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I've had the idea for a while that the brain is a rx/tx device that allows a "soul" (choice engine, memory access) to interface with this existence. I don't kn

by all2 7y ago

I've had the idea for a while that the brain is a rx/tx device that allows a "soul" (choice engine, memory access) to interface with this existence. I don't know what the "signal" is, or where "souls" reside. And I'm using quotes because I'm not sure that the words are sufficient to express what I mean...

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ncmncm 7y ago
That is an old idea, that begs the question. Why would we evolve a transceiver for something that obviously was not needed for survival? What the hell was all the soul stuff doing before apes evolved transceivers? And what good did the transceiver do before it worked well enough to tune in souls? It smacks of a desperate attempt to justify believing in a soul. If you want to believe in a soul, just do. Dragging in nervous systems just muddies the water. Gods, souls, Grace, are made out of pure belief. They don't need stuff.
- KKPMW 7y ago
  Yup, the brain as "receiver" is an old idea, like you said. But your attempt at refuting it is quite narrow and has a lot of assumptions. One such assumption is taking evolution as an unchangeable constant. To me it seems like if the "receiving" of the soul theory is true then evolution no longer plays any major role. It would simply be a story, or a lore. In a similar way when playing an RPG has a back-story that cannot really be experienced and never actually happened in the game.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    It is meaningless to talk about "refuting" it. It's a "just so" story. Whoever wants to believe in it will, evidence or no. If you assume souls matter, and evolution doesn't, you have achieved nothing, and cannot predict anything. You are reduced to catalogging observations with no pattern, or just siiting and drooling. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sen...
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  > Why would we evolve a transceiver for something that obviously [does not increase probability of] survival? (made an edit to your quote there, because as written it didn't make sense, but LMK if I messed that up) As to your point.... I don't understand what you see that makes that obvious. Can you explain? To me, there is plenty of room for an unobservable but survival-influencing signals: 1) There are many stable extra-terrestrial signals. The position of the sun and moon relative to the Earth's surface at a given position are the most obvious ones, but there are obviously lots more. 2) A set of these signals is observable by Earth's graduate student population, as of 2019 3) A set of these signals is observable by Earth's biomass, as a whole, as a result of a billion years of each species evolving in very specific pockets of those signals. 4) Set 3 is probably not a subset of Set 2 Ergo, it's probable that we gain some survival benefit from unobservable extra-terrestrial signals. But maybe I've got a mistake in my logic. Let me know.

by all2 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ncmncm 7y ago

That is an old idea, that begs the question. Why would we evolve a transceiver for something that obviously was not needed for survival? What the hell was all the soul stuff doing before apes evolved transceivers? And what good did the transceiver do before it worked well enough to tune in souls? It smacks of a desperate attempt to justify believing in a soul. If you want to believe in a soul, just do. Dragging in nervous systems just muddies the water. Gods, souls, Grace, are made out of pure belief. They don't need stuff.

KKPMW 7y ago
Yup, the brain as "receiver" is an old idea, like you said. But your attempt at refuting it is quite narrow and has a lot of assumptions. One such assumption is taking evolution as an unchangeable constant. To me it seems like if the "receiving" of the soul theory is true then evolution no longer plays any major role. It would simply be a story, or a lore. In a similar way when playing an RPG has a back-story that cannot really be experienced and never actually happened in the game.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  It is meaningless to talk about "refuting" it. It's a "just so" story. Whoever wants to believe in it will, evidence or no. If you assume souls matter, and evolution doesn't, you have achieved nothing, and cannot predict anything. You are reduced to catalogging observations with no pattern, or just siiting and drooling. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sen...
erikpukinskis 7y ago
> Why would we evolve a transceiver for something that obviously [does not increase probability of] survival? (made an edit to your quote there, because as written it didn't make sense, but LMK if I messed that up) As to your point.... I don't understand what you see that makes that obvious. Can you explain? To me, there is plenty of room for an unobservable but survival-influencing signals: 1) There are many stable extra-terrestrial signals. The position of the sun and moon relative to the Earth's surface at a given position are the most obvious ones, but there are obviously lots more. 2) A set of these signals is observable by Earth's graduate student population, as of 2019 3) A set of these signals is observable by Earth's biomass, as a whole, as a result of a billion years of each species evolving in very specific pockets of those signals. 4) Set 3 is probably not a subset of Set 2 Ergo, it's probable that we gain some survival benefit from unobservable extra-terrestrial signals. But maybe I've got a mistake in my logic. Let me know.