Does atheism eliminate the soul?

Soul is a very ambiguous and misunderstood word/concept.

A human a self-reproducing biological machine with self awareness and this self awareness is somehow connected with the ability be aware of and guide it's own thought computation. The extent of this relationship is completely unknown and can only be speculated.

Atheists recognize that we have this, we call it a consciousness like everyone else, and we also understand that it is closely linked to our physical bodies.

Basically the only difference is that most religious people think that the soul is SEPARATE from the body, in that it continues to exist after the body dies. This viewpoint is quite silly, as there is a great deal of proof that consciousness requires physical energy broken down from food to exist.

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stuh,

That response which starts with the idea of a "machine" is straight "naive realism". As explained previously I am not advocating the existence of "souls" as some form of "individual consciousness" but how can we rule out the physical brain as a receiver or transducer of field phenomena ? We tend to forget that the concept of "physicality" is itself a product of consciousness !

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Like Hume pointed out, it is a logical leap to go from the perception of experience to conclusions of causation.

But at some point, at some level, we take the concept of physicality commonsensically as a given--as a necessity as stated in an earlier post.

The difference is that some people (actually, most people) place greater importance phisicality, the approach from common sense; and others place it on consciousness, the approach from logic.

This, however, doesn't affect the argument that stuh is making within the parameters that he's defined, i.e. the soul as consciousness.

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Does atheism eliminate the soul?

I would certainly hope so. Seriously, if you understand that an atheist is unlikely to believe that there were a soul, why would you ask if someone will believe that what they believe will eliminate what they don't believe exists in the first place?

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fresco wrote:

stuh,

That response which starts with the idea of a "machine" is straight "naive realism". As explained previously I am not advocating the existence of "souls" as some form of "individual consciousness" but how can we rule out the physical brain as a receiver or transducer of field phenomena ? We tend to forget that the concept of "physicality" is itself a product of consciousness !

I agree we cannot rule out the possibility that the brain acts as a receiver or transducer of some yet-unknown field -- I think this is a very real possibility. But that's not a soul, and it doesn't contradict my previous statement Smile

What we can rule out is the possibility that our consciousness continues to function without a physical brain, which is the very premise of a soul -- so even if the basic field which its energy comes from continues to be conserved/exist in some form, that's not a soul, and its not a unique identity associated with an individual.

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Belief in an immortal soul can be independent of belief in gods, but I suspect that most people who logically reject the idea of magical beings would also logically reject the idea that any kind of consciousness could exist without some kind of physical mechanism for data acquisition, processing and storage.

The brain seems to operate like a computer that generates its own signals rater than like a TV that requires an external signal. Specific kinds of brain damage impair consciousness in specific ways, and they couldn't all be attributed to interference with reception. That in itself argues against an external source.

What makes us unique individuals is the genetic variations in brain structure and biochemistry that we were born with, combined with the neural connections made in response to sensory input that our brains use to construct our personal experience of reality.

After the brain rots, how could our memories be stored and accessed? How could we intercept the photons or detect the molecules of matter that provide information about what is going on around us without eyes, ears, and fingers? How could we communicate with anther non-embodied spirit if there is no physical way for signals to be generated or received?

If there is some kind of field phenomena as fresco postulates, where did the original consciousness come from that generates and transmits it, and did that consciousness design us so that we could receive its transmissions?

IMO, the belief in conscious force fields or immortal souls should be termed naïve mysticism.

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Terry wrote:

If there is some kind of field phenomena as fresco postulates, where did the original consciousness come from that generates and transmits it, and did that consciousness design us so that we could receive its transmissions?

I believe you are misunderstanding. It would not be generated from consciousness. I believe he is suggesting that consciousness is another form of energy which would conform to conservation of energy. It is like saying that a light bulb uses electromagnetic energy...but it doesn't have a soul, and there is nothing about electromagnetic energy that is tied to an individual light bulb -- they dont have souls.

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IMO, the belief in conscious force fields or immortal souls should be termed naïve mysticism.

IMO, it is very naive to say that...considering that we know for a fact that consciousness is not described by the existing set of laws of physics. Our current laws describe only the presence and form of energy...we have no laws that can be used to explain awareness or free-thought, both of which are things that cannot be built up from the fundamental laws that only describe energy distribution and form.

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Stuh, if fresco's field is not conscious, how does it produce consciousness when it interacts with the brain?

And if it is not conscious, how is it different from any other field (electromagnetic or otherwise) caused by physical phenomena?

What makes you think that consciousness cannot be explained by the existing laws of chemistry and physics, given that every function of the brain that we have measured so far conforms to those laws?

Do you believe that anything that science has not yet explained must therefore have a supernatural cause?

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Stuh and Terry,

My point is simply that whatever "consciousness" is, it cannot be assumed that it is a function of brain alone. This does not imply "the supernatural". As stuh correctly says, this gives no support for the notion of "individual souls" but it does leave the door open for non-reductionist views of "life" including "nested systems" models. We might speculate from a macro level for example that "individuality" is no more significant in humans than it is in insect colonies or blood cells bound together by holistic functionality. The significance of "soul" is at the individual level, and if we deconstruct the "individual" then "its soul" dissipates.

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Fresco, you can speculate all you like, but do you have any evidence whatsoever of the necessity for or existence of "nested systems" or any higher order of consciousness?

If not, why shouldn't we assume that consciousness is a function of brain alone?

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The Hinduism has more details about soul. The Almighty is called
Parama Atma (Infinite Soul). The Advaitha theory states that
a soul (Atma) is finite piece of Parama Atma.

Acceptance of soul amounts to accepting the existence of Parama Atma.
Atheists, at some point of argument, will sense that implication and try
to go against it.

"Our two minds .... One is an act of the emotional
mind, the other of the rational mind. In a very real
sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that
feels" (Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence,
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 1996, page 8). This
rational mind is also called the faculty of logic and
reason. Spirituality is connected with emotional mind
and atheism is connected with logic and reasoning.

The Upanishads say that these two are opposite in
nature. Modern psychologist also have observed it,
but they are not very sure about it:

"At the same time, reason sometimes clearly seems
to come into conflict with some desires (even
while not being in conflict with others) giving us
the impression that reason is separate from
emotion".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason

The atheists try to use endless number of arguments of logic and
reasoning. They can do so because 'logic' has that drawback:

In the 1930s, Austrian mathematician Godel proved a
theorem which became the "Godel theorem" in cognition
theory. It states that any formalized 'logical' system
in principle cannot be complete in itself. It means
that a statement can always be found that can be
neither disproved nor proved using the means of that
particular system. To discuss about such a statement,
one must go beyond that very logic system; otherwise
nothing but a vicious circle will result. Psychologist
say that any experience is contingent - it's opposite
is logically possible and hence should not be treated
as contradictory.

http://www.miskatonic.org/godel.html

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Terry,

The word "evidence" is predicated on a dualisn which traditionally separates observer from observed. The "systems approach" as exemplified by the Santiago theoty of cognition views "consciousness" as an epiphenomenon of "cognition" which itself is synonymous with "the general life process". Within this paradigm the human brain may be significant mainly in terms of "linguistic abstractions" which seem to have a "self" as one such abstraction. Other structures such as the auto-immune system appoear to display equally subtle "intelligence" to standard "consciousness". Second order cybernetics (the observation of observation) constitutes part of the formal paradigm of nested systems and therefore avoids the pitfalls of single level dualism such as those implied by Godels incompleteness theorem mentioned above.

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Quote:

What makes you think that consciousness cannot be explained by the existing laws of chemistry and physics, given that every function of the brain that we have measured so far conforms to those laws?

That is incorrect. There are two fundamental observations of the brain that are not explained by physics, and one of them appears to contradict existing physical laws.

As previously noted, laws of physics / chemistry / biology can only describe the state of energy, including form, position, movement, etc. These laws, coupled with an understanding our perspective and scale, allow us to make physical predictions.

For example, if we want to explain why something feels hot, we can say that the molecules have high kinetic energy, meaning that they are bouncing around fast, and we have certain biological neurons which are designed to detect this change in kinetic energy (through some mechanical means) and then an action potential can be sent along a voltage gated channel etc. Each step of this process can be understood at the quark level, and simply seeing a snapshot of the positions and states of all particles in the system gives complete knowledge.

That was heat. Light, sound, feeling/texture, explosions, chemical reactions, state changes, etc...all these things can be described simply in terms of the position and state of energetic particles involved.

There are VERY few things which science cannot explain in terms of an energy configuration. One of them is the origin of the universe; the singularity, or whatever other theory you want to call into play. The creation of a universe from nothing cannot be explained in terms of energy.

The second is awareness. By manipulating energy, it is fundamentally possible to create an arbitrarily complex machine capable of doing practically anything -- where "doing" is defined by manipulating the energy state around it. But being aware of oneself cannot, at present, be defined by any set of particles.

Thirdly, there is our apparent ability to make choices. This is strongly connected to our ability to be aware, because our awareness is used to drive our choices. But it is also fundamentally different, because one could imagine a machine that was aware of itself but incapable of using that awareness to control itself; like an observer of itself in a movie. We don't have proof that we are capable of making choices. It may be an illusion. It may be that our actions are deterministic, in which case, we do not actually make a choice. But if that is the case, then it is a very good illusion. At present, most people would agree that given a system containing a human, the actions of that human cannot be determined by the configuration of matter and energy in the human's brain -- but rather that the human is capable of somehow pulling a decision out of some ethereal plane, from some consciousness "outside" of the system, and using that to control its body. I am not saying that I subscribe to this belief. If free will is true, then this violates modern physics.

I do not pretend to have the answers to these questions. If I could answer them, I would consider myself the luckiest man alive. But I DO recognize that they are not explained by modern physics, and this does have 1 simple undeniable factual conclusion: there are more laws.

Terry wrote:

Stuh, if fresco's field is not conscious, how does it produce consciousness when it interacts with the brain?

I don't say that it does. But as I have explained above, there appears to be a whole area of science left unexplained, and past experience has shown that this type of phenomena may be associated with fields. For example, light, electricity, magnetism, cohesion of matter, were explained by fields. Therefore, I do not reject the possibility that a field is involved in this yet unexplained phenomena..and given that it has no observational relationship to any existing fields, it would likely be an as yet unknown field.

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Do you believe that anything that science has not yet explained must therefore have a supernatural cause?

Yes, but it is not a belief, it is simply the definition of the word "supernatural."