It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
The fact that the "I" can even ponder the existence of a soul, or the non-existence of it, is proof enough for me there is indeed a "soul"
In one of their patients, "Paul S." his right hemisphere was more developed in language ability before the operation. This is uncommon but does sometimes happen. The fact that Paul's right hemisphere was developed in verbal response enabled Sperry and Gazzaniga to interview both sides of the split brain. When the researchers asked the right side what he wanted to be, he answered an automobile racer while his left side stated he wanted to be a draftsman. Paul was asked other similar questions, which gave the researchers insight on the hidden differences between the hemispheres. Another patient also exhibited strange behaviors with his right and left hands. His right hand was trying to pull up his pants while the left hand was trying to pull then down. A similar incident occurred when a split-brain patient was having an argument with his wife. The patient was attacking his wife with his left hand while his right hand was defending her(5).
Originally posted by Speakeasy1981
Some of you are being taken for a ride. That image of the supposed soul leaving the body is, oddly enough, also used in an ad for the "Evergain Portable FarInfraRed Health Sauna"
Evergain Portable FarInfraRed Health Sauna
Scroll down half the page. In fact, it appears that the image used in this thread is even cropped from the one used to sell this health sauna.
People should be a bit more skeptical.
[edit on 27-8-2009 by Speakeasy1981]
Originally posted by jinx880101
Does your soul then stay in 'limbo' for those 49 days?
Originally posted by kalenga
Apart from that I do believe that an entity does leave the body when it dies. My sister works in an old people's home where death is frequent. She recalled to me that she saw a spirit leave a man's body from his bed. She stood aside to let him pass and followed him to his wife's bedside in another room up the corridor. The next morning the wife was found dead as well. She said he looked like a white shadow of the man without any features but had arms and legs but he floated down the corridor as in like a spirit.
The merge of spiritually and science is inevitable and accelerating.
What does cognitive neuroscience have to do with the soul? You confusing software for hardware.
The brain, like it or not, is a machine. Scientists have come to that conclusion not because they are mechanistic killjoys but because they have amassed evidence that every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain. Using functional MRI, they can almost read people's thoughts from the blood flow in their brains. They can tell, for instance, whether a person is thinking about a face or a place or whether a picture the person is looking at is of a bottle or a shoe.
And consciousness can be pushed around by physical manipulations. Electrical stimulation of the brain during surgery can cause a person to have hallucinations that are indistinguishable from reality, such as a song playing in the room or a childhood birthday party. ~ Steven Pinker: Department of Psychology Harvard University.
The topic of consciousness is much like sex was in the Victorian age. Scientifically, sex is just another part of biology, but in many societies, studying it violates a stern taboo. Once we begin to observe sexuality - or consciousness - a lot of the clouds of mystery seem to drift away. That isn't to say that consciousness doesn't come with a great many stubborn mysteries. The topic of gravity, after all, is still mysterious four centuries after Issac Newton first described it. But the difference is, there is no taboo about trying to understand gravity. ~ Bernard Baars, Neuroscience Institute.
Consciousness is an emergent property and not a process in and of itself. Our cognitive capacities, memories and dreams reflect distributed processes throughout the brain. The thousand conscious moments we have in a given day reflect one of our networks being up for duty. When it finishes, the next one pops up, and the pipe-organ-like device plays it's tune all day long. What makes emergent human consciousness so vibrant is that the human pipe organ has lots of tunes to play, whereas the rat's has a few. And the more we know, the richer the concert. ~ Michael Gazzaniga: SAGE Center for the study of Mind - University of California.
There appears to be what Wittgenstein called an "unbridgeable gulf" between the brain and the conscious mind. The paradox of the mind-body problem is that the cause of consciousness in the brain is not discoverable by inspecting the brain. Nevertheless, consciousness is surely a natural biological product, as devoid of the otherworldly as digestion. So why is it so hard to fathom? The answer lies in ourselves: our brains have not evolved the equipment to resolve this mystery. They go blank when they try to understand how they produce the awareness that is our prized essence. ~ Colin McGinn: Professor of Philosophy @ University of Miami
The trouble wit this hypothesis (the hard problem of consciousness) is that it declares it's untestability at the outset. There is nothing Steve (Pinker) could do or say under any circumstances that would provide the slightest grounds for either dismissing or confirming the reality of his experience. There could not be an objective test to distinguish a clever robot from a conscious person. Now you have a choice: you can either cling to the Hard Problem, or you can shake your head in wonder and dismiss it. We've learned to do this before: it still seems that the sun goes around the earth, be we know better. It's not all that difficult, now that we've made so much progress on the Easy Problems. Just let go. ~ Daniel Dennett.
The Brain uses the mind/soul like the lungs use oxygen... ...you wouldn't say that our lungs create oxygen.
Originally posted by Lasheic
Half of America can't even seem to grasp something as simple as "Reproduction with variation checked against natural selection = evolution" -
Originally posted by Lasheic
Quotes below come from Time Magazines recent publication "Your Brain: A User's Guide"
"And consciousness can be pushed around by physical manipulations."
Consciousness is an emergent property and not a process in and of itself. Our cognitive capacities, memories and dreams reflect distributed processes throughout the brain. The thousand conscious moments we have in a given day reflect one of our networks being up for duty. When it finishes, the next one pops up, and the pipe-organ-like device plays it's tune all day long.
Are you seriously suggesting that the "Soul" is an environmental stimulus that our bodies absorb and process? Be that the case, then were is the evidence for such a phenomena? How do you propose the mechanism for interaction with our brain operates?
If it only affects our brains, then what - exactly - is so unique about the composition of our neurons which allow it to sequester or catalyze the "soul" from the environment?
The answer lies in ourselves: our brains have not evolved the equipment to resolve this mystery.
(Note: I don't agree with McGinn's assessment that the brain is not powerful enough to comprehend the depths of the brain. Alone, yes, but not when you add in the augmentation to human thought that computers have allowed.)
The soul is being "poured" through the brain. That is why we are constantly perceiving the immediate now.
Check out this thread. www.abovetopsecret.com...
No, this is incorrect, although a theory of quantum gravity is to be hoped for at some point in the future. Please read the paper. If you have not even grasped what it is about, how likely is it that your speculations about what it means are correct? ~ Astyanax in response to BadMedia
Looks like this thread is going to die of God suffocation. What could well be a watershed in our understanding of the physical world, and nobody here seems to care because they're too busy plugging their own tunnelvision line. ~ Astyanax in response to YOU.
Originally posted by Jezus
Who’s Minding the Mind?
www.nytimes.com...
"The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java."
“Well, we’re finding that we have these unconscious behavioral guidance systems that are continually furnishing suggestions through the day about what to do next, and the brain is considering and often acting on those, all before conscious awareness...
Dr. Bargh added: “Sometimes those goals are in line with our conscious intentions and purposes, and sometimes they’re not.” "
"The brain appears to use the very same neural circuits to execute an unconscious act as it does a conscious one. In a study that appeared in the journal Science in May, a team of English and French neuroscientists performed brain imaging on 18 men and women who were playing a computer game for money. The players held a handgrip and were told that the tighter they squeezed when an image of money flashed on the screen, the more of the loot they could keep.
As expected, the players squeezed harder when the image of a British pound flashed by than when the image of a penny did — regardless of whether they consciously perceived the pictures, many of which flew by subliminally. But the circuits activated in their brains were similar as well: an area called the ventral pallidum was particularly active whenever the participants responded.
“This area is located in what used to be called the reptilian brain, well below the conscious areas of the brain,” said the study’s senior author, Chris Frith, a professor in neuropsychology at University College London who wrote the book “Making Up The Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World.”
The results suggest a “bottom-up” decision-making process, in which the ventral pallidum is part of a circuit that first weighs the reward and decides, then interacts with the higher-level, conscious regions later, if at all, Dr. Frith said.
"Scientists have spent years trying to pinpoint the exact neural regions that support conscious awareness, so far in vain"
"Yet the new research on priming makes it clear that we are not alone in our own consciousness. We have company, an invisible partner who has strong reactions about the world that don’t always agree with our own, but whose instincts, these studies clearly show, are at least as likely to be helpful, and attentive to others, as they are to be disruptive."
Originally posted by Jezus
reply to post by Navieko
I agree with that because I can never really prove that any other observers exist besides myself.
I assume that other people are not biological robots but for all I know the very "person" I am having this debate with is just a brain responding to stimulation.
I can only prove definitively with my own consciousness that I have a "mind".
en.wikipedia.org...
This is because each world has been specifically created by very different fundamental laws that cannot be broken.
we should be equally respectful/open minded of whatever "world" someone decides to place their faith.
Consciousness is not a synonym for soul.
Main Entry: soul
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: psyche, inspiration, energy
Synonyms: anima, animating principle, animation, animus, ardor, bosom, bottom, breast, breath of life, cause, conscience, courage, disposition, ego, elan vital, essence, feeling, fervor, force, genius, heart, individuality, intellect, intelligence, life, marrow, mind, nobility, noumenon, personality, pith, pneuma, principle, quintessence, reason, recesses of heart, secret self, spirit, spiritual being, stuff, substance, thought, vital force, vitality, vivacity
soul (n)
Synonyms: spirit, consciousness, psyche, will, essence, being
* Main Entry: psy·che
* Pronunciation: \ˈsī-kē\
* Function: noun
* Etymology: Latin, from Greek psychē soul
* Date: 1590
1 capitalized : a princess loved by Cupid
2 [Greek psychē] a : soul, personality