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"Newton and other Enlightenment thinkers believed that their explorations into physics would reveal God and His nature. I beleive they were right." ~ L,TOWN

"...... science has after a fashion demonstrated the soul.

It doesn't have a tremendous amount of evidence there but this is an interesting thing to ponder. When the brains of some people are opened they can touch the brain with electrodes to stimulate different memories and the like.

This is why some people have argued that memories are merely a chemical kind of response and don't have any relationship to a self, a separate soul, a person other than the brain.

But when scientists have stimulated part of the brain and the patient is conscious, the patient can actually tell whether a memory is being stimulated by the scientist or whether the memory is being brought forward out of their own consciousness.

They say, "Hey, you did that. I didn't."

This makes a very powerful point. "You stimulated that memory, I didn't." Who's the "I?"

The "I" was the person inside there, the "I" is the soul.

So there's a distinction between a chemical response that produces a memory and a volitional response that produces a memory. So it is not entirely true that there is not scientific evidence for the existence of the soul because there is some.

But there's another point that's actually quite a bit more important.

That's the fundamental point of whether science is the only road to truth. And there are actually three different ways to refute that. And it's very straight forward.

You can almost sum them up under one concept.

The idea is that if science is the only way to truth then science itself is self-refuting because science is built on a series of truths that cannot be demonstrated by science but must be in place even for science to be valid.

For example, is orderliness in the universe an illusion or is that real?

Is the external world knowable at all?

Are the intellect and the five senses reliable tools to examine the world?

Are values like "be objective" or "report data honestly" appropriate in the scientific endeavor?

Is nature basically uniform?

Do numbers in truth exist?

Do the laws of logic apply to reality?

All of these things are non-scientific questions but they relate to the issue of truth that must necessarily be in place for science even to be practiced.

So the point I'm making is that if you hold the belief that science is the only thing that is a measure of truth, then science is in hot water because science can't justify itself.

Science is not the sole arbiter of truth.

Ethics is another source of truthful information.

Philosophy is another source of truthful information.

History...Do you know that even mathematics is not scientific? Math is used in science, it underlies science, but you cannot prove math scientifically.

So the point is this, its an empty claim by Dr. Sagan that the soul can't exist because no scientific evidence has been produced to support the idea that there is a soul.

There can be other kinds of evidence that are not merely scientific yet be very valid. ......." ~ Gregory Koukl http://www.str.org/free/commentaries/science/saganand.htm