How can the immaterial (Soul) affect the material (brain)

[4Horsemen]

4Horsemen;7861409:

4H,

Good question. I am waiting with bated breath for Greylorn’s answer. In the meantime I will give my answer: God is in no way “physical”. depending, of course, on how you define physical. I agree with Greylorn’s view of physical in that everthing material is physical, but not everything physical is material. To me "physical’ includes the four elements of objective reality: matter, energy, space, and time

. So where does the spiritual come in? Greylorn seems to include God and hence includes the spritual in his definition of “physical”, which needs some explaining. However, having read and critqued Greylon’s thesis I have no doubt that he can come with an answer.

Greylorn, old buddy, can you enlighten us or are you still going to plead anonymity?

Yppop

Yppop,

I see what you mean about the part in bold. But the question, “where does the spiritual come in?” is the basic question of the OP and how the immaterial soul afftects the material part of a person. It seems some want a mechanistic approach that inevitably makes the soul (and mind) material (physical?). Others make the soul a part of the mind. I think it’s the other way around, but I’m not really sure. The soul is the breath of life so, you might say, it resides within every cell and organ and causes our material (physical?) bodies to function, including the brain of course.

Any ideas?

 

[shaky]

greylorn;7843478:

If something is material, isn’t is also physical (in the sense of not having spiritual qualities?) The dictionary definition seems to agree:

Synonyms for physical
**Physical **

indicates connected with, pertaining to, the animal or human body as a **material **organism: physical strength, exercise. Bodily means belonging to, concerned with, the human body as distinct from the mind or spirit: bodily pain or suffering. Corporeal, a more poetic and philosophical word than bodily, refers especially to the mortal substance of which the human body is composed as opposed to spirit: this corporeal habitation.

Light can in certain circumstances take on particle-like boundaries and therefore behave in particle-like ways. Physicists look for simpler realities. So the simpler reality could be a particle as it moves into an experimental black box, become a wave while inside and emerge as a particle as it exits.

In what way is God immaterial and at the same time physical?

It says in the bible Jesus who is God is the Light that has come into the world. but men loved darkness

So if you look at light it is Immaterial but at the same time has a physical existence.
If you look at dark it is Immaterial but at the same time has a physical existence.
Air breath of life is immaterial but at the same time has a physical existence.

 

[greylorn]

4H,

Good question. I am waiting with bated breath for Greylorn’s answer. In the meantime I will give my answer: God is in no way “physical”. depending, of course, on how you define physical. I agree with Greylorn’s view of physical in that everthing material is physical, but not everything physical is material. To me "physical’ includes the four elements of objective reality: matter, energy, space, and time. So where does the spiritual come in? Greylorn seems to include God and hence includes the spritual in his definition of “physical”, which needs some explaining. However, having read and critqued Greylon’s thesis I have no doubt that he can come with an answer.

Greylorn, old buddy, can you enlighten us or are you still going to plead anonymity?

Yppop

YP,
Your use of the quote function has attributed 4H’s remarks to me. You are not nesting the quote-markups properly. Both 4H (I trust) and I expect better of you, good friend.

Now that you are in a suitably annoyed frame of mind, I’ll try to deal with multiple questions by pulling a few ideas from my yet-unpublished book.

We live in a cause-effect universe.

Two forces are required in all physical interactions. (One of Newton’s laws, I forget which.) A force which encounters no counterforce cannot be the cause of an action.)

The notion of “spiritual” was invented many millennia ago by people who were wise enough to recognize that material interactions did not explain human thought or paranormal experiences, which were much more common in centuries and cultures where people were not educated to believe that such experiences were not real. Even today, one in 30 objectively interviewed individuals will admit to having had an out-of-body experience. A common effect of LSD was exactly such an experience.

So the word spiritual came to encompass things which were not material and were not understood.

Thanks to the refusal of the Church, and of lesser churches, to get with the physics program, I’m apparently stuck with the unpleasant job of reconciling the old concept of spiritual with the current understanding of physical. This is certainly my punishment for something awful that I did in my last life, and has nothing to do with my real life purpose, which is to make enough money to rename Lambeau Field.

To begin with let me make it clear what ideas I accept.

This is a created universe, and requires a creator. My understanding of God is different from that of every religion I’ve studied.

God is a thinking being, meaning that he is capable of creative thought, meaning that he can invent ideas which have never before been invented. By implication he is therefore not omniscient. By further implication, there was a point in his mental existence at which, like us, he knew nothing whatsoever.

God is not outside our universe. While his relationships to time and space are different from those to which our matter-based bodies are constrained, different does not imply transcendent. Humans experiencing or causing psi phenomena do so by virtue of a momentarily “different” relationship between their minds and time, space, or matter.

God did not create energy, which gets to follow the first law of thermodynamics. Energy is the stuff with which God interacts, by virtue of his ability to violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, so as to create the universe.

Energy is God’s raw material, the wood from which he creates his Tinkertoys (atoms) from which he builds stars and galaxies and mosquitoes.

Run awhile with the belief that man is somehow made in God’s image, but instead of satisfying this belief with the backwards notion of God-as-a-man-in-a-white-beard image, which is downright stupid, assume that the “soul” shares God’s ability to violate the 2nd Law, and therefore has the ability to think and create and manipulate the stuff of the universe. (Some of us can actually do that, when not being told that doing so is impossible.)

Consider the “spiritual” part of us as that core ability of what you guys call “soul,” best known as the ability to invent information heretofore not in existence, to pull whole concepts and instants of comprehension out of nowhere. It’s Uri Geller’s ability to bend spoons, your ability to learn a new language, make up a poem or song, Einstein’s insights into space and time, Planck’s understanding of discontinuities, Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum.”

This spiritual component of soul allows every soul to control a physical brain provided that the physical interface between them works properly.

By virtue of the meaning of “physical,” correctly offered by other participants in this conversation, the soul is working with a physical brain and must therefore, by definition, be physical itself.

I think that the problem arises from the notion of soul I got when a kid in Catholic school, shared by others, that the soul was a “thing” which was interactive with my body despite being invisible, but that it was also “spiritual,” meaning not a part of the real universe. The latter is impossible. To be interactive it must be physical. So to straighten out the confusion, simply drop the notion that the soul is non-interactive. Let it be physical, but not material.

This should not be hard. Pull one of those magnets off your refrigerator and try to see the magnetic field which attached it to the metal door. Lots of luck. Do you imagine for a moment that the field you cannot see is “spiritual?”

I hope that this helps, encourages you to encourage me to finish the book, which I’ll then try to encourage you to read, or some combination thereof. This all makes a lot more sense when I have the space to do the proper background work.

If this doesn’t make sense on initial read, read it again.

Honest questions from you guys are always welcome. Thanks for your curiosity!

 

[greylorn]

yppop;7863018:

Yppop,

I see what you mean about the part in bold. But the question, “where does the spiritual come in?” is the basic question of the OP and how the immaterial soul afftects the material part of a person. It seems some want a mechanistic approach that inevitably makes the soul (and mind) material (physical?). Others make the soul a part of the mind. I think it’s the other way around, but I’m not really sure. The soul is the breath of life so, you might say, it resides within every cell and organ and causes our material (physical?) bodies to function, including the brain of course.

Any ideas?

Drop the notion that the soul is the “breath of life,” which is meaningless dribble that comes from a confused translation of the 2nd version of the Creation story, written simultaneously with the first, by captive Jews living in Babylon just a few hundred years B.C. and well after Moses’ time, who stole the Creation story from the Babylonians, who had co-opted it from the Greeks.

There is no “breath of life.” Read Michael Behe, a devout and conventional Catholic by his own admission. Biological life uses the rules of biochemistry, ingeniously, brilliantly engineered chemistry. I figure that God made critters. He does not need some mystical force to power them. The set of forces that he devised to make matter operate interactively do just fine to explain microbiology.

So, go with that, keep it simple. Don’t add unnecessary notions like “breath of life” because Aquinas did, and be mindful that the great thinker Aquinas believed, like every ignorant person of his day, that the flat earth was at the center of the universe.

 

[Luke_K]

So, go with that, keep it simple. Don’t add unnecessary notions like “breath of life” because Aquinas did, and be mindful that the great thinker Aquinas believed, like every ignorant person of his day, that the flat earth was at the center of the universe.

Aquinas, like every other educated person of his day, believed in a spherical earth (following the Greek tradition). He did believe it was the immobile center of the universe. However, there wasn’t any evidence to the contrary until centuries after his lifetime, so we can hardly blame him.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

 

[MatteoRicci]

Drop the notion that the soul is the “breath of life,” which is meaningless dribble that comes from a confused translation of the 2nd version of the Creation story, written simultaneously with the first, by captive Jews living in Babylon just a few hundred years B.C. and well after Moses’ time, who stole the Creation story from the Babylonians, who had co-opted it from the Greeks.

“Vitalism” is such a dead concept at this point… ironically.

Its tied up into that odd mediterranean idea that proposed the soul as both vital principle AND seat of intelligence.

We can also shove some blame on Democritus/Socrates/Plato/Aristotle for mixing the two concepts together.

 

[greylorn]

Aquinas, like every other educated person of his day, believed in a spherical earth (following the Greek tradition). He did believe it was the immobile center of the universe. However, there wasn’t any evidence to the contrary until centuries after his lifetime, so we can hardly blame him.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

If Aquinas thought the earth was spherical, why did the Church, which seems to dote upon his theological opinions, believe otherwise?

The evidence for the earth’s correct relative place in the universe was available in Aquinas time. Observations were necessary, but telescopes were not. Copernicus figured it out without those tools, and he was a mere Church deacon, not a renowned scholar. As did the pyramid-building Egyptians and Mayans, the druids or whoever built Stonehenge, some Chinese and Arabian scholars, including the Magi of Christian lore, all before Christ’s birth.

So I remain unimpressed by Aquinas. Perhaps he was more convincing than well educated. His general use of faulty logic in his alleged proofs of God suggests that he would not have been able to correctly reason to the earth’s place in the universe from anything but the most in-yer-face kind of data.

 

[greylorn]

“Vitalism” is such a dead concept at this point… ironically.

Its tied up into that odd mediterranean idea that proposed the soul as both vital principle AND seat of intelligence.

We can also shove some blame on Democritus/Socrates/Plato/Aristotle for mixing the two concepts together.

Your first post! I’m honored to be its recipient, never mind it was probably an accident. Nice opening line!

Should we blame the minds willing to struggle to create ideas, and then struggle the more to put them into print, for not having gotten things quite right— or the minds incapable of distinguishing the few good ideas from the many bad ones?

And ultimately, aren’t we responsible for the beliefs we choose to accept just as for the actions we take in life?

 

[Neil_Anthony]

Hi Greylorn,

I hope you don’t mind if I repond to just one or two of your many points. I feel like these one or two are the foundation for them all, and if they don’t hold, then the other points are moot:

Then, does your theory fit Catholic dogma? You are proposing that the soul is an entity which must, by definition, be physical. (My competing theories propose the same thing.) Yet the soul is supposed to be a spirit. Haven’t you blurred some distinctions?

Get back to my last question. You’ve defined the soul to be physical by virtue of proposing that it has an intimate two-way relationship with the brain. You don’t get to claim in the next breath that the soul transcends the physical world.

You may be correct but I would like to rephrase it a bit to see what you think:

In physics, there are quantum events that are considered un-caused. They are random and their outcome is probabalistic, and the outcome isn’t determined by any physical particle or any other physical thing. I’m agreeing with this understanding of physics and taking it as my starting point.

I’m hypothesizing that there may be something that lies outside the realm of physics that affects the outcomes of these physically un-caused events. Why is it “outside the realm of physics” or transcendent? It must be transcendant by definition, if we accept that nothing physical can affect the outcomes of these events.

Does that make any sense? Or is it circular reasoning? I may be going beyond my abilities a bit here.

This is quite untrue. You might want to read some of Dean Radin’s books, or do some serious research on parapsychological phenomena. I’ve seen some material on OOB (Out of Body) experiences on a few documentary channels as well, but the literature has more detail. Uri Geller’s repeatable demonstrations of metal bending are not explicable in terms of normal physics.

Are these things considered serious problems by real physicists? Are you a scientist? I would be very interested in reading about it if they were taken seriously by mainstream scientists.

 

[MatteoRicci]

Your first post! I’m honored to be its recipient, never mind it was probably an accident. Nice opening line!

Should we blame the minds willing to struggle to create ideas, and then struggle the more to put them into print, for not having gotten things quite right— or the minds incapable of distinguishing the few good ideas from the many bad ones?

And ultimately, aren’t we responsible for the beliefs we choose to accept just as for the actions we take in life?

Oh that was me just being facetious.

I tend to be ultimately tepid on the discussions of what the soul is, precisely because it seems far too speculative. You have only track the notion of the soul from the Pre-Socratics to Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, the Stoics, the Epicureans, through the Churchmen to Thomas et al. and you will a wide bandwidth of opinion.

More often than not, their method of eliminating an option was through logical disputation → however as can be seen in the difference between Aristotle’s Physics to Newtons (and to some extant in Quantum), just cause something can make rigorous logical sense doesn’t necessarily make it true.

Reality does not have to conform to our assumptions.

The Early Church Fathers were quite careful in discussing these matters, precisely because they were focused more on the nature of Christ himself - an issue that could properly be discussed about because He discussed about it.

Except for issues regarding our personal salvation and the identity of God, Jesus was quite silent on matters of metaphysics. So were the Apostles. While he may provided phenomena to prove his divinity (Resurrection, Miracle, et al), he didn’t sit down and explain the mechanics of how all of this worked.

That wasn’t really the point of Jesus’ mission - salvation was.

So in truth, we’re making assumptions and using human-created frameworks to try and stab at a phenomena that may very well be beyond our ability to cognize.

ie: Like trying to explain an event horizon or Red Shift using Aristotle. We may have the wrong tool.

Speaking of Thomas for one second, Aquinas’ whole system works on a logic engine/assumptions built by Aristotle. It does make sense, it does have an order to it - but it doesn’t necessarily mean its right and true as the Gospels.

When we assent to Thomism (something that even the Catholic Church is unwilling to put an official endorsement on), we’re placing our trust in premises concocted by two brilliant minds.

Two brilliant, but still mortal minds.

To paraphrase the great logician Peter Abelard, “i’d rather surrender Aristotle than be cut off from Christ.”

 

[Betterave]

If Aquinas thought the earth was spherical, why did the Church, which seems to dote upon his theological opinions, believe otherwise?

Did the Church believe otherwise?

So I remain unimpressed by Aquinas. Perhaps he was more convincing than well educated.

I remain unimpressed by those who continue to perpetuate myths about the ‘darkness’ of the middle ages. Perhaps such people are more convinced than well educated.

 

[FurtherSuntime]

Im not educated and dropped by cause something weird happened to me. the only reason i thought id say this is because I think I might of seen the god the scientist is talking about in the best dream of my life about 2 months ago…i copied it out and was thinkin…maybe i can have a lucid dream cause I know how to do it …and ask a question…so we can get to the bottom of things. I don’t ever like to create lucid dreams cause I think there un-atural…But if I want to I think I can get another exposure to what I saw and ask a question…get a question for me the thing I saw was like the svcientist is explaining…and there was a little fear too.all I need is a question which I can put into a comprehensible idea of a needed answer…it can be complex but i would need to know visually or mentally all about the confusion or mystery of the suggested…plead anyway no way can i keep up with the education here…bro is head of dept bio chem one of the best in world …so sometimes i like to have a look so i can impress him with worthwhile convo. called myself FurtherSuntime cause I’m not buying all that end of the world bunk

 

[yppop]

YP,
Your use of the quote function has attributed 4H’s remarks to me. You are not nesting the quote-markups properly. Both 4H (I trust) and I expect better of you, good friend.

Now that you are in a suitably annoyed frame of mind, I’ll try to deal with multiple questions by pulling a few ideas from my yet-unpublished book.

GL
Sorry about the quote function mess up, however as a 77 year old geezer; I hope you can forgive an occasional blunder!

YP,
Consider the “spiritual” part of us as that core ability of what you guys call “soul,” best known as the ability to invent information heretofore not in existence, to pull whole concepts and instants of comprehension out of nowhere. It’s Uri Geller’s ability to bend spoons, your ability to learn a new language, make up a poem or song, Einstein’s insights into space and time, Planck’s understanding of discontinuities, Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum.”

This spiritual component of soul allows every soul to control a physical brain provided that the physical interface between them works properly.

By virtue of the meaning of “physical,” correctly offered by other participants in this conversation, the soul is working with a physical brain and must therefore, by definition, be physical itself.

I think that the problem arises from the notion of soul I got when a kid in Catholic school, shared by others, that the soul was a “thing” which was interactive with my body despite being invisible, but that it was also “spiritual,” meaning not a part of the real universe. The latter is impossible. To be interactive it must be physical. So to straighten out the confusion, simply drop the notion that the soul is non-interactive. Let it be physical, but not material.

This should not be hard. Pull one of those magnets off your refrigerator and try to see the magnetic field which attached it to the metal door. Lots of luck. Do you imagine for a moment that the field you cannot see is “spiritual?”

I hope that this helps, encourages you to encourage me to finish the book, which I’ll then try to encourage you to read, or some combination thereof. This all makes a lot more sense when I have the space to do the proper background work.

If this doesn’t make sense on initial read, read it again.

Honest questions from you guys are always welcome. Thanks for your curiosity!

I’ve read your reply a couple of times and conclude that your answer to 4H’s question, “In what way is God immaterial and at the same time physical?” is presented in comments shown above". Here is my interpretation of your answer: There is a “immaterial” presence that interacts with the “material” brain through the interface we call the mind. And since the material brain is “physical”, the “immaterial” presence must also be physical and yet immaterial.

If you agree with my interpretation, then I have another question. We both agree that all things material are also physical, but not all things physical are also material (you give the example of the magnetic field). However, I define “physical” to include the four elements of objective reality: space, time, matter, energy and exclude the “spiritual”. In your scheme of things, where is the spiritual? Do you equate it with the immaterial/physical?

Since I am familiar with your theory that you haven’t (and don’t care to) disclose in this forum, I may be ignoring certain entities,would I be wrong to assume that this immaterial/physical/spiritual trichotomy (I just made up a new word) can be resolved by invoking the interaction of the soul and certain “spiritual part” that begins with B?

By the way, ever hear of Douglas Hofstadter?

Nice joke in post #44, very subtle; too subtle for you; might damage your reputation?
Yppop

 

[yppop]

yppop;7863018:

Yppop,

I see what you mean about the part in bold. But the question, “where does the spiritual come in?” is the basic question of the OP and how the immaterial soul afftects the material part of a person. It seems some want a mechanistic approach that inevitably makes the soul (and mind) material (physical?). Others make the soul a part of the mind. I think it’s the other way around, but I’m not really sure. The soul is the breath of life so, you might say, it resides within every cell and organ and causes our material (physical?) bodies to function, including the brain of course.

Any ideas?

Yes!. Interested?

Yppop

 

[greylorn]

In physics, there are quantum events that are considered un-caused. They are random and their outcome is probabalistic, and the outcome isn’t determined by any physical particle or any other physical thing. I’m agreeing with this understanding of physics and taking it as my starting point.

I’m hypothesizing that there may be something that lies outside the realm of physics that affects the outcomes of these physically un-caused events. Why is it “outside the realm of physics” or transcendent? It must be transcendant by definition, if we accept that nothing physical can affect the outcomes of these events.

Does that make any sense? Or is it circular reasoning?

I recommend that you do not set too much store in quantum physics just yet. There has always been controversy in this field and still is. It is also worth noting that the current interpretation of QM is essentially a religious belief. It was determined by vote at the Copenhagen conference in, I think, 1929.

The conference was held in Geneva but was named Copenhagen because it was stacked with Danish physicists who had a rather mystical interpretation of the uncertainty principle and wave equation. Most American physicists disagreed with them but few could afford the time and money to attend an extended overseas conference. As a result, the mystical notions of Heisenberg (a serious crank) and Shroedinger became the official interpretation and has remained so ever since.

Essentially, what these guys did was declare that because we could not reliably measure the position and momentum of a particle simultaneously, the particle has no definable position/momentum. They would declare that not even God knows this information, because it does not exist. I disagree with their interpretation, among others.

Hark back to phlogiston theory, physics’ early explanation for why some things burned and others did not. It was a stupid, goofy theory, which esteemed professors taught in great universities until oxidation was discovered. (Lavoisier, I believe.) Quantum mechanics is such a theory, and it hides its inherent worthlessness behind mysticism.

Just because we do not know the cause of a quantum event does not imply that there is no cause. I am certain that there is. The Heisenbergian philosophy that because we cannot make a measurement means that there is no measurement to be made is, IMO, just another manifestation of human egocentrism.

Consider, for example, quantum tunneling. An electron appears suddenly on the opposite side of a barrier which it does not have the energy to pass. It would be like me suddenly appearing on the opposite side of a mountain which I don’t have the strength to climb, which sounds impressive. But the electron only appears on the opposite side of a barrier, or potential well, if it has the energy to exist at the final potential. I propose that what actually happens is that the barrier momentarily disappears. (The physics part of my theories try to explain this.)

IMO there is no such thing as genuine randomness. Random number generators rely upon processes which are too complex to predict, but which are theoretically predictable. QM mistakes human ignorance for genuine randomness.

A side question which may be helpful, since you are a Catholic. Do you believe that God can know or measure the precise simultaneous position and momentum of an electron, without destroying the information?

Now to your question. Your theoretical position is well considered. In the context of your acceptance of current physics beliefs, I can’t disprove it. I would ask, however, about the nature of the transcendent mechanism, which would seem, offhand, to be more complex than the events it controls?

Without more detail about a specific mechanism, your argument becomes only a theoretical justification for ancient beliefs that you seem to want to perpetuate in the face of science’s onslaught upon religion. We may be on the same side of this struggle, but I know that there is a better way. A football team with superb defense, who’s quarterback can’t throw, who’s running backs have hip replacements, will not win a Superbowl.

Are these things considered serious problems by real physicists? Are you a scientist? I would be very interested in reading about it if they were taken seriously by mainstream scientists.

You seem to be dependent upon authority figures, which IMO is too bad. I’ve known some extremely real physicists who cannot hold down jobs in universities because they are honest enough to disagree with the mainstream. My formal degree is in physics and EE, but I found engineers to be dull people to work with, and of course could not get an advanced degree in physics with my severe disagreements over QM. My formal papers are in computer science and astronomy, fields in which I self-educated. My published novel is essentially philosophy. I know that only because several chapters have been used in formal philosophy classes, and excerpted in a major philosophy book about the nature of consciousness. So, no, I’m not a physicist.

Paranormal stuff is largely dismissed by everyone whose mental scope is limited by the opinions of authority figures, but is nonetheless real. I advise you to read Dean Radin’s The Conscious Universe. Radin has a Ph.D in physics, which should satisfy your need for credentials. He writes well and will stuff your brain with a diverse range of data, and explanations of fascinating experiments. The book is well-indexed, and its 28 pages of references should fulfill anyone’s demand for supporting material.

You might be someone worth pursuing interesting ideas with, but I’d like to revisit this after you’ve come up to speed on a highly pertinent subject which you have heretofore blown off. Fair enough?

 

[4Horsemen]

Im not educated and dropped by cause something weird happened to me. the only reason i thought id say this is because I think I might of seen the god the scientist is talking about in the best dream of my life about 2 months ago…i copied it out and was thinkin…maybe i can have a lucid dream cause I know how to do it …and ask a question…so we can get to the bottom of things. I don’t ever like to create lucid dreams cause I think there un-atural…But if I want to I think I can get another exposure to what I saw and ask a question…get a question for me the thing I saw was like the svcientist is explaining…and there was a little fear too.all I need is a question which I can put into a comprehensible idea of a needed answer…it can be complex but i would need to know visually or mentally all about the confusion or mystery of the suggested…plead anyway no way can i keep up with the education here…bro is head of dept bio chem one of the best in world …so sometimes i like to have a look so i can impress him with worthwhile convo. called myself FurtherSuntime cause I’m not buying all that end of the world bunk

Welcome to the forum FurtherSuntime. I don’t buy all that end of the world stuff either. It happens every once-in-awhile that times and dates are set, and nothing ever happens. Jesus warns us “Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and shall deceive many.” (Matt. 24:4-5)

As for your “lucid dream”, think of it as a gift, especially since you said it was the best dream of your life and you believe you’ve seen God. It was probably very vivid and may have been a prophetic dream in which God is asking you to do something, maybe like spread the gospel in the best way you can. He may be calling you to serve Him by learning more about your faith and being a good example of a virtuous life.

I really don’t know what kind of question you are seeking which you can “put into a comprehensible idea of a needed answer.” I would say to just accept the dream as coming from the depths of your soul where only God can speak. And that is a mystery!

 

[4Horsemen]

Drop the notion that the soul is the “breath of life,” which is meaningless dribble that comes from a confused translation of the 2nd version of the Creation story, written simultaneously with the first, by captive Jews living in Babylon just a few hundred years B.C. and well after Moses’ time, who stole the Creation story from the Babylonians, who had co-opted it from the Greeks.

There is no “breath of life.” Read Michael Behe, a devout and conventional Catholic by his own admission. Biological life uses the rules of biochemistry, ingeniously, brilliantly engineered chemistry. I figure that God made critters. He does not need some mystical force to power them. The set of forces that he devised to make matter operate interactively do just fine to explain microbiology.

So, go with that, keep it simple. Don’t add unnecessary notions like “breath of life” because Aquinas did, and be mindful that the great thinker Aquinas believed, like every ignorant person of his day, that the flat earth was at the center of the universe.

greylorn,

(Looks like my post to yppop has been tossed like a football).

Note the bolded area. I agree that God made the rules that explain how the whole universe works, and they are there for us to discover. But miracles have no physical explanation. Would you agree with that? Consider Jesus’ miracles like walking on water (were the apostles hallucinating or was Jesus bending some law of physics like Uri Geller’s spoon?), Jesus healing the sick (they only thought they were sick), raising the dead (they only thought they were dead ), casting out demons (psychologists would find sociophysiological explanations), multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Oh yeah, everybody was hiding their lunches until Jesus’ sermon on love, so they all had a ‘love-in.’

 

[4Horsemen]

Yes!. Interested?

Yppop

Yup!

 

[MatteoRicci]

But miracles have no physical explanation. Would you agree with that?

Actually i’ve seen a bunch of theological opinions regarding that ~ you could very well argue that a miracle isn’t a violation of the natural law at all, simply God making use of an unknown pathway/mechanism accessible to Him alone by virtue of his Being.

As an aside: I also do vaguely recall a kind of opinion that circulated in the 1500s that demons were incapable of producing “miracles” only “marvels.”

And the manner in which they are capable of producing such effects is simply because they had been around during the Creation.

ie: They know more science than we do.

 

[greylorn]

GL
Sorry about the quote function mess up, however as a 77 year old geezer; I hope you can forgive an occasional blunder!

YP,
Nope! No forgiveness. You must learn to take geezerdom as a serious responsibility. It’s like driving drunk. Nevermind the seven pairs of headlights coming at you, because you are smart and you know there’s only one pair, unless the colors are different or there are an odd number of pairs. Being a geezer demands constant attention. For example, I make it a point to wipe the drool from my beard and zip up before going out in public. Little things are important.

We must maintain the fiction that “Youth and good looks are no match for old age and cunning,” else the whippersnappers will wise up and cut off our government bennies. Man up now, and do your part!

I’ve read your reply a couple of times and conclude that your answer to 4H’s question, “In what way is God immaterial and at the same time physical?” is presented in comments shown above". Here is my interpretation of your answer: There is a “immaterial” presence that interacts with the “material” brain through the interface we call the mind. And since the material brain is “physical”, the “immaterial” presence must also be physical and yet immaterial.

Good, but let’s make this important correction to your interpretation. The interface is a component of the brain, similar in function to the tuner circuit in a TV set.

The mind is not the interface. It is the result of soul and brain interactions.

If you agree with my interpretation, then I have another question. We both agree that all things material are also physical, but not all things physical are also material (you give the example of the magnetic field). However, I define “physical” to include the four elements of objective reality: space, time, matter, energy and exclude the “spiritual”. In your scheme of things, where is the spiritual? Do you equate it with the immaterial/physical?

IMO there is no spiritual “thing.” As a kid I visualized my soul as a glowing white lump, like one of Al Capp’s shmoos but without appendages— except that mine was a speckled shmoo, riddled with sin spots. That notion was nonsense, but I think that lots of people hold some form of it. Spiritualness is something that the soul does, not a descriptor of what it is.

Since I am familiar with your theory that you haven’t (and don’t care to) disclose in this forum, I may be ignoring certain entities, Would I be wrong to assume that this immaterial/physical/spiritual trichotomy (I just made up a new word) can be resolved by invoking the interaction of the soul and certain “spiritual part” that begins with B?

You would be right on. And, good word!

By the way, ever hear of Douglas Hofstadter?

If you mean the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Godel, Escher, Bach— the Eternal Golden Braid, Scientific American math/physics columnist from the 70’s and 80’s, nope, never heard of him. I once shared a few beers with a guy by that name. His insufferably yuppie friends seemed anxious to discuss advanced philosophical themes, and became rather annoyed with me. That other Doug and I discussed old cars, and the particulars of his personally restored '57 Chevy.

Nice joke in post #44, very subtle; too subtle for you; might damage your reputation?
Yppop

Too subtle for me is right. Looking back I could not even find a joke. Didn’t know that I had a reputation. If I do, it doesn’t seem to be the kind that could be easily worsened.