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Comments:
Anna - 2004-05-18 11:17:30 Thank you Anna! I appreciate it and will check it out. I just thought this was an elegant bit of logic. Of course later I realized one way around this is pantheism but anyways. * * * * * * * * * * * * Steven B. Cherry - 2004-05-18 15:25:00 Let me get this straight, they threw out the creationist dogma and kept the "soul" dogma and are now trying to get them to fit together. It's much easier to just buy they whole creationism thing if you're going to believe in magic.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-05-18 15:32:01 Yep, I'm with you Steven--(welcome back to the blog, YAY!) but as you know lots of people never even threw creationism out--I'd say the creationist or insidious neo-creationist "intelligent design" movement is much stronger, and certainly much sneakier, than when I was a child.* * * * * * * * * * * * ann arbor is overrated - 2004-05-18 19:23:05 I don't know - to me, this seems like saying, "Evolution has to be false, because otherwise, you would have a human as some time in history whose parents were not human." It's not inconsistent to see souls as gradual in the same way.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-05-18 20:32:47 Hmm. That's an interesting flip side argument. Can we see souls as gradual? Does my dog have .5 soul? She certainly seems to have what is termed a "soul" to me...or, rather, consciousness and a personality. I'm out of my depth at this point. Help, please, readers.* * * * * * * * * * * * Anna - 2004-05-19 11:23:05 That's exactly the kind of thing Bloom talks about. Essentially, science and religion will always be incompatible or, at any rate, unable to speak to one another on these issues. When does a mere physical body become an ensouled one? When a fetus is 4 cells? 8 cells? A dog isn't a person, but it's not a rock either, so does it have part of a soul? I'd argue along with most evolutionary biologists and psychologists that we see things as having souls is because we're hardwired to view the world that way, even from infancy -- and it's an innate all-or-none concept. Scientifically, nothing can exist apart from physical bodies, so there is no such thing as a "soul" in the traditional sense. As a funny side note, Bloom writes about an acquaintance of his -- a neuroscientist -- who knew that the center of the brain that is responsible for feelings is the amygdala, so this guy decided that the only animals that were OK to eat were ones without amygdalae. I think that left him with fish, or maybe just shellfish, since as far as I know, all mammals and birds have an amygdala.* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-05-19 12:19:15 Very interesting points Anna; I'll have to look in the library for Bloom. The amygdala story is thought-provoking, too, suggesting as it does that most animals have feelings (or the potential to have them).* * * * * * * * * * * * Anna - 2004-05-20 09:44:34 The amazon listing has the rest of the bibloigraphic info if you want to try to find it at the library: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/046500783X/qid=1085062496/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-2581788-1799120?v=glance&s=books* * * * * * * * * * * * Laura - 2004-05-20 18:51:31 aha--thanks Anna, that is helpful. :)* * * * * * * * * * * * add your comment: |