Why would one go there? Determinism doesn’t work that way. It’s stochastic.
Again, it’s stochastic. There is no mystery beyond science that’s for certain.
Not incompatible means that God’s omnipotence include the ability to be whatever He chooses including 100% human being – which includes both body AND mind. A body without a mind is not a human being. So compatibility means God can be a human being in every way without ceasing to be God. And in fact Jesus was pretty clear that He was human in every way… John 14 “whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these.” No special divine magic or power but like any human being He could ask the Father to do things for Him. The only distinction is between human beings as they were meant to be and fallen sinful human beings. This is why Jesus is called the second Adam, because He is as man should have been. But Adam was not simply a body with God substituted for a human mind and so I don’t think that is what Jesus was either.
When science comes up with the mechanism I will accept your answer…
I will be waiting a long time, I think
Richard
There are criterion for that which constitutes a proper scientific inquiry. The scientific methodology must have a way to test hypotheses, so that which is unfalsifiable is not an acceptable scientific hypothesis. Whether you choose to limit yourself to such questions according to the philosophy of naturalism and make that the boundaries of any reality you wish to think about is a choice which is itself not an acceptable scientific hypothesis. So whether you pretend otherwise or not you are making choices on these non-scientific issues and we will not be railroaded by your choices to limit our thinking in this way. You may simply ignore us when we choose to discuss these things which you do not want to think about.
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It can’t Richard. Why should it need to? Rationality without it is sufficient.
I’m thinking just fine. Rationality is bigger than science.
Sorry, what’s your point?
I did not try and separate the body from the mind, nor the mind from the soul, you did.
You have to decide where automation stops and individuality starts. The basic bodily functions are automated within the brain, but personality? If a person is “wired wrong” there is no measurable difference in genetic or other make up. If there were then psychosis would be readily treatable by surgery. There is so much about the mind that is still beyond science, let alone any measuring of the existence of a Soul. Maybe Klax is right to dismiss the whole thing as conjecture? (or faith)
There is so much about the Holy Spirit and the power(s) of God that we clearly disagree on I would not know where to start.
Richard
Being beyond science’s ability to reach, let alone grasp, doesn’t put anything in the unnatural.
Personality is not so precisely defined. There are aspects of personality which come from brain function and there are aspects of personality that come from the way we think within the linguistic structures of thought in the mind (like those things we are constantly telling ourselves like echoes from things said by others which we have bought into).
I am not entirely sure WHAT you are talking about. Regardless, this is not relevant to the issue of a difference between Orthodoxy and Apollinarianism, which is a rejection of the Apollinarian idea of Jesus being a human body with God substituted for a human mind.
The idea that God the Son is coterminous with the Son of God is that.
Probably because I hang out online where people interested in philosophy tend to be a bit naive, and here I’m thinking about the atheist/agnostic ones.
Who said God was unnatural?
Richard
Is God irrational?
Richard
That is not what I said.
I said Soul.
Richard
That’ll be me Richard : ) As a synonym for supernatural. Nothing about the human mind, personality, individuality needs a magical explanation. I’ve been there. At one point I got to that the human brain is an antenna, an aerial on a ‘spirit’ frequency from at least when the body takes its first breath, based on ‘there is a spirit in man’ from the oldest book in the Bible. The stories we cling to eh?
It doesn’t arise Richard. If God exists He is perfectly rational. Is it rational to go beyond the fact that if He is creator and has left no trace, apart from existence itself and the witness of the early Church, that despite that tracelessness, He has to instantiate each human mind (and infinite other minds) with a non-physical component?
[Or is it a field effect and only certain neurologies can pick it up?]
So this soul thing you believe in isn’t a necessary part of a human being? I mean I don’t see the necessity because I don’t even believe in such a thing. And if the soul you talk about isn’t this mind thing driving bodies like Plato and the pagan Greeks believed in (option 2) then perhaps you are just using the word “soul” as I use the word “spirit” – though I doubt it. And in that case I am not sure whether Apollinarianism applies or not either.
No it is not a synonym – not at all.
The universe and its laws of nature are the creation of God who is spirit. “Supernatural” is a synonym for spiritual and non-physical. Thus it makes no sense to refer to them as unnatural. They are not less natural but more natural since God came first.
I quite agree. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with calling God unnatural.
Yeah that is the number 2 option from Plato and such. I don’t believe in that either. Again that has nothing whatsoever to do with calling God unnatural – which is utterly absurd.
If you don’t believe in God then calling God unnatural is still absurd. It is like calling unicorns primates. It is nonsensical whether you believe unicorns exist or not. And frankly it makes you sound like a troll. Is that what you are? Are just trolling this place?