Mrrzy states:

    "The human mind does not perceive *anything* beyond the physical plane. if's (sic) it's not physical, it can't be perceived."

If you want to win an argument just redefine the terms to fit your conclusion. Perception means to become aware of. Period. Again, you enter the realm of epistemology. What is "knowing"? Are there different types of knowing? It is your assertion that physical existence is the only reality and that nothing else has reality or validity. Beside being tautological it's just flat our wrong. We can "grasp" (which is what the suffix "-cept" means) ideas, taxonomies, extrapolations, intuitions, nuances, etc. a whole host of things that do not exist in a physical, i.e. sensual plane.

The fact that this is a BS forum everyone here must concede to generalities. I just finished rereading Bertram Russell's papers on defining the perception of a thing physical. It runs on for almost 20 pages and it is really just a sketch written for scientists not necessarily involved in the philosophical aspect of their chosen profession. And other philosophers have disagreed with Russell prompting more books. Libraries are filled with such discussions. Interesting reading if you have the patience and stomach for it. However I think we could all agree that no one here is going to "prove" anything, one way or the other. Have your say and be done with it. I am about at that point in this thread myself. It does get tedious after a while. The thing that prompts me to jump back in is when I see an outlandish unsupported statement asserted as known fact. It flies in the face of logic. If it's your opinion, admit it. Opinions are like elbows, everybody has a couple. A CONSIDERED opinion is one that is supported by fact and reasonable argument. And the word "argument" doesn't necessarily mean an emotional set to. It means to make a case for or against something.


Stringsinger states:

" I can't agree. Science has tested some of these fields and has not been found wanting.
Politics can be tested and examined for its validity in social engineering. Love is in the province of psychology and there are numerous scientific approaches regarding it.
There are different forms of love and psychological viewpoints toward the subject.
Things of heart and soul requires that one believes in a soul. I don't think I do.
The heart is a vital organ but when we speak of love, we speak more of the brain and its functions."

Yes, you are correct in part. Science does make an attempt to quantify and measure certain ASPECTS of these phenomena but it is limited in various ways. Consider intelligence quotient (IQ), all the rage thirty or forty years ago. Science had quantified "smarts" and it was a hallmark for the art, er, science of psychology ( a word which means "the study of the 'psyche' or soul, spirit, interesting indeed ). We were told that the IQ of a person never really changes unless there is some physical alteration of the brain.

Unfortunately this doesn't sit well with the PC crowd as it makes distinctions which seem to predetermine that some will succeed in life and some will never do well. Could an intellectual triage be far away??? The practitioners of science measured the cranial capacity of black folks and found that there is a significant statistical difference between the white race and the black!!! Now THERE is something that is quantifiable! What does it mean? Are black people inferior to white people? It's true! It's science!

Science CANNOT measure the essence of a person. It cannot determine character or the WILL to succeed. I have known incredibly intelligent people who have done little with their lives and I have known "plodders" who plod on and do quite well because of other intangibles that make up their personality. Race and cranial capacity play no identifiable role in a person's intelligence. I recall seeing a special on PBS about the human brain and one Japanese person was missing over two thirds of his brain. Only his right occipital lobe functioned but he had an extraordinary and intelligent mind.   Science can get at some things but it is those "intangibles" that make all the difference.

And then we come to the language itself. Soul, spirit, "pneuma", nephesh. Does the language reflect the ignorance of the past or does it retain some of the mystery that still raises questions with physical science? Words are the building blocks of thought and of science. How do we define terms and how do we convey meaning? If I use the word "spirit" what does this mean to you? Epistemology is the study or rather the philosophy of "knowing". How do we know things? What determines truth? Is it social, conventional? Emotional? Psychological? Where does the seat of the emotions lie? In the west we say "the heart". In times past, the liver was credited with being the center of being. The Bible talks about the "bowels" of compassion. There are reasons for each of these metaphors and I am sure you can deduce why they are. One Greek philosopher ( I don't recall, it may have been Aristotle) believed the brain was a cooler for the blood because the head was hotter that the rest of the body most of the time and that was how the body got rid of heat. This too, was the conventional wisdom (science) of the day.

A child asks where something comes from and it begins a game of endless regression that usually terminate with God when the adult wearies from the game. Is that one of the functions of "God"? Where did God come from, Daddy? God is. He just is. Or if you don't believe in God you might throw in the Big Bang without really knowing what the Big Bang was/is. "Well, where did the Big Bang come from Daddy?" It just is. It just happened. Does anyone here see a similarity? I do. But maybe, that's just me.

Since there is not a chapter in the Bible entitled "How I Did It" by God, I am perfectly happy to let science do its thing. I'm all for it. I love science and follow it as much as I can and I employ its methods in just about any way I can to whatever situation is at hand. I appreciate John Stewart Mills, Pascal, Newton, Bacon, Mach, Einstein, Heisenberg, Pauling, Dirac, Poincare', Gell-Mann, Schrodinger (and his cat!), Greene, and Hawking, to name but a few, and I have read from each, some more than others. But science is not the "know-all, end-all".