"So to answer your question, YES human thought is an ORGANIC process. Purely driven by electrochemical reactions and logically replicable by any sophisticated computer." This is simply not known, because there is no way to measure thought itself. Show me a computer that is capable of self programming without a program already written to instruct the computer to follow a program for self programming. Show me a computer that is sentient. "the short answer is that the "soul" is a human construct." You are entitled to your opinion, but since you cannot even properly define what a soul would be or how to exclude it from physical measurements, you have nothing but your own opinion on the matter, nothing even resembling fact of non soul. You can measure electrical impulses, but you cannot measure thoughts themselves. You don't know the color, size, weight, dimension, or any other physical characteristic of any particular thought...because thoughts don't have any physical properties. Since you cannot measure the thought, you cannot know that the thoughts don't continue in some way after death, or that there is some other mechanism involved with the generation of thoughts that is not physical as physical is known. If a radio transmitter shuts down, does that end the previous transmissions? Or do they continue on? If a radio is broken, does that mean the radio waves are no longer in the room? I assume you believe in psychosomatic illness. So by merely thinking some thoughts it has an impact on the body, but we cannot measure anything but the body. There is doubtless a connection between mind and body, but that connection has never been measured or observed through any physical instrumentation. Additionally, every measurement is then known only in the mind through the senses, and the ideas about the meaning of the measurement come into play, and those ideas are not the product of simple chemical reactions...so we have no objective test on the mind, as the mind is intimately involved in all measurements and reading the results of measurements, and then coming to conclusions and interpretations of what the measurements mean. There is no getting away from it, the mind is always there and there is no way to have some objective physical measure of the mind or ideas, concepts, etc. No, the mind is not physical as we can not measure it with physical instruments. The mind and body are linked of course, but since there is no way to measure the mind itself, there is no way to know if the mind continues or not after the death of the body. Look, let's get down to brass tax. Mathematics is essentially a mental discipline. The purely abstract ideas and concepts of mathematicians are not physical or measurable with physical instrumentation. No machine has actually measured the value of a negative number because negative numbers don't exist outside of the mind and the mental field of mathematics. No infinite set has been observed by the senses, no one has seen the infinite points on a line, no one has found or observed all the possible prime numbers, etc. These mathematical properties have no physical properties at all, though there certainly is a connection between mathematics and the physical world as we have seen the world follows sequences that can be understood through mathematical properties. However, they transcend the physical world. If all humans ceased to exist, would the mathematical proofs and theories produced by humans cease to be real or exist? No, as they are not dependent on the physical human being for their truth or existence. They transcend the physical. They are as close to pure thought as we get, just like some philosophy and metaphysical thought is purely abstract and non physical. When you find physical instrumentation to measure the physical properties of ideas and concepts, precepts, axioms, etc. let me know... So the mind and body are not the same, and since we cannot measure the mind, human consciousness, ideas, emotions, feelings with physical instrumentation, it is not reasonable to say they end just because the body dies. That human body may not be capable of experiencing the mental realm after death, so we don't know if the mental realm itself continues on or not...and we don't know if it merely migrates to a new physical body.
You need to do some research on current AI. Thoughts are currently being measured as are emotions as are ALL brain activities. This not supposition or speculation, this is real, evidence based fact. A machine CAN read your thoughts. If you are not aware of this then your statements are not informed. If you choose to ignore this information then I can only do my best by bringing scientific publications to your attention and hope that you carefully examine the information being presented. Let me say this, you do not have a scientific background and your argument regarding mathematical abstraction falls apart given applied math and engineering. Engineering is where the rubber meets the road and we can engineer a human brain that is identical in its logical mechanism. It is being done, it has been done and will only get better with time. I understand the desire to believe in a higher being/power. I have this desire as it is a very human desire. I also understand that there is much we do not understand. That said - basic electrochemical processes are not a part of the unknown. We are a biological organism that is no different for any other carbon based life form we know about. This leads down the path of what other life forms exist that we don't know about but that is not the point of this discussion. The point is that the human being is a very simple organism wherein every process has a reasonable explanation - brain activity included. If you choose to ignore this - as I believe one would need to in order to further the theism hypothesis, then, one is doing themselves a disservice by purposefully ignoring newly gained knowledge and the benefits of that knowledge.
I realize that you want to project yourself as some expert, but it doesn't wash at all...at least with me. You cannot tell what particular computer program is being run, or where it is in the process of running a particular program by measuring the electrical impulses in the CPU, and you want to say that you can measure the physical properties of thoughts by measuring brain activity? Sorry, but that is just nonsense. The human brain is infinitely more sophisticated than the most advanced computer, and until you can build a human brain from scratch... Well, the "science" is just not making a valid argument that you are presenting... I am not saying there is not a relationship between the impulses in the brain and the thoughts, there definitely is, but just like mathematical concepts transcend physical existence, so too does the mental transcend the physical. Destroy the entire physical existence and you are not destroying the mathematical concepts that are the foundation of the physical universe. Destroy the physical, and do all axioms that also vanish? Even in a state of complete nothingness (which could never be physically measured) mathematical concepts would continue. No one may be able to hear the tree fall, but it does make a sound. Axioms and certain truths were never born, eternal truths are discovered, never created. Before anything comes into existence, the potential for that existence preceded it. This potential even when actualized does not vanish, it remains as a foundation for the physical. Destroy the physical, and what gave rise to the physical, which is not itself physical, the pure potential for the physical remains. The physical is created and could cease to exist because that is its nature. Not so with the mental field to our knowledge, because we have no way to measure the mental dimension with physical instruments. We measure physical with physical, there are no mental instruments to measure instruments except our own mind, and that is self referral and therefore entirely subjective.
I've never met anyone with less common sense than someone who is immersed in scientific research... LOL!!! LOL!!! LOL!!! They never see the forest for the trees...
EVERYONE thinks their 'common sense' notions are unsurpassed. why should you be any different those "immersed in scientific research" are in the biz of PROVING their assumptions. i'm not surprised this foreign to you
Optional, I am not a philosopher nor do I claim expert status in the philosophy of human/machine interaction. Bart Kosko on the other hand, who wrote the book I recommended, is an expert. Please - no matter what you think of me at this point - read the book. It will be worth your time. Philosophy is not my strong suit and you're getting philosophical. What I am telling you are facts, I don't argue philosophy as it is not a science.
It bears repeating: A guy may spend his life studying a tree but he still has no clue about the forest unless he gets a holistic perspective... Too dense 4 wurds (sic) you is... Please child, at least try to put up a challenge... LOL!! LOL!! LOL!!