Spiritual machines?

[Guest]

SoaringEagle,

That is a great article. I really enjoyed reading that. It reminds me of the book of Job. After Job goes through all this suffering and starts questioning God, you would think God would respond by explaining why he allowed all that to happen. What does he do? He answers by detailing his creation. It's quite a remarkable response by showing the care taken with his whole creation. Sorry, didn't mean to side track just found the correlation about the importance of creation interesting.

-Micah

[Guest]

SoaringEagle,

Great article! Thanks

[Guest]

Hello,

I've simply got to post a rebuttal to the Bob Enyart article that was recently posted here. Enyart's arguments are terrifically myopic, and it is material like this that makes non-Christians roll their eyes and turn to something that at least has some cogency.

To begin with, it is astounding that someone would try to make the claim that dirty jokes and taboos of physical privacy are actual proof of God! Contrary to the author's impression, there are perfectly practical and rational reasons to account for such constructs, without the need to appeal to the divine.

The unique presence of dirty jokes and taboos of physical privacy can be attributed to the unusually complex development of the human psyche. Human beings are capable of processing experiences and activities conceptually, and not just in terms of instinct and sensory response. We are able to reflect upon our ways of being, and to impart meaning - both real and imagined - to them. This is almost certainly an advantage to our species, and it provides a venue for behavior to enter into the chain of evolutionary process.

So, to engage the taboos on physical privacy first, we can identify a social evolutionary advantage to the development of sexual privacy:

There is practical advantage to males limiting sexual access to their females. For one thing, it can reduce the spread of venereal disease. For another, it makes it easier to identify which offspring belong to whom, which makes for a more tightly-knit familial unit. The familial unit is an advantage because it provides a more stable setting for mutual support and the rearing of children, along with a certain efficiency through assignment of interpersonal responsibility and caregiving. And, of course, humans are far from the only species to have males limit sexual access to their females.

From this, then, given the visual orientation of male sexuality, it is understandable that males would wish to hedge their bonds to their females by covering those portions of their anatomy which might extraordinarily excite competition from other males. Eventually, they might also seek to hedge their bonds by developing the practice of males covering their own exciting parts. As this hedge would become more and more common, the natural engines of social conformity would kick in, and psychological issues of embarrassment and shame would enter the picture. Of course, these psychological factors and the engines of social conformity are an advantage, inasmuch as they contribute to greater cohesiveness and cooperation amongst a social group.

Beyond this, the concept of sexual privacy allows for a more intimate and circumscribed sexual experience, which contributes to a closer and more distinct psychological bond, and thus a stronger familial unit.

As for excretory privacy, this is understandable in part as an extension of the sensitivities of sexual privacy, given the anatomical proximities of both functions. Beyond this, since excretion is an occasion of somewhat increased physical vulnerability, seeking privacy somewhat lessens the danger of being attacked with one's pants around one's ankles, so to speak - which is another practical advantage.

So, beyond these issues of privacy, then, the emergence of dirty jokes is easily understandable. Humor is a psychological device that allows us to more flexibly cope with some incongruity to a norm or an ideal. This is a useful advantage to us, in general. Of course, it can be inflated beyond its healthy purpose, and arguably in our society it has taken on monstrous proportions. But it should not be surprising that dirty jokes would develop out of the humorous theme of breaching the expected.

Of course, Enyart's points on privacy and taboo are further undercut by the lack of universality to his claims. In different cultures or even social classes, delicacy about excretion or nudity or even sexual congress will vary.


I will avoid expending much effort on Enyart's sermonizing about his theological anthropology. His conviction that humanity is comprised of soul, body, and spirit - and uniquely so amongst species - is far from self-evident. And one can look at Indian theological anthropology (with its chakras, etc.) and recognize that human concepts of one's actual being can be speculative or preconditioned, and do not need to correspond to reality.


So - to move on the the ghosties with the mosties.... Common human fear of spirits does not demonstrate the existence of a spiritual realm any more than the once prevalent trend toward polytheism demonstrated that there were river-gods and sun-gods and fertility-gods. Human capacity for imagination and abstract thought, combined with apparently freakish occurrences, are sufficient to account for concepts of ghosties. But beyond this, it is amazing that Enyart could not diagnose a practical advantage to wariness toward darkness, or that he could not recall another species that shies away from its own dead.


And so we move on to beauty. Enyart's arguments on this point are patently ridiculous. Beauty is, as they so rightly say, in the eye of the beholder. Enyart apparently is unaware of cultures where a man's belch is in fact a thing of beauty, inasmuch as it compliments the provider of the food. He is apparently also insensitive to the proliferation of created life that is less-than-beautiful to human eyes; few people would consider the tapeworm or the cockroach or the naked mole rat gorgeous. Furthermore, he sees no rational explanation for the concept of beauty, when it is easily appreciated that beauty is linked to factors like symmetry, grace, and clemency. Each of these factors links to a practical advantage worth appreciating in its own right. From this, human capacity for abstractualization easily accounts for concepts of beauty.

Repeatedly, Enyart displays a myopic tendency - unable (or unwilling) to see beyond the presumed categories of thought that define his world. It is unnecessary to hold an atheistic perspective to recognize that Enyart's objections are recurringly insubstantial, and an actual detriment toward significant dialogue with thoughtful atheists.

[Guest]

Wow Emmett,

Nice reply, but I think you are stretching there a bit. You don't seem to take notice that he was comparing human nature to animal nature and showing the differences between the two. So, in essence what you are telling me that someone can believe(namely an atheist) that out of the billions of life forms on this planet, only one species developed all these traits. C'mon that is even a stretch for you. Plus all the things you listed are highly speculative with absolutely no evidence at all.

[Guest]

In Genesis, we read that God made man in His likeness, and after His image, or something to that affect. We never read of God doing this to any other creature, just us. And if we look around, it appears that only us, have something no other creature has. For example, think of music. Music has the ability to touch us and move us in a unique way. Yet no other creature on this planet can connect with music in this way. Have you ever seen a weasel dance to music and be inspired in such a way that we are? (Commercial's don't count ). But it cause us to get emotional in many different ways. I'd say this is evidence at best, and small indications at worst, for a case for the soul of man. This type of analysis seems to be the gist of Bob Enyarts material. If there can be evidence for the soul or spiritual things, then it makes the atheist very uneasy, because allowing there to be spiritual things, opens the door for the plausibility for a Creator, and the Creator revealed in the bible just happens to Be "Spirit" according to Jesus. John 4:24 I think it is.

[Guest]

There are a few statements in the article that caught my attention:

But nothing inherent in matter should reliably give rise to any knowledge whatsoever....
...For information science shows that knowledge does not arise nor increase by chance. And if any atheist thinks otherwise, then produce the proof discovered since Einstein which shows that knowledge can arise from matter

and

Just as no conceivable process can account for consciousness, i.e. self-awareness, arising of itself from matter, neither could personality and emotion so originate. Logically, the effect cannot be greater than the cause.

Atheist,

This expresses (better than I was apparently able to in the other thread) what my point was regarding the moral and teleological argument. Thought (let alone morality) is meaningless from a naturalistic world view. And the fact that you can imagine such a speculative scenario as you described there only serves to bolster my argument IMO. Speculation is not even real knowledge at all, yet we have the creative capacity to imagine it in our minds...just like an intelligent Creator.

I don't think Homer and I are the ones with the warped idea of naturalism. But, that's just my opinion.

[Guest]

Hello, Micah,

Thank you for your response.

You don't seem to take notice that he was comparing human nature to animal nature and showing the differences between the two.

Enyart's argument is thoughtfully organized around the ways creatures treat poop and sex. Now, cats bury their feces. Does this make them higher spiritual beings than dogs? Are they therefore greater reflections of the image of God? Please. There is no reason to presume that species' bodily etiquette demonstrates their relative spiritual condition. Not even all humans share the same etiquette when it comes to sexual and excretory propriety. And, for what it's worth, plenty of humans excrete and have sex without serious concern for whether goldfish are watching - and at a Christian bachelor party just the other week, I heard one upper-middle-class man explain in serious (non-bawdy) tones that he would be OK peeing in front of his wife. I doubt that human bodily etiquette directly and consistently correlates to spiritual condition. So tropical women go topless - proper women in the past wouldn't show their ankles, and does this make girls in sandals and shorts today promiscuous? It's largely a matter of cultural sensibilities.

Beyond this nonsense, Enyart's basic premise is flawed. We have no verifiable way of ascertaining whether or not certain animals have spirits, and there is little basis for drawing an exclusive distinction between human and animal nature.

So, in essence what you are telling me that someone can believe(namely an atheist) that out of the billions of life forms on this planet, only one species developed all these traits. C'mon that is even a stretch for you.

I find the mechanical requirements of unguided evolution from raw chemicals to modern humans to be questionable, given the limited time frame available within Earth's geological history. So for even one species to display these traits would be astounding; why then should it be impossible for only one to do so?

But Enyart is arguing repeatedly from psychological grounds, and there are naturalistic explanations for human sensibilitites and behavior. And I would not be too surprised if these naturalistic explanations correspond in large part with God's own reasons for defining something as "good" or "evil."

Plus all the things you listed are highly speculative with absolutely no evidence at all.

What manner of evidence do you feel to be lacking?

Shalom,
Emmet

[Guest]

So what about my first post after posting Enyart's article? What would you make of that observation, brother Emmet?

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply Emmett.

The unique presence of dirty jokes and taboos of physical privacy can be attributed to the unusually complex development of the human psyche. Human beings are capable of processing experiences and activities conceptually, and not just in terms of instinct and sensory response. We are able to reflect upon our ways of being, and to impart meaning - both real and imagined - to them. This is almost certainly an advantage to our species, and it provides a venue for behavior to enter into the chain of evolutionary process.

This seems incredulous, despite the fact that evolution would be a statistically phenomenal event, because it would take another statistically phenomenal event to have only one species develop these traits.

There is practical advantage to males limiting sexual access to their females. For one thing, it can reduce the spread of venereal disease. For another, it makes it easier to identify which offspring belong to whom, which makes for a more tightly-knit familial unit. The familial unit is an advantage because it provides a more stable setting for mutual support and the rearing of children, along with a certain efficiency through assignment of interpersonal responsibility and caregiving. And, of course, humans are far from the only species to have males limit sexual access to their females.

I guess I am a little lost with the point you are trying to make here. What part of his article are you trying to dispute with this paragraph? Or are you trying to say we are not that much different than the animals? If it is the latter, than yes, you are going to find some similarities, but overall humans have distinct traits that none of the other animals have.

From this, then, given the visual orientation of male sexuality, it is understandable that males would wish to hedge their bonds to their females by covering those portions of their anatomy which might extraordinarily excite competition from other males.

Why then don’t any other animals exhibit this trait? You don’t see the male Lion covering his female lions in order to dissuade other male lions from his pride.

Eventually, they might also seek to hedge their bonds by developing the practice of males covering their own exciting parts. As this hedge would become more and more common, the natural engines of social conformity would kick in, and psychological issues of embarrassment and shame would enter the picture. Of course, these psychological factors and the engines of social conformity are an advantage, inasmuch as they contribute to greater cohesiveness and cooperation amongst a social group.

Do you have evidence of this? I think you are jumping to a conclusion here without showing this process in any other species.

Beyond this, the concept of sexual privacy allows for a more intimate and circumscribed sexual experience, which contributes to a closer and more distinct psychological bond, and thus a stronger familial unit.

No other animals need privacy. Why do we? Seems like an odd concept to develop when everything around you does the opposite.

As for excretory privacy, this is understandable in part as an extension of the sensitivities of sexual privacy, given the anatomical proximities of both functions. Beyond this, since excretion is an occasion of somewhat increased physical vulnerability, seeking privacy somewhat lessens the danger of being attacked with one's pants around one's ankles, so to speak - which is another practical advantage.

Again, what other species does this? If the point of the atheist is that we evolved from a prehistoric animal species than why are we the only one doing this?

So, beyond these issues of privacy, then, the emergence of dirty jokes is easily understandable. Humor is a psychological device that allows us to more flexibly cope with some incongruity to a norm or an ideal. This is a useful advantage to us, in general. Of course, it can be inflated beyond its healthy purpose, and arguably in our society it has taken on monstrous proportions. But it should not be surprising that dirty jokes would develop out of the humorous theme of breaching the expected.

Do you have any examples of animals that exhibit this trait of humor? A hyena doesn’t count.

Of course, Enyart's points on privacy and taboo are further undercut by the lack of universality to his claims. In different cultures or even social classes, delicacy about excretion or nudity or even sexual congress will vary.

I think he addresses this point in his article:

In rejecting God, an individual or societal conscience can be seared and values lowered. So tribesmen can adopt minimalist clothing and condition their women to go topless, but missionaries find that women in such cultures readily reassert their modesty. Behaviors that are characteristically human, which are unlike those in the animal kingdom from which we supposedly evolved just a short time ago, testify to a morality of human nature imposed upon us by the Creator.

So - to move on the the ghosties with the mosties.... Common human fear of spirits does not demonstrate the existence of a spiritual realm any more than the once prevalent trend toward polytheism demonstrated that there were river-gods and sun-gods and fertility-gods. Human capacity for imagination and abstract thought, combined with apparently freakish occurrences, are sufficient to account for concepts of ghosties. But beyond this, it is amazing that Enyart could not diagnose a practical advantage to wariness toward darkness, or that he could not recall another species that shies away from its own dead.

Do you have an example of another species that exhibit these traits?

And so we move on to beauty. Enyart's arguments on this point are patently ridiculous. Beauty is, as they so rightly say, in the eye of the beholder. Enyart apparently is unaware of cultures where a man's belch is in fact a thing of beauty, inasmuch as it compliments the provider of the food. He is apparently also insensitive to the proliferation of created life that is less-than-beautiful to human eyes; few people would consider the tapeworm or the cockroach or the naked mole rat gorgeous. Furthermore, he sees no rational explanation for the concept of beauty, when it is easily appreciated that beauty is linked to factors like symmetry, grace, and clemency. Each of these factors links to a practical advantage worth appreciating in its own right. From this, human capacity for abstractualization easily accounts for concepts of beauty.

I would say beauty is in the eye of the human beholder. People tend to cringe at the sight of things that don’t look normal. Like when someone gets burnt in a fire, but you don’t see that same tendency in a dog. Dogs don’t care what you look like as long as you are there to give them the attention they want.

Repeatedly, Enyart displays a myopic tendency - unable (or unwilling) to see beyond the presumed categories of thought that define his world. It is unnecessary to hold an atheistic perspective to recognize that Enyart's objections are recurringly insubstantial, and an actual detriment toward significant dialogue with thoughtful atheists.

I disagree. I think he brings up very valid points and you haven’t proved to me that animals have at least displayed a remote likeness to the qualities of those found in humans.

Enyart's argument is thoughtfully organized around the ways creatures treat poop and sex. Now, cats bury their feces. Does this make them higher spiritual beings than dogs? Are they therefore greater reflections of the image of God?

Of course not, it just means that the cat is a cleaner animal than a dog. They still defecate in front of you without any sense of embarrassment.

Please. There is no reason to presume that species' bodily etiquette demonstrates their relative spiritual condition. Not even all humans share the same etiquette when it comes to sexual and excretory propriety. And, for what it's worth, plenty of humans excrete and have sex without serious concern for whether goldfish are watching - and at a Christian bachelor party just the other week, I heard one upper-middle-class man explain in serious (non-bawdy) tones that he would be OK peeing in front of his wife. I doubt that human bodily etiquette directly and consistently correlates to spiritual condition. So tropical women go topless - proper women in the past wouldn't show their ankles, and does this make girls in sandals and shorts today promiscuous? It's largely a matter of cultural sensibilities.

Just because a husband will pee in front of his wife doesn’t mean he would do the same in front of his wife’s sister. On your last point, I think the reason our culture gets further away from modesty is because we keep searing our conscious to accept it as the norm. The same thing is happening with violence. Where one would not have even allowed their child to play a violent video game like today 20 years ago, it appears to be no problem now. I find it very interesting in that all of the sinful desires that the Bible points out, humans tend to keep gravitating toward slowly, but surely.

Beyond this nonsense, Enyart's basic premise is flawed. We have no verifiable way of ascertaining whether or not certain animals have spirits, and there is little basis for drawing an exclusive distinction between human and animal nature.

I think there is a lot of basis for drawing a exclusive distinction between human and animal nature. If the atheist is claiming we evolved from animals than we should exhibit the very same traits as those animals. Or those animals should be exhibiting at least similar traits to us. What we find, however, is that we are a very distinct species that separate us from all other animals. This shouldn’t be the case if we evolved from them.

Now I can agree that our distinction may not prove we have a spirit because without seeing one how can we say we have one. However, there should be an explanation for why we are so different from the animals. So far, the Bible has those answers and evolution does not. If the atheists don’t have evolution than what do they have?

[Guest]

Hello, SoaringEagle,

Thank you for your response. I apologize for the bit of lag-time. The internet router at my house got fried, so I am somewhat deferring to using my connection at work. I'm pretty lucky to have a job where I can afford to do this!

In Genesis, we read that God made man in His likeness, and after His image, or something to that affect. We never read of God doing this to any other creature, just us.

This is, of course, an argument from silence.

Beyond this, it could be argued philosophically that every creation is in the image and likeness of its creator to some extent, as an expression of the creator's mind.

And if we look around, it appears that only us, have something no other creature has. For example, think of music. Music has the ability to touch us and move us in a unique way. Yet no other creature on this planet can connect with music in this way. ... But it cause us to get emotional in many different ways. I'd say this is evidence at best, and small indications at worst, for a case for the soul of man.

I find it difficult to ascertain what constitutes "music" in other animals' consciousness. But essentially, music is just a particular mode of communication, and this is certainly a common trait across species. But for what it's worth, it appears that at least some animals display emotion, and react empathetically to others' displays of emotion.

Before I can address your conclusion, though, I will need to know your answer to: what is a "soul"?

Shalom,
Emmet