1.2 Human Nature and the Human Condition

Question 1

What is human nature?

Answer 1

Nature refers to your character, what makes you, u
- everyones has their own specific character that is individual to them

Question 2

What is the christian traditional view of human nature?

Answer 2

Image of God
- we have certain God like qualities
- Rational Moral and spiritually aware
- have free will
Fallen
- means that humans are inclined to sin

Question 3

What are the three different views on Human Nature?

Answer 3

1. Agustine
2. Thomas Aquinas
3. Jean Paul Sartre
4. Agustine
   - Humans are made teo parts, the body and the soul both are necessary for us to be humans and both are created by God
   - Soul is rational and moral while Body is driven by instinct and physical drives, so the soul must guide the body to make rational decisions

Uses the analogy of a horse
- The soul is like the rider steering the animal and body is the horse which carries the soul and acts on impulse
- After the fall the body became rebelloois and often refused to obey the rational soul, CONCUPISENCE

2. Thomas Aquinad
   - More positive slant on human nature compared to Agustine
   - Everyone is created in the image of God and all people are essentially good
   - People never sin deiberately, but the fall damaged peoples ability to use their reason correctly
   - Mistake apparent good for real good
3. Jean Paul Sartre
   - Argued that there is no such thing as human essence or human nature,
   - believes who are are and what we are comes from the choices we make and how we live our lives
   - Believed in Existentialism
   - Famous for saying existence precedes essence, which means your life and choices come first and make your nature, not the other way around

Question 4

Describe the Body Soul and Spirit

Answer 4

Body
- Physical and material part of a human being
- Genesis 2, God creates Adam out of the dust of the earth, so out of physical stuff
- In ancient Greek physical body was regarded as something that dragged the soul down and distracted it from the pursuit of higher things
- Life in the afterlife will involve the body as well as soul
- The resurrected Body will be different in that it will not be perishable

Soul
- Old testament hebrew word was Nephesh, means “life force” or “life”
- Genesis 3 when God breathes into Adam he becomes a living soul
- New Testament Greek word “Psyche” often means character or personality
- All living beings have a life force or character.

Spirit
- Hebrew word “Ru’ach” and Greek word “Pneuma”
- Usually understood as the non material stuff
- Angels and God are generally believed vy Christians to be purely spiritual beings except when God is incarnated as Jesus when he has a physical body

Question 5

What do different cultures/religion say of Immortality?

Answer 5

The Bible
- Eccleiastes 12:7 says that at death, “the dust returns to the earth just as it happened to be and the spirit itself returns to the true God who gave it”
- Paul says that in the afterlife natural bodies will be replaced by spiritual bodies, if the spirit cannot decay get ill or die, then it seems natural that it would automatically survive

For the Greeks
- Soul is immortal and would return to the spiritual world of ideas, once freed from the body that dragged it down and kept it, prisoner in the material world

For the Traditional Jews
- No dualistic world view and the idea of an immortal soul was not present
- living beings have a life force but it dies when they do

For Modern Christians
- Believe that the soul is naturally immortal

Question 6

Why some people believe in a soul?

Answer 6

1. Near desth experiences prove that consciousness does not come from the brain, consciousness survives death, thus consciousness must come from the soul
   - Remebered past lives, could ve used to make a similar point
   - Bible says humans have spiritual souls
   - There is nothing physical that stays the same
   - explains why people have a moral conscience
   - If we have a spiritual part, that is not subject to the physical biological and chemical laws of the universe, then free will becomes possible

Question 7

Describe the Physicalist View and Physicalism as a whole

Answer 7

• people who believe that only physical things exist, they reject any belief in the spiritual elements of the world
• Say that none of the so called evidence is for the soul is convincing. it is anecdotal, subjective and hard to test
• argue that things like religious experiences can be explained in terms of brain activity
• No hard evidences for a soul, no hint of a soul had ever been found in operations or dissections
• evidence is weak, because it is subjective and hard to repeat in controlled circumstances
• there is usually a clear possible rational explanation for things
• Belief in the soul is a likely just to be wishful thinking according to Feuberbach