Soul

The two options you mentioned are:

quote:

---

1) Souls don't exist
2) Souls don't matter

---

First of all, absense of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absense.Us not being able to put our finger on souls doesn't mean that they don't exist. Things' existences are not dependent on our abilities to find them. IMHO, I think its possible that the doorway between the physical and spiritual is the mind. Your soul could exist on some spiritual plane, parallel to our physical plane, and the soul could interact with your body through your mind. This would allow the interaction of different souls on the physical plane via people's bodies through their minds. That provides a mechanism for actions in the phyical world affecting the spiritual. Of course, this is all conjecture. Es imposiblé.

I would go further and say that the only sensible position regarding the existence of things for which no evidence exists is to assume that they don't exist. Strictly speaking, since it is impossible to prove a universal negative, the position should be "The soul almost certainly does not exist.", pending evidence that proves it does exist.Simply saying "We don't know" implies some kind of parity between the existence and non-existence positions, when in actual fact, we are all well aware that when there is absolutely no evidence for something, no need for it, no reason, then that is because it isn't real.Unless one is willing to say that we don't know whether Santa is real or not, the logical default position on the soul is that it doesn't exist.

---

Mutate and Survive

No empirical evidence, sure.But if I feel like I have a soul and conclude from those feelings that I do have one, then my conclusion is not baseless.

But to me, it seems like I have a soul. I think that is some kind of evidence, albeit shitty evidence. It is, though, a reason to believe it exists. I have a reason to believe in my soul, though. I wouldn't say there is absolutely no evidence for it. And I could come up with some needs for it, so I can't really say that is isn't real. But I don't have any reason to say that Santa is real.

If your soul interacts with your mind, then there should be something going on in the mind that can't be described in physical terms. As scientists are getting better and better at deciphering the electrochemical impulses in the brain, we're finding more and more evidence that every desire, thought, and feeling are merely those electrochemical processes at work.Anything we believe exists that we can't actually see, we deduce by noticing its effects on something else. Dark matter is gravitationally linked to visible matter, etc.The fact that you feel you have a soul is not evidence of anything. When you go to the dentists and he shoots novacaine in your mouth, your lips feels twice the size of normal...but it's not. People feel things all the time that are wrong.

That is just wishful thinking, which is no reason to believe in anything. To a small child, it seems as though Santa is real. Is this reason to believe that he does exist? Is it corroborating evidence, even shitty evidence? To whom must it seem real before we call it evidence? Me? You? A child? A lunatic? Your reason is wholly subjective though and thus, valueless as evidence. In the absence of anything else, "evidence" this bad is equivalent to nothing at all, which just leads me back to my previous position.I am intrigued to hear what these needs you talk about are. Whilst we don't have a full explanation for human conciousness, that does not imply that what we need to fill our knowledge gap is a soul. What we need is the true explanation, not whatever explanation seems the most comforting to theists. So we assume that he isn't (sorry kids). By the same token, if you can provide us with a reason to believe in the soul, beyond a vague sense of "seeming" real, then I might take the proposition a bit more seriously. Until then...

---

Mutate and Survive

Maybe you don't. But there may be many who do.If we are going to start accepting personal feelings about things as evidence for their existence then the evidence for Hindu Gods is very compelling indeed.
The evidence for the existence of Santa or the Tooth fairy also need to be taken into account.People feel many things that are not real. Feelings are not evidence for existence.
At what point do we take the feelings of paranoid delusion as evidence for the "fact" that "they" really all are out to get us?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Why?It isn't necessary. Those electochemical processes could be a result of the soul transgressing the mind, just sayin' Being able to describe things physically does not negate a possible non-physical element uderlying those physcal processes.For example, the ToE could just be describing how god did it. It is a reasonable reason, to myself, for myself to believe in my soul.

Its not wishful thinking How could you even possibly know my thoughts? Yes, for the small child it is. It depends on what we are willing to consider evidence.Nothing subjective is really evidence in the best sense of the word evidence. But I do use my subjective experiences to come to my own conclusions. And in the end, all of my experiences are ultimately subjective. Its valueless as evidence for anyone other than myself. But to myself it has merit.Your previous position:

quote:

---

I would go further and say that the only sensible position regarding the existence of things for which no evidence exists is to assume that they don't exist.

---

While my subjective experience is not really "evidence" for the soul, in the sense of empirical evidence, I consider my position sensible because it makes sense to me. From what I can tell, my soul does exist. You being unaware of souls doesn't trump my own experiences. It wouldn't be sensible for me to drop my belief in my soul simply because you don't see one. I don't think you should take the proposition more seriously if you don't think there are souls. But to claim that my position lacks sensibility simpy because you don't see the result is not sensible in itself.

I'm not saying that we should start accepting other people's personal feelings as evidence for the existence of things.I'm saying that if I feel a soul, then it is sensible for me to believe that that soul exists. I don't think that is evidence for you to believe in souls, but it is for me myself. When the feelings are your own.

If everything can be described in physical terms, what reason do we have to postulate any non-physical entities. Occam's Razor would be an argument against that. Another would be this:You throw a ball in an arc to a friend a few feet away. The ball starts off on an upward trajectory and then reaches an apex and curves back down to your friend. We cand escribe the entire flight in physical terms. Does that then rule out the possibility that there are fairies on the ball who pushed it back down so it wouldn't keep flying upwards forever? No. Do we have any reason for thinking they are there when Gravitational Theory explains it just fine? Also no. If the soul created a change, such that electro chemical signals were the result, there should be a something at which we can point and say, "Those weren't created physically." If everything can be explained physically, we have no reason to postulate a nonphysical component. And if everything would have happened regardless of there being a nonphysical component or not, then even if there is one, it becomes irrelevant. It would seem you're saying that God would have created humans as a sort of Rube Goldberg machine with unnecessary complexity to do a simple task, namely the transmission of electro chemical signals.

At the risk of opening a can of worms... You say it is sensible for you to believe in a soul because you subjectively feel you have a soul. And it is equally sensible for me not to believe I have a soul because I feel I don't.It would then follow that it is sensible for someone to believe they have been abducted by aliens because they feel like that has happened. Or that it is sensible for a paranoid delusional person to believe there is a secret cabal out to get him because he feels that there is. Both of these people have no objective evidence to prove their beliefs, they only have their feelings. Especially in the last case, we would want the person to go onto some sort of medication because we don't accept his evidence.Your feelings may be enough for you to believe, but to say that belief if therefore sensible is a reach, imo.

So anything anyone feels can be justified as evidence to themselves?If I feel that you do not deserve to live do I have "evidence" that killing you is the right thing to do?Is evidence our means of differentiating true from false? If so how can subjective feelings subject to mood and mental state possibly be described as "evidence"?Doesn't this just amount to whatever I think is true must be true? With all the obvious flaws that this posittion necessarily has?

So, given that human brains, chimpanzee brains, lemur brains, and naked mole-rat brains all function physically and electrochemically in very much the same fashion, are you willing to extend the concept of a "soul" to those critters, too? If not, why not? Is there some requirement that your prefrontal cortex must be this big before you get ensouled? If so, where does that leave two-pound preemie babies?

Yes, those beliefs can be considered sensible as well. If the judgment is sound, then it is sensible, by definition. I think that basing my judgments on things that I’m convinced are real is sound.

---

From Message 26
Well, my reasons for postulating the existence of the soul are the subjective experience I have that suggest the soul exists and is non-physical. You’re assuming that I’m just believing in my soul without any reason at all and that is false. Again, not necessarily.This is essentially the same statement that I asked why to before . Like you said, there could be fairies pushing the ball down. We wouldn’t know if there were, would we? Gravitational Theory explains it just fine without them. This doesn’t mean that they cannot be there.If I saw a fairy pushing the ball down, then I might believe they exist. Your argument that theory explains fine without them wouldn’t negate me seeing them. Thus the folly of science in its failure to identify a non-physical realm. It might be irrelevant to the explanation of the mechanism by which things happen, but there could be more to this world than just the “how’s” . (like the “why’s”)

---

Science fails to recognize the single most potent element of human existence.
Letting the reigns go to the unfolding is faith, faith, faith, faith.
Science has failed our world.
Science has failed our Mother Earth.
-System of a Down, "Science"He who makes a beast out of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man.
-Avenged Sevenfold, "Bat Country"