Why do we have a brain

MooseJam

The soul is who you are, your personality and memories, so why do we need a brain ? any ideas ?

slade_x

MooseJam wrote:

The soul is who you are, your personality and memories, so why do we need a brain ? any ideas ?

Your memories are stored in your brain in the cerebral cortex and consolidated by the hippocampus, different temperal lobes are involved with long and short term, every function of your body is regulated by the brain, and who you are is the result of an accumulation of life experiences.

You require your brain to live and keep you alive. "It is the Brain of your body"

Zombrex

MooseJam wrote:

The soul is who you are, your personality and memories, so why do we need a brain ? any ideas ?

Its an interesting question. In fact why do we have physical bodies at all. What purpose does this serve? In heaven we no doubt wouldn't, so why here on Earth?

MooseJam

slade_x wrote:

Your memories are stored in your brain in the cerebral cortex and consolidated by the hippocampus, different temperal lobes are involved with long and short term, every function of your body is regulated by the brain, and who you are is the result of an accumulation of life experiences.

You require your brain to live and keep you alive. "It is the Brain of your body"

yes but there is massive redundancy, the brain stores memory and so does the the soul , the brain controls all our thinking, reasoning and planning and so does the soul, there is no reason for both. If we actually had a soul we would not need a brain is what I'm getting at, or at least a very different brain, the fact that we have a brain means we don't have a soul

Tzetze

Is the 'Soul' thought to be distinctly separate from consciousness?

MooseJam

The soul is who you are, everything you are, if you die you just continue on without your body, so I don't see why we need a brain, can any Christian tell me why we have a big brain when the soul can do it.

Saruman

Ask someone who is braindamaged, or has simply had their brain removed if they think they need it? Or is their "soul" enough.

Smellyirishman

Moose, are you being serious, or are you trying for satire?

MooseJam

I'm serious, are you a believer in the soul smelly ? I'm kind of just repeating myself now but the soul is everything you are, so whats with the brain. The brain is very strong evidence that we don't have a soul and there is no God, and if any Christian gave the idea some thought they would come to the same conclusion.

Red Hand

God gave us a brain so that we would know when not to use it.;)

Fanny Cradock

MooseJam wrote:

I'm serious, are you a believer in the soul smelly ? I'm kind of just repeating myself now but the soul is everything you are, so whats with the brain. The brain is very strong evidence that we don't have a soul and there is no God, and if any Christian gave the idea some thought they would come to the same conclusion.

Initially I wasn't sure if this was a serious post or not.

I don't see how you can come to the conclusion that having a brain = no soul. I'm sure you would apply the same logic and say that there is no heaven because there is a universe. I think you'll have to do a little better than that to unveil the lie we Christians are living.

Atheists would call it conciousness. A self-awareness that arose as a process of evolution - nothing more. Christians (largely speaking) would describe it as the spiritual aspect of you being, the non-corporeal side. Indeed, St Augustine said that it was "a special substance, endowed with reason, adapted to rule the body".

As an atheist I'm sure you would believe that at the moment of death conciousness ceases and the body begins to decay until it is broken down to chemical elements - the circle of life and all that. Christians would only agree with the latter part of that statement. With regards to conciousness (read: soul), they would see it as persisting after death. I personally think of the soul as being the 'image of God' discussed in Genesis. Something akin to the driver in a car.

So to answer your question "why do we have a brain", I would be pretty sure the answer would be because it is necessary for our life. It is an organ that has developed over the evolution of our species. However, you obviously don't understand the Christian concept (make that most world religions for that matter) of a soul if you think it is in conflict with our physical being.

MooseJam

Fanny Cradock wrote:

I don't see how you can come to the conclusion that having a brain = no soul.

Ok imagine a brain , your brain, and eyes kept alive in a jar, how would this differ from your understanding of the soul. As I can see it they are pretty much the same, it's 100% redundancy so why have a brain at all if the soul could carry out the same functions.

It's well known by medical science that your brain is your consciousness , if your brain gets injured you can lose memories or speech or whatever, you are your brain. Where is the soul located ? the human body can loose 100 % of it's composition - 100% !! obviously not at the same time but arms legs hearts lungs parts of the brain and skull it can all be lost so where is the soul hiding and how does it keep all your memories and personality, for this to happen there would have to be a hard wired biological link to the brain -

Millions of bodies have been examined and no soul has ever been found , there is no soul in the human body, it's just not there people. All the functions that you think the soul carries out can be carried out, what can carry them out ? - a brain, a real biological organ weighing three pounds is required to carry out the functions of the soul, you can't carry out these function with a magical nonexistant soul, if you could then why do we need a brain ? the fact we have a brain to carry out these functions shows we have no soul.

Saruman

Maybe the soul IS the brain?
Now i no longer believe in any form of Christian belief. There may be a God but whats written in the Bible and other Religious texts are nothing but writings by man about their own beliefs.

However most religions (or the ones i know of) have one thing in common. There is some sort of eternity, the spirit or soul goes on either to the afterlife, or maybe reincarnation etc.

So.... Back the my point. The brain is made up of... well brain However this is pretty much useless without the electrical impulses that control it. Electricity being energy, what happens to the energy when we die? It cant be destroyed or just vanish out of existence so it must go somewhere or be converted into something.

So maybe... just maybe this energy is our soul or spirit and it floats off into the multiverse to do whatever it is souls do these days.

Of course i could be talking through my arse

MooseJam

Saruman wrote:

So maybe... just maybe this energy is our soul or spirit and it floats off into the multiverse to do whatever it is souls do these days.

no, sure the brain when it dies just stops firing impulses, you need a brain to have consciousness and memories, the soul doesn't have a brain ipso facto there is no God nor afterlife.

PDN

Wicknight wrote:

Its an interesting question. In fact why do we have physical bodies at all. What purpose does this serve? In heaven we no doubt wouldn't, so why here on Earth?

In the Wicknightian religion it may be true that we wouldn't have physical bodies in heaven. However, Christianity believes in the bodily resurrection from the dead.

MooseJam

I thought in Christainity when you die your soul goes to heaven and you are judged, or do you stay dead untill the day of judgement when you are resurrected

PDN

MooseJam wrote:

The soul is who you are, your personality and memories, so why do we need a brain ? any ideas ?

The brain is a lump of meat, and therefore part of your body.

Your soul is your personality, memories, emotion etc. The Greek word translated as 'soul' in English Bibles is psyche, which gives you a good indication of its meaning.

The Bible also speaks about our spirits. The spirit (Greek=pneuma) is the part of us that was created to share fellowship with God.

What I've just outlined is the Christian tripartite view of man, but some other Christians believe we are bipartite, merging the soul and spirit.

MooseJam

PDN wrote:

The brain is a lump of meat, and therefore part of your body.

Your soul is your personality, memories, emotion etc. The Greek word translated as 'soul' in English Bibles is psyche, which gives you a good indication of its meaning.

The brain isn't a lump of meat, the brain is your personality, memories, emotion etc, it is everything the soul isn't, it's well known what functions the brain carries out.

PDN

MooseJam wrote:

I thought in Christainity when you die your soul goes to heaven and you are judged, or do you stay dead untill the day of judgement when you are resurrected

Jesus, just before He died, said "Father, into Your hands I commend My Spirit". Other Scriptural passages speak of Christians as going immediately into God's presence at the point of death. The Bible also speaks of a future resurrection from the dead.

Some see this as teaching that disembodied spirits are floating around in heaven (sort of like Caspar the friendly ghost) waiting to be reunited with their bodies at the resurrection. I personally think rather that upon death we move straight into God's presence and therefore into Eternity, where earthly linear concepts of time no longer apply. This would bring us immediately to the resurrection, with no intervening period of waiting, so we enter heaven as spirit, soul and body.

PDN

MooseJam wrote:

The brain isn't a lump of meat, the brain is your personality, memories, emotion etc, it is everything the soul isn't, it's well known what functions the brain carries out.

No, the brain may contain memories, emotions etc, but it is just a lump of meat. After you are dead there are no memories or emotions in the head of a corpse, but the brain is still there.

Are you, perhaps, speaking of the 'brain' when you mean the 'mind'?

MooseJam

well the mind is just a working brain, after you are dead there are no memories or emotions because the brain isn't working anymore, it was the working brain which gave you your mind and your memories which is my whole point, what people believe the soul to be can only exist by a working brain.

bonkey

PDN wrote:

The brain is a lump of meat, and therefore part of your body.

Your soul is your personality, memories, emotion etc. The Greek word translated as 'soul' in English Bibles is psyche, which gives you a good indication of its meaning.

The Bible also speaks about our spirits. The spirit (Greek=pneuma) is the part of us that was created to share fellowship with God.

What I've just outlined is the Christian tripartite view of man, but some other Christians believe we are bipartite, merging the soul and spirit.

This would seem to suggest that any creature in possession of personality, memories, emotion etc. must therefore have a soul.

PDN

bonkey wrote:

This would seem to suggest that any creature in possession of personality, memories, emotion etc. must therefore have a soul.

I agree. I see no biblical justification for the traditional religious assertion that animals do not possess souls.