Is the Soul a option for the competition? The original historical conclusion! If not they will not find the source of the nile.
How does the soul produce consciousness?
If yes, then where is the soul located?
(Memphis and Detroit are not helpful answers.)
there is no consciousness. there just is a soul up and about. Simple. indeed like God.
Consciousness is clearly linked to the brain. But I donāt believe it originates there.
Interesting, can you expand on that a little?
I wrote on this a while back
https://creation.com/consciousness-not-emergent-property
Consciousness is not the sort of thing that matter alone would ever be able to produce, so itās not originating in our material brains. However it does clearly link up at that point; the mind is not associated with any other body organ. Obviously you donāt lose your consciousness if you become an amputee.
It may simplify the question to ask āwhere is physical pain locatedā? We are certainly conscious of it. It is pretty real when you are going through it. Clearly, animals experience pain. It does not seem to relieve pain to just say, āhey, this is just some nerves moving ions aroundā, but on a physiological level, that is all pain more or less is.
You wrote:
There is simply no escape: without a supernatural soul, humans are tied down by the laws of physics. We are reduced to automatons, and the implications of this are far-reaching. Showing this to the atheist is a very good way to begin to take the roof off their false worldview.
I see no problem with this. I am an atheist and I donāt think that I have free will.
But where does consciousness originate? Well, most scientists believe that it is an emergent property of the brain. Itās safe to say that thereās more than one āmaster switchā for consciousness. For example, Blumenfeld (2014) reviewed and described a very interesting experiment conducted by Koubeissi et al. (2014):
During cortical mapping of a patient undergoing intracranial EEG and video monitoring, the authors stimulated a single-electrode contact and produced behavioral unresponsiveness and amnesia. The electrode was located in the region of the left extreme capsule adjacent to the anterior dorsal insula and claustrum. The effect was seen in 10 of 10 stimuli at 14 mA, and stimuli consisted of 3- to 10-s 50-Hz brief square wave pulses, using a medial frontal electrode as reference (stimulation between the medial frontal contact and other electrodes produced no behavioral change). During stimulation, the patient stared blankly and did not respond to commands. After the stimulus, the patient immediately returned to baseline with no recall of events during stimulation and no recall of words presented during stimulation. Stimulation also produced arrest of reading; however, the patient could continue repetitive hand or tongue movements for up to 4 s after stimulus onset.
Blumenfeld concludes that the claustrum may represent āa new potentially critical hub in the network of consciousness.ā This does not mean that consciousness originates there. But it is clear that consciousness is governed by the activity of the brain.
But that means you didnāt arrive at your conclusion of atheism freely, and nor do I disagree with you freely, either. We are both believing what we believe due to factors outside our own control.
But that doesnāt mean itās irrational. Rationality does not require some type of libertarian free will. I like this quote by Christian theologian Randal Rauser:
āRather, what reason requires is the ability of an individual effectively to track the relationship between propositions, their logical relationships, and supporting evidence. And there is no inconsistency between believing that such abilities can exist in a deterministic universe.ā
And determinism does not imply we are some kind of robots. People confuse determinism with fatalism way too often.
How would you demonstrate this?
Iām also not sure why emergence is a problem from a Christian perspective.
Iām not sure I understand your argument about emergence in that article, but maybe thatās something for another thread. I donāt think salt is an example of emergence, for instance.
But if there is no freedom, then oneās ability to do that is outside of oneās own control and therefore becomes irrelevant to the person. If I am not making any genuine (free) choices as an agent when I decide to believe something, then my belief is just an attribute of the universe and says nothing of the truth or falsehood of that proposition. Reason becomes irrelevant because it is not fundamentally different from non-reason; both are just paths that people are forced to tread as they ādance to the music of their DNAā and of physics.
Okay. Just ignore everything I said and restate your argument. Geez. Again your conflating determinism with fatalism.
You have not explained how this is a conflation.
Iām watching bama right now. Iāll respond later and post important papers etc.
@PDPrice start here to get a better idea of what determinism actually posits:
https://patriciachurchland.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1981_Determinism_SelfRefuting.pdf
This as well:
Says who? Do you have support for your premise here?