Seraphim

Crappy name? Sorry ... can't think of anything after 4 hours of nothing but report generating for my work place ... Why am I explaining this?

Anyway, I said I will try and prove that there is Soul, Heaven and Hell and finally God, so this thread is an attempt of that discussion.

The MOST common mistaken a person makes when trying to prove there is a God is simply by taking the biggest model he or she could find (usually the Universe and Big Bang) and assume that common sense will be enough to guide the rest.

I on the other hand will start with the basic unit of physical existence - US and OUR surrounding and slowly make my way upward.

Seraphim

To start the argument, 1st attempt - What is Soul?

The most common question in whether God exists or not is by asking WHAT is soul and proof that soul
exists.

"Any animal whose survival strategy and behaviour appears to depend on the avoidance of suffering (rather than mere reflex actions) should be assumed to be sentient. "

In Buddhism (and Hindusm), Sentient being are Soul or "The Very Subtle Mind". It didn't start simply with the coming of Mankind, it started with the start of Evolution itself on the Planet.
Millions of years on the Planet when the 1st lifeform in form of single-celled organism appeared, thus the 1st Sentient born. From that point onward.

"More specifically, in Buddhist philosophy a sentient being is one who is aware of dukkha, and is capable of experiencing the qualia of suffering and happiness. A sentient being experiences its inputs (perceptions) and outputs (actions), in contrast to an automaton where no subjective states occur, and all meanings have to be assigned to inputs and outputs from 'outside the system'"

Sentient being increase their own intelligence and mind by experiencing more and more "sensations", suffering etc thus comes out with its own path of survival. The goal of a sentient being is simple - avoid suffering and find happiness.

This can be proven simply by act of Evolution itself - where single-cell organism came together to form complex multiple organism, and that slowly evolved into much higher animal form. Slowly, that higher animal form take shapes of even higher organism and create more and more till humanity is ONE of the product of such Evolution. So, humanity IS an Sentient being in all sense.
So where does the Soul or the Subtle Mind comes in?

"In Buddhist philosophy the mind of a sentient being is not a product of biological processes, but something primordial which has existed since beginningless time and which will be drawn into another body once the present one has died. The mind is capable of exisiting independently of the body, but an unenlightened mind finds this situation (known as the Bardo) unstable and is drawn into (rather than seeks) another body.
In biological terms the mind and body form a symbiotic association."

The mind and body is separate in Buddhism, and it is in a form of Symbiotic relationship. The body benefits by an active mind which could come out with better ways to survive and could solve complex problems. The mind gains nothing from this relationship simply because it is influenced by the sensors of the body (physical sensation - pain and pleasure, emotions etc).
When the body dies, the mind (unaffected by death) enters a state of "bardo" - fear of limited existence as if it is also part of the body (undetacted to the physical body) and enters into the new body. This shifting of mind from one dying body to another can be proven by Quantum Theory.

In Quantum Theory, when a matter gets enough energy, it will leaps into the next "stage" - ladder of energy level and continue "leaping" from one energy state to another till it runs out of energy. Laser works in this method where light (which is harmless in most cases) bounced off from two objects (example - Ruby Crystals used in Industrial lasers) to a point that it become tense enough that the energy will be emitted out of the Ruby crystal in form of Laser.

So summary is this :

1. Soul exists as the Entity which survived Death.
It's existence is proven by various cases of Near Death Experience where people - medical death, experience sensations which cannot possibly comes from physical sensory.

2. Death kills the body, the Mind which occupies the body is not affected by physical death.

Please be free to ask questions and be patient if I take a while to answer (I have to work for a living as well)

Aquila ka Hecate

Hi Seraphim,

1. I don't accept this proof.
Many people on this board-myself among them-have had an NDE and certainly do not ascribe it to anything other than the dying brain producing physical symptoms which are (as they would be) superficially similar from one being to another.

2. I certainly don't accept this statement.
Ever been close to a person dying of Alzheimer's disease?
If so, you would have seen the 'mind' being absolutely 'affected' by the death of the physical organ-the brain.

I also have to work for a living, so I can't give this quite the time I need to..but I hope I've been clear enough.

Seraphim

By Aquila ka Hecate

1. I don't accept this proof.
Many people on this board-myself among them-have had an NDE and certainly do not ascribe it to anything other than the dying brain producing physical symptoms which are (as they would be) superficially similar from one being to another.

My reply : Well, NDE is one of the strongest proof of Soul, simply because it has potential of throwing away the 1st reason why such experience occurs.
Most people will say that people in NDE imagined it just like in a dream, but in NDE, in most case such as medical cases where the person is medically dead (as in heart no more supplying blood to the brain), the brain CANNOT make a new expression if it switched off.
It is just like a computer, it cannot produce more signalls IF it's power is switched off. And brain will stop working in 7 minutes (according to a medical report I read somewhere) if the oxygen is cut off and the last sensory to go is the earing. I learn about this in National Geography channel last month.
In such way, HOW does suggest that a "dead" brain could even produce imagery which could be stored as memory which the patient could remember after he or she revived?

2. I certainly don't accept this statement.
Ever been close to a person dying of Alzheimer's disease?
If so, you would have seen the 'mind' being absolutely 'affected' by the death of the physical organ-the brain.

My reply : Alzheimer's patients as well as other patients such as those suffering in Parkinson's Disease are effected by inability to perform their movements properly due to damage to their brain. But they are still capable of intelligent thoughts and expression and you can communicated with them via other means. One example I wish to point out is Dr. Stephen Hawkings, who is bound in a wheelchair but his intelligent is almost in same level as in Einstein was.

Aquila ka Hecate

No, no Seraphim:

1) Dying brain, not dead brain.
I'll point you to some studies if I have time, or perhaps someone else can do this.

2.You do not understand what Alzheimer's is , do you?
The person dying of this disease loses their personality, ability to recognize family and freinds, and eventually ability to even recognise themselves as a person.
You cannot, beyond a certain point in the disease, communicate in any rational way with such a patient.
Parkinson's is completely different.
Hawking still has his mental faculties, hence his 'personality' is untouched.(hmmm...well you know what I mean, I hope!)
I'm talking here about a disease which attacks and erodes the personality, which would be the case if the mind were a product of the physical brain, but negates your proposition that the mind is a seperate entity.

[Edited to add a link and reconsider my position that Hawking's personality is in fact 'untouched'!]
here:
<a href="http://skepdic.com/nde.html" target="_blank">Skepdic Article</a>

[ October 15, 2002: Message edited by: Aquila ka Hecate ]</p>

Seraphim

"1) Dying brain, not dead brain.
I'll point you to some studies if I have time, or perhaps someone else can do this."

My reply : What is the difference between a dying and dead brain?
One difference I see is that dying brain occurs when the brain has less oxygen and the supply decreases. In such state, the brain could still do something like project images which could recognised as NDE.

But there are cases where oxygen supply is cut totally for hours - especially during surgery and the person is medically dead, YET he has images of NDE and he could remember it after he revived, which shouldn't be IF his brain was doing it.

I'm going through some NDE experience website now and I will show some example when I find it, so far, I more interested in reading about NDE from religions' point of view.

"2.You do not understand what Alzheimer's is , do you?
The person dying of this disease loses their personality, ability to recognize family and freinds, and eventually ability to even recognise themselves as a person.
You cannot, beyond a certain point in the disease, communicate in any rational way with such a patient.
Parkinson's is completely different.
Hawking still has his mental faculties, hence his 'personality' is untouched.
I'm talking here about a disease which attacks and erodes the personality, which would be the case if the mind were a product of the physical brain, but negates your proposition that the mind is a seperate entity. "

My reply : You should look at the brain as it is the motherboard of a computer while the Mind is the electricity which runs through it. Even so the electricity remains unchanged, the defect on the motherboard doesn't effect the electricity at all.

Alzheimer's disease doesn't prove that Mind and brain are from the same source.

Aquila ka Hecate

No-brain death is legal and medical death.
No one comes back from actual brain death.
I dispute anyone surviving after having received no oxygen to the brain for several hours.

Beleive me, I've tried this, and other tricks to try to convince myself of the soul's existance.
It hasn't worked.
it hasn't seemed to me that 'the electricity remains unchanged' at all.
When you have known a person all your life, known their subtleties of thought and feeling,then you know when the personality behind them is no longer the same-is, in effect, drainig away.
Where then does it go to?
Some cosmic storage-battery?
And when the person's body finally does die, what happens to this soul? Gathers itself up and trundles off to an afterlife?
It makes absolutley no sense at all to me, and this is a very minor case.

excreationist

Electricity is used to carry signals throughout the motherboard as well as provide energy for other functions....
In humans, the thing that sends signals throughout our brain are chemical messengers (neurotransmitters?) and the energy source for our brain is blood which carries oxygen and nutrients and gets rid of wastes... in a computer, the waste is heat - and fans are used to suck out that waste to stop the hardware getting damaged.
Are you sure that analogy was a good one for explaining what the mind is?

Philosoft

Seraphim, a few questions,

What, if any, functions does the soul/mind provide that the brain cannot? Conversely, is there anything that the brain can do that the mind cannot?

If the soul can provide the functionality of consciousness and sentience after brain death, what is the purpose of the cerebral cortex? Sensory and motor duties could be handled by a much less complex brain.

Jamie_L

A person experiencing an NDE has no time reference during the NDE. No one, not outside observers, not the person having the NDE, can say that the actual NDE occurs at the same time that no brain functions are occuring. Thus, even if there were a case where someone claimed an NDE, and that person had been virtually brain-dead, we could not say with any certainty if the NDE had occurred prior to the brain-dead state or during.

Jamie