Quote Originally Posted by StephL View Post
Come on - do you really claim, you have elucidated your views on "spirit" and "soul" with these two passages?
Yes.

Quote Originally Posted by StephL View Post
Why take on this terminology, if you are on about functional faculties?
Because it makes sense to me, and because it has already been used by others for centuries.


Quote Originally Posted by StephL View Post
Indeed everybody can agree on humans having higher and lower mental faculties - absolutely everybody from atheist to fanatic Muslim - so you have said exactly nothing about your personal stance and beliefs.

But you were not evading me?
I could feel offended right back - but it's more exasperation.
I'm rather convinced that your exasperation stems from so far not being able to put me into the category "tree-hugging new age hippies". But if you really want me there, you will have to ask other questions than about soul and spirit, because these I have given my truthful engineering answer to.


Quote Originally Posted by StephL View Post
And I'm tired hunting down your terminology for essence - like asking, who or what survives physical death in your 60% version - spirit and soul together? Or only one of them?
If together - why the separation of terms in the first place - on which grounds?
In all fairness: why do you take an interest in my view on this at all? All I did was back up OP's post (#177) up with a definition of dogma taken from an online dictionary; my views on souls, spirits, and the here-after are not relevant in any way!

But, to answer specifically your latest questions: in the 60% version the answer would probably be "both soul and spirit survive physical death". But this is not something, that I have contemplated a lot, so maybe my confidence in this is lower than 60%. Please note: I do not have a clear grip on what a soul and a spirit is (from a physics point of view) - only on what they do!

Why the separation in terms - I am an engineer, and a physicist, and I like to break things down into their components - and preferably in a sensible way. Using lower and higher mental faculties seems to fit with my experience of human behaviour. Plus, as mentioned, it's traditional (and, in that tradition souls survive bodies, but spirits survive souls).



Quote Originally Posted by StephL View Post
If you would hold a purely materialistic view on human nature -then I could not accuse you of being dogmatic in your reduced definition.
Since you would then be basing your views on established facts only.
See, that's where you loose me: how does someone with a materialistic view on human nature necessarily base this view on established facts only?

A materialist would for example claim boldly, that there is no afterlife. But this is not an established fact - it is merely an assumption.


Quote Originally Posted by StephL View Post
Oh - do by all means!
Looking forward to an example in physics, where the scientific method is inadequate!
Okay, since you ask for it: bound electrons from time to time get "excited" and move into a more highly energized state. But they remain there for only so long, after which they fall back into their old energy state. The time required before falling back seems random to those who have studied it. No matter how many times they do the experiment, the result comes out different every time.

The official doctrine (which is highly dogmatic, by the way) is that this is inherent randomness in nature, and no theory can ever be proposed that would succesfully predict the time required for the decay back into the low energy state.