More on Immortal Soul: When did humankind aquire one

Faith & Science Conversation
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Hi Doug and George thanks for the interaction. Indeed, immortality is well discussed.in the NT. I’m not so sure though that the “immortality” of the soul is.Thus we Jesus followers receive the gift of eternal life. My little effort in my post was to point out that many biblical theologians see the notion an immortal soul coming out of an influence of Greek philosophy rather than biblical theology.

The image of God and perhaps the way this thread uses the term “soul” may not be too far apart. In my view, within the paradigm of theistic evolution the question of when humans received the image of God is unanswerable (akin to whether Neanderthals were made in the image of God). The more pressing issue for me, since I profoundly believe that we are all made in the image of God, is how might I defend that truth against the charge that evolution erases all “specialness” from humanity.

Regards Larry

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Well, I’d be curious what you think of this article.

I would argue that a correct understanding of evolution makes the uniqueness of humans even more clear.

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Me too!

Frankly, the Theory of Evolution has played a major role in why I’m a disciple of Jesus Christ, despite the rough time I had coming out of a Young Earth Creationist background. My study of evolutionary processes brought me to a great sense of awe toward the Creator and his wisdom in creating this universe, including the biological life within it. It brings me to greater awe and praise of the Creator.

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From the article “Theologically and scientifically speaking, we are formed from the dust of the earth, but we are more than just dust. We should all be able to agree, we humans are more than just apes.”

Thank you very much for this link Dr. Swamidass. It is an interesting and very helpful perspective. I look forward to watching the entire video. The last few sentences of the article which I’ve pasted above also summarizes my belief.

After reading the article my thinking goes in this direction … humanities task is to steward the planet as God’s “exceptional” image bearers.

Larry Schmidt

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Consciousness

“why am I here” and “where did consciousness come from.”).

I can only tell you what I was told (( most of you will dismiss this because it was during a NDE 31 yrs ago ))) short version , looking down on my body dead as a door nail I asked how can I be down there & be here at the same time ? the answer was that’s your body flesh & blood this is your consciousness , without me you are nothing .

You can’t think or breathe , I entered in your first breath & I am the last breath you exhaled … I am what you call your soul .

S ource o f U niversal Life .

I was sent back against my will so I know my body had no choice. Oh I know I can’t prove a NDE you have to be there to believe it …

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I think it is a mistake to equate the soul with consciousness. Certainly, consciousness is beyond the present understanding of science, but that does not mean it is forever beyond science’s understanding. Should we one day discover a physical cause for the phenomenon of consciousness, what then? Or should we discover that apes, dogs, cats, etc., also have a form of consciousness, haven’t we backed our theology into a corner from which it may not escape?

I’ve seen it mentioned elsewhere here in discussions of the soul and the image of God, but Anthony Hoekema’s book “Created in God’s Image” is an excellent study of the question. The image includes both functional and structural aspects. In Gen. 1:26-27, God creates humanity, both male and female, and gives them dominion. Many people so far have commented on the functional aspect of “dominion,” that humanity was created to represent God on Earth. But, not many have noted the other aspects of the image, which is that the person is now confronted by God, the creator, and by the “other,” the male/female counterpart. The functional aspect of the image of God therefore includes love to God and love to fellow human beings. The image of God is man’s responsibility to love God, to love others, and to represent God on Earth. The structural aspects of the image of God – reason, speech, will, conscience, appreciation of beauty, art, music, etc. – are bestowed in order to perform the function that God intended for us to perform. Thus, the functional aspect of the image – love to God, love to neighbor, dominion over the earth as God’s vice-regent – is primary, and the structural aspect is secondary.

This also comports with the NT teaching that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. If we want to see the image of God functioning as it should, Jesus is our example. I don’t know about you, but the most striking thing about the portrait of Jesus in the gospels is not his consciousness or intelligence (although I would contend that he was the smartest man in history), it is his great love, both for God and for others. Jesus shows us what it means to be an image-bearer of God. Sin and “the fall” did not destroy the structural aspects of the image, but it did warp and pervert the functional aspects. Salvation is the regeneration of the functional image of God in man – restoring right relationships with God, our fellow man, and nature. Sanctification is growth in Christ-likeness, until the day when we finally shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

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Sorry for the back-to-back. A final note on immortality. It, too, is based on relationship.
“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Rom. 8:29).

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If you read about solipsism, you will find that there is no greater mystery than consciousness.

Would God care about humans at all if they had no consciousness?

Whatever a soul is or could be … it is the part that is AWARE that is the most valuable.

The part or parts of a soul that are UNAWARE/UNCONSCIOUS? Are they even human? Are they driven by the limbic system? Are they mostly physiology? Without Consciousness… there is no soul.

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@gbrooks9
Consciousness is certainly a mystery. Is it the greatest mystery? Maybe, maybe not. One would need exhaustive knowledge of all sciences to rank the mysteries that mankind has not yet solved.

As for God’s care, the Psalms indicate, as does Jesus, that God cares for all his creation, not just humanity. But even with that caveat, I think we would agree that humans are capable of relationship with God in a way that the rest of his creation is not. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. The latter part of that formula implies a rational component to worship. That rational component certainly includes “facts” about God, but it shouldn’t be limited to that. It also (and maybe primarily) includes relational knowledge, e.g. truly knowing him through a relationship of love.

“Whatever a soul is or could be” … Ah, there’s the rub. If we can’t even say what a soul is, how can we divide it into parts? Is there an unaware part of the soul? Who knows? I would agree that consciousness, as well as the other aspects of the structural image of God (speech, reason, will, aesthetic sense, etc.), are what set humanity apart from the rest of the animal kingdom and make it possible for us to fulfill the functional aspects of the image of God (loving God, loving others, representing God on Earth). Without consciousness, we certainly could not function as God intended, in loving relationship with him and other people. In that sense, consciousness is a necessary precondition to worship in spirit and in truth. However, to go beyond that and say that consciousness = spirit/soul/heart is speculation. Not that there’s anything wrong with that …

My thoughts: Spirit is immaterial. God, as spirit, cannot be observed, weighed, located, etc. He is not detectable by our senses or measurable by our instruments. Likewise, the spiritual life breathed into man by God – the soul, if you will – is immaterial. The problem with identifying consciousness as the soul is the fact that we can measure, through brain waves, a person’s level of consciousness. Our instruments are capable of detecting the difference between one who is “brain dead,” comatose, asleep, or fully conscious. Granted, these are rudimentary distinctions, and they do not represent much of an advance in solving the mystery of consciousness, but the fact that a person’s level of consciousness can be measured through brain waves implies that the phenomenon has an underlying physical cause in the normal functioning of the brain. This would rule out consciousness as being equivalent to the spirit/soul, which is immaterial and, therefore, cannot be detected with physical instruments.

Again, if you try to identify the soul with consciousness, particularly if you do so dogmatically, you face a serious problem if later discoveries explain consciousness as a physical process. To paraphrase your earlier formula, with a physical explanation of consciousness, there is no soul.

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I do not need a physical explanation of consciousness.

Frankly, I think there is a part of the operation of our mind that is NATIVE to a different spatial dimension.

The famous double-slit/one electron demonstrations show that this thing we call light exists in TWO forms simultaneously… the particle (which would not interfere with itself when passing through the double-slit) and the wave (which WOULD interfere with itself).

There is a theory called the Pilot Wave theory, where LIGHT is composed of a particle, RIDING a wave.

This seems implausible to some … but I think something tantamount to this can be explained by putting the particle in one spatial realm… and the wave in another… with both of them having an affect and influence (in different ways) on the SPACE-TIME world we occupy.

I think consciousness is like that. Some of it is “just here” … and some of it is somewhere else… The two together might be THE SOUL.

Or… just ONE part might be llikened to the SOUL. The part that is bound to the physics of this world is probably the most expandable part of this structure that we might call a SOUL.

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It’s an interesting speculation, but you have to admit that your idea is purely speculative.

Discussing it as pure speculation, it seems to me that you are, in fact, still describing “the soul” as a physical phenomenon. Locating a part of it in some other space-time dimension doesn’t solve the problem of classifying consciousness/soul as part of the material world, since this other dimension would still be subject to physical laws (whether these correspond exactly to our own or differ somehow).

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@Jay313,

Now you are just trying to make me laugh out loud, right?

We are discussing the very EPITOME of metaphysics… the Soul.

And you are trying to make rules for what the Soul can or can’t do … what it can or can’t be.

Have at it man… it’s your SOUL to build up or tear down as you wish.

Too bad the ultimate set of books for understanding Human immortality doesn’t even attempt to explain the mind, or the soul or the spirit!

Why… it’s almost as if the writers didn’t really know for sure about any of it. Oh … right … they dont!:

2Cor 12:2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a one was caught up to the third heaven.

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I do believe you had a NDE, and I’ll bet it had a positive effect on the remainder of your life. I too had an NDE when a rifle grenade blasted a hole in my skull 71 years ago. But unlike you, I had no Out of Body Experience ((OBE?), but I did take a rather ‘detached’ view of developments as they were occurring. After re-attaching (self to body), I set about figuring out how to traverse the mile back up a snowy hillside to our lines and to medical aid all by myself, since there was noBODY there to help me. But there must have been someONE to help or I’d never made it. At least that is what the army doctors told me.
@smknws I hope that _now_ you are glad you and your consciousness were reunited. God Bless.
Al Leo

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As you know,Jay, this is the subject of intense scientific study, and it appears that human consciousness is only at a higher level, but orders of magnitude higher, than animal’s. So if we are to claim a soul that is intrinsically different than that of animals, we had best associate it with conscience (not consciousness), and assign our uniqueness to our desire to know our Creator and to live a life that pleases Him, not just ourselves. We know of no other animal that does that.
P. S. Your post was very well written. I liked it a lot.
Al Leo

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@gbrooks9
Sorry, I thought we were just having a discussion. If you want to discuss my ideas, I’m glad to respond. If you’d rather try to belittle me, have at it, man.

I’m not making up rules, just pointing out the obvious. Spirit, by definition, is non-physical, non-corporeal. We do not know what consciousness is, but it is certainly probable, if not likely, that consciousness is a product of normal human brain activity, and it may be a product of normal brain activity in other animal species, as well. If you want to speculate that the soul (non-physical spirit) and consciousness are the same thing, despite the obvious problems, which I won’t belabor any more, feel free. I think it is a mistake.

Hmmm. I don’t think this verse proves what you seem to think it proves. Paul is speaking about the fact that he doesn’t know whether a particular experience happened only “in the spirit,” as John’s vision on Patmos, or in the physical realm, as at the Transfiguration. He is talking about his uncertainty of how to process the information. To try to extract a metaphysical conclusion about the soul from that verse is a stretch, to say the least.

In any case, the Biblical authors also provide no definition of God. Should we conclude from that that they didn’t really know anything for sure about him, either?

I agree that the “ultimate set of books” is where we should look for understanding of the soul/spirit/heart of man. Hoekema provides a very good starting point, although there are many competent and instructive studies.

@aleo
Thanks for the kind words. The Scripture’s main concern is not to describe man’s anthropology, but his relationship to God. As G.E. Ladd said, “Recent scholarship has recognized that such terms as body, soul, and spirit are not different, separable faculties of man but different ways of viewing the whole man.” Thus, I think you are correct to locate our uniqueness in our ability to love God, to love others, and to represent God as his likeness. No animal or “lower” creature has this ability. Again, this is the functional image of God – those aspects of being created in God’s image that have to do with our purpose as his creatures.

Conscience is usually included in lists of structural aspects of the image. In that sense, it is definitely part of being created in God’s image, just as reason is. I don’t think you are saying that conscience = soul, as Mr. Brooks is saying (or seemed to be saying) that consciousness = soul. Correct me if I have misunderstood you.

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Albert Leo

I am so grateful for you reply and your own personal story, you are the first one ever to acknowledge me. I never thought there would be anyone in the forums who had a personal experience . How lucky am i thank you, i was 50 when it happened & I’m not happy that i came back .being on ones back 20 hours a day not a lot of fun … on the other hand i had a lot of time discovering so much about something i had no interest in before the NDE .evolution , I still have flashbacks to the time on the other side , its like it happened yesterday . Never had the desire to write about it, i am just happy that i understand it … you know how it is Al if your not famous no one is interested !!!
Have you told anyone your story , I read that many of our young men in the recent war had ND E’s, thank you for your kind words . God bless you too Al

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@Jay313

I am not attempting to belittle you … I’m trying to establish reasonable limits to discussion.

I hesitated about even commenting on the Soul. Because NOBODY really knows. And so now to be confronted by RULES about what is appropriately applicable to SOULS? … well, that’s just not going to lead to anything useful in my view.

If we can’t agree on the eye-ball real geology of Earth, showing that it is WAYYYYY more than 5000 years old, I don’t think we are ever going to agree on the Soul.

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@gbrooks9
Not sure if that last line is directed to me as an Evangelical or to Christians in general. I’m going to assume Christians in general, since I’ve never expressed my opinion on the age of the Earth on this forum. Just for the record, I agree with the scientific conclusion that this rock is billions of years old.

It is tough to discuss the soul/spirit because, as you say, we don’t have a lot of information about it. However, we do know some things. Otherwise, the thread could have ended after one post: Nobody really knows.

The “rule” that I threw out there is that spirit is immaterial and incorporeal. I think we can agree on that. The rest of what I had to say about your ideas relating consciousness and the soul was just my own reasoning, based on the inference that the soul/spirit of man, whatever the specifics, is immaterial and incorporeal. I’ve been known to utter stupidities from time to time. Feel free to point these out. I’m not thin-skinned, but I do think we should keep it civil in a Christian forum read by the general public. Thanks for the clarification.

In any case, I think your speculation is interesting, as I said previously. It may even prove right in the end, for all I know. I merely meant to point out some of the problems that I saw with your view. Maybe my logic was right, maybe it was flawed.

Either way, I just think that when we are speculating, particularly when the evidence is thin, we should be willing to recognize it as speculation and hold our conclusions lightly, not dogmatically, adjusting or abandoning our theories if necessary. (Speaking in general, not necessarily directing that toward you or anyone specific.) If we bemoan the fact that so many Christians can ignore a mountain of evidence that goes against their pet theories, we should not make the similar mistake of insisting on the correctness of our own pet theories when they are based on thin (or no) evidence.

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A thought provoking paper is: “Can evolutionary theory explain the existence of consciousness?” by Max Velmans, Goldsmiths, University of London. Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 18, No.11-12 (2011), pp. 243-254. This paper is a Review of Humphrey, N. (2010) Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness. London: Quercus, ISBN 9781849162371.

The notion that evolution can provide an answer is ably discussed; the author states,

“But the nub of the problem is this: Darwinian evolutionary theory is a functional theory. Stripped down to its essence, it has only one explanatory mechanism: novel biological forms and functions emerge through random variation of genes, and only persist if in some way they enhance the ability of organisms (or populations of organisms) to propagate their genes. Given this, for evolutionary theory to explain the existence of consciousness, it must show (a) how consciousness emerged through random variation in the genome of organisms in which it was previously absent, and (b) how that emergence enhanced the ability of those organisms to propagate their genes.”

The importance of random variation is clear – the author continues, however, to show ….

“…it should be possible to discover the full content of consciousness from an external perspective …The reason is the ultimate one, … natural selection. Since consciousness, as we know it, is a feature of life on earth, we can take it for granted that like every other specialized feature of living organisms it has evolved because it confers selective advantage. In one way or another, it must be helping the organism to survive and reproduce. And of course this can happen only if somehow it is changing the way the organism relates to the outside world…In short…… natural selection can explain consciousness is a doctrinal mater, a clearly stated article of faith, not open to challenge by any empirical evidence immune for example to extensive evidence that the conscious experience of others cannot be fully discerned from their behaviour and that experiences as such cannot be observed from the outside (fundamental limitations of third-person methods that are widely recognised both in psychological science and philosophy of mind). Whatever this doctrinal commitment may be, it is not science.”

This subject formed a debate chaired by Alex Kacelnick (professor of Behavioural Ecology at Oxford), and many prominent evolutionists, including Dawkins were invited to the debate. For those interested, they may consult the paper … for this blog however, it should suffice to show that the ideas put forward regarding evolution and consciousness have been described as fanciful and “stuff of magic” by prominent workers. The difficulties surrounding random genetic mutations etc and natural selection are great, and from papers such as these indicate they lack scientific credibility.

I am not trying to propose an alternate theory of consciousness (let alone soul), but instead pointing out the futility in seeking a position on such matters from any theory of evolution anyone seeks to promote.

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@Jay313,

Read the sentence I have highlighted.

I am unwilling to agree to this proposal. And I don’t think it really matters either way.

I am very inclined to see consciousness as irrelevant to the physiology of the human brain, so I can’t accept this sentence either:

" it must show (a) how consciousness emerged through random variation in the genome of organisms in which it was previously absent, and (b) how that emergence enhanced the ability of those organisms to propagate their genes.”

I tend to believe that with or without consciousness, the human brain would operate in the very same way … but without an aware “observer” that we call the SELF.

So… if consciousness is NOT part of evolution, why does it exist? This to me is a metaphysical question that is answered by a divine consciousness.