[lurquer]

Socrates argued that we are born knowing everything, but we forgot most if it. Learning is simply the act of recalling what you once knew.

The point, for this thread, is not whether or not Socrates was correct.

Rather, it’s a warning that we must not confidently assume we are anything like a machine.

We may have souls, we may be eternal, there may be something utterly immaterial at the heart of us.

As we strive to understand the inner-workings of machines that appear, at times, to be human-like, we ought not succumb to the temptation to think of ourselves as machine-like merely in order to convince ourselves (incorrectly) that we understand what’s going on.

[s0ulphire]

We may indeed have souls or be eternal; although I call myself atheist, I don't agree with subscribing with 100% certainty to any idea. As CosmicSkeptic points out everyone holds bad ideas without knowing it, and unless you're open to questioning them you'll never find out.

With that said, there is quite literally zero evidence for the existence of a soul, despite it being posited for thousands of years, and increasing evidence that consciousness is simply a product of a sufficiently connected system. I'll draw an analogy to temperature, which isn't "created", but is a simple consequence of two points in space having different energy levels. I'm sure there's a better analogy that could be made, but I think you get the idea.

[int_19h]

And, conversely, we might just be so full of ourselves that we are willing resort to claims on the immaterial if that's what it takes to not give up the exceptionalism.