Q&A: I would be glad to hear your response to Sam Harris’s remarks
I would be glad to hear your response to Sam Harris’s remarks
Question
In the link here I heard a claim that sounds logical to me.
If we see that because of a brain defect a person loses certain abilities like sight or hearing, then seemingly it is quite natural to conclude that when the entire brain stops functioning, that is, at death, then all consciousness will stop functioning as well.
If so, the soul is not eternal.
Answer
That is far from necessary, as I explained in detail in my book The Science of Freedom. What is impaired is the practical expression of the mental capacities, not necessarily the capacities themselves. Just as when the legs are injured I cannot walk even if the brain or the soul decides to walk, so too when the brain is injured I cannot think. That means the soul will not find expression in our world in the form of thought as we know it.
Beyond that, the alternative sounds to me far less plausible: that our entire mental world is a byproduct (an epiphenomenon) that emerges from physiology.
Discussion on Answer
You cannot enter into an intellectual duel with Sam Harris, because you are unarmed! The arguments you present are like saying that it is better to be young, healthy, and rich than old, poor, and sick—duh. When one dies, whether it is a person, a dog, or a bird, there is no more electrical activity in the brain, there are no commands to the circulatory system, there is no cell nourishment, and the process of cellular decomposition begins. Yes, you can stand and talk to dead people in the cemetery; if you hear an answer, apparently the process of brain dysfunction started with you before death.
Thanks for the diagnosis. In fact, just now I really saw before me a response from a brain in cellular decomposition. I’m already really wondering what’s going on with me…
Where exactly did you see in the Torah that there is life after death and resurrection of the dead?
“You will lie with your fathers and rise”? As for that, yes, there are sources—but for a life of boredom in Sheol, not for resurrection of the dead, Heaven, Hell, and the rest of the delusions.
(Daniel is an exception, since resurrection of the dead is mentioned there, but that is from the Hasmonean period, long after the classical period of the Hebrew Bible.)
It is sad to see how the evil inclination toward idolatry, or alternatively ignorance in matters of faith, leads relatively intelligent people like Sam Harris to bring such foolish proofs that simply do not hold water against life after death.
Science is not what led us Jews to believe in life after death.
But science does prove that there is a Creator of the world, and the Creator of the world revealed in our holy Torah (which was given before 600,000 people who transmitted the tradition from generation to generation) that there is life after death and there is also resurrection of the dead.
His proof is embarrassing, because he is talking about the brain and not about the soul.