Keraleeyan

As more and more details of the old mythical world picture prove themselves to be false, myth lovers seem to adopt one common strategy:The new generation of gurus conveniently forget and cover up many details of their sacred writings and bring forth some new edited version of the story, often somewhat slimmer than the original.Many a time, newer elements are incorporated, even sometimes being borrowed from previously competing 'streams of faith'. The older books meantime become converted into objects to be respected and worshipped rather than sources of ideas to be examined and discussed.Suitably enigmatic quotes are pulled out from them to be marketed-preferably by bundling up with something latest in science that is sufficiently confusing to the average reader.
I once tried a parody:
Problem:How do one 'explain' unicellular organisms? As long as people knew only about organisms visible to naked eye, the question of course,was non-existant.The sacred texts say you can even be a worm in a future birth, depending on your karma.You-meaning the eternal soul that is "neither hurt by arrows nor burnt by fire".The body you are in is now the new cage. The cage/machine functions because it is inhabited by the soul.Now there is breathing,eating, drinking, reproducing...
OK.Fine.
Enter microscope.Now you see so many miniscule cages of soul,breathing,eating, drinking... To make matters worse,you come to realize that your own body is made up of billions of such soul cages that do all these functions in a more or less independant manner.Does this mean that you have not one soul, but billions of them? How can you reconcile with the ancient idea that you are a single soul that inhabits an otherwise lifeless cage?(The obvious thing- that you are mistaken in putting forth the very idea of soul-is of course, unthinkable.)
The solution: Train hypothesis! Each of the railway compartments look and function similar to a motor car, but is it not clear that they do not have that level of independance? And is it not clear that they each do not need one engine, but just one great engine that acts as the sole mover?
With sufficient command of ancient language-which not many knows today, anyhow- you can explain that the term 'worm' actually means protozoa,bacteria,virus, whatever.They are also soul cages.

Now comes the people who 'claim' that they have created the polio virus.Of course, it is only a claim, but..

[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: Keraleeyan ]

[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: Keraleeyan ]</p>

Marduk

"This ability for self reflectiveness was previously supposed to set "us"
apart from 'animals' as well , I think.With what we know about apes now, I
understand that such an assumption is no more widely held. Am I right? "

Yes, apes know they are individuals, they will choose their own photograph from a group of apes, though they will sometimes put themselves in the human pile when asked to file photos into piles by species if they have been around humans long enough.

thebeave

Or you could word your philosophy this way:

Here I disagree with you completely. We can; and it is even desirable to do so. For me, the thought of 3,000 people dying horrible deaths on 9/11/01 is appalling; therefore, it did not happen.

Bugs

Yes but some of us prefer to try to determine what is real, rather than live in a fantasy world of what we would like.

Bugs

I disagree. The problem is, most people have never heard of Occam’s Razor, of if they have, they don’t understand it. I think it just needs explaining better. This is my explanation of it.

Occam’s Razor actually says:

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate", which is translated as "plurality should not be posited without necessity."

The archaic English needs to be interpreted for modern times. What it means is this:

Do not invent unnecessary entities to explain something.

An example

Suppose I have a cat. One night, I leave out a saucer of milk, and in the morning the milk has gone. No one saw who or what drank the milk. Lets say there are two possibilities:

• 1. The cat drank it
  
  or
• 2. The milk fairy drank it

Occam tells us to reject option 2. This is because option 2 requires us to invent an unnecessary entity – the milk fairy. It is an invention because we have no proof that the milk fairy exists. And it is unnecessary because there is a plausible explanation that does not require the milk fairy – the cat. (We know he exists.)

Note: we haven’t proven that the cat drank the milk. Or disproven the milk fairy option. Strictly speaking, we keep an open mind about both options. But Occam says that if you insist it could be the milk fairy, you have invented an unnecessary entity. And why would you do that?

Coming back to your question. Why invent a “soul”? What aspect of the brain requires a “soul” to explain it? If someone insists the brain requires a soul, they are inventing the milk fairy.

[ November 30, 2002: Message edited by: Bugs ]</p>

DMB

I think the idea of a soul is deeply embedded in our psyches.

I have read a lot about the nature of consciousness, and I am willing to accept that it has a purely natural explanation. I have never belonged to any religion and do not believe in personal survival after death.

Nevertheless I still cannot help subjectively feeling that the essential *me* resides behind my eyes and that my thoughts are abstract and not physical. Don't other atheists here feel that?

So I suppose that this sort of feeling can be a first step towards belief in a soul.

Then again, I know that I will die and I do not think that anything of me will survive after death. But I have imagination. My imagination flies to a time after my physical death and imagines viewing my funeral. It is quite hard to get my head round the idea that my consciousness will just disappear and there will be no more *me* to observe my funeral or anything else. I find it much harder to imagine non-existence than some form of continued disembodied existence.

So this kind of imagination can be a second step towards belief in the soul, now no longer just the consciousness I now enjoy, but an imagined projection of it into the future.

I helped nurse my father (also an atheist) when he was dying of cancer. Even though neither of us rationally believed in personal survival, part of me still refused to believe that a time was fast approaching when I wouldn't be able to talk to him any more. His illness and approaching deathfelt to me like an ordeal I had to help him through and that I would be able to discuss with him once he had got rid of his tortured body. It was only some time after his death that I completely accepted the fact that he had completely ceased to exist.

So I would say that emotions we feel about the deaths of those we love are another factor in leading us to believe in a soul.

I have been quite honest about my emotions and subjective impressions here and I am an atheist. I don't believe any of this stuff. I would suppose that anyone steeped in religious explanations would be much more inclined than I to accept unquestioningly the existence of the soul. In fact they would see it as obvious.

crocodile deathroll

I have come more to the view that the soul not an incarnation but it is a real physical entity. It is not God (not even close) it is an emergent property of complexity.
What make it real it the reality itself around you. You feel the mouse in your hand the key board on you computer, the seat of the chair on your tush, your desk and a few books to inform you about the nature if the natural world, but if you did not exist that reality may as well of not existed.
The soul is reality orientating itself around the observer and can only emerge when reality achieves a critical level of complexity, and that reality would not be tangible without an observer. There is such a reality sphere around you and around me.
However the perception of this reality is also vulnerable to the memory capacity of your brain so once you die it would in a real sense be identical to never been born at all in the first place. But reality has a trick up its sleeve, it will just reorientate itself around another observer and continue on unabated, so a gestalt switch mechanism will cause your soul to switch to another brain and start another life again as though it is a first time event. It was only through this mechanism that is was possible. This is not reincarnation because from the outset I said the soul is not an incarnation in the first place.

Peter Soderqvist

TO BUGS

Soderqvist1: A cat can drink milk, therefore we doesn't need any more explanation than that! I have found it proven beyond any reasonable doubts that this cat has done it, this is a clear objective phenomenon, but here is what it ends, because objective phenomenon cannot at all explain subjective phenomenon, therefore; immaterialism is not ruled out as long as materialism cannot explain the origin of subjective phenomena! For instance, sex in nature is the unconscious genes ways of making new vehicles for themselves to survive through, and we consciously exert free will every time we use contraception, science is objective, it is a quantifying phenomenon, but love is a subjective quality, therefore; science cannot quantify love, and because of that, love cannot be described in scientific terms, but a "milk fairy" in this case; a immaterial subject (a soul) can be used to describe these subjective phenomena, that the objective description is obviously unable to do! Music is only wave lengths, for instance, that classical music is beautiful have no physical reality, since it is only a molecular interactions upon our eardrums, but the concept of beauty have only merit in a spiritual dimension, furthermore; non-local phenomena, quantum entanglement, quantum tunneling, and action at a distance have no material explanation either!

An interview with Amit Goswami, a professor of theoretical physics, at the university of Oregon, regarding his book, the Self-Aware Universe, how consciousness creates the material world!
<a href="http://www.twm.co.nz/goswintro.htm" target="_blank">http://www.twm.co.nz/goswintro.htm</a>

Review the interview and let's elaborate the issue afterward!
I don't say that I agree with him about everything, but I say that; it is enough evidence there, to put the pure materialist stance in jeopardy!

[ December 03, 2002: Message edited by: Peter Soderqvist ]</p>

ps418

Are they unexplainable, or merely unexplained? And would you mind outlining the nonmaterial explanation of quantum tunnelling and entanglement? I am familiar from a layman's perspective with Aspect's exeriments and other EPR type experiments that seem to show nonlocal action. Why specifically do these phenomena require an abandonment of materialism, rather than simply a modification of materialism? Why and how are these quantum affects signficant for us macroscopic beings? Keep the physics jargon to a minimum if possible.

Patrick

ps418

Too bad you can't actually use consciousness to directly create anything interesting, for instance a dollar bill or a cookie (much less a universe). Somehow I wouldnt feel all that god-like by 'collapsing the wave-function' of a pair of entangled particles! Hell, I wouldn't even be able to choose which particle in an entangled pair did what!

I found a few webpages criticizing Goswami et al's interpretation of QM, but frankly this is not an area that I am familiar with. Does anyone know of any good books or articles on the subject of "QM refutes materialism," or "QM supports the personal survival of death"?

Here are a few articles I found, most of which I haven't read yet:

<a href="http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/vjs/www/qmyth.txt" target="_blank">The Myth of Quantum Consciousness</a>

<a href="http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-16-ludwig.html" target="_blank">Why the Difference Between Quantum and Classical Physics is Irrelevant to the Mind/Body Problem</a>

<a href="http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-19-mulhauser.html" target="_blank">On the End of a Quantum Mechanical Romance</a>

<a href="http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-03-klein.html" target="_blank">Is Quantum Mechanics Relevant To Understanding Consciousness? </a>

<a href="http://www.csicop.org/si/9701/quantum-quackery.html" target="_blank">Quantum Quackery</a>

<a href="http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/vjs/www/mystic.txt" target="_blank">Mystical Physics: Has Science Found the Path to the Ultimate?</a>