"Science of the Soul" NYT article

[jimtron]

Here's an interesting article called "Science of the Soul."

In 1950, in a letter to bishops, Pope Pius XII took up the issue of evolution. The Roman Catholic Church does not necessarily object to the study of evolution as far as it relates to physical traits, he wrote in the encyclical, Humani Generis.” But he added, “Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.”
Pope John Paul II made much the same point in 1996, in a message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, an advisory group to the Vatican. Although he noted that in the intervening years evolution had become “more than a hypothesis,” he added that considering the mind as emerging merely from physical phenomena was “incompatible with the truth about man.” (bold added)

It must be so nice to get the "truth" directly from the source.

 

[CurtC]

I have a prediction that the next big challenge to theistic thinking (the last big challenge being natural evolution vs. creation of species as they are), is going to be in the area of how brain science is making it harder and harder to justify a belief in a "soul."

It's looking more and more that the way we think, our memories, who we are, are simply things that the physical brain does. I think even most Christians will support this view if you approach it from the brain science angle. Then if you get them to there, and point out the cognitive dissonance of knowing this while still believing in a soul, it's going to make some theists re-consider.

How can a soul, the way I think, the way my brain works, survive the death of my brain? If it does, will it be as I am when I'm old and senile at death, or as I was as a young person? What about someone who suffers brain damage? And if the concept of a separate soul is untenable, what happens to religion?

 

[jimtron]

I have a prediction that the next big challenge to theistic thinking (the last big challenge being natural evolution vs. creation of species as they are), is going to be in the area of how brain science is making it harder and harder to justify a belief in a "soul."

It's looking more and more that the way we think, our memories, who we are, are simply things that the physical brain does. I think even most Christians will support this view if you approach it from the brain science angle. Then if you get them to there, and point out the cognitive dissonance of knowing this while still believing in a soul, it's going to make some theists re-consider.

How can a soul, the way I think, the way my brain works, survive the death of my brain? If it does, will it be as I am when I'm old and senile at death, or as I was as a young person? What about someone who suffers brain damage? And if the concept of a separate soul is untenable, what happens to religion?

What part of “incompatible with the truth about man" did you not understand? (I'm going to take a pass on the sarcasticon--is that OK?)

 

[Puppycow]

I like this bit:

The idea that human minds are the product of evolution is “unassailable fact,” the journal Nature said this month in an editorial on new findings on the physical basis of moral thought. A headline on the editorial drove the point home: “With all deference to the sensibilities of religious people, the idea that man was created in the image of God can surely be put aside.”

Clearly man is just another kind of animal. A very clever one, but an animal nonetheless. The difference is in degree, not kind.

I would go so far as to say that some men have less claim to respect than some dogs. I think the life of a good seeing-eye dog, for example, is worth more than that of Charles Manson. If we euthanize rabid dogs, why not psychopathic/sociopathic human killers?