The basics: Evidence for the spiritual

1 The Transcendental Desires 

This is the basic argument for a soul from Plato to contemporary Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan:

(1) we have five transcendental desires for perfect truth, love, justice/goodness, beauty, and being;

(2) we must have an awareness of what we desire; therefore, we have an awareness of each transcendental;

(3) we have the capacity to recognize every imperfection in experiencing these desires, which would not be possible unless we were aware of their perfection;

(4) the source of our awareness must itself be perfect truth, love, justice/kindness, beauty and being. This leads to the conclusion that this source (i.e. God) is present when we are aware of imperfection in these “transcendentals”;

Therefore, we are transcendent.

2 God’s Presence to Our Consciousness

The evidence for our interior awareness of a transcendent reality can be correlated with the experiences of thousands of others in different cultures and religions in 3 particular ways:

(1) The numinous experience—in which the numen presents itself as mysterious, daunting, fascinating, good, and empathetic, and invites us into itself;

(2) religious intuition—in which we sense that the sacred transcendent reality has broken into the world, inviting us to draw closer to the sacred reality through sacred place, ritual, and myth;

(3) conscience—through which an omniscient, invisible, searcher of hearts bids us to do good and avoid evil.

3 Human Intelligence vs Artificial and Animal Intelligence

There are 4 ways in which humans are connected to the transcendent that artificial intelligence is not: (1) the five transcendental desires as in 1.

(2) the formulation of conceptual ideas, such as abstract inter-relational ideas;

(3) self-consciousness, experiencing of experiencing, and the experience of inwardness—David Chalmers’ hard problem of consciousness;

(4) transalgorithmic mathematical thinking, manifest by Gödel’s theorem.

Furthermore, studies by philosopher of language Noam Chomsky reveal that humans are categorically different from primates in linguistic capabilities and in their capacity to formulate conceptual ideas in language, logic, mathematics, natural science, social science, and philosophy.

4 Free Will and Original Sin

Free will can only arise out of capacities found in our transphysical soul (see the 12 Capacities of the Transphysical Soul below). For example, at the center of free will is our capacity for self-consciousness enabling us to not only to grasp ourselves, but also to choose the powers and desires that will ultimately define the “self” we grasp. We are confronted from childhood by two fundamental options: the option to aggrandize ourselves and to possess others and the material world, or the option to pursue relationships with God and others and to submit to the requirements of conscience and empathy/love.

5 Near-Death Experiences

There is a growing body of legitimate research around near-death experience reports, and peer-reviewed scientific journals have published a number of actual medical studies on the subject. While an NDE is a subjective experience, what we do know is that tens of thousands of people report having one, and similar characteristics are reported across the range of individual experiences.

Additional “evidence” is the report of veridical data, and the fact that 80% of blind NDErs report being able to see during their experience. The most conservative interpretation of NDEs is that some aspect of human consciousness is non-physical and continues after physical death. We call this a soul.

See more information on this argument here. Source: Magis Center

The 12 Capacities of the Soul

1. The capacity for self-consciousness (inwardness)—allowing us to experience and apprehend ourselves and to create a private inner world.

2. The capacity for conceptual ideas—allowing us to have abstract thoughts, syntactical control, and conceptual language

3. The desire for perfect truth—enabling us to recognize all imperfections in our knowledge, causing us to ask questions indefinitely until we reach perfect truth.

4. The recognition of the spiritual-sacred-numinous-transcendent reality (God)—causing fascination, worship, awe, and obedience, which draws us to enter into a deeper relationship with Him, bringing us to his transcendent, eternal, and sacred essence.

5. The desire for perfect home—enabling us to recognize the imperfections of our worldly existence, causing us to pursue the sacred and Its source until we have reached our perfect home.

6. The capacity for empathy—which recognizes the unique goodness and lovability of the other, creating the desire to care about and care for the other even to the point of self- sacrificial love.

7. The desire for perfect love—enabling us to recognize all imperfections in love, causing us to pursue deeper and more authentic love until we have reached perfect love.

8. The capacity for moral reflection originating from conscience—which is God’s moral presence to our self-consciousness.

9. The desire for perfect justice/goodness—enabling us to recognize all imperfections in justice/goodness (in groups, organizations, and community), causing us to pursue more perfect forms of justice and the common good until we have reached perfect justice/goodness.

10. The capacity to appreciate and be filled by the beautiful in nature, music, art, architecture, literature, intellectual ideas, love, and goodness—causing us to seek ever greater forms of beauty until we reach perfect beauty-majesty-splendor itself.

11. The desire for perfect beauty—enabling us to recognize all imperfections in beauty, causing us to pursue ever greater beauty until we reach perfect beauty itself.

12, The capacity for free will—self-consciousness’ orientation toward either itself or toward others and God (in goodness and love.

Our transcendental capacities are so great that we can be satisfied only by Him, who is perfect truth, love, justice/goodness, beauty, and home. As Augustine noted at the beginning of the Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

See more on this topic here

See also this article, which develops the topic more comprehensively  

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Ω Source of this material - go to the Magis Center here