The Soul
- Thread starter mis-t-highs
- Start date
I dont like 'Illusion' which is termed 'Maya' in Eastern mysticism. it has come to mean that only spirit is real, and matter /Nature is an enticing trap
I prefer Alan Watts interpretation o f'Play' and/or 'magical skill'
Material reality is both real, and .....errrm, i dont know. choose a term?
I prefer Alan Watts interpretation o f'Play' and/or 'magical skill'
Material reality is both real, and .....errrm, i dont know. choose a term?
But when I have realized the true reality of nothingness, there is no such thing as baseball bats or any other visions.
It' s unfortunate you are unable to accept reality and must seek fantasies to subsist.
Of course, your statements are hypocritical as well as ridiculous. You have been reading my words and responding. Welcome to reality.
It' s unfortunate you are unable to accept reality and must seek fantasies to subsist.
Of course, your statements are hypocritical as well as ridiculous. You have been reading my words and responding. Welcome to reality.
It's not that, it's just that I get so bored of this so called "reality". Is reality only what you see? Have you ever thought that whatever you see, you see only because you're conscious of it, you can never see something which is outside your consciousness. So it appears that the universe is inside you consciousness instead of the other way around.
(Q) said:
The truth is that you are talking with yourself when you think you are talking to Yorda, because you and Yorda are one and the same thing. And so am I talking with myself when I am talking to "you". Of course, Yorda and (Q) are only two small aspects of the infinitely large self. You never wrote anything, I wrote what you said, and you wrote this. Accept that you wrote this, don't defend the personality of (Q), accept your infinity.
I and the rest of the world is the unconscious part of you, (Q) is the conscious part of you. Just calm down and concentrate on yourself.
Last edited:
It's a handle.
No, it something you cannot know. If a person's communication to our world is completely shut off, it follows that we can know of anything that person's experiencing. Perhaps if the brain was all we have, we could tell. But to assume conjecture, we'd be assuming the nonexistence of the soul. We'd be begging the question.
No, you do not know that. You know what is materially visible, that their personality is no longer apparent and that their brain is dead, but you do not know whether that person is really gone from existence. In fact, cases extist where a person is called clinically brain dead, but when that person wakes up they remember a whole range of experiences, some of whom claim to have gone to heaven or to hell, or to whatever. My point is, even when external evidence clearly indicates, personal evidence cannot be immmediately discounted.
What we call spiritual or immaterial isn't clear and cut. What I mean is, we've invented such terms to call what is visble and known to us. They describe our interactions between the two planes of existence. How our body reacts to the material world, how the soul tells the body to do, and how our body reacts to the spiritual world. Because such places seem to us separate but somehow connected, we name them as different realities or places. But it's really nothing more than terminology.
My question to you, then, is what is an appropriate reason? If it's something we do not understand, then there are countless things about the brains workings, some of which I've even mentioned, that neither science nor you can figure out. If it's a logical reason we do understand, then it must be put into the form: condition A implies the existence of the soul. And so if the soul doesn't exist, then condition A doesn't exist. But in reality, the soul isn't observable. Someone could build a computer, vastly large however, to replicate the external behavioral of a person. The computer of course would'nt have a soul, and so, I think it follows, we have no physical reason meeting condition A. Hence, our only logical reason could be a spirtual one, from which it's reasonable to onclude both the soul and the spiritual realm exist.
Okinrus,
Yes we can. We can measure electrical activity in the brain that we know through endless experiments are the result of thoughts, emotions, and feelings. If there is zero activity then the person has none of those experiences. If the brain is damaged or is missing then clearly there is no activity and hence there can be no experiences.
We know of nothing else and there is no reason to suspect anything else.
Not quite. The soul is already conjecture. There is simply no reason to assume the existence of a soul.
Billions of people have died and none have ever returned to assert that death is not the same as non-existence. Again there is no reason to suspect anything else.
Clearly they weren’t truly dead so your point is not relevant. And any memories recalled during a period when the brain and memory paths were under severe trauma (e.g. starved of oxygen) cannot ever be considered in the least bit reliable.
As is the case with any fantasy concept not based on actuality.
No that is not valid logic. If it is something we do not understand then the conclusion is we do not know. It in no way points to a conclusion that souls exist. The absence of knowledge is not evidence of a fantasy being real.
Which is consistent with anything that doesn’t exist.
No again – absence of knowledge does not imply the existence of something which has not been observed and is undetectable. For example if we used your reasoning we could substitute super aliens that control our behavior instead of souls – this fantasy works equally well. Without objective detection and observation you have no rational basis to ever conclude that souls or a spiritual realm exist or could exist.
Yes we can. We can measure electrical activity in the brain that we know through endless experiments are the result of thoughts, emotions, and feelings. If there is zero activity then the person has none of those experiences. If the brain is damaged or is missing then clearly there is no activity and hence there can be no experiences.
We know of nothing else and there is no reason to suspect anything else.
Not quite. The soul is already conjecture. There is simply no reason to assume the existence of a soul.
Billions of people have died and none have ever returned to assert that death is not the same as non-existence. Again there is no reason to suspect anything else.
Clearly they weren’t truly dead so your point is not relevant. And any memories recalled during a period when the brain and memory paths were under severe trauma (e.g. starved of oxygen) cannot ever be considered in the least bit reliable.
As is the case with any fantasy concept not based on actuality.
No that is not valid logic. If it is something we do not understand then the conclusion is we do not know. It in no way points to a conclusion that souls exist. The absence of knowledge is not evidence of a fantasy being real.
Which is consistent with anything that doesn’t exist.
No again – absence of knowledge does not imply the existence of something which has not been observed and is undetectable. For example if we used your reasoning we could substitute super aliens that control our behavior instead of souls – this fantasy works equally well. Without objective detection and observation you have no rational basis to ever conclude that souls or a spiritual realm exist or could exist.
Well, yes. If we could replicate the total external behavioral of a human mind, we would have no material reason to assume the existence of the soul, side our own conscious. But as it is, this hasn't been done, and is likely never to be done.
You stating it as fact doesn't make it make it fact. Look, what we call a person is terminology, really. If you define a person as the summation of the material, then you're right. That person dies from existence when he or she dies. But to do so is to assume a definition which is biased towards a person only having a material existence. If, on the other hand, a person is defined to have a soul, a person exists without the material body. So, you're not really getting anywhere. To assume either definition is to beg the question.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Converse error, you know, is when you have If A then B and you attempt to say If B then A. I haven't committed converse error here.
Untrue. All proofs require a system of axioms to make sense. These axioms are unproven.
Well, astral planes etc., are an extraordinary claim. But remember, your not an unbiased observer. What you consider extraordinary, isn't necessarily extraordinary to people thousands of years, to me, or to anyone else. Consciousness seems pretty extraordinary to me. You also have to show that the soul isn't extraordinary. There's no proof of how our brains work. We'd have very fast computers with very large amounts of harddrive space even if we understood the material aspects. And remember, too, the soul isn't doing much. It's only making a decision every second or so and observing visual, audio infomation, etc. It could be just influencing a few neurons by changing the charge slightly. We don't know.
Well, I'd have to look at each case of near-death experience to complete brain death.
The doctors reported "brain dead". I don't know what that means precisely. Perhaps it means the brain activity when below our sensers. What it does show, I think, is either our sensors are inept to sense all brain activity, or the soul exists, or the instruments failed.
Well, you haven't explained what you'd think would be convincing evidence here. If you believe no convincing evidence of the soul could ever be found or obtained, then how am I, or any other, supposed to convince you the soul exists?
Chris, it's logical. If no amount of evidence could ever convince you of the existence of the soul, then either you look else where or you say "you don't know". You don't know whether the soul exists. Simple enough. iI wasn't claming what I said proof of the soul.topal, however, is stating the soul doesn't exist, as a fact actually. The only true evidence of the soul's existence can come from the soul and from the spiritual realm. While the brain is an elaborate task master, I can't say you're any better off on this argument than when we lacked knowledge of the brain and onlby believed soul directly connected to your arms and legs, like the greeks believed. We've given a more specified connection.
Yes, from a material perspective we wouldn't know. But really, from a material perspective we'd have to consider the entire world as the motive force. That is, your behavior is caused by material around you, for which the movement or activity is caused by material around it. In fact, you could keep going backward and you'd never know why you did. Eventually, though, you'd have to consider all mater's motion to be caused by a prime mover or say matter has always been in motion. Neither of these two choices is apparent, the prime mover suggesting a supernatural entity and the matter always in motion being unintuitive.
Last edited:
Cris,
Or rather the brain enables or challanges the ability of soul to interact with material world. Its all in the perspective one has - material or otherwise. While you ask about the purpose of a soul, i think about the purpose of brain to be a necessary interface for the soul.
Cris said:
Or rather the brain enables or challanges the ability of soul to interact with material world. Its all in the perspective one has - material or otherwise. While you ask about the purpose of a soul, i think about the purpose of brain to be a necessary interface for the soul.
I would suggest that you read again your own responses to me and okinrus in chronological order to see your contradicting repetition of brain disection even after you seemingly agreed to the fact that brain adjusted the loss of left hemisphere leaving all the earlier neurophysiological assertions to be rather naive.itopal said:Hey why don't you try organizing my paragraphs sentence by sentence backwards that might help to . . .
everneo said:
Hey everno, yes, i was thinking about similar as that only recently. i was wondering abou tthis impasse one has communicating with science people who adhere to a physicalist theory about emerging consciousness. The impasse being how to communicate about Direct spiritual experience, and that the environment is Intelligent....how how?
of course they assume--like you imply--that only with a brain can consciousness and intelligence manifest, and for them only with human brains is this fully achieved.
But like you say, and i was thinking about. we ARe here, and in order to interelate with other people, species, Nature--the whole wonderful EVENT, we NEEd to be bodies with brains that have capacities for both logic/reason/analysis and emotion/ecstasy/feeling
As many of us may be aware. when the modern physcisists -at the trun of last century -began exploring deeper and deeper into physical reality, what they found deeply confused their assumptions about reality.
doesn't that confoundment of the 'logical' 'objective' human brain imply an Intelligence that is outSIDe the physical brain, as well as inside of course?
It's not that, it's just that I get so bored of this so called "reality".
You're bored of reality because you know nothing about reality. You exist in a fantasy world created by your mom. Confirmation of your ignorance is clearly stated here:
The truth is that you are talking with yourself when you think you are talking to Yorda
Quite frankly, I would get more intelligent conversation from a brick wall.
And so am I talking with myself when I am talking to "you"
No, you are talking to yourself and not listening to anyone else.
Accept that you wrote this, don't defend the personality of (Q), accept your infinity.
Sorry, Q attempts to steer clear of writing nonsense.
You're bored of reality because you know nothing about reality. You exist in a fantasy world created by your mom. Confirmation of your ignorance is clearly stated here:
The truth is that you are talking with yourself when you think you are talking to Yorda
Quite frankly, I would get more intelligent conversation from a brick wall.
And so am I talking with myself when I am talking to "you"
No, you are talking to yourself and not listening to anyone else.
Accept that you wrote this, don't defend the personality of (Q), accept your infinity.
Sorry, Q attempts to steer clear of writing nonsense.
You're bored of reality because you know nothing about reality. You exist in a fantasy world created by your mom.
Is that so...
Quite frankly, I would get more intelligent conversation from a brick wall.
True, but even if you talked with a brick wall, you would still be talking to yourself. When people pray to God, they pray to themselves, they talk with themselves, not God.
Sorry, Q attempts to steer clear of writing nonsense.
Seems like a good thing to do.
Is that so...
Quite frankly, I would get more intelligent conversation from a brick wall.
True, but even if you talked with a brick wall, you would still be talking to yourself. When people pray to God, they pray to themselves, they talk with themselves, not God.
Sorry, Q attempts to steer clear of writing nonsense.
Seems like a good thing to do.
Its a tough job made tougher by the notion that science validates materialism.duendy said:
I almost agree with you but it is also true that a transcending & immanent intelligence is way beyond the capability of our 'logic' & 'objective' methodologies to even recognize it let alone exploring it. You can see apparently that materialism is holding the 'reality' as its hostage!