Evolution and the soul

[pig]

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.

Luckily for me I’m not the one comparing the human or the human soul to a computer. I wouldn’t say dogs or any other creature does not will, they have the same creator as us after all and have a share in our properties, they almost seem to have a portion of personality too.
But your dogs will is not free. Your dog is not creative. Otherwise your dog would ignore your command and post a creative reply to this post.

 

[inocente]

Luckily for me I’m not the one comparing the human or the human soul to a computer.

You compared them in post #35 - “The soul is spirit. It doesn’t have parts. It is One. And unlike a computer it has will, a creative will. Or it is will. Which is what all computers lack.”

But your dogs will is not free. Your dog is not creative. Otherwise your dog would ignore your command and post a creative reply to this post.

Dogs lack language and keyboard skills, and are too smart to waste their time on philosophy.

If free will was about disobeying commands, puppies would.have free will and soldiers wouldn’t. You might find the following paper helpful:

A Turing test for free will (pdf), Seth Lloyd, Royal Society

 

[pig]

You compared them in post #35 - “The soul is spirit. It doesn’t have parts. It is One. And unlike a computer it has will, a creative will. Or it is will. Which is what all computers lack.”

I was doing what I am doing now, responding to someone trying to compare a human to a computer. It was not my idea.

Dogs lack language and keyboard skills, and are too smart to waste their time on philosophy.

If free will was about disobeying commands, puppies would.have free will and soldiers wouldn’t. You might find the following paper helpful:

A Turing test for free will (pdf), Seth Lloyd, Royal Society

Free will includes lots of things including whether to do a spot of creative writing or not.

 

[belorg]

my view is illogical, remember?

I really think it is.

somehow that makes a lot of sense.

Logical sense or illogical sense?

or your interpretation of my view is false.

Based on what you say it is the only possible interpretation. Butit is always possibel that there are things you are not telling.

aha, so you do believe in the soul.

You forgot to read the words ‘on your view’, pig.

 

[pig]

I really think it is.

Logical sense or illogical sense?

Based on what you say it is the only possible interpretation. Butit is always possibel that there are things you are not telling.

You forgot to read the words ‘on your view’, pig.

I have to say our conversation is going down the tubes, belorg.

 

[belorg]

I have to say our conversation is going down the tubes, belorg.

It’s very difficult to keep a conversation going if one of the parties is throwing away all logic.

 

[fnr]

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.

Well, I have given up on saying that the soul is a disembodied algorithm or computer. A human being’s programming resides in their genes, expressed differently by interactions with the social and natural environment. I am very skeptical that a disembodied soul has cognition anything like a living person.

There’s absolutely nothing in human experience to suggest that our consciousness is anything other than an emergent property of our complex nervous systems. Theism does not require a belief in a conscious soul.

I have an understanding that the soul is simply our “essences,” or in Aristotelian terms, our “forms.” A form need not be conscious or computational.

The difference between a Catholic and an atheist is that the Catholic believes that our souls continue to preserve the essences until the Last Day, when those who are “saved” (not the same understanding as Protestants) will be resurrected into bodies just like Jesus had in the post-resurrection Gospel stories. On “the Last Day,” God will come and dwell with his people. There’s no magic sky dragon in Catholic theology, just a physical, bodily resurrection. Only when we get out brains back will we have consciousness again.

 

[The_Reginator]

Well, I have given up on saying that the soul is a disembodied algorithm or computer. A human being’s programming resides in their genes, expressed differently by interactions with the social and natural environment. I am very skeptical that a disembodied soul has cognition anything like a living person.

There’s absolutely nothing in human experience to suggest that our consciousness is anything other than an emergent property of our complex nervous systems. Theism does not require a belief in a conscious soul.

I have an understanding that the soul is simply our “essences,” or in Aristotelian terms, our “forms.” A form need not be conscious or computational.
The difference between a Catholic and an atheist is that the Catholic believes that our souls continue to preserve the essences until the Last Day, when those who are “saved” (not the same understanding as Protestants) will be resurrected into bodies just like Jesus had in the post-resurrection Gospel stories. On “the Last Day,” God will come and dwell with his people. There’s no magic sky dragon in Catholic theology, just a physical, bodily resurrection. Only when we get out brains back will we have consciousness again.

Really? I’ve never heard the soul described in that way.

fnr,
I got so curious that I started a new thread just to get (name removed by moderator)ut on Catholic teaching about the nature of our souls.
I quoted part of your post and linked to it. (Please don’t hurt me.)
If you’re interested the new thread is
Catholic teaching on the nature of our souls

Re you last sentence: Are you saying that the saints have their brains back? … because they are outside of time? …

 

[pig]

It’s very difficult to keep a conversation going if one of the parties is throwing away all logic.

You are talking about living after you are dead. Logic determines that that is impossible. We need an upgraded logic, a plugin, if you will, or a higher logic to understand that great wonderful things are not born to be wasted nor that the quality of hope which every human can feel even in the face of death, is not wasted and because it exists, can be satisfied.

Your soul, quite simply, is you; like your reflection, glimpsed in a passing window, is you, yet in a different way, insubstantial but perfect in every detail, active, quick and mysteriously disappearing into walls as you pass the end of the window.

 

[fnr]

Re you last sentence: Are you saying that the saints have their brains back? … because they are outside of time? …

Well, I’ve jumped over to your new thread.

On your last sentence, I have no idea if/when saint have their brains back. Time is a property of the material universe, as described by Einstein’s theories of Special and General Relativity. As such, to say that a saint that died in the past has a brain doesn’t make sense in the way we experience time.

God is not bound by the laws of the physical universe, nor are our spiritual souls. On “the Last Day” (e.g., no more time?), we get our physical bodies back, if we’re saved. A saint does too. As described in Revelation 21, God will dwell among his people in the New Heaven and New Earth (presumably, these are not bound by the same physical laws that govern our universe). The resurrected body of the risen Lord, which Paul describes as what we’ll have in 1 Corinthians 15, is both physical (he ate fish and bread) and beyond physical laws (walking through walls). So if we think of Jesus’ body before and after his resurrection, we can guess that the entire universe will be similarly different.

So, when are the saints we ask for intercession and prayer? No idea. Do they have brains? No clue. They’re with God, which could be at the end of time, but that’s just speculative. I will mention that Christ says that we should love God with our whole heart, our whole soul, and our whole mind. So a soul can love. Maybe the saints in heaven intercede by love. Again, I’m out on the speculative edge.

 

[fnr]

I’ll also say that in my understanding of the soul and the nature of humankind, there is nothing about evolution that threatens that understanding of who we are. God made the universe abundantly full of life, as the life screaming from the rocks and seas 3.5 billion years ago attest, as soon as the planet could physically sustain cellular life as we now understand it. There wasn’t billions of years of lifelessness waiting around from some random spark. In fact, geology and paleobiology as we now understand them lead me to doubt that there was really any time when the planet could sustain life that it didn’t. That’s divine love at work! And we’re the products of that wonderful process!

 

[mharren]

What does the Soul have to do with the process of Evolution?

Just curious.

 

[fnr]

What does the Soul have to do with the process of Evolution?

Just curious.

My thought is that our souls are what make us essentially human. God used evolution to make us, as he used the laws of physics to make the universe (biology being just a specific form of physics in living systems). It’s our souls that link us to the end of time and God in the present, not to our origins.

 

[belorg]

You are talking about living after you are dead. Logic determines that that is impossible. We need an upgraded logic, a plugin, if you will, or a higher logic to understand that great wonderful things are not born to be wasted nor that the quality of hope which every human can feel even in the face of death, is not wasted and because it exists, can be satisfied.

Logic does not determine that that is impossible. It it did, every person believing in life after death would be demonstarbly irrational. And that is not my position at all.
Something that is logically contradictory simple cannot exist. There is no ‘higher logic’ in which square circles are possible, pig.

Your soul, quite simply, is you; like your reflection, glimpsed in a passing window, is you, yet in a different way, insubstantial but perfect in every detail, active, quick and mysteriously disappearing into walls as you pass the end of the window.

So, now it suddenly is insubstantial, I thought it consisted of a substance?

 

[pig]

Logic does not determine that that is impossible. It it did, every person believing in life after death would be demonstarbly irrational. And that is not my position at all.
Something that is logically contradictory simple cannot exist. There is no ‘higher logic’ in which square circles are possible, pig.

something that is dead and alive sounds contradictory to me, though its only the body that is dead, the soul is still alive.
Interesting that these people are still rational who believe this. Logic extends where it must.

So, now it suddenly is insubstantial, I thought it consisted of a substance?

…higher…logic

 

[belorg]

something that is dead and alive sounds contradictory to me, though its only the body that is dead, the soul is still alive.

And hence, it is not logically contradictory. Although I think it is highly implausible, it is not logically impossible.

Interesting that these people are still rational who believe this. Logic extends where it must.

These people can be rational. People who belive in square circles, however, aren’t.

…higher…logic

No, illogical.

 

[grannymh]

I really want to try to avoid an evolution debate, but at the same time, would like to address a video that I saw while watching a youtube video earlier tonight.

It was from a youtube channel called ‘Discovering Religion’ and one of the episodes was basically a venting episode. In this case, the narrator was venting on what grinds his gears-- and one of them included the concept of the soul and evolution…If my interpretation is correct, he questions why human beings proclaim to have a ‘soul’ when animals do not have one-- being that, in his case, human beings are products of the evolutionary process, which we have traits derived from animals. He wants to know how do we know a soul exists?

The link is right here:
What Grinds My ( I mean ‘His’) Gears

I will point out that perhaps this source seems kind of biased, due to his vent against concepts like conversion experiences, thanking God, etc. (then again, I could be wrong).

Hello TheoloJer,

Thank you for this important topic.

The “we” in your post covers a multitude of possible people, not all of them interested in knowing something spiritual about their own human nature.

Do you want to know if you have a soul? From a Catholic perspective?

Blessings,
granny

The human person is worthy of profound respect.

 

[pig]

And hence, it is not logically contradictory. Although I think it is highly implausible, it is not logically impossible.

These people can be rational. People who belive in square circles, however, aren’t.

No, illogical.

This from Reginators thread on the soul in Apologetics:

"…the soul is a substance, but an incomplete substance, i.e. it has a natural aptitude and exigency for existence in the body, in conjunction with which it makes up the substantial unity of human nature;

though connaturally related to the body, it is itself absolutely simple, i.e. of an unextended and spiritual nature. It is not wholly immersed in matter, its higher operations being intrinsically independent of the organism; …"

See, I knew my intuition was right… a substance.

 

[belorg]

This from Reginators thread on the soul in Apologetics:

"…the soul is a substance, but an incomplete substance, i.e. it has a natural aptitude and exigency for existence in the body, in conjunction with which it makes up the substantial unity of human nature;

though connaturally related to the body, it is itself absolutely simple, i.e. of an unextended and spiritual nature. It is not wholly immersed in matter, its higher operations being intrinsically independent of the organism; …"

See, I knew my intuition was right… a substance.

No, even if we accept this, then your intuition was dead wrong.
If the soul is an incomplete substance and yet, according to your own intuition, the very same substance as its creator, then it follows logically that God is also incomplete.

 

[edwest2]

No, even if we accept this, then your intuition was dead wrong.
If the soul is an incomplete substance and yet, according to your own intuition, the very same substance as its creator, then it follows logically that God is also incomplete.

Honest question. Why are you concerned about what Catholics Believe?

Best,
Ed