GrosMinet
Member
- Dec 21, 2013
- 61
- 12
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I have a problem with belief in souls.
I do hope that the soul exists, so that people can survive their own death and go to some heavenly place. Call it wishful thinking if you want.
However, it seems to me that it is inconsistent with human evolution. Well, not exactly inconsistent but hard to reconcile with it.
I mean, let's assume that the apes have no souls (though some thinkers would dispute that) and that the apelike ancestor of humankind likewise did not have a soul.
But then, that apelike ancestor evolved gradually, without any big leap, into our species. Actually, there is no first human being, just as there is no first French-speaker, because the boundaries between nonhuman animals and humans, just as the boundaries between latin and old French, are actually blurred.
So does it make any sense to say that at some point of our evolution a soul appeared in some apeman and turned him or her into a full-fledged human being? When would it have happened anyway? Doesn't the evolution of the brain account for the increasing behavioral complexity of humans?
By the way, is the soul the same thing as the mind, as many philosophers have thought? Isn't it the mainstream view in neuroscience that the mind is dépendent upon the brain?
But anyway, my main issue is with that idea of gradual and continuous evolution of the human lineage versus the sudden appearance of the soul (out of the blue) at some point of that evolution. And it's odd to think that the parents of the first human being did not have a soul.
I do hope that the soul exists, so that people can survive their own death and go to some heavenly place. Call it wishful thinking if you want.
However, it seems to me that it is inconsistent with human evolution. Well, not exactly inconsistent but hard to reconcile with it.
I mean, let's assume that the apes have no souls (though some thinkers would dispute that) and that the apelike ancestor of humankind likewise did not have a soul.
But then, that apelike ancestor evolved gradually, without any big leap, into our species. Actually, there is no first human being, just as there is no first French-speaker, because the boundaries between nonhuman animals and humans, just as the boundaries between latin and old French, are actually blurred.
So does it make any sense to say that at some point of our evolution a soul appeared in some apeman and turned him or her into a full-fledged human being? When would it have happened anyway? Doesn't the evolution of the brain account for the increasing behavioral complexity of humans?
By the way, is the soul the same thing as the mind, as many philosophers have thought? Isn't it the mainstream view in neuroscience that the mind is dépendent upon the brain?
But anyway, my main issue is with that idea of gradual and continuous evolution of the human lineage versus the sudden appearance of the soul (out of the blue) at some point of that evolution. And it's odd to think that the parents of the first human being did not have a soul.