Is one monozygotic twin a human individual even after separation?
Why should there be a soul before there is a brain, which is necessary for the physical part of what Genesis calls a “soul”?
The question rests on an unnecessary complicating assumption.
Physical science cannot test whether there is an external non-physical soul affecting the output of a computer. If such exists, then it has to convey its decisions to the physical structure of the computer at some point. There is no scientific way to determine whether the first physically detectable changes in the computer, signaling the start of a decision are promptings from a dualistic independent spirit versus purely electrical processes.
Causal connections are measurable, and the causal connection to the material states can be established in an if and only if relationship which makes any imagined non-physical cause extraneous to the point of meaninglessness. There is a point at which excuses render the idea completely disconnected from reality.
I would say that most people who defend the existence of a rational soul are attached to the Catholic dogma(?)
And in in my opinion evolution is sufficient to explain the emergence of intelligence, intellect and morality.
This ar
This argument from St Roymond is fundamentally flawed…
If only a single generation of biblical author were being considered, yes that argument could be valid…however, the fact is, when it comes to creation, noahs flood, and.sodom/gomorah, multiple writers across more than a thousand years wrote the exact same statements about those events.
Moses in about 1300 BC
Christ in about 30 AD
and Peter 64-67 AD
Your arggument there is absolute nonsense and the timeline of biblical authorship proves its utterly false.
I dont know why you continue to spin this tripe…the weight of internal biblical evidence against it is such that continuing to push it is a dilusion
Physical science can test whether the typing of letters on my computer correlates to my actions at the keyboard. But it cannot test whether a change occurring in the computer is caused purely by material causes such as quantum fluctuations, or whether some external non-physical soul is acting on the computer.
Of course, that is no proof that such a soul is acting on computers, or on brains. But the science does not disprove the idea of such a soul. Whether or not such exists would need to be tested using other information. Personally, I suspect that our souls have greater connection to our bodies than a strictly dualistic view would advocate.
If a completely dualistic-type soul exists, and actually bothers to involve itself in answering the questions in a neuropsychology experiment rather than leaving the brain on autopilot, then brain scans could detect the electrochemical responses to that decision being transferred by said soul to the brain.
If a decision is purely the product of material factors such as brain chemistry, then brain scans could detect the electrochemical responses to that decision being triggered by said chemical state in the brain. One can gain plenty of useful information by simply focusing on the physical processes and not considering the possibility of a soul. But claiming that this disproves the soul, as some have done in neuropsychology, is naively incompetent bad reasoning.
That is my opinion also.
Plato’s philosophical ideas, particularly those concerning the soul’s pre-existence and eternity, and the concept of a spiritual realm, significantly influenced early Christian thought, including Catholic dogma , though often through the lens of Neoplatonism (Wikipedia on Platonism)
What then? Do we have to agree with Plato because of this? I don’t think so. I prefer the teaching of Paul in the Bible on this matter.
Someone who claims Jesus wrote statements can be disregarded.
If we limit ourselves to the Vulcan-like world of logical reasoning, then we could bring up who has the burden of proof, the impossibilities of proving a negative, and so forth. Thankfully, we don’t live in that world.
Science and logic just isn’t able to answer questions of faith as it relates to the concept of the soul. The human religious experience just isn’t amenable to a limited objective approach.
Yes. If one, for other reasons, believes in a particular model of the soul/spirit (dualist, nonexistent, some degree of monism, etc.), it should be easy to see how that would fit with any particular neurological study. Those other reasons might be stronger or weaker or not very assessable.
I don’t think so.
The rather common idea of the soul as a non-physical puppet master driving the body like a person drives a car, does not agree with any of the evidence. The evidence for physical causes is just too strong – an if and only if relationship, which leaves practically no room for other causes.
Of course I have always explained that the laws of nature are not causally closed and thus some interaction with causes outside the space-time continuum is possible. But this does not allow for this above idea of the soul as a puppet master. That window or back door via quantum physics which makes possible the interaction of God with world (even within the laws of nature) just isn’t big enough for that. God is a different matter because His interactions are impossible to nail down anyway. But the behavior of people is easily measurable by comparison. It is like those tests of prayer to see if there is any measurable effect. Reliability is not possible for it contradicts the laws of nature – and that goes for any connection between a non-physical soul and the body as well.
Then there is the more recent discovery of a gap between decisions and awareness of those decisions which caused people to think there is no free will. I don’t agree with that conclusion precisely because I don’t agree with the puppet master idea of a soul. What are you going to do, suppose that the soul isn’t even aware of its own decisions? But if it is all happening in the physical mind and brain by means of electro-chemical processes then discovering a more complex interaction between decision and awareness isn’t even all that surprising.
ISTM that the questions are more related to the sciences of physiology and development, if at all, than to evolution. Whether one decides against the science or against the belief in the soul, if one sees a conflict.
An external puppet master soul should respond to physical cues. And there is a wide range of possible levels of more two-way interaction of body and soul. What evidence would disprove it? Not that difficulty in disproving would be a good reason to believe in such a soul, but if on some other ground you believe that such a soul does exist, then the physical processes that we can measure scientifically can reasonably interpreted as either influenced by action of that spirit on the body or as body-level processes that the spirit is unconcerned with. Just as the experiments can easily be interpreted in various deterministic and indeterministic ways, they can be interpreted consistently with a wide range of different beliefs about the soul, including but not exclusively its non-existence.
Except they didn’t – they used different ways of communicating – and none of them wrote or spoke in a way to say the Flood was global.
Stop ignoring the ordinary use of language and stop trying to force science on the text!
No, your view of the internal evidence makes it look like a delusion. If you would let the scriptures be what they are instead of demanding that they speak in terms contrary to the grammatical-historical method, you would lsoe all these problems you’ve invented.
What the evidence shows is what part of that range is reasonable – only interactions which are extremely rare. And that is the point, because extremely rare is NOT this idea of a non-physical puppet master. So it is NOT some non-physical insertion that makes bodies alive, animate, or a person. All the reasons for those characteristics are consistently being found in the body itself and how it works. But if the body itself has all the capabilities to do what we see people do then what role is there for extremely rare interactions? How about the miracle when people actually change. Now that I believe in. But the cause in that case isn’t the soul taught by Plato but the God (Holy Spirit) taught by Bible Christianity.
Or the standard operating procedure from which no difference can be discerned.
That’s why I like my older brother’s concept of the mind as a joint operation of “soul” and body, so that without either one the mind is dead and there is no person. How that would work theologically I haven’t really delved into, but it does seem to fit with the early Hebrew understanding.
Yeah. There were readings in Greek from Plato and others where souls were basically generic bodies without physical substance; they bugged the heck out of me especially after learning Hebrew.
For the reasons above, I believe interaction with any non-physical aspect of ourselves is almost completely epiphenomenal (one way from physical to spiritual). And this interestingly enough fits Paul’s description in 1 Cor 15 extremely well, that our physical body provides the seed from which the spiritual body grows.
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