The Soul and the Brain

[liquidpele]

Tip for today’s kids:

Southpark doesn’t make you more credible.

Haha, well duh, it just means you have a good sense of humor

 

[Shredderbeam]

Frankly, personality is a gray area as far as I am concerned.

But for the sake of discussion, in the real world of scientific research, that particular news story would probably go into the circular file. For something to be considered as to “strongly suggest” it needs to be in the format of scientifically accepted published research in one of the major world journals.

As far as I can tell, the person who “strongly suggests” is Lee Dye, the columnist on ABCNEWS.com, a former science writer for the Los Angeles Times, who now lives in Juneau, Alaska.

As far as I’m aware, the general scientific consensus is that personality is a function of the brain, affected by one’s environment and genes. A brief search on Google yielded no single journal claiming that, though I was able to find a long listing of various journals that investigate personality.
"grannymh:

Believe me, I do understand current society’s need to see everything in materialistic terms. Getting rid of the spiritual aspect of human beings is the goal of many “isms”
from humanism ( the modern version) to utilitarianism to relativism to atheism. Fortunately or unfortunately, Catholicism is the one “ism” which champions the true dignity of human beings and truly understands the answer to “Why are we here?”

Blessings,
granny

No weight of gold or silver can measure human worth. Hymn

Atheism doesn’t have a “goal”. I don’t know about other individual atheists, humanists, or relativists, but my goal is not to try and destroy or bury anything, it’s to find the honest truth.

The fact that “the amygdala is crucial to emotional processing by the brain” is not evidence that emotions originate in the brain. We can induce emotions by choosing to meditate on a particular subject.

Destruction or damage to the amygdala destroys one’s ability to process emotions. I would count that as fairly strong evidence that emotions originate in the brain.

tonyrey:

That does not mean consciousness originates in the brain.

It actually does. If it did not, then physically affecting the brain should not affect consciousness.

tonyrey:

Please consult any dictionary.

They have multiple definitions, and I’d like to nail down exactly what your definition is. If I don’t know what your definition is, it becomes a lot harder to answer your question.

tonyrey:

The article explains that “the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), orbitofrontal cortex (and the overlapping ventromedial prefrontal cortex) are brain regions involved in decision making processes.”
The fact that they are involved in decision making processes does not mean that they **originate **in those regions. They process the decisions made by the mind.

So destroying/damaging these parts of the brain should not affect one’s ability to think, right?

tonyrey:

The fact that drugs affect the brain does not prove that emotions **originate **in the brain. It merely shows that drugs interfere with the way the brain communicates emotions to the body.

The presence of certain chemicals in the brain directly affect the subjective feelings that one feels, though. That is, a higher presence of serotonin will make you feel better, more energized, and happier. Suddenly altering the balance of chemicals can lead to crippling depression. Why is this?

 

[grannymh]

As far as I’m aware, the general scientific consensus is that personality is a function of the brain, affected by one’s environment and genes. A brief search on Google yielded no single journal claiming that, though I was able to find a long listing of various journals that investigate personality.

Your search on Google is sincerely appreciated, I have not done anything with personality; however, eventually I will get to it.

Getting access to the actual scientific research on the brain itself can be very difficult. What I have done with Google material is to pick out well known individuals and Google them. Sometimes, I get lucky following a trail of links. Currently, I am studying a specific area of evolutionary theory (the human species) and a couple of friends are helping me with research.

Atheism doesn’t have a “goal”. I don’t know about other individual atheists, humanists, or relativists, but my goal is not to try and destroy or bury anything, it’s to find the honest truth.

I can agree with you that atheism, itself, doesn’t have a “goal”. In the case of atheism, it is people who have goals. From reading different threads, I find that some consider atheism more of a “result.” Regarding humanism or relativism, there seems to be a lot of personal personality involved.

Like you, my goal is to find the honest truth. Just because I am older, doesn’t mean I have lost my curiosity about truth. I send you both blessings and good thoughts regarding your search.

I will be out of town until the middle of October. When traveling, I have to depend on finding a granny-friendly computer. Thus, I don’t know when I will be able to participate in this thread.

Blessings,
granny

John 3 16-17

 

[Angels_Unaware]

Getting access to the actual scientific research on the brain itself can be very difficult. What I have done with Google material is to pick out well known individuals and Google them. Sometimes, I get lucky following a trail of links. Currently, I am studying a specific area of evolutionary theory (the human species) and a couple of friends are helping me with research.

Try Google scholar for scholary journal articles. Go to the top of the google page and choose “more” next to the links for Shopping and Gmail. You will see scholar, and get directed to a database that will pull up scholarly work. The only drawback is that many of the online databases require membership to even read the abstract, which is of course very expensive.

 

[Will8503]

Without a functioning brain, the body will not live and the Soul will depart (to a Spiritual Body in eternity.) If your head is damaged, your “soulish” processes will be impaired, just as damaged eardrums do not hear well, and injured limbs do not move nimbly.
ICXC NIKA.

What about people with obsessive-compulsive disorder? I have thoughts that scare me…so in that sense I don’t want to have the thoughts. But at the same time they’re compulsive. I can’t blame them on the OCD, but would like to believe that the OCD limits my freedom. But I know that is not always true in my case.

 

[GEddie]

What about people with obsessive-compulsive disorder? I have thoughts that scare me…so in that sense I don’t want to have the thoughts. But at the same time they’re compulsive. I can’t blame them on the OCD, but would like to believe that the OCD limits my freedom. But I know that is not always true in my case.

The fact that OCD is a recognized “disorder” suggests that yes, it can limit ones freedom. It is the brain not working perfectly; and the brain is the receiver and expressor of human thought. With it not working correctly, your thoughts will not always be what you want them to be. They are like a picture coming out of a malfunctioning laser printer.

The philosophical obsession with “free will” ignores that for us human beings, our thoughts and motivations are seldom if ever perfectly free. Our subconsciousness, emotional conditioning, and instincts have as much to say in them as our cognitive mind.

I’d say get teratment for the OCD and ask our LORD to redirect your mind. But don’t feel guilty if troubling thoughts enter it. You will only be judged for what you DO with them.

If you can’t get rid of the troubling thoughts, they may be your “thorn in the flesh.”

ICXC NIKA!

 

[antonabe]

I wonder if this has been referred to before in this thread but when you consider the phenomenon of Levitation,the ability to rising up into the air by unexplained means the differentiation between the Brain and the Soul is Clear.A friend of mine is a non Catholic actually a Buddhist Cardiologist and he said that in a number of instances patients have related to him in detail the actions performed by him on them when were they were in a sub conscious state and that they had seen all that from above.There are actually several such instances of levitation and St Pio was another capable of this feat.In my mind the soul has the services of the brain which is a material object to discern things of this world.The Soul is a Spiritual entity which will not perish

 

[liquidpele]

I wonder if this has been referred to before in this thread but when you consider the phenomenon of Levitation,the ability to rising up into the air by unexplained means the differentiation between the Brain and the Soul is Clear.A friend of mine is a non Catholic actually a Buddhist Cardiologist and he said that in a number of instances patients have related to him in detail the actions performed by him on them when were they were in a sub conscious state and that they had seen all that from above.There are actually several such instances of levitation and St Pio was another capable of this feat.In my mind the soul has the services of the brain which is a material object to discern things of this world.The Soul is a Spiritual entity which will not perish

Look, if that really exists than whoever can do it should go get $1 million dollars:

randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

 

[antonabe]

Look, if that really exists than whoever can do it should go get $1 million dollars:

randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html

If you are an Agnostic I do not expect you to believe it but let us p ray that it will happen to you someday

 

[terryroe]

After God breathed life into the inanimate body of Adam, which He had made from the earth, Adam become a living soul. I have heard many versions of what a soul is, but what came to mind while I was reading through the various opinions and descriptions was, - “An energy or force of an eternal nature with distinctive and unique identity or personality traits.”

 

[antunesaa]

I once read that the will is not in the brain. By stimulating various areas of the brain scientists can make various things occur; such as moving an arm. But the person knows that that was not their will but an action imposed on them. They have not found a way to stimulate the will; that is make a person believe that the motion was of their own volition.

My thought is that, in computer terms, the brain has the memory banks and (name removed by moderator)ut/output devices. The CPU is in the soul. [Just my speculation. I can cite no reference or authority.}

My analogy would be more like the energy that flows through RAM memory, databus, CPU, etc. The brain is the physical apparatus that, if it is complex enough or has a certain architecture, is able to establish a link between the physical and the spiritual realms. I view the soul as something like an anti-chaos energy that ensures purpose, dynamism, reason and emotion. I would say that the brain of animals other than humans is not able to establish that link and so they cannot be inhabited by souls. Their mental processes lack, if you will, the capacity of “seeing the big picture”. Given that the composition and size of the human brain does not differ by a tremendous amount from those of other animals (some apes, dolphins, whales, etc.), I would say that the absolutely vertiginous difference in the degree of intelligence between humans and other animals has to come from an unmeasured quantity. Maybe the unaccounted part has to do with the soul and its capacity to give purpose and order. But in the end I don’t know.
[/quote]

 

[soma]

I feel if we immerse our minds in Christ we begin to live and see pure consciousness within our souls as the uncreated image of God.

 

[liquidpele]

I feel if we immerse our minds in Christ we begin to live and see pure consciousness within our souls as the uncreated image of God.

If you want to actually go down *that *path, read the recently published red book. I doubt you’ll find God, but you’ll see what kinds of things lurk in your unconscious.

 

[tonyrey]

                                                                  Originally Posted by **tony**rey                     *The fact that "the amygdala is crucial to emotional processing by the brain" is not evidence that emotions **originate*** in the brain. We can induce emotions by choosing to meditate on a particular subject.

Destruction or damage to the amygdala destroys one’s ability to process emotions. I would count that as fairly strong evidence that emotions originate in the brain.

Since many emotions are produced by thoughts you need evidence that emotions originate in the brain…

           *That does not mean consciousness originates in the brain.*
 It actually does.  If it did not, then physically affecting the brain should not affect consciousness.

Why? There is obviously interaction between the mind and the brain.

  *The article explains that "the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), orbitofrontal cortex (and the overlapping ventromedial prefrontal cortex) are brain regions involved in decision making processes."

The fact that they are involved in decision making processes does not mean that they **originate ***in those regions. They process the decisions made by the mind.
So destroying/damaging these parts of the brain should not affect one’s ability to think, right?

It affects one’s ability to receive and communicate information.

*The fact that drugs affect the brain does not prove that emotions **originate ***in the brain. It merely shows that drugs interfere with the way the brain communicates emotions to the body.
The presence of certain chemicals in the brain directly affect the subjective feelings that one feels, though. That is, a higher presence of serotonin will make you feel better, more energized, and happier. Suddenly altering the balance of chemicals can lead to crippling depression. Why is this?

Because we are psycho-physical beings! []](http://forums.catholic-questions.org/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=5752981)

 

[liquidpele]

Since many emotions are produced by thoughts you need evidence that emotions originate in the brain…
Why? There is obviously interaction between the mind and the brain.
It affects one’s ability to receive and communicate information.
Because we are psycho-physical beings! []](http://forums.catholic-questions.org/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=5752981)

The problem with your analysis is that you suppose that the mind exists, while we know the brain exists. There is a term called the Tyranny of Evidence you should become acquainted with. While this video is aimed a bit at the evolution debate, it serves as an explanation here as well:

youtube.com/watch?v=WqznURlEWI0

 

[tonyrey]

The problem with your analysis is that you suppose that the mind exists, while we know the brain exists.

Our starting point is the stream of consciousness in our mind. We know our thoughts exist but we infer that there is a brain…

 

[liquidpele]

Our starting point is the stream of consciousness in our mind. We know our thoughts exist but we infer that there is a brain…

A bullet in the brain stops that stream of conciousness pretty quickly, or at least all the evidence we have displays this. You’re trying to get around the fact that there is evidence that supports the brain (as a physical thing) being who we are as opposed to some metaphysical possibility.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying that your theory has no grounding without proper evidence to support it, just like the “aquatic ape” theory in the video I posted above.

 

[tonyrey]

A bullet in the brain stops that stream of consciousness pretty quickly, or at least all the evidence we have displays this.

There is evidence that consciousness does not depend on the brain. There are some fascinating accounts:
globalideasbank.org/natdeath/ndh3.html
I was very close to death by drowning in the English Channel and I distinctly remember looking down on myself from above…

You’re trying to get around the fact that there is evidence that supports the brain (as a physical thing) being who we are as opposed to some metaphysical possibility.

The belief that a person is a physical being is also a metaphysical possibility! Materialism, idealism and dualism are all metaphysical theories but the fact remains that we have **direct knowledge **only of our thoughts, feelings and perceptions - and of nothing else whatsoever in the entire universe! What extraordinary beings we are…?

 

[liquidpele]

There is evidence that consciousness does not depend on the brain. There are some fascinating accounts:
globalideasbank.org/natdeath/ndh3.html
I was very close to death by drowning in the English Channel and I distinctly remember looking down on myself from above…
The belief that a person is a physical being is also a metaphysical possibility! Materialism, idealism and dualism are all metaphysical theories but the fact remains that we have **direct knowledge **only of our thoughts, feelings and perceptions - and of nothing else whatsoever in the entire universe! What extraordinary beings we are…?

The problem with anecdotes… youtube.com/watch?v=16E-4avtddE

Not that it makes your experience less meaningful to you, but it’s not evidence.

And the “matrix argument” is fun to bring up but meaningless as without depending on our senses and the predictability of physical evidence, it pretty much just throws out all knowledge except your own thoughts… which is funny because most of your thoughts are simulations of the physical.

 

[antonabe]

If you want to actually go down *that *path, read the recently published red book. I doubt you’ll find God, but you’ll see what kinds of things lurk in your unconscious.

This is not the Forum for Atheists and Agnostics.People beware the world is full of representatives of Satan who takes various forms to lure you away from Christ.They are in this Forum not to learn but on the direction of their Boss to try to weaken your faith.