1. There is nothing meaningless about the word spirit. As far as i am concerned, there is nothing supernatural about spirit. It is just what we are. You tend to slot words and concepts into natural and supernatural.....accept the former and reject the latter.
If there was nothing meaningless about 'spirit' someone would be able to explain in terms of demonstrable phenomena; to date, that doesn't appear to be the case. I don't separate into natural and supernatural, I separate into demonstrable and not demonstrable - if you continue to claim an effect devoid of a demonstrable cause, you're claiming something supernatural.
2. Nothing mystical about spirit. It is just about the Self. About identifying what WE are beyond the mind and body. You may prefer to assume that we are just the body and the mind as just a product of the bodily processes. People like me don't.
You're begging the question - before you can claim that 'spirit' is the bit beyond mind and body you have to demonstrate that there is something beyond mind and body (notwithstanding the fact that it's not clear there's a distinction to be made between those two at all). I know that you don't accept that limit, but the problem is that you don't appear to be able to justify why not.
3. Again....you assume that mere brain activity is all that we are.
Not assume, conclude. We are demonstrably inextricably and significantly tied to brain activity, and to a lesser extent to other bodily activities which can be shown to influence brain behaviour (i.e. hormone levels, sensory inputs, etc.). In the absence of any demonstration of anything else having a significant impact, it's a reasonable conclusion to think that we are that brain activity.
Many of us believe that we are an entity that possesses consciousness and which occupies the body-mind. There is enough evidence for that assumption.
Then why have you been hiding it for the decade and more that we've been here? Bring this evidence out into the light, stun the worlds of philosophy and physiology, go claim your Templeton Prize and Nobel... Or is it the same old argument from incredulity reheated once more?
4. NDE's are also evidence for the above.
Not good evidence, as I previously noted, given how many other entirely physical explanations there are for the few of these that aren't obviously culturally influenced.
5. I think there is enough evidence that organisms adapt their phenotype to suit their environment with the genotype remaining the same.
Tellingly, though, the people that actually study phenotypes and genotypes and publish evidenced papers on the fact don't think there is enough evidence to support that claim.
6. The idea of natural selection was born from artificial selection. So....it assumes intelligent direction at some level. The purely materialistic idea of random variations was a later creation.
No. Recognising similarities of pattern do not necessitate accepting similarities of cause. If I throw a tennis ball into the Grand Canyon that doesn't mean that every subsequent hailstone must have been launched by an angel.
7. IF we don't know something it does not necessarily mean that the gap will be filled by already known materialistic phenomena.
But every time in history that we've filled a gap in our knowledge we've done it by learning about a material cause for observable phenomena. The gaps for woo to live in have become increasingly small, and increasingly far apart as the boundaries of our knowledge have lit up the darkness. By contrast, we've never come to reliably know anything from mysticism, spirituality or religious explanations, we're expected to just accept on faith. The correct answer is 'we don't know', not magic; unless the answer is 'we do know, here are umpty-million scientific papers that are robust and consistent and wide-ranging enough to ascertain that the theory of evolution is irrefutable - and nothing's guiding it.'
O.
