The Soul - is there proof?

[The Cadet]

The experience of a miracle in fact requires two conditions. First we must believe in a normal stability of nature, which means we must recognize that the data offered by our senses recur in regular patterns. Secondly, we must believe in some reality beyond Nature.

Well how do we justify belief in reality beyond nature? After all, we cannot observe it directly, and observing it indirectly would require the experience of a miracle.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Coincidence? No. I think that a lot of people who simply view the matter as good fun started to imagine things, etc. We see the same thing with the fascination shown more recently in Vampires and Zombies (neither of which has been correctly portrayed in the pop media). These hangers-on or whatever else you'd call them don't really prove anything, not any more than the moon landing probably contributed to the popularity of Star Wars and Star Trek. But neither do I judge all issues relating to space travel by what I see in these movies and TV series.

Yeah? What do you suppose the preponderance of reports of UFOs was back in say....the 1800s?

My point again, is not that X number of paranormal investigations have proven or disproven the soul or anything else that has jumped into the mind of any readers here. It was that we cannot conclusively close out the possibility that there's something more, not with the great number of incidents spanning many decades and not with many of them remaining unexplained.

Is that really how you think though? It wouldn't be difficult to believe that there's probably millions upon millions of Hindus who claim to have had some sort of spiritual communion of some kind with any number of Hindu deities....do you consider it just as "possible" that they're all correct? Or at least that some are?

Or do you discount those experiences because of a lack of evidence.

If X number are disproven, it doesn't change the fact that too many are unexplained for us to say, logically, "Well, that settles it; there's nothing to these kinds of claims about there being a spirit world."

So in your mind....even though we don't have any real evidence (hard evidence), just personal accounts of these experiences...we can never fully discount these claims?

I'm saying....let's assume that for the next hundred years, nothing changes. We've still got lots of personal accounts without any evidence, and we've got researchers scientifically disproving some of these accounts time and time again....

You'd still say "we have to consider the possibility of the supernatural"?

Is there no way to disprove these kinds of claims in your mind?

That's rather close-minded isn't it? It would only take one bit of verifiable scientific evidence for me to change my position....yet no amount of science disproving these accounts would change your position?

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Well how do we justify belief in reality beyond nature? After all, we cannot observe it directly, and observing it indirectly would require the experience of a miracle.

We cannot justify it Scientifically. Which is why human Reason is itself invalidated if we work purely out of a perspective of Naturalistic Materialism.

 

[The Cadet]

We cannot justify it Scientifically. Which is why human Reason is itself invalidated if we work purely out of a perspective of Naturalistic Materialism.

That seems like a fairly extreme non sequitur. It could be just as valid to claim that we cannot justify it at all. After all, if we remove the justification of science and empiricism, what method do we use to determine the truth of something? "I believe it" is not good enough. And why would this "invalidate human reason itself"? That simply does not follow.

 

[Albion]

Yeah? What do you suppose the preponderance of reports of UFOs was back in say....the 1800s?



Is that really how you think though? It wouldn't be difficult to believe that there's probably millions upon millions of Hindus who claim to have had some sort of spiritual communion of some kind with any number of Hindu deities....do you consider it just as "possible" that they're all correct? Or at least that some are?

Or do you discount those experiences because of a lack of evidence.




So in your mind....even though we don't have any real evidence (hard evidence), just personal accounts of these experiences...we can never fully discount these claims?

I'm saying....let's assume that for the next hundred years, nothing changes. We've still got lots of personal accounts without any evidence, and we've got researchers scientifically disproving some of these accounts time and time again....

You'd still say "we have to consider the possibility of the supernatural"?

Is there no way to disprove these kinds of claims in your mind?

That's rather close-minded isn't it? It would only take one bit of verifiable scientific evidence for me to change my position....yet no amount of science disproving these accounts would change your position?

You talk as though every incident that hasn't been disproved is just a tale told like some fairy tale. Obviously we are not speaking of that sort of thing but of incidents that have something to them.

Ergo, I give little thought to what a boy says he saw in a dream but I don't dismiss quite so easily a near death experience in which the person accurately describes every detail of the other side of the hospital that she'd never seen, having been rushed to the emergency room of a strange hospital while traveling across the country.

 

[Ana the Ist]

You talk as though every incident that hasn't been disproved is just a tale told like some fairy tale. Obviously we are not speaking of that sort of thing but of incidents that have something to them.

Ergo, I give little thought to what a boy says he saw in a dream but I don't dismiss quite so easily a near death experience in which the person accurately describes every detail of the other side of the hospital that she'd never seen, having been rushed to the emergency room of a strange hospital while traveling across the country.

Funny that you would mention those kinds of experiences....

The largest scientific study on near death experiences was done over something like 10 years and a dozen hospitals. Large symbols, words, pictures were placed in emergency rooms so that only someone who was looking down from above...like floating around the ceiling...would be able to see them. They amassed hundreds of accounts of near death experiences where people claimed to be floating around above their bodies in these rooms...and wanna guess the results lol? Not one...not a single instance of someone mentioning any of the control symbols.

The "remarkable accuracy" of these accounts also turned out to be rather flawed. Usually, the details they remembered were incorrect, or details that were shared with them after regaining consciousness. Family, hospital staff, doctors and the like were the unwitting culprits in sharing "remembered details" of what was going on around them when they briefly died.

So much in the way you dismiss the daydreams of little boys...I tend to dismiss the stories of near death experiences.

 

[Ana the Ist]

You talk as though every incident that hasn't been disproved is just a tale told like some fairy tale. Obviously we are not speaking of that sort of thing but of incidents that have something to them.

Ergo, I give little thought to what a boy says he saw in a dream but I don't dismiss quite so easily a near death experience in which the person accurately describes every detail of the other side of the hospital that she'd never seen, having been rushed to the emergency room of a strange hospital while traveling across the country.

I'm genuinely interested though...how do you reconcile the accounts of thousands of Hindus who claim to have supernatural or spiritual experiences with their numerous gods?

Are these accounts something that you must consider as possibly true?

 

[Wolfe]

You're free to think and believe what you like. There's no proof of souls, though.

But there could be.
Scientist have found that bodies lose mass, equal to 30 grams, right at the moment of death.
Not attributed to waste, or gas, or any other material associated with post death.
To my knowledge (and to the knowledge of Google), we havn't found what causes the weight loss.
Some say chemical changes, but that occurs atleast an hour after death.

 

[The Cadet]

But there could be.
Scientist have found that bodies lose mass, equal to 30 grams, right at the moment of death.
Not attributed to waste, or gas, or any other material associated with post death.
To my knowledge (and to the knowledge of Google), we havn't found what causes the weight loss.
Some say chemical changes, but that occurs atleast an hour after death.

The scientist in question Duncan MacDougall again, or is there anything else to go on? What's your source?

 

[Ana the Ist]

But there could be.
Scientist have found that bodies lose mass, equal to 30 grams, right at the moment of death.
Not attributed to waste, or gas, or any other material associated with post death.
To my knowledge (and to the knowledge of Google), we havn't found what causes the weight loss.
Some say chemical changes, but that occurs atleast an hour after death.

I'm guessing you didn't read any of the first three pages of this thread....

 

[Wolfe]

The scientist in question Duncan MacDougall again, or is there anything else to go on? What's your source?

I can't remember his name, but I saw it in a documentary and found it interesting. I didn't find a name on google and I didn't catch the name of the documentary. Sorry.

 

[Wolfe]

I'm guessing you didn't read any of the first three pages of this thread....

I don't see what that has got to with anything, but no, I didn't.

 

[Armoured]

But there could be.
Scientist have found that bodies lose mass, equal to 30 grams, right at the moment of death.
Not attributed to waste, or gas, or any other material associated with post death.
To my knowledge (and to the knowledge of Google), we havn't found what causes the weight loss.
Some say chemical changes, but that occurs atleast an hour after death.

Very old and questionable experiment. Even if accurate, it's evidence of something happening at point of death, not the soul, per se. Google "27 grams".

 

[Ana the Ist]

The scientist in question Duncan MacDougall again, or is there anything else to go on? What's your source?

You ever hear this "scientists have weighed the soul" stuff before today? Cuz I haven't...and I know I've been in multiple discussions on evidence for the "soul". I kinda figured I'd heard it all, but now I'm surprised that this guy from 1910 and his embarrassment of an experiment keeps being brought up.

 

[Ana the Ist]

I don't see what that has got to with anything, but no, I didn't.

Somebody else made the same point you just did...and someone else debunked it. There's a link on page 2 I think if you want to read about "weighing the soul".

 

[W2L]

Asking for of the soul is like asking for proof of oneself

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

That seems like a fairly extreme non sequitur. It could be just as valid to claim that we cannot justify it at all. After all, if we remove the justification of science and empiricism, what method do we use to determine the truth of something? "I believe it" is not good enough. And why would this "invalidate human reason itself"? That simply does not follow.

I explained it in my first post. I am sorry, I assumed you had read it.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Asking for of the soul is like asking for proof of oneself

Not really....no.

 

[The Cadet]

I can't remember his name, but I saw it in a documentary and found it interesting. I didn't find a name on google and I didn't catch the name of the documentary. Sorry.

I'm pretty sure it's "21 grams". It's about as good of a documentary as Zeitgeist or Loose Change.

I don't see what that has got to with anything, but no, I didn't.

It's that we already went over this exact issue at length. The experiment was extremely questionable. The results were nothing like the clean 30 grams you spoke of, but rather varied wildly from person to person, including several who got the weight back:

1. "Suddenly coincident with death . . . the loss was ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce."
   
   
2. "The weight lost was found to be half an ounce. Then my colleague auscultated the heart and found it stopped. I tried again and the loss was one ounce and a half and fifty grains."
   
   
   
3. "My third case showed a weight of half an ounce lost, coincident with death, and an additional loss of one ounce a few minutes later."
   
   
4. "In the fourth case unfortunately our scales were not finely adjusted and there was a good deal of interference by people opposed to our work . . . I regard this test as of no value."
   
   
5. "My fifth case showed a distinct drop in the beam requiring about three-eighths of an ounce which could not be accounted for. This occurred exactly simultaneously with death but peculiarly on bringing the beam up again with weights and later removing them, the beam did not sink back to stay for fully fifteen minutes."
   
   
6. "My sixth and last case was not a fair test. The patient died almost within five minutes after being placed upon the bed and died while I was adjusting the beam."

So, out of six tests, two had to be discarded, one showed an immediate drop in weight (and nothing more), two showed an immediate drop in weight which increased with the passage of time, and one showed an immediate drop in weight which reversed itself but later recurred. And even these results cannot be accepted at face value as the potential for experimental error was extremely high, especially since MacDougall and his colleagues often had difficulty in determining the precise moment of death, one of the key factors in their experiments. (MacDougall later attempted to explain away the timing discrepancies by concluding that "the soul's weight is removed from the body virtually at the instant of last breath, though in persons of sluggish temperament it may remain in the body for a full minute.")​

Not only is this experiment a full century old and has not since been reproduced, but the data is muddled and unclear, and the methodology amounts to, "this happens, we don't know why, therefore it must be the soul".

 

[W2L]

Not really....no.

We are wonderfully made, we are far more than flesh and blood.