Science deals with physical realities. Things that have no physical reality are of no use to science because thay can’t be detected or tested with physical experiments and instruments.
That’s why we have faith and philosophy. Faith takes over where science leaves off, attempting to answer those unaswerables (and there are A LOT of ways to interperate those unaswerables).
But interestingly, regarding an injured or labotomized person, the uninjured, immortal soul would have no way of accurately contacting the physical world if its host were so disabled. So IMHO, no, science does not prove nor disprove the souls existence, nor could it, nor should it.
BTW, science seeks to prove a positive, not a negative. Proof of something does not disprove another, it only proves the something. We infer a “disproof” through logic.
There’s the rub, unless the proponent can define it in terms the opponent can agree too it’s a fool’s errand to serch for proof.
Another good point. If there is something that truly separates us from animals it’s becoming harder and harder to pin down as we learn more about ourselves.
I believe the soul exists but I doubt there is a way to find proof to my own satisfaction let alone that of a non-believer. I certainly don’t look for proof in crackpot science. As a Christian, Jesus is my savior but what a friend we have in the Amazing Randi.
insider, meet Great Debates. Great Debates, meet insider.
Asking about the physics of something which is, by definition, nonphysical is not a General Question.
What is the difference between a soul that has absolutely no effect on the physical world and a soul that does not exist?
If you claim that the soul is immaterial, non-physical, and cannot be detected, in what way is it useful to talk about such an object? By definition, we can know nothing about it.
But perhaps the soul is just some kind of energy that science hasn’t gotten around to discovering yet. Well, fine…then the soul really is material, just an exotic sort of material. Then the soul really is amenable to scientific discussion. We could take out our hypermicroscopes and put that sucker on the lab table and cut it open and see what makes it tick. Somehow, I think the believers will be more comfortable sticking with the “non-material” soul. Unfortunately, to me that’s as good as saying that it doesn’t exist.
i think it is safe to say that western science has a bad taste in its mouth in relation to religion. the Galileo incident is the classic example. i think it is reasonable to question the objectivity of both some scientists and people who claim to have a scientific bent. BELIEVING in science is unscientific.
there are people with science degrees investigating wierdness. since i never know when new people show up i’ll be redundant. check the book: OLD SOULS by Tom Shroder.
it is easy to find reviews on amazon.com.
i’ve encountered that business about slight changes in weight at the moment of death, but it has been contradictory.
I thought the idea was that when the soul is ejected from the body it would push away from the body causing the orbit to collapse.
How about the soul just has no effect on our physical world. That’s an important distinction, because that means there more things we need to define before we can even ask.
y’know, theoretically, if you died, all of the potential energy in your system comes out meaning NOTHING. so (since energy is directly realted tomatter) wouldn’t your mass be less than your dead body??
I’m kinda curious since people in this thread have suggested that the reason for unconsciousness when the brain is damaged is due to the vehicle of the soul being damaged.
Lobotomy was known to completely change people’s personality. The railway worker who had a spike fired through his brain was, for the rest of his life, a completely different person, prone to crude jokes and lack of social graces.
Inbalances in neurotransmitters, say, by abuse of Ecstasy over long periods of time results in depression.
Lack of sleep, impairs our thinking, and can bring on halucinations.
If all of this is due to impairment of the vehicle, what is the soul supposed to be doing, anyway? If the soul’s free will is so completely bound by the brain, what difference is there between its existence and non-existence?
I’m a little confused by the idea that even if there were a measurable change in the body’s mass at the exact moment of death, that we would then jump to the conclusion that it must be caused by the soul leaving the body.
Why would the soul have mass? Is it made of atoms? (If so, there are ways to detect atoms that are more accurate than a scale.)
I see the same sort of bizarre logic jumps when discussing psychic phenomena as well. And the burden of proof is always on the person who doesn’t believe it. I just don’t get it.
“There are elephants holding up the tectonic plates.”
“No, there are not.”
“Well, prove that there AREN’T!”
Ha. The burden of proof is ALWAYS on the positor of the claim, and NEVER on the skeptic. But, for philosophical questions of God and the soul, we turn to faith, where proof is in the heart, not the brain.
Neurobiologist Andrew Newberg at the University of Pennsylvania and colleague Eugene d’Aquili have used a rotating triple-head single-positron emission-computed tomography scanner to examine the brains of people meditating. (It’s in the October issue of Popular Mechanics and is not yet available online.)
I don’t know if they’ll establish the existence of a soul this way, but it would be interesting to determine just what happens in a person’s brain during a religious experience.
Yes, it’s in PM, but it’s just one small part of a longer article about scientific mysteries. (Among others are: Is time travel possible? Can the speed of light be broken? Is there extra-terrestrial life? Can we ever cure cancer? Is immortality possible?) I quoted the relevant part in my post. I’m afraid that’s all there is.
I doubt this is scientific evidence, but it’s SOMETHING:
Identical twins are sometimes vastly different.
Even when they are raised in the same environment (well, as close as you can get, being reared by the same parents, going to the same schools, etc.)
Personally, i agree with Lumpy (lobotomy/behaviour) If there is a soul, why should Brain chemistry/changes affect moral actions which would inturn affect the judgement of the almight with regard to your eternal wellbeing. By inference I think this helps disprove God.
But lets stick to science and soul.
The identical twins doesnt cut it, in my opinion. There are so many variables within a person, even within the same environment, that even with the same brain they will develop differently.
Example (its unnecessary but i just thought of it and i want to share) :- Two identical twins. Both think of sticking out tongue at each other. Due to birth times (seperate) one is able to perform the action before the other. One now has the experience of tongue pokingness while the other suffers from being the tongue pokee. Their brains are now slightly different and will grow apart for the rest of their lives.
It was better in my head. I have a feeling I should have left it there.
You seem to be confusing ability to detect with the nature, physical or spiritual, of that which you are trying to detect.
Dark matter, as its name implies, is massive; it is just not readily detectable with our current technology.
The soul, assuming that it exists, is spiritual in nature. As such, it also avoids detection.
Hence, their only resemblance rests on the fact that both lay hidden from human perception, conclusive evidence of their existence escapes our knowledge. Nonetheless, as far as their nature concerns, they are totally different. While dark matter is physical and thus potentially detectable, the alleged entity that you call soul is by definition undetectable since it can not exert a force capable of generating measurable effects and thus yield concrete evidence of its existence.
Also of relevance, from a feasibility standpoint, dark matter is a scientifically valid construct designed to adjust the existing models of the universe to empirical evidence. On the other hand, the soul is an axiomatic premise developed to “validate” the immortality of the human individual and thus eradicate, or at least diminish, the fears of its own mortality.
Concluding, there is no relation whatsoever between the two.
I remember a story from a European history class that Frederick Barbarossa had a man sealed in an urn on a scale, so that he could detect whether a weight loss occurred at the moment of death by suffocation. I believe that no weight loss was detected.
