The reality of the soul is among the most important questions of life. Although religions go on and on about its existence, how do we know if souls really exist? A string of new scientific experiments helps answer this ancient spiritual question.
The idea of the soul is bound up with the idea of a future life and our belief in a continued existence after death. Its said to be the ultimate animating principle by which we think and feel, but isnt dependent on the body. Many infer its existence without scientific analysis or reflection. Indeed, the mysteries of birth and death, the play of consciousness during dreams (or after a few martinis), and even the commonest mental operations – such as imagination and memory – suggest the existence of a vital life force – an élan vital – that exists independent of the body.
Yet, the current scientific paradigm doesnt recognize this spiritual dimension of life. Were told were just the activity of carbon and some proteins; we live awhile and die. And the universe? It too has no meaning. It has all been worked out in the equations – no need for a soul. But biocentrism – a new ‘theory of everything – challenges this traditional, materialistic model of reality. In all directions, this outdated paradigm leads to insoluble enigmas, to ideas that are ultimately irrational. But knowledge is the prelude to wisdom, and soon our worldview will catch up with the facts.
Of course, most spiritual people view the soul as emphatically more definitive than the scientific concept. Its considered the incorporeal essence of a person, and is said to be immortal and transcendent of material existence. But when scientists speak of the soul (if at all), its usually in a materialistic context, or treated as a poetic synonym for the mind. Everything knowable about the "soul" can be learned by studying the functioning of the brain. In their view, neuroscience is the only branch of scientific study relevant to understanding the soul.
Traditionally, science has dismissed the soul as an object of human belief, or reduced it to a psychological concept that shapes our cognition of the observable natural world. 传统上，科学将灵魂视为人类信仰的对象，或将其简化为塑造我们对可观察的自然世界的认知的心理学概念。The terms "life" and "death" are thus nothing more than the common concepts of "biological life" and "biological death." The animating principle is simply the laws of chemistry and physics. You (and all the poets and philosophers that ever lived) are just dust orbiting the core of the Milky Way galaxy.
As I sit here in my office surrounded by piles of scientific books, I cant find a single reference to the soul, or any notion of an immaterial, eternal essence that occupies our being. Indeed, a soul has never been seen under an electron microscope, nor spun in the laboratory in a test tube or ultra-centrifuge. 确实，从来没有人在电子显微镜下看到过灵魂，也从未在实验室的试管或超速离心机中旋转过。According to these books, nothing appears to survive the human body after death.
While neuroscience has made tremendous progress illuminating the functioning of the brain, why we have a subjective experience remains mysterious. 尽管神经科学在阐明大脑功能方面取得了巨大进步，但是为什么我们拥有主观经验仍然是个谜。The problem of the soul lies exactly here, in understanding the nature of the self, the "I" in existence that feels and lives life. But this isnt just a problem for biology and cognitive science, but for the whole of Western natural philosophy itself.
Our current worldview – the world of objectivity and naïve realism – is beginning to show fatal cracks. Of course, this will not surprise many of the philosophers and other readers who, contemplating the works of men such as Plato, Socrates and Kant, and of Buddha and other great spiritual teachers, kept wondering about the relationship between the universe and the mind of man.
Recently, biocentrism and other scientific theories have also started to challenge the old physico-chemical paradigm, and to ask some of the difficult questions about life: Is there a soul? Does anything endure the ravages of time?
Life and consciousness are central to this new view of being, reality and the cosmos. Although the current scientific paradigm is based on the belief that the world has an objective observer-independent existence, real experiments suggest just the opposite. 尽管当前的科学范式基于这样一个信念，即世界具有客观的，独立于观察者的存在，但实际实验却恰恰相反。We think life is just the activity of atoms and particles, which spin around for a while and then dissipate into nothingness. But if we add life to the equation, we can explain some of the major puzzles of modern science, including the uncertainty principle, entanglement, and the fine-tuning of the laws that shape the universe.
Consider the famous two-slit experiment. When you watch a particle go through the holes, it behaves like a bullet, passing through one slit or the other. 当您看到粒子穿过孔时，它的行为就像子弹一样，穿过一个狭缝或另一个狭缝。But if no one observes the particle, it exhibits the behavior of a wave and can pass through both slits at the same time. 但是，如果没有人观察到粒子，它就会表现出波的行为，并且可以同时穿过两个缝隙。This and other experiments tell us that unobserved particles exist only as ‘waves of probability as the great Nobel laureate Max Born demonstrated in 1926. 这个实验和其他实验告诉我们，未观测到的粒子仅以“概率波”的形式存在，正如诺贝尔奖获得者马克斯·伯恩（Max Born）在1926年证明的那样。Theyre statistical predictions – nothing but a likely outcome. Until observed, they have no real existence; only when the mind sets the scaffolding in place, can they be thought of as having duration or a position in space. Experiments make it increasingly clear that even mere knowledge in the experimenters mind is sufficient to convert possibility to reality. 实验越来越清楚地表明，即使只是实验者心中的知识也足以将可能性转化为现实。
Many scientists dismiss the implications of these experiments, because until recently, this observer-dependent behavior was thought to be confined to the subatomic world. However, this is being challenged by researchers around the world. In fact, just this year a team of physicists (Gerlich et al, Nature Communications 2:263, 2011) showed that quantum weirdness also occurs in the human-scale world. They studied huge compounds composed of up to 430 atoms, and confirmed that this strange quantum behavior extends into the larger world we live in.
Importantly, this has a direct bearing on the question of whether humans and other living creatures have souls. 重要的是，这直接关系到人类和其他生物是否有灵魂的问题。As Kant pointed out over 200 years ago, everything we experience – including all the colors, sensations and objects we perceive – are nothing but representations in our mind. 正如康德（Kant）在200多年前指出的那样，我们所经历的一切，包括我们感知到的所有颜色，感觉和物体，都只是我们心中的代表。Space and time are simply the minds tools for putting it all together. Now, to the amusement of idealists, scientists are beginning dimly to recognize that those rules make existence itself possible. Indeed, the experiments above suggest that objects only exist with real properties if they are observed. 确实，以上实验表明，只有观察到物体，物体才具有真实属性。The results not only defy our classical intuition, but suggest that a part of the mind – the soul – is immortal and exists outside of space and time. 表明心灵的一部分-灵魂-是不朽的，存在于时空之外。
"The hope of another life" wrote Will Durant "gives us courage to meet our own death, and to bear with the death of our loved ones; we are twice armed if we fight with faith." 杜兰特（Will Durant）写道：“另一种生活的希望”使我们勇于面对自己的死亡，并忍受亲人的死亡；如果我们与信仰战斗，我们将有两次武装。
And we are thrice armed if we fight with science.
You can learn more about Biocentrism at www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com and www.robertlanza.com
Whatever the soul is, its existence can’t be proved or disproved by natural science无论灵魂是什么，自然科学都无法证明或反驳它的存在
https://theconversation.com/whatever-the-soul-is-its-existence-cant-be-proved-or-disproved-by-natural-science-61244
（这个标题真中肯！）
见：
我们可以用科学来研究神吗？
https://www.douban.com/group/topic/169995053/
下面是一个系列的文章中的两篇。作者是Robert Lawrence Kuhn is a public intellectual, international corporate strategist and investment banker. He has a doctorate in brain research他拥有大脑研究博士学位。and is the author and editor of over 25 books.
哈蟆这篇文章，是书评。所评论的书是David Linden 的《 The Accidental Mind.》
书评论主旨不在证明“没有神，没有耶和华，人没有灵魂”，
书评作者说：「Linden is right to stress that brains evolved, but hasty to conclude that they are flawed in their design. We still know too little about the brains inner workings to judge how well it does its job. 林登强调大脑已经进化是正确的，但是仓促得出结论说它们的设计存在缺陷。 我们仍然对大脑的内部运作知之甚少，无法判断它的工作情况。」
他引用的文章标题：「Does studying why people believe in God challenge God’s existence? “为什么人们相信有神”的研究，有挑战上帝的存在吗？」
（哈蟆懂英语吗？？？）
出处：https://blogs.sciencemag.org/origins/2009/11/does-studying-why-people-believe-in-god-challenge-gods-existence.html
不要以为哈蟆的伟大的科学研究文章证实了没有神！
错！
看看标题就知道不是，是一个问号！
内容先引用一些人的语录，然后并没有肯定地说：伟大的科学证明没有神！
让我摘录几句：
「But the scientists I interviewed said that the question of whether God exists is distinct from their research. 但是我采访的科学家说，关于上帝是否存在的问题与他们的研究不同。…… says that her work “does not speak to the existence of God; it speaks to why and how we might believe. 说她的工作“不代表上帝的存在； 它说明了我们为什么以及如何相信。Whether God exists is a separate question, one we can’t scientifically test.” 上帝是否存在是一个独立的问题，我们无法通过科学检验。”」
「Some scientists say that the cognitive model of religion is compatible with belief in God. 一些科学家说，宗教的认知模式与对上帝的信仰是相容的。」
「Jesse Bering of Queen’s University, Belfast. “I’m arguing there are no atheists proper.” Jesse Bering。 “我认为没有无神论者是合适的。”」
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