Refuting Plantinga's God and Other Minds

[Cheerful Charlie]

Hey Charlie,

Do you think it would be an ok rebuttal then to just turn the table and say that as an atheist I don't believe in a soul (nothing of this sort has ever been proven and a soul would fall into the supernatural category, something else we have no evidence of)? If I don't believe in a soul, then that would free me from the hook the theist will throw about minds being caused by souls.

Thoughts anyone?

Oh definitely. Proving souls exist is a fair question.

In the 1500's Greek skepticism was rediscovered annd printed. Sextus Empiricus, Cicero et al. Catholics turned the techniques of throwing doubt on claims on protestants, who returned fire and lead to a rise in religious skepticism, which became something of a French Catholic crisis. Rene Descartes realized that such skepticism had to be fought on philosophy's grounds. So he proposed to put philosophy on a sound logical basis and move to then put theology on a sound philosophical basis.

Starting with "I think therefore I am".

Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia wrote him that his efforts made no mention of how the material world interacted with the supernatural world, the world of spirit and soul. Descartes had claimed soul had nothing to do with life,our material bodies were in essence, like machines, life was like the moving hands of a clock. A man was truly alive, a cat having no soul was not, it was a mere automaton.

Descartes as an answer went back to Greek thinker Galen and stated the soul acted on the human body at the pineal gland, which satisfied nobody.

Did souls have something to do with intelligence. A cat had a certain amount of intelligence, and animals had emotional lives, so it couldn't be that.. After a century, there was no answer despite a century of some of the best minds of Europe trying to figure it out.

In the end, it was just a mysterium, like the trinity or transubstantiation, something that logic could not explain, a divine mystery.

And this is where things stand today. Nobody can prove there even is a soul.
Much less what it does. Descarte's cat is still a philosophical problem.

Arab theologians speculated about the end of time when all would be resurrected and judged, spending eternity in paradise or hell. Where were our bodies. We had none but Allah would recreate our bodies at the appointed time? What about our souls. Same as our bodies said some. Al Ghazali said not so. If all resurrected our bodies and souls, even though the resulting creature was exactly like us, it would not be us and punishing or rewarding such a creation was pointless. The soul he said was not destroyed but would be rejoined to the new body so the real person could be properly punished or rewarded. That was what the soul was and nothing more.

Ancient Egyptians claimed a man had three souls, or even seven souls. Jewish/Platonist philosopher Plotinus apparently believed we had two souls.

After 4000 years of theology, there is nothing but opinion and not a stitch of evidence of anything like a soul. And not for want of trying. Just problems.

Try asking the theological types what is the best modern theological book with the best proof of the existence of the soul. A book that solved the issues Descartes struggled with. Its all still a mysterium.

It should also be pointed out that this was an important point in history that theology lost its hold on science. God and spirit and soul could explain nothing. Science dealt with secondary causes, that is the laws of the material world.
Now the rankest atheist scientist and the most orthodox Christian scientist did science in the same way. Souls and spirits had no more place in empirical science. Most Christians are still unaware of when, how and why the split between religion and science happened. Princess Elizabeth's questions to Descartes lead to the realization that the soul was not a proposition that could explain anything or be explained. Which is still where we are today.

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