Define conciousness. From what I gather you are talking about being self aware but, what part of you are you reffering too? Why do your thoughts have to be anything supernatural?
You can't go into the mind of another person but, we know what certain thoughts and memoeries are electrical patters in the brain. I even reall something about this woman that had sesures when she smelled burnt toast, the identified the part of hte brain and removed it (I am mostly certain they removed it) to solve her problem.
Thought is just another way to interpret our electronic signals, just like we do not really see. We receive and interpret electrical signals from the eyes and our brain fills in the rest by itself.
Many groups beleive animals have souls, many do not. If nothing else though, they definately have a level of conciousness. Put in the exact same situation 10 times they will not likely do the exact same thing all 10 times so they must be able to think. We are simply aware of things at a bigger scale than they are so it is no surprise that our brain is a few times bigger.
Does that help a bit?
Oh and fyi if it helps, I am not really against the idea of a soul or even 100% against an afterlife (I am however almost certain there is no god-driven anything). I just think that it is FAR to early in our study of the brain and how thought reall works to start giving the answer to the supernatural.
You can't go into the mind of another person but, we know what certain thoughts and memoeries are electrical patters in the brain. I even reall something about this woman that had sesures when she smelled burnt toast, the identified the part of hte brain and removed it (I am mostly certain they removed it) to solve her problem.
Thought is just another way to interpret our electronic signals, just like we do not really see. We receive and interpret electrical signals from the eyes and our brain fills in the rest by itself.
Many groups beleive animals have souls, many do not. If nothing else though, they definately have a level of conciousness. Put in the exact same situation 10 times they will not likely do the exact same thing all 10 times so they must be able to think. We are simply aware of things at a bigger scale than they are so it is no surprise that our brain is a few times bigger.
Does that help a bit?
Oh and fyi if it helps, I am not really against the idea of a soul or even 100% against an afterlife (I am however almost certain there is no god-driven anything). I just think that it is FAR to early in our study of the brain and how thought reall works to start giving the answer to the supernatural.
