Tag: soul

The Human Soul

The text explores the concept of consciousness, discussing its relationship with the body, spirit, and soul from both scientific and biblical perspectives. It argues that while natural materialism reduces humanity to the body, biblical teachings emphasize a multi-faceted existence. Death is viewed as unnatural, separating spirit and body, necessitating a heavenly counterpart.

From a scientific standpoint, we speak of such things as consciousness as being the mysterious part of the human experience. Is consciousness an illusion? Is it just the chemical and electrical activity among our neurons or is there something more?

The Bible talks about our spirit, soul and body. Natural materialism wants to reduce us to one thing–a body. The Bible speaks of three. The body is easy to identify. The spirit seems to be something not of this three-dimensional space, but rather something connected to the body during our lifetime. The “soul” is sometimes used as a synonym for the spirit like here:

28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matthew 10:28 (ESV)

This passage is interesting because it speaks of destruction, which apparently doesn’t refer to elimination. It also speaks of a body in Hell. Even the lost get a resurrected body, but it seems to be turned to ash according to Malachi 4. This must be a body for the space of Hell, the counterpart to a Heavenly body for the redeemed. The necessity of an accompanying body to our spiritual component is what is relevant to my blog today.

Paul says,

23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 (ESV)

Here Paul is either being redundant or he is making a distinction between soul and spirit. The soul seems to be the interaction of spirit and body. It may be what you see when you image a brain. The soul could include our consciousness or just be an element of it. Where do such things as cognition, memory, self-awareness reside? When we are as we are created to be, a body and spirit united, then the answer is all of the above. Our memories are stored in our brain (a part of the body). The soul is the functioning of spirit and body together.

Death is an unnatural thing when compared to how God designed us. It is because of God’s sentence on sin that spirit and body are torn apart. Cognition, memory, consciousness go with the spirit. Be we are not whole without a body. We are “found naked” .

5 For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4 For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

2 Corinthians 5:1-4 (ESV)

“Unclothed” must be a ghost-like state, lacking the benefits of spirit-soul-body. It is because of this passage that I am convinced we have a heavenly body. The idea that Heaven is a part of an other-dimensional space than Earth helps this to make sense. Our bodies that we possess now are constrained to occupy the three-dimensional space of this universe. A parallel universe, like Heaven could be, would require a different body. Perhaps Hell would require a different one yet.

With each body-spirit combination comes a soul. The interaction of body and spirit. The description of our resurrected, earthly body as being “spiritual” (1 Corinthians 15:44) may refer to the ability to unite them both–our spirit with both the resurrected, earthly body and the heavenly body.

How far can science probe this? Not very. It can measure the explosion of energy when the spirit and body disconnect-likely the temporary disappearance of the soul. But science is also constrained to examining these dimensions. It certainly points to the existence of others through quantum mechanics, but that is all.

Revelation from God, though sometimes cryptic, gives us a greater insight into ourselves–an exciting insight.

Life, Death and Consciousness

The post explores explanations for our complex universe, body, consciousness, and free will. It compares materialism and biocentrism, touching on consciousness, multiverse, and freewill. The author rejects the deterministic nature of materialism and embraces the spiritual dimension, referencing the Bible’s distinction between body, soul, and spirit. Jesus’ sacrifice offers hope for an eternal, heavenly existence.

What explains our experience of a complex and vast universe? What explains our complex body and the experience of being self-aware and having a free-will? Many religious, philosophical and scientific explanations have been advanced over the centuries. Do they work, do they have proof, and how did we arrive at these ideas?

The current scientific orthodoxy has a certain philosophical point of view. Materialism (not to be confused with the lust for money and property) is a philosophical point of view that says only the observable is real. Ironically, observation makes this philosophy doubtful.

One area of struggle for materialism is our consciousness. We can observe brain activity and even artificially create certain experiences within the brain, but the theory fails to explain our ability to choose in a satisfactory manner and seems somewhat desperate in its attempts to explain away Near-Death Experiences.

A more fringy and somewhat pseudo-scientific philosophy that has got a little attention is something called biocentrism. My take on what little I know about biocentrism is that it is trying to take some ideas (true or not) from the current mainstream of science and propose a largely unprovable theory of consciousness. I am interested, as well, as to how observable and tested ideas from science come into contact with information that we have by revelation from God. Consciousness obviously plays into the topic of this blog.

Biocentrism asserts that our consciousness is actually the energy within the brain. This is subtle difference from mainstream science which says that our consciousness is an illusion created by the interaction of our brain cells which is both chemical and electrical.

Where biocentrism rolls into the slightly more bizarre is how it uses the idea of a multiverse, which is strictly the desperate idea of theoretical physics to explain how we can have a fine-tuned universe that supports life. There isn’t great or any (to my knowledge) evidence for the multi-verse; especially not the version utilized by biocentrism. Their use of the multiverse is that we exist simultaneously in an infinite number of universes playing out an infinite number of choices at once. That idea tries to solve the freewill issue. We actually are not free, we are just playing out one set of possible circumstances. The odd conclusion is that since we may die in one universe, but death is an illusion since we must still live in others. The only thing unifying the multiple versions of ourselves is our brain energy. If we can train our brain energy to be more aware, we transcend the perceived problem of death.

Call me skeptical. I reject the idea that our choices are simply the product of inevitable brain chemistry. I also reject the idea that we are only an evolutionary product of the laws of nature. Getting at the true nature of what we are is hard if not impossible for scientific inquiry. At some point, we must be told what we are by someone who transcends creation–the Creator Himself.

The Bible speaks of our Earthly body, our Heavenly body (1 Corinthians 15:40, 2 Corinthians 5:1), our soul and our spirit. See https://afterdeathsite.com/2024/03/26/your-body-soul-and-spirit/ I think the Bible comes close to some of the ideas above, but remains significantly different. Our consciousness is not brain chemistry exactly. Our Spirit creates the consciousness which interfaces with the brain as chemistry and energy. Our Spirit is not limited to this universe, but is connected to it for now.

Death is a real thing, not an illusion. It is the consequence of being a sinful being that has rebelled and diverged from how God created us. That said, a human, is an eternal and potentially multi-dimensional thing. We are where God put us now, but we are created to be an eternal creature. Our life is not playing out in a different fashion in another universe, but we can have an existence in another universe. Which “universe” depends on our interaction with God, who wants us to have something good. If God can connect us by faith to Jesus, then our universe will be Heaven and eventually also a rehabilitated version of this universe.

Jesus’ death and resurrection were performed to give us that inheritance after death. Our body and spirit will separate but our soul will engage with another body in Heaven (probably another not a parallel universe). That is what completes the explanation of what we are, and that is a hope that we all can hang on to.

Your Body, Soul and Spirit

A big question that affects both life and life after death is, “What are we?” You would think that we would know this answer before anything else, but this question is very deep.

Those with a materialistic world view would say that we are just a body. To be crasser about it, one famous evolutionist says that we are just “machines made out of meat.” We are just chemistry doing what chemistry does. This philosophy either makes you feel liberated to do whatever feels good or plunges you into the depth of despair because you are nothing. You have no purpose. You have no future.

The machine made from meat idea obviously doesn’t agree with Scripture. I would have to say that it does meet with experience either.

Another view is to see yourself as just your consciousness. That you are a spiritual being temporarily occupying a physical form. This worldview has the support of the fact that we will all die and our bodies will decay (unless we are alive at Jesus’ return). It doesn’t have the support of both Jesus’ resurrection and the promise of our own resurrection. The earthly body may need a total remake, but it is an important part of you.

I would like to consider the following passage:

23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 (ESV)

Words mean what they writer thinks that mean. So someone may use soul and spirit as synonyms, while another is thinking of two distinct things. Since Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit, I would expect that these words have distinct meanings, especially considering this one:

12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Hebrews 4:12 (ESV)

The Greek behind “soul and spirit” is “psyche” and “pneuma”. I don’t think we should get too Freudian because of psyche. I like this definition, “The psyche is the is life that the spirit gives to the body as long as the two are connected.” (R.C.H. Lenski) So our soul is our consciousness which includes such things as thoughts, emotions, feelings, desires, memories. The spirit is the immaterial/extra-dimensional part of what we are. This definition is backed by how the word “soul” is used throughout Scripture. For example:

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

Psalm 139:14 (ESV)

Our spirit then becomes something that we experience indirectly. At death our spirit and our bodies are divided because of sin. What do we “experience” then? Near Death Experiences may give some insight. If we are temporarily dead, then perhaps we are temporarily in a state of separation of spirit and body. We have senses but they don’t use our sensory organs. For example, people can “see” things in the operating room with their eyes closed and their brain flat-lined. We may feel that our spirit is all that we need and that a body and the embodiment of our spirit (our soul) is not necessary. But we have been created to be embodied. Hence the resurrection.

While the information about such details is sparse, I believe that even our experience of Heaven prior to our resurrection is embodied. It is just a body that is a part of Heaven’s time and space. More about that here:https://afterdeathsite.com/2020/02/04/we-will-be-made-multi-dimensional/

Eventually, we will have and will be both a being who can exist in this universe and one that can exist in Heaven: One spirit, a resurrected Earthly body and a soul from the interaction of the two, also a Heavenly body and a soul for that embodiment.