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OrgoneConclusion said:
/when does the soul come in?

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The rocks are formed from conscious life that has died

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but in my mind even baron rocky or icy planets communicate to the universe, so there for they are alive

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dkmonk said:
My unsupported beliefs are justified, because I don't present them as facts and present them as what I think happens, and what makes sense to me.

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It boggles my mind how you can claim that you simultaneously believe something happens, and also believe it is not a fact.

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millzy said:
what definition of soul are we working with, just out of curiosity?

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Samurai Drifter said:
The better question is what would allow it? Maybe if there was a glowing ball of light in everyone's head that didn't die, no matter what you did to it, we would have evidence of a soul. As it is, there's just meat in there, which evolved from pond scum.

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Really? Read a little geology just so as not to look like a total _ _ _ _ _.

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OrgoneConclusion said:

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The rocks are formed from conscious life that has died

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Really? Read a little geology just so as not to look like a total _ _ _ _ _.

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After the next Big Bang, a little bit of me's going to be in everything.

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sonamdrukpa said:

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Samurai Drifter said:
The better question is what would allow it? Maybe if there was a glowing ball of light in everyone's head that didn't die, no matter what you did to it, we would have evidence of a soul. As it is, there's just meat in there, which evolved from pond scum.

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Certain definitions of soul can get around the problem of physicality without too much trouble.  Like if the soul is epiphenomenal, something that arises as a sort of second-level explanation of physical activity.  As if the soul is software that runs on the hardware of your brain.  Microsoft Word exists even though you couldn't pinpoint it anywhere on your circuit board.

In that case, I guess you would just say that there are certain gradations of soul, so there's a soul continuum as well as a life one.  No problem then.

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if you were to move around in the universe randomly for all eternity, there is only a ~34.054% chance that you will cross over the point where you started.

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sonamdrukpa said:
Certain definitions of soul can get around the problem of physicality without too much trouble.  Like if the soul is epiphenomenal, something that arises as a sort of second-level explanation of physical activity.  As if the soul is software that runs on the hardware of your brain.  Microsoft Word exists even though you couldn't pinpoint it anywhere on your circuit board.

In that case, I guess you would just say that there are certain gradations of soul, so there's a soul continuum as well as a life one.  No problem then.

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OrgoneConclusion said:
Provided that life is a continum from the inaninate to the animate with no single hyper-jump "Aha!" moment, then where/when does the soul come in?

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Samurai Drifter said:
I don't disagree with that as an explanation of mind

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Samurai Drifter said:
As it is, there's just meat in there, which evolved from pond scum.

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Assuming space is infinite, then consider someone walking in random directions on a 2-dimensional plane. If that person walks for infinite time, then there is a 100% probability that eventually the walker will cross over his starting point.

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millzy said:

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Samurai Drifter said:
I don't disagree with that as an explanation of mind

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Samurai Drifter said:
As it is, there's just meat in there, which evolved from pond scum.

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which position are you taking in this discussion?

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Samurai Drifter said:

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millzy said:

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Samurai Drifter said:
I don't disagree with that as an explanation of mind

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Samurai Drifter said:
As it is, there's just meat in there, which evolved from pond scum.

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which position are you taking in this discussion?

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They're both compatible. What sonamdrukpa described was the notion of mind as a complex program of symbol manipulation carried out on the neural hardware of the brain. I don't disagree with that idea but it's far from what most people mean when they think of "soul" (as it is ever-changing and ultimately destructible).

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OrgoneConclusion said:
I just proved it with a single post.

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Samurai Drifter said:

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sonamdrukpa said:
Certain definitions of soul can get around the problem of physicality without too much trouble.  Like if the soul is epiphenomenal, something that arises as a sort of second-level explanation of physical activity.  As if the soul is software that runs on the hardware of your brain.  Microsoft Word exists even though you couldn't pinpoint it anywhere on your circuit board.

In that case, I guess you would just say that there are certain gradations of soul, so there's a soul continuum as well as a life one.  No problem then.

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I don't disagree with that as an explanation of mind, but I don't think most people who believe in souls would accept that as their definition.

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Mr Person said:

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OrgoneConclusion said:
I just proved it with a single post.

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Well once you've locked us into all these materialist assumptions then of course without an "Aha!" moment there is no soul and we are all just really complexly arranged matter doing what it does.  But you know what they say happens when you assume...

Anyway until someone somewhere can mix some lipids, amino acids, and other chemicals together and create a living cell then there is still room for the possibility of something more intangible that animates life.

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Or something else tangible.

Of all the mysteries uncovered in this universe, none of them have turned out to be magic or gods.

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Mr Person said:

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Or something else tangible.

Of all the mysteries uncovered in this universe, none of them have turned out to be magic or gods.

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Honestly I am recently agnostic on the whole materialism debate.  I agree with millzy that we simply don't (possibly can't) understand a lot of this stuff.  We don't even fully understand why people yawn, or sleep, or how our basic chemical systems work-- much less mental phenomena and consciousness.  I'm down for a completely materialistic universe, but as long as long as the holes in scientific understanding leave room for more nuanced interpretations I think that hardcore materialism is on the same faith based spectrum as fundamentalist religion.

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Mr Person said:
Anyway until someone somewhere can mix some lipids, amino acids, and other chemicals together and create a living cell then there is still room for the possibility of something more intangible that animates life.

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For the sake of ths thread, let us assume the following scenario is true.

Simple elements under heat, pressure, and elecric discharge form amino acids. (This part is true.)

Some compounds called lipids naturally form a bubble shape under ordinary conditions. (Again true)

Some compounds get trapped inside such lipids, forming an inside and an outside. (Still true.)

Some compounds form chemical keys that trigger the formation of similar compounds. (True.)

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Society said:
Of all the mysteries uncovered in this universe, none of them have turned out to be magic or gods.

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WakeUp said:

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Society said:
Of all the mysteries uncovered in this universe, none of them have turned out to be magic or gods.

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And how would you discover magic? And the gods?

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The fact that life happens frequently, automatically and seemingly "easily" does not conflict with my beliefs in the slightest, in fact this confirms them.

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Society said:

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WakeUp said:

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Society said:
Of all the mysteries uncovered in this universe, none of them have turned out to be magic or gods.

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And how would you discover magic? And the gods?

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Exactly. If you believe in it, you should enlighten us how one could logically draw the conclusion that a reasonable explanation for an observable phenomenon is an intangible supernatural cause.

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Samurai Drifter said:

Funny you should say that.

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Mr Person said:

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Samurai Drifter said:

Funny you should say that.

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Creating organic chemicals from inorganic materials is not quite the same as assembling a working cell from organic chemicals. One does not necessarily lead to the other either.

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OrgoneConclusion said:
For the sake of ths thread, let us assume the following scenario is true.

Simple elements under heat, pressure, and elecric discharge form amino acids. (This part is true.)

Some compounds called lipids naturally form a bubble shape under ordinary conditions. (Again true)

Some compounds get trapped inside such lipids, forming an inside and an outside. (Still true.)

Some compounds form chemical keys that trigger the formation of similar compounds. (True.)


So what we have are is something akin to a primitive cell wall, some self-replicating compounds and the building blocks or proteins.

*The next part is speculative*

More complex reactions take place until we have a cell that uses energy to capture more material and energy. When the accumulation is too great another cell buds and then becomes autonomous. Certain compounds become sensitive to heat, light and movement and the first sense organs are born.

And so on until we have complex critters with large snapping jaws and tiny beady eyes. A zillion years later we have humans.

Provided that life is a continum from the inaninate to the animate with no single hyper-jump "Aha!" moment, then where/when does the soul come in?

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Mr Person said:

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Samurai Drifter said:

Funny you should say that.

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Creating organic chemicals from inorganic materials is not quite the same as assembling a working cell from organic chemicals. One does not necessarily lead to the other either.

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This, of course, is the nature of belief. No fact ever contradicts a belief. It gets denied for a while then it is magically absorbed as if it were there all along.

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johnm214 said:

That is not what the Miller Urey experiment showed- they started with organic molecules, and nobody was or is under any doubt that inorganic compounds can react to form organic compounds. 

Rather, the experiment showed that amino acids and other monomers could be produced using simple, realistic natural conditions.  From there, it simply takes energy to start producing peptides and other bio-polymers.

As for this not being the same as assembling a working cell from organic chemicals, so what?  It also doesn't prove calculus valid- who cares?

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B. If life is a continuum from simple molecule to complex molecule to simple life to complex life, then there is no place for a soul or animating force.

Thus far the data appears to support B as the more likely. The only thing to point to A is a gap in our knowledge - negative evidence if you will.

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falcon said:
Haha that's what's wrong with the OP, it asks you to assume that this has been resolved and

Provided that life is a continum from the inaninate to the animate with no single hyper-jump "Aha!" moment,

and it hasn't been resolved.

So given the initial statement in the OP

For the sake of ths thread, let us assume the following scenario is true.

there isn't anything to discuss, the OP is a hypothetical, that doesn't leave any room for discussion.


Of course in the middle of this he throws in,

*The next part is speculative*

Like what the fuck are you supposed to do with that when in the beginning he asks you to assume it's true and at the end, he puts the condition of 'provided'.

The OP is a confusing, mish mash of conditions with misleading qualifiers, easily defended by it's ambiguity that make it unassailable.

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You are ignoring the problem of consciousness and marginalizing the fact subjective experience cannot be explained. Again B is only more likely if you completely ignore sentience/consciousness/subjective experience.

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