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… In This Issue. February Meeting: "One True God" by Dr. Carol Copp Quote of the Month by James Branch Cabell "Are Souls Real" by Dave Silva "How Science Prevails" by Daniel Dennett "Philosopher's Corner" by Juan Bernal, Ph.D. Humor - "Jesus Hires Associate Christ" Contributed by Craig Sandberg. "Dialog Between A and B" by Benito Franqui At the February Meeting: ONE TRUE GOD: The Historical Consequences of Monotheism. By Dr. Carol Copp Sociologist and Humanist, Carol Copp, will share with us Dr. Rodney Stark’s insights contained in his recently published book, One True God: The Historical Consequences of Monotheism. As we know, monotheism’s impact has often been destructive. Glock shows why monotheism has great power to both unite and divide. He analyzes the circumstances under which monotheism generates brutal conflicts. He then shows when and how this potential for conflict is muffled by public norms of civility, exemplified by the contemporary United States. Finally, he addresses the likelihood that American style pluralism and civility will spread throughout the world. Dr. Stark is Professor of Sociology and Comparative Religion at the University of Washington and is a widely published and noted authority on contemporary religion. Quote of the Month: "The optimist thinks we live in the best of times. The pessimist fears this is true." … James Branch Cabell
ARE SOULS REAL? By Dave Silva
According to my Random House dictionary a soul is 1. The principle of life, feeling, thought, and the action in man regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body, the spiritual part of man as distinct from the physical part. 2. The spiritual part of man as regarded in its moral aspect, or as capable of surviving death and subject to happiness or misery in a life to come.
TYPES OF SOULS Life Soul: What leaves when life "goes". Common in primitive cultures it can be human, animal or plant life. It explains the difference between living and dead things. Ego Soul: Explains the personal properties of the individual. Can be human or animal. Surviving Soul: Lives on after death in a spirit world or as a ghost. This is the belief of most organized religions except Buddhism. Free Soul: Can leave the body during trances (out of body experiences) or in dreams. Natural Soul: Includes the mind, the will, emotions, feelings. Is a natural result of evolution and does not survive death. If you flex your wrist two things happen; there is a conscious decision to flex the wrist and there is the nerve impulse, called a readiness response, causing the wrist to flex. Try flexing your wrist making a very conscious decision to do so. Ask yourself which comes first; the conscious decision or the nerve impulse? Or, do they happen at the same time. The answer appears later in this article. Do people have souls? According to recent polls 88% of Americans and 61% of Europeans believe in human souls. The vast majority of those who believe in souls today believe in the surviving sole, not the natural soul, so when I say soul it will refer to the soul that is immaterial, separate from the brain and survives death. Little is written about souls and the subject remains as one of the last taboos in our culture. The Egyptians believed a soul, or ka, went to a judgment hall where it was weighed against a feather and asked a list of 42 questions, 9 of which were the same as the Ten Commandments. If the ka passed it went to paradise, if not the soul was devoured by a monster and ceased to exist. Egyptian beliefs in an afterlife go back 5000 years. The Zoroastrians originated many common beliefs about the soul. They created heaven and hell, opposing forces of good and evil, conscious reason, the power of prayer and free will; which all predate Jewish and Christian beliefs. Zoroastrians are still waiting for a savior, who will be born of a virgin mother. In Hebrew, Latin and Greek the words for soul also refer to breathing, so nefesh, psyche and anima mean breath of life. Jewish souls went to shoal and Greek souls, known as shades, went to Hades. Both were dark places where souls barely existed. This changed when the Jews adopted a more attractive afterlife around 500 BCE. Socrates sought to elevate the status of the soul by arguing that souls deserved to be treated more like people. Pythagoras (580 - 500 BC) believed that souls were reincarnated into animals as well as humans. This also coincides with the Hindu religion adopting a belief in reincarnation, or transmigration of the soul, or atman, which continues this cycle until it achieves purification and knowledge and merges once again with ultimate reality. Buddhism is unique among religions in that it teaches that the individual soul is an illusion and has no conception of a soul, or self, that survives death. Their belief in reincarnation is viewed as a continuation of one life and not as living many lives. Plato believed that our souls exist before we are born and contain great stores of recoverable knowledge from prior lives. Plato and Aristotle are important to Christian thought because they had far more to say about souls than Jesus did. Plato said the body imprisoned the soul and the soul's ability to reason made it god like. Jerome (345 - 420 AD) argued that the soul was created at the time of conception, however, this was not accepted by the Catholic Church until the 1880's. Before that the soul came into being at the "quickening", when the fetus first moved in the womb. For a time there was a debate over whether the soul needed to be physical reunited with the body after death? St. Augustine felt the will was supreme and didn't need the body, while Aquinas held a view similar to Aristotle of a soul as two distinguishable elements of a single substance, which allowed for a resurrection of soul and body. Aquinas held that it took 40 days from conception for males to receive souls and 80 days for females. When Aquinas was made a saint in 1323 his view was accepted. In the year 584, in Lyons, France, 43 Catholic bishops and 20 men representing other bishops held a debate at the Council of Macon to decide whether or not women soul and could be declared human. After many lengthy arguments a vote was taken. Women were declared human by a vote of 32 yes 31 no. In 1619, Rene Descartes concluded that human nature has two parts, a physical part, the body, and the soul, which is our true self and what we think of as our consciousness. Cartesian dualism was, in general terms, already widely accept by both Catholics and Protestants. Descartes, a Catholic, never provided any proof that the soul exists. He speculated that it might be located in the pineal gland near the center of the brain, which we now know secretes melatonine. The Cartesian Theater is a metaphorical picture of how consciousness resides in the brain. Descartes thought if you were going to point at an object that your soul, sitting at a control center, got the visual message and relayed an order to the brain, which sent a command to raise the arm and point the finger. We know from scientific tests that consciousness doesn't reside in any single part of the brain. Daniel Dennett rejects Cartesian dualism in his book "Consciousness Explained". Darwin said that science would someday prove that consciousness was a result of evolutionary forces. In the late 1800's American philosopher William James proposed the idea that consciousness was a natural dynamic process of the brain in his essay, "Does Consciousness Exist?" British philosopher Gilbert Ryle attacked the "dogma of the ghost in the machine' in his 1949 book "The Concept of Mind". How can something immaterial cause an action? There is overwhelming scientific evidence that the mind is closely affected by the body. In Daniel Dennett's theory of consciousness there is no single, definitive "stream of consciousness," because there is no central Headquarters, no Cartesian Theater where "it all comes together" for the perusal of a central controller. Instead of a single stream of consciousness there are multiple channels in which specialist circuits try to interpret, filter and edit all the sensory data to create multiple drafts as they go. These drafts aren't sent to another part of the brain to be reinterpreted, because these parallel processors have already done it. Much of our brain design is shared with other animals, but it is augmented by micro-habits of thought that are developed in the individual, partly idiosyncratic results of self-exploration and partly the pre-designed gifts of culture. Thousands of memes, mostly borne by language, but also by wordless "images" and other data structures, take up residence in an individual brain, shaping its tendencies and thereby turning it into a mind. If you flex your wrist what happens first? The nerve impulse comes about a half-second before our conscious decision. So deeply ingrained is the control center concept that most people would guess wrong. At our meeting only Carol Copp got the right answer.
Some of you may have a problem with the concept of memes, if so, you can substitute language and images. Elbert uses a toy machine analogy. If you were designing "a toy machine" how would you go about making it conscious? The android Data from Star Trek would be an example; intelligent but without emotions. Just what would you need to do? It would need to sense the world around it by sensory input and store that information in a working memory that would prioritize it in a self-referential way. You would need the most complex structure ever designed to work as a parallel -processor to understand language, abstract concepts, control all the body-mind functions and multi-task on conscious and sub-conscious levels all at the same time; just as you are doing right now. One major problem with an immaterial soul that contains our personality, our feelings and all our memories is how does it do it? Why would you need that most complex structure ever known, the human brain, which has a 100 billion neurons and trillions of connections, if something that had no physical properties could miraculously accomplish this. Plato theorized that the soul could not be immortal unless it were immaterial, and so, indivisible and indestructible. Modern imaging devices show that mental processes involve physical activity in the brain. Descartes also held that animals have no soul and therefore are not conscious. If you believe this and also believe in evolution, then that would lead you to believe that at some point God said "Okay they are human enough to be in my image so I'll give them a soul". Another problem with souls is relating it to the "self". We normally think of our soul and our self as one to a body; and yet people can have 3 or, 7 or 23 personalities. I am not the same person I was 50 years ago, so if I have a soul is it the same soul, but a different self? Those who believe in souls often believe that upon death the soul is returned to some ideal state, so that if you have a mental or physical impairment that you will not be old, or blind or retarded. This would certainly be comforting to believe, but since there is no evidence to show how this is done this must be taken purely on faith. People have always needed an explanation to account for why we are so different from other animals. Souls, however, are more of an answer than an explanation.. Two and a half million years ago our brains were 4-500cc, Around 1.8 million years ago Homo Erectus's brain was 800-900cc. When a baby is born today its brain is about 385cc and triples in size in the first few years and reaches an average size of 1350 cc. This is roughly Dennett and Blackmore's theory of why we developed large brains. We had a vocal apparatus that allowed us to make a vast variety of sounds, which became words, and the words became concepts and language. Spreading ideas became a major survival advantage. All the good talkers and those who found new uses for tools got the best mates, while those who didn't spread their memes and sat silently in their caves didn't. So, the memes of language and images drove a runaway genetic adaptation, much like the peacock's tail, that favored larger and larger brains. A fortunate side effect of this evolutionary restructuring of our brains was consciousness. Another factor leading to consciousness is that humans learn far more by imitation than any other animal. Whether this helped lead us to language or was a result of larger brains is unclear. Being a conscious person is a gradual process. This would explain why our earliest memories are after we learn to talk. Another clear indication that consciousness is dependant on language is that children who aren't exposed to language at an early age, feral children, they are never able to learn like other children. Many of the arguments for souls that are not based on books of revelation cite some common experience that seems very real. The reasoning is that souls must be real because all these people can't be hallucinating or making it up
One of the most recent arguments is near-death-experiences (NDE's). Raymond Moody wrote "Life After Life" in 1976, which sold over a million copies. Certainly, the experiences of people who report floating sensations, bright lights and seeing departed loved ones, or Jesus, seem real. In a later book Moody admits his data is unscientific and anecdotal. Moody himself suggests the need for a scientific study into NDE"S. Moody is a Christian and all the subjects he interviewed were Christians, so his data isn't meant to be representative. Blackmore points out that "Some people encounter beings of no particular religion, but there is no record of NDE's where a deity of another religion has ever been seen." Oxygen deprivation of the brain causes rapid firing of neurons, which would explain the bright lights and a rapid flood of memories. This in itself doesn't explain all NDE's. Perhaps most damaging to the credibility of NDE's is people under heavy anesthesia report no NDE's, which account for about 10% of the cases. They claim that when people rise up out of their bodies they can see themselves on the operating table. One hospital devised a test for this where they put a message in lights near the top of the operating room. There have been 24 NDE's and not one has read the message. If the soul really leaves the body why would it make any difference whether the body was under anesthesia? Also, we should remember that in all the NDE's no one ever really died! A friend of mine told me that out-of-body experiences prove that the soul exists. There is a vast amount of anecdotal evidence on OBE's, but no conclusive scientific evidence that the mind ever leaves the body. They have done tests where they would write a four digit number on a piece of paper and place it on a high shelf above people who claimed they could have OBE's. The only one who got the number right had disconnected the wires monitoring their brain waves and blood pressure. We can see people and scenes in dreams, and waking visions within our mind's eye, but to actually see outside of our bodies without the aid real eyes seems physically impossible. Blackmore concludes that OBE's are an altered state of consciousness much like a hypnotic state and that there is no scientific evidence that any soul or consciousness ever leaves the body. Another argument for souls is reincarnation. If people have had past lives then a soul that has shared those lives must exist even if science cannot detect it in any other way. Again the evidence for past lives is anecdotal and depends on the reliability of statements made under hypnotic regression. In "Coming Back" Moody, a psychiatrist who has done many past life regressions (PLR) says, "The mind likes to please and for that reason it is highly suggestible. When given the opportunity it will fill in the gaps with great aplomb. And when given the focused leisure that hypnotism presents it will often occupy itself with self-made fantasies". Oddly enough, despite recalling nine past lives himself, Moody doesn't believe in reincarnation. It's not that he doesn't find it convincing, but it is because he is a Christian and that's something Christians believe in. Moody finds PLR more credible because subjects rarely pick famous people, like Napoleon, but isn't that exactly creating a credible past life would do. You would have to know all about Napoleon, whose life is so well known, or your story would fall apart. If people were really recalling past lives they would know languages unfamiliar to them and would be able to fill in vast amounts of historic data that are now unknown. Often Moody's subjects aren't even aware of who the invaders were who killed them in some past life. There have always been mediums who have made a living out of contacting the dearly departed. Now they write best selling books like James Van Prague, or have their own TV show like Jonathan Edwards. They are very skilled at what they do, but are they really doing what they claim? Why do I need these people to talk with my departed Aunt Louise and to know that she's doing fine? If they could talk to the dead there would be no unsolved murders and we could fill in the missing details in the historical record. We could find out directly from Moses, or Jesus, what happened. There is no clear explanation of how they communicate with the dead. They say departed souls exist on another frequency or plane, but what is this frequency and where is this plane of existence? Why is it only a few mediums can detect it? In conclusion, there is not much new to say on the subject of souls. Barring some monumental discovery the belief in souls will continue to be religious in nature and based on faith. On the other hand we have much to learn about the nature of consciousness and artificial intelligence.
HOW SCIENCE PREVAILSBy Daniel Dennett (Except from "Why Getting It Right Matters" Free Inquiry Win. 1999/00) The methods of science aren’t foolproof, but they are indefinitely perfectible. Just as important: there is a tradition of criticism that enforces improvement whenever and wherever flaws are discovered. The methods of science, like everything else under the sun, are themselves objects of scientific scrutiny as method becomes methodology, the analysis of methods. Methodology in turn falls under the gaze of epistemology, the investigation of investigation itself—nothing is off limits to scientific questioning. The irony is that these fruits of scientific reflection, showing us the ineliminable smudges of imperfection, are sometimes used by those who are suspicious of science as their grounds for denying it a privileged status in the truth-seeking department—as if the institutions and practices they see competing with it were no worse off in these regards. But where are the examples of religious orthodoxy being abandoned in the face of irresistible evidence? Again and again in science yesterday's heresies have become today's new orthodoxies. No religion exhibits that pattern in its history.. PHILOSOPHER'S CORNER: By Juan Bernal It seems to me that our "Soul" talk, viz., our tendency to express human reality as essentially spiritual in nature, derives mostly from our religious, literary or poetic traditions. Without doubt this is the view of human reality presupposed by most religious cultures: all persons have a soul. Accordingly, then, we get the belief that there is more to human existence than the functioning of a biological organism, that a person alive is more than a body alive. This "something more" is expressed in terms of a soul, or spirit, "alma," "ánima," "psyche" and such. In line with this, many religious traditions assume that the essential nature of human existence is spiritual rather than corporeal and that the soul can exist separately from our body.* Early in people's attempts to understand human reality, this view might have been no more than an answer to the question 'What moves the body?' Here the assumption was that a body could not move itself. (Thus we have a need for "the ghost in the machine," as the 20th century British philosopher, Gilbert Ryle, expressed it.) After this, we can speculate that the human tendency to place high value on human existence reinforced the assumption of a soul, that "higher" aspect of human existence. We humans give very high value to human existence, and somehow many of us infer the belief that only the soul (or something like the soul) can express this high value. (This is analogous to a similar view of theism. People cannot understand how existence in general can have any meaning unless we assume that there is a God who gives it meaning.) The result is that many people in our traditional culture find it very difficult to imagine human existence without a soul, just as many of the same people find it most difficult to imagine our world devoid of a deity. Accordingly, then, many people reject the scientific view that humans are naturally evolved animals. Our self-evaluation presupposes that humans are essentially spiritual beings, created in the image of God. Not surprisingly then, the religionist has a receptive audience when he claims that our possessing an eternal soul and our status as God's special creatures show that we are distinct from the natural animal order. In this context, it is easy to see why the fundamentalist religions feel so threatened by secular humanism, evolutionary naturalism and philosophical materialism. * If we take seriously this talk about souls-separate-from-body, we find that there isn't much that one can say about the soul except by reference to the person, or a person-like entity, such as a ghost or "wispy-like spiritual being", having some minimal physical features.
Jesus Hires Associate Christ From by Craig Sandberg JERUSALEM-- Overwhelmed by a constant deluge of prayers and appeals for salvation, Jesus Christ announced Monday the hiring of Tacoma, WA, customer- service supervisor Dean Smoler as Associate Christ. "I've been in need of an Assistant Savior for a long time now, and I'm thrilled to finally have one," Christ told reporters at a press conference aired on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. "Dean is an experienced guy who will really help ease my workload." With the hiring, effective June 1, Christians seeking spiritual aid or guidance will be able to pray to either Jesus or Dean. "This is an extremely exciting opportunity for me, and I look forward to hearing your prayers," Smoler said. "To the millions of Christians around the world, I just want you to know that I am here for you, should you wander down the wrong path. If Jesus happens to be busy, please feel free to turn to me in your darkest hour." "You can expect the same great service from me that you've always gotten from Jesus," Smoler said. "Whatever you wish to say unto me, you can say unto Dean Smoler," Christ said. "I am 100 percent confident that Dean is fully capable of bathing you in the healing light of forgiveness and salvation. Turn to Dean, and you shall not go astray." From now on, Jesus advised Christians to address prayers to, "Our Lord or His Associate," "Jesus or Dean," or "Jesus or anyone acting in His employ." Monday's hiring has led many Catholic Church insiders to speculate that, once Christ retires, Smoler will become the One True Savior and Son of God. "After nearly 2,000 years of flock-leading, Christ appears to be getting tired," said Cardinal John O'Connor of New York. "I strongly suspect that Dean is being groomed as his successor." Jesus said He chose Smoler for the Assistant Christ position because of his considerable experience in dealing with the public. In addition to his six-year stint as customer-service supervisor with the Tacoma-based Consolidated Coolers, the nation's third-largest manufacturer of coolers and thermoses, Smoler worked for nine years as a human-resources manager with Sears. Though some observers have questioned whether Smoler will be able to absolve Christians of earthly wrongdoings, having never died on the cross for humanity's sins, Christ dismisses such claims, saying that he has "complete faith in Dean." Lending credence to such suspicions is a new book of the Holy Bible,which details Smoler's newfound authority and divinity. The book,tentatively titled, "The First Letter Of Dean To Mankind," will be included in the updated 2002 Bible. Smoler's hiring as the first-ever vice-Christ is being well received by Christians. "If Jesus says it's okay to pray to Dean, then it's all right by me," said Grand Rapids, MI, resident John Bouton. "I accept Dean Smoler in my heart and will pray to Him daily for eternal salvation," Beatrice Moorehead of Montgomery, AL, said. "Jesus and Dean are Lord." Dialog Between A and B By Benito Franqui A:"You must rely on some theory of knowledge." B:"I find it unnecessary to even consider the question of what constitutes knowledge." A:"You are then a nihilist." B:"A nihilist regards all hypotheses as being equally valid. I recognize wide differences in the degree of likelihood of different hypotheses being valid, depending on the relevant reliable evidence, both confirmatory and falsifying, that I am aware of." A:"Science is just one more religion." B:"Science and religion have just one thing in common." A:"And what is that?" B:"A religion has one or more dogmas which are hypotheses whose validity must be assumed strictly on the basis of faith - no questioning of those dogmas is tolerated, under any circumstances (calling the dogmas presuppositions' does not change their nature). Science has just one unquestionable hypothesis." A:"And which one is that?" B:"The hypothesis that all hypotheses (except for this one) must be questioned." A:"You have some axes to grind." B:"I have no followers to appease or from whom to seek financial support. Seems to me that those in those positions are much more likely to have some axes to grind." A:"You are arrogant, autonomous, and defiant." B:"Seems to me that those who claim, without presenting even one shred of reliable confirmatory evidence, to be in the possession of some unquestionable absolute knowledge or absolute truths, are the ones who are being arrogant, autonomous, and defiant." A:"Unless you put your trust in some authoritative Word of God, you must feel pretty insecure." B:"While that may very well apply to many, it doesn't follow that it must apply to everybody. A:"Without the fear of God, you cannot possibly behave morally." B:"While that may very well apply to many, it doesn't follow that it must apply to everybody. Also, fear of God does not guarantee moral behavior - for example, there have been numerous wars in which both sides appealed to the same God for help in slaughtering their 'enemies'. If that doesn't constitute immoral behavior, I have no idea as to what qualifies as such." A:"You seem to be continuously changing your opinions." B:"Of course! How else can one learn anything?" A:"You just don't like the truth." B:"There's nothing I would like more than my continued existence in a blissful state after 'death'." A:"You are an atheist." B:"I believe in the One True God." A:"What is the OTG like?" B:"I'm currently researching that issue. In the meantime, I'd like to share with you some pretty firm conclusions as to what the OTG is not like." A:"Such as?" B:"The OTG has never ordered the slaughter of babies." A:"Why do you say that?" B:"My moral compass forbids me to worship any such God." A:"How does the OTG reveal Himself?" B:"Through his Divine Word or Divine Creation - also known as the universe, or nature." A:"Aha! I knew it! You believe in naturalism!!!" B:"I believe in absolute supernaturalism. Everything that happens is supernatural!" A:"You are a skeptic." B:"Of course I am! And so are you." A:"Why do you say that?" B:"Out of the hundreds (or thousands, depending on how finely you want to discriminate between different versions of the 'same' scripture) of religious scriptures in existence, you are skeptical about all of them but one. And concerning secular issues, you are skeptical about countless subjects such as the claims of a used car salesperson, etc. That makes you overwhelmingly skeptical - no matter how hard you may try to deny it." A:"I pity you." B:"Thank you. We all deserve to be pitied. I also pity and bless you, and wish you the best possible existence in this vale of tears." |
