Theist zone

[tackattack]

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1- What leads you to assume that there is a storage mechanism external to the brain?
There have been recorded instances of people recalling events that happened while 0 brain activity was going on or at least that the brain was unresponsive to input (light, sound, pain etc.) While some of them may be deducible with a creative imagination and some of them might have even been coached. The likelihood of all of them having no foundation in experience, IMO, is slim.

There are recorded instances of miraculous cures at Peter Popov roadshows, and the healings of South Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba. I bet if we did scientific studies these wouldn't amount to much. That isn't a great basis for belief nor a scientific one. Compare this with 50-60 years of research into diseases of the brain, medical studies into the effects of brain injury, pictures gathered through MRI which clearly indicate the physical nature of memory, the ID, what parts of the brain are responsible for what etc

2- What leads you to conclude that this is immaterial?
I know of no physical storage medium (with respect to the human organism) that continues to function outside of biological life. Even qualia, a sense of time, intuition all immaterial and purely conceptual cease on ceasing of brain activity (waking up from a coma with the idea it's 1970, etc.)

Indeed neither do I.

3- How would an immaterial anything interact with a material something?
IDK...

Indeed neither do I...but if it did (and it must if this argument is to go through) then is it immaterial in any sense if it can interact with the material.

4- If it does interact it must be doing so billions of times a second across the earth in humankind, so why can't we detect its presence?
maybe we don't yet have the means to measure it, or maybe it's not possible with material instruments to measure the immaterial, ID

Maybe...or maybe the reason is that the immaterial just does not exist. But I wondn't consider the 2 alternatives as having equal merit nor equal chances of being true.

5- Is it present in other animals as well as humankind? To my understanding it is

Interesting...care to speculate what happens after their deaths to their souls

6- The view that this is a soul and is the one consistent with xtianity is confirmation bias (as you concede)
yes.. but I'm open to possession by aliens, mass mind control, parasite infection, super complicated bacteria manipulation or other concepts

Yes we are all broadly open to ideas, I just don't advertise a willingness to believe in extremely unlikely ones.

7- I cannot see the logic that leads you to that conclusion you have conceded its fallacious (bias on your part)
You can't escape bias. Even if we both saw a soul literally coming out of someone's body we would each interpret it different, bias does not mean false, although it can imply impartial which I fully admit to. I still feel it's logical, not based on evidence though based on faith. If evidence supersedes that then I'll probably accept it. However my faith has show proven results to me that place events in my life clearly on the side of the synchronistic rather than probability and I see no reason not to apply it in this case.

True you cannot escape bias. Which is why we use methodological naturalism to assess the likelihood of something being true. Under this approach substance dualism is extremely unlikely.

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1-And I admitted that some of them could be completely fictitious. I'm not a physicalist. I do not require emperical proof that gravity works. I don't need the numbers to back up it's functioning. I have experiential evidence that's not completely conclusive but strongly indicative that gravity works as described. If you disagree with what they've stated, test it. Just like finding out how a magician does that wonderful "trick", some people just enjoy the show, some enjoy figuring out how he does it, some just heckle to heckle. In this case I'm content to watch the show until someone else duplicates the trick and explains it.
2- Agreed.
3- I'm positing that it doesn't affect the physical, but the conceptual. If the physical brain inputs to the conceptual perspective, and the immaterial contributes to teh conceptual perspective, then they wouldn't have to directly interact, but could still influence the maerial through the conceptual. I really don't know though.
4-People believed in gravity before they could measure it. It was based on experience and a perception that it was part of reality. If it doesn't adversly impact my view on reality, I really don't see why shutting out the possiblity leads to growth in that area of knowledge. It could very well just not exist though.
5- After thinking about it for a bit, no I don't think they do. While they can have an intellegence, instinct, memory and reasoning processes , I'm not aware of them naming themselves or having that irreducilbe sense of self I'm referring to as a soul. So I'd never really thought about pets and souls before so I jumped in a little quickly on that one, thanks for the opportunity to recant.
6-It was a show of openness not a dispay of craziness, but you got that.
7-Which has strong ties to physicalism. I agree that if somthing supernatural occurs, it is then considered part of the natural world. But wouldn't it then be unnatural if immeasurable but witnessed in nature? If you preclude the supernatural/ or what's unnatural, then how would you observe it to measure it? If it's immeasuable permanently couldn't you just accept the observance without measurment and rationalize an explination?