Quote:
Originally Posted by ernestombayo7
Actually there is a lot of evidence which suggetsts that a soul exists.
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by ernestombayo7
If your looking for observable evidence,then ofcourse there is no observable evidence.We can only infer from hoiw the human body behaves
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by ernestombayo7
"I could as well say the soul dies with the body."
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by ernestombayo7
1.Free will - As long as we know that we are not deterministic in nature and can make free choice,then its a sign that we have control of our bodies.
|
Yes we live under illusionary free will.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ernestombayo7
Denying a soul is also denying free-will.If humans are only material,then it means no-one can be held accountable for any action.I can blame my brain cells for coming up with the idea of killing my grandmother.
|
Yes, if you think brain cells is ‘I’ or ‘I’ is the equivalent to the totality of neural cells, memory, plus environments interactions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ernestombayo7
2. Existence of Morality,no soul no morals, a stoning cannot be called immoral,all is happening is a bag of biological material(human),is propelling a smaller chunk of material(stone) in certain trajectory towards another bag of material with a similar biological make up(the victim).
|
Morality is merely a dictate of rules created and imposed on other people. To call a man a midget may not be morally correct, but to call a man vertically challenged really does not change the man in question.A typical londoner will say abomination if a man picks his nose on the street whereas in Nairobi it's ok.Whereas a non-naturalist will find it a moral embarrassment to play host to a nude naturalist couple, a naturalist sees there’s nothing wrong at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ernestombayo7
3. Emotions such as love or hate or anger are evidences of a soul.otherwise these are just chemical reactions triggered by neural processess in the body.so if we had a supercomputer and a very wise programmer,then it is possible to "plant" hate inside someones brain,by triggering all the right neurons.
|
Apart from computer programs that can be used to impose not just emotions but entire personality, Certain drugs are known, that affect certain neural paths and centers in the brain to produce the psychic state known as euphoria. Others affect other circuits and produce depression or sleep. We can implant electrodes in the brain and cause the subject to "hear" bells and symphonies that aren't "there" at all. We can be made to "see" figures and lights without using our eyes at all, by stimulating the visual cortex at the back of the brain. We can cause to appear the emotions of rage, sexuality, sorrow, religious awe, etc., by altering the dynamic functions of the brain in appropriate ways. We are beginning to understand how neural circuits compete with each other to give us the illusion of "free will."
Quote:
Originally Posted by ernestombayo7
4.Knowledge is a also a strong evidence of a soul.Its hard to postulate why a material object would acquire knowledge without outside interference,or even why that ,material object would want knowledge in the first place.
|
Knowledge is defined as the fact or state of Knowing. And can also be referred to as accumulation of experiences. No environments; no knowledge. You don’t learn literature and know Chemistry.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ernestombayo7
there are many others, how would you account for these things if you reject a soul? None of these points contain any proofs.
|
These arguments neither rely on facts nor logic and as expected, they are just a reflection of how vastly our environments influence chemical reactions of neural cells.
Lest we are talking of two different wards, the soul I’m referring to is the one defined as the principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body, and commonly held to be separable in existence from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical part.
We ought not get into the habit of pushing the meanings of Western wards down the throats of others.If a black man claims that he has seen Santa Clause or that he has seen a ghost, or that the soul exists, it is incumbent on that person to proof these assertions; the burden of proof rests on the claimant.
The etymology of the wards ‘soul’, ‘spirit’, ‘ghost’, trace their origins to the wards meaning ‘breath’ or ‘wind’. Mystical connotations were imposed on these wards as pre-scientific man tried to make sense of what characterize life and death. The word spirit generally a synonym for soul comes from the Latin spiritus, and clearly meant 'breath' originally. Spiritual and respiratory both derive from the same root! Modern Biologists unlike ancient makers of myths (flat earth solid sky, sun rotating round the earth etc) know that all the phenomena of living systems can be reduced to physical and chemical terms.
That a child born into a Muslim family will also become a Muslim, or that a newborn ‘black baby’ adopted by Japanese foster parents speaks fluent Japanese, think and reason like Japanese etc, etc is irrefutable proof that our environments make us what we are. A clone of Mike Tyson brought up in the ‘wrong environments’ will be scared to death in fighting ring.
01-26-2008, 08:20 AM
Linear Mode
