Sorry for double post. Actually I did think about this again and I think there is a way to almost disprove what I said above.
I think what can and will be disproven is the idea of “Soul”. Basically we already know about a lot of connections not only between brain and body function (like “which are is correlated to which operations”) but we know some things about correlation brain-personality! (If you want a really good introduction on brain-mind correlations that is not overly technical, see “The Brain and the Inner World: An Introduction to the Neuroscience of Subjective Experience” by Marc Solms and Oliver Turnbull)
So, first we have to ask us what scope the soul has. I think, that if the soul doesn’t comprehend “personality”, it is a totally useless concept. But then, on can disprove the existence of a soul distinct from the body:
there are various cases of patients (the most notable, although probably not documented precisely enough is the one about Phineas Gage, 1823-1860) that due to damage in the brain (usually the frontal lobes) changed their personality in more or less dramatic ways.
So one definitely has (or will have, if more of those kind of findings pop up) to relinquish the idea of a soul-matter duality. And there you have your whole worldview crumbling down.
The only thing one could possibly believe in then, would be a god who created the universe. But if he isn’t correlated to reality even after one’s death or after the supposed apocalypse (what sense would that make if personality/soul was body-dependant?), then what difference does believing or not imply?
and one definitely couldn’t base morals or ethics on such an independent god...
Sorry for double post. Actually I did think about this again and I think there is a way to almost disprove what I said above.
I think what can and will be disproven is the idea of “Soul”. Basically we already know about a lot of connections not only between brain and body function (like “which are is correlated to which operations”) but we know some things about correlation brain-personality! (If you want a really good introduction on brain-mind correlations that is not overly technical, see “The Brain and the Inner World: An Introduction to the Neuroscience of Subjective Experience” by Marc Solms and Oliver Turnbull) So, first we have to ask us what scope the soul has. I think, that if the soul doesn’t comprehend “personality”, it is a totally useless concept. But then, on can disprove the existence of a soul distinct from the body: there are various cases of patients (the most notable, although probably not documented precisely enough is the one about Phineas Gage, 1823-1860) that due to damage in the brain (usually the frontal lobes) changed their personality in more or less dramatic ways.
So one definitely has (or will have, if more of those kind of findings pop up) to relinquish the idea of a soul-matter duality. And there you have your whole worldview crumbling down.
The only thing one could possibly believe in then, would be a god who created the universe. But if he isn’t correlated to reality even after one’s death or after the supposed apocalypse (what sense would that make if personality/soul was body-dependant?), then what difference does believing or not imply? and one definitely couldn’t base morals or ethics on such an independent god...