"and frightening believers in the developing world who still fear God"

So is it just me or is this just a ridiculous statement? As long as they still fear God, don't give them anything else to be afraid of?

hey, seriously, where do those vatican guys get their hats? I would love to get one of those funny little priest hats, the kind the italian priests wear. I remember seeing a documentary in college about Fellini, and on the set, he was wearing this great little tri-cornered priest hat. I'd love to get one, but alas, I'm not catholic.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite jokes (circa 1973): Two hippies are standing on a street corner, and a priest with a cast on his leg hobbles by. Hippie One sez,"Hey, man, what happened to your leg?" The priest replied, "Oh, I slipped in the bathtub" and hobbles off. Hippie Two asks Hippie One, "What's a bathtub?", to which Hippie One replies, "I don't know, man, I'm not catholic!"

Oh man, two millenia of subjugation, repression, and co-option of native cultures, but them catholics sure got some funny hats!

i'll take knowledge, ability, technical competance and tools for $200, jack. but i also demand the sublime ecstasy of true appreciation-no, gratitude- the feeling of being taken care of, and not being "taken care of". the willing suspension of disbelief is undervalued as a spiritual tool. say, how do all you atheist/materialist/empiricists relate to the human spirit?(or soul?) is it one of those logical positivist things where if it can't be expressed in words it has no intrinsic meaning in reality or even as a concept? ok, i'm rambling, but i really want to know and this seems like a good crowd to ask.

I think somebody in wardrobe made a mistake. That hat belongs to Archbishop Don Magic Juan.

Jonathan,

You'll need to define spirit and soul if you expect an answer, and remember dualism in this context is half wrong.

thats what i meant by the logical positivism reference- assuming its undefinable, it doesn't exist. my question was directed to rationalists who admit the possibility of the existance of a human "soul" by ANY definition. i'm just curious as to how they (you) relate to this thing that is just accepted as a given, whatever its definition, by the vast majority of individual human minds for all of recorded history. does it serve an evolutionary function? is it a gland? in the broad context of dualism (broader than bacon :) i don't think dualism is mutually exclusive of the context of the rationalist approach, if that's what you meant. rationalists separate reality into the known and the unknown.

broader than descarte,too. :)

Nah, I was thinking body and soul when speaking of dualism, they aren't seperate things the soul or spirit is necessairly a part of the body. It's all there just not something distinct and seperate from the body. How about the poetry of life. Similar to the religious concept without the attribution.

Jonathan, As an atheist, I don't believe in any superstitions, including the existance of any kind of soul.

Jonathan said // thats what i meant by the logical positivism reference- assuming its undefinable, it doesn't exist //

Supernatural positivism - assuming it's undefinable, it must be supernatural.

well, see, this is why i'm asking. i've never even HEARD this idea that the soul is part of the body-except in the obvious sense that we don't have any sense knowledge of souls w/out bodies. in fact, the closest thing i know of that we have to empirical evidence of a the existance of a soul is the existance of the terms "i" and "we", which are just as difficult to define, and just as universally accepted. but just saying that its part of the body isn't really a way of relating to its existance. there must be more to it than that. (i mean more to the rationalist/athiest approach to the idea, not the idea itself.)

hi jo anne. i think you're confusing supernatural with nonexistant, in this context. unless i'm mistaken that the rationalistic/athiest worldview doesn't recognize the existance of the "supernatural", by definition.

you may ask, if rationalists don't believe in the supernatural, why would i address a question to those who do? this gives me the oppurtunity to state the main principle of my new approach to religion-just came up with this one. "while religion is a system of belief, and atheism is a system of non belief ( as attested to elsewhere on this blog by norm in response to the accusation that atheism is merely another form of belief), i subscribe to a second, previously unknown form of non-belief: i don't beleive in atheists. :)

oh, i'm sorry, jo anne, i just realized-where you just saying that "believers" are "supernatural positivists"? nice one. i'm sure many are. did you coin that phrase? pretty good. i vote to have it added to the lexicon, if it isn't already.

Hey, Jonathan. I have a suspicion that you may have smoked a little ganja, as I have.

I coined a phrase? Wow! Allow my ego to enjoy this ephemeral moment of self gratification. :D

Jonathan said //while religion is a system of belief, and atheism is a system of non belief ( as attested to elsewhere on this blog by norm in response to the accusation that atheism is merely another form of belief), i subscribe to a second, previously unknown form of non-belief: i don't beleive in atheists. :)//

Atheism is not a system of non belief. Atheists don't believe in fairy tales. I enjoy little pictures of fairys and i appreciate the idea of the muse, and of string theory, and of the unknown. I just don't ascribe (is that a word?) the unknown as being supernatural.

i am fucking enjoying the fucking shit out of this ephemeral fucking moment of self fucking gratifi-fucking-cation. you gonna bogart that all night or what?

well, if atheism was a system of non belief in fairy tales, i'd say most of the worlds population are atheists. but i don't think thats what norm meant. he meant,and i paraphrase, " not being a card player doesn't make me a gambler." that is, not believing in god doesn't make me a believer in not-belief. i'm merely trying to portray the atheist position fairly. not as someone who merely doesn't believe in fairy tales- or that the unknown isn't synonymous with the supernatural. i'm saying that he or she believes in the existance of the supernatural not as a principle of atheism (which seems to be ideologically opposed to this) but against their will, as some kind of genetic/evolutionary law that includes the facts that we question, we hesitate to cause pain and we laugh, not just in truimph (like chimpanzees) but as a reaction to the absurd- unlike all other animals.

You know what they say: if you're the problem then you're... the problem? That's not what they say.

Still, nice to see my direct antithesis out there. Here I am thinking to myself 'you know, occasionally christians do good work as well as spreading their nonsense' and then the ol' pontiff says 'nah - that's just a sideline: the real deal's the story!'

Who knew the Pope was an evangelical?

I love the hat. I am reminded of the Red Rider hat I had as a kidlet. Some kid stole it. Now I know who he sold it to. Damned pope, gimme my hat.

Given the option between Christianity (or any other religion or god for that matter) and a roof over my head with clothes on my back... I'll take the latter.

The RATZ looks like just another weasel peddling hs wares even with the cool hat. Isnt it strange Re: Jon & Jo anne how this idea of humans possessing a "soul" has taken hold. Is it just another comforting delusion we adopt in the face of our eventual demise of which we are always concious, no matter how hard we try to deny it/ seek escape from it. The sad part is RATZ & co have found purchase amongst the poor of Africa and China which means they will be around peddling their evil for who knows how long.

so is that it? nobodies going to answer my question about how atheists relate to the idea of the human soul/spirit? (if there is in fact a unified position on this). is it because the impossibility of defining spirit makes the question itself meaningless? that would be kind of weasle-ey. YOU know what i'm talking about. is it because it has nothing to do with the pope in a red cowboy hat? the pope, as played by a german in a red cowboy hat, reminds me of the pithy comment made by a friend upon the passing of the previous pope. "the pope? he was a good friend to the jews. and a better friend to our enemies. " wait...it doesn't? sure it does. this question IS the pope in a red cowboy hat. is it because the sentence structure in my last comment was so mangled by exposure to (second hand-of course)pot smoke as to be completely unintelligable? or am i just being a nudnik? what,you people got somthing better to do?

Jonathan, you have yet to explain what you mean by "spirit" or "soul". If you're talking about a feeling you get when something happens (e.g. the appreciation of art or beauty) or anything like that, then I think "spiritual" is just a certain way of expressing certain mental phenomena. The mental is not supernatural. The mind in human beings is dependent on the physical brain. So all the experiences we have which some people choose to label "spiritual" are in fact firmly based in the natural world. That's how the atheists I know deal with the issue, at any rate.

Umm Jon B?

Simply asserting that the soul/spirit exists does not make it so.

If your defining human emotion and human consiousness as the soul/spirit than it does exist, but only as a function of the brain.

Consiousness is a function of the brain and not some fuzzy otherworldy phenomenon, emotions are related to certain brain activity in response to stimuli, we see something funny we laugh, now just because we have 'better' brains than other animals does not mean that our brains are mysterious in some way. The fact that we dont know exactly how they work is also not evidence for the soul/spirit.

And on the whole forced to believe in the supernatural... WHAT? Are you insane? The fact that we question is suddenly supernatural? That doesnt make any sence at all, it again relates to the idea that our brains are highly evolved for adaptability, it is our brains that allow us to manipulate our enviromnents and not the other way around (Though there is a little of that going on)...

Again on the hesitation to cause pain its got to have some sound evolutionary reasons behind it, cooperation and social selection being probable key ones, but at the moment I don't care to do the checking to find out exactly the consensus on this...

Anyway, back to the point, there is no good reason to believe in the supernatural, if you have a good reason, not a reason that says: We dont understand X therefore X must have a supernatural origin. That explains nothing and is evidence for nothing... You need positive evidence that the soul/spirit are supernatural, which by definition is imposible since if they are supernatural they are outside of nature and thus not subject to our sences or our abilty to find evidence.

So on supernaturalism, any idea of God is profoundly stupid, for the simple reason that you can make up whatever shit you feel like in order to prove your position, it could even be logically consistent but so long as it remained in the realm of the supernatural you would be untouchable from a scientific standpoint.

So on metaphysics, I feel that it is all pointless bs that has absolutely no effect on our lives. So stop making shit (Souls/spirits/Gods) up and find something more usefull/better to do with your time.

Umm Jon B?

Simply asserting that the soul/spirit exists does not make it so.

If your defining human emotion and human consiousness as the soul/spirit than it does exist, but only as a function of the brain.

Consiousness is a function of the brain and not some fuzzy otherworldy phenomenon, emotions are related to certain brain activity in response to stimuli, we see something funny we laugh, now just because we have 'better' brains than other animals does not mean that our brains are mysterious in some way. The fact that we dont know exactly how they work is also not evidence for the soul/spirit.

And on the whole forced to believe in the supernatural... WHAT? Are you insane? The fact that we question is suddenly supernatural? That doesnt make any sence at all, it again relates to the idea that our brains are highly evolved for adaptability, it is our brains that allow us to manipulate our enviromnents and not the other way around (Though there is a little of that going on)...

Again on the hesitation to cause pain its got to have some sound evolutionary reasons behind it, cooperation and social selection being probable key ones, but at the moment I don't care to do the checking to find out exactly the consensus on this...

Anyway, back to the point, there is no good reason to believe in the supernatural, if you have a good reason, not a reason that says: We dont understand X therefore X must have a supernatural origin. That explains nothing and is evidence for nothing... You need positive evidence that the soul/spirit are supernatural, which by definition is imposible since if they are supernatural they are outside of nature and thus not subject to our sences or our abilty to find evidence.

So on supernaturalism, any idea of God is profoundly stupid, for the simple reason that you can make up whatever shit you feel like in order to prove your position, it could even be logically consistent but so long as it remained in the realm of the supernatural you would be untouchable from a scientific standpoint.

So on metaphysics, I feel that it is all pointless bs that has absolutely no effect on our lives. So stop making shit (Souls/spirits/Gods) up and find something more usefull/better to do with your time.

well, bcortens, aren't you a treasure. so your answer to my question "how do athiests relate to the idea of the human soul/spirit?" is "we don't. and furthermore we shit on anyone who dares to use the term. and we'll throw in a bunch of stuff about how god doesn't exist,either, just for good measure." "only" a function of the brain? for some reason i find this phrase amusing. must be a function of my brain. thank you for taking the time to respond. i hope you found it a "useful" way to spend your time.

well thank you, chris murphy. you're right, i didn't explain what i meant by the soul, simply because i can't. i was just hoping that one of the athiest folk here would have enough good will to realize that there is, in fact, something to talk about, and not be holtile or obtuse. your description, though necessarily partial, shows me that whatever it is, we're talking about the same thing. your explanation seems pretty clear- the "soul" is a mental phemomenon, connected to the brain, which is physical,ergo- the soul is physical. norm and bcortens also said as much, so i'm getting the picture that this is a consensus among atheist/rationalists. i'll say again, and i'm not proud of it, but i have been until now unfamiliar with this idea, and i thank you all for explaining it to me. would i be incorrect in stating that the mechanism whereby "soul"-or even thought-makes the transformation from meat and electrical impulses is not currently understood scientifically? because my next question would obviously be, how does labeling the "soul" a natural phenomena add in any way to our understanding of it?

If "the soul" is part of the natural world, then it might help us to understand more about it because it would then be amenable to the methods of science. If we can correlate certain brain-phenomena (an activation of area X) with certain mental-phenomena (a feeling of Y), then that goes some way to helping us understand the mental phenomena. However, since science is by its nature objective, it can never fully explain to each individual person why they feel the particular things they do, only why humans in general feel the types of things they do.

I suggest you read Colin McGinn's "The Character of Mind" (ISBN: 0198752083). I think you would find it both interesting and entertaining.

http://www.atheists.org/cgi-bin/tonly.cgi

That's all the effort I'll put forth on your "question". You don't seem to have a genuine desire to discuss or understand the other point of view on the topic IMO.

http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/mind.html

Jon I may have misunderstood you earlier.

Are you asking questions about the nature of consciousness or the brain? For example, do you want to understand more about how we think or how the brain works? If this is the case I recommend you read books on neurology or the cognitive sciences. As to which books you should read I have no idea but you will not learn much from a brief discussion with us.

You asked “how does labeling the “soul” a natural phenomena add in any way to our understanding of it?”

Well if it was not a natural phenomena we couldn’t understand it, by definition we can only study what exists within the universe. So really there is no other way to talk about the mind/soul, we have to talk in terms of naturalistic mechanisms…

We can speak in whatever terms we wish, but if you use the word soul it commonly conjures up images of an ethereal other-worldly spirit that is only vaguely connected to our physical self. The common definition of soul is also immortal, and since this immortality depends upon the ethereal qualities of the soul we again enter a realm that has no evidence for it.
If you talk to a common person about the soul you will be talking about this ethereal soul, not the physical mind that we can study and learn about. This ethereal soul is what is made up shit that has no relevance to discussion. We can talk about the nature of the mind all we want, but if we enter the realm of the metaphysical we have left the realm of relevance to science and reality and this is where I get annoyed, when in this realm it’s a waste of time, it is in the realm of the metaphysical that we can make up whatever properties we like and apply them to whatever we like because they have no meaning or influence.

So the reason you get such annoyed remarks is because the word soul is commonly associated with this ethereal shit, if you want to talk about consciousness try and stay away from ideas that are irrelevant.

Jonathan,

I don't understand what you are asking. I also don't understand what mean by "the closest thing i know of that we have to empirical evidence of a the existance of a soul is the existance of the terms "i" and "we"".

malcolm:" we are all individuals! im not."-monty python. i guess what i was really asking, in simplified form, was "do athiests believe in the existance af a "soul" of any kind, and if so, what do they believe about it? but i'm not really that interested any more. its kind or like asking george bush if he believes in monarchy. dar, your doubts about my motivations aside, that's a great website. been having fun with it all morning.

an explanation of the analogy for those who don't do well with analogies: of course george bush believes in monarchy. in fact, he believes he's the king. but he'll never say this in public because the very source of his power is a political system that rejects the validity of monarchy. so don't ask him about it, you won't get a straight answer.

Joanathan, you have received a variety of answers from myself, Norm, Malcolm, Jo Ann and bcortens. We have attempted to understand your question and - so it seems - failed. If you formulate your ideas in a way that we can interpret more easily, I'm sure we'd be more than happy to explain our position to you.

To sum up: None of us believe in the soul if by "soul" you mean something supernatural. All of us believe in the soul if by "soul" you mean the finer and more mysterious parts of our minds.

i think i do get the picture, chris, and i appreciate your,and everyone elses help. this combined w/the information from the website, was very enlightening for me. i'll try to get ahold of the book you mentioned, esp. since you said i would find it entertaining-im a big fan of entertaining. i don't find that im any more enlightened about the soul. whether its "natural" or "supernatural" is a red herring, as far as i'm concerned, and the intrinsic-ness of this issue to atheist thinking, while understandable, i consider to be mildly crippling. i DO find myself more enlightened regarding atheist thinking about the soul, and for this, again, i thank you.

and "the finer and more mysterious parts of our minds" suits me just fine as a definition of the undefinable. for some reason everyone seemed to think i'd be disturbed by the idea that the soul would be a part of the mind, or even the brain. i guess you guys are used to arguing with christians, maybe i should have pointed out from the beginning that i'm not one. cheers.

i know you're abusy guy, norm, but if you find yourself with a few minutes to spare, i've been meaning to ask you what you meant by "the poetry of life", and how its similar to religious notions of the soul, and what you meant by "attribution"? i wouldn't ask just anybody who made such a cryptic statement, but since its you..:)only if you have time, i'm really not trying to drive you nuts.

Yes well, Jonathan you got off on the wrong foot by saying what is an "atheist" view of something that has its roots in the theistic mind. And using a blanket term such as atheist. In discussion the words you choose to use are the most important indicator of your intent, Have a look at the other Jon, Jonathan Miller's series on atheism. Links are here on this website.

i know its unlike me to relate to the actual topic of a post, but about that red cowboy hat: i know it isn't a cowboy hat. i think i mentioned in another comment that i worked for many years in a bar in jerusalem with an extremely international clientelle. i spent one night in deep drunken discussion with 3 young men from europe (i think they were skandenavians of some kind) who were undergoing some kind of freemason hazing ritual, traveling the world for a year dressed in these renaissance-looking getups, like the 3 musketeers or something. i seem to remember their hats looking almost exactly like this, though of a different colour (navy blue, i think). does anyone know the origin of this hat? is it one of those folklore things that people from the country the pope is visiting give him as a sign of respect and identification? just wondering. i do a lot of this, if you haven't noticed.:)

Jonathan said // for some reason everyone seemed to think i'd be disturbed by the idea that the soul would be a part of the mind, or even the brain//

Perhaps the following comment had something to do with that:

jonathan said // but just saying that its part of the body isn't really a way of relating to its existance. there must be more to it than that. (i mean more to the rationalist/athiest approach to the idea, not the idea itself.)//

oh, come on, jo anne. there must be a million ways to show my faulty reasoning, and half a million to show how i tremble in fear and rage at the mere intimation of a brain/soul causitive relationship, and you pick an innocuous,virtually ingratiating comment like that? :)

"Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul," the pope said, issuing an open invitation to dialogue among cultures."-from the popes speech yesterday that has the whole muslim world in an uproar today. synchronicity! exactly while we're having our little blogoshere discussion on the nature of the soul (which got some of you a little riled but, to your credit, didn't produce any death threats), the pope, whose picture and statements inspired our discussion, was giving HIS opinion on the nature of the soul. not to fiesty but largely non-violent athiests, but to muslims. in his mind, he was "issuing an open invitation to dialogue among cultures"-as was i, after a fashion. but look whats happening to him! anyone care to speculate to what degree this will snowball? a fatwa calling for the head (or "eggs":)) of benidict? cackle cackle. arab muslims on the warpath against a german pope? i must be in jew heaven!(of course im only joking. jew heaven is peace on earth/goodwill toward men. much serious stroking of beard and furrowing of brow.)

Jonathan, I'm not attempting to demonstrate faulty reasononing nor did I say that you were trembling in fear and rage at the mere intimation etc etc

I was just pointing out where you said that there is more to the soul than its being a part of the body. Why don't you just tell us all the way that you see the soul.

Now don't go getting your knickers in a knot. I'm not challenging you. I'm just trying to figure out what it is that you're trying to get at.

well, nobody asked me how i see the soul. people kept asking what i MEANT by it in the context of my question, ostensibly to make sure we were all talking about the same thing. i had to keep repeating "the value of x" that i had given from the beginning (actually from my 2nd comment on the subject), namely that "x equals "the human soul by ANY definition". i thought this would make it clear that i had no agenda nor intentions to foist MY nebulous, still forming ideas on anyone, that i wasn't here to toot my own horn, that i was genuinely interested in what a blogging community (is there an official term for this?) with a high percentage of outspoken atheists, on a blog run by one,would have to say on the subject. figured to combine this with what i knew of other thought-communities and great individuals takes on the subject, and increase my own understanding. i failed miserably in at least one of these goals-i tooted my own horn. not by showing off my own "brilliant" ideas about the soul, but by making tasteless, provocative jokes. by being verbose and back-slappy and loud and tacky in church.by being patronizing and condescending with no justification in my own status or wisdom. and here i go, doing it again, a dog to its vomit. but if you really want to know: i don't know anything about the soul, except that in a kind of intellectually lazy way i identify it with consciousness. i hope you find this helpful.