quote:
However, a quark's motion variables not being fully known does not render it out side of 'natural'. There are things we may never know (at least simultaneously) but we don't need to invoke the supernatural.
Exactly! Personally I don't feel that scientific phenoms fall into the truly supernatural "realm."
Looking at the etymology of the word supernatural we see that it started as a religious term.
supernatural (adj.)
c.1450 (implied in supernaturally), "above nature, transcending nature, belonging to a higher realm," from M.L. supernaturalis "above or beyond nature," from L. super "above" (see super-) + natura "nature" (see nature). Originally with more of a religious sense; association with ghosts, etc., has predominated since c.1799. The noun is attested from 1587.
Considering their cosmology, viewing God as literally above nature makes sense. He was part of the "higher realm." Eventually the word went on to be associated with spirits in the ghostly sense.
Even the definition that 1.61803 gave in
Message 52 supports the religous or ghostly meaning.
Plus when we look at the OP
Ben OP writes:
do we have any evidence to counter the claim "there is a nonphysical afterlife." or "After death my soul will live on." ?
Ben is not presenting a scientific phenom, it is a religious or faith based claim.
I found this article on
Neurocience and the Soul which highlights a presentation by Dr. Malcolm Jeeves, who is also a person of deep religious belief. Here are some parts I found interesting.
With the help of graphic slides of the brain, Dr. Jeeves described a series of discoveries, studies, and experiments on the brain that verify an undeniable relationship between the physical substrate and mental or psychological functions. There is, for instance, the 1848 textbook case of the very conscientiously moral and reliable railroad foreman, Phineas Gage, whose brain was damaged by a tamping iron. His cognitive functions were virtually unchanged, but he became irresponsible, unethical, immoral, and unemployable-- showing a strong link between emotional personality and brain functions.
"I've said the spiritual dimension is not immune. If you read the histories of some of the great religious leaders of the past, you will find that they were not immune to the kind of changes which I've been talking about this evening. If the spiritual domain was totally separate from the rest, then no matter what happened to the brain, the spiritual dimension would go on as usual. But this is clearly not the case. You probably know from friends who have been severely depressed that their spiritual life is likewise affected. It is not a separate thing. It is an intrinsic part of the whole person.
"What is interesting to me is this emphasis on psychosomatic unity. Here I get into dangerous territory. But this, my Biblical scholar friends say, is what they've been telling us for a hundred years and we've not been listening. Biblical scholarship shows that the Hebrew-Christian view emphasizes the unity of the person, while the Pagan-Hellenistic view separates the person into bits. It is interesting that we are now recapturing what the Biblical scholars have been saying all along. It's also interesting that in the great creeds of the Church--the Apostles' Creed and Nicene Creed--there's no reference to immortality at all. The great creeds refer to resurrection, not immortal souls floating about. I said I'd be provocative here. But what interests me is that recent work in neuroscience is making us recognize afresh the unity of the human person.
Not all faiths support the idea of an independent soul after death.
Science doesn't seem to have found the soul to be a separate entity unaffected by what happens to the body.
Would these be considered evidence against there being a nonphysical afterlife?
"The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which lasts forever." --Anatole France
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