For easy of notation I’ll use the term “soul” instead of saying soul/spirit each time.

There has been much discussion about the existence of gods and proof/evidence of such; however, such arguments are irrelevant if souls do not exist.

If a human has no such thing as a soul then who cares if a god exists or not? The worst that can happen to us would be that we would die (cease to exist). And the evidence so far is that everyone dies anyway, whether there is a soul or not.

So rather than try to prove or disprove the existence of a single super entity shouldn’t it be easier to prove the existence of at least one human soul since these are in the billions, and presumably much closer to home, i.e. we are all really souls.

If souls do not exist then ALL religions have no relevant basis.

My understanding is that there is no such thing as a soul since all cognitive functions, memories, emotions, feelings, thoughts, are all stored and generated by the brain. This I believe is confirmed through thousands of clinical studies where patients have suffered some degree of brain damage and the studies show missing function depending on the damage.

If a soul exists and can carry awareness from one state of existence to another then it must be able to hold memories at least. If a brain is damaged and all memory is destroyed then if a soul is present why can’t the person remember anything? This implies that the memory is in the brain and is entirely physical.

We also know that damage to the brain can also result in impairments to abilities to think, to reason, to experience emotions, etc. The same argument applies to these properties as to memory. If these are all physical then what is a soul if it doesn’t have these?

For a soul to have any type of awareness or identity then it must be able to retain some if not all of the properties that we know are controlled by the brain.

So why is a person seriously impaired by brain damage if a soul exists? The obvious answer is that there are no such things as souls.

Does everyone agree?

Some religions dont believe in souls. What about them?

Good answer m0rl0ck, that confirms the idea that atheists are anti-christian. Unless Cris would like to rephrase the question that is.

Morlock,

Which ones?

The definition of religion includes a belief in a supernatural component of some kind.

But the term soul can be extended to include any concept that revolves around a survival of some kind beyond physical death.

The idea is that YOU are somehow seperate from physical existence.

One entry found for religion.


Main Entry: re·li·gion
Pronunciation: ri-'li-j&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English religioun, from Latin religion-, religio supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice, perhaps from religare to restrain, tie back -- more at RELY
Date: 13th century
1 a : the state of a religious <a nun in her 20th year of religion> b (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith
- re·li·gion·less adjective

Stu,

that confirms the idea that atheists are anti-christian.Two thirds of the world are not Christian. Of the remaining third only a small number understand the issues.

You should not assume that every atheist has something against your particular set of cults. The thread is not specifically targeting Christianity; there are other ideas in the world.

Do you have anything useful to add or are you here only to show your ability to be sarcastic and use ad hominem attacks?

If you are capable of courteous discussion then please use that ability.

The thread offers a serious question and I have stated my opinions and their basis. Can you offer any serious response?

Stu,

Regarding the definition of religion: Thanks. That’s good enough. Did you have a point though?

Stu,

I think you are only trying to find alternative ways to dicredit Christianity.The issue of souls is equally applicable to Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, as well as Christianity, and others.

Note that the issue isn’t an atheist/theist argument either but instead cuts to the heart of dualism and dialectical materialism.

I am not trying to specifically attack Christianity here. My point is that if souls do not exist then the major religions of which Christianity is just one face a fundamental dilemma.

If you want to argue as if you are a Moslem, then the same argument applies. The fact that you are a Christian is not important to my argument. Please don’t take the issue personally.

And I am not trying to attack you but have politely requested that you refrain from ad hominem style remarks that you have used elsewhere. My request is that you address the argument and not attack the person or his intentions. This is the essence of civilized debate.

So the real question for you then is can you show that you have a soul that I believe is essential to your particular religion?

With respect
Cris

Dr. Wilder Penfield and epilepsy

This (stimulation of the temporal lobe) has produced the surprising and remarkable experience in the subject of a form of double consciousness, as Penfield termed it. The patient only fully aware of his immediate surroundings, operating room, the surgeon and his assistants--whole local scene in fact--but also of the suddenly reenacted scene from the past, a scene so vivid that it includes sounds, and in one case even included the odor of coffee being brewed!

He records one such occasion in which "a young South African patient lying on the operating table exclaimed, when he realized what was happening, that it was astonishing to him to realize that he was laughing with his cousins on a farm in South Africa, while he was also fully conscious of being in the operating room in Montreal." Penfield observed: "The mind of the patient was as independent of the reflex action as was the mind of the surgeon who listened and strove to understand. Thus, my argument favors independence of mind-action."

Penfield was thus driven to conclude that the stimulus of the electrode was responsible in effect for a kind of TV program which the subject was watching objectively, while the subject's own mind was directing the production of an equally complete record of the events occurring in the room around him. Just as we can objectively watch a TV program in the company of others whose presence we are fully conscious of, so here were two different kinds of consciousness. The mind was observing by its own will a program presented to it mechanistically by electrode stimulation much as the TV operated independently of the viewer. As Penfield put it, if we liken the brain to a computer, man has a computer, not is a computer.

This discovery was totally unexpected. But it was in no way singular. It was repeated again and again for hundreds of patients, each of whom could identify the scene recalled with ease and virtually instantaneously. Patients could elaborate on what they saw and explain the circumstances, much as a TV viewer seeing a serial program might explain the circumstances to a watching companion who was ignorant of the previous events. In such a situation there are clearly two elements. The viewer is not part of the TV program but an observer. Yet he is more than an observer insofar as the viewer can adjust the set, clarify the image, change the program, and (in a recall situation) shut it off at will under normal circumstances by a shifting of attention (i.e., turning to another program). Here, then, we have a dualism of object and subject, of brain and mind.

It is no longer safe to view the mind as a computer, though the brain is indeed a computer of extraordinary refinement. But this computer has a programmer and an operator who is using it as a tool of recall and of motor control.



Since there is no evidence for such action, Penfield concluded that the only explanation must be that there is indeed another basic element and another form of energy, that as a programmer acts independently of his computer, even if he depends on the computer's action for certain things, so the mind seemingly can act independently of the brain.

If the dualistic view is never explored, we shall never design experimental tools to uncover the mechanism of interaction between the two elements. It before seems logical to allow dualism as a working hypothesis and to see whether new avenues of approach to the problem may not be invented in the more open climate that such an allowance would generate. Penfield was convinced we must broaden our hypothetical base.

Laying the Experimental Foundations (http://custance.org/old/mind/ch5m.html)


Sir John C. Eccles and interactionism

Eccles sees mind and brain as a clear-cut dichotomy and goes so far as to equate self-conscious mind with an entity called soul. He rejects the parallelist view as an evasion of the problem. The mind is merely a viewer of a TV screen who has no control of the TV program. The mind is an active observer which can select the program, change the channels, adjust color, and even take part in the original programming. There is, he believes, substantial evidence of an active influence of the self-conscious mind upon the neuron machinery. The mind has no interest in the firings of individual nerve cells any more than the viewer is concerned normally with the functioning of resistor transistors, condensers, or the circuitry of his own TV set. Such firings of individual nerve cells provide the mind with no useful information in themselves, though another mind may be deeply concerned in the event of malfunctioning of the mechanism. It is the collective communal operation of the large number of neurons that has to be the basis of the intelligible and useful readout. This readout is normally a readout upon demand and is integrated by the mind into a meaningful message. The brain's TV "picture" is only a picture because the mind makes it one.


"Our coming-to-be is as mysterious as our ceasing-to-be at death. Can we therefore not derive hope because our ignorance about our origin matches our ignorance about our destiny? Cannot life be lived as a challenging and wonderful adventure that has meaning yet to be discovered?

If [mind] is an emergent derivative of simply a brain developed to the highest level in the evolutionary process, then I think, we give way finally to a view that makes the self-conscious mind simply a spin-off from the highly developed brain...

My position is this. I believe that my personal uniqueness, that is, my own experienced self-consciousness, is not accounted for by this emergent explanation of the coming-to-be of my own self. It is the experienced uniqueness that is not so explained...

So I am constrained to believe that there is what we might call a supernatural origin of my unique self-conscious mind or my unique selfhood or soul; and that gives rise of course to a whole new set of problems.

By this idea of supernatural creation I escape from the incredible improbability that the uniqueness of my own self is genetically determined. There is no problem about the genetic uniqueness of my brain. It is the uniqueness of the experienced self that requires this hypothesis of an independent origin of the self or soul, which is then associated with a brain, that so becomes MY brain."

Mind is Autonomous and in Control (http://custance.org/old/mind/ch6m.html)

The Mysterious Matter of Mind (http://custance.org/old/mind)


*my soul/spirit acknowledges no god

;)

Cris,

Couldn't agree more. See my thread "from the bottom of my frontal lobe" in the general philosophy forum.

I also agree. Many people attribute NDE's to souls, however people experience NDE's at (surprise surprise) near death. We don't even fully comprehend how out mind functions normally, how can we begin to guess at what should happen when it is near death? My personal theory on NDE's is that the subconscious is most likely involved. The subconscious part of your brain has stored the idea that when close to death, people often experience the bright lights, tunnels and so forth. Since it is the most relavent thing it can find you experience this as well.

If the person is, say, Christian then this becomes even more pronounced. Christians come to expect these things (lights, tunnels) when they die, again the subconscious actually generates these images at near death simply because you expect it to happen.

If souls exist, what are they made of? Pure energy? If so why can't we detect them? If they are made of something physical (energy) we should be able to detect their presence. If they're made of something supernatural where do they reside? Inside our bodies? How are they attached to our bodies? To be completely undetectable they must be completely non-interactive with our universe. If this is true then how do they react with our brains? How do they copy the experiences (memories) from our brains to bring to the afterlife?

There are so many questions and practically no answers. Since theists claim this is true about macro evolution, and dismiss it on this premise, they should also dismiss the existance of a soul. But of course, it fits into their scheme of things, so it is held to a completely different standard; namely 'evidence doesn't matter, it's right even if there isn't any'.

Unfortunately, most theists call this "faith." Yet faith in science is "ignorance."

"Unfortunately, most theists call this "faith." Yet faith in science is "ignorance.""

I call it an ignorant double standard. "You must provide evidence for your theories to be correct, but my theories are right even if I have no evidence."... pleease.

You mean that Elvis is REALLY dead. His soul doesn't live on? :confused:

That can't be true, can it?? :(

Yes, Elvis is really dead. No his sould does not live on. He lives on through his music, and the people he affected, but nothing more. Why is this so hard to accept?

Art is long, life is short

Hmm.. is this a counter to my thread: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12762
:(

Cris,

Since that you're one of the board's biggest advocates for cybernetics & transhumanism, you often champion the idea of plugging one's brain into a computer, or transferring one's mind into a computer. If it is indeed possible to accomplish this, wouldn't it suggest that a person's consciousness is seperate from it's body? Forgive my ignorance on the matter.

BTW, I agree with your points on the soul, so don't mistake me for a christian or some such thing.

Delinking it from the religion bit for a minute, I feel the quote by spookz hits the point.

If brain is really the seat of all memory and there is nothing beyond the physical mass, then it should be possible to extract what all the brain has stored, like in those fiction movies. And may be even to produce material with all the functionality that brain has, if it is just a large neural network. I never heard of that happen. And how can a dead brain lose all the memory?

Brain could be more like the Hard disk in the computer, and the soul could be the RAM. The RAM can never store all the data by itself, and has to physically store it on the hard disk. If a part of the hard disk is damaged, you lose data. But all action has to happen in the RAM. And the RAM loses all the data once the power goes off (life), and may be a small bit lingers at times- reason for the feeling of dejavu in some strange locations at times!

And hardly can we discount the first hand experiences of so many Sciforums members with the ouija board!

When the neurosurgeon applies an electrode to the motor area of the patient's cerebral cortex causing the opposite hand to move, and when he asks the patient why he moved the hand, the response is: 'I didn't do it. You made me do it'...It may be said that the patient thinks of himself as having an existence separate from his body.

Once when I warned a patient of my intention to stimulate the motor area of the cortex, and challenged him to keep his hand from moving when the electrode was applied, he seized it with the other hand and struggled to hold it still. Thus one hand, under the control of the right hemisphere driven by an electrode, and the other hand, which he controlled through the left hemisphere, were caused to struggle against each other. Behind the "brain action" of one hemisphere was the patient's mind. Behind the action of the other hemisphere was the electrode (penfield).


on a side note......

anecdotal evidence

most scientists are wise enough to understand that anecdotal evidence always precedes and leads to the collection of "scientific evidence". in the history of science, "scientific evidence" has never been collected or even pursued until there has been enough anecdotal or indirect evidence at hand to merit an effort to collect the testable evidence. this is the intrinsic relationship between anecdotal evidence and scientific evidence

I think YKJ is onto a point, especially in light of the original messenger. After all, why claim that there is no soul when a movement or philosophy one respects seeks to establish the presence of something that can be fought over as if it was the soul?You should not assume that every atheist has something against your particular set of cults. The thread is not specifically targeting Christianity; there are other ideas in the world.But Cris, given the prevalence of Christianity in the most part of our posters' cultures, I would ask that you recognize that the conditions of God that most are objecting to are through various devices stained by Christian and post-Christian hues. I don't recall much "soul" talk in the sense of the Christian-goes-to-heaven soul while I was with Pagans. Sure we have words like "Summerland", but everyone makes a bland speculation and changes the subject because Death truly is an unknown in those circles.

On the other hand, I think Christians and atheists alike, as well as a few other religions, take notions of the soul too seriously.

Even without souls, Cris, I think that humanity, stripped of its gods, would still find something to worship. It's the way people function; they must relate to those things they don't know, and one problem of atheism in the face of any religion is that it is merely nay-saying, and atheists are generally unwilling to offer any reasonable alternative. I generally think of the "atheist evangelism" being like a father trying to calm a child who has been hurt by saying, "Just don't think about it, and the pain will go away."

In some cases it reminds me of that sick joke where a parent stomps on a child's toe, and when the child hollers in pain, the parent says, "See? Now you're not worrying about how much your arm hurts."

People will still find something to worship. And where shall they set their sights? On something known? That this tired, old accomplishment be their greatest heights? Or should they aim toward something better, and do you realize how perfect they already have to be in order to aim toward something better that, when expressed, will satisfy anybody, much less you?

The soul exists largely because of music and art. Hell, if one could prove that such a state could be made perpetual, I'd be in. But even after we're done with petty gods, people will still revere the soul in art.

Let's put it this way, Cris, since "the soul" and "soul" are interrelated in this context: Have you ever listened to soulless jazz?

Imagine Muzak, everywhere you go, playing harpsichord interpretations of jazz standards. Imagine Shaft set to the tinkling strains of "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" by Culture Club piped through the waterfall and crystalware settings on a Casio synth.

Everywhere you go. All the time.

Be careful what y ou wish for.

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

Spookz,

Hey nice article. Here is a quote, the conclusion.

In the end I conclude that there is no good evidence, in spite of new methods, such as the employment of stimulating electrodes, the study of conscious patients, and the analysis of epileptic attacks, that the brain alone can carry out the work that the mind does, I conclude that it is easier to rationalize man's being on the basis of two elements than on the basis of one. (73)I must point out that this is not science; this is speculation. The frequent analogies to TV channels and the brain being like a computer are seriously erroneous. And the conclusion is not based on evidence but an absence of evidence, or rather a lack of information that explains the observed phenomena.

It is indeed tempting to view the brain as if it is a computer but that is not appropriate. It tends to make us compare our relatively simplistic desktop PCs with a brain. But this is not reasonable. A more appropriate analogy would be as follows –

The human brain has approximately 100 billion neurons. Each neuron is capable of receiving many thousands of independent input signals and delivering a variable output based on the colossal variations of the inputs. EACH neuron is effectively a computer in its own right. The effect of combining 100 billion independent computers all operating in parallel provides a view that is substantially different to the single computer analogy.

To complete the story: A neuron fires at about 200 times per second (200Hz). A modern Intel chip operates at about 2GHz. Such a chip could do the work of about 10,000,000 neurons. And the whole brain could perhaps be emulated by approximately 10,000 Intel CPUs connected in a massively parallel processing network.

Another analogy would be to compare the brain to the Internet where multiple activities are occurring concurrently. If you push in an electrode at any point you are very likely to observe a short circuit or crossed circuits.

It should also be noted that the brain does not act like a storage device but only retains tiny aspects of original memories. The brain is then exceptionally good at filling in the blanks and reconstructing memories.

Exciting a number of neurons with an electrode (massive in comparison) is going to essentially introduce new signals to these neurons, which are going to cause a chain reaction involving millions of other neurons. The effect is to randomly activate patterns of networks that are then directly experienced in addition to the patterns currently active for the current environment. Why would this be a surprise? This has nothing to do with a mystical duality but the expected effect of abnormally activating multiple networks in a massively parallel processing architecture.

YKJ,

Since that you're one of the board's biggest advocates for cybernetics & transhumanism, you often champion the idea of plugging one's brain into a computer, or transferring one's mind into a computer. If it is indeed possible to accomplish this, wouldn't it suggest that a person's consciousness is seperate from it's body? Forgive my ignorance on the matter.Isn’t this a direct analogy to software versus hardware. We don’t consider computer software to be some form of mystical immaterial entity.

A newborn baby can do very little apart from a number of pre-wired activities. The baby brain has many neurons but are largely unconnected. As the baby flails around and receives input via its senses then neurons start to connect in largely random combinations. When external inputs are repeated then the neuron connections become reinforced. The mind is these networks of physical connections. A pattern of connections then becomes directly correlated to a particular experience. As you grow you experience more and form new patterns.

The final result is a large number of neural networks that we call mind. Very much like a computer program is the mind of a computer. The computer hardware itself has no intelligence of it own. But both are very physical/material.

The concept of mind-uploading is entirely based on making a very precise digital representation of existing neural connections and then transferring those patterns into a computer based device. The device then reacts to the uploaded patterns in the same way that the human brain physiology would operate.

Ultitruth,

If brain is really the seat of all memory and there is nothing beyond the physical mass, then it should be possible to extract what all the brain has stored, like in those fiction movies. And may be even to produce material with all the functionality that brain has, if it is just a large neural network. I never heard of that happen. And how can a dead brain lose all the memory? See my answer to YKJ. Mind uploading hasn’t occurred yet. The hardware isn’t available, e.g. the ability to link 10,000 computers in tightly coupled parallel processing entity isn’t here yet. We need about 8 more years to achieve this power.

The scanning equipment needed to scan the human brain is also not available yet. The resolution is not good enough and if sufficient power is increased on current approaches then it fries the brain. One approach is to slice the brain extremely thinly and then carefully scan each slice. One minor downside to this is that the person kinda has to be dead first.

Brain could be more like the Hard disk in the computer, and the soul could be the RAM. The RAM can never store all the data by itself, and has to physically store it on the hard disk. If a part of the hard disk is damaged, you lose data. But all action has to happen in the RAM. And the RAM loses all the data once the power goes off (life), and may be a small bit lingers at times- reason for the feeling of dejavu in some strange locations at times! Not quite. Hard disks are really only extensions of RAM. As RAM becomes cheaper, very much larger, and non-volatile then hard disks will fade a way. So your analogy isn’t quite right. The RAM holds both data and program. Neural networks are also a combination of data and program. RAM is a physical device and the actual patterns of bits represent the data and program. The direct analogy to the brain is that the connections between neurons correlate directly to the bit patterns in RAM.

And hardly can we discount the first hand experiences of so many Sciforums members with the ouija board!Now here you have something new. I’ve attended many psychic sessions and have never witnessed anything paranormal. So I would love to see such a session conducted under scientific conditions, until then I remain highly skeptical that there is anything there that is not material.

I agree with Cris in that the notion of an existing 'soul' is unfounded and a myth.

YKJ,
If it is indeed possible to accomplish this, wouldn't it suggest that a person's consciousness is seperate from it's body?
Human consciousness is purely physical. It is the neural network in our brains. Just because you can copy or transfer it does not mean it is not physical. I can copy a cd but the cd and the copy are both physical.

Tiassa,
The soul exists largely because of music and art.
If your definition of a soul is creative output...well then a soul does indeed exist. However, this is not the standard definition.

.

tiassa,

why claim that there is no soul when a movement or philosophy one respects seeks to establish the presence of something that can be fought over as if it was the soul? Ah yes, then just call me a killjoy.

But Cris, given the prevalence of Christianity in the most part of our posters' cultures, I would ask that you recognize that the conditions of God that most are objecting to are through various devices stained by Christian and post-Christian hues.But, tiassa I was thinking of you when I said those things. I distinctly remember you chastising other members many times for assuming that everyone only talks about the Christian god. But of course I am fully aware that the majority here does focus on Christianity. But my point still holds, it doesn’t matter. If when we die we cease to exist then if any religion assumes the opposite then they are all irrelevant, whether they believe in a god or not. I was trying to at least meet your request and as stay neutral as I possibly could.

I don't recall much "soul" talk in the sense of the Christian-goes-to-heaven soul while I was with Pagans. Sure we have words like "Summerland", but everyone makes a bland speculation and changes the subject because Death truly is an unknown in those circles. But a spirit world was assumed or hoped for, right? The fact that the emphasis was on other aspects does not dilute my assertions if the final objective was a hope of cheating death.

On the other hand, I think Christians and atheists alike, as well as a few other religions, take notions of the soul too seriously. Too seriously? Isn’t it the fundamental goal of such institutions? In Christianity – “believeth in me sayeth the lord and ye shall receive everlasting life”. Isn’t the whole point of being a Christian to achieve immortality? If a soul doesn’t exist then this dream is just that, a dream.

Even without souls, Cris, I think that humanity, stripped of its gods, would still find something to worship. It's the way people function; they must relate to those things they don't know,Now you are just a being a pessimist. I hope for more of the human race. As we learn more and education improves then I am sure that superstitions will fade. I agree one can’t stop people dreaming and hoping, and we shouldn’t want to stop that, but I would hope that hopes change from beliefs that something must be true because they want it to be true, to one of, it would be nice but we simply don’t know. From gullibility, irrationality and superstitions, to informed and rational objectivity. Perhaps I am just dreaming that that might occur, but then I am the eternal optimist.

and one problem of atheism in the face of any religion is that it is merely nay-saying, and atheists are generally unwilling to offer any reasonable alternative. I generally think of the "atheist evangelism" being like a father trying to calm a child who has been hurt by saying, "Just don't think about it, and the pain will go away."Perhaps, but then as atheism starts to bite harder as it is starting to do now then many atheists will also see your perspective and will want something more as religions decline. But then I am only an atheist when confronted with a theist argument. My direction is not atheism but humanism and transhumanism and those are most definitely positive philosophies. As you have said before, atheism isn’t a set of doctrines or a belief system. It is purely something in opposition. Atheists must should also take up their own positive causes as well as opposing theism.

The soul exists largely because of music and art. Hell, if one could prove that such a state could be made perpetual, I'd be in. But even after we're done with petty gods, people will still revere the soul in art. Ahh but now we enter a different realm, and a worthwhile target, and something I hope we will always have.

Let's put it this way, Cris, since "the soul" and "soul" are interrelated in this context: Have you ever listened to soulless jazz? Can’t say that I have. But then I’m afraid I rarely classify what I listen to, but I can imagine what you mean.

Everywhere you go. All the time.

Be careful what you wish forHmm, yup perhaps then it is best to keep those souls away.

Can we know anything with absolute certainty?

Empty Dragon,

Can we know anything with absolute certainty?Certainty has been claimed in mathematics.

For example 1 + 1 = 2.

However, in Boolean algebra 1 + 1 = 1.

Hmm, perhaps you are right.

But yes we can know things with absolute certainty when we know everything.

Cris read below, EINSTEIN IS FAR FROM ATHEIST, he is far from being a retard, he doesnt believe that Earth is super duper luck, or "chance", he is not stupid, only retards believe that....

"The Einstein family was Jewish, and Albert took his Jewish beliefs very seriously. He often observed the dietary practices more strictly than his father, and neither he nor his sister let go of those beliefs. HIS BELIEF IN GOD WAS IMPORTANT TO HIS SCIENCE, since he often asked himself the question, "How much choice did God have in constructing the universe?" (Hawking 174). By contemplating whether or not God would have designed the universe a certain manner, Einstein could use his sharp intuition to develop simple and elegant ideas." (later in years he began to disregard authority).

Although he was not associated with any orthodox religion, Einstein felt that belief in a personal God was too specific a concept to be applicable to the Being at work in this universe, but he never believed that the universe was one of chance or chaos. The universe to him was one of absolute law and order. He once said, "God may be sophisticated, but He is not malicious."

Whatsup,

Your post is not relevant to this topic.

However, the statement in my automatic signature about Einstein being an atheist was made by Einstein himself in a letter he wrote in reply to someone asking clarification of his religious beliefs. To Einstein God was not a being as you imagine him in your religion. To Einstein God is the universe and the order and harmony that he observed. The reference to a Jesuit priest emphasizes that the conventional Christian/Judaist perception of God is totally different to how Einstein perceived God, in which case he was a true atheist since he held no belief in such a god.

chris

i understand it is speculation. however dont most scientific theories start out that way. wasnt darwin speculating for decades before he came up with a workable hypothesis? should there be a time limit set for presenting evidence? the very fact that there are reported instances of nde's, obe's, regression under hypnosis, penfields epilepsy experiments, would give me reason to pause and speculate. it would be rather shortsighted of me to dismiss all this out of hand. all i need for speculation is perhaps, a single exception to the rule

??

Cris, you are a liar, Einstein didnt say "Belief of a God is a childlike one" YOU ADDED THAT YOURSELF LIAR, I have the webpage of his life myself and im looking for it again. The first one was true, he did say from the view of the jesuit priest he is an atheist, because his mother was catholic and father was jew and the father of the family traditionally speaking always set the rules, so parents decided he should grow up in a judaism tradition, he was a jew all his life....

"My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance-but for us, not for God." "If I were not a Jew I would be a Quaker." "I cannot accept any concept of God based on the fear of life or the fear of death or blind faith. I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him I would be a liar."-Albert Einstein.

he is simply stating that he believe in God, but not in religion. plus he is master in the field of science, not God..."I want to know God's thought, the rest are details"- Einstein...Why would an atheist mention God about the design on earth?

Originally posted by whatsupyall
"The Einstein family was Jewish, and Albert took his Jewish beliefs very seriously. He often observed the dietary practices more strictly than his father, and neither he nor his sister let go of those beliefs.Pure crap, whatsup. I'll let Einstein refute you himself (emphasis mine):

“As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came — though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents — to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true.

The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment-an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections.

It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the ‘merely personal,’ from an existence dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in its pursuit.

The mental grasp of this extra-personal world within the frame of our capabilities presented itself to my mind, half consciously, half unconsciously, as a supreme goal. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights they had achieved, were the friends who could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.”

Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes, Chicago, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company, 1979, pp 3-5.

~Raithere

Spookz,

i understand it is speculation. however dont most scientific theories start out that way.Yes of course, but the degree of speculation can be reduced by properly understanding the issues. The Penfield experiments were very limited and excluded too many other considerations. And yet the conclusion was not based on an observation but a lack of information.

wasnt darwin speculating for decades before he came up with a workable hypothesis?But then he had an enormous amount of evidence to consider.

the very fact that there are reported instances of nde's, obe's, regression under hypnosis, penfields epilepsy experiments, would give me reason to pause and speculate.NDEs and OBEs we can dismiss fairly easily since they all only occur under brain trauma and none have been assessed under scientific conditions. We know that trauma to the brain can cause delusions, hallucinations, etc, that the patient cannot distinguish from reality, and hence believe they are real. Many hallucinatory drugs (that alter the brain) have been shown to create identical effects. Hypnotic regression I’ll deal with later.

it would be rather shortsighted of me to dismiss all this out of hand. all i need for speculation is perhaps, a single exception to the ruleFair enough, but what rule do you mean?

I think first we need to discuss whether a soul could exist, where it would reside, how it could come into existence, and how it could react with a material realm. I’ll cover that in the next post. After that if you still want to speculate then feel free.

Originally posted by Empty Dragon
Can we know anything with absolute certainty?Yes. There are some things that are certain.

Each of us knows that we exist (if we did not who is asking?)
We know that the whole is greater than the part.
We know that 1+1=2.

And a few more things. Beyond that we rely upon some certain basic presumptions.

~Raithere

Whatsup,

Some more information for you on Einstein, including my signature.

From Skeptic vol. 5, no. 2, 1997, pp. 62ff.

The following article is copyright ©1997 by the Skeptics Society, P.O. Box 338, Altadena, CA 91001, (626) 794-3119. Permission has been granted for noncommercial electronic circulation of this article in its entirety, including this notice.

Einstein's God

Just What Did Einstein Believe About God?

Presented here for the first time are the complete texts of two letters that Einstein wrote regarding his lack of belief in a personal god.

By Michael R. Gilmore

Just over a century ago, near the beginning of his intellectual life, the young Albert Einstein became a skeptic. He states so on the first page of his Autobiographical Notes (1949, pp. 3-5): "Thus I came--despite the fact I was the son of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents--to a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived...Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude...hich has never left me..."

We all know Albert Einstein as the most famous scientist of the 20th century, and many know him as a great humanist. Some have also viewed him as religious. Indeed, in Einstein'a writings there is well-known reference to God and discussion of religion (1949, 1954). Although Einstein stated he was religious and that he believed in God, it was in his own specialized sense that he used these terms. Many are aware that Einstein was not religious in the conventional sense, but it will come as a surprise to some to learn that Einstein clearly identified himself as an atheist and as an agnostic. If one understands how Einstein used the terms religion, God, atheism, and agnosticism, it is clear that he was consistent in his beliefs.

Part of the popular picture of Einstein's God and religion comes from his well-known statements, such as: "God is cunning but He is not malicious."(Also: "God is subtle but he is not bloody-minded." Or: "God is slick, but he ain't mean." (1946)

"God does not play dice."(On many occasions.)

"I want to know how God created the world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details."(Unknown date.)

It is easy to see how some got the idea that Einstein was expressing a close relationship with a personal god, but it is more accurate to say he was simply expressing his ideas and beliefs about the universe.

Einstein's "belief" in Spinoza's God is one of his most widely quoted statements. But quoted out of context, like so many of these statements, it is misleading at best. It all started when Boston's Cardinal O'Connel attacked Einstein and the General Theory of Relativity and warned the youth that the theory "cloaked the ghastly apparition of atheism" and "befogged speculation, producing universal doubt about God and His creation"(Clark, 1971, 413-414). Einstein had already experienced heavier duty attacks against his theory in the form of anti-Semitic mass meetings in Germany, and he initially ignored the Cardinal's attack. Shortly thereafter though, on April 24, 1929, Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of New York cabled Einstein to ask: "Do you believe in God?"(Sommerfeld, 1949, 103). Einstein's return message is the famous statement: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings"( 103). The Rabbi, who was intent on defending Einstein against the Cardinal, interpreted Einstein's statement in his own way when writing: "Spinoza, who is called the God-intoxicated man, and who saw God manifest in all nature, certainly could not be called an atheist. Furthermore, Einstein points to a unity. Einstein's theory if carried out to its logical conclusion would bring to mankind a scientific formula for monotheism. He does away with all thought of dualism or pluralism. There can be no room for any aspect of polytheism. This latter thought may have caused the Cardinal to speak out. Let us call a spade a spade"(Clark, 1971, 414). Both the Rabbi and the Cardinal would have done well to note Einstein's remark, of 1921, to Archbishop Davidson in a similar context about science: "It makes no difference. It is purely abstract science"(413).

The American physicist Steven Weinberg (1992), in critiquing Einstein's "Spinoza's God" statement, noted: "But what possible difference does it make to anyone if we use the word 'God' in place of 'order' or 'harmony,' except perhaps to avoid the accusation of having no God?" Weinberg certainly has a valid point, but we should also forgive Einstein for being a product of his times, for his poetic sense, and for his cosmic religious view regarding such things as the order and harmony of the universe.

But what, at bottom, was Einstein's belief? The long answer exists in Einstein's essays on religion and science as given in his Ideas and Opinions (1954), his Autobiographical Notes (1949), and other works. What about a short answer?

In the Summer of 1945, just before the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein wrote a short letter stating his position as an atheist (Figure 1). Ensign Guy H. Raner had written Einstein from mid-Pacific requesting a clarification on the beliefs of the world famous scientist (Figure 2). Four years later Raner again wrote Einstein for further clarification and asked "Some people might interpret (your letter) to mean that to a Jesuit priest, anyone not a Roman Catholic is an atheist, and that you are in fact an orthodox Jew, or a Deist, or something else. Did you mean to leave room for such an interpretation, or are you from the viewpoint of the dictionary an atheist; i.e., 'one who disbelieves in the existence of a God, or a Supreme Being'?" Einstein's response is shown in Figure 3.

Combining key elements from the first and second response from Einstein there is little doubt as to his position: "From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being."

I was fortunate to meet Guy Raner, by chance, at a humanist dinner in late 1994, at which time he told me of the Einstein letters. Raner lives in Chatsworth, California and has retired after a long teaching career. The Einstein letters, a treasured possession for most of his life, were sold in December, 1994, to a firm that deals in historical documents (Profiles in History, Beverly Hills, CA). Five years ago a very brief letter (Raner & Lerner, 1992) describing the correspondence was published in Nature. But the two Einstein letters have remained largely unknown.

Curiously enough, the wonderful and well-known biography Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel, by Banesh Hoffmann (1972) does quote from Einstein's 1945 letter to Raner. But maddeningly, although Hoffmann quotes most of the letter (194-195), he leaves out Einstein's statement: "From the viewpoint of a Jesuit Priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist." Hoffmann's biography was written with the collaboration of Einstein's secretary, Helen Dukas. Could she have played a part in eliminating this important sentence, or was it Hoffmann's wish? I do not know. However, Freeman Dyson (1996) notes "that Helen wanted the world to see, the Einstein of legend, the friend of school children and impoverished students, the gently ironic philosopher, the Einstein without violent feelings and tragic mistakes." Dyson also notes that he thought Dukas "profoundly wrong in trying to hide the true Einstein from the world." Perhaps her well-intentioned protectionism included the elimination of Einstein as atheist.

Although not a favorite of physicists, Einstein, The Life and Times, by the professional biographer Ronald W. Clark (1971), contains one of the best summaries on Einstein's God: "However, Einstein's God was not the God of most men. When he wrote of religion, as he often did in middle and later life, he tended to...clothe with different names what to many ordinary mortals--and to most Jewsa--looked like a variant of simple agnosticism...This was belief enough. It grew early and rooted deep. Only later was it dignified by the title of cosmic religion, a phrase which gave plausible respectability to the views of a man who did not believe in a life after death and who felt that if virtue paid off in the earthly one, then this was the result of cause and effect rather than celestial reward. Einstein's God thus stood for an orderly system obeying rules which could be discovered by those who had the courage, the imagination, and the persistence to go on searching for them"(19).

Einstein continued to search, even to the last days of his 76 years, but his search was not for the God of Abraham or Moses. His search was for the order and harmony of the world.

Bibliography
Dyson, F. 1996. Forward In The Quotable Einstein (Calaprice, Alice, Ed. ) Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1996. (Note: The section "On Religion, God, and Philosophy" is perhaps the best brief source to present the range and depth of Einstein's views.)
Einstein, A. 1929. quoted in Sommerfeld (see below). 1949. Also as Telegram to a Jewish Newspaper, 1929; Einstein Archive Number 33-272.
___. 1946 and of unknown date. In Einstein, A Centenary Volume. (A. P. French, Ed.) Cambridge: Harvard Univ Press. 1979. 32, 73, & 67.
___. 1959 (1949). "Autobiographical Notes." In Albert Einstein, Philosopher--Scientist. (Paul Arthur Schilpp, Ed.) New York: Harper & Bros.
___. 1950. Letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; Einstein Archive Number 59-215.
___. 1954. Ideas and Opinions. New York: Crown Pub.
___. on many occasions. In Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel. (B. Hoffmann with the collaboration of Helen Dukas.) New York: The Viking Press.
Hoffmann, B. (collaboration with Helen Dukas). 1972. Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel. New York: The Viking Press.
Raner, G. H. & Lerner, L. S. "Einstein's Beliefs." Nature, 358:102.
Sommerfeld, A. 1949. "To Albert Einstein's 70th Birthday." In Albert Einstein, Philospher-Scientist. (Paul Arthur Schilpp, Ed.) New York: Harper & Bros. 1959. 99-105.
Weinberg, S. 1992. Dreams of a Final Theory. New York: Pantheon Books. 245.

Spookz, and everyone,

This is a long post originally written by Boris several years ago and who was, in my humble opinion, the most intelligent and informed member in the history of sciforums. At the time of writing he was a student of computational neuroscience.

The post covers most of the issues that demonstrate the significant improbability of souls. It is a long read but I believe well worth reading. The original text is in the archives although I have corrected spelling errors here and added some formatting for readability, otherwise the text is the same. I am copying it here again since this thread is entirely relevant to its contents and also most currently active members have never seen this. Enjoy.

Argument from interaction

Clearly, for a soul to have a meaningful connection to the body, it must be capable of interacting with matter. Yet, souls are defined as immaterial and not subject to the laws that govern matter. Hence, the paradox arises: by its definition, a soul must be both capable of interacting with matter, and not capable of interacting with matter. To elaborate,

Matter affects matter through interactions. For example, you can push a desk, or bludgeon a man, or dig a river. It is because matter is so "interactive", that we can make measurements, conduct experiments, and observe phenomena associated with matter. The soul, on the other hand, is by definition immaterial. Hence, with our scientific instruments we cannot detect it. If we could detect it, we could then determine its properties and structure and we would be able to materially interact with it, which would make the soul material.

But that's a funny thing, considering that the soul is supposed to interact with the body. After all, we are only aware of our world through our senses; and our conscious decisions directly translate into physical actions -- e.g. if I wanted to clap my hands together, I could do it. So it seems that material information must have a way to enter the soul, and material information must have a way of emanating from the soul and travelling to the body.

The latter of these phenomena has a definite effect on the body, and hence must be indirectly detectable. This is because the body is indeed material, and any changes introduced within it are thus immediately detectable with proper instruments. Thus, were the soul to feed information back to the body, scientists ought to be able to find the spot where information from the soul enters the body for the first time. (Of course, despite centuries of searching no such spot has been found.) But this again contradicts the notion that the soul is not detectable through material means (of course, this contradiction arises out of the already contradictory notion that the soul interacts with the body.)

Then there is the question of the very mechanisms through which the exchange between the soul and the body takes place. By definition, a soul is 100% immaterial. On the other hand, the body is 100% material. How do we build a bridge between the two? Does there exist a "something" that is both partly material, and partly immaterial? But anything like that would not make sense, since the idealist concepts of matter vs. essence are incompatible. Matter is temporary, while the soul is eternal. Matter is corrupt, while the soul is perfect. Matter possesses extension, density, mass, color, temperature, etc. -- while the soul has none of those properties. Matter can be subdivided, yet the soul cannot. How can "something" exist that possesses a mix of these contradictory properties? How can something be corrupt and perfect at the same time? How can something be massive and massless, colorful and colorless, extended and shapeless? So it seems there is no reasonable way that the gap between the immaterial and the material can be crossed so as to enable the communication between the soul and the body.

To sum up, two distinct points are raised here: first, the definition of the soul and its relationship with the body are contradictory, and second, there is no satisfactory explanation of how the soul can exchange information with the body.


Argument from neuroscience

For the purposes of this argument, we must first determine that of all the body parts, it is the brain that makes us who we are. After all, you can take a normal human, amputate all of her limbs, and she will still be defined as a human being. You can take a human being and cut out his heart, lungs, kidneys, bowels, etc. and he would still be a human being (for as long as surgical machines can do the work of the missing organs.) If you cut off somebody's head, and somehow manage to keep it alive, then it's the head we would point toward when we discuss that person; the headless body will no longer be ol' Joe -- since here's ol' Joe's head that speaks in Joe's voice and thinks and feels like Joe, and possesses all of Joe's knowledge, etc. So we can keep imaginatively (and nonchalantly) stripping Joe of body parts until only the brain is left floating in a jar. At this point, we can still safely point to the brain and say that it's Joe; we can incinerate the other body parts, but as long as the brain is alive, Joe is alive too. Incidentally, that's why clinical death is defined as brain death. Any other failed organ can be replaced, at least in principle; however a brain cannot be replaced. Even if Joe clinically died, and you transplanted Brent's brain into Joe's skull, all you would have done is transplant Brent's persona into Joe's body; Joe would still be dead as a doornail.

Now then, it seems that the brain is the crucial part of us that makes us who we are. Incidentally, the brain also physically controls the body. If you want to bend a finger, a train of signals has to travel from your brain down your spinal cord and through your peripheral nervous system all the way to the muscles of that particular finger, so that they contract or expand so as to bend the finger in the way you wanted. If the pathway between the brain and any particular part of the body is breached even at one spot, you will lose your control over that part of your body. Hence, the brain is not only the defining part of what it is to be human -- it is also the part that actually controls the body! So, if the soul is to interact with the body, it is clear that the soul must interact with the brain.

But where in the brain does this interaction with the soul occur? It turns out that there is no possible answer. As you may or may not know, the brain can be crudely subdivided into an old brain and the new brain, the latter composed of the left and right cerebral hemispheres. The old brain consists basically of the brainstem, and in humans is more or less a mere interface between the new brain and the spinal cord, as far as cognitive function is concerned. This is not to say that the old brain is insignificant, since it contains physiologically crucial centers controlling everything from heart beats to breathing to sleep-wake cycles. However, it is the new brain that is responsible for any behavior that we would consider above comatose. The new brain possesses vast tracts processing and combining information from the five senses, it possesses structures that plan, initiate, and control movement, it possesses structures responsible for emotions, it possesses structures involved in memory, attention, spatial navigation, object recognition, production, perception, and comprehension of speech, etc, etc, etc. In fact, brain damage studies show that every last bit of the new brain in adult humans is involved in at least one, and often several, cognitive tasks. So, it would seem that the soul must be in contact with the entire brain if it was to account for all of our human faculties. However, this does not hold when we consider abnormal physiology.

Certain birth defects cause some children to be born with only one cerebral hemisphere; other children lose a hemisphere to surgical intervention very early in life. Despite the fact that for an adult to lose a hemisphere would be absolutely devastating in terms of loss of function and aspects of personality, these children grow up to be nearly normal in all respects. This is just one example where the amazing plasticity of the brain shows itself in full glory. Thing is, the plasticity is lost early in life as the brain becomes increasingly organized, since for a highly structured brain plastic change would actually mean loss of function rather than gain. Yet, the very fact that people are alive who function normally with only one hemisphere (and a brain that is organized vastly differently!), as opposed to the "normal" people who have two hemispheres and a totally different brain organization -- poses difficulties for any proposed mechanism of interaction between the soul and the brain. Already, it would seem that the mechanism is not dependent on the soul, but must adapt to the developing brain on-the-go, so as to connect the soul to the brain correctly, whatever the final architecture of the adult brain may be.

The functional portion of the brain is composed of vast and very complex networks of a total adult average of 10,000,000,000 special cells called neurons (the bodies of these cells contain pigment and are often collectively referred to as "gray matter"). Each neuron sends out slender connections to other neurons, and an average neuron is connected to about 10,000 others (these interconnection fibers are wrapped in other special cells that form an electrical insulation around these "wires"; as a result the connections look white to the eye, and en masse are referred to as "white matter"). Of course, there are trillions of other cells in the brain besides neurons, which compose blood vessels, provide insulation and scaffolding for the connections between neurons, nourish neurons and clean up their waste, fight invading pathogens, etc -- but neurons are what actually does all the work of cognition. Neurons work by sending electrical impulses to other neurons, and accepting similar messages. Without going into too much gory detail, the effect of the messages on any particular neuron is mediated by a slew of factors from the actual chemicals used to pass the message between neurons, to the actual characteristics of the voltage signals that neurons send to each other. But the great and overriding point here is that neurons are literally billions of independent cells, communicating among each other, and every now and then sending impulses through your peripheral nervous system to affect what your body does. It seems that to control the body, the soul would have to connect individually to every last neuron in the brain and control what it does. But neurons die all the time, and new neurons are born also (although at a much slower rate.) Furthermore, the actual connections between neurons change constantly, and so the role any particular neuron plays in the overall function of the brain varies with time. So, how does the soul know what each neuron's current function is? Additionally, it seems that scientists can predict neuronal behavior precisely, based purely on the electrochemical impulses it is receiving from other neurons. So it appears that there is no mysterious soul behind the curtains telling this neuron to fire and that one to hold off once every millisecond; behavior of neurons is determined exactly by the input they receive from other neurons. And some of those other neurons receive a lot of their input from sensory organs, such as the pressure, pain, temperature, etc. (in other words, somatosensory) receptors on your skin and other organs, or from your eyes, ears, nose, or tongue, or from the vestibular apparatus in your inner ear, etc. So it seems that the brain is a deterministic machine that is driven by inputs from its environment. And all of those receptors and organs have also been studied in detail, and found to be purely biochemical and physically deterministic. There is no place left for the soul to operate!

There is no end to the problems that neuropathology brings for the soul, and I am not going to attempt to list even a small portion of such problems. However, I already mentioned the conundrum posed by neural plasticity. I'll present just one more "problem", and then move on to the next argument. The problem has to do with the split-brain patients.

Some people are subject to debilitating seizures, which are uncontrollable through drugs. A seizure is really a runaway chain reaction where a bunch of neurons starts firing chaotically, and the chaos spreads across the cortex, disrupting any cognitive function in its wake. Seizures can sometimes be combated through drugs, which help regulate neuronal activity and stop it from crossing a vital threshold above which it spins out of control. Newer methods include electrodes implanted directly into the particular brain region where seizures originate, so that an implanted computer can detect an onset of the seizure and apply a mild electric current between electrodes, which in effect "resets" the surrounding neural tissue and stops a seizure in its tracks. However, a while ago such advanced treatments were not available, and in extremely debilitating cases the only recourse was surgery. Most often, the small brain region where seizures originate was surgically removed (the mild loss in cognitive function was a small price to pay for the freedom from frequent seizures, and was especially tolerable for children whose brains are still plastic enough to compensate for the injury). However, in a few cases the offending region was crucial to certain treasured faculties, such as for example production or comprehension of speech, or control of posture. In other cases the offending region was just too large. In these cases, the surgeons did the next best thing to excising the part of the brain -- they selectively cut some of the connections between this brain part and other parts of the brain, so that the seizures would only occur locally and would not spread.

Seizures can occur in relatively localized regions of the cortex, but for some unfortunate people they occur globally, spreading from one hemisphere to the other like wildfire. In these cases, where excision was not an option, surgeons used to sever the huge bundle of fibers (called "corpus callosum") that connects the right hemisphere with the left. The corpus callosum is the major connection between the hemispheres, and although there are other small communication channels via which certain parts of the two hemispheres exchange information, when the corpus callosum is severed for all practical purposes the hemispheres are cut off from each other. For this reason, the patients that underwent this type of surgery came to be known as split-brain patients. And they permanently exhibit the weirdest behaviors. They really do have two separate, almost independent brains in their skull. Most of the time, the brains coexist peacefully. However, sometimes they don't agree with each other and the results can range from comic to absurd to horrible.

Because of the way the brain is wired up to the body, each hemisphere controls the opposite half of the body. So, the right hemisphere controls the left arm, leg, etc., while the left hemisphere controls the right half. One patient had a problem with his left hemisphere: apparently, it just couldn't stand his wife. At the mere sight of his spouse, his right hand would immediately form a fist, his right leg start making valiant attempts to get the body closer to the wife, and his right arm start violently swinging at the wife with a clear intent to do damage. With his left leg he would fight his right leg, and with his left hand try to restrain his right hand, all the while displaying a grimace of rage on the right side of his face while the left side of the face expressed clear alarm and distress. Another lady had an even more serious problem, with the two halves of her body engaging in a vicious feud. She literally beat herself up, tried to choke herself in her sleep, tore her own hair out, and all of that occurred in the context of the right side of her body doing damage to the left side, and vice versa. Fortunately, such horrible side effects tend to mellow out as time passes, but the patients never return to normal -- to the end of their lives, they literally remain split in half. Yet, if a single, indivisible, unified soul was controlling the brain, then surely cutting the link between the hemispheres would not preclude them from functioning in harmony! At the very least, they shouldn't be trying to kill each other! But contrary to all common sense as we used to know it, the two hemispheres literally turn into two distinct personalities. Each of them is capable of independent emotion, independent knowledge, and independent interaction with the world. For example, questions can be asked of the right hemisphere, and it will answer them (though not verbally, because in most people the right hemisphere is incapable of language) -- but the left, verbal, hemisphere will never know about either the questions or the answers, and will in fact tell you so when asked. Even more poignantly, the right hemisphere possesses knowledge that the left hemisphere doesn't, and vice versa. Both hemispheres exhibit structured thought and problem solving abilities, independent of each other. Both of them express feelings and emotions, again independently of each other. Each has its own stream of consciousness, again independent of the other hemisphere. So indeed, the two hemispheres are in most respects separate, distinct, independent human beings! Yet, they originally only had one soul. How would the doctrine of souls explain such a phenomenon?

Yet another difficulty lies in the transfer of memory or knowledge between the brain and the soul. For example, you might remember what you did during the last Christmas, and when asked you would tell us a story describing what happened. This process of recalling facts and then verbalizing them involves many crucial faculties that are just about as central to our stream of consciousness as anything -- so presumably at least a large part of the process occurs in the soul and not in the physical brain. However, it is well known that the brain contains certain regions specifically dedicated to memory. When these regions are damaged, the result is amnesia -- loss of memory -- despite the fact that all other cognitive functions remain intact. Now, what happens when an amnesic is asked to describe something they knew prior to the brain damage, but of which they now have no recollection? The request gets correctly processed and understood by the subject, as can be verified by questioning him about it. Presumably, such higher understanding resides in the soul, so the soul indeed knows what is being asked. The patient is also perfectly able to verbalize other facts, and to tell stories not connected to the particular lost memory -- so these faculties are preserved as well. Therefore, if the soul still retains the memory whose representation is lost in the physical brain, it should have no problem verbalizing that memory and telling stories about it, and thus in fact amnesia would never even be observed! Yet, amnesia is real and very predictable based on which regions of the brain are damaged. So, it seems that destroying a part of the physical brain utterly destroys the memories it used to help encode. This means that the soul does not possess memory; memory is purely a property of the brain. Which means that when the brain dies, all memories die with it. Which means that the entire personality dies with the brain, since memory includes, in addition to explicit facts, everything from learned skills such as language, coordinated movement, or art, to such things as preferences, attitudes, beliefs, etc. Which comes into a huge clash with all the claims of afterlife where the souls are supposed to retain memory of earthly existence and even maintain their pre-death personality.


Argument from neuropsychology

This gets to the reason why we conjecture the existence of the soul in the first place. In the old times, when people knew very little about the nature of life or cognition, it baffled them that certain objects were indeed alive, and other weren't. It baffled people even more why certain living creatures, such as humans, have civilizations, art, language, religion, etc. while other living creatures have none of the above. People also wondered what happened to them when they slept, as they often seemed to depart the regular world for other bizarre realities, inhabit bodies other than their own regular body, fly, and do all sorts of amazing things that other normal things just aren't seen to be doing. And then, people wondered what it would feel like to die, and what happens to their friends and family once their bodies are destroyed, and they also wondered where their stream of consciousness came from, and how come they can't remember anything prior to their early childhood. Thus came around suggestions that what all life has is something special, some kind of a "living essence” that separates it from non-life. You will find that particular idea in every single culture that ever existed, which goes to show just how natural such a conjecture is, and how easily it arises. It may have been a reasonable suggestion, until relatively recently when science began to unravel the true mechanisms of life and cognition.

Today, we know that the simplest forms of life contain no "living essence" at all -- they are merely very complicated chemical structures that are able to obtain energy and material from their environment, and to reproduce themselves. Thus, in one deft blow the pre-existing void between matter and essence is bridged. It stands to reason that if unicellular life does not possess a soul, same holds for multi-cellular life -- since multi-cellular organisms are nothing more than intricately organized and coordinated colonies of single specialized cells.

But what of the stream of consciousness, the emotions, the awareness, the sensations, the knowledge, the reasoning power that we all possess as humans? How do all of these weird qualities derive from mere cells? Well, the answer has not yet been entirely completed, and I personally hope to play a part in completing it. But the beta version goes something like this.

In what may at first glance appear to be a grotesquely oversimplified analogy, consider modern computers. What you see on your screen is a pretty complex visual image representing an attempt at a simple, elegant, and easy to comprehend User Interface. Behind that interface lies complex functionality that enables you to create documents, exchange information with other people, play games, create art, listen to music, render computer movies, simulate collisions of galaxies, analyze data, design other computers, and in general do an amazing variety of things. Most of those applications depend on arcane algorithms and complex protocols to work, of which you as a user have no knowledge or comprehension; all you work with is a friendly (or at least not as arcane as the source code) UI, which abstracts you away from all the hair-raising complexity that dwells on your CD-ROMs and inside your particular beige box.

The brain presents a somewhat analogous picture. What we observe is the outside, equipped with a "user interface" consisting of the body. We can interact with the body, we can communicate through it to the brain, and receive replies from the brain through the body. In essence, the body abstracts the brain from us, and as generic "users", we are not aware of how exactly the brain does what it does -- nor do we particularly care, as long as the brain does its job, and does it well. However, the analogy with computers is not complete, since whereas with computers we at least have engineers and programmers who understand exactly how the computer does the things it does, with the brain, at least at the outset, we possess no such knowledge. Thus, the problem of figuring out how the brain works can be compared to the following hypothetical situation: imagine that the enlightened ancient Greeks happen to chance on a complete modern computer system, loaded with all the software, connected to an uninterruptible power supply that will last for decades, and programmed so that its user interface is in ancient Greek (so they can at least partially decipher what it is that it does.) Now imagine just how hard it would have been for the poor Greeks to figure out how all that graphical splendor and functionality arises from that box cluttered with weird metallic and non-metallic parts. Heck, they'd have to develop the theory of quantum mechanics before they could understand how a single transistor works, and they'd have to develop ultra-powerful microscopes to even find those transistors. They'd have to develop an entire theory of computation before they could understand how the mysterious box is able to exhibit such strangely life-like interactivity. Then, they would have to reverse-engineer all the circuits of the computer, and understand exactly how they interact and tie together into a working system. Then, they'd have to reverse-engineer all the binary machine code on the computer's hard drive, and determine how it affects the CPU and other components to do the things that they do when various programs are run. Then they'd have to find ways to de-compile the machine code into a human-readable language, so that they may finally understand how the programs are put together, and how they work. Only then will they finally understand that the computer is not a magic or cursed item, that it is not a living organism or a gateway into another dimension, that it is not a God in disguise and not a fundamental key to all creation -- but that it is what it is, a machine that processes information according to certain pre-set algorithms.

An equivalent claim is made for the brain: it is a machine that processes information according to certain pre-set algorithms. And we face a horrendous task of reverse-engineering the brain in order to understand it, in a way very similar to the plight of the unfortunate ancient Greeks. Only the brain is even more daunting than the most complicated computer in existence. It sports an equivalent of 10,000,000,000 processors interconnected in complicated ways, all working simultaneously at 50 Hz in a cacophony of communication. It is fluid, and constantly changes its very structure. It computes not only with electricity, but also in a large way with biochemistry, which makes the behavior of its individual CPUs much more complicated to unravel than the behavior of a typical circuit. It is inexorably tied to the body throughout its development and function, and so to understand the brain we must also understand the workings of the body in all of their intricate detail. The brain is shaped by genetics as well as sensory and chemical input as it develops and matures, so we must understand all of those processes with a high degree of confidence and in great detail over time spans lasting well over a decade from birth to maturity -- if we are to understand how the brain acquires its structure and generates its circuits. And then, once we unravel the story of the hardware, we must understand how it translates into the actual behaviors that we observe -- in essence, we then must reverse-engineer the brain's algorithms and put them into plain English before we ever hope to claim that we completely understand how the brain works. The task is clearly not for the weak of heart. In fact, it can be argued that unraveling the human brain is among the few most difficult challenges science has ever faced. And the task will clearly take at least decades, if not centuries, to complete. But we are already making the first brave steps, and so far we have learned enough to very crudely describe what lies behind our various and wonderful cognitive powers.

In the course of our studies, we have localized regions of the brain, or "nuclei", that either by themselves or in concert with other nuclei directly correspond to various human faculties. For example, there is a clearly defined subsystem in the brain that is linked to emotion. Lesioning the lymbic system will turn a person into an automaton incapable of generating or expressing absolutely any kind of affection for anything. Such patients even talk in rhythmically perfect monotone, like robots from cheap sci-fi flicks. As another example, the memory subsystem has been located in another brain structure, the hippocampus and the parahippocampal and entorhinal cortex regions. Damage to these areas predictably results in various forms of amnesia, with the exact symptomology dependent upon exactly which parts of the system were damaged, and how extensively. As another example, take the ability to understand spoken speech. This capacity is at least in part dependent on a part of the cortex called Wernicke's area, damage to which instantly turns the speech a patient hears into meaningless gibberish, and has the same effect on the speech actually produced by the person (though they are not aware that they make no sense to the others; in fact they are usually quite distressed at the fact that the others are talking gibberish and can't understand what the patient is saying.) Amazingly enough, in a fully organized adult brain there even are regions devoted specifically to reading written text, or specifically to writing text. Damage to these regions results in strange symptomology, such as for example a person being able to read, but no longer able to write, or being able to write, but not being able to read back what they just wrote. Such study of neural pathology has produced an innumerable flood of findings like these, and the deluge has yet to show signs of subsiding.

Additionally, computational modeling and animal research have been providing insights into other crucial powers of cognition. For example, the faculty of vision has been, is, and will be studied with utmost intensity. As examples, we have discovered cells in the brain that respond to lines of various orientations in the visual field, or variously oriented and scaled gratings of alternating light and dark regions; we have found cells in the visual cortex that respond to local motion in a certain direction, or to a contraction or expansion of the local texture (indicating approaching or receding objects); we have found cells higher up in the processing hierarchy that combine those basic features into more complex items, such as corner, or circle, or crosshatch patterns, and we've found cells yet higher up that respond to entire objects only of a certain type, such as faces for example. We've tentatively began to trace the diverging pathways in the visual processing stream, where one pathway specializes in recognizing objects, while the other pathway specializes in determining the location of objects in space around the observer, or the observer's relative coordinates with respect to objects. We are currently constructing rather successful computational models of how rats tell where they are, based exclusively on the rat neurophysiology and actual electrical recordings from individual cells in rat brains. We have constructed a very successful neuro-computational explanation of how barn owls determine the direction of the sounds they hear. People are digging in on all levels, from planning, coordination, and initiation of motion, to hearing, somatosensory perception, mastication, memory, emotion, mechanisms of attention, to cognitive and neurobiological development, to language, etc, etc, etc. Slowly but surely, the brain's enigma is giving way and grudgingly surrendering territory. And absolutely at no point anywhere within this extensive and burgeoning research field has any research group ever found even a remotest hint of anything supernatural.

But what we actually do, at this time, know about the link between brain and cognition -- is that the various cognitive faculties that in the past could not even be imagined to stem from mere matter, derive from specific regions in the brain, and the relationships between these brain regions and how linked regions combine to create cognition, are very physical and well-defined indeed. Additionally, severe damage to a brain region (in adults) connected to some cognitive ability completely and permanently destroys that ability; no hint of its past existence can be recovered through the use of other faculties, as should have been the case if the "lost" faculty actually resided in the soul.


Argument from evolution

Well, this one's short and sweet, and will work against only a narrowed selection of various doctrines. It basically says that since, obviously, simple life forms do not have souls, and we are merely evolved forms of the same thing, then surely we don't have souls either. At a deeper level, the argument challenges the believer to define at which point living beings acquire souls. Do only humans have souls? But then you have problems with primates, since they are so incredibly similar to us both physically and behaviorally. Do only primates have souls? But then you have a problem with the simians, since monkeys are so similar to apes both physically and behaviorally. Do only primates and simians have souls? But then you have a problem with the prosimians, etc, etc, etc. Eventually, you are forced to retreat to a generalization over all mammals, then over all animals, and finally over all life -- at which point you arrive at a stark contradiction with a clearly observable fact -- that the lowest forms of life do not have souls.


Argument from development

This is somewhat similar to the argument from evolution. Here, you are challenged to define just at what point during development a human acquires a soul. It couldn't be at the point of egg fertilization, since at that time everything is still purely biochemical, and the fertilized embryo has no properties normally associated with a soul. It couldn't be during early embryonic development, since an early human embryo is anatomically and functionally indistinguishable even from fish embryos. So when is it that a human acquires a soul? The answer to that question is impossible similarly to how it is impossible to define a cutoff across different lifeforms -- because just as the spectrum of lifeforms on earth is fairly continuous in terms of their capabilities, form and function, the development of an embryo is similarly continuous. At no point during development does the embryo suddenly make a quantum leap and exhibits some feature it didn't have a second ago. This continuity makes it impossible to define a cutoff at which the soul definitely must be there. From another (and more mathematical) perspective, since a fertilized egg has no soul, then by induction over this smooth continuum of development we arrive at the conclusion that even a fully developed adult human doesn't have a soul.


Argument from objectivity

This calls into question the very need to have a concept of souls or afterlife. Neither are objective, in that neither are tangible, measurable, or independent of observer (e.g. neither can be detected by "brainless", mechanical scientific instruments that don't have a propensity for misinterpreting things like humans do). Neither can be tested, neither provides any tangible evidence for its existence. In fact, if one starts out with a (still futuristic) complete physical explanation of cognition, then one is not going to be likely to conjecture the existence of souls or afterlife -- simply because there would be no remaining evidence available that would prompt such a conjecture. Hence, objectively, the theories of "vital essence", or souls, or afterlife are outdated and superceded by modern science. As any invalidated theory should, therefore, the ideas of soul or afterlife properly belong in the history books, but no longer in the domain of serious discourse.


Argument from equivalence

This is where we assume that the brain has, at some point in the future, been scientifically unraveled to the point that absolutely everything is known, understood, and explained about its form and function. Then, we can imagine that the scientists of the future endeavor to replicate a complete human brain, but not in flesh in blood, but as a program running in some blindingly powerful supercomputer. The brain is simulated down to the last atom, complete with information input from simulated eyes that mimic human eyes, and simulated ears that mimic human ears, and all other sensory modalities equally well implemented, with a simulated body providing feedback to the brain, and a simulated ultra-detailed environment for that body to roam and interact with. Because the simulation replicates the function of a real human brain to the last detail, and it replicates a realistic environment for that simulated brain to mature in, the simulated human will certainly develop its own conscious stream of awareness, learn the details and workings of its environment, exhibit emotions, intelligence, sensations -- it will be altogether equivalent in all of its functions to an actual physical human. But it is painfully obvious that the simulated human does not have a soul, because in reality he is nothing but a pattern of bits in the memory banks of our supercomputer. Ironically, if we were to simulate not one such human, but an entire tribe living in some virtual jungle, and allow the simulation to progress across many generations, the humans will develop language, culture, and even religion, and likely one of their first metaphysical conjectures will have to do with the fundamental distinction between life and nonlife -- the "vital essence".

Originally posted by Raithere
Pure crap, whatsup. I'll let Einstein refute you himself (emphasis mine):

“As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came — though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents — to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true.


~Raithere


Rait, what a compulsive liar, the true words were "Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be LITERALLY true."

You took the word out "LITERALLY", I have read it before...There are many webpages for Einstein, and mostly lowlife "postive..lying..atheism.com" makes him look like an atheist and translate the word for him..

WHY DONT YOU PUT A WEBPGAE THAT IS EEXACTLY HIS OWN WORDS, I AM NOT INTERESTED OF YOUR OWN TRANSLATION....HERE I WILL GIVE YOU HIS EXACT QUOTES, TRANSLATE IT HOWEVER YOU WANT....

once again, HE BELIEVES IN GOD, LAW AND ORDER, HOWEVER HE REJECTS AUTHORITY, RELIGION, AND I DONT KNOW WHAT ARE HIS REASONS (PROBABLY BECAUSE HIS MOTHER WAS CATHOLIC AND FATHER IS A JEW).(thats why the jesuit catholic priest regards him as an atheist ).

"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and actions of human beings."- Albert Einstein
~1929

http://www.innovativart.com/einstein.html

THERE, THOSE ARE ALL HIS QU0TES CONCERNING HIS BELIEF, TRANSLATE IT HOWEVER U WANT IT....The quote above I took out of this webpage...
BUT THERES ONE WEBPAGE I AM LOOKING FOR STILL....

There was even a quote where Einstein said "I AM FAR FROM BEING AN ATHEIST"...And I am looking for that right now...


"beware....

Beware....
Beware and donot trust the quotes from the lying atheists, they donot have commitment to truth, thus they dont fear lying, and they will do so by all means..."Repentance" is a myth to them, they think they care, but they dont, if they do, thats because of convenience, I have personally experienced that myself, and you will later in years, so beware....Atheists, by expeirence, are generally liars"...- By me..

It doens't matter what people say, Muscleman/Whatsupyall will continue on his path. He's a blind, ignorant chap with no hope orther than that granted by his delusions, thus he will stick with them.

whatsup,

I hope you realize that Spinoza's God (quoted in your post by Einstein) has nothing to do with the Christian god. Spinoza was significantly opposed to Christianity and in his time was considered an atheist. Spinoza saw God as nature, an eternal universe that had no creator, that was controled by order and harmony. This was the vision that Einstein shared.

Like I was saying, I dont care about your translation with his words, you can twist it, lie, and change it however you want.

But the fact is, Einstein admits to believing in God, but with his own concept, not christianity's concept, that doesnt matter, FACT IS HE SAID IT HIMSELF THAT HE BELIEVES IN GOD, EVEN IF GOD TO HIM IS A SPIRIT THAT REVEALS HIMSELF IN THE EXISTENCE AND ORDER OF NATURE, THE WORD "GOD" DOESNT MEAN "NO GOD" OK? IF YOU THINK "I BELIEVE IN GOD" MEANS "I DONT BELIEVE IN GOD", THEN I SUGGEST YOU NEED SOME FORM OF PSYCHIATRIC HELP, OR EXORCISM....TO ME "I BELIEVE IN GOD" MEANS "I BELIEVE IN GOD", AND IM SORRY IF MY UNDERSTANDING OF THESE IS DIFFERENT FROM YOURS....

Cris, Please see my theory on the human soul
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10661
That link is the details but the general idea is that the soul is a residue image of the pattern of nerves that make up our nervous system. Either physical or energy this pattern survives even when the origin doesn't.

Like a fossil where all the organic nature has completely gone yet the shape remains.

whatsup,

But the fact is, Einstein admits to believing in God, but with his own concept, not christianity's concept, that doesnt matter,Yes it does, because nature is not a spirit, the laws of physics do not constitute a spirit. These are Christian concepts that Einstein rejected. You cannot agree that he doesn’t support the Christian concept and try to say he does.

THE WORD "GOD" DOESNT MEAN "NO GOD" OK? Atheism is defined as a disbelief in a god or gods. Einstein had no belief in the Christian god, hence he was an atheist from a Christian perspective.

IF YOU THINK "I BELIEVE IN GOD" MEANS "I DONT BELIEVE IN GOD", For Einstein it means he believes in the order and harmony of nature, in which he firmly rejects and disbelieves in the Christian god.

"Einstein's "religion" as he often explained it, was an attitude of cosmic awe and wonder and a devout humility before the harmony of nature, rather than a belief in a personal God who is able to control the lives of individuals. He refered to this "belief" as "cosmic religion." It is incompatible with the doctrines of all theistic religions in its denial of a personal God who punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous."

"My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."

"If God created the world, his primary concern was certainly not to make its understanding easy for us."

"The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and science lies in the concept of a personal God."

Source: The Expanded Quotable Einstein

whatsup,

TO ME "I BELIEVE IN GOD" MEANS "I BELIEVE IN GOD", AND IM SORRY IF MY UNDERSTANDING OF THESE IS DIFFERENT FROM YOURS....But more importantly your perspective of a god is totally different from that of Einstein. You and Einstein are using the same word “God” to describe two entirely different concepts.

Hobbes,

Okidoki I'll take a look. But its just turned midnight now so it will have to be tomorrow.

But please read my long post that Boris wrote.

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit WHO REVEALS HIMSELF in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds."- Albert Einstein...

Again, Einstein doesnt believe in the idea of God as those who reward and punishes, THE GUY ISNT RELIGIOUS BUT A SCIENTIST....HE REJECTS THAT IDEA OF GOD, BUT HE DOES BELIEVE OF GOD CONSIDERING THE FACT THAT NATURE IS IN LAW AND ORDER, AND HE REJECTS "CHANCE" AS AN EXPLANATION OF NATURE, THEREFORE HE IS NOT AN ATHEIST...A FACT...

HE SAID "I BELIEVE IN GOD", IN HIS OWN PERSONAL CONCEPT HOWEVER, HOW DOES THAT MEAN HE IS AN ATHEIST? THATS WHY THE CATHOLICS OR OTHER CHRISTIAN VIEW HIM AS AN AGNOSTIC OR AN ATHEIST BECAUSE OF THAT, BUT HE DOES BELIEVE IN GOD...PERIOD....

And what is a christian God? Christian means "Disciple of Christ", in other words "Student of Christ"...Jesus christ teaches us to love all regardless of religion, race, nationality (gentiles or jews, women or men, enemies or friends, Love all unconditionally, in painfull times and in goodtimes, "Theres is no love greater than he who will lay his life down for another man"- Jesus)...He is famous for that, no other so called religion or god(s) is as profound as Jesus....
A CHRISTIAN GOD DOESNT REJECT EINSTEIN'S GOD IF HIS GOD TEACHES MORALITY AND LOVING ALL HUMAN KIND, WITH VIRTUES....

http://www.innovativart.com/einstein.html

check the webpage out, it has the ORIGINAL QUOTE of Einstein, dont listen and read his quote from the atheist web pages such as "Positiveatheism.com", and dont listen to their translation either, they want him to look like an atheist so that they can say only intelligent peeps are atheist, when they are very well wrong, 99% of the universities are founded By christians and 100% of the presidents are believers of God and 99% of the world leaders are believers of God, LOOKS LIKE NO ROOM FOR ATHEIST HERE, so they have to lie their way up.
AND CRIS QUOTE OF EINSTEIN IS A LIE, HE DIDNT SAY "A BELIEF OF GOD IS A CHILDLIKE ONE", CRIS ADDED THAT HIMSELF, THE PERSON IS A LIAR (OR HAVE BEEN LIED TO)...I wish I can also lie and do the same, but I cant, its very tempting, but I just cant, my conscience is pulling me back....

Originally posted by Empty Dragon
Can we know anything with absolute certainty?

As Plato said...everything changes, nothing is absolute (is there an absolute? the "Forms"? What we know now will change, so what kind of knowledge do we actually have?

I won't dare to say that the soul/spirit does not exist, but I won't dare say that the soul/spirit does exist. It's simple, I have no proof for either and will not make a premature decision upon my ignorance on the matter.

Cris, we know very little. :)

This thread is amazing.

On one hand, you have an idiotic dialogue concerning Einstein's belief in god that has no relation at all to the topic.

On the other, you have an amazingly thoughout re-post by boris that gives many valid(IMO) reasons why belief in a soul is irrational. Yet, most of the posters are saying they either believe in a soul or are undecided. If that is so, why has nobody touched boris' post? Aren't there some parts you refute? I don't get it.

Hobbes,
Interesting thoughts. I will quote some of your thread here if you do not mind.

First I believe energy only exists as the movement of particles and not as its self.
How would you explain the formation of stars and planets?

My theory goes that a web of ultra small particles line our central nerves system. We already know electrons pass back and forth like a small electrical current. What if some other particles were involved too. This web/pattern of small particles while connected to our nerves system would also be independent of it.
Why can these ultra small particles not be detected?

fading,

On one hand, you have an idiotic dialogue concerning Einstein's belief in god that has no relation at all to the topic.Yes I agree, and I really didn’t want this thread to be hijacked into a theist/atheist argument again, there are enough of those. And really they are all irrelevant if there is no such thing as a soul.

Chosen,

Cris, we know very little. In that sense then the argument could come down to one of credibility.

There is so much about the brain that we do not understand and we know it can do some amazing things. All clinical evidence, see Boris’s analysis, point entirely at physical cause and effect. In this light what is the most credible explanation for those areas that we do not yet understand or have not explored –

Is it that there is more to understand about how this complex organ operates –

or

It is all run by a supernatural entity?

To conclude the latter at ths time would be incredibly irresponsible and irrational.

Originally posted by fadingCaptain
Yet, most of the posters are saying they either believe in a soul or are undecided. If that is so, why has nobody touched boris' post? Aren't there some parts you refute? I don't get it.


give me time. i am slow and stupid
rest assured tho that i will not crawl into my grave and simply die like a stinking......thing!

:D

If your definition of a soul is creative output...well then a soul does indeed exist. However, this is not the standard definition.Cris ... we're human beings. All of us six billion "souls" on this hallowed rock:

•_... this is not the standard definition: If we were examining the wavelengths that determine "red" to the human eye, some degree of standardization is necessary. However, when it comes to more subjective things ... we're human beings. "Nielsens", Billboard Hot 100, Mr. Blackwell's Worst-Dressed List ... tell me about each in that sense--is the upcoming CBS Victoria's Secret lingerie show really "good" television, as its ratings will imply? Is Britney Spears really a "good" musician compared to a Thom Yorke, Chris Cornell, Rufus Wainwright, or Brian Wilson? Is Mr. Blackwell's list really important at all? Bearing in mind that if you're not careful around a geologist, you might actually argue the "definition" of a pebble, rock, or boulder (there are, in fact, very specific demarcations) ... what is the value of "standard definition"? After all, if we look at Christianity in America, we can see what this "standard definition" of moral beneficence has earned us.

The thing is that I don't assert that we know what the soul is. When I was little, I learned (somewhere) that it was physically stored somewhere in the right side of my abdomen. Amazing, eh?

Hopefully, you can follow this; I almost can't. Last night, Tig (pregnant and due in ... 3 days) mentioned that it was nice to get up and walk around. I smiled and said, "Well, your body wants to live." At which point, she surprised me by making an associative turn I never thought I'd hear from her: Don't all things naturally attempt to return to their ground state?

I know what she's referring to; she learned the idea in a chemistry class when the professor was explaining the layout of the elements in the periodic table.

But I wasn't prepared for the question at all, so I gave her a multivalent (ha!) answer:

• The conversion of fuel into energy in the body constitutes this process
• The decay of the body can be said to constitute this process
•_Life is merely a range of rations of matter and energy, but what makes life self-perpetuating is another mystery entirely.

For the purposes of last night, it was a huge digression, but part of what I slept last night thinking about was that something that makes life self-perpetuating.

This, in and of itself, might be considered a soul. Or, perhaps, the "spark" that makes our self-awareness so different from other animals. Mind you, I expect that these have scientific explanations to a certain satisfactory degree, but I'm having an inner conflict with our tendency to use modern evidence and ideas to condemn old ideas; what happens if we translate the old idea into the modern ...?

What "could" a soul be? Well, the mind-uploaders might have an answer for that question someday. Perhaps it's a strictly bio-electrical phenomenon. I still hold to my conclusion that life is not a chance occurrence but a statistical necessity in the Universe, so it's not as if a soul must be mystical.

If you trust the standard definition of the soul, then the argument freezes there. We doubt everything else about Christianity, for instance ... why not doubt the definition of the soul? Without hostility, sarcasm, or otherwise--for it might be possible to interpret it that way--the result of trusting the Christian definition of the soul in order to argue about it seems more a tool to beat down an idea rather than to explore its possibilities.

Do you trust an ancient, possibly deluded people to define the terms of consideration you award a concept?Ah yes, then just call me a killjoyHardly a problem. You can call me Al. ;) But, tiassa I was thinking of you when I said those things. I distinctly remember you chastising other members many times for assuming that everyone only talks about the Christian god.Slightly different, but your point is still taken.

What bugs me is when an atheist who has rejected the Christian god that he or she learned in the world applies that to all Gods, even those they may never have heard of. This is the height of arrogance and contradiction, as it makes the atheist religious.

However, in this case, as I have pointed out above, you're letting people you don't trust set the considerations for the definitions.

In other words: Should someone someday find a "soul", do you really expect that it will look like people have described in religious philosophy?I was trying to at least meet your request and as stay neutral as I possibly could.And I do thank you. But is there not a possibility that the limited linguistic scope of the past might stain the present considerations?

Is there any one idea of a soul? No. There are many diverse ideas of what the soul is. If we limit ourselves to the characteristics of any one idea, we limit our scope of inquiry. However, we are also limiting our scope of inquiry if we accept at face value what is said. Jesus touched a man and instructed him to wash in the river, and a skin infection was miraculously healed. Actually, I can do the same thing for myself. It's called sand. Or ask Revlon or Clinique, or anyone who makes exfoliant makeup. Now, we can argue whether or not Jesus had the healing touch, but as such we are trusting the intellectual limitations of the past. But if we discuss whether or not Jesus knew something about that condition and helped someone with that knowledge, the conversation no longer seems incredulous. Admittedly, it takes the wind out of Christianity's sails, but do you or I care if that is the result?

Or: Rise up off your pallet and walk. Have you ever closely watched a faith healer? I'm convinced it's a psychological trip; I can invoke similar states of desperation in people if I try--it's not a pleasant exercise, and experience tells me it's not a good way of going about things. Nonetheless, must we accept for argument that Jesus miraculously healed a paralysis? Or is it easier to believe that "Jesus" (we need not believe him a single entity, but might regard him as a legendary composite) said or did something to snap someone out of a psychiatric condition? (Freud saw a number of "glove paralysis" cases which he tied to sexuality in the Victorian age; a woman masturbates, feels extreme guilt, somehow loses use of her hand in a psychosomatic manifestation of the perceived godly vengeance.)

A man with a limp? How about "Dr. Jesus the Chiropractor"?

What I would ask you to recognize, then, is that as a result of the prevalence of Christianity in our posters' cultures, even non-Christian ideas will be stained by that. Even if we reject the Ten Commandments, you and I might agree that murder is wrong. Why? There is no real objective answer until we understand the "purpose of life", for it may be that murder and war are actually forms of selective breeding and reduction; manifestations of natural selection. Sure, it's grim, but if we pretend otherwise, it's only on faith. Whence comes that faith? We who were raised in the presence of Christian evangelism understand morality through those terms often enough, because even when it wasn't put into the idea of what God says, it was still the "way things were and are".

In addressing the soul, then, I would suggest what I do when addressing the notion of God--retreat to the most basic expressions of the soul and determine what is accreted since. Usually, the reasons for those accretions will be clear in any cursory evaluation of the historical circumstances of the time.But a spirit world was assumed or hoped for, right? The fact that the emphasis was on other aspects does not dilute my assertions if the final objective was a hope of cheating death.Poetic expressions of death are common. I would hope to die in a moment of nobility than of neutrality or malice. Is that religious? Perhaps. But I'd rather go down saving my daughter from a rapist than pick up a rifle and die killing Iraqis, for instance.

Beyond that, it is a weird thing; to my experience, it only ever came up when we were asked about it. And sometimes it seems the Summerland and other ideas were merely extended from poor interpretations of terms like Tir na Og, which may come down to a way of saying that one died nobly, as opposed to one going to a noble place. It's all a matter of how much you trust the source to take it literally. I actually take very little at its face value; if I did, I would truly hate people, for most that I know are dishonest and downright mean. But that dishonesty is symptomatic, so I don't take it as a necessary expression of the true self. Likewise, I tend to think of the expressions of the afterlife I found among pagans largely convenient capsules to put it into terms understandable to Christian or other seekers who inquire.Too seriously? Isn’t it the fundamental goal of such institutions? In Christianity – “believeth in me sayeth the lord and ye shall receive everlasting life”. Isn’t the whole point of being a Christian to achieve immortality? If a soul doesn’t exist then this dream is just that, a dream.Such a condition, however, seems to necessitate exploration of the soul. Christianity, furthermore, exhibits a prohibitionary, controlling aspect; they've put too much emphasis on determining the objective (?!) classification of the soul, and have failed to celebrate its function.

Would you rather dance to the music, or wonder why the music makes you want to dance? Some days, people just want to dance. But in wondering why they want to dance, they might come up with silly notions like the supremacy of country-western (line-dancing), classical (minuet--an early form of line dancing), Top-40 (must-look-sexy-while dancing), ad nauseam. Some days you just have to dance. And on those days you wonder about why you dance, it is important to bear in mind that other people dance. If you do not, the best you can do is to speculate why you dance. With a better and broader data set, you might find reasons to rationally theorize why anybody dances.

Did you know that, technically, the Charleston is not a dance?Now you are just a being a pessimist. I hope for more of the human race.I hope for much more, too. But in the face of mounting evidence, it is hard to turn that hope into faith. In the end, the proof of faith is that we work toward hope.As we learn more and education improves then I am sure that superstitions will fade. Do you have faith in family members? Why is it important to be any more tolerant of them than of anyone else? Because they're family? But why? For what objective reason?

In the face of mounting evidence, it is harder and harder for me to maintain faith in certain members of my family. On the one hand, they're offended when I call them selfish. To the other, they're proud to call themselves selfish. What to do?

My faith in them may compel me to endorse inappropriate human conduct. It sucks, but how much do I want to yell at them when nothing else works? After all, they're family. (Which is curious to me because family is a legal term, not a spiritual term in this sense. Spiritually, I do have a family that warrants my trust, but the rosters are different.)I agree one can’t stop people dreaming and hoping, and we shouldn’t want to stop that, but I would hope that hopes change from beliefs that something must be true because they want it to be true, to one of, it would be nice but we simply don’t know. I agree, but the problem seems to be one of paradigm. Take a look at the culture immediately around you: it is generally materialistic in the less-than-good sense, and self-centered. How can I be so sure? Well, you're in California, of all places. Cupertino or thereabout, as I recall. Part of what makes the economy tick down there and all over the country is self-centered materialism. How does this seemingly ill-conceived concept become "good"? I think the transformation you describe would directly undermine the general American economic system (I'm not picking on the Valley specifically here, for