This topic is starting to look less like a debate and more like a "let's gang up on the Christian" type of thread.
But isn't that same limited human understanding what you are basing your truth claims on? How do you know that god and the bible are the true answer? Unless reason and logic are abandoned for faith alone, and if its faith alone, then you cannot say that anything is the way it is with any degree of certainty.
I'm putting my hope in the belief that scripture was NOT based on our limited human understanding, but that it was inspired by God's spirit. If this isn't the case, then there really isn't any point.
Who says I have to abandon reason and logic for faith? I use reason and logic and faith together, with the hope that they might lead me closer to truth.
Reason and logic are not in conflict with faith. It's personal opinion about what one feels about faith that may be in conflict. If you don't like faith because there's no certainty in it, that's your choice.
As for what makes us who we are? What did you think of my first post regarding the "mind-body problem?"
There is a really cool international study going on that is addressing this issue, check out the link:
-THE AWARE STUDY
I've heard of the mind-body problem before. But I find it hard to believe that either mind or body can be solely responsible for making us who we are.
This might be sort of a silly illustration, but maybe it'll help to explain my reasoning.
What if there were a machine that could copy and reproduce the human body? If I were to walk into this machine and create an exact copy of myself, then what?
We'd have the same body, same memories, everything would be exactly the same. But wouldn't the original me still be separate from the new me? If so, how could it possibly be my body or my mind that make me my own person?
Yes, if this really means a stopping of one's entire psyche. We are nonexistent for that time. We wouldn't be actual persons -- at best we'd only be potential persons.
So what? Why does personal identity have to be static over time? Our changing memories are part of who we are as who we are.
No, we wouldn't be, since there would be a huge discontinuity in personal change.
There wouldn't be a natural process of personal change consistent with one's personal identity. In other words, this wouldn't be like dynamically growing as who one is -- acting according to one's judgment and values and learning from the results -- but rather a sudden >GAP< that has nothing to do with growing as who one is, and which leads to something completely different. The process that had been occurring is wiped out and replaced with something else.
Why not? If there is a huge leap, there seems little reason to hold to that conclusion.
It sounds like you think that personhood is really a kind of substance, and if we don't become a different substance, we don't become a different person. But what if personhood has more to do with a dynamic process acting according to natural psychological processes, especially involving those processes that we consider personhood? (Processes such as reasoning, choosing, experiencing, remembering, acting?)
Not unless our own memories were wiped out.
eudaimonia,
Mark
Yes, I do change over the years, so much so that I might say I'm a different person than I was ten years ago. But am I really a different person? Aren't I still me? Have I ever stopped being me?
If we were really different people every time we change (and we are always changing), then how could we hold anyone responsible for any crime?
"Sure, that person who used to me might have brutally raped and killed that woman, but I'm a different person now."
Do we have any more right to lock him up than we do any random stranger? If neither one was the one who existed during the crime, then we might as well lock up the stranger.
Or maybe we should lock someone up because we
think this new person may someday become a person who would commit a violent crime?
I didn’t create that definition of
worship. I quoted the meaning from the dictionary. If you don’t like it, take it up with the editors.
Here's a definition I pulled from dictionary.com: "to feel an adoring reverence or regard for (any person or thing)."
Do you not feel an adoring reverence or regard for the endless pursuit of unreachable absolute certainty?
You obviously have nothing more to contribute to this topic, so why don't you go troll somewhere else?
Is the existence of "spirit/soul" just a wild guess of you that´s basically not more than a euphemism for "I don´t know", or is there more to it?
If I'm wrong, it's not my idea to start with. I heard it from a pastor, who came to such a conclusion from reading the Bible.
If you are a philosopher, then my idea would just be one possible answer to the question. There are many ideas out there, and any one of them could be true.
My conclusion is based on my trust in God and the Bible. I used my logic to eliminate the idea that the soul could be something entirely separate from the body, considering how we now know that the things we call the soul are dependent on the human brain (a part of the body).
I do not believe that the Bible could be solely responsible either, but you might disagree with me here.
I've said that it can't be the body, because the body is always changing, but some counter this argument with this. Maybe the body is changing, but it's not changing all at once. Instead, the whole is taking pieces of to remove and new parts to fit in. The whole still exists, even though it's being manipulated in its individual parts.
Eventually, no individual part of the body which existed in one time would remain in the whole at another time, so they might be a different person then. But how can we say how long it takes until someone is a new person?
This is a problem we've encountered in our judicial system. Sometimes people will not get caught immediately after committing a crime, but new evidence will cause them to be incriminated ten years later, or more. But can we hold this person responsible for what they did ten years ago?
To make my question better understandable: If I would come here and claim that humans aren´t made of two or three parts but of five and that the additional ones (zuluati and wascatubi) are what makes us who we are, would you let me get away with it?
Why not? I couldn't say anything to tell you why you're wrong, at least not unless you're going to explain in greater detail what you think these parts are.
The Ancient Egyptians believed that a human soul was made up of five parts: the
Ren, the
Ba, the
Ka, the
Sheut, and the
Ib. In addition to these components of the soul there was the human body (called the
ha, occasionally a plural
haw, meaning approximately sum of bodily parts).
Egyptian soul - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ib - The problem with this one is that they give credit to the "heart and not the brain that was the seat of emotion, thought, will and intention." But emotion, thought, will, and intention, are all mental activities.
Sheut - The shadow is the absence of light that is seen on the opposite end of a light source and an object. The shadow itself does not exist, but it is simply a pattern we experience due to our ability to pick up light from our environment.
Not only this, but even inanimate objects have shadows. Are they persons, then?
And what about when one shadow merges with another? Do the souls become joined in this event? Sometimes you may even have more than on shadow, depending on the number of light sources. What happens then?
Ren - I found this one to be kind of strange. They believed that the verbal utterance of a person's name was a part of the soul? How does a sound become a part of the soul? Did they perform some sort of hex to merge the sound with the newborn child? What about people who have more than one name?
Ba - This one sounds sort of like a spirit, with the exception that it has a physical shape, which means it is made up of physical energies. They also attribute the personality to this
ba, but that again is a part of the human body, the brain.
Ka - This also is much like the Christian spirit, with one exception. The
ka is reliant on the physical energies of food and water to exist. Why would an immaterial spirit need food and water (material objects) to continue their existence? It doesn't make sense to me.
