SA <nospam at nospam.net> wrote:
> In article <m7zom83t8z.fsf at skaggs.bns.pitt.edu>, Bill Skaggs
> <skaggs at bns.pitt.edu> wrote:
>> > herwin at gmu.edu (Harry Erwin) writes:
> >
> > > Side comment: I would estimate the percentage of neuroscientists and
> > > cognitive scientists who are concerned with the soul at less than 1%.
> > > Why? Because there's good experimental evidence (from studies of people
> > > who have had lesions due to stroke and other causes) that the soul does
> > > not exist in any sense meaningful to a religious person. The scientific
> > > concerns are with the mind and brain.
> >
> > Hi Harry,
> >
> > I'm an atheist and don't believe that there is such a thing as
> > a soul, but I don't understand what evidence you are referring to.
> > Can you be more specific?
> >
> > -- Bill
>> I think the part "not meaningful to a religious person" is correct,
> although the idea that there is any evidence that the soul doesn't exist
> is false. I mean, this is a classic error in logic that positivists
> make. I too am an atheist, but realise that the scientifically correct
> position is agnosticism, since the ideas that the soul or God exist or
> not are not scientifically testable.
I will grant that the questions of the existence of God or of the soul
are not testable in themselves, but specific theories of God or the soul
are testable. For example, the notion of a personal God acting within
time that is also omniscient and omnipotent runs into serious problems
with experiments in general relativity.
This is rapidly heading off-topic...
--
Harry Erwin, PhD, <mailto:herwin at gmu.edu>,Computational Neuroscientist
(modeling bat behavior), Senior SW Analyst and Security Engineer, and
Adjunct Professor of Computer Science, GMU. Looking--CV available at:
<http://mason.gmu.edu/~herwin/CV.htm>
