Can science tell us what spirit is?

[edwest2]

Not necessarily. It is possible that forces exist entirely outside of our perception. Perhaps a bit like a looking-glass. One can see through it and see the things behind it, but one can’t exactly see the looking glass itself unless its looked at from a distance. Perhaps we simply aren’t capable of stepping back far enough to see the edges of the looking glass from where we currently stand.

??? Or to put it another way: ???

Peace,
Ed

 

[edwest2]

One would think.

The trouble is, the concept of ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ is held to be beyond scientific reach almost by definition. Never mind that no-one has ever put forward a satisfactory explanation for how physical and nonphysical entities might interact - believers in spiritual reality continue to insist that no matter how much scientific investigation is done, we’ll never approach a complete understanding of human consciousness because science can’t touch the soul.

For some, there seems to be an underlying fear that in explaining cherished phenomena such as free will and consciousness (often considered the province of the ‘soul’), science - particularly neuroscience - will be explaining them away. Not so - knowing how something works doesn’t make it stop working. Understanding that my enjoyment of a party or of good conversation with friends or of a delicious meal is a function of electrochemical reactions in my brain doesn’t lessen such enjoyment one jot. We know that (most) humans have certain capacities such as empathy and creative intelligence - the job of science is to investigate how these capacities manifest. It does no good to say, “Oh, but science can’t explain that, because it’s spiritual”. As you rightly point out, if it has detectable effects, a spiritual entity, whatever such may be, is susceptible to scientific study.

No, actually, it’s not. We’re just a water filled bag of chemicals responding to outside stimuli. That’s it.

Peace,
Ed

 

[StrawberryJam]

If spirit can affect our innermost being, it must be able to be measured scientifically.

You don’t understand how science works to make this statement, and unfortunately the commenters here understand how to spin your question into a “science isn’t useful” type of thread.

Science won’t be useful to this thread at all.

If spirit…

That’s the question. Let’s worry about its effects on “innermost being” or any other such claim after we get past this premise first.

 

[Robert_Sock]

You don’t understand how science works to make this statement, and unfortunately the commenters here understand how to spin your question into a “science isn’t useful” type of thread.

Science won’t be useful to this thread at all.

If spirit…

That’s the question. Let’s worry about its effects on “innermost being” or any other such claim after we get past this premise first.

My only claim is that if something is having a physical effect, it must be measurable.

 

[Neildown]

??? Or to put it another way: ???

Peace,
Ed

Basically, yes.

We need to learn how to come to terms with the fact that we have a limited perception of basically everything. The human body, unaided, cannot see every bit of the light spectrum, nor hear everything on the sound spectrum. We can make machines that allow us to perceive or at least acknowledge the existence of things outside of our natural perception with accuracy, but everything becomes much more complicated when you bring spiritual perception into play.

We’re actually quite top-notch, sensually, in the physical world, but we simply don’t have those kinds of advantages as far as spiritual perception. With that in mind, it is very important to understand that we not only know very little about the spiritual world, but we are only capable of gauging it via a physical world which may or may not work based on the same or similar laws/principles. All we really have in the line of hard evidence is the Bible and the RCC, and neither one appears to give much detail on the mechanisms of the spiritual world.