A "meta-argument" against all future arguments for God's existence ?

[The Grand Nudger]

For me, the soul would be the “software” of the brain. We can compare it with a PC although the way a brain works and a PC works isn’t an exact match. The brain has more of a similarity to a ASIC (a specialized chip. For example a MPEG hardware decoder.).

Once your ASIC is damaged, then the software that it represents is gone.

So, I’m fine with the notion that our soul/spirit is non-material.
Then there is the question of god. Why are people claiming that it is non-material when it clearly decides to make things out of atoms?
At least claim it that it is made of some other type of particles and maybe it is from another world or universe.

Claiming that the god is non-material is equivalent to saying that it is a nothing or just an idea and one has not been built yet.

 A poor idea of the soul.  The soul is not immaterial, but it's contents are important beyond the dissolution of it's vessel.

[GrandizerII]

Claiming that the god is non-material is equivalent to saying that it is a nothing or just an idea and one has not been built yet.

Per your materialist worldview which is not shared by theists. If you want to make some argument against theism or whatever position you disagree with, you can't just keep begging the question. Explain why it is the case that non-material => non-existent, don't just state it as if it's very evident it is so.

[The Grand Nudger]

What I find interesting in this, is that it was once the theists view that the soul was very much a material part of a material body. Literally, your breath. That's why there's the talk of animating breath in old magic book, and bodily resurrection in new magic book.

[Angrboda]

What I find interesting in this, is that it was once the theists view that the soul was very much a material part of a material body.  Literally, your breath.  That's why there's the talk of animating breath in old magic book, and bodily resurrection in new magic book.

It's still that way in many places. Witness rituals of protection in Asia in which trucks and guns are blessed by splattering them with the blood of an animal.

The bible even says that blood is life.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah, there's a consensus that crosses boundaries of geography and time that sustenance, breathing, and blood...are somehow the thing(s) that hold animating power. A modern reader sees that they're trying to describe our metabolism. They had some quaint ideas about it, but that's what they were doing.

It was only in the failure of these very material explanations in point of fact that god botherers invented an alternate world where their folk beliefs were still true. Obviously... not everyone got the memo.

[Jehanne]

Claiming that the god is non-material is equivalent to saying that it is a nothing or just an idea and one has not been built yet.

Per your materialist worldview which is not shared by theists. If you want to make some argument against theism or whatever position you disagree with, you can't just keep begging the question. Explain why it is the case that non-material => non-existent, don't just state it as if it's very evident it is so.

One principle would Occam's Razor; the immaterial soul may exist, as may the immaterial God; neither are necessary to explain anything.

[Ferrocyanide]

For me, the soul would be the “software” of the brain. We can compare it with a PC although the way a brain works and a PC works isn’t an exact match. The brain has more of a similarity to a ASIC (a specialized chip. For example a MPEG hardware decoder.).

Once your ASIC is damaged, then the software that it represents is gone.

So, I’m fine with the notion that our soul/spirit is non-material.
Then there is the question of god. Why are people claiming that it is non-material when it clearly decides to make things out of atoms?
At least claim it that it is made of some other type of particles and maybe it is from another world or universe.

Claiming that the god is non-material is equivalent to saying that it is a nothing or just an idea and one has not been built yet.

 A poor idea of the soul.  The soul is not immaterial, but it's contents are important beyond the dissolution of it's vessel.

What do you consider the soul to be?

And if you don’t like the word “soul”, just replace it with the word consciousness. Where does consciousness come from?

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Claiming that the god is non-material is equivalent to saying that it is a nothing or just an idea and one has not been built yet.

Per your materialist worldview which is not shared by theists. If you want to make some argument against theism or whatever position you disagree with, you can't just keep begging the question. Explain why it is the case that non-material => non-existent, don't just state it as if it's very evident it is so.

I already gave the arguments.
I’ll simplify it for you:
We live in this reality. This reality has some stuff called space and has various other stuff called subatomic particles, you also have photons.
The way these things interact together is via 4 fundamental forces.
I consider all these things as material things and they exist.

You are asking why non-material things do not exist?
I don’t know. Ask the universe why number 5 does not exist and why a certain proton does exist.

Or, maybe this is a matter of definition. Some people include all non-material things in the set_of_things_that_exist and some people do not.

---

Yeah, there's a consensus that crosses boundaries of geography and time that sustenance, breathing, and blood...are somehow the thing(s) that hold animating power.  A modern reader sees that they're trying to describe our metabolism.  They had some quaint ideas about it, but that's what they were doing.

It was only in the failure of these very material explanations in point of fact that god botherers invented an alternate world where their folk beliefs were still true.  Obviously... not everyone got the memo.

Well, we can’t blame ancient people for trying to explain how reality worked.
They observed that a breathing person is alive and when he dies, he stops breathing. So, they conclude that breathing gives life.

They observed that if you cut someone or some animal, eventually it bleeds a lot and dies. So, they conclude that blood has some life giving “power”.

In the Bible, we can see other traces of materialism as well. Look at all the parts about element 16. Hell is filled with pools of element 16. The jewish god’s breath smells like element 16 (I think this is for cleansing people). The jewish god pours element 16 on Sodom and Gomorah.

So, element 16 was used as a cleanser of some kind long ago. I have heard that Greeks would burn it to keep away pests.
Modern humans use element 17 (chlorine) as a disinfectant and products that release chlorine such as sodium hypochlorite, calcium hypochlorite, Trichloroisocyanuric Acid.
Sometimes, we use iodine or bromine.
There are plenty of other compounds for dealing with pests.

Of course, the Bible doesn’t mention any of these materials. The Bible is just a product of its time.

[Belacqua]

What do you consider the soul to be?

The standard meaning of "soul" in Western philosophy was defined by Aristotle and adopted later by the Christian church. For them, it has a specific meaning. Obviously you're free to define it however you like, but then you'd be talking about something different.

For Aristotle and for Christians, the soul is the form of the body. "Form" here doesn't mean just "shape," because a newly-dead body has the same shape but no soul. As always in Aristotelian hylomorphism, "form" refers to the shape of the parts, their function and interaction. How they work, what they do. 

Souls always give form to matter. The matter of the body is carbon, calcium, hydrogen, etc. The way this matter is put together, to make it into the unique thing that it is, is the form -- the soul. 

Therefore souls are not material, but always exist with matter. Matter always has a form, form can't exist without matter. 

This is why Paul doesn't say that after death the soul will fly away immaterially. He says that the same soul will go to new matter. This is the part of Christianity that demands supernatural belief. We can all agree that bodies have forms, but not that the same form can somehow go to new matter. Aristotle didn't think this was possible, either. 

And if you don’t like the word “soul”, just replace it with the word consciousness. Where does consciousness come from?

Again, if you choose to say that "soul" and "consciousness" are synonymous, no one will stop you.

Traditionally, however, consciousness is one of the activities of the body made possible by the fact that the body is put together in a certain way -- the form, the soul. Soul is responsible for more than consciousness, however. It's also responsible for all the unconscious processes, and everything that makes a person a person.

[emjay]

What do you consider the soul to be?

The standard meaning of "soul" in Western philosophy was defined by Aristotle and adopted later by the Christian church. For them, it has a specific meaning. Obviously you're free to define it however you like, but then you'd be talking about something different.

For Aristotle and for Christians, the soul is the form of the body. "Form" here doesn't mean just "shape," because a newly-dead body has the same shape but no soul. As always in Aristotelian hylomorphism, "form" refers to the shape of the parts, their function and interaction. How they work, what they do. 

Souls always give form to matter. The matter of the body is carbon, calcium, hydrogen, etc. The way this matter is put together, to make it into the unique thing that it is, is the form -- the soul. 

Therefore souls are not material, but always exist with matter. Matter always has a form, form can't exist without matter. 

This is why Paul doesn't say that after death the soul will fly away immaterially. He says that the same soul will go to new matter. This is the part of Christianity that demands supernatural belief. We can all agree that bodies have forms, but not that the same form can somehow go to new matter. Aristotle didn't think this was possible, either. 

And if you don’t like the word “soul”, just replace it with the word consciousness. Where does consciousness come from?

Again, if you choose to say that "soul" and "consciousness" are synonymous, no one will stop you.

Traditionally, however, consciousness is one of the activities of the body made possible by the fact that the body is put together in a certain way -- the form, the soul. Soul is responsible for more than consciousness, however. It's also responsible for all the unconscious processes, and everything that makes a person a person.

This is very interesting. I've largely forgotten what Aristotle had to say about it but was it 'the form of living matter'? Ie under that conception there can never be matter without form, so soul is the special case that is the form of living matter? As opposed to an unnamed case of 'form' for any inanimate matter, including dead matter? If so I did wonder at the time while reading that how you'd get from that to a migrating soul, so interesting to see you explicitly state that Aristotle think didn't that was possible and Paul did.

My dad as a Christian doesn't think the soul is consciousness per se either, though it's hard to pin down exactly what he does think, though I don't think it's the Aristotlian conception, or at least not attributed to him if it is that or something like that. He also distinguishes a spirit as something different from a soul, and equally essential to life, but to me they're both just different ways of adding nothing to the equation, seemingly largely borne out of the view of living matter being fundamentally different from non-living matter - when to me there's no fundamental difference, just ultimately chemistry and physics at play in either case - but where that sort of 'life force' idea is most clearly exemplified by Aristotle's concept of a soul. I guess all those ideas stemmed from that concept, but I didn't know/infer that until I started reading Aristotle.

Don't get me wrong, I think there is a nice simplicity about Aristotle's view of a soul, a useful special-case designation of the same matter/form distinction he makes for everything else... it just fits nicely within that existing system of thought without really changing anything... and to the extent that I'm willing to entertain Aristotle's perspective on the world, ie for the sake of argument, then I'm willing to accept that rather mundane concept of a soul, but that's still a far cry I think from the migrating soul that you say Paul envisaged.

[Belacqua]

This is very interesting. I've largely forgotten what Aristotle had to say about it but was it 'the form of living matter'? Ie under that conception there can never be matter without form, so soul is the special case that is the form of living matter? As opposed to an unnamed case of 'form' for any inanimate matter, including dead matter? If so I did wonder at the time while reading that how you'd get from that to a migrating soul, so interesting to see you explicitly state that Aristotle think didn't that was possible and Paul did.

No doubt I'm overstating the case if I say that this is THE Christian view of the soul. Naturally there are a lot of Christians and they don't agree on everything. Still, this is the classical theological view, and I think it makes sense to focus on this one if people are trying to define the word. I don't know why people just want to define it any way they want without at least checking what it has traditionally meant. 

As I understand hylomorphism (which is not that well), it applies to everything. The typical example is a bronze statue, where the material is bronze and the form is Zeus or whoever. Form only deserves the word "soul" when it's applied to a living body. There are plant-souls, animal-souls, and human-souls. But not rock souls. Rocks have form and matter but aren't alive, so we don't call their form a soul. 

The form gets applied to a living thing just in the way you'd expect -- we get born, we grow up, etc. Aristotle didn't know about DNA but it makes sense to say that form is transmitted largely by DNA. Since it's not something that can separated from its matter, Aristotle didn't think you could just lift off the form and give it to new matter -- any more than you could take your bronze statue of Zeus and magically transform its form into wood. How, for Christians, the soul gets translated into a spirit-body is one of those things that natural theology can't explain -- it's faith. 

My dad as a Christian doesn't think the soul is consciousness per se either, though it's hard to pin down exactly what he does think, though I don't think it's the Aristotlian conception, or at least not attributed to him if it is that or something like that. He also distinguishes a spirit as something different from a soul, and equally essential to life, but to me they're both just different ways of adding nothing to the equation, seemingly largely borne out of the view of living matter being fundamentally different from non-living matter - when to me there's no fundamental difference, just ultimately chemistry and physics at play in either case - but where that sort of 'life force' idea is most clearly exemplified by Aristotle's concept of a soul. I guess all those ideas stemmed from that concept, but I didn't know/infer that until I started reading Aristotle.

None of the Christians I know worry about theology at all. It's about behavior and group identity, being moral, etc. So I feel a little rude trying to pin them down on a definition of the soul. I suspect your dad is in the majority here, and I can respect that. 

He's correct, I think, to distinguish spirit, soul, consciousness, and other things, as different. We fuzzy up our thinking if we start to say they're just all the same thing. Why use two different words if soul and consciousness are the same thing?

Don't get me wrong, I think there is a nice simplicity about Aristotle's view of a soul, a useful special-case designation of the same matter/form distinction he makes for everything else... it just fits nicely within that existing system of thought without really changing anything... and to the extent that I'm willing to entertain Aristotle's perspective on the world, ie for the sake of argument, then I'm willing to accept that rather mundane concept of a soul, but that's still a far cry I think from the migrating soul that you say Paul envisaged.

I see Aristotle's definition as a non-supernatural idea that we should be able to agree on. Even if it's not that useful to how we think anymore, it's not a way-out kind of concept. Even mundane, as you say.

You're right, though, that to get from Aristotle to a full Christian view, where the soul is translatable and immortal, requires a bunch of additional belief. But what's at issue then is not what the soul is (it's still just the form) but what it's capable of, or what God does with it. That's certainly far from proven. 

(I joke that the form/matter distinction is most useful these days as a formula for making modern art. Choose the least appropriate material for a certain form -- say, a hacksaw made of glass or a bed made of ground beef -- and you'll be guaranteed a spot in your local art exhibition.)