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Creation of Self: A Case for the Soul
Situated in broader science-and-religion discussions, The Creation of Self is the first book-length defense of a creationist view of persons as souls. This book therefore serves as both a novel argument for God's creation of selves and as a critique of contemporary materialist and emergent-self alternatives, critically examining naturalistic views that argue for a regular, law-like process behind the emergence of personhood. Author Joshua Farris argues on the assumption that persons are fundamentally unique individuals that look more like singularities of nature, rather than material products grounded in regularity or predictability from past events. By extending the basic intuition that we are unique and mysterious individuals, Farris develops a sophisticated analytic defense of the soul that requires a sufficient explanation not found in nature but made by a Creator who has intentions and the power to bring about novel entities in the world. The Creation of Self gives philosophers, theologians, and the lay intellectual grounding for thinking about persons as religious beings. It aims to help readers understand why recent scientifically motivated objections to the soul are unsuccessful, and why we must consider a religious conception of persons as souls as a common starting point.
328 pages, Paperback
Published July 1, 2023
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October 3, 2023
The Creation of self - Joshua Farris - A Case for the Soul.
Once again I've been drawn to opening this book by Joshua Farris on the bookshelf about, a case for the soul. Just recently I wrote about biblical meditation that is altogether different from and lost to the increasingly popular practices of mindfulness and self-enlightenment, as well as transcendental meditation. Which then begs the question as to when we look into a mirror and then into our inner selves are we the same.?
‘I’, "that is to say, the Soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body and is even easier to know than the body; and would not stop being everything it is, even if the body were not to exist.” Rene' Descartes, 1637, p. 29.
Situated in broader science-and-religion discussions, The Creation of Self is the first book-length defence of a creationist view of persons as souls. This book therefore serves as both argument for God’s creation of selves and as a critique of contemporary materialist and emergent-self alternatives, critically examining naturalistic views that argue for a regular, law-like process behind the emergence of personhood. Author Joshua Farris argues on the assumption that persons are fundamentally unique individuals that look more like singularities of nature, rather than material products grounded in regularity or predictability from past events.
By extending the basic intuition that we are unique and mysterious individuals, Farris develops a sophisticated analytic defence of the soul that requires a sufficient explanation not found in nature but made by a Creator who has intentions and the power to bring about novel entities in the world. The Creation of Self gives philosophers, theologians, and the lay intellectual grounding for thinking about persons as religious beings. It aims to help readers understand why recent scientifically motivated objections to the soul are unsuccessful, and why we must consider a religious conception of persons as souls as a common starting point.
This as opposed to our modern day mainstream thinking by science that souls are now not only irrelevant but also mere spooky handovers from past beliefs. That have now been relegated to being incorporated into scary stories and or movies, but also adopted into the likes of the upcoming mainstream commercial annual Halloween night festivities. A belief that the soul is the spooky, the eerie ghost like figures that depart the body in death to be made fun of at this time.
To answer this one needs to ask one of the crucial questions from biological studies is the question of consciousness. Where did it come from? Does consciousness have any place in biological evolution at all? Whether or not the sciences have much of anything at all to say about consciousness.
Questioned by bodies such as the most recent World Transformation Movement organisation set up by an Australian Genealogist now dedicated to developing and promoting understanding of the human condition. A biological explanation of the human condition provides the holy grail of insight we have sought for the psychological rehabilitation of the human race” makes FREEDOM the linchpin breakthrough needed to save the human race! Can science and biology even begin to understand the soul and our consciousness?
Francis Harry Compton Crick the renowned English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist who played a crucial role with James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule. He once stated; "You," your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."
However that argument as in the past is now being challenged by renowned scientists and Genealogist's. The likes of Prof Francis Collins an American physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. In his book "The Language of God." Prof Collins raises arguments for the idea of God. This scientist presents evidence for belief drawing both from science and philosophy. He cites many famous thinkers, most prevalently C. S. Lewis, as well as Saint Augustine and arguments against the likes of Stephen Hawking, Charles Darwin, Theodosius Dobzhansky and others.
"And what more am I? I look for aid to the imagination. But how mistakenly! I am not that assemblage of limbs we call the human body; I am not a subtle penetrating air distributed throughout all these members; I am not a wind, a fire, a vapor, a breath or anything at all that I can image. I am supposing all these things to be nothing. Yet I find, while so doing, that I am still assured that I am a something.”
― René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy.
Descartes in" Meditations on First Philosophy states" indicated his purpose in showing that the human mind or soul is really distinct from the body. Thus to refute those scientists who only have faith in mathematics and will not believe in the soul’s immortality without a mathematical demonstration of it. One of the deepest and most lasting legacies of Descartes’ philosophy is his thesis that mind and body are really distinct—a thesis now called “mind-body dualism.” He reaches this conclusion by arguing that the nature of the mind (that is, a thinking, non-extended thing) is completely different from that of the body.
For this is what the soul our inner most being yearns for in meditation.
"O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
when I remember you upon my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.
Psalm 63:1-5
Once again I've been drawn to opening this book by Joshua Farris on the bookshelf about, a case for the soul. Just recently I wrote about biblical meditation that is altogether different from and lost to the increasingly popular practices of mindfulness and self-enlightenment, as well as transcendental meditation. Which then begs the question as to when we look into a mirror and then into our inner selves are we the same.?
‘I’, "that is to say, the Soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body and is even easier to know than the body; and would not stop being everything it is, even if the body were not to exist.” Rene' Descartes, 1637, p. 29.
Situated in broader science-and-religion discussions, The Creation of Self is the first book-length defence of a creationist view of persons as souls. This book therefore serves as both argument for God’s creation of selves and as a critique of contemporary materialist and emergent-self alternatives, critically examining naturalistic views that argue for a regular, law-like process behind the emergence of personhood. Author Joshua Farris argues on the assumption that persons are fundamentally unique individuals that look more like singularities of nature, rather than material products grounded in regularity or predictability from past events.
By extending the basic intuition that we are unique and mysterious individuals, Farris develops a sophisticated analytic defence of the soul that requires a sufficient explanation not found in nature but made by a Creator who has intentions and the power to bring about novel entities in the world. The Creation of Self gives philosophers, theologians, and the lay intellectual grounding for thinking about persons as religious beings. It aims to help readers understand why recent scientifically motivated objections to the soul are unsuccessful, and why we must consider a religious conception of persons as souls as a common starting point.
This as opposed to our modern day mainstream thinking by science that souls are now not only irrelevant but also mere spooky handovers from past beliefs. That have now been relegated to being incorporated into scary stories and or movies, but also adopted into the likes of the upcoming mainstream commercial annual Halloween night festivities. A belief that the soul is the spooky, the eerie ghost like figures that depart the body in death to be made fun of at this time.
To answer this one needs to ask one of the crucial questions from biological studies is the question of consciousness. Where did it come from? Does consciousness have any place in biological evolution at all? Whether or not the sciences have much of anything at all to say about consciousness.
Questioned by bodies such as the most recent World Transformation Movement organisation set up by an Australian Genealogist now dedicated to developing and promoting understanding of the human condition. A biological explanation of the human condition provides the holy grail of insight we have sought for the psychological rehabilitation of the human race” makes FREEDOM the linchpin breakthrough needed to save the human race! Can science and biology even begin to understand the soul and our consciousness?
Francis Harry Compton Crick the renowned English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist who played a crucial role with James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule. He once stated; "You," your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."
However that argument as in the past is now being challenged by renowned scientists and Genealogist's. The likes of Prof Francis Collins an American physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. In his book "The Language of God." Prof Collins raises arguments for the idea of God. This scientist presents evidence for belief drawing both from science and philosophy. He cites many famous thinkers, most prevalently C. S. Lewis, as well as Saint Augustine and arguments against the likes of Stephen Hawking, Charles Darwin, Theodosius Dobzhansky and others.
"And what more am I? I look for aid to the imagination. But how mistakenly! I am not that assemblage of limbs we call the human body; I am not a subtle penetrating air distributed throughout all these members; I am not a wind, a fire, a vapor, a breath or anything at all that I can image. I am supposing all these things to be nothing. Yet I find, while so doing, that I am still assured that I am a something.”
― René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy.
Descartes in" Meditations on First Philosophy states" indicated his purpose in showing that the human mind or soul is really distinct from the body. Thus to refute those scientists who only have faith in mathematics and will not believe in the soul’s immortality without a mathematical demonstration of it. One of the deepest and most lasting legacies of Descartes’ philosophy is his thesis that mind and body are really distinct—a thesis now called “mind-body dualism.” He reaches this conclusion by arguing that the nature of the mind (that is, a thinking, non-extended thing) is completely different from that of the body.
For this is what the soul our inner most being yearns for in meditation.
"O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
when I remember you upon my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.
Psalm 63:1-5
February 14, 2024
The writer explores the origin of the soul/mind. He looks at the creation of the soul from a materialistic point of view and shows the impossibility of a purely physical creation. He then explores the creationist view meaning that God creates the soul and unites it with the physical.
The problem is that the creationist view does not pinpoint when this union occurs i.e. at conception or at birth, He does not delve into the argument.
Overall a good read but the three star rating is that the author writes with the idea that the reader would understand his terms and certain beliefs. If read this book have a dictionary or google search to define terms LOL.
The problem is that the creationist view does not pinpoint when this union occurs i.e. at conception or at birth, He does not delve into the argument.
Overall a good read but the three star rating is that the author writes with the idea that the reader would understand his terms and certain beliefs. If read this book have a dictionary or google search to define terms LOL.
March 27, 2024
Joshua Farris is the daring Christian on the unbeaten path with his defense of Cartesian dualism. With his dualist sword, he is hailed as a leading figure in theological anthropology, during this time when materialism still reigns supreme in our culture. As post-materialist philosophies are gaining momentum in the 21st Century, Farris wants to make sure we are not short on options.
See my full review below:
https://www.thecommoncaveat.com/artic...
See my full review below:
https://www.thecommoncaveat.com/artic...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews