Machine or soul?

There is an interesting thread to atheist thinking that goes something like this:
1) There is nothing about us that cannot be explained (in time) in biological terms, including our thought processes and even our personalities. We are simply a biological body/machine, no soul or metaphysical component.
2) Because our actions/thoughts reactions/decisions can be explained (traced to the ‘programme’ we have written for ourselves as we grew up) we are without freewill and therefore in effect sophisticated, apparently autonomous, bio-computers. Implicitly such creatures have no soul, ipso facto no God.

Now some of this seems to make a lot of sense at first. Apparently our brain controls us; some of this control is hard wired (instinctive) such as the fight/flight response. Some of the way we are is determined by our experiences and what we have learned and expresses itself at the sub-conscious or conscious level. Exactly which is which – the old nature vs. nurture debate – is really not of specific interest to me here. It is the consequences that are of interest to me.

There are clear evolutionary advantages in being less dependant on hard wiring and being able to learn – or more specifically to be taught - how best to conduct ourselves. Waiting for, say, our knowledge of how to make fire to become hard wired is clearly less advantageous than being able to pass the knowledge on from generation to generation and within or between communities.

So the evolution of a superior capacity for learning and teaching has been good for us and has led to our ability to dominate other life forms on this planet. Together with learning however comes the ability to do things that may be bad for our (or others) survival in the short or long term, as either individuals or as a species.

I would like to focus on us as individuals and ask if our ability to think is open ended (i.e. we can exercise freewill) or is it constrained by the dictates of evolution and is our “thinking” a deterministic outcome of our “programming”.

In biological terms, if we are still “evolving” - I prefer developing - it is through the accumulation of knowledge and our ability to adapt our environment to us, rather than our biology to the environment. Now is the ability to learn/teach the final step in the evolutionary ladder. Theists believe not, believing that there is a further step in the development of a soul that is eternal and supersedes the physical body – seems like a logical progression to me.

The challenge to this theory is that the atheists argue that we are stuck at the biological computer stage. In support of this position they present research that demonstrates our advancing knowledge of how the brain works – its storage of memories and its decision making and in some cases what they hypothesise is the seat of consciousness.

But what is actually being advanced by those arguments? As I see it, nothing more than an explanation of how the bio-computer that is our brain works and we should draw no metaphysical inference from the science.

What it does ask though is where (if at all) is the dividing line/role between soul and machine?

As this is already a long post I will cut it off here with this most contentious question left hanging. In truth the answer to this may elude us and to debate may be futile, but as we draw a clearer line between machine and soul we should better understand both.

Hamba kahle – peace