Talkback: The Soul

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From:	MadPole	2001-02-09 19:13:47
Subject:	Reincarnation....
Comment:	MadPole(103): Reincarnation is path to oblivion path!
From:	Jason	2002-01-04 13:58:16
Subject:	Matter and energy cannot explain
Comment:	The brain is superfluous in explaining the soul. How can you explain the fact that YOU feel emotion of any kind, even if it comes from the ordinary experience of tasting a cherry or reading a novel or listening to a symphony, or having nails driven through you? In theory, you can explain your BEHAVIOR as the output of an extremely sophisticated computer program, but you can never explain your SENSATIONS. Because machines don't feel. But YOU do. An extremely complex computer can seem to have a personality. It may seem to purr when you click on the right buttons. But it doesn't know that it knows that it knows that you are carressing its keyboard! Do you even feel what a computer feels when you make keystrokes? Do you ever feel what a rock feels when you dash it to pieces on a pavement? If someone dashed a piece of pottery to pieces a hundred miles away, you'd never know it. But you are certainly aware of what happens to you? What makes this awareness possible in a world of mere matter and eneregy?
From:	Jason	2002-01-04 14:00:29
Subject:	Matter and energy cannot explain
Comment:	Granted, it is possible that in a world of pure matter and energy, a hand may slap a face, a mouth may utter high-amplitude, high-frequency sound, causing neurons to fire in a certain manner until twenty years later, a bunch of bodies are gathered in a courtroom picking up more stimuli and exhibiting more weird behavior. But it is impossible that some conscious entity is sueing some other conscious entity for physical and verbal abuse! For in a world of pure matter and energy, physical and verbal abuse don't exist. For only the motions of pure-matter hands slapping pure-matter faces and pure-matter throats gushing out pure-energy sounds can really exist. The slap in the face can't really hurt, and the words can't be harsh. For all it is is pure matter, energy and motion. Therefore, murder can't really be a crime, and no one can really have rights.
From:	Jason	2002-01-04 14:06:07
Subject:	Matter and energy cannot explain
Comment:	To speak of such things as love and happiness, human rights, and hate crime, is really superfluous in a world of pure matter and energy. It is also impossible for white people to be racist or for blacks to experience discrimination. Oh no, I'm not saying that it is impossible for a bunch of angry black guys to say, 'White people are devils!' at high volume or for white police to take out clubs and beat black men to death. But white people are just machines, and machines can't be racists. The white machines are only doing what they have been programmed to do, responding to visual stimili reflecting off of dark skin. And what is the word 'N-I-G-G-E-R' but a mere waveform? That waveform can be a very potent stimulus, which can cause some neural networks to go haywire, ultimately inducing dark-skinned hands to slit ligh-skinned throats. That waveform can't be hurtful, because it is meaningless to speak of black machines really being insulted by a mere stimulus! Oh, this atheist, materialist, soul-deconstructing stuff isn't politically correct, is it???
From:	Jason	2002-01-04 14:11:14
Subject:	Matter and energy cannot explain
Comment:	But YOU know that you know that you know that YOUR emotions exist. And YOU know that you know that you know that you are entitled to certain kinds of emotion, and that when you don't get those right feelings, YOUR rights have been violated. (And every religion from Christian to Wiccan acknowledges this) And it would be ludicrous to think that YOU are the only conscious entity there is. Sure, other people with bodies like yours have the same types of feelings. Thus YOU also know that your rights end where others' rights begin. The same thing must also apply to the unborn babies. Surely, the fetus in the uterus must have these sensations, even though he/she will not have the capacity to remember them 20 years later. When the throat of that fetus is slit, a soul just like yours dies! And that soul can feel the pain of the knife, just before it departs from its unborn body.
From:	Jason	2002-01-04 14:12:04
Subject:	Matter and energy cannot explain
Comment:	I can say that there are five things that a world of pure matter and energy can not explain: how matter and energy came into being, how life came from nonlife, how YOU know that you know that you know that you exist, why YOUR sensations, and of course, others', feel the way they feel, and the empty tomb. So it is high time to get knowing that you know that you know what you believe and why.
From:	poo42	2003-03-04 03:09:15
Subject:	soul
Comment:	a soul does not have to be completly christian, or even religious for that matter, a soul can simply be analogous to the id, ego and super ego, but easier to swallow. nancy murphy states that if you ingage in a dialectic, one can prove that there is a soul by using a research mechanism. also, you have too many options for polling about the existance of a soul, either people believe, they don't or they have no opinion, but i like the site
From:	l	2003-04-02 01:16:42
Subject:	the soul
Comment:	The soul is not immortal, nor mortal. The first intake of breath brings life, here is where soul is brought to life. As one exhales, the soul is released. This is the death. The soul circles, every breath in and breath out. When the breath ceases, the soul is released.
From:	cosmicstargoat	2003-08-31 12:18:17
Subject:	Ghost in the machine
Comment:	http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/ghost.html Tremendous essay on the effects of trauma to the brain & the ramifications on the concept of a soul. A MUST READ that totally obliterates this unfounded belief in souls and afterlifes.
From:	Clayton Carter	2003-11-07 13:25:04
Subject:	Open your brain
Comment:	Okay, so what are we? Atoms, forming molocules, carrying out the laws of physics to create a machine that can percieve the natural universe and store these perceptions as chemical signitures. There is an internal, inate and if you like computationalism, hard-wired, language we have to interperate these perceptions based on how relative they are to the machine and its functions. Evolutional fact teaches us that we more than likely evolved from simple creatures. Deep in the bowls of the ocean, where the water is heated and mixed with certain atoms life forms not by chance, but by eventuality. As we evolved we developed a language and became a social culture. At first there were no words for 'I love my steak well-done' it was just a primitive 'meat! fire!' But over time we began to ponder. That is what makes humans different than everything else on earth, we are small fragile creatures with practically no self defense mechanisms aside from our brains. To survive we had to become a learning society to one-up the animal competition. So a questioning nature was infused. From this questioning nature humans began to think that something must be seeing the things it sees, and this something is 'I'. 'I' is a generalization of all the atoms doing what they do with in me. So where does the soul come from. Society teaches us EVERYTHING we know, otherwise we are fruit flys: born, maintaining life, creating life, dying. These concepts of love, freedom, right and wrong, are just representations of the human machine generalizing its very basic functions.
From:	Clayton Carter	2003-11-07 13:25:58
Subject:	...cont'd
Comment:	A computer cannot have beliefs, or desires, anymore than we do, exactly because beliefs and desires are not real, they are generalizations. We cannot make computers right now with the sufficient coding to 'feel' the things we do, but it is more than likely we will create an intelligence much like our own through mechanics. All we are are biological machines, the soul is not real, if you have faith that it is, then there is no way to disprove it. I live in a REAL world based on my perceptions of it, and everything outside of this world is NOTHING to me. So maybe there is more out there, but I can describe my entirety through the world I know, I don't need to have a soul to be knowingly knowing, all I need is the language to decribe it.
From:	Ivan	2003-11-12 04:55:29
Subject:	haha
Comment:	you arguers are all so funny. you all only have aprt of the facts or part of teh intelligence or part of something... you have lal these combacks abotu emotion and such... wmotion is simply an alteration of our personality, an alteration of our program, if u will. this is hwat causes us to act differently. theres always a logical response to ocunter nay of oyur ill conceived retorts
From:	John English	2004-08-25 03:26:15
Subject:	Comments about the existence of the soul
Comment:	You discredit your argument here with your own argument. You talk about the scientific beliefs of old generations as being ridiculous. Yet, you base your argument on present day scientific beliefs. Truth is, those same beliefs will eventually become outdated. If we know so much about the brain, and all life is tied to it, we would no longer have mental illness. We don't have all the facts though, and this argument is as speculative as the one that proposes the existence of the soul.
From:	CS	2005-06-08 21:48:18
Subject:	SOUL
Comment:	WICKED SITE