Evidence of the soul
Offline A theistic friend of mine from my hometown of Manchester who I do not consider to be intellectually bright put this absolutely ridiculous idea to me last night.
We were debating matters of religion and we got onto the subject of the soul. This is (roughly) the conversation:
"But Jacob there is actually physical evidence of a soul."
"Well there's physical evidence of the brain."
"No, not that. But right, there was this guy right who was weighed just before he died and then again a few hours afterwards and after death he weighed two pounds less."
"So this means that the soul, which by definition is a non-physical, supernatural thing has left the body and subtracted physical mass from it."
She didn't seem to understand this comment at all. I continued...
"So your evidence for a soul is that one bloke weighed two pounds less after death."
"Well, no, it's happened with lots of people."
"Is there a study documenting this phenomenon?"
"Well yeah."
"Could you name it for me."
Several other friends of mine also joined the conversation. Her argument degenerated gradually from it being proof of a soul to suggesting that in a whole range of possibilities it could be a soul.
"Oh it makes you think though doesn't it."
"Well yes, of course it does but it doesn't mean I have to fill the gap in my knowledge with a God-of the-gaps fallacy" a friend of mine said.
*Sigh* Seriously, the girl, Leanne, is a very good friend of mine. I really do like her and enjoy her company very much until she tries to get intellectual (and it is a pretty geeky group apart from her) in which case she's just frustratingly idiotic. It has to be one of the strangest arguments for something supernatural I've ever heard. Her, and her family are the sort of people who believe in God and Christianity because it's tradition and believe in evolution because it's held to be true by society and read far too much into horoscopes because they're also a norm in society.
I am wondering though, biologists here if there is any reason why someone would weigh less shortly after their death, without being decomposed or losing a body part. I am confident that there is a reasonable explanation for it or else she's repeating some bullshit she's heard from someone else which she's taken to be true which actually isn't.
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Of course, silly boy. Descartes knew centuries ago that the soul is attached to the body in the pineal gland.
Now, in all seriousness, you are putting up with the stupid chick with ulterior motives in mind, yes? There can be no other acceptable reason for it.
"Tis better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven." -Lucifer
The way I'd heard it, only a few ounces were lost. I don't remember the time between pronouncement of death and the weighing, but if it's a few hours as you state, I would think weight could be lost to fluids and gasses during that time.
It's interesting how little research has to be done, and how little people have to hear about it, before something becomes a pervasive meme. Pyramid power, eggs "fainting," etc. I consider many off-the-wall concepts worthy of research, if it's done correctly. But I can't stand this kind of anecdotal shit.
I think it's supposed to weigh 21 grams. They made a movie about it and everything, so it must be true. Hollywood doesn't lie.
Ah, roughly 3/4 of an ounce (US). It's probably the weight lost when the body poos itself.
Hmm...I always poo, well, poo, not my body.
I always thought that the body disposed of all waste when the person died. Sort of like a natural reaction similar to goosebumps. Something that requires no brain activity to produce.
I know when I take a load off I weigh about 2-5 pounds less.
I've heard this argument before. It's based on the dubious study done my Dr. Duncan MacDougall. So it is true that a doctor tried to prove that a soul has weight, and he was convinced that he had done so.
You should have your friend read the snopes page on it, which is pretty good. It points out that some people who tried to measure the weight of a soul actually measured a weight gain, and that his methods were flawed.
It's only the fairy tales they believe.
The best thing about getting a degree in psychology is that you learn that the concept of a soul is a complete myth. If there were truly a mind/body separation then psychotropic drugs wouldn't work. Could a person really experience a LSD acid trip since the drug could only affect the material body and not the soul? Would Phineas Gage's personality have changed after a railroad spike went through his skull if the soul is responsible for personality?
There's an interesting fact about the brain and religious experience. There's a part of the brain that can be severed that affects religious experience. When the temporal lobe is stimulated people experience god. Often this happens naturally with epilepsy. When the lobe is severed then the experiences stop.
It's no surprise that during brain surgery parts of the brain are stimulated to generate a physical response. This is done so the surgeons know that they aren't cutting into the wrong part of the brain so they don't cause paralysis. The brain can be physically stimulated to bring about religious experiences. No extra-dimensional beings, no rituals are needed for this reaction.
What we experience as god is merely our conscious mind explaining a natural physical reaction in our neural context. This proves that god isn't real. With no soul there is no god because it is integral to the entire belief system of an afterlife.
Every person that has a personality change during illness or damage to the brains is evidence of no consciousness outside the brain.
Unless christians think people with alzhemiers only have half a soul and half has already gone of to heaven
The study was probably done after the guy was weighed, then died then weighed again.
However I always thought, a good way to prove if a soul exists would be weighing, however differently. First a person is put in a box that is completely sealed off, that box is air tight and no air can escape. The person is about to die, so he is put in a vacuum chamber(The box is put in a vacuum chambed on top of a weighing machine that can weigh down to the micro-gram) so no force is acting on the box such as outside air other then gravity. The person then dies, then they wait, and see if the weight changes. Because even if the body rots, or air is expelled from the body, it should still be the same weight, as it is still in the air tight box, nothing can escape. Creationists would still find some stupid flaw to point out, even though the test would only prove souls don't exist or don't have weight.
"When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever.... I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it." ~H.L. Mencken
Thank god i'm a atheist!
Hmm...it's funny that everyone's talking about studies. If the soul has weight, then the soul is a natural thing, not an immaterial thing. The argument is self defeating. Case closed.
I have no problem with a natural soul. I use the word soul still, but I mean my self, my intellect, emotions, etc. Just because it's in the brain doesn't mean it isn't a real thing.
I was under the impression that it was the lack of muscle tone that caused it.
-Triften
"21 grams, starring Jim Carrey!"
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell.
I think that's correct. When one passes away there is no more muscle control and without muscle control, well, you know what happens.
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A scientific examination of any phenomenon requires that we operationalize our terms. There is no way to accomplish this task. No philosopher or theologian has ever succeeded in providing an ontology for the term 'soul' - they can only equate it with the CNS, or provide rule outs - i.e. no positive terms that do not steal from naturalism.
Ergo, there can be no 'evidence' for a 'soul', only evidence that materialist accounts of how the brain works are incomplete.
To this, any scientist worth his paycheck would respond: No shit.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
No shit.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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Drive a railroad spike through any part of my body and you'd experience a change in my personality.
Oh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr. I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!
Nah, you'd just become more holy.
Your friend does not have her facts straight. It's not two pounds. It's two ounces. In the strict meaning of the word, the soul is not completely immaterial. Only God is completely spiritual and immaterial.
Question: What references would you recommend concerning the evidential value of NDE's (near death experiences) Please send a list.
Answer: Here are a number of items for you to check out:
- The latest edition of my book with JP Moreland, either the Crossway edition (1998) or the Wipf and Stock reprint (2003), include three chapters on NDEs as opposed to only two chapters in the earlier edition.
- Negative critiques seldom ever address the evidential aspects of NDEs. For one that at least makes the attempt, see British psychologist Susan Blackmore, Dying to Live: Near Death Experiences (Prometheus Books, 1993).
- I responded to Blackmore, claiming that we do have at least some of the evidence that she required, including a few more Bibliographic items for you: Gary Habermas, "Near Death Experiences and the Evidence: A Review Essay," Christian Scholar's Review, 26:1 (Fall, 1996), pp. 78-85.
- From one of the top medical researchers over the last 25 years: Michael Sabom, Light & Death: One Doctor's Fascinating account of Near-Death Experiences (Zondervan, 1998). (You've probably seen his earlier, highly-acclaimed volume, Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation [Harper and Row, 1982].)
- Sabom also wrote recently a two-part article where he shares some of his conclusions on NDEs: "The Shadow of Death," parts one & two, Christian Research Journal, 26:2 (2003) & 26:3 (2003).
- A critical response (with a creative title) by a University of Washington Medical School professor: If I Should Wake Before I Die: The Biblical and Medical Truth about Near- Death Experiences (Crossway, 1997).
- Although it is a popular account, prominent New Testament scholar Graham Tweltree tells about his own NDE in: Life after Death (London: Monarch, 2002), pp. 24-27.
- Although it is older, I assume you have seen the often-reprinted article by well- known naturalistic philosopher A.J. Ayer, "What I Saw when I was Dead," originally published in the Sunday Telegraph, 28 August, 1988.
From: (Link edited out) [MOD EDIT - link to website edited out to avoid giving this guy any site traffic]Regardless of the weight being lost, this would mean we would be able to pin-point the EXACT spot of the soul for study by weighing individual limbs and parts of the body to see the weight lost and from there we can figure out EXACTLY where the soul is.
This is just stupid.
Some of my Eastern Christian saints taught that that the body is actually in the soul. This seems to coincide with recent discoveries by such notable neuro-surgeons as Wilder Penfield of Canada, in his work The Mystery of the Mind. He presents a very powerful case that the mind is not contained within the brain or body, and he gives the scientific data for this.
That made me laugh out loud.
So, I'm not keeping up with cosmology or theoretical physics, but wouldn't there be some cases where a scientist wouldn't necessarily have an ontology for what he's looking for, but the other things in the experiment/observation would give it one?
For instance, if I understand correctly, scientists looked at galaxies and said, "Ok, there's matter and energy, and equations for how they interact. The equations don't work when we look at galaxies. Either the equations are wrong, or there's something else." With this in mind, they started looking for dark matter, even though nobody knew what it might actually be.
Of course, this doesn't help the soul search (pun intended) because everything makes sense without the soul being thrown in the mix, so we'd be looking for something that has no effect on anything -- essentially, looking for nothing.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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