There are different variations. The Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in immaterial souls separate from the body. All life occurs as a material body. They get rid of hell too. Rather sensible, I think.
I couldn’t quite tell from your comments whether you’re referring to people with similar beliefs to the Witnesses, or people who say you have a soul, but it (waits around? exists but has no sensation?) until God gives it a shiny new body.
I assume there are all conceivable permutations of when/where/how/if souls exist, and I don’t have a stand on whether the first Christians believed in immaterial souls or not. Maybe some did, some didn’t? Truth be told, I was thinking about a thousand years back, by which time I believe an immaterial soul was taken as given through most of Christendom. Mind body dualism seems to go a long ways back with animism, ghosts, and spirits. What do you have to say about the general history of materialism versus dualism?
It is similar to the Witnesses as far as your description goes, though I am not very familiar with JW’s beliefs to comment further on the similarities.
My only point was that this is an old idea (that you need a body to function and that you get given a new body of some wondrous sort upon death), and not one contrived as an escape from the physicalists death blow. The debate is over and done for me, and I as you see the moves of the dualist as always failing to substantiate the additional substance.
There are different variations. The Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in immaterial souls separate from the body. All life occurs as a material body. They get rid of hell too. Rather sensible, I think.
I couldn’t quite tell from your comments whether you’re referring to people with similar beliefs to the Witnesses, or people who say you have a soul, but it (waits around? exists but has no sensation?) until God gives it a shiny new body.
I assume there are all conceivable permutations of when/where/how/if souls exist, and I don’t have a stand on whether the first Christians believed in immaterial souls or not. Maybe some did, some didn’t? Truth be told, I was thinking about a thousand years back, by which time I believe an immaterial soul was taken as given through most of Christendom. Mind body dualism seems to go a long ways back with animism, ghosts, and spirits. What do you have to say about the general history of materialism versus dualism?
It is similar to the Witnesses as far as your description goes, though I am not very familiar with JW’s beliefs to comment further on the similarities.
My only point was that this is an old idea (that you need a body to function and that you get given a new body of some wondrous sort upon death), and not one contrived as an escape from the physicalists death blow. The debate is over and done for me, and I as you see the moves of the dualist as always failing to substantiate the additional substance.