Half a soul?

Cris Oh Cris,
I'll be the bigger one here and give this argument to you, but between me and you,

you said:

"The brain will rot when deprived of oxygen and nutrients. What hs an alleged soul to do with any of that?"

And you confirmed this notion by saying in another time:

"What role then does food and water and cell metabolism play then in your opinion? These explain the fuel source and the power supply mechanism. If you remove the fuel then you die, if you interfere with metabolism then you die. Presumably if a soul was the power source then we wouldn’t need food, water, or metabolism. This appears to prove that your claim that the soul is a power source is false."

Then you placed yourself in a circular argument when you said:

"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. "

So the brain is the most crucial part that makes us able of taking oxygen and food in, while food and oxygen are necessary to make the brain function. In my dictionary, this is a classic case of a circular argument, but I'll keep that between me and you as our little dirty secret that Cris the all mighty can make circular arguments and I'll announce you the winner of our little debate.
 
Flores,

This is the problem with you Atheist, your mind immediately assign simplicity to one words uttered by Theists.
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The discussion is concerned with duality not theism.

You assume that soul is a simple answer,
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Simplicity vs complexity is not the issue. The issue is evidence and credibility.

The evolution of the Atheist logic is incorrect,
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There is no such thing as atheist logic. Some atheists use logic some don't.

science advance by coming up with a basic model or black box, then filling up the gaps.
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Almost, if you mean the formation of a hypothesis and then searching for evidence then you are correct. If this were applied to the question of a soul then it does not yet qualify as a hypothesis, it is still at the imaginative fantasy stage.

Why do you think all the laws of physics where developed before we could understand the magnitude to which they could be used.
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Is that a question or a statement? You didn't seem to be making any meaningful point with that.

Every action has a reaction was a solid model that was known centuries ago, yet it's application to automautive couldn't have been dreamt of centuries ago.
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This appears to be another random thought. Do you have a point to make?
 
Stop butchering me Cris....

Originally posted by Cris
The discussion is concerned with duality not theism.
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Every single discussion on this forum is concerned with theistic verses Atheistic...you know it and I know it... souls versus no soul, god versus no god, half a soul versus no soul, ect....with the exception of the few Islamic and Christian meanigless threads based on spamming and bashing that appear frequently and are closed just as quick.

Originally posted by Cris
Simplicity vs complexity is not the issue. The issue is evidence and credibility.
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Credibility is much in question and fairly subjective. Evidence may not be possible for a hypothesis formation. If you allow me to steal your ideas, I'll say that the soul concept is a hypothesis and not yet a working model with evidence to support it.

Originally posted by Cris
There is no such thing as atheist logic. Some atheists use logic some don't.
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I think most Atheist use logic, and this logic is based entirely on taking the current information into bits and pieces on paper in a highly scientific way, while I think that the acid test of our understanding is not in our ability to understand science but in whether we can put science together into practice and make it work.....Atheists don't observe their surrounding enough to understand the power and beauty involved in making their life real, contrary, they concentrate on their own selves and consider their minute understanding of their surrounding as reason enough to claim their supriority.

Originally posted by Cris
Is that a question or a statement? You didn't seem to be making any meaningful point with that.
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For future reference, all my statements contain both the question, the answer, and the justification.....You just need to look a little harder and give me some little credit and the benefit of the doubt.
 
Flores,

So the brain is the most crucial part that makes us able of taking oxygen and food in, while food and oxygen are necessary to make the brain function. In my dictionary, this is a classic case of a circular argument,
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Then examine it more closely.

I'll give you a clue: Dependent systems are very common. This has nothing to do with circular logic. I'm not trying to trick you. Just think it through more carefully. The issue here is not about the trivia of who wins or loses a debate, I'm here to learn, and I hope you might be interested in that as well.

but I'll keep that between me and you as our little dirty secret that Cris the all mighty can make circular arguments and I'll announce you the winner of our little debate.
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I'm sure you will do as you please. Those who can think clearly can see the truth for themselves.
 
okie dokie Cris, I'll print out your initial post, there is a lot of good info on it that look confusing on first glance and I'll sleep over it, maybe I'll see more to it.
:m:
 
This is the problem with you Atheist, your mind immediately assign simplicity to one words uttered by Theists. You assume that soul is a simple answer, well it is not, it's merely the function that is used to describe a complex phenomena of how life operates. X might seem simple, but when you describe x=y^2+z+ dy/dx2 + ect......it is not that simple.
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i'm sorry you feel that way. i do not generalise here and i don't think or assign simplicity with thiests or the words they utter. i just think that there is more to it than a soul. the universe is so complex with many types of inputs, that i would be surpirsed if a soul was the only input into who we are.

we wouldn't need the "new" part of the brain if all we had was a soul. so i'm sticking to my guns, to use a cliche- i do think the theory that the soul is all there is when it comes to who we are is an over-simplification. even though i don't really believe in "souls", for those who do, i think that the brain has a lot to do with who we are as well.
 
There is no such thing as a soul. It is an imaginary concept drafted by the ignorant, for the ignorant, and is instrumental in perpetuating ignorance.

Thetans, anyone?

Grinches and Truffula Trees?

All purely imaginary.
 
Yes until someone can create a computer replicating the entire brain, then you really don't have evidence either way. Sure the brain interacts with the outside world and stores memories. However who chooses to remember something or makes decisions. Once these decisions are made then they might travel through the neural pathways.
 
Spookz,

really? can you show me then the mechanism thru which consciousness emerges from the brain?
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Why? What has that to do with the baseless fantasy of a soul?

But try this link for starters, it has several thousand references to work in this field –

http://home.earthlink.net/~dravita/m_thru_r.html#P

Also try this -

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/1628/A41brain.htm

A short extract -

To summarize then, brain, mind, consciousness, intelligence, moods, and feelings are all complex phenomena, which need explanation. Yet, none of these are in any way metaphysical in that they cannot be explained in evolutionary terms. We see the brain building up anatomically in layers with each new evolutionary strategy, and each new layer bringing into existence new forms of consciousness.
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It is not just that the soul (responsible for consciousness) does not exist but the very suggestion is comparable in stupidity to the child who states that babies are delivered by the stork.

I’ve perused a number of the references given above and it is not difficult to see how the mechanisms involved in consciousness are being discovered.
 
Okinrus,

Yes until someone can create a computer replicating the entire brain, then you really don't have evidence either way.
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What do you mean by either way? Shouldn’t the question be about how the brain does it?

Put in perspective, once you realize that the human brain has the power of over 20,000 modern state of the art computers squeezed into your skull then why would you even consider looking elsewhere?

The idea of a soul is like examining a car and refusing to believe that the engine is what makes it move.
 
Ummm...

Am I missing something here? The soul isnt fantasy. Its your mind, will and emotions. Thats all very physical. The thing religion talks about is your spirit. A spirit - your link between you and God. Thats I understand it.

I think you are all talking about the spirit, no? :confused:
 
Put in perspective, once you realize that the human brain has the power of over 20,000 modern state of the art computers squeezed into your skull then why would you even consider looking elsewhere?

The idea of a soul is like examining a car and refusing to believe that the engine is what makes it move
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More than 20,000. Most computer scientist state think that with the current architecture it is impossible, no matter how much the hardware improves, to produce human level AI.
 
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Spookz,

when i attempted to ask that, you indicated the question was not relevant to souls.
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Not quite. I said ‘baseless fantasy’.
 
Sputnik,

The soul isnt fantasy. Its your mind, will and emotions. Thats all very physical. The thing religion talks about is your spirit. A spirit - your link between you and God. Thats I understand it.

I think you are all talking about the spirit, no?
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Within the context of this thread soul=spirit.
 
Okinrus,

More than 20,000. Most computer scientist state think that with the current architecture it is impossible, no matter how much the hardware improves, to produce human level AI.
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What is the source of your statistics? Can you show your claim is anything more than wishful thinking on your part? But what do you mean by ‘current architecture’? And how does anyone know how much hardware will improve to claim it will be impossible? Your claim sounds very much like those who said that man would never fly.

But I am not claiming here that building such a machine is possible or not. My illustration concerns the massive processing capability of the brain and the apparent lack of comprehension by religionists of that perspective such that they state that something else is needed for consciousness.

But if you look more closely I think you will find that ‘most’ scientists working in the field of AI will say that reaching and surpassing human-level AI is inevitable. The question of whether it is possible or not is not a serious consideration. As John McCarthy of Stanford University states –

Many tasks that humans can do, humans cannot yet make computers do. There are two approaches to human-level AI, but each presents difficulties. It isn't a question of deciding between them, because each should eventually succeed; it is more a race.
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Full article –

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/human/human.html


But is it possible to reach human level AI – try this http://home.mchsi.com/~deering9/3ai.html

…. it is a matter of who will get there first. Rodney Brooks' 2040 sure seems like the long shot. The brain builders have a very predictable path, which is also aided by exponentially accelerating technological capabilities. And while the AI theorists will also benefit from faster more powerful computers and programming tools their primary limiting factor is theoretical, the functionality of their models. Several AI theorists believe that they already have the correct structural outline of a mind and just need the hardware and software to implement.

This is the wildcard in the calculation. The robot builders expect them to evolve to human equivalence by 2040. The brain scanner/simulators can show good evidence of completion by 2020. The AI theorists say they can beat the 2020 deadline by some arbitrary number of years giving dates ranging from 2006 to 2016 depending on who you ask and what they had for breakfast.
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good piont, that cancels out any evidence of aa soul even existing, splitting a soul. heh. this also brings up the concept of the good/evil twin though so it may be feasable
 
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