What the hell is a 'soul' anyway?

[Ronkonkoma]

The term soul was first introduced by the Greek philosophers. Its the immaterial part of you, a part of the immaterial world.

The Greek philosophers realized that Mathematics is also a part of the immaterial world.

The soul, like math, has no weight or mass, you can't see it and it doesn't alter light.

Like math, you can study its effects because the soul gives human life its fundamental essence and value.

This concept became more refined after Christian teaching met the philosophies of Plato, Aristoteles, and Socrates.

The human soul houses the core of human desire, and as such is an important basis of our understanding of personhood.

The Greeks also believed that the earth was the center of the universe. tits Evidence or GTFO.

This has implications on human dignity, human rights, responsibilities, and freedom. If you ignore these things, you see important implications, the culmination of which are the Gulags of the Soviet Union for instance, or the Holocaust, or the carpet bombing of Dresden and perhaps the destruction of Hiroshima.  

I see your point, but it still doesn't prove that the soul is an independent entity. To me, human lives have an intrinsic value too, but that's because I enjoy my life and I have good reasons to assume that other people want to enjoy their lives as well. No souls required.

All these things (dignity, rights, responsibilities, freedom), like the soul, are immaterial.

Value, like the soul, is also immaterial.

Value can generate bills of money from seemingly "nothing". In material terms, a stack of bills is nothing but paper. But money can be put to use to alter material things, such as the great cathedrals and churches of Europe, which are direct expressions on the effect of the soul on matter.

I think this is because we are organisms that have evolved to understand the world around them. The world is really, really complicated and therefore, abstract thought is a great tool to recognize the patterns that occur naturally in our experience of the world. We have an experience and we associate it to the previous experiences we've had, and we "create" the idea by keeping together the things all these experiences had in common.

Similarly, persons in material terms are seemingly nothing but DNA, or ribonucleic acids, but they can generate ideas, hopes and dreams, and put values into reality. Say for example, I value my kids, I can alter reality by reading to them at night. I made that value a reality in the irreversible past. DNA can't do that. On the other hand, our material brain is the most complex thing we know of in the entire universe. In material terms there is no way that we have any idea what a thought, or a value, or a soul is.

Good night, kids.

And this is where I get mad. Because you are completely misunderstanding and underestimating the whole of molecular biology.

1. DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid, not "ribonucleic acids".

2. People are NOT "just DNA". DNA holds the "plans" that guide the development of the structures that make out our body and the synthesis of the proteins that are needed for our organism's life. Those structures, on the other hand, are way more complex than DNA is and have different functions. Our material brain is a product of the unfolding of the reactions that many particular sequences of DNA can help catalysing by codifying for enzymes. Enzymes are, in turn, those things that actually go and catalyse the reactions that are needed to happen for our organism's development and survival.

I could go about for days here talking about gene regulation and the like, but I've got other stuff to do so if you want to go deeper in this subject, this is probably the best starting point:

http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-...0321905377

Yeah, it's not cheap, but you can definitely Google around and find some cheap second-hand copies of it somewhere.

No reason to get mad. I might be just a dumb-ass country doc, who doesn't know his elbow from a pimple on his ass, but for the sake of arguing about the soul it matters little if I say ribonucleic acid or deoxyribonucleic acid.

My point is, there are implications on our understanding of the soul. Implications, that determine a civil and just society, just as the ancient Greek philosophers are the rogenitors of our modern democracy and western set of values.

Sure we can respect human life as long as it is convenient for us to do that, and as long as that seems like the nice thing to do... But as soon as becomes inconvenient?
What stops us from interpreting life to begin as soon as baby is born, versus at the moment of conception?
Does the mere presence of blastocysts and DNA constitute personhood?
Are human zygotes persons???
At what point do they become persons, and who is the one to define that???
Are drug companies that produce the morning after pill competent to re-define the start of human life, so that technically their pills do not cause abortion?

We enter a lot of muddy and dangerous ground when we ignore the soul, the basis of human identity and dignity.

---

The Greeks also believed that the earth was the center of the universe. tits Evidence or GTFO.


I see your point, but it still doesn't prove that the soul is an independent entity. To me, human lives have an intrinsic value too, but that's because I enjoy my life and I have good reasons to assume that other people want to enjoy their lives as well. No souls required.


I think this is because we are organisms that have evolved to understand the world around them. The world is really, really complicated and therefore, abstract thought is a great tool to recognize the patterns that occur naturally in our experience of the world. We have an experience and we associate it to the previous experiences we've had, and we "create" the idea by keeping together the things all these experiences had in common.


And this is where I get mad. Because you are completely misunderstanding and underestimating the whole of molecular biology.

1. DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid, not "ribonucleic acids".

2. People are NOT "just DNA". DNA holds the "plans" that guide the development of the structures that make out our body and the synthesis of the proteins that are needed for our organism's life. Those structures, on the other hand, are way more complex than DNA is and have different functions. Our material brain is a product of the unfolding of the reactions that many particular sequences of DNA can help catalysing by codifying for enzymes. Enzymes are, in turn, those things that actually go and catalyse the reactions that are needed to happen for our organism's development and survival.

I could go about for days here talking about gene regulation and the like, but I've got other stuff to do so if you want to go deeper in this subject, this is probably the best starting point:

http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-...0321905377

Yeah, it's not cheap, but you can definitely Google around and find some cheap second-hand copies of it somewhere.

No reason to get mad. I might be just a dumb-ass country doc, who doesn't know his elbow from a pimple on his ass, but for the sake of arguing about the soul it matters little if I say ribonucleic acid or deoxyribonucleic acid.

My point is, there are implications on our understanding of the soul. Implications, that determine a civil and just society.
Thoe ignorant and stupid Greek philosophers are actually the progenitors of our modern democracy and western set of values, architecture and mathematics.

Sure we can respect human life without speaking of the soul... as long as it is convenient for us to do that, and as long as that seems like the nice thing to do... BUT! as soon as becomes inconvenient?
Take this example. It is inconvenient for the makers of the morning after pill to call the drug an abortion inducing drug.
So they come up with a great idea! What stops us from interpreting life to begin as soon as human life is conceived????
Lets just redefine it to begin as soon as it is implanted in the uterus, that way the general public will have no problem selling these drugs over the counter.

Besides, look at a small zygote of 16 cells. I's just cells and DNA!
Does the mere presence of o few cells and a unique set of DNA constitute personhood?
Are human zygotes persons???
At what point do they become persons, and who is the one to define that???
Are drug companies that produce the morning after pill competent to re-define the start of human life, just to make a profit?

See, we enter a lot of muddy and dangerous ground when we ignore the soul, the basis of human identity and  human dignity.

---

The Greeks also believed that the earth was the center of the universe. tits Evidence or GTFO.


I see your point, but it still doesn't prove that the soul is an independent entity. To me, human lives have an intrinsic value too, but that's because I enjoy my life and I have good reasons to assume that other people want to enjoy their lives as well. No souls required.


I think this is because we are organisms that have evolved to understand the world around them. The world is really, really complicated and therefore, abstract thought is a great tool to recognize the patterns that occur naturally in our experience of the world. We have an experience and we associate it to the previous experiences we've had, and we "create" the idea by keeping together the things all these experiences had in common.


And this is where I get mad. Because you are completely misunderstanding and underestimating the whole of molecular biology.

1. DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid, not "ribonucleic acids".

2. People are NOT "just DNA". DNA holds the "plans" that guide the development of the structures that make out our body and the synthesis of the proteins that are needed for our organism's life. Those structures, on the other hand, are way more complex than DNA is and have different functions. Our material brain is a product of the unfolding of the reactions that many particular sequences of DNA can help catalysing by codifying for enzymes. Enzymes are, in turn, those things that actually go and catalyse the reactions that are needed to happen for our organism's development and survival.

I could go about for days here talking about gene regulation and the like, but I've got other stuff to do so if you want to go deeper in this subject, this is probably the best starting point:

http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-...0321905377

Yeah, it's not cheap, but you can definitely Google around and find some cheap second-hand copies of it somewhere.

No reason to get mad. I might be just a dumb-ass country doc, who doesn't know his elbow from a pimple on his ass, but for the sake of arguing about the soul it matters little if I say ribonucleic acid or deoxyribonucleic acid.

My point is, there are implications on our understanding of the soul. Implications, that determine a civil and just society, just as the ancient Greek philosophers are the rogenitors of our modern democracy and western set of values.

Sure we can respect human life as long as it is convenient for us to do that, and as long as that seems like the nice thing to do... But as soon as becomes inconvenient?
What stops us from interpreting life to begin as soon as baby is born, versus at the moment of conception?
Does the mere presence of blastocysts and DNA constitute personhood?
Are human zygotes persons???
At what point do they become persons, and who is the one to define that???
Are drug companies that produce the morning after pill competent to re-define the start of human life, so that technically their pills do not cause abortion?

We enter a lot of muddy and dangerous ground when we ignore the soul, the basis of human identity and dignity.

---

No reason to get mad. I might be just a dumb-ass country doc, who doesn't know his elbow from a pimple on his ass, but for the sake of arguing about the soul it matters little if I say ribonucleic acid or deoxyribonucleic acid.

My point is, there are implications on our understanding of the soul. Implications, that determine a civil and just society.
Thoe ignorant and stupid Greek philosophers are actually the progenitors of our modern democracy and western set of values, architecture and mathematics.

Sure we can respect human life without speaking of the soul... as long as it is convenient for us to do that, and as long as that seems like the nice thing to do... BUT! as soon as becomes inconvenient?
Take this example. It is inconvenient for the makers of the morning after pill to call the drug an abortion inducing drug.
So they come up with a great idea! Who says human life to begins as soon as human life is conceived????
Lets just redefine it to begin as soon as it is implanted in the uterus, that way the general public will have no problem selling these drugs over the counter.
Why not??? Great idea!
Besides, look at a small zygote of 16 cells. I's just cells and DNA!
Does the mere presence of a few cells and a unique set of DNA constitute a person?
Are human zygotes persons???
At what point do they become persons, and who is the one to define that???
It turns out drug companies with a vested interest in the matter for their personal gain can re-define it at their own whim.

See, we enter a lot of muddy and dangerous ground when we ignore the soul, the basis of human identity and  human dignity.