Feb
07.
At last, the series ends. Here is part five of the series on the mind/body problem. This episode steps completely away from analytical philosophy and is an overview of some of the biblical material that bears on the subject. Although it’s a comparatively long episode (just under fifty minutes), it’s still a very sketchy overview. The subject is a large one, and at best I can get the ball rolling and encourage you to look further. Enjoy. 
Similar Posts:
- Episode 026: In Search of the Soul, part 1
- Episode 027: In Search of the Soul, Part 2
- Episode 032: In Search of the Soul, Part 4
- Episode 015: Why become an atheist?
- What's in the next podcast series:
- Episode 043: In Search of the Soul Revisited – Aristotle and Aquinas
Tags: dualism, Philosophy of mind, physicalism, podcast, soul, Theology / Biblical Studies
A genuinely free soul would be neither male or female in its essential feeling-disposition.
And because it would be established in the asana or disposition of being in feeling relationship to all beings it would also be characterized by freely given love, blessing and compassion towards all beings–even the very worst of human beings.
It would certainly have no sympathy for Berattas and the “culture” of death that they intrinsically represent.
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I liked this podcast (and the last one too). Even though I am a dualist, I agreed with much of what was said. I don’t think that the Bible clearly teaches dualism or things that obviously entail dualism. I think you are right that Scripture emphasizes the goodness of the material world and that our ultimate hope is the resurrection of the body and the renewal of this world, not eternal existence as a disembodied soul. I also think you are right that it is not Biblical teaching that it is our having a soul that sets us apart from animals (and from a philosophical perspective, it is hard to endorse standard arguments for dualism without holding that animals also have souls).
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Human don’t have a soul and nothing exists beyond the material world.
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2
And the congregation said “amen.”
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Kenny, Ecclesiastes 3 says: Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath (life/spirit/soul) ; man has no advantage over the animal (in the natural, except, of course, man can believe in Jesus and so be resurrected)
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oops, sorry Kenny, just re-read your post and you clearly support what the verse above states. I really should listen to the podcast first before posting! I suspect Glenn used it too.
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Not this time, James. I tried (not always successfully) to stay away from verses to do with life after death and stay with verses that spoke only about human nature.
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Glenn, have you come across this guy’s nice and simple explanation from Gen 1 & 2 as to our human condition? It’s at http://www.jba.gr/Articles/nkjv_jbamay96.htm
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“The Journal of Biblical Accuracy”? LOL! What a name for one man’s website.
No, I haven’t read his work. I’ll take a look.
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Most important of all, of course, is the fact that I have new opening and closing music in this episode!
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Noe that you brought it up…
I have been wanting to tell you how much I enjoy your guitar playing.
When did you start playing?
I started in the mid 90′s so shredding was not required during the grunge movement nor was any sort of technical skill.
You sound like you can shred with the best of them.
Also, is that a drum machine or a kit?
More on topic…really really nice series.
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Glenn was your “amen” directed at post #3?
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Well it wasn’t my amen. It was the congregation of the disciples of Dawkins.
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Personally, I think you could make more use of Southern Baptist-style organ bashing during the podcast, just to emphasise points and generally whip us up into a frenzy.
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I love Soul 5.
One thing came up in KJNT / 1cor5. Paul is instructing the church to deliver a bad boy to Satan for the destruction of the flesh in the hope of the spirit being saved.
I don’t know all the ways the flesh is defined, so I allow for the possibility that the flesh does not always represent the body or as Soul5 would indicate, the living creature entotal as soul. You do present the spirit, however, as belonging to God and simply ours as a loan. The passage in 1Cor5 suggests there exists a jeopardy for the spirit.
Is it God’s spirit in danger or the essence of who the bad boy was/is? What am I missing?
Great Work! PayPAL shortly.
Thanks
George Hine, USA
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Finally got time to listen to this, and I am half way through (25th minute). You are discussing the use of ‘soul’ by John in Revelation and it struck me (since I’ve also just finished listening to the previous episode) that if as a dualist I believed the soul was immaterial, then what exactly did John see? What’s more, how could this have a forehead to be marked? or have a voice to cry out? Surely the text *only* allows for soul to refer to objects that are at least material in nature…
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Nathan, that’s an interesting point! John can only really have meant that he saw people, otherwise what would there be to see?
Still, the idea of a ghostly apparition would have been a familiar one to him – but then, this would not have been called a psuche.
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Sorry, I know this is an old post, but I’ve been meaning to comment ever since I went through the series and haven’t gotten around to it until now.
Glenn, I really enjoyed this series. It resonates with me because when I had a massive crisis of faith a few years ago, one of the things that troubled me was the obvious physicality of conscious human sentience. A number of things from ordinary experience seem to really point to the mental/emotional/volitional part of us being physical. For instance: the effects of alcohol, drugs, Alzheimer’s disease, the manipulation of the brain by a surgeon on the operating table, whatever mysterious phenomena that occurs to our “soul” when we are unconscious for six to eight hours every night, etc. (ever wonder, from a dualist perspective, what your “soul” is doing all the time you are asleep? especially during the non-dreaming periods). Also the fact that memories are obviously a feature of our physical brains (a fact I’m dealing with personally right now, due to a loved one having been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease). I could go on…
The reason this was a problem during a crisis of faith was that I at that point I thought that the Christian world view required dualism. Your series helps to resolve that tension, and fits nicely with both Christian theology AND observed reality. (I was able to recover my faith without necessarily resolving this: there were enough other things that got resolved I was able to “shelve” this worry for a while).
However…
The whole time I was listening, one thought has been bothering me: what does this do with your Christology? If God is a spirit, and Jesus was human (and hence, physical), how could he also be God? If humans are entirely physical, and Jesus, being human, was physical like the rest of us, does that mean he didn’t exist before being born as a human? If he did, then in what sort of state would Jesus have existed prior to occupying a body on earth? Could physicalism lead to Arianism? How would you deal with this?
(forgive me if this was covered in the material or comments; I’ll confess to occasionally encountering distractions while listening to the podcast).
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Referring back to comment #3 – of course Richard knows this based on personal experience.
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