The Soul: Does It Exist?

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Secuutus' date='19 September 2009 - 06:48 PM' timestamp='1253404126' post='1969435']
Okay now I get it lol. I was thinking majoring in philosophy, now after reading your first response, im not so sure now lol. Im thinking of majoring in anthropology, I might stick with that instead! lol [img]http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/public/style_emoticons/default/upsidedown.gif[/img]
[/quote]
First year philosophy is not that hard. They start you off with the basics.

[Servus_Mariae]

[quote name='Hassan' date='19 September 2009 - 02:55 AM' timestamp='1253343306' post='1969080']
Why?
[/quote]

Though I understand the sentiment expressed it statements like: "There has to be something otherwise this life is meaningless", they really aren't good proofs for meaning...just that it would be nice if it did.

With that said, the reason this life would be meaningless would be because in the end nothing has an end. There is no value to choices made nor virtues obtained accept the value you thrust upon them. I could enjoy vice and crime and inflicting harm on others and the value would be the same as the value of virtue. In the end, you will be left with how you feel about being alive and more importantly how you feel at death (which, inescapably would be a permanent sate of unrest knowing good feelings will be gone soon).

I could be as wealthy as Bill Gates with the virtue of a great saint and married to the most beautiful woman in the world with the most gracious and talented children in the world and it would mean as much as being deceitful, hateful, and malicious to all I come in contact with so long as I derived pleasure from it in the same way.

Contrarily, with a soul and a life to come, every action and experience has a value and choices have a lasting effect. The meaning of life would not be determined by something so subjective and trivial has how good I feel...but rather by what good I have done.

[Little Lamb]

I saw a TV program today about death and in it was mentioned that in 1907 two scientists wanted to scientifically prove the existance of the soul. They argued if soul was something material that left the body at the moment of death then the body should become lighter at that moment. They used a huge scale and put the bed of a dying patient on that scale & just at the moment they determined to be the moment of death the scale moved and the body became 84 grams lighter!! Of course we don't know the exact conditions of their experiment. Also, the commentator said that those scientists never elaborated how they determined the exact moment of death.

Just thought some of you might find that little tidbit interesting.

[Secuutus]

[quote name='Servus_Mariae' date='20 September 2009 - 11:58 AM' timestamp='1253462297' post='1969643']
Though I understand the sentiment expressed it statements like: "There has to be something otherwise this life is meaningless", they really aren't good proofs for meaning...just that it would be nice if it did.

With that said, the reason this life would be meaningless would be because in the end nothing has an end. There is no value to choices made nor virtues obtained accept the value you thrust upon them. I could enjoy vice and crime and inflicting harm on others and the value would be the same as the value of virtue. In the end, you will be left with how you feel about being alive and more importantly how you feel at death (which, inescapably would be a permanent sate of unrest knowing good feelings will be gone soon).

I could be as wealthy as Bill Gates with the virtue of a great saint and married to the most beautiful woman in the world with the most gracious and talented children in the world and it would mean as much as being deceitful, hateful, and malicious to all I come in contact with so long as I derived pleasure from it in the same way.

Contrarily, with a soul and a life to come, every action and experience has a value and choices have a lasting effect. The meaning of life would not be determined by something so subjective and trivial has how good I feel...but rather by what good I have done.
[/quote]


I agree!

[Mark of the Cross]

[quote name='Servus_Mariae' date='21 September 2009 - 02:58 AM' timestamp='1253462297' post='1969643']


Contrarily, with a soul and a life to come, every action and experience has a value and choices have a lasting effect. The meaning of life would not be determined by something so subjective and trivial has how good I feel...but rather by what good I have done.
[/quote]
During my lifetime I had the experience of new houses, new cars and holidays. None of these things compare with some trips I made to East Timor teaching English to the most physically and spiritualy beautiful children you could imagine. I didn't choose this response, it just is and it's more than just doing good. I guess where there is good there is Jesus and when we are doing good Jesus presence in us makes life more fulfilling.

[Servus_Mariae]

That's awesome Mark.

[dauntingknight]

The soul exist because we think, feel and have the will to do good or evil.
If we have any hope of "surviving" after we die we would need a soul.

[Hassan]

[quote name='Servus_Mariae' date='20 September 2009 - 11:58 AM' timestamp='1253462297' post='1969643']


With that said, the reason this life would be meaningless would be because in the end nothing has an end.[/QUOTE]

What do you mean by, "an end"?



[QUOTE]There is no value to choices made nor virtues obtained accept the value you thrust upon them.[/QUOTE]

What is the source of values in your system? Just that God arbitrarily thrusts certain value upon certain things?

[QUOTE]I could enjoy vice and crime and inflicting harm on others and the value would be the same as the value of virtue. In the end, you will be left with how you feel about being alive and more importantly how you feel at death (which, inescapably would be a permanent sate of unrest knowing good feelings will be gone soon).[/QUOTE]

Yes. If by value you mean some transcendentally imposed standard.

[QUOTE]I could be as wealthy as Bill Gates with the virtue of a great saint and married to the most beautiful woman in the world with the most gracious and talented children in the world and it would mean as much as being deceitful, hateful, and malicious to all I come in contact with so long as I derived pleasure from it in the same way.[/QUOTE]

I could agree with you until you brought in pleasure, which seemed an unnecessary addition.

[QUOTE]Contrarily, with a soul and a life to come, every action and experience has a value and choices have a lasting effect. The meaning of life would not be determined by something so subjective and trivial has how good I feel...but rather by what good I have done.
[/quote]

Now you have confused your issues (actually you have all along, but I will point it out here). An immortal soul in and of itself has nothing to do with those matters.

[Hassan]

[quote name='Servus_Mariae' date='19 September 2009 - 06:41 PM' timestamp='1253400118' post='1969389']
Sorry man...I am a philosophy major, which means I am a master of making myself sound smarter than I actually am.

Basically I mean this: When you learn a concept, you are gaining information which you cannot touch or see. This "concept" is not injected into your brain. You cannot even argue that it is a brain response because the concept was there before your brain was. So...this means you have the ability to obtain concepts using apart of you that is not physical. [/QUOTE]

No, no this is all wrong or unsupported. To begin with you seem to dismiss the physiological aspects of learning which modern neuroscience has documented. What do you mean the "concept" was there before the individuals brain was? What do you base this upon?

[QUOTE]Think of it this way: Justice. How do you know what it is? What is it? Can you see it? No because it is immaterial. Justice is not a brain wave or collection of cells. It is not neurological. And yet...you know what it is. You can experience it, though it is not material.[/QUOTE]

What do you mean by justice? How do individuals experience "justice"?

[QUOTE]Now...we have established that you can experience it. But how do you get it? You have to "reach out" and "pull away" (Latin: ab=away tract=pull/ abstract) these concepts. As you read this...you are "pulling away" the concepts which are immaterial. This part of you is not your brain specifically because these concepts are not physical realities like your brain is. So how do you grasp immaterial things? With immaterial experiences. What part of you can experience the immaterial? Your soul.

You are an immaterial being which can experience this immaterial.

The part that confuses things...is the fact that we are not just souls. We are "body-souls". Each can have an impact on the other. So, its easy to simply push off one experience as being of the body and disregarding the soul. The problem here is thus: If you have only material experience...how can you entertain the immaterial?

I hope that helps.
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I don't mean to be rude but I really just cannot follow your reasoning. I think you need to make a more structured argument with much more clearly defined terms. What do you mean by "immaterial"? Does mathematics count? What about physics theorems? What do you mean by "material"? It seems like your entire argument is predicated on the assumption that a bio-physical brain would be unable to process abstraction.

Yet even if this were true, and you have given no reason for us to suppose it is, and even if this proved the existence of a soul, how does this prove the existence of an [b]immortal[/b] soul?

[Christopher Brandon]

[quote name='Hassan' date='20 September 2009 - 11:56 PM' timestamp='1253505403' post='1970183']
What do you mean by justice? How do individuals experience "justice"?
[/quote]

They experiance it by the satisfactory feeling of something they believe in their hearts to be wrong set right.

just like individuals experiance love, your not really going to tell me love is just hormones giving me a hard on are you?

[Hassan]

[quote name='Servus_Mariae' date='19 September 2009 - 03:22 PM' timestamp='1253388127' post='1969276']
You could approach it epistemologically. How is it we come to know, and what is it that we come to know?

This capacity to obtain knowledge is called abstraction. In this way, the human person can grasp that which is incorporeal and can do so distinct from physical experiences.[/QUOTE]

How exactly do you define "abstraction"? You need to be much more clear on this point.

[QUOTE]These incorporeal realities are known and related as universals (e.g. Goodness: love, pleasure, beauty, truth...all of this is related to good and can be seen in these things; which consequently can be related to other things as well).[/QUOTE]

Pleasure is a neurological phenomena.

[QUOTE]The capacity to come to know that which is good or true or beautiful is unending. I have yet to meet a person of advanced age discover that their ability to obtain new information is impossible.[/QUOTE]

So? How does that constitute any evidence that any sort of information is infinite? Moreover even if it did what would it prove?

[QUOTE]Likewise, no amount of human beings can use up these concepts. No one can use up all of the "justice" or run out of the notion of "good".[/QUOTE]

Are you talking about the inexhaustibly of our ability to learn about these concepts or the concepts themselves?

[QUOTE]So, an infinite capacity (abstraction) to know that which is infinite in nature (concepts) indicates a faculty of infinite vitality.[/QUOTE]

Does a Turing Machine have an immortal soul?

Edited September 21, 2009 by Hassan

[Hassan]

[quote name='Christopher Brandon' date='21 September 2009 - 12:02 AM' timestamp='1253505728' post='1970189']


just like individuals experiance love, your not really going to tell me love is just hormones giving me a hard on are you?
[/quote]


What do you think love is?

[Christopher Brandon]

[quote name='Hassan' date='21 September 2009 - 12:12 AM' timestamp='1253506343' post='1970196']
What do you think love is?
[/quote]
I think love is an emotional and spiritual attachment to someone, or a group of someones.

[Hassan]

[quote name='Christopher Brandon' date='21 September 2009 - 12:18 AM' timestamp='1253506685' post='1970200']
I think love is an emotional and spiritual attachment to someone, or a group of someones.
[/quote]

You seemed distressed at the idea that I might consider love nothing more than a hormonal reaction (particular one of sexual arousal) yet an emotional response is precisely a bio-physical reaction. So on this count we seem to be on the same page. I'm not sure what you mean by a "spiritual" attachment.

[Servus_Mariae]

Thanks for your responses Hasaan...it's allot though, so I am going to take a bit to look at all of them more thrououghly.

[Servus_Mariae]

[quote]What do you mean by, "an end"?[/quote]

I mean an objective and final purpose for action. Without an objective end this life becomes what you make it...arbitrarily determined by the "end" you have established for yourself in this lifetime, which I would argue is no "end" at all. Let me explain; it would appear that the "good" is the end which we are all geared towards (its what we all want in some way) We all want "good things" however that is made manifest.

However, even if all were to agree on this point and pursue "the good", it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you are good...there is no purpose for it, there is no objective "end". If I am happy and a good person...I still die and any good I experience comes to a halting conclusion without consideration to the good I had done.

"Death comes to us all"; this applies to the good and the bad of the world. If there is no life to come...then what distinguishes the two? There legacy? I suppose. But if this life is all there is, what good is a legacy to the dead?

I should have responded to this last...I assume allot in this post. I would ask that you refrain from critiquing this one (unless its for clarity's sake) until I get to the other ones...then you can have a field day. lol

[Mark of the Cross]

[quote name='Hassan' date='21 September 2009 - 04:21 PM' timestamp='1253510470' post='1970294']
You seemed distressed at the idea that I might consider love nothing more than a hormonal reaction (particular one of sexual arousal) yet an emotional response is precisely a bio-physical reaction. So on this count we seem to be on the same page. I'm not sure what you mean by a "spiritual" attachment.
[/quote]

My wife and I have pretty much had zero physical attraction. Our bond is purely spiritual! A normal parent would not have a sexual attraction to their off spring yet have love to the point of self sacrifice.
The word love as a polite mataphor for hormonal attraction is a corruption of the word. Allegances based on this usually end in separation/divorce! True love is an example of the eternal world which permeates into this terminal existance and you take it with you when you go.

[Servus_Mariae]

Hey Hasaan...I haven't forgotten about this. I am in the midst of an exam week and things are kinda nuts. I'll get on this tomorrow or Friday.

[Guest nvzbl]

i got soul...

[Servus_Mariae]

[quote name='Hassan' date='20 September 2009 - 11:48 PM' timestamp='1253504898' post='1970177']

"What is the source of values in your system? Just that God arbitrarily thrusts certain value upon certain things?"

I hold the source of value to be that which is a most perfect manifestation of the good (which I hold to be objective). Recognizing God as the ultimate good, that which is good is not so because God arbitrarily thrust His "stamp" of approval on it. For example, Charity would not be considered wrong because God suggests it to be so nor does greed become virtuous if God blesses it. Rather, Charity is in correspondence with God's nature which is goodness itself and greed is not in correspondence with God's nature. The relationship between God and the thing I consider valuable is correspondence in nature.

I value something because it is God-like not God-liked.


"Yes. If by value you mean some transcendentally imposed standard."

Imposed would be an improper word. From an atheistic point, my position would be more like valuing things in correspondence with something that isn't actually there.


"I could agree with you until you brought in pleasure, which seemed an unnecessary addition.


Now you have confused your issues (actually you have all along, but I will point it out here). An immortal soul in and of itself has nothing to do with those matters."

If it seems like that post has little to do with proving the immortality of the soul...its because it had nothing to do with proving the immortality of the soul. I was seeking to address the futility of the life lived without an immortal soul.

A life lived without an afterlife means this life is all there is. If this is the case, then being a "good person" is just one manner of living among many for making this life worth living. This is where the pleasure part came in. The only thing that makes life useful are the "good times". What else do you have? These "good times" would be guided by no end in mind. So...whatever you do is irrelevant accept to attain pleasure (which is the only "end" in sight).

[/quote]