Do top Chinese technocrats believe in “the soul” or “love”?

_{Denyse O'Leary

July 28, 2019

Intelligent Design}

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Both big tech entrepreneurs Kai-Fu Lee and Jack Ma seem to believe in souls or something but they do not believe that souls can be trusted with freedom, the way governments can:

Kai-Fu Lee’s thought-provoking comments on the soul echo the sentiments of Jack Ma, co-founder and head of Alibaba, China’s equivalent of Amazon. He is a self-made billionaire and, by many accounts, the richest man in China. When the soul comes up again, it is in the context of LQ, the Love Quotient (as in EQ, emotional quotient, or IQ, intelligence quotient):

That said:

Ma also said in 2017 that China benefits from the stability of a one-party system. He seems comfortable with China’s big data police (“it can help pinpoint terrorist activity”) but he wishes his government would stick to governing, by which he seems to mean, not stifling innovation. And then there was the data-sharing scandal: “‘There’s no way to refuse’: China’s Alibaba under fire over use of customer data.”
Denyse O’Leary, “Chinese technocracy surges ahead with AI surveillance” at Mind Matters News

Well, as they say, love is a many-splendored thing. And once again, we may get a chance to test whether the soul exists.

On the soul: On the soul: The real reason why only human beings speak. Language is a tool for abstract thinking—a necessary tool for abstraction—and humans are the only animals who think abstractly (Michael Egnor)

On displacement by technology: Jay Richards: Creative freedom, not robots, is the future of work. In an information economy, there will be a place where the human person is at the very center

A chilling snippet on mass surveillance in China. China is helping other countries restrict their citizens’ internet, while shunning the U.S.

and

China’s AI package for Africa includes mass surveillance technology Africa sees development aid; China sees an expanding African database

Comments

BB, If a higher realm does exist, then there will be questions to which we mortals simply don't have answers. Some of your questions may be in that category, and you may have to decide some things without complete knowledge. What will you do then? If the failure on our part to answer any one question means that you will stick to only those beliefs that you feel you completely grasp, then how do you know you aren't artificially limiting yourself?EDTA_{July 28, 2019
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BB, note your loaded word, "assume." There is some serious evidence that is visible, absent imposition of a priori evolutionary materialism (as Lewontin described) as a lock-out crooked yardstick imposed as standard of straight, accurate, upright. A worldview BTW which is self-refuting and necessarily false. You are being pointed to some of a whole world of evidence, but as they say, you cannot make the horse drink. KFkairosfocus_{July 28, 2019
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KF
BB, why is there inescapably morally governed reasoning and not merely dynamic-stochastic processing on a computational substrate? KF
I’m afraid I don’t see what your point is. My questions are the ones that follow on if we assume that the soul exists and that it is eternal. If you are interested in addressing any or all of them, I would enjoy the discussion.Brother Brian_{July 28, 2019
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FE & SAZ etc, there is considerable overlap among: soul, spirit, heart, mind and more. They all pivot on there being an inner man that transcends merely material properties. KF PS: Again, I am reminded of Reppert:
. . . let us suppose that brain state A [--> notice, state of a wetware, electrochemically operated computational substrate], which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief [--> concious, perceptual state or disposition] that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.
I have long since put up the Smith Model with a two-tier controller cybernetic loop model as a useful context. I recently spoke to a supervisory oracle that can be viewed in terms of a fifth dimensional interface.kairosfocus_{July 28, 2019
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BB, why is there inescapably morally governed reasoning and not merely dynamic-stochastic processing on a computational substrate? KF PS: Reppert:
. . . let us suppose that brain state A [--> notice, state of a wetware, electrochemically operated computational substrate], which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief [--> concious, perceptual state or disposition] that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.
kairosfocus_{July 28, 2019
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And while atheistic materialists are at a complete loss to explain how particles can be instantly correlated,,,
Quantum correlations do not imply instant causation – August 12, 2016 Excerpt: A research team led by a Heriot-Watt scientist has shown that the universe is even weirder than had previously been thought. In 2015 the universe was officially proven to be weird. After many decades of research, a series of experiments showed that distant, entangled objects can seemingly interact with each other through what Albert Einstein famously dismissed as “Spooky action at a distance”. A new experiment by an international team led by Heriot-Watt’s Dr Alessandro Fedrizzi has now found that the universe is even weirder than that: entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do. http://phys.org/news/2016-08-quantum-imply-instant-causation.html Experimental test of nonlocal causality – August 10, 2016 DISCUSSION Previous work on causal explanations beyond local hidden-variable models focused on testing Leggett’s crypto-nonlocality (7, 42, 43), a class of models with a very specific choice of hidden variable that is unrelated to Bell’s local causality (44). In contrast, we make no assumptions on the form of the hidden variable and test all models ,,, Our results demonstrate that a causal influence from one measurement outcome to the other, which may be subluminal, superluminal, or even instantaneous, cannot explain the observed correlations.,,, http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600162.full
,,, And while atheistic materialists are at a complete loss to explain how particles can be instantly correlated, on the other hand Christian Theists readily have a beyond space-time, matter-energy, cause that they can appeal to in order to explain quantum non-locality:
Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
And this ‘spooky action at a distance’ of ‘non-local’ quantum entanglement, which requires a cause which is beyond space-time, matter-energy, in order to explain its existence, is now found to be ubiquitous within molecular biology:
“What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information or the electron clouds and the protons. So mathematically you can describe that as a quantum/classical state.” Elisabeth Rieper – Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information resides along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it) https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176 Classical and Quantum Information Channels in Protein Chain – Dj. Koruga, A. Tomi?, Z. Ratkaj, L. Matija – 2006 Abstract: Investigation of the properties of peptide plane in protein chain from both classical and quantum approach is presented. We calculated interatomic force constants for peptide plane and hydrogen bonds between peptide planes in protein chain. On the basis of force constants, displacements of each atom in peptide plane, and time of action we found that the value of the peptide plane action is close to the Planck constant. This indicates that peptide plane from the energy viewpoint possesses synergetic classical/quantum properties. Consideration of peptide planes in protein chain from information viewpoint also shows that protein chain possesses classical and quantum properties. So, it appears that protein chain behaves as a triple dual system: (1) structural – amino acids and peptide planes, (2) energy – classical and quantum state, and (3) information – classical and quantum coding. Based on experimental facts of protein chain, we proposed from the structure-energy-information viewpoint its synergetic code system. http://www.scientific.net/MSF.518.491 Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules – Mar. 6, 2015 Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say. That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.” The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,, “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?” https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552
Besides providing direct empirical falsification to neo-Darwinian claims in general, claims that say immaterial information does not exist apart from its representation on a material substrate, the implication of finding 'non-local', beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every DNA and protein molecule, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. That pleasant implication, or course, being the fact that we now have very strong physical evidence directly implying that we do indeed have an eternal soul that lives beyond the death of our material bodies. In the following video Stuart Hameroff states 'it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
“Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” - Stuart Hameroff - Quantum Entangled Consciousness - Life After Death - video (5:00 minute mark) https://youtu.be/jjpEc98o_Oo?t=300
As to scientifically establishing the physical reality of heaven and hell,.. Whereas, atheists have no compelling evidence for all the various extra dimensions, parallel universe and/or multiverse scenarios that they have put forth to 'explain away' fine tuning, quantum wave collapse, etc. etc. (in fact there is much evidence that can be mustered against those claims), Christians, on the other hand, can appeal directly to the higher dimensional mathematics behind Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity and General Relativity to support their belief that God upholds this universe in its continual existence, as well as to support their belief in a heavenly dimension and in a hellish dimension. Here is a video where I lay out and defend that line of evidence:
Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, General Relativity and Christianity - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4QDy1Soolo
Thus BB, far from life after death and your eternal soul being figments of imagination, the fact of the matter is that our most powerful theories in science, relativity and quantum mechanics respectfully, now provide the Christian Theist with many lines of powerful scientific evidence for his belief in life after death and an eternal soul. Moreover on top of all that, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”. Here are a few posts where I lay out and defend some of the evidence for that claim: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-multiverse-is-just-religion-theoretical-physicist-charges/#comment-680519 Verses and Music:
Mark 8:37 “Is anything worth more than your soul?” John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. Casting Crowns - The Word is Alive (Lyrics) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnh4V7fcnZ0
bornagain77_{July 28, 2019
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BB, as EDTA alluded to, your questions are more of a theological and philosophical nature than they are of a scientific nature. It seems to me, scientifically speaking, since you apparently do not believe in life after death or that you have an eternal soul, the first questions you should have asked, as far as the science itself is concerned, is, “What scientific evidence do you have for life after death and for an eternal soul?” In regards to life after death, the scientific evidence for life after death is far, far, more robust than the scientific evidence for Darwinian evolution is. As Dr. Egnor explains, “The most "parsimonious" explanation -- the simplest scientific explanation -- is that the (Near Death) experience was real. Tens of millions of people have had such experiences. That is tens of millions of more times than we have observed the origin of species , (or the origin of life, or the origin of a protein/gene, or the origin of a molecular machine), which is never.,,, The materialist reaction, in short, is unscientific and close-minded. NDE's show fellows like Coyne at their sneering unscientific irrational worst. Somebody finds a crushed fragment of a fossil and it's earth-shaking evidence. Tens of million of people have life-changing spiritual experiences and it's all a big yawn.”
Near-Death Experiences: Putting a Darwinist's Evidentiary Standards to the Test - Dr. Michael Egnor - October 15, 2012 Excerpt: Indeed, about 20 percent of NDE's are corroborated, which means that there are independent ways of checking about the veracity of the experience. The patients knew of things that they could not have known except by extraordinary perception -- such as describing details of surgery that they watched while their heart was stopped, etc. Additionally, many NDE's have a vividness and a sense of intense reality that one does not generally encounter in dreams or hallucinations.,,, The most "parsimonious" explanation -- the simplest scientific explanation -- is that the (Near Death) experience was real. Tens of millions of people have had such experiences. That is tens of millions of more times than we have observed the origin of species , (or the origin of life, or the origin of a protein/gene, or of a molecular machine), which is never.,,, The materialist reaction, in short, is unscientific and close-minded. NDE's show fellows like Coyne at their sneering unscientific irrational worst. Somebody finds a crushed fragment of a fossil and it's earth-shaking evidence. Tens of million of people have life-changing spiritual experiences and it's all a big yawn. Note: Dr. Egnor is professor and vice-chairman of neurosurgery at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/near_death_expe_1065301.html
As to the physical reality of the eternal soul itself. Believe it or not the question of whether we actually have a soul or not plays right into the main debate between ID advocates and Darwinists. The main debate between ID advocates and Darwinists is over the inability of material processes to generate information. Darwinists simply have zero scientific evidence that material processes can generate non-trivial levels of information. Whereas, on the other hand, ID advocates have a veritable infinity of examples that they can point to of intelligent minds generating massive amounts of information information. What is interesting about information, and one of the primary reasons that material processes will never be able explain to origination of information, is the immaterial nature of information. As Dr. Stephen Meyer explains, “information is a mass-less quantity. Now, if information is not a material entity, then how can any materialistic explanation account for its origin? How can any material cause explain it’s origin? And this is the real and fundamental problem that the presence of information in biology has posed. It creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic, evolutionary scenarios because information is a different kind of entity that matter and energy cannot produce.”
“One of the things I do in my classes, to get this idea across to students, is I hold up two computer disks. One is loaded with software, and the other one is blank. And I ask them, ‘what is the difference in mass between these two computer disks, as a result of the difference in the information content that they posses’? And of course the answer is, ‘Zero! None! There is no difference as a result of the information. And that’s because information is a mass-less quantity. Now, if information is not a material entity, then how can any materialistic explanation account for its origin? How can any material cause explain it’s origin? And this is the real and fundamental problem that the presence of information in biology has posed. It creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic, evolutionary scenarios because information is a different kind of entity that matter and energy cannot produce. In the nineteenth century we thought that there were two fundamental entities in science; matter, and energy. At the beginning of the twenty first century, we now recognize that there’s a third fundamental entity; and its ‘information’. It’s not reducible to matter. It’s not reducible to energy. But it’s still a very important thing that is real; we buy it, we sell it, we send it down wires. Now, what do we make of the fact, that information is present at the very root of all biological function? In biology, we have matter, we have energy, but we also have this third, very important entity; information. I think the biology of the information age, poses a fundamental challenge to any materialistic approach to the origin of life.” -Dr. Stephen C. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of science from Cambridge University for a dissertation on the history of origin-of-life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences. Intelligent design: Why can't biological information originate through a materialistic process? - Stephen Meyer - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqiXNxyoof8
In further establishing the immaterial nature of information, it is interesting to note that immaterial information can be encoded on a virtual endless variety of material substrates, and yet the meaning of the information never changes from one material substrate to the next. i.e. Immaterial information is simply not reducible to a materialistic explanation! George Ellis further elucidates the immaterial nature of information and of mind in the following excellent article,,
Recognising Top-Down Causation - George Ellis Excerpt: page 5: A: Causal Efficacy of Non Physical entities: Both the program and the data are non-physical entities, indeed so is all software. A program is not a physical thing you can point to, but by Definition 2 it certainly exists. You can point to a CD or flashdrive where it is stored, but that is not the thing in itself: it is a medium in which it is stored. The program itself is an abstract entity, shaped by abstract logic. Is the software “nothing but” its realisation through a specific set of stored electronic states in the computer memory banks? No it is not because it is the precise pattern in those states that matters: a higher level relation that is not apparent at the scale of the electrons themselves. It’s a relational thing (and if you get the relations between the symbols wrong, so you have a syntax error, it will all come to a grinding halt). This abstract nature of software is realised in the concept of virtual machines, which occur at every level in the computer hierarchy except the bottom one [17]. But this tower of virtual machines causes physical effects in the real world, for example when a computer controls a robot in an assembly line to create physical artefacts. Excerpt page 7: The assumption that causation is bottom up only is wrong in biology, in computers, and even in many cases in physics, ,,, The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities. http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Ellis_FQXI_Essay_Ellis_2012.pdf
Moreover, one of the primary presuppositions of Darwinists is that they hold that information to be merely emergent from a material basis. Yet, contrary to that primary presupposition of Darwinists, immaterial information is now shown to be its own distinct physical entity that is separate from matter and energy, A distinct physical entity that has, of all things, a ‘thermodynamic content’.
Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010 Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform
In fact, researchers have now built “ an information engine—a device that converts information into work—with an efficiency that exceeds the conventional second law of thermodynamics.”
Information engine operates with nearly perfect efficiency - Lisa Zyga - January 19, 2018 Excerpt: Physicists have experimentally demonstrated an information engine—a device that converts information into work—with an efficiency that exceeds the conventional second law of thermodynamics. Instead, the engine's efficiency is bounded by a recently proposed generalized second law of thermodynamics, and it is the first information engine to approach this new bound.,,, https://phys.org/news/2018-01-efficiency.html
Although the preceding is certainly very strong empirical evidence for the physical reality of immaterial information, the coup de grace for demonstrating that immaterial information is its own distinct physical entity, separate from matter and energy, is Quantum Teleportation:
Quantum Teleportation Enters the Real World – September 19, 2016 Excerpt: Two separate teams of scientists have taken quantum teleportation from the lab into the real world. Researchers working in Calgary, Canada and Hefei, China, used existing fiber optics networks to transmit small units of information across cities via quantum entanglement — Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.”,,, This isn’t teleportation in the “Star Trek” sense — the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,, ,,, it is only the information that gets teleported from one place to another. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/09/19/quantum-teleportation-enters-real-world/#.V-HqWNEoDtR
Moreover, this immaterial quantum information that is now shown to be physically real is also found to be 'conserved'. That is to say, 'the conservation of quantum information means that quantum information cannot be created nor destroyed.'
Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html
Moreover, it is also important to note at this time that Quantum non-locality, i.e. ‘spooky action at a distance’ as Einstein termed it, is one of the most enigmatic, and yet is also one of the most verified, aspects of Quantum Mechanics.
“I cannot seriously believe in it because the theory cannot be reconciled with the idea that physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance.” Einstein – (The Born-Einstein Letters, p.155) Godel proved mathematics is incomplete,,, Secularists cannot make God dispensible Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php Einstein vs quantum mechanics, and why he’d be a convert today – June 13, 2014 Excerpt: In a nutshell, experimentalists John Clauser, Alain Aspect, Anton Zeilinger, Paul Kwiat and colleagues have performed the Bell proposal for a test of Einstein’s hidden variable theories. All results so far support quantum mechanics. It seems that when two particles undergo entanglement, whatever happens to one of the particles can instantly affect the other, even if the particles are separated! - per physorg Einstein wouldn’t like it: New test proves universe is “spooky” – Oct 21, 2015 Excerpt: Eighty years after the physicist (Einstein) dismissed as “spooky” the idea that simply observing one particle could instantly change another far-away object, Dutch scientists said on Wednesday they had proved decisively that the effect was real. Writing in the journal Nature, researchers detailed an experiment showing how two electrons at separate locations 1.3 km (0.8 mile) apart on the Delft University of Technology campus demonstrated a clear, invisible and instantaneous connection. Importantly, the new study closed loopholes in earlier tests that had left some doubt as to whether the eerie connection predicted by quantum theory was real or not. Einstein famously insisted in a 1935 scientific paper that what he called “spooky action at a distance” had to be wrong and there must be undiscovered properties of particles to explain such counter-intuitive behavior. The idea certainly confounds our day-to-day experience of the world, where change only appears to occur through local interactions. But in recent decades scientific evidence has been building that particles can indeed become “entangled”, so that no matter how far apart they are, they will always be connected. The Delft experiment is conclusive because, for the first time, scientists have closed two potential loopholes at once. The first suggests that particles could somehow synchronize behavior ahead of time, while the second implies that testing might detect only a subset of prepared entangled pairs. To prove their case, the team led by Delft professor Ronald Hanson used two diamonds containing tiny traps for electrons with a magnetic property called spin and measured all entangled pairs across 1.3 km separating two laboratories. The experiment effectively closes a chapter in an 80-year scientific debate, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/21/us-science-universe-einstein-idUSKCN0SF2GQ20151021
bornagain77_{July 28, 2019
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Or, assume that answers to all such questions _were_ available: then the belief system being discussed would necessarily be one that would completely fit inside a human mind. Therefore, it would not be talking about anything transcendent, and it would be no bigger or better than the human mind holding it.EDTA_{July 28, 2019
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BB @ 7, I'm sure there are Christians/theists who are more than willing to speculate on these matters, but most of those questions are on matters that are truly outside our realm. In fact, if there is a higher realm, we should expect there to be many things that we do not know. We should even expect there to be things we cannot even conceive of. To come at it from the opposite direction, i.e., to insist that answers be available for any pose-able question is to presume that we have access to everything, and can comprehend everything that is, including things outside the physical realm. I see no reason to accept such a premise. The lack of forthcoming and satisfactory answers to these questions therefore does not mean much. It certainly does not provide evidence against theism or Christianity.EDTA_{July 28, 2019
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I understand that people here think that the soul actually exists, that it is eternal, and that it survives death. But this raises a few questions. 1) By eternal, are you only referring to the life of the current universe? 2) Where did the soul reside in the billions of years before the human was born? 3) Are there a finite number of souls? 4) When does the soul enter the physical human? 5) Do identical twins have one soul or two? 6) Do fraternal twin fetuses that have merged into one early in development have two souls or one? I have many more questions but these are good enough to start.Brother Brian_{July 28, 2019
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There is considerable confusion and not a little overlap in the meanings (and usages) of "soul" and "spirit" in the Bible and in modern usage. In Genesis 2:7, as I understand it, God breaths a spirit (breath of life) into Adam and he becomes a living soul (being). The soul may refer to the spirit of the entire person, depending on how it is used, whereas the spirit is always non-physical. Hence, the SOS signal, "save our souls", usually requests physical rescue rather than spiritual redemption. Perhaps the switch from OT Hebrew to NT Greek causes some of the confusion? Not knowing much of either, I cannot say.Fasteddious_{July 28, 2019
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"When the creature stops breathing, the soul is dead." So you think that in heaven that we will not breathe?
“The moment we take our last breath on earth, we take our first in heaven.” - Billy Graham Crystal McVea, Author, Says She Smelled God During Near-Death Experience Excerpt: A woman who said she saw, heard, spoke with and even smelled God during a near-death experience in 2009 recounted her experiences on an episode of Fox News‘ “Fox and Friends“ on Tuesday. Crystal McVea, an Oklahoma native, said she spent time in heaven when she went into full respiratory arrest after a medical procedure on Dec. 10, 2009. She said the experience renewed her faith in Christianity. Speaking with Fox’s Gretchen Carlson, McVea said the moment she closed her eyes in the hospital, she opened them in heaven. “I had angels, I had God, and I fell to my knees in front of him,” she said. After Carlson asked her to describe God, McVea answered that while “human words” failed to describe what heaven looked like, she could describe God as “an immense brightness –- a brightness I could feel, taste, touch, hear, smell –- that infused me. Not like I had five senses, but maybe like I had 500 senses.” Twice, McVea said God asked her if she wanted to return back to Earth, and twice McVea said she chose to stay. “All my life, I was a doubter,” McVea said. She had heard the stories and gone to church, but wasn’t completely convinced. “And so, to close my eyes and open them and be standing in front of the creator of not only the universe, but of me, i never wanted to leave that.” Despite her objections, McVea said God sent her back to her body after “freeing” her from her shame and guilt. McVea has written about her experience in a book titled Waking Up In Heaven. According to Scientific American, 3 percent of the U.S. population reported having a near-death experience. ,,, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/crystal-mcvea-smelled-god-near-death-experience_n_3007864
bornagain77_{July 28, 2019
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SmartAZ @ 3
Soul is a Hebrew concept, a synonym for a living breathing creature. When the creature stops breathing, the soul is dead. Anybody who uses the word in any other context either doesn’t know what they are talking about, or is trying to sell something you don’t need. Except musicians. Musicians are cool, and they know exactly what they mean by “soul”.
What about the “Hebrew” who said: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Does he not know what he is talking about? Was he trying to sell something you don’t need?awstar_{July 28, 2019
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Soul is a Hebrew concept, a synonym for a living breathing creature. When the creature stops breathing, the soul is dead. Anybody who uses the word in any other context either doesn't know what they are talking about, or is trying to sell something you don't need. Except musicians. Musicians are cool, and they know exactly what they mean by "soul".SmartAZ_{July 28, 2019
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Belief in human souls and the existence of a supernatural God are the foundations of the oldest pieces of human culture. Bushmen of the Kalahari and natives of Tierra del Fuego (and everybody in between) believed in God and souls when they were first contacted by European explorers. So those beliefs MUST BE at least 50,000 years old, out of Africa-wise. Every human religion consists of 3 parts: ceremony, doctrine, and personal religious experience. Most "religious" people (e.g., me) never have a personal religious experience, but they accept enough doctrine from a specific religion to avoid having to build a complete religion of their own. I understand that part of Jewish doctrine is that humans do NOT have souls. What Jehovah promised The Chosen People was happiness ON THIS EARTH. And when their mortal bodies die, the mortal bodies are buried in the ground where they "sleep with their ancestors". I guess that there are other religions (the ancient Romans?) that believe in God, but not in immortal souls. There might some day be a very lucky doctor who can prove that a clinically dead body is reanimated (an interesting term) by the return of the Soul to its mere Earthly container, but once you Believe, there isn't any need for proofs.vmahuna_{July 28, 2019
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Nothing new or techy about this. China's religion has ALWAYS been worshipping the emperor.polistra_{July 28, 2019
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