Athiesm Question

M

MangoMan

~Frozen~Infinity~
Registered Senior Member
While I am sort of neutral on religious topics, I DO tend to believe in a higher power. Some questions I would ask athiests are:

Do Athiests believe in a soul?

If not, how do you explain the fact that you are you, you have been you since you were born and will be till you die. NEVER will you be anyone else.

The very concept of 'being' someone should not even exist (in absence of a soul) because without souls we should merely be just autonomous robots... (albeit, highly intelligent, emotional, and creative autonomous robots)

just a question I've been thinking of, and I didnt have anyone to ask till i found this forum 8)
 
While I am sort of neutral on religious topics, I DO tend to believe in a higher power. Some questions I would ask athiests are:
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We don't have a mantra or set of rules. Any question I answer will only stand for my view. I will give probabilities based on conversation and observation.
Do Athiests believe in a soul?
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I do not. This one is not likely to be found in many atheists. A soul is usely just an extension of religious needs. Immortality, etc. are theist properties.
If not, how do you explain the fact that you are you, you have been you since you were born and will be till you die. NEVER will you be anyone else.
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A soul does not neccessarily answer this question. Biology, however does. Our cells have processes known as mitosis and miosis. They replicate. They make exact duplicates. The brain stores memories and personality traits. Through a set of chemical reactions and a complex relationship between the outer logical brain and the inner, more instinctual core we are prompted for any given reaction.
The very concept of 'being' someone should not even exist (in absence of a soul) because without souls we should merely be just autonomous robots... (albeit, highly intelligent, emotional, and creative autonomous robots)
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That is the ego. You need to differentiate yourself from the synthetic. In truth religious individuals are a bit more robot than us. Your reactions are easier to predict. You operate more from emotion than any operative coherency.
just a question I've been thinking of, and I didnt have anyone to ask till i found this forum
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Please do not construe my observations as hostile. This is just a culmination of experiences.
 
Mangoman,

Welcome to sciforums.

I think Teg has done a good job answering most of your questions, but I’ll add a little more.

Do Athiests believe in a soul?
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Atheists lack theistic beliefs primarily because there is no evidence for gods; souls come into a similar category so most atheists disbelieve in the idea of souls as well. But technically Buddhists are atheists (no belief in gods), but they do believe in souls.

If not, how do you explain the fact that you are you, you have been you since you were born and will be till you die. NEVER will you be anyone else.
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I think you need to define what you mean by YOU. For me I am the sum of my memories and my brain’s ability to generate and process thoughts. I don’t believe there is anything else or needs to be anything else.

The very concept of 'being' someone should not even exist (in absence of a soul) because without souls we should merely be just autonomous robots... (albeit, highly intelligent, emotional, and creative autonomous robots).
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And yes you are approaching what I would consider the obvious conclusion. However, the perception of a robot is of a primitive slave like machine, and that is understandable since computing power is currently several million times less than the human brain. Given another 20 to 40 years it is expected that computing power will rival and surpass the human brain. So if we consider those machines on an equal footing with humans then we can indeed conclude that humans are no more than biological robots/machines.

Cris
 
For me I am the sum of my memories and my brain’s ability to generate and process thoughts. I don’t believe there is anything else or needs to be anything else.
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Many people are so much afraid of this possibility tht they are ready to beleive in everything else but this.

They say tht they are seeking for (or have found) truth, but at that time they are also avoiding from it.

hmmm........
 
you dont think theres more to you than just a biological robot?

heres another way to put it:

from your perspective, what is the difference between you, and some other person? why will you never see through the eyes of another person, think with another brain, etc...?

ie: you are stuck as you, i am stuck as me
 
MangoMan,

you dont think theres more to you than just a biological robot?
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That's correct. Do you have any evidence of anything else?

what is the difference between you, and some other person? why will you never see through the eyes of another person, think with another brain, etc...?
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I have a unique set of neural networks that have grown and developed based on my unique learning experiences.

The word robot should probably be avoided for the moment since it implies mindlessness and future robots will not be so impaired.

A biological based intelligent machine might be a more accurate description.

But what do you mean by '...see through the eyes of another person'?

Cris
 
But what do you mean by '...see through the eyes of another person'?
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I think he ment by tht tht you - preceive world and particular events exactly as tht person does.
(one had a childhood trauma, was bitten by a dog, ad everytime he sees a dog, he becomes really scared(phobia)), so if you would look through his eyes, you would be afraid of dogs, even if you previously didn't.
 
Greetings -

If not, how do you explain the fact that you are you, you have been you since you were born and will be till you die. NEVER will you be anyone else.
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Why, who else would I be? :D I must admit that I'm uncertain what you mean here. In some ways, I haven't always been me; there are portions of my mind and body now that did not exist previously. That which I label as myself is something of a work in progress. Also, people with certain mental disorders do have the capability to be someone else, mentally.
The very concept of 'being' someone should not even exist (in absence of a soul) because without souls we should merely be just autonomous robots... (albeit, highly intelligent, emotional, and creative autonomous robots)
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Well, with or without a soul, our mental and physical states are indeed unique, and with distinct boundaries. That is what we define as 'being'. Is there something wrong with being an intelligent, emotional, and creative autonomous robot? A rose, by any other name..

Thanks,
FyreStar
 
what i mean by seeing through someone elses eyes is that 100% of the time you are seeing through your own eyes. ie: if you look down you will see your nose, or if you face a mirror you can see your reflection. how come you will never look in the mirror and see someone elses face?

you must understand what im talking about. the way that you are like a pilot of a machine called a body... you can decide to move your arm for no reason other than to move it....the way you can enjoy something...

wow it sure is hard to put into words...maybe i am special and im the only person who is really real
because as far as anyone knows, they are...:bugeye:
 
Why, who else would I be? I must admit that I'm uncertain what you mean here. In some ways, I haven't always been me; there are portions of my mind and body now that did not exist previously. That which I label as myself is something of a work in progress. Also, people with certain mental disorders do have the capability to be someone else, mentally.
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lets say you are named Joe Schmidt. why will Joe Schmidt never be Olga Knudsen? Joe Schmidt sees down the end Joe Schmidt's nose. why will he never see down the end of Olga's nose....
 
Adam = Atheist.

I don't believe in souls, but I don't not believe in them. Until I learn otherwise, that issue is in the undecided tray.

We are not necessarily one thing throughout our lives. People learn and grow, they change.
 
lets say you are named Joe Schmidt. why will Joe Schmidt never be Olga Knudsen? Joe Schmidt sees down the end Joe Schmidt's nose. why will he never see down the end of Olga's nose....
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Well, because the 'pilot' of my body, my brain, happens to be wired into my nose and my other features. To see through somebody elses eyes, I'd have to somehow link my brain to their optical nerves.
 
MangoMan, I know what you're talking about, but many atheists seem to prefer to ignore subjectivity. Perhaps that's because it's built in as a definition for them (you see that when people just say "I'm this physical structure") so they never consider it. Or, perhaps just because no one who likes science wants to be forced to think of all observations as being their own perspective of the object rather than an actual direct observation of the object -- complete objectivity is an important concept to science, so even though evolution gives us similar types of subjective experiences that isn't good enough.

To answer for myself, I would say that I am a being of either 2 or 3 parts.

1) The perspective -- something that it has no substance itself but is instead about substances. This is 100% logically equivalent with where others have been saying "I'm this physical structure by definition", except I expand on what the definition means and for the sake of analysis treat it as though the definition of the perspective were distinct from that which it's of. (They have to come as a pair in reality of course.)

2) What the perspective observes: the mind.

3?) Then there's the uncertain possibility of if it makes more sense to have the mind and brain as different things (the brain causing a mind) -- this boils down to a question of if the experience of being a physical process can explain the nature of thought.

As far as never being anyone else but the mind/brain I'm aware of now... this leads me to 2 ideas. First, I could never know, maybe I am other people sometimes... since the memory is in the brain, I have no way to know for sure if I've always been aware of this mind instead of others. Second, a more comfortable idea and a more logically simple one, is that the perspective which defines me is rigid -- this is where it might make more sense if the brain generated a nonphysical mind, since the physical brain moves around and it's easier to see how the mind could be in one theoretical place all the time -- thus not requiring the perspective to ever change.
 
Originally posted by MangoMan
If not, how do you explain the fact that you are you, you have been you since you were born and will be till you die. NEVER will you be anyone else.
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For a person with personality disorder, do you it's the result of two or more souls fighting for controls over one's body?

The very concept of 'being' someone should not even exist (in absence of a soul) because without souls we should merely be just autonomous robots... (albeit, highly intelligent, emotional, and creative autonomous robots)
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You should say autonomous robots with self-awareness, which makes them less autonomous. Unless you think sucicide is an autonomous behaviour.
 
:( wow i didnt realize this was such a hard concept to get across...

ok we have a lot of amzing things about us that modern day machines do not right?

things like self-awareness, amazing creativity, emotion, will, personality, etc, etc...

but those are not the thing that im trying to get at. even IF you created a machine with all of those things the machine would still lack this.

the machine would still just be a machine, and no more 'alive' than a large rock....
 
actually here is another way t put it:

you know the way that the minds of the rest of the human race are completely innaccessable to you? as far as you are concerened the rest of the human race might not even be real, and you might be in some wierd alien holo-dome or something....

IF there were no soul, the same would be true of you...
in other words since we would all be bio-machines, life would be just as black as non-existance
 
things like self-awareness, amazing creativity, emotion, will, personality, etc, etc...

but those are not the thing that im trying to get at. even IF you created a machine with all of those things the machine would still lack this.

the machine would still just be a machine, and no more 'alive' than a large rock....
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I disagree. The machine with every attribute of humanity would be....human. Except mechanical.

Watch BladeRunner.

IF there were no soul, the same would be true of you...
in other words since we would all be bio-machines, life would be just as black as non-existance
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Why? This universe is all that there is. What is so depressing about that?

In other words....what are you going to do, cry about it?
 
Mangoman,

even IF you created a machine with all of those things the machine would still lack this.

the machine would still just be a machine, and no more 'alive' than a large rock....
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Are you trying to imply that a rock is self-aware? :D

So now you need to define what you mean by ‘alive’. A bacterium is alive so does that have a soul or this thing you are talking about?

IF there were no soul, the same would be true of you...
in other words since we would all be bio-machines, life would be just as black as non-existance.
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But life doesn’t seem to be black and I know I exist, and I can’t see where my alleged soul could possibly reside, or in fact why it even needs to exist.

So if you think there are such things as souls then where are they and what do they do? The brain provides our intelligence, emotions, thoughts, ideas, and memories; what else do you think we need that a soul might provide?

But before you answer please read carefully the post by Boris in the link below (start at the 4th post ) -

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2539&highlight=mind

Cris
 
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