilst you endeavour to enjoy this material energy.

Those who continually take birth in this world of suffering only to enjoy sense pleasure are said to be mudhas.

Originally posted by stellspalfie

a collection of N chemicals alone do not have the ability to create consciousness. we have to look at the whole evolutionary process and all the chemicals needed at each stage.

It seems to me that you are saying in the "evolutionary process" something along the way is added to N elements to become N+1 with a potentiality of consciousness.

I don't see how falling back on the process solves the problem of where does the potentiality for consciousness enter into the process. That is in a strictly physicalist viewpoint.

this maybe a poor analogy (but its the one that springs to mind), think of a lunar module, if you had all the component parts of a lunar module, no matter how you assembled them you still wouldnt get it to the moon as you need all the other parts that were jettisoned on the way to the moon. so although its the module that lands on the moon, it requires all other stages to get to that point.

The potentiality of traveling TO the moon entered into the arrangement where powerful booster engines performed their function.

On a strictly physicalist view, the potential for matter to self awake and be conscious had to be brought in by some matter somewhere along the evolutionary path.

If I imagine that such matter was jettisoned such to be no longer discoverable, I wonder why consciousness of matter still exists without it.

This is why I say below, to your protests, that the substance[edited] dualist who sees a mind / brain dualism or a soul / body dualism is no worse off for unsolved mysteries than the physicalist.

sonship:
they hope will arrest dementia or Alzheimer's disease. Because of this some jump to the conclusion that our "souls" are nothing more than bodily functions.

would you describe people with dementia or alzheimers as having freewill?

I think relatives that I have known with dementia or alzheimers still showed some decision making freedom of will, in my experience.

And I would not reduce the SOUL to just being the functions of the physical body.

sonship:
While I admit there is deep interaction between body and soul, between brain and consciousness, the close link does not mean the soul can be reduced to these bodily functions. The correlation does not equal reduction.

so as we know events in our life alter the way we think, does this mean that events in our life can change our soul?

I think events in our life can leave powerful impressions upon our soul. Perhaps "change our soul" would be an adequate expression to discribe this. I would not object to speaking that way.

sonship:
The Christian believing in substance dualism between immaterial mind/soul from body/brain is no worse off than naturalistic attempts to explain the relationship between the psychological and the physical. There is no sense that what you propose is a simpler answer such that Occam's Razor favors a naturalist explanation of the origin of consciousness.


my system is simpler. i have one system - the body and brain. your system is the same but with an added layer of complexity - the soul and as of yet no explanation as to why it is needed or how and when it operates.

I haven't seen any advancement towards simplicity yet. But it is a very large subject.

You say I add a layer of complexity. Maybe. But in your appeal to consider the evolutionary process, you also are saying that somewhere along the process an added layer of complexity arrives.

So I feel I am no worse off in conceptualizing the dualism. You are just moving the complexity to a place you want it to be introduced.

sonship:
Physicalists must go beyond showing that mental and brain phenomena are inseparable to establish physicalism. They must show that the two phenomena are identical.

who must they show this to? its already been proven to the satisfaction of the majority of science. there is nothing that points to something existing outside of the brain.....i think the onus is on those claiming that there is and as of yet they have produced zero evidence.

I think they have to prove if it were sufficiently proven to yourself for instance, otherwise you would not have progressed up to this point in our exchanges. I think if it were so obvious that my brain was my mind you would not bother to debate.

I would expect someone like you to pretty much no feel the need to waste effort and time if I, say, proclaimed that the earth was on the back of a series of turtles. Its pretty evident that it would be crazy to insist on that.

So not only do I see an equal amount of burden upon you for your theory, to opt out now by saying you are obviously right is not right. It is not obvious.

1.) It is not obvious that no God exists. And if God exists then a self-aware Being affords a very plausible explanation as to the existence of consciousness. That is if being created in the image of God indicates some reflection of God's being in our own.

Naturalism is not obvious. I think the people who say " we are convinced, the burden is on you to show otherwise" are often the same people who think it is obvious that atheism is true. But that is not obvious by a long shot.

A second point - Matter, by definition doesn't include the concept of consciousness or mental ability. These two concepts belong to the "nonmatter" category. You feel the problem because you struggle with understanding where in the evolutionary process this mental ability got introduced. You acknowledge an extra layer of complexity somehow emerges from another category of phenomena.

Third - I don't think we should lightly ignore that throughout history and across varied civilizations it has been held that the soul can be separated from the body.

I realize that they didn't have computers, lasers, ipads, microwave, and atomic energy, etc. etc. Yet extrapolating our "advancement" beyond our predecessors, I think, has some limits. Some valuable knowledge has been lost just as much as some has been gained.

"We now know better" is not a concept I accept without some limitations. That to me would be foolish arrogance.

We should be careful to dismissing body / soul dualism as somehow "obviously" counterintuitive.

If I as a Christian jump to a conclusion that Jesus, who spoke of a dual soul / body nature of man, just didn't know as well as you, it introduces many more problems. The approvedness that Christ has established in terms of lack of self deception, integrity, honesty, knowledge of the human predicament, the mind of God, are not at all easy for me to hand wave away. For you the atheist they may be easy to dismiss, but not for me.

The "modal argument" for substance dualism states that even if there is a logical possibility (whether consciously or not) that the soul and the body are not the same, then we cannot quickly dismiss the assumption as irrational.

Some NDE (near death experiences) and some ODE (out of body experiences) argue that we might be on the right track to assume a substance dualism of soul / body. Dismissing all reports with a hand wave of unwarranted parapsychology, I think, is jumping too eagerly to that conclusion.

Sciences of all types through their stages of infancy. We didn't dismiss all biology, all chemistry, all astronomy, all cosmology, etc. because they went through infancy stages and proposed things which we now may regard as foolish.

Cont. latter

Originally posted by sonship

a collection of N chemicals alone do not have the ability to create consciousness. we have to look at the whole evolutionary process and all the chemicals needed at each stage.

It seems to me that you are saying in the "evolutionary process" something along the way is added to N elements to become N+1 with a potentiality of conscious ...[text shortened]... hrough infancy stages and proposed things which we now may regard as foolish.

Cont. latter

yawn