The Latest On The Brain

"Is what you see real? Join neuroscientist Heather Berlin on a quest to understand how your brain shapes your reality, and why you can’t always trust what you perceive. In the first hour of this two-part series, learn what the latest research shows about how your brain processes and shapes the world around you, and discover the surprising tricks and shortcuts your brain takes to help you survive."

The brain clearly isn't the tool humans should use to understand reality. Why? - - -

• It's a tool for survival and comfort
• It distorts reality to achieve such

Consciousness is clearly only the product of brain activity, thus essentially falsifying the concept of a separate supernatural Soul.

Click on the link below for an hour-long documentary supporting the claim that science is the route to understanding reality:

Your Brain: Perception Deception

Souls And Identity

The TMM YouTube channel is one of my favorite counter-apologetics sources. Click on the link below for a detailed rebuttal to the claim that humans have a material body and an immaterial Soul.

Why Souls Are Nonsense

Can Machines Be Conscious?

One of the great unknowns in our reality is what is consciousness and how is it achieved. Click on the link below for an interesting and different look at it. Oh, BTW, the author does not think that it is separate from the brain in humans (how refreshing):

Can Consciousness be Non-Biological?

Why Science CAN Address The Hypothesis Of A Soul

The vast majority of humans accept that we have an immaterial soul and that science has nothing to say about it.  This rather lengthy excerpt from the author's book, "The Soul Fallacy: What Science Shows We Gain From Letting Go of Our Soul Beliefs", challenges that belief.

You don’t have a soul: The real science that debunks superstitious charlatans

The following is condensed from a discussion with two scientists and myself. One of the scientists wants to belief that there is a supernatural and tries to support his position by saying that the functions of the mind are immaterial and that “spirit” is supernatural (making a distinction without a difference, a logical fallacy). He offered no evidence for any of this, of course. The lesson? Even some advanced scientists can let their desires overrule science-based thinking. This scientist tried to compare Cyberspace with the mind to make his point. Here are the major points we made:

Cyberspace is made up of transistors and capacitors in computers. Love is a chemical process and chemical processes exert force. Cyberspace is a place of electricity that also exerts force. 

Cyberspace exists only because the 0’s and 1’s exist on a hard drive or in RAM somewhere. Cut out those 0’s and 1’s and you are literally cutting out a piece of “cyberspace”. And then, of course, you can put those pieces into a box. 

Your mind exists inside the network of your neurons, just like cyberspace exists inside the network of computers. Start cutting out pieces of the brain and putting them in a box (to use your previous analogy) and you will be cutting out pieces of the person’s mind. 

Ideas are groupings of neurons that are firing in certain patterns as are behaviors and music is actual sound-waves moving through the air. 

The mind isn’t immaterial. it is layers and layers of neural pathways that are processing signals. Stop those signals from processing and the mind goes away. 

Information IS the electrons and capacitors. Take away the electrons or the capacitators and the information no longer exists.  

Example. Hydrogen is not water. Oxygen is not water. Combine the two in a specific formation and you get water. The same is true of the information in a computer. Combine the hardware with the electricity in a specific configuration and you get information. Take any part of the hardware away, and the information disappears, just as would happen if you took the oxygen away from water.  

Computers use 0’s and 1’s to store information. The exact medium changes depending on the storage device. Those 0’s and 1’s when put into the correct pattern ARE THE information. The information is a physical thing made up of 0’s and 1’s put into a specific pattern. Change the pattern and the information is gone. 

The internet and love and anger are all material as they all exert force. 

Computers don’t have any capacity to access and display immaterial things. Only material things

 

The Soul: Science Has No Need For That Hypothesis

"'The brain is where thinking takes place, love and hatred reside, sensations become perceptions, personality is formed, memories and beliefs are held, and where decisions are made. As D.K. Johnson said: 'There is nothing left for the soul to do.'”

Why Psychology Has No Need for Souls

Reincarnation

This post is an adjunct to my recent post entitled Scientific Support For The Dalai Lama.

Following are links challenging the concept of reincarnation:

Scientific Support For The Dalai Lama

I have written extensively that Christianity, and all other religions, are not supported by evidence and that all of their claims regarding God's effects on reality have been falsified.  However, the manner in which the Dalai Lama is chosen includes one interesting scientific test:

How We Live On After We Die

An interesting look at the workings of the mind, and the theory of mind.

This is how our minds may actually live on after death