Recovering Evangelicals #10 Soul and Afterlife: Scientific explanation for the soul
Can there be a materialistic explanation for the soul!? Does the soul have to be immaterial?
In the previous episode, we found that scholars — scientists and philosophers — have long wrestled with the concept of an immaterial soul (and spirit) and come to a fully reasoned conclusion that it doesn’t work.
Here, we first look at what the soul “does” for us, and then at an idea that explains all those functions using neurobiology. So could “the soul” be a material emergent property of the material brain? The Bible never speaks clearly on what the soul is (note: it never says that soul and the immaterial spirit have to be one and the same thing).
But to get to the bottom line, we need to first define what “material” and “immaterial” are, and then go over some basic neurobiology. With that in place, we can talk about the human soul being an emergent property of the material brain: a very complex and intricately wired region of the brain which represents the “self” to oneself, to other humans, to the rest of Creation, and … if one is so inclined … to the Divine.
This material view of the human soul opens up whole new avenues for understanding postmortem resurrection (the topic of next week’s episode). It also opens up a way to bring together the Hebrew understanding of “the imago Dei” (being created in God’s image) with the very different Greek understanding of that concept.
Tell us what you think … leave questions or comments at bottom of this page (stir the pot a little bit!).
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