Questions On Biological Life

[suchandra]

Since it is now in the Vaishnava school-books - biological life is what the world of living entities is made of - these questions were asked by some students.

 

"Does that mean that a soulless animal gave birth to and raised the first 46-chromosome homo sapien with a soul? How did that work? Did that person mate with another soulless animal? Is the soul gene recessive or dominant?"

 

Is intelligent design pseudo scientific?

 

"All this jibber-jabber is beneath contempt. If the adjunct professor has a point, he has concealed it to perfection. Plato and Aristotle were pre-scientific thinkers and have absolutely nothing to do with the modern Intelligent Design™ movement, which is a pseudo-scientific disguise for fundamentalist theology."

 

Survey

 

"Which of the following comes closest to your view of human nature?

 

1. Humans are composed of three parts; e.g., body, soul, and spirit. (trichotomism)

2. Humans are composed of two parts: (dualism)

2a. A body and a soul.

2b. A body and a mind.

3. Humans are composed of one 'part': a physical body. (physicalism)

4. Who cares?"

 

Was this first human infant born by a soulless ape?

 

"That is, humans were said to have evolved from apes, and it made sense to assume that humans had souls but apes did not. However, this image cannot be pressed too far: was this first human infant born by a soulless ape?"

[Bishadi]

 

Since it is now in the Vaishnava school-books - biological life is what the world of living entities is made of - these questions were asked by some students.

"Does that mean that a soulless animal gave birth to and raised the first 46-chromosome homo sapien with a soul?

Or did man evolve from dirt (mass and energy)?

Yes!

All life has ‘purpose’ defined as ‘intent to continue.’

That change that occurred is simply that the ‘experience’ of life is felt. In a molecular or scientific frame, the energy of mind is associated to existence with the ability of predetermination; energy (light) is increasing potential greater than the reactive potential because of the entanglement to its environment. (see casimir) Meaning; that a spark of light is increasing its ‘flame’ greater that the fuel of (wood) consumption based on the input of sensory perception: entanglement to the environment.

Think in the line of a single celled organism and a rock. The organism has intent to continue, thereby moves to consume fuel/energy. It senses its surroundings to absorb more energy.

Now think in the lines of sentience; it is the association of other persons by words that entangles the present with the conscious of past experiences while predetermining the future in thought.

 

How did that work?

Energy is entangled to everything else. Sentience can experience this association to everything else.

 

Did that person mate with another soulless animal?

Of course, there had to be that first One.

 

Is the soul gene recessive or dominant?"

See autism. Alive in human body yet not conscious. A gene is not what makes sentience; the collective and order of interaction does.

Is intelligent design pseudo scientific?

ID, seems to be a combination of science within a religion but return to ‘phenomenon’ to represent the undefined.

 

Survey

"Which of the following comes closest to your view of human nature?

1. Humans are composed of three parts; e.g., body, soul, and spirit. (trichotomism)

2. Humans are composed of two parts: (dualism)

2a. A body and a soul.

2b. A body and a mind.

3. Humans are composed of one 'part': a physical body. (physicalism)

4. Who cares?"

Compassion; consciousness is what allows a physical body to experience existence.

The line items above are metaphorical descriptions.

i.e…. define body, soul, mind…….. without equal definitions between parties; they are words! (sounds, symbols)

[suchandra]

 

Or did man evolve from dirt (mass and energy)?

Yes!

All life has ‘purpose’ defined as ‘intent to continue.’

That change that occurred is simply that the ‘experience’ of life is felt. In a molecular or scientific frame, the energy of mind is associated to existence with the ability of predetermination; energy (light) is increasing potential greater than the reactive potential because of the entanglement to its environment. (see casimir) Meaning; that a spark of light is increasing its ‘flame’ greater that the fuel of (wood) consumption based on the input of sensory perception: entanglement to the environment.

Think in the line of a single celled organism and a rock. The organism has intent to continue, thereby moves to consume fuel/energy. It senses its surroundings to absorb more energy.

Now think in the lines of sentience; it is the association of other persons by words that entangles the present with the conscious of past experiences while predetermining the future in thought.

Energy is entangled to everything else. Sentience can experience this association to everything else.

Of course, there had to be that first One.

See autism. Alive in human body yet not conscious. A gene is not what makes sentience; the collective and order of interaction does.

ID, seems to be a combination of science within a religion but return to ‘phenomenon’ to represent the undefined.

Compassion; consciousness is what allows a physical body to experience existence.

The line items above are metaphorical descriptions.

i.e…. define body, soul, mind…….. without equal definitions between parties; they are words! (sounds, symbols)

Great point - well spoken Bishadi! At PONTIFICIA ACADEMIA PRO VITA, vatican.va it says something very similar, the spirit soul is an unique amazing individual, "The spiritual soul, which is the essential constituent of every subject belonging to the human species and is created directly by God, cannot be generated by the parents, produced by artificial fertilization or cloned. Furthermore, psychological development, culture and environment always lead to different personalities; this is a well-known fact even among twins, whose resemblance does not mean identity. The popular image or aura of omnipotence that accompanies cloning should at least be put into perspective. Despite this impossibility of involving the spirit, which is the source of personality, the thought of human cloning has already led to the imagining of hypothetical cases inspired by the desire for omnipotence: duplicating individuals endowed with exceptional talent and beauty; reproducing the image of departed loved ones; selecting healthy individuals immune from genetic diseases; the possibility of choosing a person's sex; producing selected frozen embryos to be transferred in utero at a later time to provide spare organs, etc.

By regarding these hypothetical cases as science fiction, proposals can soon be advanced for cloning considered "reasonable" or "compassionate": the procreation of a child in a family whose father suffers from aspermia or to replace the dying child of a widowed mother; one could say that these cases have nothing to do with the fantasies of science fiction.

But what would be the anthropological significance of this activity in the deplorable prospect of applying it to man?"

[Bishadi]

 

By regarding these hypothetical cases as science fiction, proposals can soon be advanced for cloning considered "reasonable" or "compassionate": the procreation of a child in a family whose father suffers from aspermia or to replace the dying child of a widowed mother; one could say that these cases have nothing to do with the fantasies of science fiction.

But what would be the anthropological significance of this activity in the deplorable prospect of applying it to man?"

Not sure the question but no need to worry about that 'uploading' of mind into an SAI or such. Them road blocks have already been identified but stem cell research and simulating dna is old news.

[suchandra]

 

.....no need to worry.......

"No need to worry", V. S. Ramachandran, a brain scientist, see below, at the University of California, San Diego, says something similar, don't worry, there may be soul in the sense of “the universal spirit of the cosmos,” but the soul as it is usually spoken of, “an immaterial spirit that occupies individual brains and that only evolved in humans — all that is complete nonsense.” Belief in that kind of soul “is basically superstition,” he said.

 

May 16, 2008

<nyt_headline version="1.0" type=> Science of the Soul? ‘I Think, Therefore I Am’ Is Losing Force </nyt_headline>

 

<nyt_byline version="1.0" type=> </nyt_byline>By CORNELIA DEAN

<nyt_text> </nyt_text> <nyt_correction_top> </nyt_correction_top>

 

NEW YORK TIMES

 

 

In 1950, in a letter to bishops, Pope Pius XII took up the issue of evolution. The Roman Catholic Church does not necessarily object to the study of evolution as far as it relates to physical traits, he wrote in the encyclical, Humani Generis. But he added, “Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.”

Pope John Paul II made much the same point in 1996, in a message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, an advisory group to the Vatican. Although he noted that in the intervening years evolution had become “more than a hypothesis,” he added that considering the mind as emerging merely from physical phenomena was “incompatible with the truth about man.”

But as evolutionary biologists and cognitive neuroscientists peer ever deeper into the brain, they are discovering more and more genes, brain structures and other physical correlates to feelings like empathy, disgust and joy. That is, they are discovering physical bases for the feelings from which moral sense emerges — not just in people but in other animals as well.

The result is perhaps the strongest challenge yet to the worldview summed up by Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who divided the creatures of the world between humanity and everything else. As biologists turn up evidence that animals can exhibit emotions and patterns of cognition once thought of as strictly human, Descartes’s dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” loses its force.

For many scientists, the evidence that moral reasoning is a result of physical traits that evolve along with everything else is just more evidence against the existence of the soul, or of a God to imbue humans with souls. For many believers, particularly in the United States, the findings show the error, even wickedness, of viewing the world in strictly material terms. And they provide for theologians a growing impetus to reconcile the existence of the soul with the growing evidence that humans are not, physically or even mentally, in a class by themselves.

The idea that human minds are the product of evolution is “unassailable fact,” the journal Nature said this month in an editorial on new findings on the physical basis of moral thought. A headline on the editorial drove the point home: “With all deference to the sensibilities of religious people, the idea that man was created in the image of God can surely be put aside.”

Or as V. S. Ramachandran, a brain scientist at the University of California, San Diego, put it in an interview, there may be soul in the sense of “the universal spirit of the cosmos,” but the soul as it is usually spoken of, “an immaterial spirit that occupies individual brains and that only evolved in humans — all that is complete nonsense.” Belief in that kind of soul “is basically superstition,” he said.

For people like the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, talk of the soul is of a piece with the rest of the palaver of religious faith, which he has likened to a disease. And among evolutionary psychologists, religious faith is nothing but an evolutionary artifact, a predilection that evolved because shared belief increased group solidarity and other traits that contribute to survival and reproduction.

Nevertheless, the idea of a divinely inspired soul will not be put aside. To cite just one example, when 10 Republican presidential candidates were asked at a debate last month if there was anyone among them who did not believe in evolution, 3 raised their hands. One of them, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, explained later in an op-ed article in this newspaper that he did not reject all evolutionary theory. But he added, “Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order.”

That is the nub of the issue, according to Nancey Murphy, a philosopher at Fuller Theological Seminary who has written widely on science, religion and the soul. Challenges to the uniqueness of humanity in creation are just as alarming as the Copernican assertion that Earth is not the center of the universe, she writes in her book “Bodies and Souls or Spirited Bodies?” (Cambridge, 2006). Just as Copernicus knocked Earth off its celestial pedestal, she said, the new findings on cognition have displaced people from their “strategic location” in creation.

Another theologian who has written widely on the issue, John F. Haught of Georgetown University, said in an interview that “for many Americans the only way to preserve the discontinuity that’s implied in the notion of a soul, a distinct soul, is to deny evolution,” which he said was “unfortunate.”

There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the diversity and complexity of life on earth.

For Dr. Murphy and Dr. Haught, though, people make a mistake when they assume that people can be “ensouled” only if other creatures are soulless.

“Evolutionary biology shows the transition from animal to human to be too gradual to make sense of the idea that we humans have souls while animals do not,” wrote Dr. Murphy, an ordained minister in the Church of the Brethren. “All the human capacities once attributed to the mind or soul are now being fruitfully studied as brain processes — or, more accurately, I should say, processes involving the brain, the rest of the nervous system and other bodily systems, all interacting with the socio-cultural world.”

Therefore, she writes, it is “faulty” reasoning to want to distinguish people from the rest of creation. She and Dr. Haught cite the ideas of Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century philosopher and theologian who, Dr. Haught said, “spoke of a vegetative and animal soul along with the human soul.”

Dr. Haught, who testified for the American Civil Liberties Union when it successfully challenged the teaching of intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism, in the science classrooms of Dover, Pa., said, “The way I look at it, instead of eliminating the notion of a human soul in order to make us humans fit seamlessly into the rest of nature, it’s wiser to recognize that there is something analogous to soul in all living beings.”

Does this mean, say, that Australopithecus afarensis, the proto-human famously exemplified by the fossil skeleton known as Lucy, had a soul? He paused and then said: “I think so, yes. I think all of our hominid ancestors were ensouled in some way, but that does not rule out the possibility that as evolution continues, the shape of the soul can vary just as it does from individual to individual.”

Will this idea catch on? “It’s not something you hear in the suburban pulpit,” said Dr. Haught, a Roman Catholic whose book “God After Darwin” (Westview Press, 2000) is being reissued this year. “This is out of vogue in the modern world because the philosopher Descartes made such a distinction between mind and matter. He placed the whole animal world on the side of matter, which is essentially mindless.”

Dr. Haught said it could be difficult to discuss the soul and evolution because it was one of many issues in which philosophical thinking was not keeping up with fast-moving science. “The theology itself is still in process,” he said.

For scientists who are people of faith, like Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University, asking about the science of the soul is pointless, in a way, because it is not a subject science can address. “It is not physical and investigateable in the world of science,” he said.

“Everything we know about the biological sciences says that life is a phenomenon of physics and chemistry, and therefore the notion of some sort of spirit to animate it and give the flesh a life really doesn’t fit with modern science,” said Dr. Miller, a Roman Catholic whose book, “Finding Darwin’s God” (Harper, 1999) explains his reconciliation of the theory of evolution with religious faith. “However, if you regard the soul as something else, as you might, say, the spiritual reflection of your individuality as a human being, then the theology of the soul it seems to me is on firm ground.”

Dr. Miller, who also testified in the Dover case, said he spoke often at college campuses and elsewhere and was regularly asked, “What do you say as a scientist about the soul?” His answer, he said, is always the same: “As a scientist, I have nothing to say about the soul. It’s not a scientific idea.”

<nyt_correction_bottom> </nyt_correction_bottom>Correction: May 12, 2008

An article in Science Times on Tuesday about evolution and the soul misstated the views that Nancey Murphy, a philosopher at Fuller Theological Seminary, expresses in her book “Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?” Dr. Murphy argues that neither humans nor animals have souls, not that both have souls. She cited the ideas of Thomas Aquinas on animal and human souls to contrast with her view, not to support it.

 

<nyt_update_bottom> </nyt_update_bottom>

[Bishadi]

 

“the universal spirit of the cosmos,” but the soul as it is usually spoken of, “an immaterial spirit that occupies individual brains and that only evolved in humans — all that is complete nonsense.” Belief in that kind of soul “is basically superstition,” he said.

 

I agree in the sense of 'unversal spirit of the cosmos' is a true.

 

In contrast that the idea of 'individual soul's occupying individual brains' is purely untrue. There is no isolation and it is the mind of memories that allows an individual to think they are isolated.

 

 

For scientists who are people of faith,

key words 'of faith"

 

 

like Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University, asking about the science of the soul is pointless, in a way, because it is not a subject science can address. “It is not physical and investigateable in the world of science,” he said.

“Everything we know about the biological sciences says that life is a phenomenon of physics and chemistry, and therefore the notion of some sort of spirit to animate it and give the flesh a life really doesn’t fit with modern science,” said Dr. Miller, a Roman Catholic whose book, “Finding Darwin’s God” (Harper, 1999) explains his reconciliation of the theory of evolution with religious faith. “However, if you regard the soul as something else, as you might, say, the spiritual reflection of your individuality as a human being, then the theology of the soul it seems to me is on firm ground.”

 

I agree, current sciences are incorrect and any individuality is based on the mind of each and not reality.

 

What corrects both is the change the description of energy itself, then the answers simply reveal themselves.

[suchandra]

 

I agree in the sense of 'unversal spirit of the cosmos' is a true.

 

In contrast that the idea of 'individual soul's occupying individual brains' is purely untrue. There is no isolation and it is the mind of memories that allows an individual to think they are isolated.

 

key words 'of faith"

 

I agree, current sciences are incorrect and any individuality is based on the mind of each and not reality.

 

What corrects both is the change the description of energy itself, then the answers simply reveal themselves.

Looks like the ongoing debate Evolution vs Intelligent Design is clearly pro atheistic Evolution. When studying the internet you'll find tons of articles strongly against Intelligent Design - so that's the world we're living in, no need to preach, these people only understand lessons from the material energy.

Something like, ok, your religion is that everything ends below a gravestone, but isn't then all that you do right now an illusion?

 

The Evolution of the Intelligent Design Creationism Hoax

wordpress.com

May 20, 2008 — Lou FCD Jim Lippard pointed out this new video from the National Center for Science Education.

It’s concise and well done, concentrating on the transitional fossil found that chains the “Intelligent Design” movement solidly to its evolutionary ancestor, Creationism. “Intelligent Design” was itself an intermediate form, as The Hoax then mutated into “Teach the Controversy” and most recently into “Academic Freedom”.

These of course are just cheap disguises designed to fool federal courts into believing that there is a non-religious motivation behind attacks on Science education in America. Besides being scientifically without merit, they are both unconstitutional and dishonest. It’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from the crowd that pushes them.

Fortunately, federal judges, even “good old boy brought up through the conservative ranks” and “appointed by GW hisself”” have thus far seen right through the veil of sciency sounding words.

Enjoy the video.

 

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And for a bonus video, here’s one on the subject to which I am especially partial, with special guest star Dover Area School District Board-member, William “I never said Creationism” Buckingham.

 

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[Bishadi]

 

Looks like the ongoing debate Evolution vs Intelligent Design is clearly pro atheistic Evolution. When studying the internet you'll find tons of articles strongly against Intelligent Design - so that's the world we're living in, no need to preach, these people only understand lessons from the material energy.

 

Something like, ok, your religion is that everything ends below a gravestone, but isn't then all that you do right now an illusion?

 

The Evolution of the Intelligent Design Creationism Hoax

 

 

and what is it you are trying to say; you are converting to ID?

 

as for the ongoing debate with evolution and creation (religions) may be the area to address.

 

 

 

ok, your religion is that everything ends below a gravestone

Heck all choice ends each night when we go to sleep; what's the point. Same with death; no more experience of choice for that person.

 

Reality and nature shares that biology is physical science. And without folk taking biology classes in school then doctors would probable not have a clue on how to 'doctor' up folk.

 

If the idea is that; since others discount ID and evolution, that they have it correct as it is all spiritual; is like suggest JC is coming thru the clouds to rapture up a storm and forgive all them sins from everybody.

 

ID is not based on facts but a combination of faiths and physical descriptions but they are just as stubborn as any faith with an intent on maintaining a following (and a money group they have) and will retain complacency to be accepted. i.e... the 2nd law (entropy) is incorrect as 'life abuses entropy.'

 

my point was that neither team is 100% correct.

 

If you were aware of how the sciences represent 'energy' then for someone to suggest 'light' is the energy upon mass, then you would know a rebel is amongst the group.

 

This opinion is not about complacency to any sect, religion or science; all that is important is the truth.

 

SO if you have a question in biology for this thread, then ask as there are very few disciplines within the sciences that have not been observed and if you find or share a phenomenon that has not been addressed; then Thank you ahead of time, as you can bet, this "i" will be doing the homework!