Sam Parnia - Do Persons Have Souls?

Sam I would like to be an immortal Soul who who wouldn't although I am extremely skeptical some who would try to defend that position would use so-called near-death experiences reports of out of- body experiences when theyo people supposedly die as uh justification or corroboratory evidence that there really is an independent Immortal soul of some kind you have studied Consciousness during the during cardiac Aras as an intensive care physician uh H do would you look upon the data that you have as supporting those people who would use near-death experiences to defend an immortal Soul well one of the things that um I think it's important uh from a perspective of science um is to be very precise with what we're talking about um and the issues that we're studying now I as a scientist as a physician you know I um like everyone else of course I'm interested in knowing what happens when we die for two reasons one because I my job is to bring people back and prevent brain damage but also my job is to bring back a person fully conscious with an active mind uh psyche uh and to make sure the soul of the person is back inside of it but what's the problem with the word Soul the problem is that it's very imprecise and IL defined um and it has different meanings to different people so if I may let me just Define what we're talking about um nobody can deny that they have a sense of self they have Robert is Robert Sam is Sam and if you go back in history we see that for thousands of years human beings have been interested in this and again starting from the sort of my perspective from the time of the Greek philosophers they called the self um they called it the psyche and what they meant by the psyche was essentially everything that makes us who we are our thoughts feelings emotions rationality conscience sentiments everything that packaged together makes Robert into who he is and Sam into who he is and the word psyche uh was translated into Soul uh in English and has different obviously derivatives in other countries um and one of the big debates that has been going on from that time well even before but certainly from then onwards until now is not so much uh do we have a psyche you know if I were to say to you you said your skeptical about the soul if I said are you skeptical about having a psyche you would probably say no because most people associate the word psyche with the mind but the soul is something sort of religiously weirdy and then therefore they give an opinion based upon their religious beliefs but actually it's the same thing so even from then until today the debate has been more on what happens to the psyche Consciousness the soul after death and how is it produced is it produced from bodily functions whether the heart or or the brain or wherever or is it something separate so if you look at it that way I think any rational being would not deny that there is a soul in the sense that you wouldn't deny that you are a conscious thinking being that's really what the soul is there's nothing more to it if other people have different definitions of Soul that's not my definition that's not what I'm talking about the soul is the self so scientifically yes um I think we all accept that it exists the question is what happens to it where is it produced from and what happens after death um of course we don't know scientifically how it comes to be that's the big problem of Consciousness that we talk about uh but the evidence certainly from research that is being done in Cardiac Arrest patients people who gone beyond the threshold of death suggest that Consciousness psyche or Soul does not become annihilated um uh when people have uh gone beyond the threshold of death at least not in the early stages of of death so this is a very important distinction you're making that is you're defining Soul as PS which is the self you can make an affirmative strong comment that you that this can exist even though the person is clinically dead for a period of time measured now in hours beyond that you not you can't say but during that time but for other people to use that information to defend their definition of Soul which is this Immortal Soul whether it's a a platonic or religiously based your data does not support that again if I may I have made a very conscious decision not to get involved uh with people's personal beliefs or religion uh in the global sense because if you think about it again those things mean different things to different people if you take even say you take Christianity within Christianity you have multiples of different opinions and Views you apply that across religious views across the world you've got culture all sorts of things mixed up I don't know how our research impacts people's beliefs but what I do think is important is that for the first time in history our opinions and beliefs should be guided by the results of research rather than the way it is today which is that basically you probably have millions or billions of different opinions about what happens when we die so the the Viewpoint that I think is probably most consistent with the results of our research so far is the view expressed by eminent scientists such as Professor Sir John EOL the Nobel Prize winner uh more recently Professor baram alahi who's given a series of lectures at the sborn in Paris which is basically that Consciousness psyche the soul exists yet it's a separate undiscovered entity to the brain it's most likely a very subtle type of nature it's not immaterial it's not weird and magical it's it has some materiality but it's very subtle this is what Professor baram malahi has proposed and that it is who we are um and that it should be studied with the objectivity of science uh rather than the sort of uh vague or you know ways that people discuss it today so at the very best you would say that somebody who believed in an immortal soul in in any one of the incarnations um uh in Christianity or Hinduism or anywhere you find it that at very best your research is neutral on that but it it certainly the way you're defining the the subtle material ity of the psyche that can exist Beyond clinical death that cannot be used to to to confirm the existence of a an immortal Soul as defined by any of these religious groups again I can only explain what our studies are found I can't comment on how it may be interpreted by people um but if somebody's using your data to say that this confirms our data you you you you're not claiming that that's your view I don't know their data as I said there are millions of different opinions about what happens when people die there are millions of different religious interpretations I won't even go there I think if I spent 20 lifetimes I wouldn't be able to find out what we were talking about so I leave that aside and I comment on the data that we have and the data suggests that Consciousness the psyche whatever you want to call it doesn't become annihilated and that it's most consistent with certain scientist viewpoints such as Professor barahi sjn EO the late sjn EO that it it exists it has some type of materiality most likely but it hasn't yet been discovered you know if if we fast forward to 50 years from now and we found a tool that could measure your thoughts then all the debate would be gone because what is consciousness what is the soul it's the amalgamation of all your thoughts your feelings your emotions that is it um the reason why we have all these debates and and if we do do that then there'll probably be no more different religious viewpoints your question would not be quite the way it is today because then everyone would be able to converge on what science has shown about what what happens to Consciousness and what is the soul what happens when we die the fundamental distinction will be if that exists the psyche as you've defined it is it material however subtle and however different it is than what we know now if there's a materiality to it it is in contradiction to the traditional at least religious views and some philosophical views of an immortal soul in a dualistic sense because when you have if you have slight materiality you're in the material world world and and you are wholly distinct from the dualistic Immortal Soul well you and I have been chatting for a little while and one of the things that I mentioned to you is that I actually stay away from philosophy um and the reason for that I'm not a philosopher people use different phrases to describe different things um I'm not able to comment all I can simply say um is that we've made enormous inroads through objective science in determining the relationship between perhaps a relationship between Consciousness psyche or soul and the brain and that it appears that Consciousness there's at least growing evidence to at least rais the question that it's possible uh contrary to many people's beliefs that actually Consciousness the psyche or the soul may continue and may exist independent of brain function what that means beyond that um perhaps we can live another 50 years and have this discussion again in the future uh but I do believe that people's personal religious Phil opical views uh in the future will be guided more and more by uh research such as ours uh and hopefully others

Channel: Closer To Truth

Views: 12,307

Keywords: closer to truth, robert lawrence kuhn, Sam Parnia, souls, consciousness, philosophy

Id: xH4VKrb2Bdc

Length: 9min 39sec (579 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 11 2024