Natural Selection Seems Insufficient

[The Grand Nudger]

Machines do it all the time..and they're not conscious or ensouled, are they?

No, actually they don't. You're mixing apples and oranges.

Machines don't consciously navigate and calculate.  A computer is just passive wires carrying current, arranged strategically to output desired predeterminate outcomes. The computer is not in control.  In essence, a computer isn't really DOING anything and, moreover, there is consistency in the process.

Conscious activity is very different.  When I walk to the grocery store, there is no predefined path. All the roads familiar to me might currently be blocked with Detour signs. And a rocky road might call for picking up my feet in completely unpredictable angles and distances. There is no consistency. I must consciously control the navigation. The question is how we accomplish it. Merleau Ponty was sufficiently erudite about human motility to credibly argue, "Cleary we are not calculating X-Y-Z coordinates". Our own experience confirms:
(1) We are controlling the navigation consciously.
(2) But we are NOT navigating by calculations.

That was my point.  Do you think about every step?

Exactly Merleau Ponty's point.

b-mine

.....exactly.  They don't consciously do anything - and yet they do calculate, they do navigate, they do control.  Is it absurd to believe that your soul or your mind can do things without you being consciously aware of them happening?  You're not aware of the avalanche of whole body communication going on when you walk.  All of the ways and mechanisms that your internal body model get's checked against external sensory apparatus...but it is happening.  Most of your behaviors are like this.  Conscious apprehension is just the tip of an iceberg.

Thinking critically, it is often the case that "free will" is a fudge factor for these internal unknowns. That we have a habit of saying we freely willed x when we don't really know why or how we did or arrived at x.

[The Grand Nudger]

-IMO, attention schema theory and illusionism offer a much more compelling explanation of control than souls and other assorted homunculi do- mostly because they come with receipts. They're derived from real world observation, have practical applications, and make predictions about future observations and system potential.

Like I told you in the beginning...I like to think we have free will. I like to think we have agency, at least. I can't prove we do - and there's good reason to think we don't.....that the whole fabric of our entire subjective experience is just confused misreporting. The biological version of an ai hallucination. Souls don't actually help here, I think - we would just be talking about the soul being the confused entity - instead of the brain.... the confusion bit isn't theoretical - it's very well observed across multiple fields.

[Ravenshire]

My theory: Blah, blah, bullshit, blah...

You don't have a theory. You don't even have an hypothesis. What you have, at best, is a wild-assed guess based on willful ignorance and incredulity.

[Paleophyte]

My theory: I opine that...

Will anybody be surprised to learn that there's a difference between a theory and an opinion?

[The Grand Nudger]

In the hebrew tradition, soul was alleged to be the thing that animates us and the I that moralizes and manipulates. A gaggle of misconceptions about the function of respiration, complete ignorance of metabolic cycles, a pseudo mechanistic account of a rational mind, and a metatheory about moral psychology. The trouble being that it was never just one thing that did all of this alleged soul stuff, nor do things which possess one necessarily (or even conceptually) possess the others, as you would expect if those behaviors were indicative of a soul which is their alleged cause.

In fairness, what we believe about souls today is mostly new age claptrap, not what people believed about souls in the original series, lol. Souls were much more potent - they could do all kinds of shit. They were less about body control and more about death and dreaming. Travellors, like us.

[Sheldon]

Atheism no more requires any explanation for anything, than not believing in mermaids does, and I am an atheist for the same reason I disbelieve in mermaids, there is no objective evidence they exist, and the claim they do has no explanatory whatsoever.

[Sheldon]

Correct. Macro evolution is a fact, we've observed speciation.

Look, I live in a mechanical body built from inanimate matter called food. 
Technically, therefore, I should just be an inanimate machine. 

Sheldon: Yet you're not, and you seem to have missed the part where you evidence your conclusion, that contradicts that part of objective reality?

But in fact I am an animate body, which is consistent with a soul-infused body. 
Where did I get this physical soul? And why cannot it simply detach itself from my body by self-locomotion?

Sheldon: Define soul, then evidence it exists, otherwise you might as well be claiming mermaids are slippery. 

My theory: I opine that God infuses a soul into the body and confines it there (Gen 2:7). 

Sheldon: That's a bare claim, I think calling it a theory is risible. Referencing a quote from an archaic superstitious creation myth that is at odds with objective facts, is equally risible. 

Seems to me He is deeply involved with His creatures and, as such, likely the unseen agent of speciation as well. Just my opinion. 

Sheldon: Seems to me this another claim that has no evidentiary support? Also "seems to me" scream subjective opinion. 

I'm sorry no one on this thread wants to hear  that opinion. But to prematurely rule out that possibility strikes me as a bit presumptuous.

Unevidenced opinions don't need "ruling out", they need evidence, you are again trying to reverse where the burden of proof lies. You are also projecting bias onto others, while reeling off these unevidenced opinions in a gish gallop style, that's pretty ironic.

[Sheldon]

Once again shifting the burden of proof.  Even if the distribution of the burden is not wholly toward the proponent, they still bear the lion's share of the burden.  It is not our job to disprove that which has yet to be proved.

I wasn't shifting the burden of proof. I wasn't asking for proof. I was simply talking about remaining open-minded to possibilities.  A fully closed mind is not objectivity. It's bias.

1. Shifting the burden of proof does not require a formal request for proof. 
2. If you are claiming deities are possible, then this requires evidence before I'd believe the claim, I can disbelieve your claim and still maintain an open mind, since I treat all claims this way, hence no bias. BTW do you mean epistemically, objectively or nomologically possible? 
3. Can you evidence any objective difference between the deity you believe exists and all the ones you do not? Only if you cannot then the bias, and therefore the closed mind seems to be yours?

Atheism is not a claim, and it is not a belief. Until an atheist makes a claim about any deity, your assumptions they need to explain anything is absolutely an attempt to shift your "burden of proof" onto those who disbelieve your claims.

[Belacqua]

Atheism no more requires any explanation for anything, than not believing in mermaids does

You say this, but then you go on to give an explanation.

there is no objective evidence they exist, and the claim they do has no explanatory whatsoever.

This is a perfectly good reason to not believe that unicorns exist. 

The epistemological basis is that we should only believe in things for which we have certain kinds of evidence -- objective evidence. This is the reason that most atheists on the Internet have for not believing in God. It is a good reason, but it is a reason, and shows that atheism is not simply a lack, but rests on epistemological claims.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Atheism no more requires any explanation for anything, than not believing in mermaids does

You say this, but then you go on to give an explanation.

there is no objective evidence they exist, and the claim they do has no explanatory whatsoever.

This is a perfectly good reason to not believe that unicorns exist. 

The epistemological basis is that we should only believe in things for which we have certain kinds of evidence -- objective evidence. This is the reason that most atheists on the Internet have for not believing in God. It is a good reason, but it is a reason, and shows that atheism is not simply a lack, but rests on epistemological claims.

'I do not believe that gods exist' is not the same statement as 'I believe that gods do not exist.'

Boru