Count-Down 7: Self Awareness and the Soul

by Amazing 20 Replies latest jw friends

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  Amazing

  No one has ever been able to explain to me just how we, as products of evolution, can possibly have sentience and self awareness. (I understand and accept that humans evolved.) How is it that you are you, and I am me? How come I am aware that I am Jim Whitney, a middle aged male, instead of being a young female named Sarah Smith? And Sarah Smith ended up being Jim Whitney? Are we mere products of our environment, making each of us unique and who we are? No. Because we can change our environment and make choices to change what we are into something else. However, our self-awareness remains the same. And it does not resolve the question as to how we end up in one environment and not in another environment with self-awareness that we are someone else. Note: If there is an evolutionary basis for self-awareness, then we must consider the possibility that animals, fish, insects, reptiles, and even plants might also be self-aware.

  The JW soul: Looking back at how the Watchtower Society took away our soul and made us to be souls as a combine of our physical body, the air we breathe and some invisible energy that God gives us is fascinating. The Watchtower argument fits far better with pure godless evolution than any other doctrine. According to them, we are, afterall, just a mere product of the dirt of the earth, and our existence is strictly limited to our physical nature. We are merely an advanced beast of the animal kingdom. This view is devoid of meaning and too empty for me to consider ever again.

  Did God give us a soul? I learned this growing up, that we are not just products of the natural forces of the earth, but we are individual souls created by God and put here on this earth for a purpose. We are assigned to a family and to a set of circumstances. This does not refute evolution, but merely makes our spiritual nature something not under the control of, or produced by, evolution. However, it makes God far more responsible for who we are and what circumstances we are placed in. In one case, the person is born healthy and placed into a family that is well off and in a nice environment. In another case, one is born with serious physical or mental defects and may not be in a nice environment ... and there are countless combinatioins and possibilities that exist. This view resolves the sentient, self-aware question, but creates a whole new set of more disturbing questions and challenges to my faith.

  This post does not resolve the above questions ... but instead solicites your thoughts.

  Jim Whitney
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  Crumpet

  I don't know. However I am just about to spend a weekend studying what makes us different from and the same as animals and discusses human treatment of death etc and so if I come up with any theories then I'd love to come back and post them here.

  Really nicely thought out post by the way.
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  Nathan Natas

  One of the most delightful confusions of the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society revolves around the things they say about the condition of the dead.

  The Watchtower has often championed the Scriptural truth on this matter; here is but one example:

  "We find that [hell] is the translation of the Hebrew word sheol, which simply means thestateorconditionofdeath. There is not in it the remotest idea of either life or torment; . . . But still [the clergy] go on preaching this false idea of hell, which is nothing short of a slander against the character of God."—November 1883, p. 4.

  -- W 7/1/79

  Brother Russell was well aware that the majority of sensible people did not really believe the doctrine of hellfire. But, as he pointed out, in 1896, in the booklet WhatSaytheScripturesAboutHell?, "since they thinkthattheBibleteachesit, every step they progress in real intelligence and brotherly kindness . . . is in most cases a step away from God’s Word, which they falsely accuse of this teaching."

  To draw such thinking people back to God’s Word, he presented in this booklet every text in the KingJamesVersion in which the word hell was found, so readers could see for themselves what these said, and then he stated: "Thank God, we find no such place of everlasting torture as the creeds and hymn-books, and many pulpits, erroneously teach. Yet we have found a ‘hell,’ sheol,hades, to which all our race were condemned on account of Adam’s sin, and from which all are redeemed by our Lord’s death; and that ‘hell’ is the tomb—the death condition...

  -- Proclaimers (book) 1993, discussing CTR's teaching

  but it seems somewhere a change occurred:

  Since Hades refers to the common grave of mankind, a place rather than a condition, -- Insight (book) 1988

  We have seen that hell (Sheol, or Hades) is a place of rest in hope for the dead. Both good and bad persons go there, to await the resurrection. -- Live Forever (book) 1989

  If it is a place, is it a physical place that I can get to with a GPS navigator? What will I find when I get there? All the dead bodies of mankind since the time of Adam? I doubt that...

  If it is a place in the spirit realm, what is it that resides there, since the corpse or ashes are physical and are "on this side" of the veil?
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  journey-on

  Have you read "The Science of God" by Gerald L. Schroeder? It has some fascinating insight regarding matter and spirit, science and religion. It opened my mind and addressed a lot of my thoughts on just what our soul really is or might be. Schroeder has a doctorate from MIT and is also an applied theologian. It used modern science to reconcile biblical truths in a way that's logical and understandable.
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  Narkissos

  I would tend to think that self-awareness -- or, more exactly, the particular human form of self-awareness, for all "sentient" organisms might as well be described as "self aware" -- is a direct corollary of the invention of language. We cannot put words on "things" and "beings" and communicate with each other without naming ourselves. Memory, narration, interaction, all language events and processes contribute to the construction of an "image of self" (cf. Lacan's mirror) which functionally separates itself further and further from any objective description (the imaginary "little man within the big man"). The subject of language remains hidden by definition, by the very requirement of linguistical structure, moving backwards from one question to another: who is the I who says "my body," "my soul," "my mind," "my self"? As soon as you point "it" down you realise that there is "someone else" pointing "it" down, ad infinitum. Mirror play.

  "Soul" is a beautiful metaphor nonetheless. But the only possible definition of "I" is grammatical imo.
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  proplog2

  I tend to like Aristotles concept of Soul in contrast to Plato's.

  We are 100% part of nature.

  Soul was an attempt to explain how something material like an animal (anima-soul) can move around. The ancients imagined a person within a person. This carried over to the industrial age when some pictured some little man inside pulling the levers and the electronic age where the levers were now seen as buttons to be pushed.

  Modern psychology understands that there is no one at the controls. We are reactive organisms and our nervous system is made up of the specialized organs for dealing with emergent situations.

  Screw with the brain and behavior changes radically.

  Brain death is pretty much the end.
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  journey-on

  Brain death is pretty much the end.

  Respectfully, that's like saying if you unplug the computer from the electrical outlet, the electricity and programs cease to exist. They still exist (how and where ???)....but nevertheless, they still exist somewhere. They just no longer animate that particular computer.
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  Jankyn

  Well, for openers, this question appears to arise from an exceptionalist view of human sentience and the "soul."

  It may be that we are not the only critters to have evolved either or both; it might also be that the "soul" exists only as a perception (or misperception) of part of our "sentience"; it might be that many--if not all--animals and plants have either or both "sentience" and a "soul", albeit not necessarily in the same way that we humans perceive it.

  There are a lot of assumptions underlying the conceptions of "sentient being" and "soul." It might be intriguing to question those assumptions before questioning whether or not "sentience" and "soul" can be the result of evolution.
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  poppers

  Narkissos said: "who is the I who says "my body," "my soul," "my mind," "my self"? As soon as you point "it" down you realise that there is "someone else" pointing "it" down, ad infinitum. Mirror play."...........he is onto something here. This ability to direct awareness allows awareness to be directed at itself. This is the pinnacle of what it means to be a "human being" - getting to the basic essence of oneself, free of beliefs and identification as someone separate and distinct from all else. Few stumble across this idea of "self-awareness" and what it means, and of those who do very few actually investigate into their real nature to find out what it really is beyond any IDEA of what it is.
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  Undecided

  Your brain is who you are. Mentally ill people sometimes think they are someone else. When the brain goes dead, you are dead as far as your ability to function as a person. Since the brain controls your activities and thinking, you are your brain. Think alzheimers.

  Ken P.