P
pig
Guest
your ways are not my ways…
- Status
E
edwest2
Guest
E
edwest2
Guest
So something from nothing. “physical life processes” are still not understood in too many cases. I’ll tell you that the living God exists right now. His name is Jesus Christ.
Peace,
Ed
E
edwest2
Guest
Why argue? If you do not want to see or hear, then why ask us to tell you what you want to hear? The soul has characteristics that are not subject to scientific examination. The same with God.
Don’t insult people. Most people who don’t believe rely on some type of belief system and it sometimes doesn’t involve logic.
Peace,
Ed
F
fnr
Guest
The resurrection of the body is fundamental to what it means to be human.
Just this Sunday, the first two readings discussed the bodily resurrection. It’s totally crucial to this discussion.
Early in my life, the only thing that seemed to resist this reductionism was the subjective experience of sensation and self-awareness. “Only a soul can experience the color blue,” I thought.
When I first started thinking about cognitive neuroscience and the physiology of the brain, I thought it had “killed” the concept of the soul. Seriously. It occurred to me that our sensations can be lost or altered when injury or biological defects affect the brain: synesthesia (e.g., when someone tastes a color or hears a fragrance) and tinitis (ringing in the ears), for example. A traumatic brain injury can cause someone to lose their memory, personality, and even sense of identity (e.g., due to extreme memory loss). The brain runs on electrochemistry that’s well-described by chemical reactions.
Then someone one CAF pointed our that St. Thomas Aquinas had defined the functions of “the soul” about 800 years ago in a way that seemed to prefigure cognitive neuroscience. He said a soul senses through the sense organs like eyes and ears. He said it moves through the body. He said that “the rational soul” contained our reason and memory. Even he recognized that souls don’t see without eyes or move without a body. But then again, this was 800 years ago. Modern biology has shown us that our reason and emotion area also bound up in the matter of our bodies.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church reflects this understanding that vision is mediated by our sense organs, when it describes how souls in heaven perceive the divine through intuitive vision.
The soul isn’t a ghost that rises from our bodies up to Heaven, or sinks down to Hell. According to the Catechism, it’s our most essential self. The Catechism (362-368) says that the we are “body and soul but truly one,” the the soul is the “form” of the body. Based on a Biblical concordance, the New Testament says the soul can do three things: live, die, and love (not think or feel, I’ll point out).
I would predict that in coming years, we will be able to explain human consciousness in solely physical terms, as it’s never a good idea to bet against science.
We will never measure a soul. We will never detect a soul. A soul is not a physical thing.
When we die, before the Resurrection, our souls will not have our memory. I doubt very much that our souls will be capable of thought. It’s only when we are resurrected in our glorified bodies (as Christ’s post-resurrection body) that we will get it all back. In that regard, the Resurrection is even more central to our understanding of ourselves than is the metaphorical stories told in Genesis.
How does this affect evolution? Not much. Evolution describes in strictly materialist terms the emergence and change of species over time, and does so very well. The first-known life on earth appeared ~3.5 Billion years ago (miraculously, in my eyes, since it happened as soon as the planet had any rock that wasn’t molten), and evolution has been taking place ever since. That’s not to say that God wasn’t intimately involved every step of the way, it’s just to say that God isn’t bound by the rules of causality in our universe.
At some point, humanity evolved. Our souls are the things that link us back to God, to the divine love that suffuses all reality.
Just this Sunday, the first two readings discussed the bodily resurrection. It’s totally crucial to this discussion.
Early in my life, the only thing that seemed to resist this reductionism was the subjective experience of sensation and self-awareness. “Only a soul can experience the color blue,” I thought.
When I first started thinking about cognitive neuroscience and the physiology of the brain, I thought it had “killed” the concept of the soul. Seriously. It occurred to me that our sensations can be lost or altered when injury or biological defects affect the brain: synesthesia (e.g., when someone tastes a color or hears a fragrance) and tinitis (ringing in the ears), for example. A traumatic brain injury can cause someone to lose their memory, personality, and even sense of identity (e.g., due to extreme memory loss). The brain runs on electrochemistry that’s well-described by chemical reactions.
Then someone one CAF pointed our that St. Thomas Aquinas had defined the functions of “the soul” about 800 years ago in a way that seemed to prefigure cognitive neuroscience. He said a soul senses through the sense organs like eyes and ears. He said it moves through the body. He said that “the rational soul” contained our reason and memory. Even he recognized that souls don’t see without eyes or move without a body. But then again, this was 800 years ago. Modern biology has shown us that our reason and emotion area also bound up in the matter of our bodies.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church reflects this understanding that vision is mediated by our sense organs, when it describes how souls in heaven perceive the divine through intuitive vision.
The soul isn’t a ghost that rises from our bodies up to Heaven, or sinks down to Hell. According to the Catechism, it’s our most essential self. The Catechism (362-368) says that the we are “body and soul but truly one,” the the soul is the “form” of the body. Based on a Biblical concordance, the New Testament says the soul can do three things: live, die, and love (not think or feel, I’ll point out).
I would predict that in coming years, we will be able to explain human consciousness in solely physical terms, as it’s never a good idea to bet against science.
We will never measure a soul. We will never detect a soul. A soul is not a physical thing.
When we die, before the Resurrection, our souls will not have our memory. I doubt very much that our souls will be capable of thought. It’s only when we are resurrected in our glorified bodies (as Christ’s post-resurrection body) that we will get it all back. In that regard, the Resurrection is even more central to our understanding of ourselves than is the metaphorical stories told in Genesis.
How does this affect evolution? Not much. Evolution describes in strictly materialist terms the emergence and change of species over time, and does so very well. The first-known life on earth appeared ~3.5 Billion years ago (miraculously, in my eyes, since it happened as soon as the planet had any rock that wasn’t molten), and evolution has been taking place ever since. That’s not to say that God wasn’t intimately involved every step of the way, it’s just to say that God isn’t bound by the rules of causality in our universe.
At some point, humanity evolved. Our souls are the things that link us back to God, to the divine love that suffuses all reality.
T
ThinkingSapien
Guest
How do you determine what attributes are a part of something’s “nature” and which ones are not?
P
pig
Guest
I think everything is relevant. Its interesting, isn’t it, that matter reduces down and down and down until its no longer matter; oxygen, a wonderful material substance reduces down to electrons, protons, neutrons, then to quarks, but dammit all, quarks have no dimensions like matter, and they possibly become strings or ‘geometry’.
In the end matter does not matter, what matters is the ‘order’ that orders or ordered matter in the first place. A quark does not know anything about friendship but that which ordered quarks ordered first of all, friendship.
Exactly! this substance has kindness, and everything that kindness envisions and realizes.
Y
yunat
Guest
Couldn’t the same be said about a modern day warlock possessing the ability to cast amazing and fantastical spells?
A warlocks powers are very real, only they are not subject to scientific examination. The same with the Hindu God with four faces and four hands, Brahma.
See the problem believing in something that absolutely cannot be proven as even existing?
E
edwest2
Guest
I’ve lost my faith in the biological sciences, especially as it regards human beings. God? No. I’ll bet on Him. Science will not save us. It is appointed for man once to die and then the judgement, just like it will be for the guy in the lab coat. God is no respector of persons.
We will literally be judged by the Living God and will have to give an account of all we did.
Peace,
Ed
B
belorg
Guest
What you are saying is that there is no real distinction between non-matter and matter, it’s more of a gradual process. In fact, that is fundamentally a materialistic claim.
As to the order that orders the matter. The answer to that question is , in fact, fairly simple. The order is necessary.
Exactly, so your claim that there are different souls and personalities is false.
T
Theophorus
Guest
When I use the terms “substance” and “accidents” in this way I refer back to the Aristolelian-Thomistic view. Take for example a chair(artificial things are easier to use as examples) it could be made of many different materials, come in many different shapes, sizes, colours and weights, it could be in my living room or kitchen, yet there is still something about it which answers the question-“What is it?-a chair” there is something which is substantially “chairness” for want of a better word, which would only cease to be if the chair ceased to be. It is this which is the substance of a chair, that which it is by nature. the other things(weight, colour, material composition, spatial place etc.) are “accidents”(not to be confused with unintentional effects) of the chair which inhere in the substance of the chair. This substance of Chairness is not itself material, but “in-forms”(gives shape which the intellect can grasp//intelligibility) the matter of the chair. This material aspect, these “accidents” are proper to the nature of the thing, and inhere in the thing with wide scope for accidental change(again not unintentional change), but they are not part of the nature of the thing per se. As otherwise to change the colour of a chair or to move it from one room to another etc. would substantially change the chair(much as burning the chair to ash would), and we know this is not the case.
B
belorg
Guest
I don’t insult people, but if someone does not believe in logic, there is nothing to rationally discuss.
And pig’s claim is not that the soul has characteristics that are not subject to scientific examination, his claim is that each soul has the same substance, which is uncomposed and yet each soul is different. That has nothing to do with science, but with logic. And this claim is only acceptable if we throw away logic, which entails a completely fideist position.
P
pig
Guest
Not sure I’d say that (first sentence), you’re soul and your foot cannot be treated in the same way. There is a distinction. It is more a case of matter unravelling, not to non-matter, but to the idea of matter contained in the immaterial. An idea is a function and product of will and creativity and a whole bunch of other fun stuff.
The second part of your answer about the order being necessary might be interesting were it not for the fact that you do not know if the beginning of the universe, the BB, was necessary or not. In fact neither of us know why it happened; so to make the claim that order was therefore necessary when you are ignorant is going to be difficult to prove.
From my POV I have a hypothesis covering the Beginning which rationally explains the reason for the fact of everything material and immaterial I experience.
Appealing to total ignorance is not a sound foundation on which to lay claims.
You do not believe there are different personalities? BTW have you given up on calling the soul or personality a computer (made up of parts)?
B
belorg
Guest
There is no ‘other fun stuff’ on your view.
It’s in fact very easy to prove.
Something that has no order is chaotic.Howver, something that is completely chaotic is highly ordered.
And something that is not completely chaotic has order, by definition.
And something that is completey ordered also has order by definition.
Therefore, ther is no possible world without oder
Hence, order is necessary.
I do believe there are different personalities, but they are not possible under your view. Hence; your view must be false.
And, I have not given up on calling the sould a kind of computer. Whether it has parts or not, it is, on your view a highly ordered entity. So, in that way it is analogous to a computer.
I
inocente
Guest
We’re cool. What I mean is that stereotyping me is not a logical argument and so doesn’t move the discussion forward (or as the mod puts it, discuss the topic not each other
).One explanation for different life forms used to be the soul, but it never got anywhere, it was never capable of curing cancer or smallpox or pretty much anything. We now know that the forms are due to genetics, an explanation which is far more detailed, assured and useful. There doesn’t seem any point in trying to keep the old failed theory alive, it was wrong and useless, destination round receptacle, RIP.
Btw, this is not questioning the intuitive belief in the soul as personal identity.
I
inocente
Guest
Creativity is dead easy to explain if you think about it: it just involves throwing together disparate ideas at random and seeing what comes out. Likewise will is just the capacity to act on a desire. Right now my dogs have a desire to go for a walk and are willing me to take them
.Imho we need to be careful about getting mystical about things like creativity and free will, and we’re so very different from computers that I can’t see much value in making comparisons. If you look back in history, there’s always been a tendency to compare us to the latest technology, which I think included telegraphs and even steam trains.
I
inocente
Guest
I’m born again and can categorically state that nowhere does Christ teach that my salvation depends on believing a polio virus has a soul, so color me confused.Surely Christianity is about finding the truth, not being enslaved to the past.
P
pig
Guest
my view is illogical, remember?
somehow that makes a lot of sense.
or your interpretation of my view is false.
aha, so you do believe in the soul.
- Status