At Evolution News and other, Dr. Michael Egnor has been writing extensively on the subject of mind, thought, consciousness and soul: here, here, here , here , here and here.
It seems that all his efforts have been concentrated on the critic of the materialistic views of the origins the mind, thoughts and consciousness. To make the long story short, Dr. Egnor is convinced that with the exception of one type of thoughts, where some thought patterns have been detected in human brain by MRI, EEG etc., other types of thoughts, such as abstract thoughts, can’t be explained in materialistic terms and therefore they are directly or indirectly a solid proof of the existence of an immaterial soul or the Thomistic Dualism dogma propagated Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century…
While there maybe a third explanation for this phenomenon, such as quantum consciousness/mind/thoughts, which I had already covered here , in this OP however, I would like to focus on another aspect of this issue:
Where did the idea of the immortal soul come from in the first place?
As a Christian, Dr. Egnor must rely on the bible to support his beliefs, including the dogma of the immortal soul. But here is where I seem to have found a discrepancy…
When God introduced Adam and Eve to the tree of knowledge of good and evil, He didn’t mention that they possessed an immortal soul that will continue on living if they ate the forbidden fruit and therefore sinned which would lead to death. God simply said that if they disobey, they will die. There is no mention of any afterlife or eternal torment in the fiery hell…
Judge it for yourself:
Gen 2:17
“But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
“…You will surely die…”No hell, no afterlife, no nothing…
Not only that, after Adam and Eve sinned, one would hope that God would tell them all the details about their future regarding their afterlife, hell and all.. And yet, another disappointment. No word on the soul living on or afterlife either..
Gen 3:19
“By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
“…You will return do the ground… because from it you were taken…”
So again, no word about the immortal soul and their destiny in the fiery hell…
Instead, God clearly tells them that they are going to return to where they were before…
What’s going on here?
I have also discussed this issue at UD here.
Sal,
Sounds like your faith was in pretty bad shape.
Know, shmow. I think you mean “believe” there.
Hey Sal!
It’s good to hear back from you! 😉
I have been thinking and reading about this staff for few months now and the only thing that I can come up with is; maybe on subatomic level, time, distance past and future don’t matter or they simply don’t exist…
Just a thought… 😉
Right. What matters are the individual acts of loving behavior. Whether or not the abstraction is said to exist, doesn’t matter.
Ah, yes, something to just “know,” which explains nothing and requires nothing in order to believe.
If that’s enough for you, it’s not enough for those who demand reasons.
Glen Davidson
A few disagree.
Glen Davidson
The reason is one-your favorite: LOVE
Hey Brother! The Lord bless you.
An historical footnote — the great irony of history is that as much as Einstein hated QM, he won the Nobel Prize for his contribution to quantum Mechanics!!! Here is one of his famous equations about E that he shares with Max Planck, the famous Plank-Einstein relation of Quantum Mechanics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%E2%80%93Einstein_relation
of course Einstein’s other famous equation about E 🙂 is:
As much as Einstein was famous for his theories of QM (which he ironically hated but also pioneered), he was more famous for Special and General Relativity. What I found very bizarre was that in Relativity we often drop the measurement of time in terms of seconds but use METERS! That is units of distance.
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/special-relativity/minkowski-spacetime-2016-01-18T22:56:14.718Z/v/measuring-time-in-meters-in-minkowski-spacetime
Below is my General Relativity book, by Bernard Shutz. During the Thanksgiving/Christmas season last year, Phoodoo began a thread on relativity, and when I started going through the ideas again, I could no longer resist and just had to revisit my old books…
And then you were the only one in the last several years who was interested in QM’s connection to ID and that also helped spark a revival in me of old ideas I was almost losing to forgetfulness. It was in the process of shaking the dust off Griffiths book that I finally saw his discussion of the realist, the mentalist (aka Copenhagen), and agnostic interpretations of QM. When I studied QM, all the theological and philosophical implication was sanitized out of by the professor since he was focused on the math. Many of my classmates were more interested in QM’s implications for lasers and semiconductors and chemistry. Half the US economy is based on QM, so the theological implications were thrown by the wayside while I studied.
But then, because of your interest, I revisted some of my old essays and then Griffiths book and then it came alive in a way I had not appreciated previously, especially the last chapter which I never learned in his book because the professor didn’t cover it 7 years ago! But that was the best chapter, on Bell’s theorem that establishes the “mentalist” (aka Copenhagen) interpretation.
So to what you said:
this is what Einstein said:
Although perhaps Einstein was saying this because of relativity, it is moreso true because of QM. And in my experience, if Physicists had to choose which theory takes precedence over all others, it would be QM.
And now it makes sense why a prominent professor at my school said:
Now it’s coming back to me, and now it’s making more sense than ever. There is a God. Praise be!
Hey Sal!!! 🙂
Din’t I tell you that ‘when you learn quantum mechanics you are never going to be the same again’?
Now imagine that QM is just the beginning of the understanding and the great depths of knowledge and truth…
And then imagine a beautiful white unicorn, dappled in the sunlight, taking a drink from a mountain tarn in early morning. A beautiful maiden appears from the forest greenery, calls to the magical animal and, with a quick snort, the majestic beast dives into the quantum depths of knowledge and truth, its twined horn gleaming, before instantaneously arriving at the feet of the girl. The unicorn then kneels gracefully, so the maiden can mount it without trouble, and the twain disappear into the quarks and dark matter, where they meet the timeless lord who loves them both so well.
walto, to J-Mac:
J-Mac showed a concern with bestiality on the objective morality thread, so if you really want to get his attention, you should probably have the unicorn mount the beautiful maiden rather than vice-versa.
Are you trying to expand you horizons beyond philosophy and write fairy-tales? What’s your point, walto?
Just imagining….
I would say individual souls are what matters whether the abstraction “soul” is said to exist, doesn’t matter.
peace
What’s weird to me is why anyone would want their soul to be immortal. It seems to me that one of the most beautiful things about death is that it is the termination of existence. I suppose that makes me somewhat unusual.
If you are taking “soul” as an abstraction for a class of behavioral propensities, then I don’t have a problem with that.
Have to say, it doesn’t appeal to me. All our connections with our loved ones, all our memories…..gone. It’s life that’s beautiful, I think. Comtemplating its end makes me sad and scared. But, it’s the natural course of things. Nothing can be done about it, I guess, except maybe wait for AI to bring us “the singularity.”
ETA: Or, I guess, we can travel the quantum pathways to the sacred land where a couple of happy unicorns will gladly escort us to Candy Mountain (and no one will actually pilfer our kidneys).
For me soul is pretty much a fancy word for self.
peace
I suppose it all depends on what your time is occupied with.
I would hate to see it end. There is still so much more I want to learn and experience.
peace
That’s about how I use the term.
Define self, please.
The conscious entity that is me.
quote:
Self: a person’s essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially considered as the object of introspection or reflexive action.
end quote;
from here
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/self
peace
It seems clear to me that the majority would agree that there is no immortal soul and the soul is actually a person/self.
It would be consistent with other references in the bible where animals are referred to also as souls…
Did you conduct a survey?
No, but it seems obvious by the comments on the OP by both theists and agnostics…
J-Mac,
Ah, I see. I didn’t realize you meant the majority here at this site. That’s probably true.
I meant exactly that… However, I was speaking at large gathering of mixed theists and agnostics…and used the same reasoning as in the OP…
Before my speech, 77% believed in some kind of being (soul) surviving death…
After my speech and reasoning (question and answer) with the public, the great majority agreed with soul = person/being though we didn’t get the exact %…
However, at another gathering among about 75-80% agnostics, quantum soul was a winner, going as far as 90% plus believing in the quantum soul surviving death after my speech explaining it in very simple terms…
J-Mac,
With all due respect, you’re not nearly so persuasive here. Maybe it’s one of those ‘you just had to be there’ things.