@Eric Hernandez, doubt you'll read this, but as a neuroscientist (neuropsychologist), I'd like to point some things out: Eric: "What's a pain?" The activation of nociceptors, which (as Aron accurately pointed out) is the response to damage. The qualia you pertain to is simply the restating of the hard problem of consciousness. Additionally, if pain wasn't a physical process, then painkillers shouldn't be able to work. Eric: "Where's a thought?" A bit of a non-sensical question, the thought is represented by neural activity (as distributed over a neural network). Eric, you give the impression that you think a thought is located in a single neuron, but that's just wrong. You have to view brain functions as neural activity distributed over networks. Eric: "How can a function be true or false?" The thought itself is, again, represented within the neural network. This is true regardless of whether that the content of this thought is true or false. The evaluation of its truthfulness is also represented by neural activity. Separate neural activity, but still there. Eric: "How does a brain function perceive?" This is another non-sensical question. Brain functions don't perceive, nor do they function in isolation. The brain perceives from all available senses (including i.e., proprioception, balance, etc.), neural mechanisms that are reasonably well understood. And this information is used in conjuction with other neural activity for a variety of activities. A singular brain function doesn't "perceive", the network as a whole does (in other words, the brain as a whole does). Eric: "If I open a piano, do I see the note C"? Actually, yes. The note C is a process, its a wave-sound picked up by the brain. If you open the piano and play the note, you can perceive not only the sound, but also the vibration of the string. Within the brain, this is entirely represented by neural activity, so the remark that "music within the mind is without vibration" is kinda ... dumb, really. Concerning the CD, yes, the music is in the CD. The music is represented using data, and played off of different media (the overlapping media to the brain being sound waves), but yes, it is there. In the end, it all boils down to causality of neural activity, right? You're saying a soul is still responsible for the neural activity we see through neuro-imaging. What we're saying is that we know for sure (100%, determined via experimental research) that causality AT LEAST goes in the other direction: the brain affects the soul (it may still work both ways, but this direction is clear). Now, what neuroscience has shown, is that we can create accurate models that completely exclude the soul, indicating that the soul is an obsolete concept. This is why there's no scientific evidence, no scientific reason and no scientific necessity for a soul. THAT'S where the issue lies. Additionally, there are elements to the soul that make no sense. Take the car-analogy: the soul is the driver, whereas the car is the vehicle (more often considered as a ship and a sailor). As Aron also pointed out, breaking a headlight doesn't make you blind. Now, you can make the argument that a damaged car requires adjustments from the driver to use it. But damaging the car only impacts the drivers capability to drive the car, it doesn't impact the driver itself. So why would the driver make completely atypical decisions after mere physical damage? It doesn't make sense, and now we have established a causal direction in one direction, and inconsistencies in the other direction. That's the problem of the soul.
@@MartialNico Quite likely Eric wont read your post and will intentionally ignore it because your explanations were well thought out and completely obliterate Eric's weak philosophical conjectural argumentation. His position is weak because at no point do we get any closer to how he can substantiate his definition of the "soul". It comes down to metaphysical mumbo-jumbo and superstitious belief.
So the only problem with this is that it kind of misses the point. These are really good scientific reasons for what is correlating to the causes, however it doesn't say what it is. I recommend you look into philosophy of mind and do some research on the hard problem. This is genuinely a philosophical matter.
@@kylexinye1990 I disagree, this comes directly to the heart of the issue. Sure, you can uphold dualism by maintaining that an immaterial spirit causes the neural activity reflecting conscious thought, but to say science has *nothing* to say is an intellectual dead-end. I agree that this is a philosophical issue at heart; especially the hard problem of consciousness is well out of our scope (although the Libet-experiments are certainly a first step). But to view such input as "missing the point" is simply to ignore adjacent, relevant and to some extent well-studied topics.
Aron literally ran you over with fact... take it or leave it your followers will say your right his will say his are right, but so far? all you have really said was "that was irrelevant" to all the data YOU YOURSELF can look up. your legit only argument is that aron is unprepared and is doesn't understand. Get a grip dude
Hi Eric, your arguments in the opening are no good. Let me help you understand why, at least for some of them, because Tbh man, this is genuinely painful to listen to for anyone with an ounce of understanding about how stuff actually works. Ok so straight up please understand, The mind and the brain are not identical, as you say, but not because they are unrelated, rather because they are not the same thing. The mind is located within the brain but not the whole brain. Much the same as how your toe is not your foot.. just part of it. Your nose is not your face, just part of it etc You also say: “I don’t open my brain and look at my thoughts" that’s true. Do you open a computer and look at the software? And you say “When I’m hungry my neurons aren’t hungry" are you suggesting that when you’re hungry your soul is hungry? I mean.. hunger is a physical thing you understand right? Even a pro soul person would understand that hunger is a function of the brain. Would a bodyless soul experience hunger? Anyway, whether you accept the fact one day or misunderstand it ever onward, truth is your mind is in your brain
Could you quote me a few sources please? And explain why the sources I quoted are incorrect? Because all I see are a bunch of baseless assertions and circular reasoning. Thanks
@@EricHernandez sources for what exactly, that the toe is a part of the foot? Or that opening a computer will not reveal the software? Or that hunger is a physical thing? Do you really require sources for those? Are they really baseless assertions? Really - truly?
Atheist told me this story. Man and his young daughter go into a pet store, and some time earlier as a joke , the store manager had filled a plastic tropical fish bag with water, tied it off with a rubber band, and marked it with a Sharpie pen "invisible fish-$3.00." Well, the little girl was absolutely engaged and delighted with the plastic bag containing the invisible fish. The man knew that he had to buy the "invisible fish" for his daughter. Like Christians and their belief in a God, the little girl derived joy, peace, and comfort from her false belief that the plastic bag indeed contained an invisible fish.
Eric Hernandez yes there are some atheists who claim there is no god but the vast majority make no claim, just that there isn’t sufficient evidence to believe in such nonsense.
@@EricHernandez you must think people who dont believe in the soul think that. Thats why you brought it up. You hammer on an identity problem that nobody is trying to argue for. We dont think the brain is the mind or the brain is consciousness.. it is produced by the brain. Its a causal relationship. Not an identity issue. Its a strawman and red herring all in one
@@utopiabuster not really. He made the point all throughout the debate for one. And he was addressing an issue that is irrelevant and that is the point.
@@EricHernandez Aron said enough, your lack of comprehension of what he was saying does not equate to him not saying anything. Man oh man where's my face palm emoji?
Eric Hernandez seriously man? You showed zero evidence and your incoherent word salad was very hard to listen to. Here’s a great question. Does your left arm, hand?
Eric's entire argument hinged upon the long-discredited idea of qualia, or the idea that abstractions of physical phenomena (such as pain or color) are indeed """"real"""" in some way. He even had the gall to talk down his nose at Aron for being baffled by such a silly idea. If you can describe everything about pain in completely physical terms, why must you imagine something undetectable, unmeasurable, invisible and immaterial that does the exact same thing? Oh wait, for the same reason you assume the existence of a god. Duh.
I agree. Claims about musical notes not being physical or color not being phisical are indicative of a lack of understanding. The words we use to describe the way we think are flawed because they are just describing our perception of the things going on in our minds.
@@EricHernandez what assertion did I make, Eric? All I did was compare the substance of your arguments. I mean surely you wouldn't dispute the fact that you showed no evidence...for goodness sake, you completely ruled it out on your first slide, didn't you?
@@EricHernandez deeeemn dat fourth grader comeback. But let's be real for a moment here. What do you, after this debate and some days to think about it, think the soul does in our bodys. What is it responsible for? And how do you think a soul can have free will of it is given by an all knowing god? Isn't free will impossible of god knew thousands of years ago what i will do tomorrow at 10:31 and 17 seconds?
@@EricHernandez well i hoped for an honest and fruitful conversation here... I get that you are starting to become bitter due to all those a holes making fun of you. But if you recover from that hit me up to start this discussion.
Proving yet again that all Eric has is baseless assertions, obvious fallacies, and a DEEP misunderstanding of neuroscience lol. Is he competing with Ray Comfort for dumbest apologist or something? Hahaha this was so clearly a win for Aaron that I'm shocked Eric uploaded it.
What the hell are you talking about the only person that used fallacies and made ridiculous assertions, I misunderstood the opponents position was Aron.
Science has nothing to say about the nonphysical, yet you can sit there and claim that a soul exist. Science has nothing to say about spiritual batman but I know he exist, sometimes I feel like I am a genius. Bruh! According to your logic Mr Eric, what can't people claim to be true?
@@kylexinye1990 Category error? How can one sit there and claim that something exists and say that you cannot use science to prove that what you are saying exists? That's my whole point here. You can literally claim anything to exist at this point, according to Eric.
Eric, it seems like an entire field of scientific investigation, Neuroscience, is devoted to collecting empirical evidence as to how the brain generates consciousness. The short answer to that question is: we don't know _exactly_ , but we now have enough knowledge to build machines that can extract images, imagined and seen just by measuring brain activity (www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15037) - Can you explain how the soul generates consciousness? - Is pain in the soul? Is a thought in the soul? - How does a soul think?
@@steven4428 If nobody can answer those questions from the point of view of naturalism, does that mean there _is_ a soul? No. And that is the inference Eric was trying to make. Watch the video. What's the evidence the soul exists? 'we don't know how to explain X on naturalism'.
@@mattsmith1440 If the soul does not exist then how do you explain out of body experiences during NDEs? There is one in particular that is very interesting. There was a woman who has been blind since birth and has never seen anything. She does not see any images even in her dreams. When she had her NDE, she was able to see for the very first time looking down at her own body on the operating table. Here is the video about it: ua-cam.com/video/saRGVdExv-w/v-deo.html
@@steven4428 I explain experiences with reference to a physical brain. Is there something spooky about NDEs that's different from imagination or dreams? I don't think that's been demonstrated. And of course, I'm sure you'd see something amiss if I said, 'How do you explain X, unless Thor exists', right?
"When Jesus said 'I am the door' you think he meant he was a piece of wood?" No. Do you genuinely think Aron thought that? Obviously Aron can think one thing in the bible is literal and also realize that other things aren't. The absurdity of the question makes it's own point absurd. It's a self-disarming argument. Truly genius. You would have to demonstrate why the scripture isn't literal, not that it is possible for it to not be.
Jesus said he was the door and THWH said that this Jesus person was his son. Could be that the "son" was figurative and "door" was literal, since the authors are long since dead and their intentions are lost from us.
@@PaulQuantumWales A good amount of the authors intentions are unclear, yes. But I'm sure there are certain verses that are clear based on context, given the translation is accurate and takes the culture of the author into consideration.
Did you take Eric's being baffled by Aaron's illiteracy in Exegesis as a concession? If the Bible says God is a Spirit does it then by necessity follow that He cannot take physical form? The God who made the physical world cannot come into it?? This was your slam dunk??? Aaron performed poorly here, and I'm surprised how many atheists here are claiming the win for Aaron...
1. What's the process by which a soul animates a body? 2. How is that process investigated? 3. Is that process an admission that the soul can 'touch' a body, yet bodies cannot 'touch' souls because they are immaterial? 4. If human beings actually had 3 souls, how would we be able to figure that out? 5. Is the soul a placeholder for what we don't understand about the human mind? 6. If there isn't a soul, would that completely unhinge your worldview and invalidate the core beliefs of your religion?
Go Aron go! Looking forward to the debate! Update: The debate was good. Have to say I didn't find any reason to come away thinking there is a soul, but I've come to expect that after listening to so many people try to argue for one. I'm of the opinion that you can't really argue for supernatural things without appealing to God of the gaps, essentially. At least I've not heard many do it successfully. Anyway, thanks. Have a great evening, be safe, and social distance
@@EricHernandez thanks for responding. Let me start by taking a more humble and humanistic tone. I'm happy we can discuss freely without disparaging and I hope l didn't come off that way to start. I'll begin by conceding that a gaps argument was not the foundation of your argument in this debate. However, let me try to explain what I meant by my comment. I reject your premise that an immaterial soul would be beyond scientific measurement; therefore, it has to be determined philosophically whether a soul exists. I think that dodging the scientific value of this proposition allows you to evade the gap argument, but I reject the premise you use to do this. Therefore, I conclude that you wouldn't be able to convince me without first acknowledging that it is a scientific question and not appealing to the gaps argument. So while you didn't use this argument, I think you unfairly dodged the question, therefore I remain unconvinced. I recognize some may find this convincing however I do not. That being said, I didn't mean to include you in a generalization about gap arguments. Finally, I'll attach a post script explanation for why I think the soul, even if inmaterial as you propose, would be subject to scientific investigation. Thanks for reading and replying. P. S. The soul, even if inmaterial, would be subject to scientific investigation because if an inmaterial object can interact with the material world, the effect is hypothetically demobstrable. Well, when I hear hypothetically demonstrable, I think, great, let's think of a way to test it. If a god, for instance, could make a crop grow faster than normally allowed by biology and physics, the plant itself could be subjected to tests to determine how it actually happened. If a soul can from a non physical state affect a physical body, the effects can be subject to tests and therefore cannot dodge the burden of scientific evidence in an attempt to appeal to word games and philosophy. Argument rejected.
@@blueheron9060 You confuse "God Of The Gaps" with abduction. I don't even believe in the soul but it is embarrassing to see people who don't know the topic at hand and take their ignorance as evidence they are right
@@MrBrass that's actually not what I was doing, as I explained in my second comment. I meant to say that more generally I don't think the scientific questions can be answered without a god of the gaps argument. I don't think Hernandez is doing that here. I think he dodges the issue to try to avoid it all together
Aron can’t crush anything, he mocks, he lies constantly, he argues and complete bad faith makes zero attempts to try to understand what his opponents positions actually are, and instead of listening to what his opponents explain what their beliefs are, he tells them what their beliefs are, and he interrupts constantly.
Eric sounds like that one passive-agressive freshman in philosophy class that just learned some new philosophy related words and skipped the classes on logical reasoning, diving head first into Dunning-Kruger.
Wait wait wait wait wait stop for a second,Aron is the definition of the Dunning Kruger effect, he’s been debating Christian apologists for over 20 years yet he doesn’t understand basic Christian apologetic arguments,like the cosmological argument or the fine tuning argument, he still continues to say that faith is just believing something without evidence, even after it’s been disproven to him multiple times, and he has no evidence to back up that claim, seriously what do you find compelling about him.
@@pleaseenteraname1103 hahahh ALL christian arguments to this day hold absolutly ZERO value, they have no evidence at all. Show me Evidence for ANY God Argument and ill go pray every sunday. (I'll accept anything that qualifies as evidence, any body of objectively verifiable facts which are positively indicative of, or exclusively concordant with one available position or hypothesis over any other.~Aron Ra)
@@phonixfighter7966 first of all you didn’t spew any of the arguments you just said that they’re dumb and have zero value, which atheist philosophers, Michael Martin, Graham Oppy, and Thomas Nagel certainly would disagree, they think cosmological argument is given by Christian apologist like William and Craig are some of the absolute best and all of contemporary philosophy. And this is a straight up non sequitur because I never claimed I believe in God and I never claimed that these arguments were good, I simply said that he doesn’t understand them. And I don’t think you’re being entirely honest when you say only if you were given evidence you would believe, you would probably just find some other reason. And that’s also strawman because not all arguments for God‘s existence are supposed to be evidence for God‘s existence. The evidence you want is impossible , and self refuting, because if the only standard of evidence he will accept his naturalistic empirical evidence, then it’s impossible to prove God‘s existence to you, because you can’t use a purely naturalistic method to prove a supernatural being that textbook example of an attribution error. And if naturalistic empirical evidence which is what Aron is referring to, because you can’t objectively verify your naturalism by using your naturalism, or empirical and verify your empiricism by using your empiricism. And even atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel acknowledges in his book the server in Cosmos and in many other instances, but theorists are the only ones I have a answer good answer to naturalism, and many anti-theist fundamentalist dogmatists, like Aron don’t like him because of that. Aron doesn’t care about science or evidence, he only cares about either of those things when it promotes his agenda, it’s been shown time to time a prime example of this is Christianity being dangerous and the definition of faith.
To add to smug,condescending, arrogant and deluded,The mask slips with Eric,and He smirks,I really find Him a deeply unpleasant person,not very Christian at all.......
@@EricHernandez Well according to your bible ya... Proverbs 11:2-When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom. Even the bible says not to be so smug and be humble Eric. Like Jesus supposedly said to? Not that you care lol
he's a dick, and he knows he's a dick and he's perfectly fine with it. not to mention he has extremely thin skin because he can't let a random internet diss go unanswered.
I have not gone through this yet but, dang. Eric. My man. You did not account yourself well on this one. You pretty much did all you could to tie your oponent's hands behind their back and then Aron Ra broke out with some roundhouse kicks early on. "What is a pain?" "Here is an explanation of what pain is which does not require a brain." "What is a pain?" I also think that Eric has pre-prepared notes and arguments but only knows them through repitition and rote and that is why he seemed so lost when Aron Ra out flanked him.
If anyone is taking Aron on the should be well prepared for a very intelligent and well educated person. Aron is a very kind person and likes his openent to give him a good iterlectual argument both scientifically religiously and philosophically.
@@Solideogloria00 Eric thinks that destroying a guitar to find the air vibrations for the note C is a valid analogy of the brain & mind. Eric is an idiot.
@@Solideogloria00 Philosophically speaking; Ra seems to cater to the lower common denominator of atheists.. while Eric to some of highest of Christians.. Which would explain all of the prison yard back alley comments that follow these empty people.
@@kelvyquayo Oh my. Can you give a specific example? Eric doesn’t even know what science is.Do you NOT see Eric’s “arguments” e.g. comparing the brain and mind to a guitar, as disingenuous and dishonest?
Quite a lot of wrong things you said here Eric. Let's focus on most memorable ones. 1st. Value based on mass. Value is subjective. Humans (in some situations - something else) determine value. For example family for me is more valuable than everyone else. Or pen is valued 10 dollars. 2nd. C-note is in piano. C-note is a process of gasses vibrating just like thought is process of brain (can see that with fmri). 3rd. Thought can't be true or false therefore soul. Dumbest question and most confusing one. Thoughts can be true or false because we can define it as such based on reality. 2+2 = 4 is true because that is in accordance to reality.Unless you meant it as how true and false lead to thought then look up software. Simple 1 and 0 can lead to logical process. 4th. You never clearly defined what soul even is. You said what it is not ( not material ) and what it does (thinks or contains consciousness) Overall you ignored, misdirected almost all of aron's points, provided no arguments that would indicate soul existence, you didn't even clearly defined it. You LITERALLY went into this debate having NOTHING. No wonder you lost horribly.
He didn't lose. You and Aron Ra both dismiss his opening arguments. The letter C isn't physical; the contents of thoughts aren't physical either, so it seems that the brain can't generate them. Instead, it seems more likely that the brain channels those thoughts into a physical body. My explanation is probably not the best one out there; you should look at the sources Eric mentions before dismissing everything he says. Goodbye.
@@promethium-145 Both are physical processes. Letter C is demonstrably process of gasses vibrating a specific way. Same is with thought. Those are demonstrably physical, they just aren't an object.
@@dariusnoname12 Ok then. But thoughts are still metaphysical, to an extent. For example, a bunch of electric signals don't translate to the memory of a fancy car, or mansion. The way I see it, the brain is a filter for consciousness, a sort of processing valve that links it to the physical universe.
@@promethium-145 I would argue that it is also same with thoughts. We have devices that can map out your brain and we can see to extent what person is thinking (with fmri machines). If you think that thoughts are not possible simply with neurons. Looks at computers. Computers are a lot simpler yet they can easily emulate logical processes, animate graphics, etc. It's fine if you think that brain is gateway to soul or something, but know that there is nothing that would indicate your claim being true. While there are quite a lot of support for consciousness being a process of a brain.
@@dariusnoname12 Maybe. Good talking with you. I have to go now, because I'm trying to submit an assignment, and I don't even know my own password for my outlook account. This will be hard!
The musical note of C is 0.261625565 kilohertz. 0.261625565 kilohertz is a property of a physical system. To say that 0.261625565 kilohertz is not physical is true, but the concept of 0.261625565 kilohertz is dependent on a physical system. Arguing that an immaterial thing that has all the properties of non-existence and yet does exist is asinine. How can you tell the difference between something that has all the properties of non-existence and does exist and something that just doesn't exist?
@@AndJusticeForMe congrats, you are now a hindu, a jew, a muslim, a greek pantheon follow plus thousands of other religions as they're all theists and thus do not have to present evidence..
Truly terrible "debate" Eric Hernandez seems to be sooo confused but yet totally deluded as poor Aron ra tries to converse with him, he rea is an embarrassment to himself, well don't Aron for not resorting to violence, the frustration must have been overwhelming
@Your Greatest Ally Why would that make it an immaterial substance? You look at the screen and see tv shows. And tv shows are not "in" the tv. They are streamed through them.
16:11 "You can say that a brain state/firing caused your hand to move, which caused the staff to move, which caused the rock to move. But given it was a physical event, you would still need to give a prior physical cause." Right, and the only options are not a soul or infinite regress. This is absolutely absurd. The brain is connected to many forms of outside PHYSICAL stimulation, such as sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch.
@@JumpingMonkey So the problem was that in order to have freewill that the source of this action had to start with the self. No one I hope would argue that the arm was caused to move by the neuron firing, and it is HERE that the only two options become an infinite regress OR at some point, alluding to external physical factors beyond one's control that caused the neuron to fire. And given that would have to be the case, then one is no longer the first mover and thus, freewill could not exist. Geeze. Pay attention to the argument and understand it before commenting, my man. Love you tho.
@@EricHernandez I'm arguing that there is no free will. It sounded at first like you were just making an argument against Aron's belief in a purely physical free will, but the statement I cited made it seem like you also thought there was no physical cause to the neuron firing.
@@JumpingMonkey >> [Hernandez] thought there was no physical cause to the neuron firing" That's in fact exactly what Hernandez wants you to believe: that an immaterial/supernatural "soul" caused the neuron to fire!
When Eric propose to remove science, religion and the Bible from the Conversation, he forced Aron in to a corner to prevent him from debunking the bs and contradictions in Christianity.
Eric: " when Jesus say "I am the door" do you think he's made out of wood?". Since Aaron gave multiple examples of a physical God: .If Jesus said he's the door but also said you can open him, grab his door handle, slam him, knock on him, post a note on him, people can exit through him, etc.. then yes
It’s weird that Eric claims that Aaron Ra has the burden of proof, when the debate topic is Does the Soul exist? If that’s the debate topic then we don’t know if the Soul exist and Eric must provide the evidence or arguments for why it does exist.
Oh my god, Eric really does struggle to understand anything in detail, "the broken guitar and note C" idea shows his monumental misunderstanding. Aron ra is so far out of Eric's league it's laughable
@@bigscreenbird8198 it's hilarious that I personally know an ex-Christian who's doubt originally started after hearing Eric debate Matt Dilahunty and fail utterly. She is much happier now so at least Eric is good for showing the silliness of his religion lol
soul = "an immaterial substance" That's telling me what type of substance it's NOT, not what type of substance it IS. "If it's not a material substance, what type of substance is it?" soul = "Contains consciousness" That's not telling me what a supposed "soul" is. That's telling me what a suppose soul DOES. "What IS this supposed "soul" thing that supposedly "contains consciousness"?" soul = "animates the body". That's what a supposed soul supposedly DOES, not what a soul IS. "What is this supposed "soul" thing that supposedly animates the body?
Austin lowery That’s what comes to mind, but Eric can define “substance” however he’d like. I just want to know what type of substance it IS, since he only stated what type it’s NOT.
@@AsixA6 well if he defining in however he likes then the question should be what does he mean by substance. We can't talk about what type of substance if we aren't using any known definition.
Wow, lol. So first of all you're using the word substance as synonymous with "stuff". The word first popped up from the field of philosophy and there's a rich history to it. Given you're not familiar with this, I can understand the confusion. Paradigm cases of substances are living things and are contrasted with merelogical aggregates. What is the soul? I did say and define it. I AM a soul. I don't "have" a soul. But literally, I am a soul; the self, the conscious subject.
@@EricHernandez _"So first of all you're using the word substance as synonymous with "stuff"."_ False. Apparently, you didn't read my reply to Austin above where I literally stated you can define "substance" however you want. Either way, telling me what substance a supposed "soul" is supposedly NOT(material) does not tell me what supposed substance it supposedly IS. _"The word first popped up from the field of philosophy and there's a rich history to it. Given you're not familiar with this, I can understand the confusion."_ Please quote me stating I was unfamiliar with this. _"Paradigm cases of substances are living things and are contrasted with merelogical aggregates."_ So, you're claiming a "soul" is a mereological aggregate? If so, a mereological aggregate of what? _"What is the soul? I did say and define it."_ No, you defined what it's NOT and what it supposedly does, but not what it IS. _"I AM a soul."_ I didn't ask what YOU are. I asked what a supposed "soul" supposedly is. _"the self, the conscious subject."_ I already have words for "the self" and "the conscious subject". It's "the self" and "the conscious subject".
It's like trying to teach a neuroscience course to a kindergartner. It would actually be easier to teach a kindergartner since they don't a have predisposition of the metaphysical or the physical. Aron Ra would have to start from the very beginning of neuroscience and biology for Eric to understand it. This was like starting the course at college level and skipping the basics.
@@EricHernandez I don't recall you explaining Neurological functions to him at all. You were trying to teach him something you wouldn't even hear in a classroom. How can you expect someone to grasp the properties of dualism if it isn't even in a basic educational curriculum?
Well Erik's analogy disproves his own point, when you destroy the instrument, note to is destroy, do no longer exist, when you destroy the CD, the data=music is destroyed along with it, so by that logic when the brain is destroyed the soul is to?
He's making reference to a mental field which materializes in reality. The frequency 440hz is A, because the note A is a predisposed 'thought' just like the number two. He is trying to say that yourself, your ego etc is brought to the material world through your body, similarly to the frequency 440hz making your mind interpret the note A.
@@nemrodx2185 damn i wrote this a year ago and feel like it was not so long ago. but eric would surely claim so since god of the gaps. i mean he doesnt know what pain even is so in his mind - god. even though neurology exists and the concept of pain is like a basic
I think I understand Eric's idea. however he didn't really give a reason for believing it. When Aron asked if he's driving a car and the headlights go out, does the driver lose the ability to see. It sounds like he's on the right track to understanding the point that Eric was portraying the idea that "the soul" can only act on the physical world by using something physical like the brain. So if you damage the brain or change/limit its function it therefore in-turn limits "the soul's" ability to interact with the physical world. It doesn't affect "the soul" itself (because its not physical) So "the soul" isn't really "inside" or contained within the brain but it interacts with the physical world through the brain (the brain is its vehicle). HOWEVER. Eric never really portrayed a reason to believe this. BECAUSE "the soul" CANNOT be proven as it is not in the physical realm. Aron and many others, myself included, have consciously decided to only believe in things we can actually prove to be true. This limits our beliefs to only include things that actually exist in the physical world. So if something like a "soul" can only interact with the physical world through something physical meaning it leaves no evidence of its existence, then therefore there's no reason to believe it exists. So if "the soul" cannot be proven/disproven because it leaves no physical evidence of its existence "WHY WAS THE IDEA OF A SOUL EVER CONCEIVED?" People like Eric try he argument that for things to move there must be an initial mover (God) to have moved the first thing which moved the next thing etc. An example would be something like; if the rock was moved because my hand moved the staff which in turn moved the rock, well my hand moved because my muscles moved because my brain's neurons fired, and my neurons fired because . . . . . etc. but that's an argument for The origin of the Universe (Big Bang), which explains the beginning of motion in the universe. Energy is finite. it cannot be created or destroyed. So all the energy in the universe now is all the energy there ever was, and will ever be. For any1 who has not see this 2 part series on what is you? I'll share ua-cam.com/video/wfYbgdo8e-8/v-deo.html&ab_channel=CGPGrey ua-cam.com/video/JQVmkDUkZT4/v-deo.html&ab_channel=Kurzgesagt%E2%80%93InaNutshellKurzgesagt%E2%80%93InaNutshell I feel this explores a bit more on the idea that as a social species we've acknowledge our own existence and other's existence as well. So the concept of "us" was made-up by us
Wow, you see how atheists are just as parochial as theists are,...I know Aaron is a smart guy, so I can't believe this explanation was too lofty for him to grasp, which only leaves that he was being purposefully obtuse. And the car analogy there is a defense of the concept of a Soul held by all peoples of all cultures throughout all human history. And btw, if you're a physicality then you look at the brain and see neurons firing, you then make an inference that the brain activity implies thought?? How does that transfer over? Brain activity occurs when someone is conscience, and when he is not conscience there is no brain activity...ok, great, why then continue to make the assumption that one caused the other? Is that proof that neurons firing up composed Beethoven's 5th Symphony?? "Aron and many others, myself included, have consciously decided to only believe in things we can actually prove to be true. This limits our beliefs to only include things that actually exist in the physical world. "...well, you can't prove this sentence coz the meaning conveyed in the information transcends the digital markings appearing on the screen...and the meaning you get from reading and writing, is it your neurons understanding? "People like Eric try he argument that for things to move there must be an initial mover" "but that's an argument for The origin of the Universe (Big Bang), which explains the beginning of motion in the universe" Where's the objection here? Do things move on their own?? Things have to be moved, cause & effect,..so from the big bang, God set things in motion that eventually led to your neurons firing as you typed your response...Eric's point is sound...things don't just move unless acted upon...Aristotle, not being a Theist, still had common sense when he coined that term, 'Unmoved Mover' as all of humanity always has... atheists claim special logic that if something isn't dissectable then it isn't real,, except for their statements of course.... *"as a social species we've acknowledge our own existence and other's existence as well. So the concept of "us" was made-up by us"* ...the concept, as in the elucidation of the idea of us, using language to describe what is observed...the concept is not "made-up"..."us" existed before the philosophizing of the concept, we merely developed language to represent something that constituted how we exist in social categories....just like Soul, people perceive the essence of man to transcend physical constraints, and so the concept 'soul' to represent it. We did not create "us"...we did not create "soul"...we did however create concepts like life from not life(evolution), and physical causes for the presence of the physical universe which did not exist before the physical cause created the physical universe...????..
@@angru_arches why do you presuppose god though? The unmoved mover is unknown. So why do you say it's god? Also life from non life is not evolution. Thats abiogenesis. Your whole argument is just semantics. Things exist with or without us. Thats true. Just like species evolve with or without us. And chemistry does it's thing with or without us. You have no reason to even suggest a god yet you claim you KNOW it's god. If you can't test to see if a claim is true or false why hold onto it? It's useless. Atheists aren't saying there is no God. We're saying there's no evidence to suggest one.
@@FR099Y "why do you presuppose god though?"...the whole world presupposes God. It's innate within us. We are made with this instinct and conscience. All of human history every society cross-culturally and transhistorically has posited a God...I don't know whether it's gaslighting you're doing or what.."why do I presuppose a God"..the whole world does and always has,..YOU are the anomaly,..now efforts to canonize atheism and make it movement with its own secular set of precepts. You know you atheists have a set of common beliefs almost like an orthodoxy...I can guess so many values you hold, because like human nature we all have faith, just in different things. "The unmoved mover is unknown. So why do you say it's god?"..it seems there is a simple logical axiom that I can only attribute to willful ignorance on the atheist's part that won't allow them to see what everyone else does, that everyone has presupposed God because it is a logical necessity. But I'm afraid your commitment to rejecting a personal God is too strong, it's even etched in your position's name, A-Theism....you accept that you do not say there is no god, but so committed to the thought that it can't be that, an unmoved mover even. So here's why: An Unmoved mover has to be Powerful (creative power), Intelligent (intricately designed cosmos), Personal (it takes personhood to make a decision to make...without the Unmoved Mover choosing to, there would be no 'moving'),..all that together and we have what we would call God. "Also life from non life is not evolution. Thats abiogenesis." That's conjecture...we don't even have a working theory for abiogenesis...even Dawkins, y'allz biggest prophet now, subscribes to the possibility of Pan Spermia, alien life planted life on earth and it evolved from there...there's the other infinite universe theory which is also unscientific...the lengths they have to go to not to contend with the God theory,...you'll say "we're not saying He doesn't exist" but yet "we won't consider the possibility of it".... Why do you believe in abiogenesis?? It's never been observed in nature. And do you believe things just moved themselves? Logical fallacy right there. "You have no reason to even suggest a god yet you claim you KNOW it's god." There you go to the commitment now to the point of denying the personal experiences of millions around the world. The instinct to posit God is constantly confirmed by personal experiences of God...how many reports and testimonies of experiences of God does it take for atheists to open up within their own assumptions? Let's see how you work around these... "Atheists aren't saying there is no God. We're saying there's no evidence to suggest one." The existence of a universe (why something rather that nothing? Coz out of nothing, nothing comes), the existence of moral laws and absolutes, the fine-tuning of the universe, personal experiences, the historical Jesus (best attested ancient manuscripts documenting the life of Jesus and supernatural deeds, unless you don't think History is a legitimate branch of knowledge)... All these have been sufficient evidence for everybody but the atheist...all this is philosophical argumentation, but you refuse basic logic; without a theory for the origin of life or the cosmos, you are ready to deny the God position, or have you not heard of these arguments before?
@@angru_arches *I typed out a whole reply to this but the page refreshed and i lost it. I now grow tired of this argument you wont bring anything forward just speculation that you KNOW things that you clearly don't* People think a gods exist because they're told about them. Gods were created by leaders to control people. A way to make the people think that there's an all seeing eye watching and judging, reporting back to the authorities. Stop applying characteristics to things you've never observed or detected. You say the unknown mover must be powerful, intelligent, and personal. but you cant even show it exists. How can you possibly know anything about it? Abiogenesis has several working theories. Do we know which type happened here on Earth? No. We lack sufficient evidence as of right now. We never see it in nature because nature is always consuming it before it could possibly have time to develop. The only thing that's required to be an atheist is the lack of a belief. nothing more. Stop listening to your preachers and think for yourself. If you are indeed not trolling. Than you really should take a moment and find out what it is that you know, what can you prove? Now if you want to just believe stuff than whatever. But you've provided not much more than some old ass dudes wrote some good stories in a book once. The Bible is meant to be gods word. I can tell you've never actually read it and said. "yep this is a good book" Just a final note. if your god is so powerful why cant he write his own book?
The intrathoracic pressure in your body momentarily increases when you sneeze, which can cause death, because your heart has to change rhythm to compensate.
Immaterial substance? Immaterial 1. spiritual, rather than physical. Substance: 1. a particular kind of matter with uniform properties. 2. the real physical matter of which a person or thing consists and which has a tangible, solid presence. You have a long way to go before you convince anyone of this. So this soul that I am, can I only function in the body? Can I separate from my body and chill somewhere else while my actual body rests? It is the body the only thing the soul can influence? If yes, how do you know? And can you show us instances where a soul has influence another thing? If no, please provide things we can test to verify this. What energy does the soul use? Does the soul need rest? At what point does the soul enter the body? Where are souls created? If the souls always was, when and where was it before entering the body? Are souls just winning lottery tickets to decide who gets to animate a body on earth? Help me out here!
Your "note c" analogy, easy to answer. Open the piano is there a note c, can you grab it? No, because the PHYSICAL action for that piano to make that note is not happening, just like without the physical action of thinking, the thought is not there. See? And the CD player, the music is destroyed on that cd that is scratched because that code on the cd is physical, making the music. And again that is the same as the brain, damage the brain and you can not recover the info in that part of the brain.
Just found this debate. Eric once again is out of his depth. I've seen several debates with him and he never, ever, has a coherent argumebt backed by evidence or consistent logic, just smugness and over-confidence despite not understanding the topic.
Eric: Offers 4 sound (or at the least formally and informally valid) logical arguments for the existence of the soul. Aron: "Where did you provide any reason to believe in the soul, can a toilet flushing be true or false?" It really irks me when Aron shows he has no grasp of the relevant literature on this topic, e.g. Physicalism, dualism (nor Idealism), and qualia like the feeling of pain not being the same as signals in pain receptors. Essentially it shows how little respect he has for theists that he thinks he can come into a debate on whether the soul exists with a diatribe about ghost hunters and near death experiences of people from other religions and call it a day.
Eric claims existence is a non-scientific question. This is always false. Logical arguments are not evidence. Please don't confuse soundness for validity. Obviously Aron has little respect for theists. The reason for this is because theists often state incredibly stupid assertions like the smell of a rose is not 7 inches long or if you broke a guitar open you couldn't find the note C. Not even Eric could really be that stupid.
Rembrandt972 Existence is not a non-scientific question so much as a pre-scientific question. Science studies that which exists; it cannot _prove_ existence _qua_ existence, it can only assume it. *Logical arguments are not evidence* Define _evidence_ (without a logical argument).
@@nathanaelculver5308 Evidence is data that points to one and only one conclusion. Dictionary.com has this: 1. that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof. 2. something that makes plain or clear; an indication or sign: His flushed look was visible evidence of his fever. 3. Law. data presented to a court or jury in proof of the facts in issue and which may include the testimony of witnesses, records, documents, or objects. No argument here.
@@rembrandt972ify What evidence do you have that logical arguments aren't evidence? In science there are many examples of empirical equivalence, where all the available data can be explained in multiple ways. Philosophical (metaphysical, epistemological, aesthetic) considerations often serve to evidence one explanation over the other. All scientific theories have 3 components, the data, the hypothesis, and philosophical shaping principles. For example the criteria by which we judge a scientific theory to be better or worse than its competitors are not themselves scientific but philosophical. Things like explanatory scope, explanatory power, simplicity, coherence with the available data, and beauty (e.g. symmetry) are not themselves scientific or empirical observations. So to say logical arguments aren't evidence just betrays a lack of understanding of science and the significant role logic and philosophy play in it. Also I clearly didn't confuse validity with soundness. Validity is a matter of an arguments having the correct logical structure (Modus Ponens, Modus Tollens, etc...), soundness is the conjunction of a valid argument and true premises. This is why I said "Eric: Offers 4 sound (or at the least formally and informally valid) logical arguments for the existence of the soul". In essence the arguments have the correct logical structure and so if the premises are true the argument is sound, you can dispute the premises though and so say its not sound, however Aron didn't even touch one of the premises to dispute it. Further both you and Aron should have more respect for theists, simply insulting their intelligence or dismissing them as stupid isn't enough. You actually have to address the arguments, something Aron did not even attempt in this.
@Eric Hernandez If I had a belief in reincarnation into animals or a belief that I could see the future in my dreams, could I use ‘faith’ to justify why I believe it?
Eric Hernandez so you have no answer. I can tell this is your pattern of response by looking through the comments of this video. You simply won’t respond after people show you in error.
I actually wished Ra wouldve pressed him on this too. He would have to necessarily agree that all animals have souls, which is clearly unbiblical. Not agreeing would prove that a brain can serve the same function as a soul which makes the soul an unnecessary addition to reality, which is incidentally what all supernature claims are.
@@ScienceGeek-pu1ni You suffer from the same issue as Aron it seems. Sorry to be this honest but you have to face it, if you cannot even hear the argument it would be a waste of time stipulating it in the comments.
Right now, I am watching this while having blisters on my feet. They are sending pain signals to my brain non-stop, and body is responding to them by pooling fluid in them. My central nervous system is taking the signal from the nerve endings in my feet and sending them to my brain so I can interpret the pain signals being sent and where it is coming from. How the hell does my soul receive those signals if it is non-physical? If I had a soul, I could just use it to switch off the pain. But for some reason I cannot do that. So is the soul servant to the body, or is the soul in control over the body? Until you can prove the soul is real, you can ONLY say it's a belief. No amount of long scientific words will change that. We could have a soul that is formed from all of our experiences and what we have learnt, and when we die it just leaves to the wind. The desperation of the believer trying to validate the soul is for the sole justification of then saying it goes to heaven or hell depending on how they lived their life. So it then justifies their religion, which then would validate their crusades to force the world to obey them. Science has no issue with the soul existing if we can prove it does with enough certainty and with a reliable method to test it. Religion in it's millennia of existence through history has never had any provable and falsifiable evidence of it.
LOL!!!! Oh my goodness WOW. Did you not watch the debate? Because you either commenting before watching or completely ignored my opening statement where I address this asinine, pseudo criteria. Impressive.
@@EricHernandez You only asserted and gave no evidence. Your assertions are based on the premise that Homo Sapiens, as a species, are somehow more special than any other organism on the planet. This Eric is your great delusion of grandeur that you have been indoctrinated with since you were born.
I really should've stop listening when this genius asked "If i break a CD does the music fall out?" Wow. What kind of preschool understanding do you have of the world? If it wasn't for the fact that this guy is actually on the Pro Am Apologetics Circuit I'd think this was trolling.
I'm sorry to hear you feel that way. I believe in the soul, am a Christian, and I think this went great. Braxton Hunter will be doing a review of this and posting it hopefully in the next day or so. He's great at unpacking debates. His review may help
@@EricHernandez So I've been doing more research, I think you may have a point in the soul. Btw, I wasnt trying to say you weren't a Christian, if it seemed that way. I'm curious, what do you think about the differences between the soul and the spirit? Also, when I say you didn't do that well I mean, I dont think Aron was truly getting what you were trying to say so I think there might have been a better way of communicating your points. God bless you and your ministry, cant wait to watch more of your content
@@APolitical99 Ah, I apologize for the miscommunication. Thank you and I take your feedback well. The spirit would be a faculty of the soul. I have a two hour plus video on the soul on my channel where I go MUCH more in depth into this topic. ua-cam.com/video/EWIbnxRzkMw/v-deo.html
My favorite part of Eric’s opening was when he argued that he doesn’t understand wind, and thinks invisible hands are moving things, that us saying “bless you” proves a good spirit is leaving the body and an evil one might enter, and lastly when he cited all the pagan myths about the breath of life”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oh wait, he didn’t… my bad.
The Hebrew Bible says humans and animals ARE souls (beings) not that they HAVE souls. BIG difference and could have been a mighty refutation against Eric.
I would argue pain doesn't "exist" pain is a description of the phenomenon of the body being harmed. Its not some otherworldly thing its just a description of human experience not actually a "thing" but maybe I am wrong.
I tend to look at it as another tactile sensation. Or perhaps the inevitable bad end of each different tactile sensation? Just a different way of saying physical sensation of some type.
I like how when you talk about metaphysical possibility you are actually talking about physical possibility but you don't want to say that so you say metaphysically instead. We have ways of determining what is physically possible or impossibile. Do we have any methods of determining what is metaphysically possible?
@@EricHernandez interesting, then why do distinguish metaphysical possibilities from logical possibilities.. according to what you just said, they are the same.
I've seen a couple of Eric's "debates" and I gotta say... he's horrible at debating. 1. He's dismissive and condescending. Eric (tries) to come across as the smartest person in the room. 2. Eric tried to attack Aron's position instead of presenting the positive for his case. Typical deflection tactic. 3. His argument was weak and he knows he can't demonstrate a soul, so he has to resort to petty insults and word salad. Ultimately, Eric knows he can demonstrate a soul exists which is why he resorts to these sort of dishonest debate style.
@@darkloki1 So, still just going to make assertions? Cause that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. All you've given me are assertions.
@@EricHernandez Hahahahaha avoiding the points and deflecting! Just as predicted! Holy shit, you're easy to read. You're about as deep as a paper plate son. The evidence is in every debate video you were ever a part of. Seriously man... this isn't looking good for you.
For being such a respectful and honest debate I have no clue what on earth Aron Ra fans have to do here hating on Eric in the comment field, but I think it - like any form of bullying - speaks for itself.
I thought it was a cordial debate as well! I was really pleased with how Aron behaved in comparison to my first debate with him. And I think you hit the nail on the head with that last observation!
Eric seems to think abstract descriptive words are physical things. I’m not sure if he doesn’t understand this, or thinks it’s a clever way of distraction. It’s frustrating to listen to.
I love how Eric argues and thinks like a little kid who is scared to think outside of what he’s been taught. He equates personhood with an immaterial soul. He equates a brain with an immaterial mind and he equates a mind with an immaterial substance. I can’t imagine being more wrong.
Hi Eric, could you answer some questions for me about the soul? When people have severe mental handicaps such as Down syndrome, is the soul mentally dysfunctional as well as the brain, or is it only the brain that's not functioning properly? If the former is true, what is it that causes the soul to be mentally handicapped? It couldn't be any biological facts about the development of the brain because the soul is distinct from the brain. However, if the latter is true and only the brain is dysfunctional, then it seems like we'd have to conclude that people with Down syndrome are actually just as mentally competent as anyone else. It would only appear as though they're mentally deficient, in much the same way that a professional pianist would appear to be a bad musician when he starts playing on a broken piano. But is that really plausible? Is it really likely that if, hypothetically, we were somehow able to peer inside the mind of someone with Down syndrome, we would find the thoughts and inner monologue of someone who is just as mentally competent as the average person? Imagine what kind of hell that would be to have all kinds of intelligent or insightful thoughts that can only manifest themselves through broken behavior and speech of someone who appears to be retarded but really isn't. What are your thoughts on the matter?
@@EricHernandez I don't remember you specifically addressing the issue of mental handicaps, thought maybe I missed that part. If the speech and behavior of someone with Down Syndrome is analogous to a guitarist trying to play a guitar that's out of tune, then these people aren't actually mentally impaired at all. They're playing all the right notes (so to speak), it's just that the brain isn't processing their thoughts and intentions accurately. Is that honestly what you believe? Do you think that people with severe mental retardation have roughly the same kind of thoughts, ideas, and coherent internal monologues that occur in the minds of non-mentally handicapped people?
@@EricHernandez Your guitar analogy is a false equivocation since guitars and guitar players are demonstrably real. Guitars are not alive and lack a brain. Pathetic.
Also, Eric, acknowledging that we are not the same person from one moment to the next is an argument AGAINST your position. The soul is supposed to be fixed abd unchanging, and what makes you you. If humans change constantly, then the soul does not exist, because the soul is supposed to be a fixed self. There is no fixed self, therefor there is no soul. I think Aron did, from his own point of view, explain what pain is. Although I see what Eric was getting at, and I tend to agree generally with him on this issue. But he should have argued more directly against Aron on this point, rather than continuing to ask the question over and over again. Eric knew exactly what Aron was getting at, he didn’t have to repeatedly ask the same questions.
So the soul (A non-physical thing) can be damaged when the body (A physical thing) is damaged? So does this mean the soul is both a physical and non-physical thing at the same time?
@@EricHernandez I watched the entire debate. I'm still not understanding how a non-physical soul that no one has ever observed interacts with the physical world through the body which it uses as an instrument without coming into the physical world to do so.
Who say to a tree, 'You are my father,' And to a stone, 'You gave me birth.' For they have turned their back to Me, And not their face; But in the time of their trouble they will say, 'Arise and save us.' Evolution is just a new wrapper! For idolatry
Gonna be honest, this seems like a really weak argument because of how Eric has defined the soul and how he was unable to answer under what mechanism the soul functions. If you are going to define something as "does X"(animates the body in this case) then you need to be able to demonstrate this. Once you define the soul as animating the body then that's it, you lose. Because souls can't go to heaven, they are stuck animating the body. Souls don't exist if the body is not animated. This is the problem and why things are not generally defined as "noun and verb" both. Seems like Eric defined it too reliant on the body and then wasn't able to actually show it exist in the end. Most of the conversation was geared towards questioning Aron Ra and it should have been a clear cut case of "the soul does X and I can show it with Y."
I don't know if it's a result of extremist bias, comprehension difficulties, or plain old ignorance but, the concept or idea of the soul has been around for some time encompassing nearly every culture and religious perspective, and has been similarly described in each. So, one would think nearly everyone would have had some idea what is meant by a soul, whether one believes it, by its religious connotations, or not. As such, the question, as to the souls "mechanism" or "operation" is meaningless since the soul can be basically described, without religious conotations, as one's personality, being or sense of being. In psychology this would be defined as "identity". Granted, under a non-religious or non-spiritual view one's personality and being, "identity", would be the result of genetic/epigenetic influences. In many trains of thought the soul would be the essence of one's being, the thing that makes each individual distinct and unigue. As such, Eric's argument has more to do with "information loss and conscioisness", and that relationship with the idea of the soul as an eternal carrier of one's being considering information theoretic paradigms and quantum information theories. In other words, since information cannot be lost (as far as we know), then the essence of one's being, identity, products of one's mind=consciousness, counted as "information", cannot be lost and some depository of that information must extend beyond the physical because, well, physical life is not immortal. When we "think" of a "Model T Ford" we don't need to have a physical representation of it to "know" what it is. Same with an elephant, or mermaid. When an atom is smashed into its constituent subatomic parts, where did the atom go? All that is "information", which includes what makes us, us. When we die where does all that information, thoughts and actions, gathered and attained, throughout our lifetime go? Given that information cannot be lost. A computer needs input to function We know that a computer can be designed with learning algorithms, and, thereby, create information on its own. In actuality Ra, makes Eric's argument for him, as do you with your question. If information is not dependent upon a physical medium, and does not require physical representations to be "perceived" then on what medium is it stored? What is the mechinisms or operations by which the "mind" functions? We postulate that medium, mechanism and operation, to be the soul. Consciousness=awareness Mind=experiential medium Soul=repository of the self. Prove me wrong! Thanks for playing.
@@utopiabuster that's was a lot of text to conclude with an argument for ignorance. The origins of the belief doesn't matter. The lack of explanation for another belief doesnt matter. If you are claiming X without demonstration of X, then I have no reason to believe your claim. This is just basic inability to prove your(or in this case Eric's) case.
This debate is the intellectual equivalent of a boxing match in which, Mike Tyson fights a 4 month premature, newborn baby with cerebral palsy and a cleft palate. With Eric, of course, being the unfortunate baby. This debate was borderline abusive how unfair it was.
Actually, you can open up someone's skull and examine their brain to see what they're thinking. Here's an example of how our visual cortex is used for visual imagination and how we can see what you're imagining by looking at the neural firing in your visual cortex: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00429-019-01828-6
Eric Hernandez It doesn’t matter. If there are perfectly good material explanations that actually make testable predictions, there’s no value in proposing something extra that makes no testable predictions. Maybe neuroscience doesn’t give a complete picture. Your proposal about the soul gives even less, because it has no mechanism or predictive model therefore no explanatory value.
Eric Hernandez Yes, I know, Eric. Like just about every other apologist, you think you're absolutely right about everything. It's this arrogance that is so damaging to the Christian community, and naturally you don't care.
I love how atheists believe they have all these facts on there side and that appealing to an unseen cause is ridiculous then turn around and TRUST in a theory that says pure chance is responsible for the complexity all around us without a single shred of evidence for where information comes from they either ignore this or appeal to some complete bullshit like transpermia which only serves to move the problem back you guys have no explanation for metaphysics and no epistemology that isn’t self contradictory and when this gets pointed out to you you act like someone is playing a word game with you
@Eric Hernandez "The nephesh occurs 754 times in Bible. ... term, nephesh chayyah is often translated "living ". Chayyah alone is often translated living thing or ." So the bible says man and animals ARE souls not that they HAVE souls.
How ridiculous - AronRa simply said a soul would be independent of a mind. If you would have a mind, a soul would not be the mind itself. It would be independent of it and we do have indications that consciousness is in the brain. And we now know that Neuroscientists have conducted extensive research on consciousness for many years. In the past, the traditional viewpoint was that consciousness required the proper functioning of midline brain structures and that the content of an experience was supported by the activity of neurons in specific areas of the cerebral cortex. especially the neurons of the ascending reticular activation system, play a vital role in maintaining behavioral arousal and consciousness. Eric then tries to compare that to playing a piano and picking a 'C' out of a guitar. This is an example of the lengths that theists will go to in order to rationalize their position. Meanwhile, without a shred of evidence, they believe in fiery shrubs with voices, oceans that split in the middle on command and serpents with vocal chords. It's downright embarrassing.
How people watch a debate like this and can possibly say Eric was wrong or lost the debate is baffling. People really need to study more and analyse the arguments.
@@EricHernandez I don't understand. Are you saying you wish what you are saying wasn't true or that you wish you could make up a story like this? Please clarify.
This guy is basically confused on something equivalent to "this hard drive doesn't look like my desktop, so that must mean that it does not contain information that I can't understand that forms together to make my desktop".
Aron Did lay out the facts for Eric. Because I fact check Aron On the science. Eric just created silly circular arguments to try to deflect away from his nonsensical points. If Eric actually has a case for the soul then he should present this to scientist and he would win the Nobel peace prize. Except Eric was portraying a person being very dishonest....
I'm just introducing myself to philosophy, logic, and religion, but even I can spot the problems with your argument Eric. It's simply a false dilemma. The options aren't "brain = mind" or "mind is some property of the soul". You haven't even established why the mind would have to be some property of the soul if it doesn't emanate from the Brain. There could be some other immaterial substance that isn't a soul in the Christian theological sense, or some other physical process that isn't carried out by the brain. The more glaring problem is that you ignored the possibility of the brain and mind not being identical, but of the mind being a product of the brain. Plastic does not = cup, but if I use plastic to fashion a cup then in conjunction with other things plastic has produced a cup. You tried to argue that if one believes that there is nothing, but the physical, they should be "value" men more than women since men typically have more body mass. This is a very strange argument because there is no one to one relationship between one's metaphysics and their socio-cultural values. You then tried to argue that without positing the soul to explain what ultimately directs actions one is stuck in an infinite regress of physical causes, but positing a soul doesn't solve the issue. Instead you have just added the question of what caused the soul to direct actions. Asserting that the soul has free will doesn't solve this issue because it is just an assertion.
Also, on the whole issue of the "self" you raised: A category such as "myself", or "yourself", doesn't need a metaphysical justification. It's a category that like all categories is relatively arbitrary, but for it's use to people. This is not to wave away this big philosophical question of what the self is, but simply to say that we can use categories like "self" to assign accountability simply based on their utility, no belief in immaterial souls required.
There goes that dang Bird of Aron's again lol, you can hear it every now and then lol, it sounds like it's his mother yelling at him to get off the computer and clean his room!!!!!!!! lol.....
@@EricHernandez I never understood your argument on *"Retaining identity through change"* being evidence of the soul. For example, let's say a hurricane moves from one island to another... Wouldn't it be the same hurricane system (and would have the same name) that moved from one island to the next, even though the particles that makes up the system is in constant change throughout its journey? And would that imply that Hurricanes therefore has a soul? And how would that argument of yours apply to other life forms, like Plants etc??
Call Me Emo Interesting question. I would say we humans call the hurricane a certain name isn’t because of what’s in it, but the collection of things that are going on. The certain pattern of wind is how we ground it. So no, it would be silly to conclude that as evidence for a soul but it is good reason to think that there is only 1 tornado even if it’s parts are changing. The key point is that there has to be something to ground the tornado..for humans, there has to be something to ground our identity. Under something like mereological nihilism, the tornado is just a bunch of small particles flying around and each exchange of particles would require us to see it as a different tornado.
If the entire concept of having a soul, free will and earning deeds or sinning, is part of a test of your faith. Then, doesn't that make all your philosophical arguments impossible to prove since it will be contradictory to your belief? The whole concept of faith in religion revolves around the idea that because none of the previous elements I mentioned cannot be proven, hence you just need to have faith and believe as oppose to reasoning and rationality.
This man is absolutely dripping with pride. Just admit you don’t know what some of these things mean or that you misspoke or misunderstood or something! SMH
Let's make Eric's guitar analogy a little more honest. "The note C isn't even coming from the guitar, it's coming from an invisible leprechaun that hides inside the guitar and sings every time a string is played. When we investigate, it sure looks like the guitar is making the sound but trust me, it's a leprechaun. Furthermore, once a string breaks, the tiny leprechaun loses his ability to hit certain notes. Almost as if the sound comes from the guitar but trust me, it's the leprechaun."
I skipped all the opening stuff since I've heard most of it from both of you, and skipped to the CE. I hope that's not unfair. But that said, interesting discussion. I do disagree with you and Aaron on the notion of qualia.
It seems to me that the big flaw with Eric's position is that it isn't clear how we would prove that conscious mind states determine brain states rather than vice versa. Without proof of this causal connection it isn't clear how the soul would be meaningfully different from consciousness.
I am a Christian (down deep in my soul) but Eric's argument that pain is not physical is giving me a pain in my brain. Have to give Aron Ra credit for sense on that point. Which I hate to do. But Eric is trying to hang his argument on the wrong peg here. "Feelings" in the sense of EMOTIONS would get to his point about consciousness, but pain as a sensory input surely does not.
You put your hand on a stove and you sole says remove you might get a burn but some people have higher pain thresholds. Everyone knows pain is your bodys way of telling if your injured
For aron, his ignorance is his bliss so to speak. If he doesn't know what you're talking about then he can just ask questions and run in circles all day. He showed a complete lack of understanding for Eric's position, his own position, and even the Christian position. The guy thinks there's no such thing as THE Christian faith and sees Mormons and Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses are all the same. This lack of understanding is embarrassing and bad on his part for someone who dedicates his life to debating these topics. This tells me everything I need to know about aron.
@Your Greatest Ally Perhaps the reason aron doesn't look deeper into these philosophical issues is because he'll be exposed the the absurdity of his position...
Very underhanded and dishonest "tactics" from Eric, to switch the topic to the debate without his opponents knowledge is shocking, Eric knows damn well there is no evidence of the soul, and clouds his lack of evidence by rapidly spouting dihorea like guitar strings "popping" not removing the note C, what a load of bull. His obvious lack of understanding for every topic he mentions is laughable, all with a smug smirk on his face, amazing
Nada Bro, if you actually understood Bayesianism and evidence, you would understand there is evidence. Please look into the topic involved and actually study before insulting the character of people.
At 41:00, after providing zero evidence for a soul or even defining it, Eric somehow tried to change the burden of proof, “what is a pain.” He either doesn’t understand the concept of emergent properties, or it’s just more disingenuousness. Then after Aaron talks about evidence that brain function is likely the cause of thought or source of consciousness, Eric’s reply is “so you think a F’ing guitar…” That’s right out of Kent Hovind’s playbook, “So you’re saying a pine tree and dog are related?” What a charlatan.
I've been reading about this topic for about three or four months now, how does Aron not know even the basic definitions for some of the terms used? I'm no polymath or genius scholar, but Aron seemingly has just not even read what even atheist philosophers have to say. Strange...
@@EricHernandez You looked like you were the one not prepared. You tried to frame the debate in your favor. The topic is clear, you cannot say it is not a scientific question.
Eric, “It’s my soul that thinks; it’s my soul that sees.” The soul that he can provide no evidence FOR. How do dogs or snakes see-is it their soul that sees as well?
Thanks! I wouldn't say "better", but I could say it explains it just as well as the substance dualist position that I hold to. Did you see my discussion on hylomorphism with Haden Clark? I hold to a traducian view of the soul, which is pretty darn close to hylomorphism. Hence, I have no problem saying that hylomorphism can equally explain it, but I wouldn't say "better", as they are close enough to solve the problem in a fair and precise way.
That is because Eric is like every other theists out there. They are IGNORANT of science and have no good evidence for their beliefs, just assertions after assertions.
So Eric is a sound C physical or not? How do we humans describe pitch of sound? How does that sound travel to your ears and who can hear it? Physical or not?
Is the concept of "braking" in a car physical? When you see a Baptist in the road...like a baby Baptist...is the act of braking in the spirit world, and/or does it travel to your foot to step on the brake?
Eric why do you keep using the identity argument when no one believes that neurons = thoughts? Have you ever heard about emergent properties? Water has properties like surface tension, but single molecules of H2O do not posses that property, does it then follow that water in not the same as H2O or that H20 molecules cannot produce surface tension? You are saying that since neurons don't have the properties of thoughts they cannot produce thoughts because they are not identical? A very large group of neurons interacting is what produces thoughts, this does not entail that neurons interacting are identical to thoughts, they are produced by that. It is a causal relation not a identity relation ffs.
Dr. Francis Crick once said: The Astonishing Hypothesis is that ‘You,’ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior or a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice [in Wonderland] may have phrased it: ‘You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.’ This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people alive today that it can be truly called astonishing.” (Crick 1994, 3). In short, what you have described is your belief called naturalism. Kindly note that I am not saying naturalism is false but you have confidence in naturalism.
So do animals go to heaven if they have souls? I'm curious about how souls going to heaven work; if they manifest a form that appears like their physical self did on earth in heaven, does their soul create a physical form in heaven from which can interact with the properties and others in heaven? Or do they remain simply being made up of their non material soul.
I love how Eric keeps saying that Aron is only asserting when that is exactly what he is doing lmao And why does he say it’s irrelevant when it is all relevant but he can’t comprehend 😂
@Eric Hernandez, doubt you'll read this, but as a neuroscientist (neuropsychologist), I'd like to point some things out:
Eric: "What's a pain?"
The activation of nociceptors, which (as Aron accurately pointed out) is the response to damage. The qualia you pertain to is simply the restating of the hard problem of consciousness. Additionally, if pain wasn't a physical process, then painkillers shouldn't be able to work.
Eric: "Where's a thought?"
A bit of a non-sensical question, the thought is represented by neural activity (as distributed over a neural network). Eric, you give the impression that you think a thought is located in a single neuron, but that's just wrong. You have to view brain functions as neural activity distributed over networks.
Eric: "How can a function be true or false?"
The thought itself is, again, represented within the neural network. This is true regardless of whether that the content of this thought is true or false. The evaluation of its truthfulness is also represented by neural activity. Separate neural activity, but still there.
Eric: "How does a brain function perceive?"
This is another non-sensical question. Brain functions don't perceive, nor do they function in isolation. The brain perceives from all available senses (including i.e., proprioception, balance, etc.), neural mechanisms that are reasonably well understood. And this information is used in conjuction with other neural activity for a variety of activities. A singular brain function doesn't "perceive", the network as a whole does (in other words, the brain as a whole does).
Eric: "If I open a piano, do I see the note C"?
Actually, yes. The note C is a process, its a wave-sound picked up by the brain. If you open the piano and play the note, you can perceive not only the sound, but also the vibration of the string. Within the brain, this is entirely represented by neural activity, so the remark that "music within the mind is without vibration" is kinda ... dumb, really. Concerning the CD, yes, the music is in the CD. The music is represented using data, and played off of different media (the overlapping media to the brain being sound waves), but yes, it is there.
In the end, it all boils down to causality of neural activity, right? You're saying a soul is still responsible for the neural activity we see through neuro-imaging. What we're saying is that we know for sure (100%, determined via experimental research) that causality AT LEAST goes in the other direction: the brain affects the soul (it may still work both ways, but this direction is clear). Now, what neuroscience has shown, is that we can create accurate models that completely exclude the soul, indicating that the soul is an obsolete concept. This is why there's no scientific evidence, no scientific reason and no scientific necessity for a soul. THAT'S where the issue lies.
Additionally, there are elements to the soul that make no sense. Take the car-analogy: the soul is the driver, whereas the car is the vehicle (more often considered as a ship and a sailor). As Aron also pointed out, breaking a headlight doesn't make you blind. Now, you can make the argument that a damaged car requires adjustments from the driver to use it. But damaging the car only impacts the drivers capability to drive the car, it doesn't impact the driver itself. So why would the driver make completely atypical decisions after mere physical damage? It doesn't make sense, and now we have established a causal direction in one direction, and inconsistencies in the other direction. That's the problem of the soul.
Nobody’s reading that😂🤡
@@GodsProphet23 That has been my experience, yes.
@@MartialNico Quite likely Eric wont read your post and will intentionally ignore it because your explanations were well thought out and completely obliterate Eric's weak philosophical conjectural argumentation. His position is weak because at no point do we get any closer to how he can substantiate his definition of the "soul". It comes down to metaphysical mumbo-jumbo and superstitious belief.
So the only problem with this is that it kind of misses the point. These are really good scientific reasons for what is correlating to the causes, however it doesn't say what it is. I recommend you look into philosophy of mind and do some research on the hard problem. This is genuinely a philosophical matter.
@@kylexinye1990 I disagree, this comes directly to the heart of the issue. Sure, you can uphold dualism by maintaining that an immaterial spirit causes the neural activity reflecting conscious thought, but to say science has *nothing* to say is an intellectual dead-end.
I agree that this is a philosophical issue at heart; especially the hard problem of consciousness is well out of our scope (although the Libet-experiments are certainly a first step). But to view such input as "missing the point" is simply to ignore adjacent, relevant and to some extent well-studied topics.
Aron literally ran you over with fact... take it or leave it your followers will say your right his will say his are right, but so far? all you have really said was "that was irrelevant" to all the data YOU YOURSELF can look up. your legit only argument is that aron is unprepared and is doesn't understand. Get a grip dude
His followers have said I was right too
@@EricHernandez 🤣🤦♂️
@@nickarton3089 did he really think that?
Eric Hernandez Do you have evidence of that?
IKR. This guy seems like he's just jumping over the the points Aron was making.
Hi Eric, your arguments in the opening are no good. Let me help you understand why, at least for some of them, because Tbh man, this is genuinely painful to listen to for anyone with an ounce of understanding about how stuff actually works.
Ok so straight up please understand,
The mind and the brain are not identical, as you say, but not because they are unrelated, rather because they are not the same thing. The mind is located within the brain but not the whole brain. Much the same as how your toe is not your foot.. just part of it. Your nose is not your face, just part of it etc
You also say:
“I don’t open my brain and look at my thoughts" that’s true. Do you open a computer and look at the software?
And you say
“When I’m hungry my neurons aren’t hungry" are you suggesting that when you’re hungry your soul is hungry? I mean.. hunger is a physical thing you understand right? Even a pro soul person would understand that hunger is a function of the brain. Would a bodyless soul experience hunger?
Anyway, whether you accept the fact one day or misunderstand it ever onward, truth is your mind is in your brain
This is perfect.
Could you quote me a few sources please? And explain why the sources I quoted are incorrect? Because all I see are a bunch of baseless assertions and circular reasoning. Thanks
@@EricHernandez sources for what exactly, that the toe is a part of the foot? Or that opening a computer will not reveal the software? Or that hunger is a physical thing?
Do you really require sources for those? Are they really baseless assertions? Really - truly?
@@EricHernandez >> Could you quote me a few sources please?
@Lorenza Semaj McCoy Jr. ironic alright but he's blind to the irony
Atheist told me this story. Man and his young daughter go into a pet store, and some time earlier as a joke , the store manager had filled a plastic tropical fish bag with water, tied it off with a rubber band, and marked it with a Sharpie pen "invisible fish-$3.00." Well, the little girl was absolutely engaged and delighted with the plastic bag containing the invisible fish. The man knew that he had to buy the "invisible fish" for his daughter. Like Christians and their belief in a God, the little girl derived joy, peace, and comfort from her false belief that the plastic bag indeed contained an invisible fish.
Yea I've seen atheist buy similar bags for far more money that said "There is no God" bag. Quite sad and delusional.
@@EricHernandez Watching you reply to people shows how sad you are.
@Gen-X Earthling crickets lol
Eric Hernandez yes there are some atheists who claim there is no god but the vast majority make no claim, just that there isn’t sufficient evidence to believe in such nonsense.
@@bigscreenbird8198 It doesn’t matter what you claim. You are either living as though God exists or you are not.
If I'm hungry my neurons are not hungry... wow. Such a profound statement lmao dude aron never said or implied that.
Bro that was literally my opening. Aron hasn’t said anything lol
@@EricHernandez you must think people who dont believe in the soul think that. Thats why you brought it up. You hammer on an identity problem that nobody is trying to argue for. We dont think the brain is the mind or the brain is consciousness.. it is produced by the brain. Its a causal relationship. Not an identity issue. Its a strawman and red herring all in one
@@skepticallyskeptic,
I don't believe you get it!
Eric made that statement in his opening, which makes your comment the strawman!
Thanks for playing!
@@utopiabuster not really. He made the point all throughout the debate for one. And he was addressing an issue that is irrelevant and that is the point.
@@EricHernandez Aron said enough, your lack of comprehension of what he was saying does not equate to him not saying anything. Man oh man where's my face palm emoji?
Eric, you failed to show any evidence. You even managed to convince me more that there is no soul.
You failed to convince me that you were paying attention.
@@EricHernandez I was not party to the discussion.
Do you always jump from branch to branch in your thinking? Try to apply some Occam's Razor.
@@EricHernandez I thought hubris was a sin in your religion? Or is it just 'do as I say, not as I do?'
Eric Hernandez seriously man? You showed zero evidence and your incoherent word salad was very hard to listen to. Here’s a great question.
Does your left arm, hand?
@@EricHernandez Of course that was your best retort. You're such a child Eric hahaha
Eric's entire argument hinged upon the long-discredited idea of qualia, or the idea that abstractions of physical phenomena (such as pain or color) are indeed """"real"""" in some way. He even had the gall to talk down his nose at Aron for being baffled by such a silly idea. If you can describe everything about pain in completely physical terms, why must you imagine something undetectable, unmeasurable, invisible and immaterial that does the exact same thing? Oh wait, for the same reason you assume the existence of a god. Duh.
I agree. Claims about musical notes not being physical or color not being phisical are indicative of a lack of understanding. The words we use to describe the way we think are flawed because they are just describing our perception of the things going on in our minds.
Great assertion Sofia. Too bad there's no evidence for that.
@@EricHernandez what assertion did I make, Eric? All I did was compare the substance of your arguments. I mean surely you wouldn't dispute the fact that you showed no evidence...for goodness sake, you completely ruled it out on your first slide, didn't you?
Eric Hernandez dude you really are sounding more and more like a total d bag.
@@bigscreenbird8198 he has a petulant child's mind that can't take how poorly he did in this (and all his other) debate.
How embarrassing for you, Eric.
This comment is embarrassing for you.
@@EricHernandez deeeemn dat fourth grader comeback.
But let's be real for a moment here.
What do you, after this debate and some days to think about it, think the soul does in our bodys. What is it responsible for?
And how do you think a soul can have free will of it is given by an all knowing god?
Isn't free will impossible of god knew thousands of years ago what i will do tomorrow at 10:31 and 17 seconds?
@@Smitywerban Nope.
@Mary Whiterabbit Ok.
@@EricHernandez well i hoped for an honest and fruitful conversation here...
I get that you are starting to become bitter due to all those a holes making fun of you.
But if you recover from that hit me up to start this discussion.
Proving yet again that all Eric has is baseless assertions, obvious fallacies, and a DEEP misunderstanding of neuroscience lol. Is he competing with Ray Comfort for dumbest apologist or something? Hahaha this was so clearly a win for Aaron that I'm shocked Eric uploaded it.
He uploaded it because he really thought he won LOL. The Hernandez delusion
What the hell are you talking about the only person that used fallacies and made ridiculous assertions, I misunderstood the opponents position was Aron.
Science has nothing to say about the nonphysical, yet you can sit there and claim that a soul exist. Science has nothing to say about spiritual batman but I know he exist, sometimes I feel like I am a genius. Bruh! According to your logic Mr Eric, what can't people claim to be true?
Lentutis Dude, it is literally a category error. This is a philosophical, not scientific problem, and philosophy does provide evidence.
@@kylexinye1990 Category error? How can one sit there and claim that something exists and say that you cannot use science to prove that what you are saying exists? That's my whole point here. You can literally claim anything to exist at this point, according to Eric.
@@kylexinye1990 if it exists and science cannot prove it, how does eric know?!
Science can’t answer whether an action is moral or whether justice exist, so it’s important that you have a better understanding of ontology.
@@johnlovestosing04 BOOM! You said it best.
Eric, it seems like an entire field of scientific investigation, Neuroscience, is devoted to collecting empirical evidence as to how the brain generates consciousness. The short answer to that question is: we don't know _exactly_ , but we now have enough knowledge to build machines that can extract images, imagined and seen just by measuring brain activity (www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15037)
- Can you explain how the soul generates consciousness?
- Is pain in the soul? Is a thought in the soul?
- How does a soul think?
@ Matt If no one can answer those questions, what does that prove? That we don't know. Does not knowing prove that there is no soul? No.
Check my opening. Neuroscientists believe in the soul
@@steven4428
If nobody can answer those questions from the point of view of naturalism, does that mean there _is_ a soul? No.
And that is the inference Eric was trying to make. Watch the video. What's the evidence the soul exists? 'we don't know how to explain X on naturalism'.
@@mattsmith1440 If the soul does not exist then how do you explain out of body experiences during NDEs? There is one in particular that is very interesting. There was a woman who has been blind since birth and has never seen anything. She does not see any images even in her dreams. When she had her NDE, she was able to see for the very first time looking down at her own body on the operating table. Here is the video about it:
ua-cam.com/video/saRGVdExv-w/v-deo.html
@@steven4428
I explain experiences with reference to a physical brain. Is there something spooky about NDEs that's different from imagination or dreams? I don't think that's been demonstrated.
And of course, I'm sure you'd see something amiss if I said, 'How do you explain X, unless Thor exists', right?
"When Jesus said 'I am the door' you think he meant he was a piece of wood?"
No. Do you genuinely think Aron thought that?
Obviously Aron can think one thing in the bible is literal and also realize that other things aren't.
The absurdity of the question makes it's own point absurd. It's a self-disarming argument. Truly genius.
You would have to demonstrate why the scripture isn't literal, not that it is possible for it to not be.
Profound insight. Thank you.
Jesus said he was the door and THWH said that this Jesus person was his son. Could be that the "son" was figurative and "door" was literal, since the authors are long since dead and their intentions are lost from us.
@@PaulQuantumWales A good amount of the authors intentions are unclear, yes. But I'm sure there are certain verses that are clear based on context, given the translation is accurate and takes the culture of the author into consideration.
It was a clearly disingenuous argument from a guy that has no good arguments to make. Strawman is the desperate resort of the defeated lol
Did you take Eric's being baffled by Aaron's illiteracy in Exegesis as a concession? If the Bible says God is a Spirit does it then by necessity follow that He cannot take physical form? The God who made the physical world cannot come into it?? This was your slam dunk??? Aaron performed poorly here, and I'm surprised how many atheists here are claiming the win for Aaron...
1. What's the process by which a soul animates a body?
2. How is that process investigated?
3. Is that process an admission that the soul can 'touch' a body, yet bodies cannot 'touch' souls because they are immaterial?
4. If human beings actually had 3 souls, how would we be able to figure that out?
5. Is the soul a placeholder for what we don't understand about the human mind?
6. If there isn't a soul, would that completely unhinge your worldview and invalidate the core beliefs of your religion?
Please stop asking great questions. Those confuse theists.
Go Aron go! Looking forward to the debate!
Update: The debate was good. Have to say I didn't find any reason to come away thinking there is a soul, but I've come to expect that after listening to so many people try to argue for one. I'm of the opinion that you can't really argue for supernatural things without appealing to God of the gaps, essentially. At least I've not heard many do it successfully. Anyway, thanks. Have a great evening, be safe, and social distance
Thanks for the feedback. Could you point to which of my arguments were gap arguments where the foundation of my argument hinges on an “I don’t know”?
@@EricHernandez thanks for responding. Let me start by taking a more humble and humanistic tone. I'm happy we can discuss freely without disparaging and I hope l didn't come off that way to start.
I'll begin by conceding that a gaps argument was not the foundation of your argument in this debate. However, let me try to explain what I meant by my comment.
I reject your premise that an immaterial soul would be beyond scientific measurement; therefore, it has to be determined philosophically whether a soul exists. I think that dodging the scientific value of this proposition allows you to evade the gap argument, but I reject the premise you use to do this. Therefore, I conclude that you wouldn't be able to convince me without first acknowledging that it is a scientific question and not appealing to the gaps argument. So while you didn't use this argument, I think you unfairly dodged the question, therefore I remain unconvinced. I recognize some may find this convincing however I do not. That being said, I didn't mean to include you in a generalization about gap arguments. Finally, I'll attach a post script explanation for why I think the soul, even if inmaterial as you propose, would be subject to scientific investigation. Thanks for reading and replying.
P. S.
The soul, even if inmaterial, would be subject to scientific investigation because if an inmaterial object can interact with the material world, the effect is hypothetically demobstrable. Well, when I hear hypothetically demonstrable, I think, great, let's think of a way to test it. If a god, for instance, could make a crop grow faster than normally allowed by biology and physics, the plant itself could be subjected to tests to determine how it actually happened. If a soul can from a non physical state affect a physical body, the effects can be subject to tests and therefore cannot dodge the burden of scientific evidence in an attempt to appeal to word games and philosophy. Argument rejected.
@@blueheron9060 You confuse "God Of The Gaps" with abduction. I don't even believe in the soul but it is embarrassing to see people who don't know the topic at hand and take their ignorance as evidence they are right
@@MrBrass that's actually not what I was doing, as I explained in my second comment. I meant to say that more generally I don't think the scientific questions can be answered without a god of the gaps argument. I don't think Hernandez is doing that here. I think he dodges the issue to try to avoid it all together
@@blueheron9060 Quite eloquent.
you can tell by his smirks and sighs and personality that Eric is the smartest person in every room he steps in.
Or simply thinks he is
Napoleonic complex.
@@EricHernandez /r/woooosh
Little 4 feet schmuck
Aron crushes this guy.
@Nic B I have to agree lol
Na, fam.
Aron can’t crush anything, he mocks, he lies constantly, he argues and complete bad faith makes zero attempts to try to understand what his opponents positions actually are, and instead of listening to what his opponents explain what their beliefs are, he tells them what their beliefs are, and he interrupts constantly.
In your dreams
Eric sounds like that one passive-agressive freshman in philosophy class that just learned some new philosophy related words and skipped the classes on logical reasoning, diving head first into Dunning-Kruger.
Cool story bro.
Wait wait wait wait wait stop for a second,Aron is the definition of the Dunning Kruger effect, he’s been debating Christian apologists for over 20 years yet he doesn’t understand basic Christian apologetic arguments,like the cosmological argument or the fine tuning argument, he still continues to say that faith is just believing something without evidence, even after it’s been disproven to him multiple times, and he has no evidence to back up that claim, seriously what do you find compelling about him.
@@pleaseenteraname1103 hahahh ALL christian arguments to this day hold absolutly ZERO value, they have no evidence at all.
Show me Evidence for ANY God Argument and ill go pray every sunday.
(I'll accept anything that qualifies as evidence, any body of objectively verifiable facts which are positively indicative of, or exclusively concordant with one available position or hypothesis over any other.~Aron Ra)
@@phonixfighter7966 first of all you didn’t spew any of the arguments you just said that they’re dumb and have zero value, which atheist philosophers, Michael Martin, Graham Oppy, and Thomas Nagel certainly would disagree, they think cosmological argument is given by Christian apologist like William and Craig are some of the absolute best and all of contemporary philosophy. And this is a straight up non sequitur because I never claimed I believe in God and I never claimed that these arguments were good, I simply said that he doesn’t understand them. And I don’t think you’re being entirely honest when you say only if you were given evidence you would believe, you would probably just find some other reason. And that’s also strawman because not all arguments for God‘s existence are supposed to be evidence for God‘s existence. The evidence you want is impossible , and self refuting, because if the only standard of evidence he will accept his naturalistic empirical evidence, then it’s impossible to prove God‘s existence to you, because you can’t use a purely naturalistic method to prove a supernatural being that textbook example of an attribution error. And if naturalistic empirical evidence which is what Aron is referring to, because you can’t objectively verify your naturalism by using your naturalism, or empirical and verify your empiricism by using your empiricism. And even atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel acknowledges in his book the server in Cosmos and in many other instances, but theorists are the only ones I have a answer good answer to naturalism, and many anti-theist fundamentalist dogmatists, like Aron don’t like him because of that. Aron doesn’t care about science or evidence, he only cares about either of those things when it promotes his agenda, it’s been shown time to time a prime example of this is Christianity being dangerous and the definition of faith.
@@pleaseenteraname1103 thats a Lot of words too Bad im not reading them
P. S. You still wrong
To add to smug,condescending, arrogant and deluded,The mask slips with Eric,and He smirks,I really find Him a deeply unpleasant person,not very Christian at all.......
>> The mask slips with Eric,and He smirks
Yes, God forbid that Christians smirk.
@@EricHernandez Well according to your bible ya...
Proverbs 11:2-When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.
Even the bible says not to be so smug and be humble Eric. Like Jesus supposedly said to? Not that you care lol
he's a dick, and he knows he's a dick and he's perfectly fine with it. not to mention he has extremely thin skin because he can't let a random internet diss go unanswered.
@@EricHernandez you don't know your own bible
I have not gone through this yet but, dang. Eric. My man. You did not account yourself well on this one. You pretty much did all you could to tie your oponent's hands behind their back and then Aron Ra broke out with some roundhouse kicks early on.
"What is a pain?"
"Here is an explanation of what pain is which does not require a brain."
"What is a pain?"
I also think that Eric has pre-prepared notes and arguments but only knows them through repitition and rote and that is why he seemed so lost when Aron Ra out flanked him.
If anyone is taking Aron on the should be well prepared for a very intelligent and well educated person. Aron is a very kind person and likes his openent to give him a good iterlectual argument both scientifically religiously and philosophically.
Wow this aron ra guy is the voice of reason while eric is the voice of idiocy.
Aron guy reason? He didn’t even understand the arguments like most people who think Aaron did well.
@@Solideogloria00 Eric thinks that destroying a guitar to find the air vibrations for the note C is a valid analogy of the brain & mind.
Eric is an idiot.
@@justsomeguy6336 an idiot is one that thinks they are the arbiter of what a valid analogy is.. or that listens to one..
@@Solideogloria00 Philosophically speaking; Ra seems to cater to the lower common denominator of atheists.. while Eric to some of highest of Christians.. Which would explain all of the prison yard back alley comments that follow these empty people.
@@kelvyquayo Oh my. Can you give a specific example? Eric doesn’t even know what science is.Do you NOT see Eric’s “arguments” e.g. comparing the brain and mind to a guitar, as disingenuous and dishonest?
Quite a lot of wrong things you said here Eric. Let's focus on most memorable ones.
1st. Value based on mass. Value is subjective. Humans (in some situations - something else) determine value. For example family for me is more valuable than everyone else. Or pen is valued 10 dollars.
2nd. C-note is in piano. C-note is a process of gasses vibrating just like thought is process of brain (can see that with fmri).
3rd. Thought can't be true or false therefore soul. Dumbest question and most confusing one. Thoughts can be true or false because we can define it as such based on reality. 2+2 = 4 is true because that is in accordance to reality.Unless you meant it as how true and false lead to thought then look up software. Simple 1 and 0 can lead to logical process.
4th. You never clearly defined what soul even is. You said what it is not ( not material ) and what it does (thinks or contains consciousness)
Overall you ignored, misdirected almost all of aron's points, provided no arguments that would indicate soul existence, you didn't even clearly defined it.
You LITERALLY went into this debate having NOTHING. No wonder you lost horribly.
He didn't lose. You and Aron Ra both dismiss his opening arguments. The letter C isn't physical; the contents of thoughts aren't physical either, so it seems that the brain can't generate them. Instead, it seems more likely that the brain channels those thoughts into a physical body. My explanation is probably not the best one out there; you should look at the sources Eric mentions before dismissing everything he says. Goodbye.
@@promethium-145 Both are physical processes. Letter C is demonstrably process of gasses vibrating a specific way. Same is with thought. Those are demonstrably physical, they just aren't an object.
@@dariusnoname12 Ok then. But thoughts are still metaphysical, to an extent. For example, a bunch of electric signals don't translate to the memory of a fancy car, or mansion. The way I see it, the brain is a filter for consciousness, a sort of processing valve that links it to the physical universe.
@@promethium-145 I would argue that it is also same with thoughts. We have devices that can map out your brain and we can see to extent what person is thinking (with fmri machines).
If you think that thoughts are not possible simply with neurons. Looks at computers. Computers are a lot simpler yet they can easily emulate logical processes, animate graphics, etc.
It's fine if you think that brain is gateway to soul or something, but know that there is nothing that would indicate your claim being true. While there are quite a lot of support for consciousness being a process of a brain.
@@dariusnoname12 Maybe. Good talking with you. I have to go now, because I'm trying to submit an assignment, and I don't even know my own password for my outlook account. This will be hard!
The musical note of C is 0.261625565 kilohertz. 0.261625565 kilohertz is a property of a physical system. To say that 0.261625565 kilohertz is not physical is true, but the concept of 0.261625565 kilohertz is dependent on a physical system.
Arguing that an immaterial thing that has all the properties of non-existence and yet does exist is asinine.
How can you tell the difference between something that has all the properties of non-existence and does exist and something that just doesn't exist?
Thankyou @Eric Hernandez for confirming that there is no evidence for the soul and that you have no clue what you are talking about.
Ok
He shouldn’t have to present evidence…he’s a theist.
@@AndJusticeForMe congrats, you are now a hindu, a jew, a muslim, a greek pantheon follow plus thousands of other religions as they're all theists and thus do not have to present evidence..
Eric actually made me think a soul doesn't exist
Yeah, with a name like that I'm suuuuuure he's the one who convinced you. ;)
@@ericb.1384 I cant help what my parents named me
@@hop392 I'm pretty sure you are not believe in soul at all, so stop pretending you are believe in soul and now you are start doubting.
Truly terrible "debate" Eric Hernandez seems to be sooo confused but yet totally deluded as poor Aron ra tries to converse with him, he rea is an embarrassment to himself, well don't Aron for not resorting to violence, the frustration must have been overwhelming
What in the world are you trying to say?
Question: if you crack open a Television (like your guitar) then would you see the t.v. shows?
Na fam
@Your Greatest Ally he won't engage. He's only here to praise the people who agree and to give little pointless comments to people who disagree.
@Your Greatest Ally Why would that make it an immaterial substance? You look at the screen and see tv shows. And tv shows are not "in" the tv. They are streamed through them.
@@skepticallyskeptic Love you Austin
@@EricHernandez point proven
16:11 "You can say that a brain state/firing caused your hand to move, which caused the staff to move, which caused the rock to move. But given it was a physical event, you would still need to give a prior physical cause."
Right, and the only options are not a soul or infinite regress. This is absolutely absurd.
The brain is connected to many forms of outside PHYSICAL stimulation, such as sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch.
Wow.
@@EricHernandez Wow.
@@JumpingMonkey So the problem was that in order to have freewill that the source of this action had to start with the self. No one I hope would argue that the arm was caused to move by the neuron firing, and it is HERE that the only two options become an infinite regress OR at some point, alluding to external physical factors beyond one's control that caused the neuron to fire. And given that would have to be the case, then one is no longer the first mover and thus, freewill could not exist. Geeze. Pay attention to the argument and understand it before commenting, my man. Love you tho.
@@EricHernandez I'm arguing that there is no free will.
It sounded at first like you were just making an argument against Aron's belief in a purely physical free will, but the statement I cited made it seem like you also thought there was no physical cause to the neuron firing.
@@JumpingMonkey >> [Hernandez] thought there was no physical cause to the neuron firing" That's in fact exactly what Hernandez wants you to believe: that an immaterial/supernatural "soul" caused the neuron to fire!
Yea if you take the bottom half of you, you are still you.. what if you take off the top half? Lmao
mr Hernandez you are amazing...
Every word you said was wrong...
Could you kindly put the effort into coming up with a more compelling argument? Thank you.
When Eric propose to remove science, religion and the Bible from the Conversation, he forced Aron in to a corner to prevent him from debunking the bs and contradictions in Christianity.
Eric: " when Jesus say "I am the door" do you think he's made out of wood?".
Since Aaron gave multiple examples of a physical God: .If Jesus said he's the door but also said you can open him, grab his door handle, slam him, knock on him, post a note on him, people can exit through him, etc.. then yes
It’s weird that Eric claims that Aaron Ra has the burden of proof, when the debate topic is Does the Soul exist? If that’s the debate topic then we don’t know if the Soul exist and Eric must provide the evidence or arguments for why it does exist.
Both positions have a burden of proof
@@EricHernandez The positive statement has a burden of proof.
@@EricHernandez whoever makes a positive claim, must bear the burden.
@@JumpingMonkey Any statement has a burden of proof
@@godsrevolver9737 Any claim has a burden of proof
Oh my god, Eric really does struggle to understand anything in detail, "the broken guitar and note C" idea shows his monumental misunderstanding. Aron ra is so far out of Eric's league it's laughable
Yea Aron was totally out of his league here. I agree.
Eric Hernandez dude you are like a 4th grade child. Your smug assertions give Christians a bad name.
@@bigscreenbird8198 it's hilarious that I personally know an ex-Christian who's doubt originally started after hearing Eric debate Matt Dilahunty and fail utterly. She is much happier now so at least Eric is good for showing the silliness of his religion lol
@@EricHernandez this reply is a perfect summary of this debate. You don't understand what was said and assume victory anyways
@@broface301 lol so true
soul = "an immaterial substance"
That's telling me what type of substance it's NOT, not what type of substance it IS. "If it's not a material substance, what type of substance is it?"
soul = "Contains consciousness"
That's not telling me what a supposed "soul" is. That's telling me what a suppose soul DOES. "What IS this supposed "soul" thing that supposedly "contains consciousness"?"
soul = "animates the body". That's what a supposed soul supposedly DOES, not what a soul IS. "What is this supposed "soul" thing that supposedly animates the body?
Its worse than that. A SUBSTANCE is, by definition, material.
Austin lowery That’s what comes to mind, but Eric can define “substance” however he’d like. I just want to know what type of substance it IS, since he only stated what type it’s NOT.
@@AsixA6 well if he defining in however he likes then the question should be what does he mean by substance. We can't talk about what type of substance if we aren't using any known definition.
Wow, lol. So first of all you're using the word substance as synonymous with "stuff". The word first popped up from the field of philosophy and there's a rich history to it. Given you're not familiar with this, I can understand the confusion. Paradigm cases of substances are living things and are contrasted with merelogical aggregates. What is the soul? I did say and define it. I AM a soul. I don't "have" a soul. But literally, I am a soul; the self, the conscious subject.
@@EricHernandez _"So first of all you're using the word substance as synonymous with "stuff"."_
False. Apparently, you didn't read my reply to Austin above where I literally stated you can define "substance" however you want. Either way, telling me what substance a supposed "soul" is supposedly NOT(material) does not tell me what supposed substance it supposedly IS.
_"The word first popped up from the field of philosophy and there's a rich history to it. Given you're not familiar with this, I can understand the confusion."_
Please quote me stating I was unfamiliar with this.
_"Paradigm cases of substances are living things and are contrasted with merelogical aggregates."_
So, you're claiming a "soul" is a mereological aggregate? If so, a mereological aggregate of what?
_"What is the soul? I did say and define it."_
No, you defined what it's NOT and what it supposedly does, but not what it IS.
_"I AM a soul."_
I didn't ask what YOU are. I asked what a supposed "soul" supposedly is.
_"the self, the conscious subject."_
I already have words for "the self" and "the conscious subject". It's "the self" and "the conscious subject".
It's like trying to teach a neuroscience course to a kindergartner. It would actually be easier to teach a kindergartner since they don't a have predisposition of the metaphysical or the physical. Aron Ra would have to start from the very beginning of neuroscience and biology for Eric to understand it. This was like starting the course at college level and skipping the basics.
Wow you literally described Aron but then you accuse this towards me. Incredible.
@@EricHernandez I don't recall you explaining Neurological functions to him at all. You were trying to teach him something you wouldn't even hear in a classroom. How can you expect someone to grasp the properties of dualism if it isn't even in a basic educational curriculum?
@@EricHernandez I know the UA-cam comment section is cancer, but dude, come on, you got your ass handed to you in this debate. HARD. accept your L
Well Erik's analogy disproves his own point, when you destroy the instrument, note to is destroy, do no longer exist, when you destroy the CD, the data=music is destroyed along with it, so by that logic when the brain is destroyed the soul is to?
He's making reference to a mental field which materializes in reality. The frequency 440hz is A, because the note A is a predisposed 'thought' just like the number two. He is trying to say that yourself, your ego etc is brought to the material world through your body, similarly to the frequency 440hz making your mind interpret the note A.
"Is pain physical?"
The answer should be:
"Do you know what a painkiller is?"
Bad response!
@@nemrodx2185 damn i wrote this a year ago and feel like it was not so long ago. but eric would surely claim so since god of the gaps. i mean he doesnt know what pain even is so in his mind - god. even though neurology exists and the concept of pain is like a basic
I think I understand Eric's idea. however he didn't really give a reason for believing it.
When Aron asked if he's driving a car and the headlights go out, does the driver lose the ability to see. It sounds like he's on the right track to understanding the point that Eric was portraying the idea that "the soul" can only act on the physical world by using something physical like the brain. So if you damage the brain or change/limit its function it therefore in-turn limits "the soul's" ability to interact with the physical world. It doesn't affect "the soul" itself (because its not physical)
So "the soul" isn't really "inside" or contained within the brain but it interacts with the physical world through the brain (the brain is its vehicle).
HOWEVER. Eric never really portrayed a reason to believe this. BECAUSE "the soul" CANNOT be proven as it is not in the physical realm.
Aron and many others, myself included, have consciously decided to only believe in things we can actually prove to be true. This limits our beliefs to only include things that actually exist in the physical world. So if something like a "soul" can only interact with the physical world through something physical meaning it leaves no evidence of its existence, then therefore there's no reason to believe it exists.
So if "the soul" cannot be proven/disproven because it leaves no physical evidence of its existence "WHY WAS THE IDEA OF A SOUL EVER CONCEIVED?" People like Eric try he argument that for things to move there must be an initial mover (God) to have moved the first thing which moved the next thing etc. An example would be something like; if the rock was moved because my hand moved the staff which in turn moved the rock, well my hand moved because my muscles moved because my brain's neurons fired, and my neurons fired because . . . . . etc. but that's an argument for The origin of the Universe (Big Bang), which explains the beginning of motion in the universe. Energy is finite. it cannot be created or destroyed. So all the energy in the universe now is all the energy there ever was, and will ever be.
For any1 who has not see this 2 part series on what is you? I'll share
ua-cam.com/video/wfYbgdo8e-8/v-deo.html&ab_channel=CGPGrey
ua-cam.com/video/JQVmkDUkZT4/v-deo.html&ab_channel=Kurzgesagt%E2%80%93InaNutshellKurzgesagt%E2%80%93InaNutshell
I feel this explores a bit more on the idea that as a social species we've acknowledge our own existence and other's existence as well. So the concept of "us" was made-up by us
Wow, you see how atheists are just as parochial as theists are,...I know Aaron is a smart guy, so I can't believe this explanation was too lofty for him to grasp, which only leaves that he was being purposefully obtuse.
And the car analogy there is a defense of the concept of a Soul held by all peoples of all cultures throughout all human history.
And btw, if you're a physicality then you look at the brain and see neurons firing, you then make an inference that the brain activity implies thought?? How does that transfer over? Brain activity occurs when someone is conscience, and when he is not conscience there is no brain activity...ok, great, why then continue to make the assumption that one caused the other? Is that proof that neurons firing up composed Beethoven's 5th Symphony??
"Aron and many others, myself included, have consciously decided to only believe in things we can actually prove to be true. This limits our beliefs to only include things that actually exist in the physical world. "...well, you can't prove this sentence coz the meaning conveyed in the information transcends the digital markings appearing on the screen...and the meaning you get from reading and writing, is it your neurons understanding?
"People like Eric try he argument that for things to move there must be an initial mover" "but that's an argument for The origin of the Universe (Big Bang), which explains the beginning of motion in the universe" Where's the objection here? Do things move on their own?? Things have to be moved, cause & effect,..so from the big bang, God set things in motion that eventually led to your neurons firing as you typed your response...Eric's point is sound...things don't just move unless acted upon...Aristotle, not being a Theist, still had common sense when he coined that term, 'Unmoved Mover' as all of humanity always has... atheists claim special logic that if something isn't dissectable then it isn't real,, except for their statements of course....
*"as a social species we've acknowledge our own existence and other's existence as well. So the concept of "us" was made-up by us"* ...the concept, as in the elucidation of the idea of us, using language to describe what is observed...the concept is not "made-up"..."us" existed before the philosophizing of the concept, we merely developed language to represent something that constituted how we exist in social categories....just like Soul, people perceive the essence of man to transcend physical constraints, and so the concept 'soul' to represent it. We did not create "us"...we did not create "soul"...we did however create concepts like life from not life(evolution), and physical causes for the presence of the physical universe which did not exist before the physical cause created the physical universe...????..
The soul is movement of life in material form such as nature with idiomata
@@angru_arches why do you presuppose god though?
The unmoved mover is unknown. So why do you say it's god?
Also life from non life is not evolution. Thats abiogenesis.
Your whole argument is just semantics. Things exist with or without us. Thats true. Just like species evolve with or without us. And chemistry does it's thing with or without us.
You have no reason to even suggest a god yet you claim you KNOW it's god.
If you can't test to see if a claim is true or false why hold onto it? It's useless. Atheists aren't saying there is no God. We're saying there's no evidence to suggest one.
@@FR099Y "why do you presuppose god though?"...the whole world presupposes God. It's innate within us. We are made with this instinct and conscience. All of human history every society cross-culturally and transhistorically has posited a God...I don't know whether it's gaslighting you're doing or what.."why do I presuppose a God"..the whole world does and always has,..YOU are the anomaly,..now efforts to canonize atheism and make it movement with its own secular set of precepts. You know you atheists have a set of common beliefs almost like an orthodoxy...I can guess so many values you hold, because like human nature we all have faith, just in different things.
"The unmoved mover is unknown. So why do you say it's god?"..it seems there is a simple logical axiom that I can only attribute to willful ignorance on the atheist's part that won't allow them to see what everyone else does, that everyone has presupposed God because it is a logical necessity. But I'm afraid your commitment to rejecting a personal God is too strong, it's even etched in your position's name, A-Theism....you accept that you do not say there is no god, but so committed to the thought that it can't be that, an unmoved mover even.
So here's why: An Unmoved mover has to be Powerful (creative power), Intelligent (intricately designed cosmos), Personal (it takes personhood to make a decision to make...without the Unmoved Mover choosing to, there would be no 'moving'),..all that together and we have what we would call God.
"Also life from non life is not evolution. Thats abiogenesis." That's conjecture...we don't even have a working theory for abiogenesis...even Dawkins, y'allz biggest prophet now, subscribes to the possibility of Pan Spermia, alien life planted life on earth and it evolved from there...there's the other infinite universe theory which is also unscientific...the lengths they have to go to not to contend with the God theory,...you'll say "we're not saying He doesn't exist" but yet "we won't consider the possibility of it"....
Why do you believe in abiogenesis?? It's never been observed in nature. And do you believe things just moved themselves? Logical fallacy right there.
"You have no reason to even suggest a god yet you claim you KNOW it's god." There you go to the commitment now to the point of denying the personal experiences of millions around the world. The instinct to posit God is constantly confirmed by personal experiences of God...how many reports and testimonies of experiences of God does it take for atheists to open up within their own assumptions? Let's see how you work around these...
"Atheists aren't saying there is no God. We're saying there's no evidence to suggest one."
The existence of a universe (why something rather that nothing? Coz out of nothing, nothing comes), the existence of moral laws and absolutes, the fine-tuning of the universe, personal experiences, the historical Jesus (best attested ancient manuscripts documenting the life of Jesus and supernatural deeds, unless you don't think History is a legitimate branch of knowledge)...
All these have been sufficient evidence for everybody but the atheist...all this is philosophical argumentation, but you refuse basic logic; without a theory for the origin of life or the cosmos, you are ready to deny the God position, or have you not heard of these arguments before?
@@angru_arches *I typed out a whole reply to this but the page refreshed and i lost it. I now grow tired of this argument you wont bring anything forward just speculation that you KNOW things that you clearly don't*
People think a gods exist because they're told about them. Gods were created by leaders to control people. A way to make the people think that there's an all seeing eye watching and judging, reporting back to the authorities.
Stop applying characteristics to things you've never observed or detected. You say the unknown mover must be powerful, intelligent, and personal. but you cant even show it exists. How can you possibly know anything about it?
Abiogenesis has several working theories. Do we know which type happened here on Earth? No. We lack sufficient evidence as of right now. We never see it in nature because nature is always consuming it before it could possibly have time to develop.
The only thing that's required to be an atheist is the lack of a belief. nothing more. Stop listening to your preachers and think for yourself.
If you are indeed not trolling. Than you really should take a moment and find out what it is that you know, what can you prove? Now if you want to just believe stuff than whatever. But you've provided not much more than some old ass dudes wrote some good stories in a book once. The Bible is meant to be gods word. I can tell you've never actually read it and said. "yep this is a good book"
Just a final note. if your god is so powerful why cant he write his own book?
The intrathoracic pressure in your body momentarily increases when you sneeze, which can cause death, because your heart has to change rhythm to compensate.
Interesting
Oh I saw this on 1000 ways to die! Ya that and laughing for too long were the weirdest ways they had I think haha. Perfectly formed my ass
Immaterial substance?
Immaterial
1. spiritual, rather than physical.
Substance:
1. a particular kind of matter with uniform properties.
2. the real physical matter of which a person or thing consists and which has a tangible, solid presence.
You have a long way to go before you convince anyone of this. So this soul that I am, can I only function in the body? Can I separate from my body and chill somewhere else while my actual body rests? It is the body the only thing the soul can influence? If yes, how do you know? And can you show us instances where a soul has influence another thing? If no, please provide things we can test to verify this. What energy does the soul use? Does the soul need rest? At what point does the soul enter the body? Where are souls created? If the souls always was, when and where was it before entering the body? Are souls just winning lottery tickets to decide who gets to animate a body on earth? Help me out here!
Your "note c" analogy, easy to answer. Open the piano is there a note c, can you grab it? No, because the PHYSICAL action for that piano to make that note is not happening, just like without the physical action of thinking, the thought is not there. See?
And the CD player, the music is destroyed on that cd that is scratched because that code on the cd is physical, making the music. And again that is the same as the brain, damage the brain and you can not recover the info in that part of the brain.
Inoculom Fear So you mean to imply that if your brain were thinking a thought that you COULD see the thought?
@@kylexinye1990 in the same sense you can see the note C. You can see the physical process...
Just found this debate. Eric once again is out of his depth. I've seen several debates with him and he never, ever, has a coherent argumebt backed by evidence or consistent logic, just smugness and over-confidence despite not understanding the topic.
You misspelled Aron.
Eric: Offers 4 sound (or at the least formally and informally valid) logical arguments for the existence of the soul.
Aron: "Where did you provide any reason to believe in the soul, can a toilet flushing be true or false?"
It really irks me when Aron shows he has no grasp of the relevant literature on this topic, e.g. Physicalism, dualism (nor Idealism), and qualia like the feeling of pain not being the same as signals in pain receptors. Essentially it shows how little respect he has for theists that he thinks he can come into a debate on whether the soul exists with a diatribe about ghost hunters and near death experiences of people from other religions and call it a day.
Eric claims existence is a non-scientific question. This is always false. Logical arguments are not evidence. Please don't confuse soundness for validity.
Obviously Aron has little respect for theists. The reason for this is because theists often state incredibly stupid assertions like the smell of a rose is not 7 inches long or if you broke a guitar open you couldn't find the note C. Not even Eric could really be that stupid.
Rembrandt972 Existence is not a non-scientific question so much as a pre-scientific question. Science studies that which exists; it cannot _prove_ existence _qua_ existence, it can only assume it.
*Logical arguments are not evidence*
Define _evidence_ (without a logical argument).
@@nathanaelculver5308 Evidence is data that points to one and only one conclusion.
Dictionary.com has this:
1. that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.
2. something that makes plain or clear; an indication or sign:
His flushed look was visible evidence of his fever.
3. Law. data presented to a court or jury in proof of the facts in issue and which may include the testimony of witnesses, records, documents, or objects.
No argument here.
@@rembrandt972ify Why are logical arguments excluded from those definitions?
@@rembrandt972ify What evidence do you have that logical arguments aren't evidence? In science there are many examples of empirical equivalence, where all the available data can be explained in multiple ways. Philosophical (metaphysical, epistemological, aesthetic) considerations often serve to evidence one explanation over the other.
All scientific theories have 3 components, the data, the hypothesis, and philosophical shaping principles. For example the criteria by which we judge a scientific theory to be better or worse than its competitors are not themselves scientific but philosophical. Things like explanatory scope, explanatory power, simplicity, coherence with the available data, and beauty (e.g. symmetry) are not themselves scientific or empirical observations. So to say logical arguments aren't evidence just betrays a lack of understanding of science and the significant role logic and philosophy play in it.
Also I clearly didn't confuse validity with soundness. Validity is a matter of an arguments having the correct logical structure (Modus Ponens, Modus Tollens, etc...), soundness is the conjunction of a valid argument and true premises. This is why I said "Eric: Offers 4 sound (or at the least formally and informally valid) logical arguments for the existence of the soul". In essence the arguments have the correct logical structure and so if the premises are true the argument is sound, you can dispute the premises though and so say its not sound, however Aron didn't even touch one of the premises to dispute it.
Further both you and Aron should have more respect for theists, simply insulting their intelligence or dismissing them as stupid isn't enough. You actually have to address the arguments, something Aron did not even attempt in this.
Hey Eric,
Is there any belief that a faith cannot justify?
Not sure what you mean by something that “Faith cannot justify”. Could you elaborate?
@Eric Hernandez
If I had a belief in reincarnation into animals or a belief that I could see the future in my dreams, could I use ‘faith’ to justify why I believe it?
@@EricHernandez Come on mate, use your brain a little bit.
@@poerava Would you have any reasons to believe this? If not it sounds like you are trying to equate blind faith with reasonable faith.
@ONESTEPAHEAD
I think we’ve discovered the flaw in thinking. What is ‘reasonable’ faith as you mention. Please describe the difference.
Do elephants have souls? If not how do their brains work independently of a soul? I’m actually interested in hearing your response to this.
Yup. Big souls
Eric Hernandez so you have no answer. I can tell this is your pattern of response by looking through the comments of this video. You simply won’t respond after people show you in error.
I actually wished Ra wouldve pressed him on this too. He would have to necessarily agree that all animals have souls, which is clearly unbiblical. Not agreeing would prove that a brain can serve the same function as a soul which makes the soul an unnecessary addition to reality, which is incidentally what all supernature claims are.
@@SkylarFiction He's a fraud and he knows it deep down which is why he is so unpleasant.
The problem is that Aron does not listen to the argument
Exactly!
What argument? Eric never made one.
@@ScienceGeek-pu1ni You suffer from the same issue as Aron it seems. Sorry to be this honest but you have to face it, if you cannot even hear the argument it would be a waste of time stipulating it in the comments.
This the one debate where I didn’t see Aron cursing and swearing 🤬
Awww poor baby...what are you little guy like 6?
@@Screencappedhats Awww... just expecting rational people to treat others how they want to be treated. Isn't that rational?
Right now, I am watching this while having blisters on my feet. They are sending pain signals to my brain non-stop, and body is responding to them by pooling fluid in them. My central nervous system is taking the signal from the nerve endings in my feet and sending them to my brain so I can interpret the pain signals being sent and where it is coming from.
How the hell does my soul receive those signals if it is non-physical? If I had a soul, I could just use it to switch off the pain. But for some reason I cannot do that. So is the soul servant to the body, or is the soul in control over the body?
Until you can prove the soul is real, you can ONLY say it's a belief. No amount of long scientific words will change that. We could have a soul that is formed from all of our experiences and what we have learnt, and when we die it just leaves to the wind. The desperation of the believer trying to validate the soul is for the sole justification of then saying it goes to heaven or hell depending on how they lived their life. So it then justifies their religion, which then would validate their crusades to force the world to obey them.
Science has no issue with the soul existing if we can prove it does with enough certainty and with a reliable method to test it. Religion in it's millennia of existence through history has never had any provable and falsifiable evidence of it.
Ahh... Eric the troll, still has no scientific tests for the soul. Pink unicorns will suffice, won't they?
LOL!!!! Oh my goodness WOW. Did you not watch the debate? Because you either commenting before watching or completely ignored my opening statement where I address this asinine, pseudo criteria. Impressive.
@@EricHernandez You only asserted and gave no evidence. Your assertions are based on the premise that Homo Sapiens, as a species, are somehow more special than any other organism on the planet. This Eric is your great delusion of grandeur that you have been indoctrinated with since you were born.
@DJ Sympy Who says they do?
I really should've stop listening when this genius asked "If i break a CD does the music fall out?" Wow. What kind of preschool understanding do you have of the world? If it wasn't for the fact that this guy is actually on the Pro Am Apologetics Circuit I'd think this was trolling.
Hey Eric. Love your stuff but I dont rhink you did very well in this debate. I believe in the soul and I'm a Christian. Cheers
I'm sorry to hear you feel that way. I believe in the soul, am a Christian, and I think this went great. Braxton Hunter will be doing a review of this and posting it hopefully in the next day or so. He's great at unpacking debates. His review may help
@@EricHernandez So I've been doing more research, I think you may have a point in the soul.
Btw, I wasnt trying to say you weren't a Christian, if it seemed that way.
I'm curious, what do you think about the differences between the soul and the spirit?
Also, when I say you didn't do that well I mean, I dont think Aron was truly getting what you were trying to say so I think there might have been a better way of communicating your points.
God bless you and your ministry, cant wait to watch more of your content
Watching this for the second time and I just laugh when Aron Ra argues against “the man behind the curtain” multiple times . He’s exactly that 🤣
@@APolitical99 Ah, I apologize for the miscommunication. Thank you and I take your feedback well. The spirit would be a faculty of the soul. I have a two hour plus video on the soul on my channel where I go MUCH more in depth into this topic. ua-cam.com/video/EWIbnxRzkMw/v-deo.html
@@robertbethel4341 LOL that is true
My favorite part of Eric’s opening was when he argued that he doesn’t understand wind, and thinks invisible hands are moving things, that us saying “bless you” proves a good spirit is leaving the body and an evil one might enter, and lastly when he cited all the pagan myths about the breath of life”.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Oh wait, he didn’t… my bad.
Eric believes animals have souls but has no biblical justification for this.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_in_the_Bible
Triggered b*sted
You should read the bible then.
The Hebrew Bible says humans and animals ARE souls (beings) not that they HAVE souls. BIG difference and could have been a mighty refutation against Eric.
Purple Pill Philosophy try quoting it.
I would argue pain doesn't "exist" pain is a description of the phenomenon of the body being harmed. Its not some otherworldly thing its just a description of human experience not actually a "thing" but maybe I am wrong.
I tend to look at it as another tactile sensation. Or perhaps the inevitable bad end of each different tactile sensation? Just a different way of saying physical sensation of some type.
I like how when you talk about metaphysical possibility you are actually talking about physical possibility but you don't want to say that so you say metaphysically instead. We have ways of determining what is physically possible or impossibile. Do we have any methods of determining what is metaphysically possible?
Not sure what you're referring to, but to answer your question, yes. Logic, modal logic, etc. Plenty of ways.
@@EricHernandez interesting, then why do distinguish metaphysical possibilities from logical possibilities.. according to what you just said, they are the same.
I've seen a couple of Eric's "debates" and I gotta say... he's horrible at debating.
1. He's dismissive and condescending. Eric (tries) to come across as the smartest person in the room.
2. Eric tried to attack Aron's position instead of presenting the positive for his case. Typical deflection tactic.
3. His argument was weak and he knows he can't demonstrate a soul, so he has to resort to petty insults and word salad. Ultimately, Eric knows he can demonstrate a soul exists which is why he resorts to these sort of dishonest debate style.
This comment is just petty insults and word salad.
@@EricHernandez Your replies are just as skillful as your debate skills. Ever get tired of losing debates?
@@darkloki1 So, still just going to make assertions? Cause that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. All you've given me are assertions.
@@EricHernandez Hahahahaha avoiding the points and deflecting! Just as predicted! Holy shit, you're easy to read. You're about as deep as a paper plate son.
The evidence is in every debate video you were ever a part of. Seriously man... this isn't looking good for you.
@@darkloki1 I wish you'd stop dodging and actually give some evidence instead of more assertions. Oh well. I tried. Have a great one bud.
Man the moderater couldn't be more bias if he tried
For being such a respectful and honest debate I have no clue what on earth Aron Ra fans have to do here hating on Eric in the comment field, but I think it - like any form of bullying - speaks for itself.
I thought it was a cordial debate as well! I was really pleased with how Aron behaved in comparison to my first debate with him. And I think you hit the nail on the head with that last observation!
@@EricHernandez
Thanks. Keep up your great work!
Eric seems to think abstract descriptive words are physical things. I’m not sure if he doesn’t understand this, or thinks it’s a clever way of distraction. It’s frustrating to listen to.
You seem to think your words are physical things
Eric Hernandez what is this, I know you are but what am I?
Yea
Eric is a troll.
I love how Eric argues and thinks like a little kid who is scared to think outside of what he’s been taught. He equates personhood with an immaterial soul. He equates a brain with an immaterial mind and he equates a mind with an immaterial substance. I can’t imagine being more wrong.
Hi Eric, could you answer some questions for me about the soul? When people have severe mental handicaps such as Down syndrome, is the soul mentally dysfunctional as well as the brain, or is it only the brain that's not functioning properly? If the former is true, what is it that causes the soul to be mentally handicapped? It couldn't be any biological facts about the development of the brain because the soul is distinct from the brain. However, if the latter is true and only the brain is dysfunctional, then it seems like we'd have to conclude that people with Down syndrome are actually just as mentally competent as anyone else. It would only appear as though they're mentally deficient, in much the same way that a professional pianist would appear to be a bad musician when he starts playing on a broken piano. But is that really plausible? Is it really likely that if, hypothetically, we were somehow able to peer inside the mind of someone with Down syndrome, we would find the thoughts and inner monologue of someone who is just as mentally competent as the average person? Imagine what kind of hell that would be to have all kinds of intelligent or insightful thoughts that can only manifest themselves through broken behavior and speech of someone who appears to be retarded but really isn't. What are your thoughts on the matter?
Did you catch my guitar analogy and literally any other question I answered regarding correlation?
@@EricHernandez I don't remember you specifically addressing the issue of mental handicaps, thought maybe I missed that part. If the speech and behavior of someone with Down Syndrome is analogous to a guitarist trying to play a guitar that's out of tune, then these people aren't actually mentally impaired at all. They're playing all the right notes (so to speak), it's just that the brain isn't processing their thoughts and intentions accurately. Is that honestly what you believe? Do you think that people with severe mental retardation have roughly the same kind of thoughts, ideas, and coherent internal monologues that occur in the minds of non-mentally handicapped people?
@@EricHernandez >> Did you catch my guitar analogy
Chad Eric is a troll.
@@EricHernandez Your guitar analogy is a false equivocation since guitars and guitar players are demonstrably real. Guitars are not alive and lack a brain. Pathetic.
Also, Eric, acknowledging that we are not the same person from one moment to the next is an argument AGAINST your position. The soul is supposed to be fixed abd unchanging, and what makes you you. If humans change constantly, then the soul does not exist, because the soul is supposed to be a fixed self. There is no fixed self, therefor there is no soul. I think Aron did, from his own point of view, explain what pain is. Although I see what Eric was getting at, and I tend to agree generally with him on this issue. But he should have argued more directly against Aron on this point, rather than continuing to ask the question over and over again. Eric knew exactly what Aron was getting at, he didn’t have to repeatedly ask the same questions.
So the soul (A non-physical thing) can be damaged when the body (A physical thing) is damaged? So does this mean the soul is both a physical and non-physical thing at the same time?
How could the soul be damaged when the body is damaged?
Did you not watch the debate? I literally answer this question when Aron asks it. Wow.
@@EricHernandez I watched the entire debate. I'm still not understanding how a non-physical soul that no one has ever observed interacts with the physical world through the body which it uses as an instrument without coming into the physical world to do so.
I’m still not understanding why you would bring up red herrings rather than interact with my arguments.
@@EricHernandez nothing he said was a red herring. You either don't know what that means or you are being dishonest again.
Who say to a tree, 'You are my father,' And to a stone, 'You gave me birth.' For they have turned their back to Me, And not their face; But in the time of their trouble they will say, 'Arise and save us.' Evolution is just a new wrapper! For idolatry
Then why does the Catholic church teach it might as well say doctors worship germs.
Daragh O'kane I’m not following what you are saying? Please respecify.
Gonna be honest, this seems like a really weak argument because of how Eric has defined the soul and how he was unable to answer under what mechanism the soul functions.
If you are going to define something as "does X"(animates the body in this case) then you need to be able to demonstrate this.
Once you define the soul as animating the body then that's it, you lose. Because souls can't go to heaven, they are stuck animating the body. Souls don't exist if the body is not animated.
This is the problem and why things are not generally defined as "noun and verb" both.
Seems like Eric defined it too reliant on the body and then wasn't able to actually show it exist in the end. Most of the conversation was geared towards questioning Aron Ra and it should have been a clear cut case of "the soul does X and I can show it with Y."
Wow
@@EricHernandez might want to take into consideration that when people ask you for the mechanism you should have an answer.
@Lorenza Semaj McCoy Jr. True.
I don't know if it's a result of extremist bias, comprehension difficulties, or plain old ignorance but, the concept or idea of the soul has been around for some time encompassing nearly every culture and religious perspective, and has been similarly described in each. So, one would think nearly everyone would have had some idea what is meant by a soul, whether one believes it, by its religious connotations, or not.
As such, the question, as to the souls "mechanism" or "operation" is meaningless since the soul can be basically described, without religious conotations, as one's personality, being or sense of being. In psychology this would be defined as "identity". Granted, under a non-religious or non-spiritual view one's personality and being, "identity", would be the result of genetic/epigenetic influences. In many trains of thought the soul would be the essence of one's being, the thing that makes each individual distinct and unigue.
As such, Eric's argument has more to do with "information loss and conscioisness", and that relationship with the idea of the soul as an eternal carrier of one's being considering information theoretic paradigms and quantum information theories.
In other words, since information cannot be lost (as far as we know), then the essence of one's being, identity, products of one's mind=consciousness, counted as "information", cannot be lost and some depository of that information must extend beyond the physical because, well, physical life is not immortal.
When we "think" of a "Model T Ford" we don't need to have a physical representation of it to "know" what it is. Same with an elephant, or mermaid. When an atom is smashed into its constituent subatomic parts, where did the atom go?
All that is "information", which includes what makes us, us. When we die where does all that information, thoughts and actions, gathered and attained, throughout our lifetime go? Given that information cannot be lost.
A computer needs input to function
We know that a computer can be designed with learning algorithms, and, thereby, create information on its own.
In actuality Ra, makes Eric's argument for him, as do you with your question.
If information is not dependent upon a physical medium, and does not require physical representations to be "perceived" then on what medium is it stored?
What is the mechinisms or operations by which the "mind" functions?
We postulate that medium, mechanism and operation, to be the soul.
Consciousness=awareness
Mind=experiential medium
Soul=repository of the self.
Prove me wrong!
Thanks for playing.
@@utopiabuster that's was a lot of text to conclude with an argument for ignorance.
The origins of the belief doesn't matter.
The lack of explanation for another belief doesnt matter.
If you are claiming X without demonstration of X, then I have no reason to believe your claim.
This is just basic inability to prove your(or in this case Eric's) case.
This debate is the intellectual equivalent of a boxing match in which, Mike Tyson fights a 4 month premature, newborn baby with cerebral palsy and a cleft palate. With Eric, of course, being the unfortunate baby. This debate was borderline abusive how unfair it was.
Actually, you can open up someone's skull and examine their brain to see what they're thinking. Here's an example of how our visual cortex is used for visual imagination and how we can see what you're imagining by looking at the neural firing in your visual cortex: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00429-019-01828-6
I guess you missed Jaegwon Kim’s quote that correlations aren’t explanations?
Eric Hernandez It doesn’t matter. If there are perfectly good material explanations that actually make testable predictions, there’s no value in proposing something extra that makes no testable predictions. Maybe neuroscience doesn’t give a complete picture. Your proposal about the soul gives even less, because it has no mechanism or predictive model therefore no explanatory value.
@@theosib Tell that to the neuroscientists
Eric Hernandez Yes, I know, Eric. Like just about every other apologist, you think you're absolutely right about everything. It's this arrogance that is so damaging to the Christian community, and naturally you don't care.
I love how atheists believe they have all these facts on there side and that appealing to an unseen cause is ridiculous then turn around and TRUST in a theory that says pure chance is responsible for the complexity all around us without a single shred of evidence for where information comes from they either ignore this or appeal to some complete bullshit like transpermia which only serves to move the problem back you guys have no explanation for metaphysics and no epistemology that isn’t self contradictory and when this gets pointed out to you you act like someone is playing a word game with you
@Eric Hernandez
"The nephesh occurs 754 times in Bible. ... term, nephesh chayyah is often translated "living ". Chayyah alone is often translated living thing or ." So the bible says man and animals ARE souls not that they HAVE souls.
Yup. I make that point often
@@EricHernandez It is just a book written by man.
Eric Hernandez is a very poor debater. Sad.
Yea. I could use help financially.
Pray harder...😁
@@olmeckrav 😂😂😂😂
He is too busy praying his god sent corona virus does not harm him
How ridiculous - AronRa simply said a soul would be independent of a mind. If you would have a mind, a soul would not be the mind itself. It would be independent of it and we do have indications that consciousness is in the brain. And we now know that Neuroscientists have conducted extensive research on consciousness for many years. In the past, the traditional viewpoint was that consciousness required the proper functioning of midline brain structures and that the content of an experience was supported by the activity of neurons in specific areas of the cerebral cortex. especially the neurons of the ascending reticular activation system, play a vital role in maintaining behavioral arousal and consciousness. Eric then tries to compare that to playing a piano and picking a 'C' out of a guitar. This is an example of the lengths that theists will go to in order to rationalize their position. Meanwhile, without a shred of evidence, they believe in fiery shrubs with voices, oceans that split in the middle on command and serpents with vocal chords. It's downright embarrassing.
How people watch a debate like this and can possibly say Eric was wrong or lost the debate is baffling. People really need to study more and analyse the arguments.
I couldn’t have said it better myself!
Agreed
If Aron Ra was more inconsistent with his arguments I would have to believe his brian is undeveloped!!!
Unreachable because they are hell bent on being such. God bless, Eric.
People who find obvious liars like Eric unconvincing aren't really unreachable.
No....just looking for good evidence
“Liars”
I wish
@@EricHernandez I don't understand. Are you saying you wish what you are saying wasn't true or that you wish you could make up a story like this? Please clarify.
Alas, I just saw Eric’s website and noted his education. No wonder he relies on the Kent Hovind apologetics.
This guy is basically confused on something equivalent to "this hard drive doesn't look like my desktop, so that must mean that it does not contain information that I can't understand that forms together to make my desktop".
Aron Did lay out the facts for Eric. Because I fact check Aron On the science. Eric just created silly circular arguments to try to deflect away from his nonsensical points. If Eric actually has a case for the soul then he should present this to scientist and he would win the Nobel peace prize. Except Eric was portraying a person being very dishonest....
Eric try to say that the body feeling pain is actually how humans respond to pain, which makes no sense.
@@delusionalskywizard796 brilliant comment
@@delusionalskywizard796 Eric doesn’t know what science IS. You’re right, Nobel Prize.
I'm just introducing myself to philosophy, logic, and religion, but even I can spot the problems with your argument Eric. It's simply a false dilemma. The options aren't "brain = mind" or "mind is some property of the soul". You haven't even established why the mind would have to be some property of the soul if it doesn't emanate from the Brain. There could be some other immaterial substance that isn't a soul in the Christian theological sense, or some other physical process that isn't carried out by the brain. The more glaring problem is that you ignored the possibility of the brain and mind not being identical, but of the mind being a product of the brain. Plastic does not = cup, but if I use plastic to fashion a cup then in conjunction with other things plastic has produced a cup.
You tried to argue that if one believes that there is nothing, but the physical, they should be "value" men more than women since men typically have more body mass. This is a very strange argument because there is no one to one relationship between one's metaphysics and their socio-cultural values. You then tried to argue that without positing the soul to explain what ultimately directs actions one is stuck in an infinite regress of physical causes, but positing a soul doesn't solve the issue. Instead you have just added the question of what caused the soul to direct actions. Asserting that the soul has free will doesn't solve this issue because it is just an assertion.
Also, on the whole issue of the "self" you raised:
A category such as "myself", or "yourself", doesn't need a metaphysical justification. It's a category that like all categories is relatively arbitrary, but for it's use to people. This is not to wave away this big philosophical question of what the self is, but simply to say that we can use categories like "self" to assign accountability simply based on their utility, no belief in immaterial souls required.
There goes that dang Bird of Aron's again lol, you can hear it every now and then lol, it sounds like it's his mother yelling at him to get off the computer and clean his room!!!!!!!! lol.....
lol.. i didn't hear the interview but thought you were talking about his wife for a sec.. took me a bit to understand it was a literal bird.
Yes! LOL
@@EricHernandez I never understood your argument on *"Retaining identity through change"* being evidence of the soul.
For example, let's say a hurricane moves from one island to another... Wouldn't it be the same hurricane system (and would have the same name) that moved from one island to the next, even though the particles that makes up the system is in constant change throughout its journey? And would that imply that Hurricanes therefore has a soul?
And how would that argument of yours apply to other life forms, like Plants etc??
Call Me Emo Interesting question. I would say we humans call the hurricane a certain name isn’t because of what’s in it, but the collection of things that are going on. The certain pattern of wind is how we ground it. So no, it would be silly to conclude that as evidence for a soul but it is good reason to think that there is only 1 tornado even if it’s parts are changing. The key point is that there has to be something to ground the tornado..for humans, there has to be something to ground our identity.
Under something like mereological nihilism, the tornado is just a bunch of small particles flying around and each exchange of particles would require us to see it as a different tornado.
@@WhatYourPastorDidntTellYou what is *"grounding"* the hurricane such that it retains its identity through change?
If the entire concept of having a soul, free will and earning deeds or sinning, is part of a test of your faith. Then, doesn't that make all your philosophical arguments impossible to prove since it will be contradictory to your belief? The whole concept of faith in religion revolves around the idea that because none of the previous elements I mentioned cannot be proven, hence you just need to have faith and believe as oppose to reasoning and rationality.
This man is absolutely dripping with pride. Just admit you don’t know what some of these things mean or that you misspoke or misunderstood or something! SMH
Referring to Eric?
Mike AN Yes.
Are you talking about Eric? Because if you are the fact that he hearted your comment is too damn fujnny
Let's make Eric's guitar analogy a little more honest. "The note C isn't even coming from the guitar, it's coming from an invisible leprechaun that hides inside the guitar and sings every time a string is played. When we investigate, it sure looks like the guitar is making the sound but trust me, it's a leprechaun. Furthermore, once a string breaks, the tiny leprechaun loses his ability to hit certain notes. Almost as if the sound comes from the guitar but trust me, it's the leprechaun."
Don't forget to add that if that guitar is destroyed, the leprechaun goes to heaven and its still a guitar
I skipped all the opening stuff since I've heard most of it from both of you, and skipped to the CE. I hope that's not unfair. But that said, interesting discussion. I do disagree with you and Aaron on the notion of qualia.
Aron*
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
I’d be interested in that too!
Nice of Eric to be the poster boy for Dunning and Kruger's experiment.
Not only does Eric sound like a child he argues like one too.
It seems to me that the big flaw with Eric's position is that it isn't clear how we would prove that conscious mind states determine brain states rather than vice versa. Without proof of this causal connection it isn't clear how the soul would be meaningfully different from consciousness.
ah, you forget - no empirical evidence is valid!
I am a Christian (down deep in my soul) but Eric's argument that pain is not physical is giving me a pain in my brain. Have to give Aron Ra credit for sense on that point. Which I hate to do. But Eric is trying to hang his argument on the wrong peg here. "Feelings" in the sense of EMOTIONS would get to his point about consciousness, but pain as a sensory input surely does not.
You put your hand on a stove and you sole says remove you might get a burn but some people have higher pain thresholds. Everyone knows pain is your bodys way of telling if your injured
For aron, his ignorance is his bliss so to speak. If he doesn't know what you're talking about then he can just ask questions and run in circles all day. He showed a complete lack of understanding for Eric's position, his own position, and even the Christian position. The guy thinks there's no such thing as THE Christian faith and sees Mormons and Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses are all the same. This lack of understanding is embarrassing and bad on his part for someone who dedicates his life to debating these topics. This tells me everything I need to know about aron.
Yes yes yes! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
@Your Greatest Ally Perhaps the reason aron doesn't look deeper into these philosophical issues is because he'll be exposed the the absurdity of his position...
“Rumbas have conscious perceptions.” - Aron Ra.
Very underhanded and dishonest "tactics" from Eric, to switch the topic to the debate without his opponents knowledge is shocking, Eric knows damn well there is no evidence of the soul, and clouds his lack of evidence by rapidly spouting dihorea like guitar strings "popping" not removing the note C, what a load of bull. His obvious lack of understanding for every topic he mentions is laughable, all with a smug smirk on his face, amazing
Nada Bro, if you actually understood Bayesianism and evidence, you would understand there is evidence. Please look into the topic involved and actually study before insulting the character of people.
At 41:00, after providing zero evidence for a soul or even defining it, Eric somehow tried to change the burden of proof, “what is a pain.” He either doesn’t understand the concept of emergent properties, or it’s just more disingenuousness. Then after Aaron talks about evidence that brain function is likely the cause of thought or source of consciousness, Eric’s reply is “so you think a F’ing guitar…” That’s right out of Kent Hovind’s playbook, “So you’re saying a pine tree and dog are related?” What a charlatan.
I've been reading about this topic for about three or four months now, how does Aron not know even the basic definitions for some of the terms used? I'm no polymath or genius scholar, but Aron seemingly has just not even read what even atheist philosophers have to say. Strange...
YUP. And there are a TON of hours on my channel where he could have at LEAST just watched a video or two of mine and been far more prepared.
@@EricHernandez You looked like you were the one not prepared. You tried to frame the debate in your favor. The topic is clear, you cannot say it is not a scientific question.
Eric, “It’s my soul that thinks; it’s my soul that sees.” The soul that he can provide no evidence FOR. How do dogs or snakes see-is it their soul that sees as well?
Of course. Duh.
Eric loved the debate, my man! Quick question, Wouldn’t hylomorphism explain the relationship between the mind and the brain, better?
Thanks! I wouldn't say "better", but I could say it explains it just as well as the substance dualist position that I hold to. Did you see my discussion on hylomorphism with Haden Clark? I hold to a traducian view of the soul, which is pretty darn close to hylomorphism. Hence, I have no problem saying that hylomorphism can equally explain it, but I wouldn't say "better", as they are close enough to solve the problem in a fair and precise way.
Eric Hernandez no, I’ll definitely check that out! Thanks for the reply!
Aron gets the W
"whine"
That is because Eric is like every other theists out there.
They are IGNORANT of science and have no good evidence for their beliefs, just assertions after assertions.
Pray for Aron , to see the light.
Amen
So Eric is a sound C physical or not? How do we humans describe pitch of sound? How does that sound travel to your ears and who can hear it?
Physical or not?
Is the concept of "braking" in a car physical? When you see a Baptist in the road...like a baby Baptist...is the act of braking in the spirit world, and/or does it travel to your foot to step on the brake?
Eric won’t answer because she’s a troll.0
Not physical.
I'm mexican.
Eric Hernandez What about the note C is not physical?
Eric why do you keep using the identity argument when no one believes that neurons = thoughts? Have you ever heard about emergent properties? Water has properties like surface tension, but single molecules of H2O do not posses that property, does it then follow that water in not the same as H2O or that H20 molecules cannot produce surface tension? You are saying that since neurons don't have the properties of thoughts they cannot produce thoughts because they are not identical? A very large group of neurons interacting is what produces thoughts, this does not entail that neurons interacting are identical to thoughts, they are produced by that. It is a causal relation not a identity relation ffs.
Dr. Francis Crick once said: The Astonishing Hypothesis is that ‘You,’ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior or a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice [in Wonderland] may have phrased it: ‘You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.’ This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people alive today that it can be truly called astonishing.” (Crick 1994, 3).
In short, what you have described is your belief called naturalism. Kindly note that I am not saying naturalism is false but you have confidence in naturalism.
@@computationaltheist7267 I'm debunking his argument form identity dude idk what this has to do with naturalism or anything you just typed lol
@@TopoTopaco I wouldn't really call that "debunking".
@@steven4428 what would you call it then?
@@TopoTopaco ,
Desperation?
Hahaha, Eric refers to the “Christian perspective, the Marvin comments on it, but when Aron destroys it, the two Christians say that it’s off topic.
lol ghosts clothes 😂 that’s a funny no matter who u are
So do animals go to heaven if they have souls?
I'm curious about how souls going to heaven work; if they manifest a form that appears like their physical self did on earth in heaven, does their soul create a physical form in heaven from which can interact with the properties and others in heaven? Or do they remain simply being made up of their non material soul.
Including ghost clothing
@@NitpickingNerd lmao
@@NitpickingNerd 😂😂😂😂😂
I love how Eric keeps saying that Aron is only asserting when that is exactly what he is doing lmao And why does he say it’s irrelevant when it is all relevant but he can’t comprehend 😂
My man!
Eric is a troll.
@@justsomeguy6336 it's literally like he is trolling Christianity!