qwerty1011, you are way too late, read first 20 pages of this topic please.

Do I have to prove that your soul exists?
Uhm... yes.

Okay. I need some basis to be aligned first. What is consciousness? What kind of biochemical reactions cease when a person is knocked out cold, by any means? What kind of biochemical reactions apply in the case of humans with prolonged absence of consciousness that were experimented to provide "conscious" answers? Source Another one And, what causes them to not recover into active form of consciousness?

But surely, if they exist, they exist.  And they either:
Exist OR Don't Exist.

You're applying logic to a single factor of existance. Okay, "If soul does not exist, then any human is a biomachine" - is this following true? If yes, this in turn implies that a biomachine cannot create anything abstract, based on a statement that a machine in general is a superclass of biomachine (AKA "All biomachine are machine") and the statement "All machine operate with objects". But logic is abstract, and is created by humanity - you yourself have defined this. This results in total "If soul does not exist, then false".

For me this statement put the final nail in his argument.

For you, yes, since it's your own disregard. However this does not disprove the original statement.

Even if they are in the "spiritual realm", the statements that you say about them are still either right or wrong, and they either exist or don't exist.  Thus, logic is still applicable.

I wasn't addressing the implications of them, just what they were.

Okay. I need some basis to be aligned first. What is consciousness?

It's an emergent property of the mind. There has been hypotheses indicating there may be key areas of the brain that are responsible but from what I know it hasn't been confirmed.

You're applying logic to a single factor of existance. Okay, "If soul does not exist, then any human is a biomachine" - is this following true? If yes, this in turn implies that a biomachine cannot create anything abstract,

How do you figure that?

Do you think animals have souls?
If not, then explain how This occurs.

vesper said he can't view YouTube videos.

Got to say That's pretty impressive. I've seen elephants produce abstract pictures but nothing recognizable like this.

Do you think animals have souls?
If not, then explain how This occurs.

These are some impressive pictures, but how exactly would they prove the existence of a soul?

These are some impressive pictures, but how exactly would they prove the existence of a soul?

vespers claim seems to indicate that abstract thinking requires a soul.

The only problem is that it's a youtube video and could have been faked

I severely doubt that an elephant could paint that unless it had been trained to do it which still doesn't prove the existance of a soul. Anyway if all animals have souls then all should be able to do that. Anyway does it matter if people have a soul or not

it doesn't change what we are apart from your opinion

All he was stating is that if they exist then they are real, factual, and thus would be able to be observed, measured, tested, etc.

This is based on an assumption that if something exists, it can be measured. This is not true in case of immaterial substances. Electromagnetic field is a form of matter's existance, therefore material although invisible, and being material, it can be measured.

Do you think animals have souls?
If not, then explain how This occurs.

Current church teaching views animals as indeed having souls, although mortal souls or souls that don't require salvation. I'm yet uncertain about this, but indeed some species provide exceptional behavior with expressing almost-human feelings. And I'm not even speaking about primates - there's an evidence of a cat border guard, who was able to coherently speak, and kind of voluntarily helped humans to not get undermined. Some human though got angered by that cat's undermining him, so he killed that cat.

They are disregarded because they have no grounding in fact.

Torino's shroud, huh? So far I don't recall any of you objecting this.

No, and your statement is nonsense to be perfectly honest. The nonexistence of a soul does not demand that the only other state that a human could occupy is that of synthetic life.

Maybe - after all this wasn't stated a cast-iron truth. Going to find other arguments - there are some.

vespers claim seems to indicate that abstract thinking requires a soul.

Yes indeed.

I severely doubt that an elephant could paint that unless it had been trained to do it which still doesn't prove the existance of a soul.

We aren't arguing existence or non existence. just the one claim that abstract thinking requires a soul.
Now yes the elephants are trained to paint, they are given hand signals to form basic shapes on the canvas. However to follow such hand signals would still require abstract thinking skills in order to relate the two.
Also the language used by elephants and dolphins shows similar patterns to human speech. These patterns indicate that specific sounds have very specific meanings to them. This is again something only accomplished through abstract thinking. (I'll see if I can find something on it online, this was something shown on tv)

This is based on an assumption that if something exists, it can be measured. This is not true in case of immaterial substances.

If it interacts with the world we can measure that interaction. Since we have no examples of metaphysical things existing we have no reason to believe they do. Further more the things you attribute to being the result of the immaterial we either have material explanations for which leave you denying facts, or we actually don't know which meas your claiming to know something that you don't.

Torino's shroud, huh? So far I don't recall any of you objecting this.

You say that like it's suppose to mean something.