By the way, isn’t reincarnation and ghost possession against the Christian doctrine anyway? I know some christians who believe in possessions, but they claim that they are demons, and not ghosts from the deceased. It seems contradictory to defend the christian doctrine of the soul by invoking those.
If this is scientific research then I would be interested in the actual scientific papers that were published in peer reviewed journals . Youtube videos don’t qualify as science.
What we need to see is the methodologies, positive and negative controls, actual measurements, statistics, and so forth. If there aren’t any numbers or error bars, then it isn’t science.
That would be easy to test. All you need to do is put two people in full football pads and then have them run into each other at a full run. If the soul is like dark matter then their souls should pass right through each other after they collide and be measured as two areas of mass that continue through the collision. This is how dark matter is observed to behave after galaxies collide.
To make things worse, there are actual papers like that trying to reproduce parapsychological research in controled conditions, and as you would expect, they always fail, even when the original team is involved. So it is not like the original papers are just badly designed and inconclusive, there are actually controled conditions in which the hypothesis is falsified.
I really don’t see how a ghostly substance is better at explaining consciousness and the soul than the brain. It is still some kind of material thing (like dark matter) that is somehow generating consciousness. At least the brain has the "consciousness is information processing’ theory going for it.
Yes, reincarnation is contrary to Christian belief. “And just as people are appointed to die once, and then to face judgment,…”
I’ve never heard of ghost possession!
Some here are very much into demon possession (but not me!).
Early Christian teaching was of the restoration of all things, which includes the Gift of Reincarnation, as Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3. This was replaced the doctrine you quote, and is contrary to modern science. I suggest looking at the reasons why the eternal damnation doctrine came into Christianity.
Possession is prevalent in the New Testament. Up until the the last century, churches prayed every Sunday for the “lost souls”, knowing the damage they can cause. Modern Christianity has lost this wisdom.
And you are going to restore it, right? And you plan to use BioLogos as a platform to teach it. I suppose that BioLogos will be fine with that.
Geez, when did I step through the looking glass? A known atheist is arguing the nature of the soul by looking for parallels in the universe while a God-fearing Christian would prefer to ground the soul in the brain*.
*Correct placement by the way.
**Oops, that quote was misattributed to the known atheist. (Takes one to know one.)
Not really, I was responding T_aquaticus comment, but the part quoted was him responding the author of the topic, so the words are not his, but from Shawn. Also, I’m a cartesian dualist, I just don’t think that the soul is some kind of weird ectoplasmic substance.
But, since you commented that, there are atheists who argue for the non-physicality of consciousness, which are usually philosophers. Three that come to mind are David Chalmers, Thomas Nagel and Rebeca Goldstein, all of which are atheist humanists but argue for the idea that physical processes are insuficient to explain consciousness. Colin McGinn also kinda does that, but he believes that the explanation is ultimately material, but impossible for us to solve with our limited inteligence.
Edit: Here is one of Chalmer’s most famous thought experiments on that: Philosophical zombie - Wikipedia
I’ve got a board meeting I have to leave for right now but I look forward to reading it. Rest assured, my entry level philosophy is insufficient to incline me toward non-physical consciousness. Though of course the phenomenology of the experience of consciousness probably will resist a fine grained, materialist analysis.
That would be a tall order to “restore it”. I see myself as a catalyst, not evangelical. Free will is God’s most precious gift to His children and I attempt to respect everyone’s free will. I just hope to be available when someone knocks on the door. This is why I am happy to write everyday on Quora because these are real people asking questions, then I am free to answer.
My hope is touch one or two enlightened scientists looking for a comparable view of Christianity that encompasses what they already know about the world and extend that into the spiritual world. The original goal of philosophy was to start with the laws of nature and use them as a basis to investigate the spiritual laws that created them.
What do you mean by ‘enlightened scientists?’
It was? I have no idea so was wondering what you are referring to.
Enlightened scientists are those who have, through their research, discovered that there is more to this world than what their science can explain.
Philo Sophia means Love of Wisdom. The Ionian Greeks, who founded this discipline, required mathematics, geometry and natural sciences as prerequisites before to attempting to become a philosopher. I go into more detail in my paper about that time period.
I agree. Moving the consciousness to a different material doesn’t move away from materialism, if that is the goal someone is shooting for.
That’s what every scientist discovers. That’s why they do research. If current science explained everything then we wouldn’t need new scientists.
The real question for you is if you think we can discover how consciousness works through the use of the scientific method. If so, how do you think that will work? Is the soul a part of the natural world like dark matter and dark energy? Is it a material thing like photons or neutrinos?
The Monroe Institute has been working on consciousness research for 40 years, but they have not been able to define the substance of the soul, but I do not think it is undefinable. The issue I have with scientific experiments on the soul is twofold.
- how to achieve repeatable results when dealing with free will of the subject?
- How do you overcome the Heisenberg principle? That means, the researchers have an impact on the experiment not only by their physical presence, but their own consciousness impacts the results.
The opportunity to examine the properties of the soul, without a consciousness in the equation is by investigating water. Both Dr Masaru Emoto and Bernd Kroeplin have developed methods of using water as a carrier for the ethereal energy in the soul. Emoto has shown repeatable results in transferring conscious to water and consciousness impacts the growth of ice crystals from that water. Kroeplin has analyzed the water directly.
Further research along the lines of Emoto and Kroeplin could be used to examine closer the quality of consciousness and maybe find a detector technology that can replicate how water is reacting to it. For me, this would a big step in the direction of understanding DM and DE.
Technically pretty much every scientist of every generation knows that there is more than what their science can’t explain. Newton didn’t really have a theory of gravity, and even his law failed in multiple ways… So what did scientist do with what he didn’t know? Did they
A) leave the explanation at Newton’s ‘unknown agent’ and use this as proof of the supernatural
B) keep trying to figure out a better set of equations with an actual mechanism
This sounds like a textbook example of the God of the gaps fallacy where we don’t have a scientific explanation for something – therefore God/gods/spiritual beings must be doing it.
How did they determine that it is an ethereal energy in the soul that is causing changes in the water? Have they published any of their work?
All that they published are shown on their websites that I linked.
I am suggesting their methods, but they did not adequately determine the source of the energy. More research has to be done to determine its source and quality.