The Soul Fallacy

Most Americans believe they possess an immaterial soul that will survive the death of the body. In sharp contrast, the current scientific consensus rejects the traditional soul, although this conclusion is rarely discussed publicly. In this book, a cognitive scientist breaks the taboo and explains why modern science leads to this controversial conclusion. In doing so, the book reveals the truly astonishing scope and power of scientific inquiry, drawing on ideas from biology, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the physical sciences. Much more than chronicling the demise of the traditional soul, the book explores where soul beliefs come from, why they are so widespread culturally and historically, how cognitive science offers a naturalistic alternative to religious conceptions of mind, and how postulating the existence of a soul amounts to making a scientific claim. Although the new scientific view of personhood departs radically from traditional religious conceptions, the author shows that a coherent, meaningful, and sensitive appreciation of what it means to be human remains intact. He argues that we do not lose anything by letting go of our soul beliefs and that we even have something to gain. Throughout, the book takes a passionate stand for science and reason. It also offers a timely rejoinder to recent claims that science supports the existence of the soul and the afterlife.

This book examines the idea of a soul and what it is and what it isn't. It covers what has been routinely accepted and what is consonant with reality. This book is written for those who want understanding rather than commiseration. The hope of the author is there are people who are not satisfied with relying on the imaginary.

“[An] acute and powerful vision . . . offers a renaissance of humane values.”—Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life Plato called it “daimon,” the Romans “genius,” the Christians “guardian angel”; today we use such terms as “heart,” “spirit,” and “soul.” While philosophers and psychologists from Plato to Jung have studied and debated the fundamental essence of our individuality, our modern culture refuses to accept that a unique soul guides each of us from birth, shaping the course of our lives. In this extraordinary bestseller, James Hillman presents a brilliant vision of our selves, and an exciting approach to the mystery at the center of every life that asks, “What is it, in my heart, that I must do, be, and have? And why?” Drawing on the biographies of figures such as Ella Fitzgerald and Mohandas K. Gandhi, Hillman argues that character is fate, that there is more to each individual than can be explained by genetics and environment. The result is a reasoned and powerful road map to understanding our true nature and discovering an eye-opening array of choices—from the way we raise our children to our career paths to our social and personal commitments to achieving excellence in our time. Praise for The Soul’s Code “Champions a glorious sort of rugged individualism that, with the help of an inner daimon (or guardian angel), can triumph against all odds.”—The Washington Post Book World “[A] brilliant, absorbing work . . . Hillman dares us to believe that we are each meant to be here, that we are needed by the world around us.”—Publishers Weekly

A number of authors have noted that if some physical parameters were slightly changed, the universe could no longer support life, as we know it. This implies that life depends sensitively on the physics of our universe. Does this "fine-tuning" of the universe suggest that a creator god intentionally calibrated the initial conditions of the universe such that life on earth and the evolution of humanity would eventually emerge? In his in-depth and highly accessible discussion of this fascinating and controversial topic, the author looks at the evidence and comes to the opposite conclusion. He finds that the observations of science and our naked senses not only show no evidence for God, they provide evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that God does not exist.

Claims that sexual fantasies stem from past psychological tragedies, and argues that Christians should tap into God's love to overcome the desire to act out sexual fantasies in order to heal from past trauma.

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A brilliant inquiry into the origins of human nature from the author of Rationality, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. "Sweeping, erudite, sharply argued, and fun to read..also highly persuasive." --Time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Updated with a new afterword One of the world's leading experts on language and the mind explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts. Injecting calm and rationality into debates that are notorious for ax-grinding and mud-slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgment of human nature based on science and common sense.

C. G. Jung regarded the soul to be a reality in its own right which reflects itself in all manner of images and events. symbols and traditions. In this fourth volume of his Collected English Papers, Giegerich recalls the soul to the inwardness of its own home territory by bringing out the thought-character of the self-creating, self-unfolding logical life that it is. In addition to clarifying what thought means for psychology and analyzing certain misconceptions surrounding the topic of "soul and thought" a challenging thesis concerning the limitation of an imaginal, "anima-only" approach in psychology (given the essential historicity of the soul) is carefully argued, while examining at the same time such topics as "the end of meaning and the birth of man," "anima mundi and time", "the metamorphosis of the gods," and the logical steps involved in the transition from childhood to adulthood and from a psychological oneness with nature to modern alienation from nature. The book also discusses the notion of the soul’s logical life and shows in action the psychological procedure of "absolute-negative interiorization" of phenomena into their soul and truth in a number of in-depth examinations of particular phenomena (e.g. Heraclitus’ dictum about the soul’s depth, the "leap into the solid stone," the negativity of the "stone which is not a stone"). In thorough-going critical engagements with other authors in the field, it demonstrates specific instances where psychology fails to do its job due to faulty presuppositions, above all psychology’s failure to face the modern world. It emphasizes the active role of the mind in soul-making as the making of psychic reality. It addresses the questions of the future of psychology and whether progress in psychology is possible.