13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
I wasn’t able last week to write my weekly blog. My brother passed away last Saturday, and I wanted to be there with him and with the family.
Naturally, I’ve thought quite a bit this week about death and the continuation of the soul. I especially thought about the last portion of the verse above: “that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” In this case, our hope is in the continuation of our consciousness, our souls, to be with Christ.
Modern science has a real problem with consciousness/the soul. Since science presupposes materialism, that all that exists is material, certainly the idea that consciousness exists pokes their proverbial bear. To get around this problem, some like Dr. Philip Goff look for a straw to grasp. Dr. Goff believes all mater might be conscious.
Shouldn’t that alarm those who are vegetarians on moral grounds? Just a thought.
Some of the early philosophers and even today’s scientists believe there are different levels of consciousness. Dogs have a form of consciousness. They can make decisions, they dream, etc., but dogs can’t do calculus. So, there are different levels.
Humans also have something besides simple dog-consciousness. We have self-reflection. Our consciousness, our soul, is special. We have the ability to say “I” and to think about the things we’re thinking about. We know of no other earthly being with that capability.
Souls, our souls, exist without being material. They are not linked directly to matter, and so are not necessarily dependent on that matter. The only material thing which has a self-reflective soul is us. With only one study group and no control group, it is hard for science to come to a conclusion as to where the soul comes from or if it can exist away from a body. We don’t have other self-reflective beings we know of here on earth, so we can’t be sure the soul is limited by what we might see materially in humans.
Some evidence for the existence of the soul, though, could be near death experiences. In their book, Immortality, Drs. Habermas and Moreland tell of people who were clinically dead, brain dead, for up to three hours and brought back. Why this relates to our discussion is they didn’t come back as someone else. When the body rebooted, the soul was still the same. It hadn’t changed into someone else or ceased to exist. The soul doesn’t die when the body dies.
Why is this important?
Asking a scientist to prove the existence of the non-material soul or God using scientific methods would be like asking a pastor to prove the speed of light metaphysically. It can’t be done. The question is a category fallacy. It’s equal to saying “prove the number two is blue.”
The soul is not material. It is a part of us. In fact, it is us. If it’s not material, it can’t be permanently linked to the material body. If it can’t be linked to the material body, there is no reason to believe it dies when our material body does.
The Bible has been clear that the soul carries on after our body dies.
We are not like those who have no hope.
Believers Armed and Dangerous 