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

[heflores]

Everneo,
The reason I don't agree with you is that, you can't induce these emotions to people that do not have the function existing from the first place. For example, you can not make a vegetable person feel anything...Can you....? Because if you can, then you're the first person on earth that have performed such a miracle.

 

[everneo]

Heflores,

yeah.. if the person does not respond to singnals from sensory organs it is futile to induce the sensations.

 

[heflores]

Everneo,

So emotions are not induced, they are merely managed within the body. All emotion drugs are known as mood stabilizers. They ensure that the chemical that is already existing in the body is balanced. They try to prevent the ups and downs by levelling the graph. Creation of moods is something that today's science is far far from reaching.

We know that human feelings and functions falls within a limited range. There is a lot of sounds that do exist that are either above or below our hearing limit and thus not percieved by us. Vision is the same thing, we don't know if we know all the colors that there is, or if we know around us all the smells that really exist. We merely don't know. Theses are immaterial things that we can't just discount because we can not percieve they exist. Discounting the existance of the soul is ignorant, because we simply don't know and have no choice but to lump all the unknown things about our body in a term that we call soul.

Thanks

 

[everneo]

Re: Everneo,

Originally posted by heflores
Theses are immaterial things that we can't just discount because we can not percieve they exist. Discounting the existance of the soul is ignorant, because we simply don't know and have no choice but to lump all the unknown things about our body in a term that we call soul.

Heflores,
True. But exploring the possiblities of the limitations of body/matter in a reasonable, logical way is not wrong.. isn't it..? if we don't know the functions of body, especially brain, thoroughly then it is not fair to say that brain is everything for the existence of consiousness..! that is what i tried to point out in my earlier post.

 

[heflores]

Yes, but you will never be able to study the brain thoroughly as you say, because our range of knowledge is limited just like our range of smell is limited. We can study it well enough for a certain limited aspect of it's function. For example, we can learn about the eye nerves and how to make them more susceptable to see within a certain range. But since we don't know for instance that there is another dimension of vision, we'll never be able to explore that. We will never percieve the reality of this world for what it is because we're limited to our tiny microscope. I just don't see how that such apparant lack of knowledge does not scare Atheists into respecting the unseen element of the creator....It terrifies me.

 

[everneo]

Come on dude, no need to get terrified.. God is not obvious to materialistic vision.. might be intentionally..!

 

[heflores]

It's dudette, but yes the idea of god puts fear in me, specially the idea of the existance of the soul and so the possibility that we have other dimension that wanders of our material bodies during sleep or after death...That scares me....Who wouldn't it.

 

[everneo]

My goodness.. pardon me. No need to fear if u don't go wrong. i see it in this way. that might be a different reality and only well known thing to us there, or anywhere, is GOD. that may be reason why none is more close to us than GOD..!:m:

 

[spookz]

raith

The question I would pose is, "Why do we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls?" Upon what evidence or logic does he base this premise? I challenge that there is no such evidence or strong logical support for this. He begins with an unfounded conclusion and is merely working to support this conclusion.

i guess a man of his stature can get away with shit like that. i for one, being of even lowlier stature than chris, must attempt to be more careful. i still find him useful though i disagree with some of his conclusions. whenever i see scientists attempt to formulate a grand theory of everything based on incomplete and underdeveloped ideas, i tend to make a hasty retreat

when i quoted eccles "superstition" comment, it was a sly dig nothing more. whether it was a valid accusation or not was'nt a concern (call it trolling if you will (raith)). however, it is interesting that you chose not address his comment but rather counter with your own criticism of his claims.

Sorry, I didn't mean to derail your position.

why not? if you can find holes in anyone's argument, i expect you to do so. it would make the discussion so much more....scientific! or if you need more noble reasons, do it for the sake of humanity and the pursuit of knowledge!

 

[spookz]

Originally posted by Cris
Spookz,

The idea I had in mind was trying to place specific details to a fantasy as opposed to say putting details to the idea of gravity 1000 years ago

of course, you had to pick an example that conveniently turned out to work. no doubt if you were back at that time, given the culture and attitudes of that time, it is quite possible that you would be preparing to burn at the stake, the poor unfortunate that dared use his imagination.

 

[heflores]

By Cris: The idea I had in mind was trying to place specific details to a fantasy as opposed to say putting details to the idea of gravity 1000 years ago

HEF: Cris, how do you distinguish between fantasy and a valid idea that have no been concieved yet. I'm not sure I follow your argument with spookz. Before we knew the earth was round, we had no proof of it, would you have characterised that idea back then as a fantacy....afterall, there was no proof to it's validity.

 

[spookz]

raith

Is it possible? Certainly, but from what does one even begin to postulate? I could go spend my life in search of dragons hiding in the Himalayas but is such a pursuit truly worthy of my time? (raith)

dunno. perhaps by taking into account, the fact we can differentiate b/w waking and sleeping states and go from there?

Against this backdrop, it seems timely to pause for a moment amidst the onrush of new results and ideas, and to reflect upon the nature of the overall project of trying to understand the mechanism of human consciousness. Yes, we live in a very exciting time, and breakthroughs on all levels abound. But at the same time there is the danger that all these new results can blind us and make us overlook the narrow restrictions that might still be built in into the approaches we customarily take in scientific investigation. As Phil Anderson expressed it to one of us, over lunch one day, in the form of a question: ``What are the Ptolemaic circles in current research?''

* hidden assumptions make themselves felt indirectly, by leading to apparent limits in the terrain of study.

* further scrutiny of what seems to be `off limits' in a given area of study may point to the limitations in the methods used, rather than in the material that is being studied.

* realizing that limits are inherent in methods rather than in the structure of reality (mind and world), leads to an attitude of optimism.

more

http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:bAUT6XF_PtUC:www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf...nsciousness+investigate+nature&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

dragons? no! (these fictional comparisons are getting extremely tiring)
perhaps you would like to comment on the link below

Noë and Thompson- Are there Neural Correlates of Consciousness

 

[wesmorris]

I'm sure this has been said, so pardon.. but:

Isn't it just as presumptuous to assume that souls don't exist as it is to assume they do?

 

[Raithere]

Originally posted by heflores
Creation of moods is something that today's science is far far from reaching.

Not at all. Opium, for instance, causes euphoria. Electrical stimulation of various regions of the brain have been reported to cause the subject to feel certain emotions.

We know that human feelings and functions falls within a limited range. There is a lot of sounds that do exist that are either above or below our hearing limit and thus not percieved by us. Vision is the same thing, we don't know if we know all the colors that there is, or if we know around us all the smells that really exist. We merely don't know.

The reason we hypothesized the existence of these things was because of our understanding of what we are able to sense unaided. Further, we now have the technology to detect these things and know, for a fact, that they exist.

Theses are immaterial things that we can't just discount because we can not percieve they exist.

No they are very much a part of the empirical world.

Discounting the existance of the soul is ignorant, because we simply don't know and have no choice but to lump all the unknown things about our body in a term that we call soul.

Unlike those things mentioned above, there is no real reason upon which to base such a proposition. Now I wouldn't go so far as to state unequivocally that there is absolutely no such thing but simply accepting that souls do exist is just as, if not more, ignorant.

but you will never be able to study the brain thoroughly as you say, because our range of knowledge is limited just like our range of smell is limited.

Where do you find proof of this?

But since we don't know for instance that there is another dimension of vision, we'll never be able to explore that. We will never percieve the reality of this world for what it is because we're limited to our tiny microscope.

If it's unperceivable how do you know it exists?

I just don't see how that such apparant lack of knowledge does not scare Atheists into respecting the unseen element of the creator....It terrifies me.

Again, I must ask how you derive an "apparent lack of knowledge" from that which you declare is unperceivable. How is it that you have knowledge of that which is unknowable?

~Raithere

 

[spookz]

raith

In the philosophical tradition of thinking about the subject, there seems to be a substantial, not merely terminological divide regarding the question whether consciousness can be of itself (Kant's reine Anschauung, Sartre's pre-reflective cogito) or not (Hume's verdict on introspective attempts to find the self, Hegel's definition of consciousness as that which is opaque to itself, irreflexive Buddhist optics of consciousness). As Toms says, the question is whether consciousness is 'true self-consciousness, an act of consciousness knowing itself in its own occurrence' (Toms, 1984, p. 35). One issue here is that it is hard to see how consciousness could "get a grip" on itself, "step behind its own back" and become its own object, if it is always the instrument. As Deikman recently put it, 'awareness cannot be made an object of observation because it is the very means whereby you can observe' (Deikman, 1996, p. 351).

this appears to be an instance where a dichotomy b/w mind and body is not present. for instance, if you are unable to "step behind your back", it would appear that one is nothing but a zombie. a mere automaton capable of responding to stimuli, possessing simple feedback loops that allow it a rudimentary sense of internal states (warm, thirsty...)

Contrary to this, Perlis suggests that awareness can be its own object, 'pure awareness of itself' (p. 523), and gives linguistic examples of strong 'referring that refers to that very referring' (p. 520). This kind of referring again recalls Hegel and his conception of reflexive relationships, reflected in their objects (a relationship to something being at the same time a relationship to that relationship to it). But it was only formal self-reference of the kind exemplified by Gödel's sentence which offered a precise model of such reflexivity, showing how the means of observation can become their own object. This aspect of Gödel's work on self-reference, namely the formal construction of a self-referential sentence, has received much less attention than the implications of his theorems for the puzzles of human and machine reflection. But the sentence itself has perhaps as much to offer to the studies documented by this journal; as Perlis himself says, though only with reference to the brain, 'perhaps the diagonal method of Cantor, used so well by him and Gödel and Turing in explicating self-referential mysteries of mathematics and computation, has yet more in store for us' (p. 524).

http://nl.ijs.si/~damjan/perlis-2.html


(referring that refers to that very referring'). it appears that there is a third person. (i am stuck, perhaps you can critic or develop this further)

 

[enton]

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?

There are souls. There are gods. The Bible declares them plainly. Whether you believe their existence or not is not the christians' problem anymore.

 

[Cris]

Enton,

There are souls. There are gods. The Bible declares them plainly. Whether you believe their existence or not is not the christians' problem anymore.

There is a current and recent thread on souls, please join that debate rather than ressurect threads from years ago.

And your assertions that there are souls and gods have no value without support. The bible is not a credible source of knowledge and quoting it further weakens your claims.