IS THE MIND SEPARATE FROM THE BODY?

Dualism imagines that because thoughts and feelings and ideas are not like anything physical they are not physical at all and have nothing to do with the physical and can be there if there is no physical. That is its fundamental logical error. If something does not seem physical that does not mean there is nothing physical about it.

Thinking and deciding and feeling are mistaken for spirit activities or non-material activities because they are what material things do and are not things. It is like thinking what the breeze does is non-material! But is not about material or immaterial but what the breeze does!

Religion believes you have a soul or are a soul inhabiting a body. The “evidence” is how a soul "explains" some aspects of our nature and how our minds work. But that is merely a souls of the gap theory. You may not understand how your dog got a cut but that does not mean an alien came from space and did it or a demon or some magical being.

There is no reason for denying that the mind or soul is separate from the body. Both of them make up a unity – one person. When the body dies the mind dies as well for body and mind are one and the same. This is the simplest view and simplicity is the law in all things and in all philosophy. Don’t assume more than you need to.

Many think that they know that the mind can survive death and is independent of sensed matter when children who have hardly any brain matter still have minds which they take to mean that the mind is something that is plugged into the body and is not the brain.

The mind is a machine made of matter, undetectable matter or it is spirit (soul) if spirit can exist. It is not spirit or separate from the body for if a spirit goes unconscious then it would be non-existent for its nature is to be aware. Also, if we were spirits we would be able to speed up or slow down our perception of time. But we cannot. We cannot make a second seem like a minute. This suggests that the mind is subject to the same force that makes matter change and must be matter itself. And being without parts there would be no forgetting or making mistakes. That we have no souls or spirits is proven.

What does the machine be doing when we are asleep? Sleep is a function of the body. There is no reason why the body and brain can’t sleep and the mind continue to work all the time even if it is only dreaming. The mystery of the children is not solved by advancing another and tougher mystery. Better to believe that the little brain matter they have is somehow enough though we can’t see how.

It is thought, “I cannot be aware of a tree unless I am aware that I am aware that I am aware ad infinitum of it. When I see a tree my eye sees it and my consciousness or awareness sees what my eye sees. So, my awareness of my awareness sees what my awareness sees and so on and on forever”.
 
It is thought that:
 
1 Like an ad infinitum line, so consciousness also is an infinite series of awarenesses.”
 
2 The line does not contain all reality and power and neither does my infinite consciousness.

3 This proves that consciousness, the mind, is not a part of sensed destructible matter for matter is not an infinite duplication of awareness.

If consciousnesses or awareness is really infinite then it means that everything is my consciousness and I am God for infinite means unlimited. This is obvious nonsense. But awareness is just one level not many or an infinite.  You have just one awareness and it focuses on one thing at a time. You don’t need an infinity of eyes to see something, you only need the one! It is based on the notion that if I am conscious I am conscious of that, and then conscious of that that I have already refuted.
 
Awareness is something registering on your awareness. An image is registered on a mirror and infinite mirrors aren’t needed. One consciousness is enough for information to register with. So, one mind is needed to register not an infinite number of minds.

 “Out of body experiences and memories of previous lives could be subconscious fantasies or they could be real. It is most likely that they are real because when there is no evidence that something is delusion it has to be believed. There is no evidence that you are not dreaming your life in this world this very moment so what you experience you have to believe. In most cases, the mind tricking you makes no sense for why would it do that?”

I reply that the going out of your body could be a fantasy which contains elements of knowledge gained by clairvoyance or by the cleverness of the sub-conscious mind which can make a shockingly accurate number of good intelligent guesses so you never know if you really left your body. There is no decent evidence for clairvoyance – if it seems to happen then perhaps the person only psychically sees how the present will determine the future. The past causes the present which causes the future. For one to see the future would mean a change in this order so one cannot really see the future. It would mean that seeing what you saw caused what you saw so it is an evil gift if it is real.
  
AM I INFINITE?
 
Argument: The consciousness I have is one power. The distance between its existence and nothing is infinite therefore it is caused by infinite power – it takes infinite power for it to exist. My consciousness is made up of infinite power and so it cannot be destroyed because what is infinite cannot cease to exist. Something cannot become nothing and nothing cannot become something. Not only will we have no end but we had no beginning for we always were.

Reply: When what is infinite is one power (because infinite power means an unlimited force so there can be no other forces but one) I object that this means that there is only one consciousness and that anything that is not consciousness does not exist. This is absurd for we all experience ourselves as different beings. But we could have an infinite force that becomes many other beings and things. That force could manifest in me as awareness and change into something else when I die.

The one same pure awareness is not going to become billions of awarenesses for that is a waste of power for there is no need for all those. If reason says there is only one then we are left with a paradox, one awareness being many. The perception we all have that we are many would have to be caused by a mental defect for it is not real. We are not able to see the solution. Remember, we must have the least silly paradox. It is worse to say we are all one awareness than it is to say that we are not for the first fights what we know to be true and the second only what the rules of reason as we have them say. The latter is only denying our minds are right and not the validity of true reason.

Right, a paradox is assumed to account for diversity and things being separate and the existence of infinite oneness. But why can’t we assume that infinity only seems to exist but does not and ignore the problem with that by saying that we have another paradox?

If I am infinite I should have infinite power. I am God. But I have finite power so I am not divine. So I can’t be immortal on the basis that I am divine for I am not divine.

FREE WILL - PHYSICAL POWER OR NON-PHYSICAL?

Free will, assuming it is real and not just something we think incorrectly that we have, is something a conscious being will use.

Some say the brain creates consciousness so it is a physical power in some way we do not understand well.

Others say the brain does not create consciousness. It comes from some non-physical force. It is a non-physical force. Then what about free will? It could be a physical faculty that a non-physical soul uses. It need not be inherently part of the soul or the consciousness. If it is not then we are about existing not choosing.  The choosing is only an extra and not an essential component.

Yet the whole emphasis about the non-physical soul is about trying to say it is a free agent!  Spirit is hauled in to account for free will when if either is real nobody really knows much about them.  That is hoodwinking the thoughtless.

Dualism is a huge claim and you need to show that spirit as in non-physical reality is possible.  You cannot show that at all.  And yet you think you can treat it as true.  It could be possible and still untrue.

BOOKS CONSULTED

AFTER DEATH – WHAT? Fred Pearce, Christadelphian Publishing Office, Birmingham
ETERNAL LIFE, Hans Kung, Collins, London, 1984
GOD AND THE NEW PHYSICS, Paul Davies, Penguin Books, London, 1990
HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East Sussex, 1995
JEHOVAH OF THE WATCHTOWER, Walter Martin and Norman Klann, Bethany House Publishers, Minnesota, 1974
IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH? Paul Kroll, Worldwide Church of God, Pasadena, California, 1988
MIND OUT OF TIME, Ian Wilson, Gollanez, London, 1981
LIFE AFTER DEATH THE WONDERFUL FACTS, Alan Hayward, Christadelphian, ALS, Birmingham
REASONS FOR HOPE, Ed Jeffrey A Mirus, Christendom College Press, Virginia, 1982
THE AFTER DEATH EXPERIENCE, Ian Wilson, Corgi, London, 1987
THE DEVIL HIDES OUT, David Marshall, Autumn House, Grantham, 1991
THE LIFE OF ALL LIVING, Fulton J Sheen, Image Books, New York, 1979
THE INCREDIBLE CREED OF JEHOVAH WITNESSES, Frs Rumble & Carty, TAN, Illinois, 1977
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HEAVEN? Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Publishers, Oregon, 1988

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BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible