(September 16, 2016 at 9:08 pm)bennyboy Wrote:(September 16, 2016 at 8:12 pm)Jehanne Wrote: Dan Barker makes the excellent point that a soul, spirit, etc., is always defined in terms of what it is not ("non-material", "immaterial", etc.) as opposed to what it "is". Consciousness and free will (if the latter even truly exists) are mysterious, but saying that there are non-material things responsible for such is kind of a "soul of the gaps".
Hang on, there. Define "material" if you're so sure that reality is definable from any perspective. What is "stuff"? What is "energy"? What is gravity, or anything else? What do we really know?
Given that I know all I know only through my capacity for subjective experience, you're going to have to come up with some pretty sound logic if you're going to demonstrate that ANYTHING at all is more than that, without accepting philosophical assumptions that beg the question.
I'll say right now, and unambiguously-- it cannot be done. You cannot demonstrate even that the keyboard you're typing on is anything more than a collection of ideas.
For starters, you can weigh it (material things), something that I do nearly everyday!
