CADRE Comments

July 13,2020

Bill Lauritzen, in  “Can a Machine Have a Soul,”[1] argues against the existence of the soul.It is my contention that  he has a simplistic and wrong notion of soul. He tells us what he means by the term: ”I am not talking about souls in a metaphorical sense, as the 'essence' of a person, I am talking about 'the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal .'"
 It is my contention that he has it backwards. The notion he does not deal with as the essence of a human is the right notion and the idea of an immortal aspect is not the preponderance of uses in the Bible.

There is, however, a  Caveat. The  Hebrew term used in OT for soul is nephesh or Nefesh it has a multiplicity of meanings. One can find passages where it is interchangeable with spirit and where it is an mortal aspect  separate from the body. But as I say that's not the preponderance of meanings.

I have changed my view on this. I had gone in for the modernist …

"As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are blessed to be led by living prophets—inspired men called to speak for the Lord, as did Moses, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, Nephi, Mormon, and other prophets of the scriptures. We sustain the President of the Church as prophet, seer, and revelator—the only person on the earth who receives revelation to guide the entire Church. We also sustain the counselors in the First Presidency and the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as prophets, seers, and revelators....Our greatest safety lies in strictly following the word of the Lord given through His prophets, particularly the current President of the Church. The Lord warns that those who ignore the words of the living prophets will fall (see Doctrine and Covenants 1:14–16). He promises great blessings to those who follow the President of the Church." (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/prophets?lang=eng)

        The New …

"The two men testified that they knelt before the angel who then “laid his hands upon us” and said, “Upon you my fellow servants in the name of Messiah I confer the priesthood of Aaron.” Though they now had authority to baptize each other by water, the angel declared that this priesthood did not authorize them to give the gift of the Holy Ghost. The angel assured them the “power of laying on of hands, for the gift of the Holy Ghost” would come “in due time.” He identified himself as John, “the same that is called John the Baptist in the new Testament,” and said he acted “under the direction of Peter, James, and John, who held the keys of the priesthood of Melchisedeck.” Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery stated that this experience occurred on May 15, 1829. When the vision closed, they went to the nearby Susquehanna River and baptized each other." (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/restoration-of-the-aaronic-priesthood?lang=eng)

        The Old …

The Mormon church explains its dogma of an ordained ministerial priesthood after the order of Melchizedek and its secondary Aaronic priesthood as follows:

“There are, in the church, two priesthoods, namely, the Melchizedek and Aaronic, including the Levitical Priesthood. Why the first is called the Melchizedek Priesthood is because Melchizedek was such a great high priest. Before his day it was called the Holy Priesthood, after the Order of the Son of God. But out of respect or reverence to the name of the Supreme Being, to avoid the too frequent repetition of his name, they, the church, in ancient days, called that priesthood after Melchizedek, or the Melchizedek Priesthood. All other authorities or offices in the church are appendages to this priesthood. … The second priesthood is called the Priesthood of Aaron, because it was conferred upon Aaron and his seed, throughout all their generations. Why it is called the lesser priesthood is because it is an appendage to the grea…

In “Can a Machine have a Soul?” Bill Lauritzen claims to have disproved the soul.[1] He’s considering the issue of weather or not transferring human consciousness into a machine would give the machine a soul? His solution is to disprove that humans have souls then there’s no soul to worry about. In my view the soul is a symbol and it’s the spirit that lives on after death. So there’s no question of proving or disproving the soul since there is no question or proving or disproving symbols. For the sake of this issue I’ll use his terminology. He assumes the soul is the thing that lives. After all, he would make the same argument against the spirit. That argument is made by the bogus method of merely assume what he thinks human ancestors must have thought about after life and what they based it on. Basing it on something we know is false such as an literalized analogy between smoke is the afterlife of fire, and breath sustaining life, being like smoke, therefore like the smoke form the …