The DI's Soul Argument Against Materialism

Well, many articles written by DI members mention the soul as an argument against materialism…
Science and the Soul

“Emergence” of the Soul

Perhaps this theme deserves a separate topic…

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This will be a new topic. It might be a great example of Theological Premises in Design Arguments?.

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Maybe I misunderstood your question to begin with:

Are you maybe asking why they have such a strong focus on the existence of the soul? If so, that is a good question. I think that many of us think of certain topics as being “silver bullets” such that they, themselves, can serve as debate-enders. I know that I’m guilty of pursuing discussions using those aspects. I think that many think that if one convince others of the existence of a soul (a spiritual aspect of a person apart from the physical person), it may be an aspect that cannot be explained from an evolutionary perspective.

It’s probably quite ineffective, because it avoids the original debate and just changes one topic for another. Now instead of questioning whether or not evolution can account for the variety of life we see, an argument over whether or not people are “spiritual beings.”

That’s my guess, anyhow. Maybe not that the presence of a spirit or soul will cause doubt for an evolutionary biologist, for instance. But maybe that it would be cause the layperson, like me, to doubt the efficacy of evolution’s ability to explain all life (including soul and spirit.)

3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Ann Gauger: Did the Human Brain Evolve?

It seems like it is important to them…

I got banned at UD by Barry Arrington for exposing the falsehood of the teaching of the immortality of the soul by quoting the founding fathers of his own church.

I don’t think religious hypocrisy can reach any farther than that…

Huh?

@J_Mac, you are a Christian? And you think you can prove that an immortal soul doesn’t exist?

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I don’t know Arrington’s view on the soul. By “immortality of the soul”, do you mean the doctrine that the soul is immortal, and therefore has a continued existence outside the body after death? (And maybe before as well?) Is that what Arrington was arguing for?

However that may be, I would caution you against taking Arrington’s view as “the” ID view. ID folks differ among themselves on a number of philosophical and religious matters. In the discussions I’ve had with them over the past 11 years, I’ve found that some of them insist on “substance dualism”, i.e., the separability of soul (or mind, or intelligence, or whatever, depending on who is writing) from body. Others doubt such separability, partly on the basis of much Biblical language which seems to imply an unbreakable union between the two. But all, I suppose, would agree that even if soul is never actually separable from body, soul (including the mind) is the ruling principle within the soul-body combination.

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