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Author Topic:   More than flesh and blood?
Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2698 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


Message 15 of 62 (458732)
03-01-2008 7:18 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Recon3rd
03-01-2008 7:54 AM


Spirit? Soul?
Welcome to the forum, Recon3rd!
Do living creatures, man included have a spirit/soul or are we just what we see of each other?
All religions that I'm familiar with believe in a spirit, jiva, atman, ling, shen, kami, or something like it. The only thing that I have difficulty with is that nobody has actually been able to pinpoint a definition for it. Everyone seems to agree that it's "immaterial," but we don't really have a handle on what "immaterial" really means.
None of the definitions for spirit, soul or even "immaterial" can really even rule out the wacky, sci-fi B-movie idea of an insanely-long string of 1's and 0's recorded on the Big Ultra-Supercomputer Databank in the Skies by angels (heavenly computer geeks) eyeballing the whole thing from their observatory in the Andromeda galaxy.
Until we figure out a way to detect things that are immaterial, we can't actually know, per se, whether they exist. Chiroptera has mentioned emergent properties, Larni has mentioned brain activity, and GDR has mentioned perspectives/opinions. Emotions and opinions (as several people have pointed out) seem to be at least somehow correlated with observable, physiological phenomena, and, in many instances, the chemical/synaptic triggers for such responses are actually known. In order for a spirit to exist as the central "mind" of a human, we now know that it is at least heavily influenced by the phsyical body it inhabits, if not just an emergent property of that body.
But, don't take this to mean there isn't a God or spirits or anything (I believe there is). Remember, nobody actually knows what a spirit is, anyway. Maybe it is Chiroptera's "emergent property," or Taz's "neural patterns." The lack of a good definition is generally the reason why scientists don't discuss it. However, the lack of a definition also provides all sorts of weird rationalizations for people struggling with their faith.

Signed,
Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Recon3rd, posted 03-01-2008 7:54 AM Recon3rd has not replied

  
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