Bloglines - Souls and Brains

Bloglines user ygb (ygbechhofer@gmail.com) has sent this item to you, with the following personal message:

Great post by RMC.

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Reuven Meir

Souls and Brains By Reuven Meir I just stumbled on a very interesting article on Scientific American's web site. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa029&articleID=BE96F947-E7F2-99DF-3EA94A4C4EE87581 Here is a quote: "The operation known as hemispherectomy—where half the brain is removed—sounds too radical to ever consider, much less perform. In the last century, however, surgeons have performed it hundreds of times for disorders uncontrollable in any other way. Unbelievably, the surgery has no apparent effect on personality or memory." Now, according to most views, memory, intelligence, and personality are three areas that either reside completely in the soul, or are affected and changed by it. For example, a person born with a angry temperament can work on himself, and become gentile and kind. This "working on it" is a function of the soul which alters the personality of the person. Another example would be intelligence. At least the function of expressing intelligent ideas through speech ("man became a speaking spirit"). Now of course at some level these parts of our souls connect to the physical world somewhere in the brain, otherwise expressing them would be impossible. According to this article: "If the left side of the brain is taken out, "most people have problems with their speech, but it used to be thought that if you took that side out after age two, you'd never talk again, and we've proven that untrue," Freeman says. "The younger a person is when they undergo hemispherectomy, the less disability you have in talking. Where on the right side of the brain speech is transferred to and what it displaces is something nobody has really worked out."" So in effect, no matter which side of the brain one removes, the person's memory is still there, their power of speech comes back after a while, and their personality stays the same. Now, if memory is stored all over the brain, then the information in one half would be gone with it's removal. And obviously the brain does not store memory in just the half of the brain that is bound to not be removed! We could suppose that the brain could store duplicate copies of memories in different locations in the brain, but this has never been shown to be true as far as I know. Also, the ability to express intelligent ideas through speech is a hallmark property of a soul. The fact that it is "relearned" "somehow" on the other side of the brain is not remarkable to those who believe in a soul. Therefore, I propose that barring any other explanation or experiment, this phenomenon could easily be considered as an additional piece of evidence that the soul is real and interacts with our bodies. (Not that Torah Jews need such evidence, but it is always nice to see.)

JPost Article From Friend

Your friend, YGB, has sent you the following article from JPost.com:

Powerfully Moving

Man who lost wife, 3 kids in attack goes south to help

"After what I went through I can help people, because I understand what they're going through."

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Interesting RAYHK thread someone forwarded to me

http://hydepark.hevre.co.il/topic.asp?topic_id=2210526

Very important contribution:

http://emet.blog-city.com/the_missing_years_in_jewish_chronology.htm

The Missing Years In Jewish Chronology

« H E » email

posted Monday, 21 May 2007

I have always been fascinated by the "missing years" in Jewish chronology and it is something that I really want to explore in more depth in later posts. For a bit of a background to this issue, see this Wikipedia article

I have addressed the issue once before in this post, which includes R'Biberfeld's solution to the problem. R'Biberfeld proposal can be found in his scholarly polemic "Universal Jewish History" which is available online in its entirety here. It is a very interesting book, which although dated, does contain some fascinating ideas and sources.

A rather new approach which has recently appeared can be found in the 3rd volume of the Hakira Journal. The article entitled "A Y2K solution to the Chronology Problem" is available for download here. I will hopefully analyze this solution in a later post.

What I really want to post up is a fascinating piece by R' Saadia Gaon in his Emunot v'Deot relating to this issue. It can be found in Chapter 9 of the "Treatise of Redemption" (pg 322 of the Yale English Edition). R' Saadia Gaon in his critique of the Christian interpretation of some passages in Daniel, makes the claim that the Christians intentionally altered the calendar so that the dates of their view of redemption would coincide with their understanding of scripture. R' Saadia Gaon makes the accusation that they intentionally added dynasties to their list of kings to achieve this effect (the opposite of the views championed by the article in Hakira and R' Shimon Schwab). Here is the quote in full:

However the clearest [refutation of all lies in the fact that from the time when this revelation was made to Daniel until the date which they believe [to have been the time of the fulfillment of the prophecies regarding the redemption], only 285 years had elapsed. Now the total sum [mentioned in the book of Daniel] is 490 years. Of this number of year 70 were taken up by the period preceding the building of the second temple, and 420 by that of its existence.

I have found, then, that the advocates [of the Christian doctrine] had no other means [of supporting their theory] except the contention that an addition is to be made in the chronological calculation. They maintain, namely, that the government of the Persian over Palestine existed for a period of something like 300 years before that of the Greeks and that the number of their kings during this period was seventeen. However, I have refuted this contention on their part from the text of the book of Daniel itself, [pointing out] that it was impossible that between the time of the government of Babylon and that of the Greeks more than four Persian kings should have rules over Palestine. For the angle said to Daniel, peace be upon him: And as for me, in the first years of Darius the Mede, I stood up to be a supporter and a stronghold unto him. And now, I will declare unto thee the truth. Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer than they all; and when he is waxed strong through his riches, he shall stir up against the real of Greece (Daniel 11:1,2). The above statement has thus been explained from every aspect.

These are, then, the arguments that may be offered in refutation of the doctrine of the Christians aside from the objections to be raised against their theory of the suspension of the laws of the Torah and those that might be urged against them on the subject of the Unity of God, and other matters, which cannot properly be presented in this book.

The eight treatise has hereby been completed.

Translated Shaarei Kedusha

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	shalom
Date:	Sun, 20 May 2007 20:42:19 +0300
From:	<webmaster@dafyomireview.com>
To:	<ygb@aishdas.org>

For your interest, I have completed a translation of much of shaarei kedusha by R.Chaim Vital. It is a bit advanced but has in my opinion tremendous kiruv value.

 

please consider linking to it (or the like)

 

http://dafyomireview.com/shaarei_kedusha.php

 

thank you.

all the best,

Yosef Peretz