Re: [asa] Greetings from a new member

Welcome, Christine,

At 11:50 AM 4/8/2007, Christine Smith wrote:

>1. I long ago made peace with the idea that God could use evolution
>to form our physical bodies. What was new to me, from the atheists'
>perspective, was the idea that the intangible aspects of us, like
>feelings, emotions, consciousness, etc. (which I had equated with
>the God-given, eternal soul) could also arise (ala emergent
>properties) naturally. Thus, I've acquired a new-found interest in
>the fields of pyschology, neurology, and computer science as I try
>to reconceptualize the idea of a "soul".

@ Here is something that you may not have considered yet:

The Semitic Totality Concept

"..Behind much of the thought in the Bible lies a "peculiarly
Semitic" idea of a "unitive notion of human personality." [Dahl,
Resurrection of the Body, 59] This notion combined aspects of the
human person that we, in modern times, often speak of as separate
entities: Nausea is thought of as a condition of the soul and not the
stomach (Num. 21:5); companionship is said to be refreshing to the
bowels (Philemon 7); and the fear of God is health to the navel
(Prov. 3:8). This line of thinking can be traced through the Old
Testament and into the New Testament (in particular, the concept of
the "body of Christ") and rabbinic literature.

Applied to the individual, the Semitic Totality Concept means that "a
man's thoughts form one totality with their results in action so that
'thoughts' that result in no action are 'vain'." [ibid, 60] To put it
another way, man does not have a body; man is a body, and what we
regard as constituent elements of spirit and body were looked upon by
the Hebrews as a fundamental unity. Man was not made from dust, but
is dust that has, "by the in-breathing of God, acquired the
characteristics of self-conscious being." Thus Paul regards being an
unbodied spirit as a form of nakedness (2 Cor. 5). Man is not whole
without a body. A man is a totality which embraces "all that a man is
and ever shall be." .." ~ J.P.Holding http://www.tektonics.org/

~ Janice

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Received on Sun Apr 8 22:31:37 2007