(October 15, 2012 at 12:18 pm)Akincana Krishna dasa Wrote: Life is a symptom of the presence of a soul. You can't get life without the soul.

Suggest a means to uniquely pin point the presence of this "soul" in you, so that you might claim to exhibit symptom of having at least one, albeit misfiring, neuron.

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(October 15, 2012 at 1:58 pm)popeyespappy Wrote:

(October 15, 2012 at 12:18 pm)Akincana Krishna dasa Wrote: Life is a symptom of the presence of a soul. You can't get life without the soul.

Oh great! Salmonella in heaven.

May heavenly salmondella have a riot and kill his soul with embrosial poisoning.

If you leave a plate of sausages unattended on a table in a room with a dog, then return to find an empty plate and a guilty-looking dog, clearly it makes more sense to suspect the dog than the race of invisible pixies that may or more likely may not live in your carpet. Similarly, since life - at least as we know it - is based on DNA, a self-replicating molecule, it makes a great deal more sense to look for a chemical origin than a magic one. In other words, per Occam's Razor, it's far more reasonable, and with a greater probability of being right, to go with the evidence at hand, and which can be found, than to reach around for the most unlikely explanations simply because they may feel better.

Let's make it easy and consult someone who actually follows the science on this stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ElUjXxnTOo?rel=0

I admit I haven't read this entire thread, but the idea that life comes from a soul is just silly. According to Catholics only humans have souls, I know you can't just copy/paste one religious dogma into another, but there's a lot of life out there that at least Catholics believe are soul-less. And what about babies that are born missing chunks of their brains? They are alive, yes in the sense they can breathe, their hearts beat, etc., but they don't have the parts necessary for communication, higher thought, etc. Are they soul-less?
I think the idea of a soul, and by extension the idea of a cohesive self, are handy tools that humans have developed in order to process our surroundings. Without the idea of a central self, how would we begin to process everything we see, hear, and feel from the world around us? I don't like the idea that when I die I'm going to wink out, there will be nothing left of my sense of "self." But not liking an idea is a poor excuse to create a delusion of an afterlife and particularly reincarnation.

(October 15, 2012 at 2:14 pm)Chuck Wrote: May heavenly salmondella have a riot and kill his soul with embrosial poisoning.

Meh. I'm more worried about how to transport my Tupperware cake plate up there in order to keep the germs out of my angle food cake. I'm thinking cremation is out for plastic and something like that is awfully bulky for burial.

Maybe something out of biodegradable plastic? Then it will rot down, inasmuch as the stuff does rot down, and make the transition all by itself.

So if I run one off with the 3d printer then bury it in the back yard will it be waiting on me when I get there or will one of you godless heathens filch it before I arrive?

What, free Tupperware? Does the Pope shit in the woods?

(October 15, 2012 at 12:51 pm)Darkstar Wrote: I see. I guess the 'contrversial' part is about if something that is 'not a discrete life form' can speciate, but now that I think about it, it might not be illogical to conclude that it can.

The concept is the full collection of traits and abilities needed to make something a life didn't develop all at once. Instead there had been a protracted process in which selection pressure conceptually similar to those governing biological evolution had steered and governed the development of the individual complex chemical reaction to create features required for life, and then step by step assembled them into a working organism.

During each step, random chemistry evolved in chemically possible direction, But only those which are physically or thermodynamically favored to build one upon another, to replicate, would survive, and contributed to creating yet more complex chemistry, and have the opportunity to leave traces in the functioning of the any organism that eventually arose down the line. Here the different sets of complex chemical reactions may be roughly said to represent an analogue of species. Most have no future, and would leave no trace of themselves in later life. Some form good building blocks for assembly into something even closer to life. These pre-biotic chemical processes left their markers in the fundamental chemistry of life.

It is the ubiquitous presence of these chemistry in life, and their total dominance over all parts at all levels of all functions shown to present or required in life, that convinced us life arose out of complex organic chemistry.

With the difference between Archea and other forms of cells, we may have a glimpse of the nature of the last few steps in complex chemistry process on the road to bonafide life, BEFORE it has quite gotten to the stage of what we would call life.

We may not be able to duplicate the entire chemical process from scum to life, but we may gortunitously been given an snap shots of the chemical process right before the golden moment of the actual creation of the linage of life that led to us.

Isn't it most honest, intellectually and spiritually, to assume no answer until one can be definitively determined? To take a mystery and make assumptions before any attempt is made to determine the facts with our physical tools is counterproductive and foolish.

Here is the one concession I'll ever make to the religious regarding any claims they make: the only time it is ever appropriate to do anything other than imagine supernatural influence in any matter involving the real world is after, and only after, any and all possible, conceivable methods of physical inquiry we can ever invent are thoroughly and rigorously tested and never produce an answer. Only when science is completely defeated, with zero possibility of error or alternative method, is a spiritual explanation permissible. To ever deviate from this, for any reason imaginable, is to take the human race backwards into barbarism of thought and action.

(October 15, 2012 at 4:00 am)Akincana Krishna dasa Wrote: How do you answer this challenge?

The scientists must admit that they still do not know the origin of life. Their claim that they will soon prove a chemical origin of life is something like paying someone with a postdated check. Suppose I give you a postdated check for ten thousand dollars but I actually have no money. What is the value of that check? Scientists are claiming that their science is wonderful, but when a practical example is wanted, they say they will provide it in the future... The scientists cannot produce even a single blade of grass in their laboratories, yet they are claiming that life is produced from chemicals. What is this nonsense? Is no one questioning this? - Life Comes from Life, p. 10

Well if scientists truly cannot do what you say they must, then surely we must all accept whatever comes out of your mouth next as the truth. Wait, you can't give a lick of support for any of the bullshit you believe so I guess you must submit to the truth of whatever I say too. (I'll get back to you.)