Yabby,
Prove to me that the chemistry of the brain by itself controlls any and all attitudes and behaviours independent of - and predetermines all attitudes and behaviours. You are stating the mind is not a free agent of its chemistry, but the chemistry that occurrs in the brain therefore controlls the mind and we are locked into its predetermined chemistry.

I suggest you talk to persons undergoing psychotherapy to control habbits or brain conditions. Our thoughts and attitudes create the conditions of change that occurrs in the brain. Ask persons suffering depression to laugh at anything [an act of will of the mind] and you will find the production of proteins that stimulate health and create change to negative thoughts and brain chemistry.

If your theory is correct people cannot change attitudes and behaviour by will because they are locked into predetermined chemical patterns. I ask is the mind more powerful than the chemistry of healthy humans or are we merely controlled by set brain chemistry?

Yabby you yourself speak outside as an observer of the chemistry of your brain. You prefer to submit to predermined and set brain chemistry I prefer to controll my will. I ask in your case; "Who is the I".

In your theory - people cannot change attitudes and behaviours because we are the products of predetermined chemistry. Therefore theives are free of blame, rapists are free to perform their vile deeds, peadophiles to molest children - they are controlled by mere evolved chemistry they cannot change.

Nonsense!

"Hormones, ligands, peptides, they all affect human behaviour,
we can show that."

Thats what I wrote Philo, not the "control" which you speculated.

There is in fact much competition within the brain, between
various centres. The rational and aware parts, are only a
small section of all that. The massive chemistry which
is happening, affects just about every decision you make,
if you are aware of it or not.

Next part is when in fact there are sections of the brain,
which are not functioning properly, or have been damaged,
as in wars, accidents, various defects etc. Epileptics
do not choose to have a seizure for instance, its just
part of their brain function. They cannot choose not
to have a seizure either.

A book worth reading, written by a well known neuroscientist,
to explain a bit about the brain to you is called
"Phantoms in the Brain". It discusses various medical
cases known to science. I got mine from Amazon.

You are the product of your mind and your brain does what
your mind is. Some of what you do, is voluntary, some not.
Virtually all your thoughts are affected by your brain
chemistry and influence your decision making, even if you
are unware of it.

Dickie just can't help being maternal for instance :)

Philo, Yabby,
There is this thing going around and has been going around for quite some time now, it's giving up ones organs when one leaves this life.
The heart, lungs, kidneys etc are all being given up for possible use for those who are suffering with cancer. How do we know that we have no use of them in the afterlife?
The comment of leaving this world, leaving your body and travel in spirit form, do these "parts" not travel with one?
The chemistry you speak of and are both quite adamant that we take on those chemicals of our forefathers, is very strange to me, one is concieved and the product of two consenting adults, we carry fourth the genes of the two who did the deed, we nor scientists are able to deduce what brains the product has and in today's world of "get it where you can" and "take it when offered on a plate" anything can happen and by my reckoning (with tongue-in-cheek), no-one can tell whether the child will be a maestro, rocket scientist or street bum, beggar. The act of the rich going in search of children to adopt, go first to the gene pool to ensure that what they are getting, will have some brains...WHAT UTTER RUBBISH, WHAT A BUNCH OF CLANDESTINES! These guys must get a life, stop doing what doctors tell them to do and adopt a child that plainly needs a home,(bunch of @rsehooles). Now that I have vented, The whole point is that we are here from evolution, spawned from apes who got it on with some other neanderthal homoerectus, we stood up from all fours and carried on from there, we lost the flat head and hang nails, invented the wilkinson sword, had a shave and became what we call today...man. (and that all in a nutshell) We are born, then we die.

Hey Spanky

Have you heard about Tatti Valo a 23 year old from South Russia?

10 years ago, during a maths class, Tatti surprised her classmates by spontaneously speaking other languages.

Linguists have identified 120 different arcane languages that Tatti now speaks, including 16th century Chinese, Mongolian, Persian and English.

Now, Spanky, we could say she is a reincarnate, however, I doubt any reincarnate would have been sufficiently well-educated to speak 120 different languages - or anyone else for that matter. Perhaps she's many reincarnates?

Perhaps it all a fake. If not, it sure does give one food for thought.

"How do we know that we have no use of them in the afterlife?"

Quite simple Spanky, we see what happens to them, when people
die and become corpses. When that Tsunami killed so many,
corpses everywhere, the evidence was pretty clear :(

Its one big mess, rotting meat, bacteria take over, no difference
to any other species dying really.

A bloke I knew, killed himself in the outback, strung himself
from a tree. When they found him a week later, the blowflies
had moved in, he had become just another carcass with millions
of maggots chewing him up.

So your afterlife speculation is nothing more then that, based
on the evidence. What we do know however, is that it makes people
feel better, to think there is an afterlife and feeling better is
after all what people like to do. However reality does not
go away, when we close our eyes and wish it would.

The value of who we are in attitudes, behaviours and actions is who we are as the Person. "I am" is the person, the chemistry is merely the venue of our personal mortal existence. We take none of the organic chemistry into our spirit of who we are. The spirit of a person has no chemistry, though disfunctional chemistry may restrict a persons potential or activities. For functions we cannot change as humans, because we are mortal humans we are not responsible for these.

We are not accountable for our body chemistry other than to nourish it and keep it free of avoidable toxins, but we ["I"] are accountable for our attitudes, behaviours and motives. It is for these we are held responsible in the afterlife. Unless we change our bad attitudes and behaviours we do face a bleak future.