Posted by Flash (62.6.208.254) on October 12, 2000 at 10:50:01:
In Reply to: not so, I'm afraid... posted by pinksharkmark on October 12, 2000 at 06:00:49:
I am an agnostic for this very reason. I believe that all living things have a soul. It stands to reason that a soul woul dnot be manufactured out of molecules.
The fact is that scientists only know a small amount about the obervable universe. The more they look, the more complicated it all gets. Just because they haven't discovered a soul, or a God doesn't mean that there isn't one.
I can name quite a few things that we all know exist, but which are not composed of matter:
Good.
Evil.
The law of gravity (not gravity itself, but what the whatever makes it behave the way it does).
The speed of light.
The 3 spatial dimensions that everyone is aware of.
Time.
You.
Personally I believe in the infinate number of universes theory. Where every possibility that can happen does happen somewhere. This makes perfect sense to me.
I am a qualified computer scientist. I work with computers for a living. Some of them are very powerful. No computer will ever gain conciousness. They may simulate it, but they will never really become conciously aware. There is absolutely no way to achieve this.
All aspects of concious awareness can be simulated. That is true. The debate is whether something that behaves as if it is concious is concious.
If a person is just like a machine, then it stands to reason that if we knew the mass and velocity of every particle in the universe then we could predict the future. Quantum mechanics says that if we examine a particle, then we instantly change either it's mass or velocity, therefore the information is useless. However, lets assume that we don't actually need to examine the particle:
Assume you clone a person. You keep all of the clones in indentical environments. Black boxes with nothing inside, just 4 black walls. They are all fed by drip, and kept paralysed by drugs. Nasty eh?
Finally starved of all sensory development for 30 years, you release them all into identical mazes. They should all do exactly the same thing. Will they? If they do, then they share an identical conciousness, and therefore they are machines.
Science has this duplicity problem. If only a few basic parameters of the universe were altered, then it wouldn't exist. Scientists look at this amazing creation, and put it all down to chance. Some even claim to understand it. OK why does it exist clever cloggs? If it is mechanical, then there must be a reason for it. The scientists like there to be a reason for everything that happens in their lovely mechanical universe constructed out of matter and nothing else, but if you say "why is it here?" They claim it just is. Ha! So things can be all mysterious and unexplained when it suits them (ie when they don't know). If you ask what is outside of the universe, they will tell you nothing. Really? If you told them you opened the window, and there was nothing outside, they would call you a liar, or insane. The fact is they don't know.
Just becasue the soul hasn't been discovered doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Near death experiences aren't just the brains way of making you feel better before the end. If they are, then most shotgun suicides are being denied them, and that would be pretty unfair.
Mankind cannot even produce a single celled organism. We can't build a bacteria let alone a worm. The best we can do is to genetically modify things. Something that happens on it's own over time anyway.
If a bunch of scientists built a person out of raw atoms. Assembled it's genes, by copying the huma genome etc, grew this person in s test tube. If they did this, and the person was acutally alive then I'd be impressed. The interesting thing is that even if they did, there wouldn't be much point, since most of us are capable of exactly the same thing, through sex.
Oops thus turned into a rant. My appologies.
Flash