That which is animated, such as a bird, is alive ... it is nephesh. That which is not animated, such as a rock, is not alive.
Why must there be more than that. Is that not enough genius for the Bronze Age mind? Is there not sufficient beauty in the awareness of living vs. non-living and the simple curiosity of wondering what it is that makes one live and not the other?
Science has anwered most of these questions for our generation. Why look backward and think they knew something more?
I want to know why so many people believe that Bronze Age mystics and shamans were the guardians of secret knowledge? Why don't you trust the revelation of understanding that we have from scientific discovery instead of loosing yourself in the text in ignorant men who had more questions than answers and who made stuff up to fill in the gaps of their understanding? Why would you repeat that mistake by making stuff up to fill in your own gaps of understanding? God lives in the gaps!
you're speaking in generalizations and abstractions. trusting scientific discovery is inconsistent with ancient wisdom? i have no answer for you until you ask a concrete question.
@zthustra In the Thomistic sense, the soul is the "animating principle" of a living being, so, roughly, the soul of any living thing is that which causes it to move. In humans, this is correlated to our free will (ergo its immateriality), while in animals their soul is merely material and so perishes when their body does. Science doesn't have anything to say about immaterial objects or free will, so far as I know.
Thomas Aquinas wasn't alive when the Hebrews wrote nephesh into their scriptures. He wasn't alive when the Greeks translated the word to psychē, and the Latins to anima. He wasn't even alive when Ulfilas translated it to saiwala, the etymological root for the word soul. The Goth's believes that the animating life force "came from the sea", saiwala or soul.
You and I know more of the biological, science, behavior and life than Aquinas did, why would we look to him for guidance?
@zthustra I wasn't aiming for a strictly chronistic answer, more of a theological one (and yes, I find anachronistic interpretations to be wholly viable). As to looking to Aquinas, I don't understand your question. Aquinas isn't speaking in a scientific sense, but a metaphysical sense. I don't see how any scientific knowledge will make one's metaphysical knowledge necessarily better (or worse). Besides, such historicism is intrinsically self-refuting. Wisdom doesn't expire.
Getting out the crayons! The video is about the supernatural, animating life force that modern people call a soul.
Hebrew nephesh is not soul, it is simply the word for animated, living things vs. inanimate, non-living things. Latin anima is the same. Greek pshyche is from pagan mythology and has to do with motives for behavior. Finally, we get the the origins of the concept of soul, it is the Goth saiwala, life coming from the sea, a superstition. Where is the wisdom?
Of course not! Science is the study of the natural and what you are talking about has nothing to do with science or the natural. But, we must not call it supernatural, magic, or mysticism. Instead we will call it wisdom, even though it is not wisdom at all, it is foolishness. IMO, believing in things like magical, animating life forces without any evidence for them is foolishness and it doesn't matter how long people have been believing it or if they quote Thomas Aquinas.
i didn't postulate animating life forces. if my choice of wording suggested that, i apologize. everything i said in the video could be understood in terms of consciousness and biology.
@zthustra I don't see how the etymology of a word does anything to discredit the concept. You already committed historicism, are you now committing what might be called "etymologism?"
If they words don't mean anything, why bother using them?
Etymology helps us understand what words means, it puts them in the context of their longer historical usage. If we quote so and so from such and such time we must consider what it is that they actually said or wrote, you know the words, and what those words meant at the time they spoke or wrote them. In this video the Hebrew word nephesh is borrowed from history and then butchered to make mysticism stew.
@zthustra The words do mean something, I haven't postulated that they don't. You're the one on this etymology fix which does nothing to deal with the actual Thomistic concept of soul I was speaking of.
The point of the etymology post is to bring us back to the video which begins with nephesh. And an understanding of what nephesh was and what the several words and concepts that followed were is what all of my points have been about.
Whatever Aquinas had to say has no more validity than what you or I have to say. He wasn't even alive when the words were in use and the concepts were developed.
NOTE: Science has MUCH to say. Quick! Hands over ears! La la la la la ...
@zthustra So what you're saying is no philosopher can develop a concept and use a term to denote that concept which is similar to the concept he develops? He must come up with an entirely new word for every new concept?
Note: Your assumption that I'm opposed to science is curious.
You know what, you are absolutely right about everythig you posted. Thank you for helping set me straight on a few things that I have always wondered about. This has been a stimulating exchange and I would like to continue but I need to go brush my teeth.
Totally willing to have an honest discussion about what the Bible says and in placing it in context of the cultures and languages that the Bible has been written in.
I am totally unwilling to entertain assertions made by 13th century apologists about the magical, mystical or the supernatural aspects of ghosts, spirits and spectres that occupy the human corpses and give them life. It was nonsense then and it is nonsense now.
Do you imagine that there is any way to read anything from the Bible and understand what the author was attempting to convey without putting it in the context of history.
Some people read the book and just imagine that all those words were written last week. That's why I don't care what Aquinas thought. He was looking at his copy 1500 years later and pulling conclusions out of his ass. You and I can read the text with more historic and scientific knowledge than he had.
@zthustra Reading it in a non-anachronistic sense is perfectly defensible, but I don't see why reading it in an anachronistic sense is wrong either. Within the Christian Tradition there has always been a general approval of allegorical interpretations (i.e. Origen), which are certainly anachronistic. In other words, there's more than one way to read the Bible, and reading it with a philosophical lens does no damage.
"There has always been a general approval" is an interesting phrase. At the time these early Christian apologists were writing, there was general agreement that the Biblical text supported a beleif that the earth was flat, and later that it was the center of the known universe.
Modern Christian apologists go nuts on me and reject the flat-earth or earth-centric arguments that I make telling me we can't look there. But then they want me to go there for Origen or Aquinas? BS!
@zthustra Historical/scientific explanations or facts were never what was focused on, nor was it ever taken that the Bible was meant to be a text inerrant on such things. Augustine stressed the distinction between matters of faith and natural philosophy (aka science), and the Alexandrian school interpreted the Old Testament to the neglect of its historical data.
You're not getting anywhere trying to dictate what Christians believe.
All I want to know is what Christians believe and why they believe it. And when they tell me "Bible" and then I say, "Great, let's talk Bible" and the suddenly, "Oh, I didn't mean Bible" that is where I go a bit nuts.
About the only reason I post is to point out that Christians don't believe "Bible". Christians beleive whatever they want to believe and then say "Bible" at the end in the hope that people like me won't be listening.
@zthustra I'm sorry that in 2000 years Christians have developed a nuanced appreciation of the Bible and philosophy, and that I would appeal to said Tradition in order to present a reasonable and defensible form of Christianity. Or did you want me to portray an easily refutable fundamentalist version?
Still chasing words around, "Christians have developed a nuanced appreciation of the Bible and philosophy." Some of us call this "cherry picking".
And then, "a reasonable and defensible form of Christianity." I'm at a loss to figure out what that is.
If the Bible part and the Christ part aren't so "reasonable and defensible", why not dump them and keep the good humanistic stuff, like "love thy nieghbor"?
The good stuff has nothing with magic and pretend.
@pyrrho314 ~ Ur phantasmorgical ~ like Gary says ~ eh ? & what's wrong or right w/ Ur life ~ U tell Me ~ Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom (Aristotle)
i'm glad you got the implied point in the video. i'm not a self-body dualist anymore. this may amount to retracting a few suggestions in previous videos (though i don't think i explictly espoused cartesian dualism). i think some sort of emergent dualism is true, but that the brain causally influences conscious states. i think the view that the person is unaffected by the body is intellectually and ethically hazardous.
You don't get a soul for free. You're not born with one. It's not eternal. You have to work and strive to develope a soul, it a rare thing a gift we give to ourselves when we finally gain self knowledge and learn to appreciate life. It's a way of being and has nothing to do with a God.
hes back
tgeorge95 6 months ago
"as dear pants for so my soul thirsts for you" I always loved that
manutdfan4321 1 year ago
WOOHOO!!! Good vid! So did you read John Cooper's book or is this otherly inspired?
fenoglios 1 year ago
That was very interesting.
LJonYT 1 year ago
something's different about your hair.
pulelovesme 1 year ago
blah blah blah....to summarize, nephesh=living, not nephesh=not living...dont bother watching the video
tantrikwizard 1 year ago
@tantrikwizard
there was more than that. you just didn't get it.
legodesi 1 year ago
Do you extrapolate god's existence from your psychological need?
hilbert54 1 year ago
@hilbert54
such a simple question, but my answer would be a bit complicated. i'll try to form one in my next reply to you =]
legodesi 1 year ago
@legodesi
Looking forward to that.
hilbert54 1 year ago
We, human beings are not pleased with Life, we want to live forever. So we invented the concept of a soul.
allTRIPLE1 1 year ago
That which is animated, such as a bird, is alive ... it is nephesh. That which is not animated, such as a rock, is not alive.
Why must there be more than that. Is that not enough genius for the Bronze Age mind? Is there not sufficient beauty in the awareness of living vs. non-living and the simple curiosity of wondering what it is that makes one live and not the other?
Science has anwered most of these questions for our generation. Why look backward and think they knew something more?
zthustra 1 year ago
@zthustra
i'm not really sure what you're asking.
legodesi 1 year ago
@legodesi
I want to know why so many people believe that Bronze Age mystics and shamans were the guardians of secret knowledge? Why don't you trust the revelation of understanding that we have from scientific discovery instead of loosing yourself in the text in ignorant men who had more questions than answers and who made stuff up to fill in the gaps of their understanding? Why would you repeat that mistake by making stuff up to fill in your own gaps of understanding? God lives in the gaps!
zthustra 1 year ago
@zthustra
zthustra,
you're speaking in generalizations and abstractions. trusting scientific discovery is inconsistent with ancient wisdom? i have no answer for you until you ask a concrete question.
legodesi 1 year ago
@zthustra In the Thomistic sense, the soul is the "animating principle" of a living being, so, roughly, the soul of any living thing is that which causes it to move. In humans, this is correlated to our free will (ergo its immateriality), while in animals their soul is merely material and so perishes when their body does. Science doesn't have anything to say about immaterial objects or free will, so far as I know.
hxrtotally 1 year ago
@hxrtotally
Thomas Aquinas wasn't alive when the Hebrews wrote nephesh into their scriptures. He wasn't alive when the Greeks translated the word to psychē, and the Latins to anima. He wasn't even alive when Ulfilas translated it to saiwala, the etymological root for the word soul. The Goth's believes that the animating life force "came from the sea", saiwala or soul.
You and I know more of the biological, science, behavior and life than Aquinas did, why would we look to him for guidance?
zthustra 1 year ago
@zthustra I wasn't aiming for a strictly chronistic answer, more of a theological one (and yes, I find anachronistic interpretations to be wholly viable). As to looking to Aquinas, I don't understand your question. Aquinas isn't speaking in a scientific sense, but a metaphysical sense. I don't see how any scientific knowledge will make one's metaphysical knowledge necessarily better (or worse). Besides, such historicism is intrinsically self-refuting. Wisdom doesn't expire.
hxrtotally 1 year ago
@hxrtotally
Getting out the crayons! The video is about the supernatural, animating life force that modern people call a soul.
Hebrew nephesh is not soul, it is simply the word for animated, living things vs. inanimate, non-living things. Latin anima is the same. Greek pshyche is from pagan mythology and has to do with motives for behavior. Finally, we get the the origins of the concept of soul, it is the Goth saiwala, life coming from the sea, a superstition. Where is the wisdom?
zthustra 1 year ago
@zthustra
actually, i didn't say anything about the supernatural.
legodesi 1 year ago
@legodesi
Of course not! Science is the study of the natural and what you are talking about has nothing to do with science or the natural. But, we must not call it supernatural, magic, or mysticism. Instead we will call it wisdom, even though it is not wisdom at all, it is foolishness. IMO, believing in things like magical, animating life forces without any evidence for them is foolishness and it doesn't matter how long people have been believing it or if they quote Thomas Aquinas.
zthustra 1 year ago
@zthustra
i didn't postulate animating life forces. if my choice of wording suggested that, i apologize. everything i said in the video could be understood in terms of consciousness and biology.
legodesi 1 year ago
@zthustra I don't see how the etymology of a word does anything to discredit the concept. You already committed historicism, are you now committing what might be called "etymologism?"
hxrtotally 1 year ago
@hxrtotally
If they words don't mean anything, why bother using them?
Etymology helps us understand what words means, it puts them in the context of their longer historical usage. If we quote so and so from such and such time we must consider what it is that they actually said or wrote, you know the words, and what those words meant at the time they spoke or wrote them. In this video the Hebrew word nephesh is borrowed from history and then butchered to make mysticism stew.
zthustra 1 year ago
@zthustra The words do mean something, I haven't postulated that they don't. You're the one on this etymology fix which does nothing to deal with the actual Thomistic concept of soul I was speaking of.
hxrtotally 1 year ago
@hxrtotally
The point of the etymology post is to bring us back to the video which begins with nephesh. And an understanding of what nephesh was and what the several words and concepts that followed were is what all of my points have been about.
Whatever Aquinas had to say has no more validity than what you or I have to say. He wasn't even alive when the words were in use and the concepts were developed.
NOTE: Science has MUCH to say. Quick! Hands over ears! La la la la la ...
zthustra 1 year ago
@zthustra So what you're saying is no philosopher can develop a concept and use a term to denote that concept which is similar to the concept he develops? He must come up with an entirely new word for every new concept?
Note: Your assumption that I'm opposed to science is curious.
hxrtotally 1 year ago
@hxrtotally
You know what, you are absolutely right about everythig you posted. Thank you for helping set me straight on a few things that I have always wondered about. This has been a stimulating exchange and I would like to continue but I need to go brush my teeth.
zthustra 1 year ago
@zthustra Well if you didn't really mean to enter into honest discussion, I suppose I was just too optimistic.
hxrtotally 1 year ago
@hxrtotally
Totally willing to have an honest discussion about what the Bible says and in placing it in context of the cultures and languages that the Bible has been written in.
I am totally unwilling to entertain assertions made by 13th century apologists about the magical, mystical or the supernatural aspects of ghosts, spirits and spectres that occupy the human corpses and give them life. It was nonsense then and it is nonsense now.
So claim victory and be happy.
zthustra 1 year ago
@zthustra I don't know what you're going on about. And you still seem to be awfully historicist.
hxrtotally 1 year ago
@hxrtotally
Do you imagine that there is any way to read anything from the Bible and understand what the author was attempting to convey without putting it in the context of history.
Some people read the book and just imagine that all those words were written last week. That's why I don't care what Aquinas thought. He was looking at his copy 1500 years later and pulling conclusions out of his ass. You and I can read the text with more historic and scientific knowledge than he had.
zthustra 1 year ago
@zthustra Reading it in a non-anachronistic sense is perfectly defensible, but I don't see why reading it in an anachronistic sense is wrong either. Within the Christian Tradition there has always been a general approval of allegorical interpretations (i.e. Origen), which are certainly anachronistic. In other words, there's more than one way to read the Bible, and reading it with a philosophical lens does no damage.
hxrtotally 1 year ago
@hxrtotally
"There has always been a general approval" is an interesting phrase. At the time these early Christian apologists were writing, there was general agreement that the Biblical text supported a beleif that the earth was flat, and later that it was the center of the known universe.
Modern Christian apologists go nuts on me and reject the flat-earth or earth-centric arguments that I make telling me we can't look there. But then they want me to go there for Origen or Aquinas? BS!
zthustra 1 year ago
@zthustra Historical/scientific explanations or facts were never what was focused on, nor was it ever taken that the Bible was meant to be a text inerrant on such things. Augustine stressed the distinction between matters of faith and natural philosophy (aka science), and the Alexandrian school interpreted the Old Testament to the neglect of its historical data.
You're not getting anywhere trying to dictate what Christians believe.
hxrtotally 1 year ago
@hxrtotally
All I want to know is what Christians believe and why they believe it. And when they tell me "Bible" and then I say, "Great, let's talk Bible" and the suddenly, "Oh, I didn't mean Bible" that is where I go a bit nuts.
About the only reason I post is to point out that Christians don't believe "Bible". Christians beleive whatever they want to believe and then say "Bible" at the end in the hope that people like me won't be listening.
zthustra 1 year ago
@zthustra I'm sorry that in 2000 years Christians have developed a nuanced appreciation of the Bible and philosophy, and that I would appeal to said Tradition in order to present a reasonable and defensible form of Christianity. Or did you want me to portray an easily refutable fundamentalist version?
hxrtotally 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@hxrtotally
Still chasing words around, "Christians have developed a nuanced appreciation of the Bible and philosophy." Some of us call this "cherry picking".
And then, "a reasonable and defensible form of Christianity." I'm at a loss to figure out what that is.
If the Bible part and the Christ part aren't so "reasonable and defensible", why not dump them and keep the good humanistic stuff, like "love thy nieghbor"?
The good stuff has nothing with magic and pretend.
zthustra 1 year ago
@zthustra
zthustra, hxrtotally is one of the savvier theists on youtube. please don't presume that he needs lecturing.
legodesi 1 year ago
@legodesi
Are you saying that he has already been lectured to death and it is a total waste of time?
I figured that one out. My apologies for wasting all that valuable white space on the computer screen.
zthustra 1 year ago
christianity sucks
xXBlackxRebelXx 1 year ago
@xXBlackxRebelXx
you suck more.
legodesi 1 year ago
@legodesi christianity is infact silly. christians have no place in india.
xXBlackxRebelXx 1 year ago
@xXBlackxRebelXx
thanks for your insight.
legodesi 1 year ago
very interesting!
pyrrho314 1 year ago
@pyrrho314
thanks!
legodesi 1 year ago
@pyrrho314 ~ Ur phantasmorgical ~ like Gary says ~ eh ? & what's wrong or right w/ Ur life ~ U tell Me ~ Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom (Aristotle)
TJae1 1 year ago
@pyrrho314 ~ or Us (blushes)
TJae1 1 year ago
Rock star HAIR!!!
Nice video man.
WayOfTheBastard 1 year ago
So your not a dualist then?
hilbert54 1 year ago
@hilbert54
i'm glad you got the implied point in the video. i'm not a self-body dualist anymore. this may amount to retracting a few suggestions in previous videos (though i don't think i explictly espoused cartesian dualism). i think some sort of emergent dualism is true, but that the brain causally influences conscious states. i think the view that the person is unaffected by the body is intellectually and ethically hazardous.
legodesi 1 year ago
@legodesi
Good answer. Thanks.
hilbert54 1 year ago
@hilbert54
Ugh! "you're"
hilbert54 1 year ago
excellent video. excellent hair
tgeorge95 1 year ago
@tgeorge95
lol. this is finney before shower.
legodesi 1 year ago
You don't get a soul for free. You're not born with one. It's not eternal. You have to work and strive to develope a soul, it a rare thing a gift we give to ourselves when we finally gain self knowledge and learn to appreciate life. It's a way of being and has nothing to do with a God.
disrxt 1 year ago
@disrxt
i don't know how you're defining it. i only sought to give a sketch of what it is in judaism.
legodesi 1 year ago
I must say, fcking souls, how do they work?
FlyingSpahghettiMan 1 year ago
@FlyingSpahghettiMan
i don't quite know.
legodesi 1 year ago