Someone who recognizes the existence of the soul cannot explain its existence with atheistic explanations (multiverse and the like). So true, those explanations in themselves are far weaker than the divine explanation, but here they completely collapse, and they offer no explanation at all for the existence of souls. That is why atheists generally do not believe in the existence of a non-physical component in a person, but rather imagine that their imaginings are something physical. And therefore I think this proof definitely deserves attention.

Y.D.,
when I look at people around me, I can think that they are not really thinking, but are some kind of sophisticated robots whose actions (including verbal ones) look as if they are thinking. When I observe myself, I know that my consciousness is there. There is no physical explanation at all for that consciousness. So maybe I can explain all your actions with a physical explanation (through neurons), and that includes your claim that you have consciousness, but my own consciousness I cannot explain.

For some reason the Rabbi dismisses this proof, even though it is very strong. I already brought it up here on the site.

A. Most of the world does not assume that the soul is eternal — that assumption is reasonable, and from here one needs a Creator.
B. This proof greatly strengthens the physico-theological proof. The chance that a world would come about in which there are human beings is negligible. [Whereas before, one could quibble about whether complexity is an undefined concept, etc.]
C. One can more easily establish free will by analogy to the Creator of the world.
D. It strengthens the tautological proof, which shows that will only enters the story later, so there is a planned process in the world.

It adds a few more things, but I need to think them through first.

The soul proves nothing. Who said it wasn’t always there? It adds nothing to the cosmological proof, and to the physico-theological one it has no relevance at all.

You need to go back over the first notebook.
The question is whether this proof seems compelling to anyone, that is, whether there is anyone to whom it is obvious that a soul needs a Creator but the physical world does not. It seems to me there are such people, and in that case the proof is good for them (at least the questioner’s friend is such a person, and I think there are many like him).
It seems to me that most people do not think it is reasonable that their soul existed before their current existence.

Yishai,
of course this is the accepted assumption that most people accept — the soul does not precede the body.
From here there is automatically a somewhat “cosmological” proof: something created requires a creator.
Only the Rabbi here denies that assumption [perhaps without the brain there is no memory, and enough said].

Also, this proof very much strengthens the physico-theological proof —
A. We have an indication to assume that a willing being exists.
B. The probability that an intelligent entity would come about into which the soul would be emanated is negligible. The fine-tuning argument.
And therefore the probability that such a world would come about is negligible. And thus the proof is completely objective, even though perhaps there may be other universes with complex products but not human beings.

And it strengthens the tautological proof — one sees a process progressing toward a certain role.
There is also a law that enters the picture at a late stage only after 14 billion years….

And it also gives the proof from morality and from meaning even more force.

Hello Yishai.
For anyone who thinks this way, the proof is perfect. That is of course a tautology, so what do you want from me? I’m talking about what I think of it, since that is what I was asked. In parentheses I’ll add that the claim that a soul needs a Creator but material things do not seems quite bizarre to me.

Why is that claim bizarre?
If I am willing to accept eternal things but not spontaneous creation (which is a sensible direction), and I assume that my soul is not eternal but roughly my age (the other claim sounds bizarre to me), then I can assume that matter is eternal (even if it was once concentrated at a point) and therefore does not need a Creator, whereas the soul does need a Creator.

Begging your pardon, it’s a bit embarrassing to discuss this nonsense.
As for the inference, I already wrote that it is tautological and therefore correct. My remark referred only to its premises.
If you are willing to accept that matter is eternal, then why not the soul (or the “materials” of which it is made)? These are very bizarre things indeed. (My specific body is also not eternal, only the materials of which it is made are.)

I already explained above — with my soul I am acquainted. I cannot rule out with certainty that once it (that is, I) was floating around in upper worlds and I remember none of it, or that once it was inside another person or inside a fly, an anemone, or a streptococcus, and all the memories were lost. That is skepticism at a very high level, about basic things in my own consciousness.
So maybe your soul is eternal, and maybe you are really a sophisticated robot (I actually think not), but regarding my own soul, it seems utterly unreasonable to me to assume that it is eternal. And it seems to me that most people think that way.

I understand that you remember your body from ancient times already (from year minus infinity onward)?

I didn’t manage to understand the question.
The fact that something is eternal does not mean I would remember it. First, because I am probably not eternal. Second, even if I am eternal, that does not mean that my acquaintance with that thing is eternal.
I also couldn’t figure out whether you think your soul has existed for 15 billion years, or maybe 5777 years, or whether you think it is your age. If you think it is your age, then you are agreeing with me that there is an intuition that the soul is not eternal, and that intuition is not connected to the fact that the whole universe is not eternal. In other words, there is an additional and independent proof here.

And I didn’t manage to understand what is so complicated here.
My claim is that the proof from the soul adds nothing to the regular proof (from the existence of a material world). And if you say that matter is eternal, then the soul can be eternal too. And if you speak about your specific soul (which is not eternal), by the same token one can speak about your specific body (which is not eternal). And if your body was created from eternal materials, then the soul too can be made from eternal “materials.”
In short, the discussion has been exhausted completely.

That is exactly the claim: that the soul cannot be formed from eternal matter; emergentism is a mistake.

I understood that that is the claim, and I am saying that by the same logic one could just claim that there is a God, period. Why should one make God’s existence depend on a claim that is no more necessary than that? As I said, it adds nothing to the regular proof.

Moshe,
he wrote that the soul could be formed from eternal “materials,” meaning from some spiritual “materials.” There is some world in which there are soul-parts that every so often perhaps collide, and sometimes a connection is formed until eventually a soul is formed, and then somehow it reaches the body of someone who is born. Maybe he has a less silly description. He apparently thinks that is as reasonable as an eternal material universe.

What is silly about this description? If it can happen with matter, why not with the soul? If one adopts the eternity of matter without logic, why not adopt the eternity of soul-parts? Because we have not scientifically seen that it happens? That is exactly what I keep saying: there is nothing in the soul that adds anything to the regular argument. At most, this is a God-of-the-gaps argument (because a soul is something we do not understand and do not know how it was formed, if it was formed at all. By the way, from that I would infer precisely that it was not formed but always existed).

I agree that if one adopts something contrary to reason, then one can adopt anything, since as is well known any claim follows from a false claim. But if we are talking about claims whose falsehood cannot be proven, only that they are improbable, then one can rank their plausibility.

If I may ask a question here,
why does the Rabbi assume that the soul is eternal? We have no indication at all that it is eternal; if anything, the opposite. After all, in the end we see something new in the world: a soul that previously did not appear in the world (before the baby was born). The simpler reasoning is to say that it is new. If so, someone probably created it…

I didn’t assume that. I only said that the argument from the soul adds nothing to the regular argument.

Sorry, it adds a lot. A person can accept that there is an infinite regress of causes / that an eternal world exists, and still accept the proof from the soul…

By the way, how does the Rabbi deal with someone’s natural death, assuming there is no God in the story?
Why would the soul suddenly “flee” from the body? Fine, let it enter a body — there is a law that when the fetus is age X, a soul enters it. Or the soul itself chooses to enter a body from among some Platonic storehouse of souls somewhere above.
But who caused it to flee the body at the time of death? I don’t feel like I want to die, to tell the truth… and it seems to me that those who died would also have preferred to go on living, so their soul didn’t want it.

Hello Kobi.
No need to be sorry. If it adds a lot for you, then good for you. In my opinion it adds nothing. Just as a soul enters, it can also leave. I think we’ve wrung this discussion dry.