"Science of the soul?" - NY Times

[3588897]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/science/26soul.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I'm not exactly sure what to say about this... Just posting because some of you might want to read this.

[greggkroodsma]

There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the diversity and complexity of life on earth.

Everything that moves and breathes and survives has a soul.  Humans are the only creatures that can respond to the spirit.  It would take a little explanation to tell you how each phase of creatures suddenly appeared, but the quickest way to say is that it was by design.  A design that was completed about a million years ago after about 4 billion years of evolution.

[Sharpe]

Greg can you please add: "I think/I believe", because I did the same thing you did and people get reall ticked if you act like this man.
(but, I did tell facts most of the time so I didn't think "I think" would be neccesarily, *sigh*, even facts are opinions for *SOME* people on this forum )

[greggkroodsma]

Actually, I don't think I have a soul, I know I do.  And as far as me saying I belive we have been around for about a million years is backed up by science that has determined that the earth has been here for 4.6 billion years.  I don't want to become somebody who spouts out learned facts and I'm really sad that y'all don't know these things, if you don't.  I will say 'in my opinion' if the opinion I have differs from the established facts. I do not believe the Roman Catholic Church.  No part of it. 
In this particular article it states:  'Although he (the pope) noted that in the intervening years evolution had become "more than a hypothesis," he added that considering the mind as emerging merely from physical phenomena was "incompatible with the truth about man." '
That is not even thinking!  No thought behind that statement.  The mind inside of anything would not even be a mind at all unless it had the physical contents to become a mind. 
I do not beleive the mind of any other creature besides man has the capacity to form thoughts apart from the instinct and love is instinct, caring for your young is instinct, feeding yourself is instinct, but one thing that is not instinct is forgiveness. 
Maybe what I said wrong is humans are the only creatures that can respond to the spirit.  What was wrong with that statement is love is a spirit, caring is a spirit, group sharing is a spirit, survival is a spirit. and sex is a spirit; maybe I can stick alchohol in there too.
Well, what is the truth about man? 
I could stick 'I think' of 'I believe' in there but sticking to the established truth of the matter, our thoughts are the same process that the sun goes through.  What took the sun and put it in our brains?
Now I will put it in there.  I believe the sun did.  But that wipes out alll the beliefs of any of the churches. 
   

[Sharpe]

I don't get your idea of spirit, it's not exactly black and white the way you explained isn't it?

I get where you're coming from with forgiveness and love.
You should read more books about this, it's very fun in my opinion.

Don't think that I'm trying to tinkle you off or anything, but you just don't know enough about the brain and it's purpose to form a conclusion yet, but you're brain thinks it has, seems logical.

The way I look at it, there are 2 things in building reality in your brain.
1=hardware, 2=software, love is hardware, forgiving is learned behaviour (software), which add's emotions to the (idea of) forgivingness with the help of "anchoring".

Not saying "I" know everything about this, I'm trying to learn everything I can no at this moment, but it's too limited.
I really want to study neurosurgery to know everything there is to know about myself and others, but I have to finish high-school first.

Anyways, I hope you get me.

[greggkroodsma]

It doesn't 'tinkle' me off, this is so much fun!
My idea of 'spirit' is children playing.  They all have that spirit of play. 
In my opinion, you have no control whatsoever in the processes of the brain.  Of course, you have the autonomic nerve system that controls your organs, but you do not control what you see or what you hear which cause other autonomic reactions in your body; you do control the directions you look or the sounds that you pay attention to.  For example, they have come out with the Holosync technology which has to do with carrier waves and frequencies and brain waves.  This stuff is not new to me, but what's new is the process of delivery.  I can choose to pay attention to it or not and I can experiment with it and see what happens which is what I'm doing and what I am directed to do by the intro audio tape.  One thing that does concern me is the point you are saying about me not knowing enough about the brain to form a conclusion.  Well, I can bypass that for now.

The way I look at it, there are 2 things in building reality in your brain.
1=hardware, 2=software, love is hardware, forgiving is learned behaviour (software), which add's emotions to the (idea of) forgivingness with the help of "anchoring".

The 'hardware' of the brain is the actual white-matter which contains the 'software' which is the learned behaviours.  In a human brain, there is the ability to create more 'hardware' by creating different 'pathways' for electrical activity which the Holosync technology tries to do, but you are restricted to the size of the 'pathway' and by the amount of white-matter that is there to use.  The Holosync technology cannot produce more white-matter, the 'hardware.'  And if the 'hardware' is damaged somehow, there is another problem that comes in.
The soul is set apart from the body in that the body is the container of the soul.  That makes the soul the electrical charges in the nervous system, the energy body. 
The science of this energy body is it is ionic.  It is sodium ions exchanging electrons with potassium ions and we know how powerful the bonds in the atom are. 
That is why the soul has power.
You have a long way to go if you want to be a neurosurgeon and that is great if that is where you are going.  Stay in school and learn as much as you can; don't ever stop learning.

[Awakened_Mind]

I couldn't get to ther article, can anyone copy and paste it to me by pm or in the thread?

Whats peoples simple definition of the soul. Not a paragraph on what hwo you think it interacts with things, or whether it's real or not. Just a simple one setence definition. I see mind and soul as different things.

-AM

[Sharpe]

Hey greg, I'm sorry for my statement that you didn't knew much about the human brain.
I take back my words but I would like to add that I don't see the soul as the energy source.
No, this is why we have the heart, it is the thing that keeps the energy going with the consumption of food or oxygen.
About the hardware in your brain, you can't neccesarily change it, this is not possible.
Like the sense of competition to love from others to status to happiness.
Like love and laughter, like fear and sexual desire.
These are hardware.
What is software?
There's a huge dilemma in most theories of this.
For knowing what the software is.
We need to know the behaviours that are "flexible".
We need to look back into history to know this.
Spartan's thought you had the lowest status if you could count, or had any knowledge of the market.
Now we think soldiers are bloodthirsty hillbilly's. (at least this is what my idea of them)
This is a total change of the idea of status.
But some things stayed the same, even with the spartans.
Those are things we should see as hardware, and anything that is flexible should be seen as software.

[Awakened_Mind]

This is my whole point. There seems to be a persisting ambiguity in the area of soul and heart, mind and self etc because we all have our own personal definitions that aren't properly defined in the first place. I know the last place I go when looking for definitions to these things is a dictionary. They simply don't suffice.

-AM

[Sharpe]

Exactly.
The dictionairy just has words.
JUST words.
And words are man made.
Just like numbers.
Everything we think is reality is just an illusion sometimes.

[Awakened_Mind]

Well I think it'd be an illusion all the time or not at all.

We definately contstruct our reality through language. Language is something we have never attempted to consciously evolve. One moment language wasn't around the next moment it was. It's like some metaphysical entity that we share a symbiotic relationship with, we think it's ours, but in reality perhaps it's moving toward it's own agenda.

-AM

[Sharpe]

I would love to know how language was evolved out of nothing.

Just imagine those people, naming everything they see and then giving that info to their children, who increase the vocabulairy, generation after generation untill a language is formed.

[Awakened_Mind]

That's the whole mystery about the evolution of language. Who decides to call a chair as such? Some things are named after their discoverers/inventors but other words seem to pop out of the collective consciouness over time. Perhaps when certain ideas emerge we need to reach a consensus on what to actually call it. The important factor there is that the idea comes before the definition.

-AM