Drugs prove there is no soul!

[Purdie]

It also states that this is why drugs are seens as a "window on the soul" - because it's entirely chemical... Interesting stuff I thought.

drugs being "a window on the soul" is interesting stuff. yes?

So how do drugs prove there is no soul if they open the window on it? I mean to open a window on the soul there needs to be a soul to begin with yeah?

It's early, but i said i was gonna be nice to my brain today so now i will have some sleep

 

[Purdie]

Substances that have a purely chemical action on the brain can grossly distort our perception, reasoning and personality,

is not all action on the brain purely chemical? all sensory input is processed chemically not? Or have i got that wrong here?
So it's just a case of finding the right mix of chemical for the individual?

... can grossly distort our perception, reasoning and personality,

Just like prescription shit really, only then it's controlled and it might or might not agree with your own body's chemistry.


From the article this is:

Perhaps one day, when prohibition is finally abandoned, scientists may once again take up the promise offered by those tiny little chemicals that can tell us who and what we are.

You mean somebody actually believes that one day the pharmaceuticals will give up their monopoly of legally fucking with people's mind chemistry in the name of medicine?

Little voice inside is telling me i should sleep

 

[Jorum]

I was thinking along the lines of 'simplistic reductionism'

Fair enough, but just because something is simplified of reduced to fundamentals doesn't necessary make it meaningless. I've simplified down to the level of available facts and observable phenomenon.

I could just as easily claim that discussing "live after death", "mind seperate from physicality" and a metaphysical "soul" is elaborate, undefined, and mere unsubstantiated conjecturing.

What is meant when you say "soul"?
What do you consider to be the "mind"?
What is their relationship with our physical existence?
How do these survive without the brain? What is the evidence, what is the conjecture?

 

[MysteryGuest]

The brain has electrical activity going on whether you take drugs or not. Suggesting that seeing as you can't find the soul when you change that activity through taking drugs, then therefore the soul doesn't exist seems very "straw man" to me. Or even circular. Or... I dunno... soddit, I had a late night last night and all I can think about is going home.


Haven't got the time to check now, but didn't Blackmore once claim that taking one puff of weed will give you brain damage?

 

[magneze]

I think the argument was that if drugs ARE the "window on the soul", then the soul is an entirely chemical process, is intrinsically linked to the body, and is therefore non-existant after death.

 

[girasol]

You mean the light that travels through space and enters the hollow that is your pupil? Bit like our own personal black hole they is.

Are you on drugs too?

 

[haggy]

and one day everyone you know will be dead (which band sang that?) QUOTE]

But, Millions Now Living Will Never Die...

 

[haggy]

Haven't got the time to check now, but didn't Blackmore once claim that taking one puff of weed will give you brain damage?

If you want to be pedantic, she's absolutuely right. it does. drinking a pint of beer does limited damage also...

but then again, so does living...

 

[beergut100]

Melanie Phillips reckons that smoking spliff puts ice in the soul and makes you go round killing people!

Somewhere on her website.

 

[Sacri Liege]

Melanie Phillips reckons that smoking spliff puts ice in the soul and makes you go round killing people!

Somewhere on her website.

Whoever she is, she seems quite well chuffed with herself.

Yet more evidence that cannabis -- far from being the soft, relatively harmless drug we are constantly told it is -- can be a killer. That is to say, it can make users kill other people.

It is not so much that users turn to crime to feed their habit; it is more that the drug 'disinhibits' them by destroying those parts of the brain that deal in cognition and produce any kind of moral sense. All this is quite clear from the research evidence.

It's becoming all too clear now. Praise Jesus.

 

[Purdie]

Melanie Phillips reckons that smoking spliff puts ice in the soul and makes you go round killing people!

Somewhere on her website.

I went there. Its a scary friggin place for the state my mind is in at the mo because it gets me adrenaline pumping and that ain't no good thing. Gonna have a dig for some bits in links

 

[beergut100]

She used to have a bit more interactivity on it - a posse of creeps would post things up like "Another wonderful acticle, Melanie - you don't mind if address you as Melanie?" etc etc.

Alas, dissenting voices soon ventured on, calling her ahem a sad old menopausal cow that needed to be put out of her misery and so forth, so you can't post stuff there anymore.

 

[MysteryGuest]

I think the argument was that if drugs ARE the "window on the soul", then the soul is an entirely chemical process, is intrinsically linked to the body, and is therefore non-existant after death.

Yeah but that's what I was trying to get at in my post. She would say that the soul is an entirely chemical process, right? But what is qualitatively different between chemical processes of one sort or another, when all those processes are physical? None. Hence the straw man-ly feel to her argument. To me, that is.

 

[ska invita]

"Soul" is not a scientific term, and for science to disprove something that it cannot define in the first place is a waste of time.

 

[TeeJay]

Trying to prove beyond doubt that there's no life after death...

Can you prove anything beyond doubt?

 

[ska invita]

I doubt it.

 

[Moggy]

After death I think that you only really live on in other people's memories.

I like the whole idea of that article. On Magneze's point though, if we have an ever present soul and we die, if it lives on in other people's memories then surely it was never entirely ours to begin with? So in essence, our souls are other people's interpretations of ourselves.
Does that make sense?

 

[Blagsta]

Drugs show quite clearly that the brain is the mind.
Substances that have a purely chemical action on the brain can grossly distort our perception, reasoning and personality,
Also stopping the supply of oxygen to the brain shuts down our "mind" within minutes..

Not saying I believe this, but...

TV analogy. You can distort the TV picture with magnets. You can turn off the power and the picture goes away. Does this mean that the picture originates from within the TV?

 

[magneze]

Hmmm, but surely using your analogy, using magnets on a turned off TV should still produce an effect. Which they don't.

 

[Blagsta]

No. 'cos turning off the TV is like turning off the oxygen to the brain.

 

[magneze]

Isn't that the point though? If I understand your analogy:

TV = brain
picture = mind
magnets = drugs

then surely turning off the TV (or killing the brain) turns off the mind (the picture). If you're saying that the picture is not connected to the TV then you're right, but it's a flawed analogy - humans do not have a single broadcast mind. (AFAIK )

 

[Blagsta]

I'm just throwing ideas in, not claiming them as truth. But you turn the TV off and there's no picture. But its still there, availiable on other TVs...

 

[magneze]

Yep, but if you see each TV as a brain then you have to accept each TV's picture (mind) is unique to it surely... maybe 'cos they have different contrast settings and stuff ...
Of course drugs don't actually prove 100% there is no soul. However, because of the reaction in the mind, it IS very unlikely I think. Which is a bit depressing, now I think about it more...

 

[Blagsta]

I was thinking more along the lines of the TV broadcast being consciousness or something and each TV's electronics making the picture look different or something...I guess you can stretch an analogy too far.

And I wonder why I get called a hippy sometimes...

 

[rorymac]

I don't think we can comprehend the idea of the soul using our limited erm comprehension faculties ..<groans>
But I reckon some folks definitely have one and I hope some don't cos they're wankers and they don't deserve one.
<submits hypothesis>
<drops out at Michaelmas>

 

[MightyAphrodite]

I don't think we can comprehend the idea of the soul using our limited erm comprehension faculties ..<groans>
But I reckon some folks definitely have one and I hope some don't cos they're wankers and they don't deserve one. <submits hypothesis>
<drops out at Michaelmas>

thats made more sense to me than anything else on this thread

 

[Purdie]

Isn't that the point though? If I understand your analogy:

TV = brain
picture = mind
magnets = drugs

....

Call me pedantic but does that mean everyone that ever had a brain scan was unwittingly put under the influence of drugs? So their minds get drugged without them knowing? They do brainscans on newborns too you know

 

[girasol]

...

 

[Purdie]

Hmmm, but surely using your analogy, using magnets on a turned off TV should still produce an effect. Which they don't.

How you know they don't? If you got a really high tech telly and you mess around with magnets around it even if the plug is pulled then it probably wouldn't do it much good. Something cause they work with magnetism in the first place
My other half did try to explein it (couple of days ago now too) but i ended up a bit like this :

 

[magneze]

Yes, but you still can't see the picture, therefore to all intents and purposes the TV is dead.