/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

Science is bullshit. Disregard it, OP.

>>596661

A proper, Scholastic account of the soul as the form (this term has a very specific meaning in Scholasticism) of a living being will definitely help. In the end there is nothing to be afraid about in discoveries of neuroscience.

>>596668

What makes you say that anon?

>>596670

Can you elaborate on that or give any links to further reading?

>>596661

>I recently watched (in fact as of typing am watching) a show called

This is the problem. The talmudvision is designed to do this through many different angles of attack. Quasi-science is one of them. These people are not worthy of your trust. They will come up with any kind of presentation they can think of, based on misleading statements to make up their own conclusions. I guarantee you this stuff is not accurate based on who it's coming from; and it goes beyond highly speculative, the talmudvision is deliberately misleading people on a regular basis, under the false guise of science.

>>596661

If the mind is a product of the brain, it is a mere illusion, being result of mere chemical misfires. However, every illusion requires a subject to experience it. Vacuum cannot experience an illusion. Therefore, it is impossible for mind to be a product of matter, because its mere existence testifies of its reality, the illusion requires a subject, which can only be a real mind.

>>596661

>>596681

Pretty much this

>>596681

That’s a really convincing argument for the fact that we have an independent mind separate to the body, but to what extent is this mind?

Like is this mind only our personal identity? Or does it contain memory, emotion, etc etc?

>>596668

fuck you, God created all laws of nature. Science is the study of his creation. God made gravity, God made electricity, eveything is from Him. Why are you denying His creation?

God created us as biological machines. Our brains are basically meat CPUs. If that bothers you for some reason, feel free to second guess Him

As for me, I appreciate that God blessed me with a working brain, eyes, ears, fingers etc.

>>596661

The soul isn't physical. Electical signals in your body animating extremely sensitive and advanced prosthetics is not counterevidence to have a soul, since it is one physical process generating another.

>because it seemed heavily to support physicalalism

Science deals only with what is quantifiable and material. Even then, if they push are actually pushing physicalism/materialism, then

they are in error. That's all there is to it.

Also, this >>596681 and unironically to a certain extent this >596668

>>596691

Because what passes for science today is Godless garbage and unsustainable and unreliable technological crap, and which is passed on though half-assed popular journalism like what the OP watched. It has become a way for creatures to try to pretend they don't need Him.

>Shall the axe boast itself against him that cutteth with it? or shall the saw exalt itself against him by whom it is drawn? as if a rod should lift itself up against him that lifteth it up, and a staff exalt itself, which is but wood. (Is 10:15)

>>596661

I don't even know what >>596670 means (not to say he isn't speaking sense, just that I'm not learned) but none of this in anyway implies we don't have a soul, dw OP

>>596691 With the caveat that scientific enquiry can never actually make full truth claims literally the best it can do is allow us to say 'we haven proven this theory false…yet,' and therefore there is a distinct possibility that gravity, electricity and whatever else we've discovered through the scientific method is straight up bs, this. Don't listen to >>596668 despite the caveat this some zany ass horsesh*t right here

the flesh is a vessel

if the vessel is broken somewhere, it can have result in a part of the vessel not working as intended

if you can pick stuff up with a robotic arm attached to your head, then it means that they figured out how to make your spirit be able to move that robotic arm if it is somehow connected to your brain, even if its a one-way connection

>>596661

Explain free will if we are only the flesh.

>>596661

>This scares me because it seems to imply that we have no soul, that we are just physical brains.

Don't let it scare you. All it means is that our experience of the physical world, and our ability to interact with it, are both mediated through the brain.

Which makes much more sense than thinking that a lot of unconscious stuff, can suddenly become conscious, just because there is a lot of it, moving in complex ways.

>>596731

>what are emergent properties

That said, I don’t think anyone claiming to have definitive scientific explanations for subjective experience using hard materialism is being honest, but I think there may be an answer some day that bridges the gap

>>596746

>emergent properties

Are always of the same intrinsic quality as its parts. Matter may exhibit complex behavior, but it will always remain unconscious while doing so.

>I think there may be an answer some day that bridges the gap

So is this like a "God of the gaps" argument, but with the scientific theories of the future God's place?

>>596694

>Because what passes for science today is Godless garbage

There are shitty scientists, that doesn't mean science is shit

just like:

there are shitty Christians, doesn't mean Christianity is shit

>math teacher says "4x4=12"

<see? math is wrong and useless!

nope, just the teacher is wrong.

>>596681

Ooo, ooo, this is what I was talking about when I referred to philosophical arguments about the "mind" and making soul-believers of neuroscientists. (Well…)

Neuroscientists/philosophers are saying that the mind is a construct created by the brain to "project" reality at "you", but the "projection" to a ""you" implies there is a "you" to begin with, something that is possibly "outside" the function of the brain, leading to the option of there being a soul that "watches" the reality tv show called your life. While it's a poor analogy, think of it as like the little alien dude that "drove" the human machine in Men in Black (y'know, the guy that everyone was hunting for his jewel that was a universe inside it). The soul is "watching" the monitors which are projections of how the brain is making sense of all the data it receives from eyes and nerve endings, and ears and so on.

That someone is watching the show implies there is a someone TO watch the show.

>>596715

>>596675

Feser also wrote a book on this very subject called Philosophy of Mind. He touches on it a little in The Last Superstition as well.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oBsI_ay8K70

Watch this playlist then. The science shows we have a soul.

>>596661

The soul is the immaterial 'you', and you are not your body - not as in "born in the wrong body" obviously. The brain is an amazing thing in itself, but it's not where the consciousness sits, it's a tool, a means, to have the soul - 'you' - communicate with the material. For this reason, if there are more functioning neurons, the cognitive abilities are better, because the communication is better. If you cut half the brain out … you know what I mean. Such is the ability of communication not lost when losing the limb. Your brain still gets the signal going to move it, and when that is caught by an electrode, it can use the signal move an artificial arm. That's not witchcraft or anything, it's just how it is and it's amazing if you think about it.

Don't listen to fundies and others being like "muh science is shit" or "muh jewish science hurr", because they have no clue. Real science is not contra God - because it can not be by definition. It can only interpreted against God. And that's where personal agendas kick in.

>>596661

Why do you think its real?

>>596670

I agree with you. I can understand people being a bit nervous with this, there are very few resources from a Christian POV, and even less from a Catholic POV.

As long as you remember your morals, there shouldn't be anything to fear, unless your belief in them is weak.

>>596661

>imply that we have no soul

That shit is false, anon. I liked those stuff few years ago. Being a dumfuk i was.

Those things really can't explain faith exactly and it's clearly obvious they can't into Jesus and Saints too!

Their limit is that things have background and set up while there lies things only God'd do.

>This scares me because it seems to imply that we have no soul, that we are just physical brains.

Try explaining how it implies that, as rigorously as you know how to. I think that will clarify things.

The answer you'll eventually reach is that it doesn't. Popular depictions of neuroscience are intentionally framed in a way that suggests materialism, but that typically has very little to do with the underlying data. Your ancestors knew that physical stuff could have an impact on the way you think and perceive (we've had alcohol for millennia). None of them, or almost none, thought that meant they had to be materialists.

>>597132

Like stuff such as "if we remove this part of the brain then X happens, when a person is happy this part of the brain lights up".

I am very glad that there are brothers who have explained this in such a way that atheist-materialist tendencies get BTFO.

Words fail to get across the depth of what I'm asking, but here's the gist. I know I shouldn't really be questioning why God does what He does, but is there any particular purpose for God giving someone an autistic brain? The basic presumptions are 1) souls do NOT reincarnate, God makes them fresh and 2) autism is NOT a punishment.

>>598036

The quote is fake, brother.

Heisenberg was a devout lutheran, though, and frequently touched on how science and God is compatible.

Maybe this will help? It's written by the founder of the department for Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. The book aims to reconcile Christian students who are studying neuroscience or psychology

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Minds-Brains-Souls-Gods-Conversation-ebook/dp/B00EHIC9S2

Also Dr John Lennox probably has a talk on it idk

>>603627

Thank you for the book recommendation, brother. God bless!

The Allegory of the Television Set

The differences and connections between these two forms of heredity become easier to understand if we consider an analogy to television. Think of the pictures on the screen as the form that we are interested in. If you didn't know how the form arose, the most obvious explanation would be that there were little people inside the set whose shadows you were seeing on the screen. Children sometimes think in this manner. If you take the back off the set, however, and look inside, you find that there are no little people. Then you might get more subtle and speculate that the little people are microscopic and are actually inside the wires of the TV set. But if you look at the wires through a microscope, you can't find any little people there either.

You might get still more subtle and propose that the little people on the screen actually arise through "complex interactions among the parts of the set which are not yet fully understood." You might think this theory was proved if you chopped out a few transistors from the set. The people would disappear. If you put the transistors back, they would reappear. This might provide convincing evidence that they arose from within the set entirely on the basis of internal interaction.

Suppose that someone suggested that the pictures of little people come from outside the set, and the set picks up the pictures as a result of invisible vibrations to which the set is attuned. This would probably sound like a very occult and mystical explanation. You might deny that anything is coming into the set. You could even "prove it" by weighing the set switched off and switched on; it would weigh the same. Therefore, you could conclude that nothing is coming into the set.

>>603777

I think that is the position of modern biology, trying to explain everything in terms of what happens inside. The more explanations for form are looked for inside, the more elusive the explanations prove to be, and the more they are ascribed to ever more subtle and complex interactions, which always elude investigation. As I am suggesting, the forms and patterns of behavior are actually being tuned into by invisible connections arising outside the organism. The development of form is a result of both the internal organization of the organism and the interaction of the morphic fields to which it is tuned.

Genetic mutations can affect this development. Again think of the TV set. If we mutate a transistor or a condenser inside the set, you may get distorted pictures or sound. But this does not prove that the pictures and sound are programmed by these components. Nor does it prove that form and behavior are programmed by genes, if we find there are alterations in form and behavior as a result of genetic mutation.

There is another kind of mutation which is particularly interesting. Imagine a mutation in the tuning circuit of your set, such that it alters the resonant frequency of the tuning circuit. Tuning your TV depends on a resonant phenomenon; the tuner resonates at the same frequency as the frequency of the signal transmitted by the different stations. Thus tuning dials are measured in hertz, which is a measure of frequency. Imagine a mutation in the tuning system such that you tune to one channel and a different channel actually appears. You might trace this back to a single condenser or a single resistor which had undergone a mutation. But it would not be valid to conclude that the new programs you are seeing, the different people, the different films and advertisements, are programmed inside the component that has changed. Nor does it prove that form and behavior are programmed in the DNA when genetic mutations lead to changes in form and behavior. The usual assumption is that if you can show something alters as a result of a mutation, then that must be programmed by, or controlled by, or determined by, the gene. I hope this TV analogy makes it clear that that is not the only conclusion. It could be that it is simply affecting the tuning system.

>>602866

>if we remove this part of the brain then X happens

If a man's eyes are put out, that will severely alter his behavior. No one thinks that implies materialism. Why is this different?

>when a person is happy this part of the brain lights up

When a person is happy he smiles, too. No one thinks that implies materialism. Why is this different?