This is an astronomy forum. As such it is understandable that from time to time we want / need to discuss things a little off topic... With some relationship or not to astronomy. I can see the link, but understand why some do not. That is why this 'Off topic babbling' is even here. The subject of this thread is how do we, or. Can we prove the existence of some thing that we seem to have no proof of.?

This forum has rules. If you want to break them, fine. but some place else a... DO NOT DERAIL MY PAGE.

I will not talk of things unscientific. Will not, norr do I want to. Most of what I have to say on this is little more than opinion. Thats mine... not yours.
I do however want to understand what I do not. For that I need to listen and understand differing opinion. It will always be my right to disagree.
For those interested you will have noticed the start of an endless discussion regarding the soul and what if any connection to the finding of the Hoggs Boson Particle. Whatever that might be proven to be.. That thread has been closed and warranted that action because of what might be seen as intolerance for differing opinions... I will not demonstrate such here.. I want to learn. The why. The how.
So, it would seem that some people see a soul as some part of the human being that can at death leave the body and live on. I wish to examine this and understand what proof or evidence there is for this understanding. Can you help me ?

Is that the fat one? sorry, but I couldn't resist...

Proof. Evidence. The former is something best left to the mathematicians. Evidence, on the other hand, can range from very, very iron-clad, to tenuous and misleading, at best, and still be considered "evidence." To qualify what's acceptable or not, various venues which consider evidence have their own rules, which are called, amazingly enough, "the rules of evidence."

Would personal testimony count among your rules of evidence? How about photos? What if they're doctored?

Obviously, the bit about mass reduction at the moment of death was absurd. If there were any measurable amount, we'd be exploding at death rather than merely giving up our last breath.

In the other thread, I proposed using various brain scan techniques to map out the differences between those who believe they're connected with the spiritual world and those who don't believe it exists at all. If there is a difference, it wouldn't necessarily constitute evidence of a spiritual world. Rather, it may only constitute evidence that something in the brains of those who're spiritual works differently than the brains of those who aren't. Perhaps the spiritualists are in touch with a facet of the human mind the pragmaticists are not. On the other hand, it may be the pragmaticists who're fully in touch with their intuition, and recognize it and call it as such.

But making that determination is step two, if not three or four.

The first step is finding out if there's a difference between the brains.

I had another thought this afternoon - what if the difference isn't in the brains, but in the lower central or peripheral nervous system itself? Could there be a sort of memory in the spinal cord? How about distributed throughout the body? Perhaps one, the other, or both function as a separate "brain," as do the left and right lobes of the human brain, but given the nature of the connection, while they're great at controlling certain functions and providing feedback, they may be poor at basic communication. Thus, that communication from the spinal cord, the PNS, or both isn't understood, or even heard, directly, by the cerebral cortex...

...except as either intuition, or at a "spiritual" level.

Perhaps intuition itself is a melding of messages from the spinal cord and the PNS.

Who knows?

We do have the tools to do some mapping, so perhaps it's time someone smarter than me on brain and CNS/PNS functioning design a test and start testing.

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

Correct on both counts. From what I learned in that other thread, and from the Arp thread, for that matter, evidence can be presented as support for a theory even though its so-called support is weak or flawed.

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Huh?

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I realize the thread is supposed to only consider scientific evidence, but I'd suggest that it's hard to scientifically consider the concept of a soul without a firm definition of what is meant.

The closest thing to a rigorously-described version of the idea that I can think of comes from philosophy rather than religion (or maybe it's from the fringe between the two): substance dualism.

The linked article also includes some arguments in favor of dualism. Though I'll grant none of them are all that firmly rooted in empirical knowledge.

Thank you contributars... and yes that was a goofed attempt to write the Higgs Boson, , sorry. So yes slap a diet on him. Not Hoggs.
I am pleased with the level of intelligence thus far shown and the mods do not need worry. Lets keep it clean a...
As you might guess, I do not think the Higgs Boson particle has any weight in this discussion. It might be proven to be real or not. The soul is far more complex than a sub atomic particle is it not ? My take on this is thus; Those who pertain that a soul is real would have me except that the soul is the essence of. The caricature of. Memory and warts included of a dead person. While I am at it I have been told of out of body experiences and other strange things that could be attributed to this soul thingie... A human being without a body is not a human being. Its a Ghost. This I find perplexing and difficult to except as real.
I am that person who has as a core belief that in order for any thing to be real it must exist. I have no evidence of any exceptions. Do you ?
As I seem to have made up my mind already and have prejudged any talk of souls as a fiction I will now withdraw to a safe distance and watch to see if I can be persuaded to rethink this question;... and thanks for the input all.

1. "...and he breathed the breath of life into him, and the man became a living soul..."

2. "...the ship foundered with 120 souls aboard, and all were lost..."

The source of the first quote should be recognizeable; the second quote is from late 19th century usage. I would submit, that before blues music, a soul was considered an entire human being, not part of a person.

As far as OBEs (out of body experiences), I would submit that the spirit was what went out of body, in considering the entire person as a soul.

Just my two cents worth.

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Salty
"...with God, all things are possible..." Even evolution

I don't see why that follows. It is common to use some part of the body, even a non-existent one, as a metaphor for the entire body. Examples that comes to mind are "many mouths to feed" and "a head count". Even today it's OK to use "souls" metaphorically to mean people.

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As above, so below

Yes: using a part to stand for the whole (or the whole to stand for a part) is a common enough rhetorical device, called synecdoche.
I don't know if it's a local usage or not, but in my part of the world we'd commonly say "there wasn't a soul around" or "I couldn't see a soul" to mean "I was on my own". Thinking about it for the first time, I feel that the word "soul" slightly colours the sense of the phrases: we'd use them not just when there was no other person around, but when that absence of others induced a sense of loneliness or isolation.

Grant Hutchison

The question of a soul's existence, or your original question?

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Just as Jens has pointed out... when I said 'Rethink this question' I meant rethink this question...
that being my understanding of what a soul is. We have made progress because now I can say souls are some times people and a inference of loneliness is meant when the word is used that way.
When the media release says 'All 97 souls were lost.' That is not lost, but dead.
These are foible's of the language we use not the meaning of or explanations of a soul. I think use of this word soul is corrupted by this usage. It is little wonder we find confusion explaining a soul when it can be construed so simply to mean different things.
The core entity might be called the soul, but is it real. Can science show and tell.
I think not.
I am a directly effected by my circumstance. I have used programming as a good way of demonstrating this clearly. Every thing I say and think is as a direct result of the ever changing world I am part of. I learned that getting so close as to burn my clothing around a fire is a little foolish. This small fact I carry with me until death. It is not saved. It does not go, some place. The library is closed. decay and destruction are now at work... Can we as a scientific community tell people that their dream is a fiction., and Untrue. Only ever created by the scholars of society to frighten the ignorant masses into tithing for their after life insurance premiums.. No, that sounds a little unfair and will not serve my argument well. Could it be true,?
When we die. Do we.?
This is my problem. I am unwilling to concede that some form of entity might survive me. No, death is the final act. The secession of life. When it goes so to does all that memory and knowledge. No more active neural pathways. Dead.

The problem of answering your question with the scientific method, is that there are boundries. If not before, then since Darwin, science has taken a materialistic bent. Imho, by so doing, science disqualifies itself from investigating life after death. The soul could be an intangible part of a person; so could the mind or the spirit. Psychiatry bedevils itself, trying to apply the scientific method to discoveries about the mind. That's why, I think, in the 1950's, there was a Medical Arts building in Fort Worth.

If the soul and mind are to be taken out of their original religious context, then they ought to be examined by the Arts, not by science. Because science focuses on the material, only, it seems. And, it does that quite well.

So, I respectfully submit, that historians, philosophers and medical people bring science where it is awkward to apply its strengths. Don't get me wrong, medical science has made great strides in micro-biology; but then, in that field, discoveries bring about awkward ethics. That's all I'm saying, to that.

The heart of this post, is that people bring science beyond its operable limits, beyond its boundries, to discuss the intangible. That's why I demonstrated a tangible definition of a soul: to accomodate the materialistic bent of contemporary science. Science was not always materialistic. We've lost an insight, by gaining a material restriction to science, imho.

Let me stress, I am not saying that science invades; I am saying that some people try to apply science to an immaterial topic.

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Salty
"...with God, all things are possible..." Even evolution

The problem is, it will always fall back to defining what a soul actually is. Any which way you cut it, the idea of a soul is linked to a belief, whether it be dogmatic or a philosophy. Since each group is divided into many subgroups, the whole acknowledgement of a soul and what it means to the individual, the circumstances surrounding it's existance varies so greatly, it would be impossible to find a correct definition of a soul. Like Salty said, the topic resides beyond the the operable limits of science.

I can't offer anything at all about the substantive questions here, but I've thought it remarkable that people have the capacity to imagine their personality, mind, soul, or whatever, detached in some way from their current body - survival, reincarnation, transference etc.

I would have thought that this a property, presumably of the brain, capable of, and perhaps worth, study.

That's the word I was looking for, concerning OBEs: personality. Personality traits can be picked up from reading a really strong and really good writer. I've read novels and histories, and come away with a sense about the person who wrote it, a touch of the author's personality. I've come away with a touch of the author's personality.

I thought the following thought, in senior high school: "People never die, they are merely forgotten."

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Salty
"...with God, all things are possible..." Even evolution

Exactly. The existence of a soul (at least the way it is usually defined), like the existence of a Diety, is outside the realm of scientific investigation. The coin of that realm is evidence. In coin of the realm of faith is emotion. They are mutually exclusive, but do not violate one another. The only violation is when people mix the two.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

I personally define soul as the particular pattern, or signature if you will, which arises from the complex neural interactions in an individual´s brain. That pattern fades away as the brain ceases to function, some time after the heart is disabled.

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What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart

So you define the soul as a metaphor for a personality, right?

Hmm, right, I think.

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What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart

If there is a soul it has to be made up of something; it can't be nothing. This is where I think particle physics comes in, but I don't know how. If the soul is energy, it still is something, like light photons.

At death there is a brief release of breath and poof… vanished. All electrical currents cease, the brain is dead/dies.

Can an electrical current just die? Can mass/energy just disappear? Does it have to become or be something else?

Do my questions make sense? I am prepared for anything you have to say, I too would like to understand.

Thanks,
megr

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Beneath the stars came falling on our heads.
But they're just old light, they're just old light.

Regina Spektor - Samson

That definitely nails it for me.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

The energy dissipates. Just like from any heat source. Like a star, except smaller scale.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Could the soul/personality be the pattern of something, for example, electrical currents or potentials?

Yes, electrical current can just die.


Maybe computer memory is a good analogy. The soul/personality is the sum total of information stored on the RAM of the organic brain. Some types of RAM are volatile - as soon as you power down the computer, that information is lost.

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That seems iffy. At least as I understand it, the soul is supposed to be somewhat independent of the physical body and able to continue existing after the body's death. A pattern of activity within the body wouldn't fit that description.

Then there´s nothing to discuss. We already know it is impossible.

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What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart

Batteries "die". They are capable of providing electrical current only until their internal chemical processes can no longer sustain it. Of course, we don't store an electrical potential like batteries but we do have biochemical processes going on inside of us that produce current. Stopping those processes doesn't make the current "disappear"...it's just no longer produced.

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Brett
Peters Creek, Alaska
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Actually, the process is not very different from batteries. Both store the potential by moving ions.

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I wouldn't say impossible, but it is extremely far-fetched. Presumably a soul must somehow be created during the process of conception or prenatal development. It's hard to imagine that every sperm or egg cell has a soul, and the idea of pre-existing souls that attach themselves to an organism raises so many questions that I'm hesitant to even think about opening that can of worms.

Of course, so does a soul being created during the developmental process. That would imply that there is some form of hidden matter which is able to interact with the everyday stuff we're used to. But the interaction would have to be using means that we have yet to find any hint of, which seems unlikely considering that it's something that would be happening on an everyday basis.

The soul is also presumably being constructed according to a genetic code. DNA and RNA don't seem like likely candidates, since the soul clearly isn't made of proteins. But then, they're probably the only candidates since the prospect that cells contain an entirely separate genetic code and the mechanisms for working with it that remains undiscovered is very hard to believe. Maybe the genetic code includes a blueprint for chain of biochemical pathways that is consuming energy but not apparently doing anything with it (since the energy would be going toward influencing matter we haven't discovered yet). That, of course, would also have to remain undiscovered as well. Somebody would be making some noise if we knew about a portion of cell metabolism that is, by all appearances, violating conservation of energy.

True...and that was pretty much my point, if not well stated.

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Brett
Peters Creek, Alaska
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