# Do Ben Carson and Scott Walker not believe humans have souls? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [August 9, 2015, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365 "2015-08-09T04:34:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/1 "2015-08-09T04:34:57Z")
Carson said the following at Thursday’s debate, and Walker could be seen alongside him, nodding vigorously (I couldn’t see the other candidates, so I don’t know if others did as well): > [@](#): > > I was asked by an NPR reporter once, why don’t I talk about race that often. I said it’s because I’m a neurosurgeon. And she thought that was a strange response. And you say — I said, you see, when I take someone to the operating room, I’m actually operating on the thing that makes them who they are. The skin doesn’t make them who they are. The hair doesn’t make them who they are. I would have thought these devoutly religious conservatives would be mind-body dualists for sure. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/2 "2015-08-09T05:48:44Z")
I think you’re reading more into it than Carson intended. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/3 "2015-08-09T05:50:38Z")
The inference seems very clear and inescapable, whatever he “intended”. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/4 "2015-08-09T06:11:26Z")
Carson is a duallist, but not in the sense that you think. He’s a duallist in that he believes in two contradictory things at once. Carson is a devout Adventist. He believes in the human soul. He also believes the consciousness derives from the brain. He believes both of these things at once, depending on the situation. Doesn’t really make a whole lot of intellectual sense, but religion usually doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/5 "2015-08-09T06:31:50Z")
BTW, I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed just how much in love Scott Walker seemed to be with Carson. The way he was looking at him I was sure that Walker is voting for Carson, not himself, in the Wisconsin primary. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/6 "2015-08-09T09:01:14Z")
Yeah, I think you nailed it. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/7 "2015-08-09T12:50:08Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Carson is a duallist, but not in the sense that you think. He’s a duallist in that he believes in two contradictory things at once. Carson is a devout Adventist. He believes in the human soul. He also believes the consciousness derives from the brain. He believes both of these things at once, depending on the situation. Doesn’t really make a whole lot of intellectual sense, but religion usually doesn’t. What’s contradictory about believing in a soul and believing that that consciousness derives from the brain? I can think of plenty of ways that isn’t a problem; non-conscious souls, imprinting souls, imprinting brains, a soul-mind separation… I mean, you have to\* add\* something to that situation before you get a contradiction. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/8 "2015-08-09T16:21:10Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#): > > What’s contradictory about believing in a soul and believing that that consciousness derives from the brain? I can think of plenty of ways that isn’t a problem; non-conscious souls, imprinting souls, imprinting brains, a soul-mind separation… I mean, you have to\* add\* something to that situation before you get a contradiction. Yes. Every brand of classic Christianity confesses the resurrection of the flesh, because the complete human is body AND mind AND soul. The contradiction arises if we presume the position that only the soul is the “real you”, or that the mind and the soul are one and the same and that the material body is a mere vessel for them. That is not in evidence as the belief of the persons in question. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/9 "2015-08-10T01:18:57Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > BTW, I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed just how much in love Scott Walker seemed to be with Carson. The way he was looking at him I was sure that Walker is voting for Carson, not himself, in the Wisconsin primary. Aren’t you a Carson fan? I don’t trust your judgment on this. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/10 "2015-08-10T02:28:00Z")
I’m a big fan of Carson the man(who wouldn’t be?). Carson the candidate, we’ll see. He hasn’t impressed so far, although he’s doing better than his disastrous start. ---
**Author:** ![cerberus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@cerberus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cerberus)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/11 "2015-08-14T22:25:12Z")
I thought that the dual idea was more along the lines of the soul working or interfacing through the brain. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/12 "2015-08-14T22:36:43Z")
I’m sure that’s how they’ve had to retrench it in the modern era. But clearly one does not need a brain to think and be conscious, according to Christianity; otherwise, forget an afterlife. When Carson says he is “operating on the thing that makes them who they are”, I don’t know how to interpret that other than there being no consciousness, no self, without that physical brain. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/13 "2015-08-14T23:18:22Z")
Why is this so hard? Let’s start from the fact that the Christian afterlife does not feature disembodied souls. You seem to question that, but I’m not sure there’s a single reference to a body-less afterlife in the New Testament. (And those who have died and have yet to be resurrected are “sleeping” thereby implying that souls need a body to function.) What if we use a computer analogy? You put data on a hard drive. What is the data, though? Is the hard drive heavier after you put the data into it? Can we store the data without a drive? Or interact with the data without the drive? No… the data is a concept, really. It has no physical existence, but it is recorded via the state of the hard drive. Change the hard drive, change the data. Destroy the hard drive, destroy the data. But if you had a backup of the data, you could put that data into a new hard drive and it would be the same as the original, wouldn’t it? So there you go. Brain=hard drive. Soul=data. Or you can just keep beating on your straw man effigy of a Christian. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/14 "2015-08-14T23:23:26Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > Why is this so hard? > > Let’s start from the fact that the Christian afterlife does not feature disembodied souls. I’m gonna guess that the vast majority of real-world Christians don’t agree with that. I’m not saying that’s not what is written. I’m saying that that isn’t how it’s sold to an ignorant populace. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/15 "2015-08-14T23:25:51Z")
It’s not a straw man, because it’s still the data, not the physical hard drive, that makes that consciousness what it is. The hard drive itself is generic, with no individuality. Besides which, I know a lot of Christians and I don’t believe most of them expect to spend the afterlife in their physical bodies. I know there is stuff about this in the Bible, that at the time of Jesus’s Second Coming people’s dead bodies will be raised. So a strict version of Christian theology could imagine that one’s experience of dying would be to lose consciousness and then the next conscious experience occurs when everyone is raised at the same time, however many years/centuries/millennia from now it is. But I guarantee you that the vast majority of actual Christians do not see it this way. When a loved one dies, they think of them as having an afterlife _right now_, at the same time as everyone here on Earth continues their pre-End Times existence. There is talk of how “Grandpa is looking down and smiling right now–he’s so proud of you”, yadda yadda. ETA: \*\*Lobohan \*\*said it more succinctly while I was composing my post. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/16 "2015-08-14T23:44:59Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > I’m gonna guess that the vast majority of real-world Christians don’t agree with that. > > I’m not saying that’s not what is written. I’m saying that that isn’t how it’s sold to an ignorant populace. Doing a quick search comes up with this [http://relationshipsinamerica.com/religion/do-people-still-believe-in-life-after-death](http://relationshipsinamerica.com/religion/do-people-still-believe-in-life-after-death) where there is a question about a bodily resurrection near the bottom. 37% of all Americans believe in a bodily resurrection. So if we go into a shopping mall, believers are outnumbered 2:1. I’m not sure I’d call that “vast majority” and that sample is all Americans - so we’re not just sampling Christians. If you walk into a random church service (not even a Christian church, just anyone attending church), then the belief in a bodily resurrection jumps to 61%. So among Christians who go to church, this is a majority belief. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/17 "2015-08-14T23:55:33Z")
I would guess that these people’s beliefs are confused, contradictory, and just generally incoherent (shocker!). If you ask them if their dead grandma is looking down on them right now from Heaven, there’s no way 61 percent are saying “nuh uh”. ETA: You also still haven’t addressed my point that the hard drive itself in your analogy is a blank slate and does not “make someone who they are”. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/18 "2015-08-14T23:58:26Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > Doing a quick search comes up with this [http://relationshipsinamerica.com/religion/do-people-still-believe-in-life-after-death](http://relationshipsinamerica.com/religion/do-people-still-believe-in-life-after-death) where there is a question about a bodily resurrection near the bottom. > > 37% of all Americans believe in a bodily resurrection. So if we go into a shopping mall, believers are outnumbered 2:1. I’m not sure I’d call that “vast majority” and that sample is all Americans - so we’re not just sampling Christians. > > If you walk into a random church service (not even a Christian church, just anyone attending church), then the belief in a bodily resurrection jumps to 61%. So among Christians who go to church, this is a majority belief. A bodily resurrection at the end times is in addition to a spiritual heaven, at least in every Christian I’ve ever known. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2015, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/19 "2015-08-15T01:49:24Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > So there you go. Brain=hard drive. Soul=data. Interesting implications there. Implication #1 is that since a fetus is, at least at some stage, an empty hard drive with no [experiential] data, then it clearly has no soul and all good Christians must obviously be pro-choice, or at least indifferent about abortion. Implication #2 is that when we can transfer the entire information content of a human brain into an AI machine – as Ray Kurzweil and others think we will be able to do within a few decades – then such a machine, clearly, will have a soul. So that when the time comes to send it to the scrap yard for recycling, its soul will ascend to the Kingdom of Heaven. Which gives an unintentional whole new meaning to the Tracy Kidder book _The Soul of a New Machine_, which is actually about the challenges of engineering a new generation of minicomputer. However, none of this is what I thought this thread was going to be about. I thought it was about how Carson and Walker were both soulless automatons with no human empathy whose only purpose was to dismantle social institutions and enact tax cuts for the rich. To which my question was going to be, why limit that criticism to just those two? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2015, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ben-carson-and-scott-walker-not-believe-humans-have-souls/727365/20 "2015-08-15T23:08:47Z")
Some Christian (but very progressive) friends of mine provided me with two Bible citations that appear to rebut \*\*dracoi’s \*\*argument. _2 Corinthians 5:8-9_ > [@](#): > > We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. _Luke 16:19-31_ > [@](#): > > “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. > > 22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ > > 25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’ > > 27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ > > 29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ > > 30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ > > 31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”