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God V Science (again)
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stray
stray
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Re: God V Science (again)
Sep 17, 2008, 12:55
Yep indeed. Um, just for giggles here let me construct a radical argument. First off lets define 'radical' cos a lot of people without a scientific or mathematical argument don't understand what radical means. I'm not saying you don't Nigel, just going to try to explain it here so people don't think I'm completely 'timecube style' mental. The purpose of a radical argument is not for it to be taken as a truth, or even remotely as something rational, but to highlight either how fucked or lacking our current understandings are. Or as a thought experiment that could possibly lead to a better philosophical understanding of er.. 'something'.

A radical defence of the soul and the purpose of faith.

Simply put : Human purpose.

If we were to take evolution as the model of human purpose we would logically subscribe to eugenics. As humans we can for the most part function, propogate etc, outside of the norms of natural selection. Therefore it's arguable that people who were born unfit, flawed, deformed etc should either be well, executed or at the very least everyone involved should be sterilised. Bit of a leap that, granted, but hey, being radical here, this is a forum post not a philosophical or scientific paper.

As we have stepped outside of natural selection through the application of our intellect, medicine, ethics etc, it's probably safe to say that evolutionary arguments do not adequately describe us as we are and how we function. I'm saying this because although more of us survive than frankly should (fulfilling the survival imperative sure), however we would still survive as a species if we did subscribe to eugenics. We don't though, because we are compassionate, where does compassion come from ?

Compassion could be a product of the soul. Emotion = soul, to put it simply. Maybe the soul and it's more wooly purpose is responsible for our progression, ethics, medicine, intellect etc. Could the fact that compassion, our ability to identify with each other beyond merely competing with each other for resources, be a product of the soul ? Could the emergence of the soul be a result of evolution in that in order to compete with other species we have pulled ourselves above and beyond the rest of the game.

There you go. A painfully flawed argument, most definitely, but it's getting towards what I'm trying to say. Sure, I've set a dangerous set of axioms there, particularly by attaching some kind of evolutionary purpose to the soul, and soul=emotion is even more omfg, but I hope you get what I'm saying. Yes I'm joking, but just showing how not only it's philosophically possible to argue for the existence of the soul, but to also allocate it a role outside of a faith. It's still better than the one Aristotle came up with in De Anima imho. ;)
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