Science & The Bible by Ted Burge

Author:Ted Burge
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

of the mind as an entity in its own right, a “mental substance” compared with the body as a material substance. This substance dualism is now largely discarded, and it is claimed by some that mind cannot exist

without matter. Some philosophers believe that the relation of mind

to body is an insoluble problem.

S&B_Interior 11/30/05 5:29 PM Page 101

p e r son — m aterial, mental, spiritual i 101

Spirit and Sou l

Beyond the recognition of body and its mental processes, many wish

to introduce human spirituality, but we need to be cautious because of

the different meanings and interpretations that such concepts invite.

At one extreme are those who identify spirit as if it were an “entity”

distinct from the body. Some go further and believe that, at some point

in the evolution of humans, spirit was suddenly and explicitly added

to the individual, but not necessarily as a “substance.” This inner, vital,

and spiritual principle, which relates to the body-mind, is termed the

soul or spirit. The person is then said to consist of body, mind, and soul

(sometimes body, mind, and spirit), without overimplied distinction

between body and mind. This is essentially the position adopted by

those who wish to give importance to certain aspects of the second

account of creation in Genesis, “the Lord God . . . breathed into his

nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being” (Gen.

2:7). They assert therefore that this act of God made a clear distinction between humans and animals, and implies that an animal does not have a “soul.” It is also used by some to indicate the point at which

humans became uniquely and fully human, with purported original

innocence, ignorance of right and wrong, no sense of good and evil,

fashioned with perfection and favored with immortality.

Some people nowadays cling to this belief in order to rescue what

remains of the Genesis account of the creation of humans, when evolution is taken into account, in order to lead into a belief in the Fall and its consequences. The belief in a separate addition of soul (or spirit),

by divine intervention, has a profound affect on the theology of sin and

death, and of such difficult ideas as Original Sin; consequently, it influences attempts to understand the work of Jesus in relation to atonement. It is perilously close to a “God of the gaps,” making a gap that, to scientists, is unnecessary, in order to let God in. It links to a controversial belief that evolution leaves no room for God in creation and a gap is therefore needed. It could also have arisen from the traditional

b e l i e f, now often challenged, that God governed and continues to

g o vern the whole process of evolution, step by step, and likewise events

S&B_Interior 11/30/05 5:29 PM Page 102

102 j p e r son — m aterial, mental, spiritua l

in the earth a nd universe today, so that any attempt to explain the

process is unnecessary.

The most important basis of the theory of evolution is the identification of a sequence of events, with branching, parallel developments, and extinctions, and the production of a corresponding time scale.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.