Haha, oh my people were sore at my posting...
Actually by "we" I meant the majority of thinking human beings. Established universities with funding programs that are dedicated to weeding out theories put forward by people who can't be bothered to put aside the magical thinking after childhood and by advancing strong ones put forward by the kind of people who devote their lives to trying to answer said questions instead of sitting on a forum piggybacking off of other's research and then ridiculing it. The best estimate is by actual scientists working towards something that is... not immaterial and people who can't even attain a doctorate that just sit on Skeptiko in their spare time aren't going to answer the questions they seek, but.. enjoy your spiritual journey, right? Get back to your science books and learn, stop repeating the statements made by other's, ie. "wake up to the fact we're spiritual beings" then wake yourself up and get off a subpar, dying, forum about "intelligent discussion on science and spirituality" and go and find evidence for it. Or, spend the rest of your days relying on other's life's goals.
Johnny you say life is not material then show me your immaterial soul, or whatever crack you believe in LOL and I'll show you a material world right in front of your eyes. You realize that, as one example, information transfer is physical, right? Just because our senses (which are in the brain not the immaterial ethereal woo-void) cannot detect something doesn't mean it is immaterial. Even the empty space between atoms, or perhaps universes, is physical. There may be no immaterial.
Provide me with an example of something immaterial, please.
Hi Travis Montgomery, I can sense a really foul tone developing between us, And perhaps I am to blame, I shouldn't have said that "people should wake up to the fact that we are spiritual beings' that was a bit rash of me, I meant that 'I wish' people would wake up to the fact we are spiritual beings, because that is my firm belief..
But to begin with, I am not whimsically stating we are spiritual beings, just because I heard someone else say that, I have dedicated a vast portion of my life in the search to this answer, and I am convinced that I am not solely my material body, in fact, I don't think I am my temporary body at all, but that the very life force within me, The self, my true identity. is not material. but immaterial, it is also not a subject I can convey in a post or two, or perhaps I can offer a few examples, as to how I come to conclude this, And therefore validate my reasoning for holding such beliefs.
Firstly
In my last post I asked you a question, are the thoughts in my mind physical, I didn't get an answer to this response.
Moving on,
I am not this material body,
My body is constantly changing from birth, like changing clothes, taking of one garment and wearing another,
All the atoms that make up my body are constantly being renewed. and the body I had as a baby, is no longer, it has been replaced with an entirely new body, and the body I have in the present will also not be the same body I posses in ten years or so, So, all the physical elements that make up my body are nothing but temporary, Yet, 'I' the self ( Soul ) am still existing as the same self, In the search for identity, The conclusion is, I am not this material body. If the body is changing, in this lifetime, like changing garments, yet I am still existing.
So where does my mind reside, In my brain? My research say's no.
Another challenging phenomenon is the presence of normal or
even high intelligence in people who have very little brain tissue. There
are again rare, but surprising, cases of people who seem to function
normally in life, with normal intelligence and normal social function,
despite having virtually no brain at all.
Bruce Greyson M.D Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences
How is it possible to conclude that the 'life force' within me is an emergent of my brain, when my brain itself doesn't begin to emerge until about three weeks into my material life, Each one of us begins life as a single celled organism, about the size of a grain of salt, The cell starts to divide and multiply, into two then four and so on, It is able to develop due to the life within it, and about three weeks into conception we start developing a brain, then limbs organs and so on. Without the life energy within the material body, there is no question of development. the conclusion is that life is not an emergent of the brain, the brain is an emergent of life.
Also, the brain you had last week, is not the same brain you will have next week.
, "Your brain is being disassembled and reassembled every day. "One week from today, your brain will be made up of completely different proteins than it is today. This video shows the process. We've known that it was happening, but now we can watch it happen."- Don Arnold, associate professor of molecular and computational biology at the USC
http://www.sciencespacerobots.com/video-shows-the-traffic-inside-a-brain-cell-82220123
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-video-reveals-just-happens-inside-brain.html
So in conclusion, I am constantly changing my material body, yet I am still existing.
My brain is an emergent of the life force within my material body, not the other way round.
I could probably continue, but as I said, I am not really keen on putting years of study, and having to remember knowledge on demand, over a forum, It's time consuming and requires a lot of energy, I prefer more lighthearted interactions nowadays, But if they do manage to prove life is an emergent of matter, 'll be all ears, I'm just sick of these close calls, by all means,,if one can prove it, then do so. But I ain't holding my breath, and further, it's my firm belief, that life animates matter, not the other way round. But in no way am I lazy in this aspect, I apologize I never dedicated my life to science, I am more of a spiritualist.
John