Humans Have Souls

My opponent is incorrect in regards to consciousness. Yes the resolution didn't mention it but it still coincides and I will now refute my opponent's scientific evidence in support of consciousness being physical. Our consciousness AS WE KNOW IT is contingent on the physical however it possibly goes beyond this as my research from Dr. Robert Lanza demonstrated. Spiritual =/= religious. If my opponent wants we can discuss why this is not the case separately however since I am not basing it off spirituality I will not go into depth on the reasoning behind me saying this. The definition of soul states the spiritual OR immaterial part of a human being or animal. It does not say 'and', therefore, I am going with immaterial - not spiritual. Just because something is contingent on something, this does not mean that it is not immaterial. Contingent means 'dependant on' [1]. Imagine there is a human being called A which has a neuron-based brain and is therefore self-aware (if you are super-sceptical and claim that we can’t really know whether A is self-aware, feel free replace A with yourself). Since every neuron in A’s brain is physical and deterministic, there is nothing preventing us (theoretically speaking) from making a perfect copy of it. This also means that we could make an exact copy of the entire brain of A’s and attach it to a body that is also a perfect copy of A’s body – let’s call this new entity B. Now, B itself must be conscious, since lack of consciousness would imply that there must be some other, non-physical quality of A’s which wasn’t “copied” to B, which would contradict the original assumption. Now, let’s say that we put A and B in two separate, controlled environments, so that all of their perceptions get identical inputs (the simplest example would be two dark, isolated rooms with same temperatures and air pressure). The main question arising from this is: what would be the relation of B’s awareness when compared to the original awareness of A? I can see two possible answers: 1) There is no new consciousness created in the process – A’s awareness is that of B’s and vice-versa. 2) B has a separate awareness which is independent of A (although they would obviously have same thoughts and behaviours) Of course, no one could know which of these two would be true (not even A/B), but it is intuitively clear that only one can hold. If we assume that 1) is true, that would imply that consciousness must have some non-physical aspect, since same awareness would be present in two physically separated beings. This contradicts the original assumption of the neuron-based consciousness. On the other hand, 2) would also lead to contradiction, because two identical physical entities produce two different awarenesses. If you can’t immediately get your head around this, imagine that A’s brain was instantly replaced with the newly created brain of B’s. From the physical point of view, nothing in A’s physical composition has been changed, but his awareness has been replaced with that of B’s. This implies that consciousness must be based on something that is outside physical. Unless there is another possible case which I’ve missed, all this would imply that consciousness cannot be based on any physical entity.Now that this is covered, on to Dr.Robert Lanza. My opponent seems to dismiss this entire argument onthe basis that Lanza has been critiqued by many people. This an extremely poor rebuttal. The theory that the Earth is round is still critiqued to this very day [2]. Does that mean that it is false? No. We have strong enough evidence suggesting the contrary to the flat earth society and therefore on this basis we have been able to disprove their arguments. My opponent has not addressed any arguments directly, simply claiming that Lanza is not a physicist without any citation. Lanza knows enough about physics to have his name in the top 100 most influencal people in the world list compiled by TIME'S Magazine [3] based solely upon his theory in regards to consciousness and the multiverse. My opponent then re-states his argument in regards to consciousness' contingency on neurons however this has already been refuted and does NOT stand. To conclude, my opponent has falsely categorized consciousness as physical and therefore his entire rebuttal fails. I thank Con for the debate so far and hope that he can produce a more direct rebuttal in the following round. [1]https://www.google.co.uk...[2]http://www.alaska.net...[3]http://www.robertlanza.com...