From: msavasti@telesciences.com (Michael Savastio)
Subject: RE: Soul
Summary: Existence of soul cannot be disproven with science, was not disproven by Cormier
Keywords: Traducianism, Pineal gland, Exispencilism, Remote control
Organization: TeleSciences CO Systems, Inc.
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 01:14:20 GMT


In article <1992Aug30.024256.7153@r-node.gts.org> Marc.Cormier%nautical@r-node.gts.org (Marc Cormier) writes:
   
>   Since most religions require a spirit or soul to survive death, a way to
>prove the inexistence of such an entity is to take all its'[sic] attributed
>characteristics and prove them to be purely physical and biological in
>nature. 
>   Among the many characteristics attributed to the Human soul (according to
>christian, judaic and islamic religions) are the following:
>   Thought, Reasoning, Emotions, Personality, Animator of the being, and so
>on. 
>    
>    However all (ALL!) of the above charactersitics of the Soul are
>perfectly explainable in RATIONAL Scientific terms. Namely Biochemistry, and
>Biology. All thought processes are Biochemical and physiological in nature.

Biochemistry and Biology are sciences and thus are concerned only with
observable phenomena and not with insensible sources of the phenomena.
Anyone who tries to prove or disprove the existence or nonexistence of
God, the soul, or any other insensible entity using science is just using
the wrong tool for the job.

It is true enough that the characteristics of the soul which you listed above
can be attributed to natural chemical reactions in the body.  But this does
not necessarily give evidence that the soul does not exist.  If I'm not
mistaken, the doctrine of traducianism states that there is a distinction 
between the soul and the spirit, and that the soul, in part, is inherited 
from one's parents.  To use an analogy, the body is merely a machine designed 
to operate in the physical universe.  The spirit exists in an invisible
universe and directs the body by "remote-control".  The soul would be the
interface between the body and the spirit.

In other words, the spirit has rudimentary desires such as love and hatred.
It communicates these desires to the spiritual side of the soul, which in turn
translates those desires to the physical universe so that the body can take
appropriate action.  It is entirely possible (and even likely) that the
signal gets corrupted somewhere along the path from the spirit to the body.
Thus, a person with a defective machine may carry out his rudimentary hatred 
by driving his truck into a restaurant and shooting two dozen people, whereas
a person with a sophisticated machine will carry out the same hatred of others
by taking their names off his Christmas card list.  This is consistent with
the Christian idea that sin is sin when it is conceived in the heart (ie,       
spirit ==> soul) regardless of whether it has been carried out by the body.

What the biologist sees in the laboratory is simply the response of the body
to the spirit's commands.  We can't see the spirit with scientific methods
and shouldn't even try.


>    Today's religious and philosophically enclined theologians will probably
>push the soul into the realms of the unattainable world. A obvious and
>logical choice. The last resort. Just as God has been pushed from beyond the
>far hills, to the depths of oceans to the end of the universe, so has the
>soul gone from the heart to the blood, to the brain, and the pineal gland.
>Now it has nowhere to go. It does not exist...

Don't come to that conclusion so quickly.  Maybe the soul is being pushed to
unattainable realms by philosophical theologians like myself because that's
where it's always belonged and we've just been wrong in the past in putting
it elsewhere.


>    Finally if there is no soul, why do we need anything else including...
>.... GOD? Is this line of reasoning faulty, if so please respond.

The reasoning is faulty as far as reasoning goes (since you haven't
established that the existence of God is utterly dependent on the existence
of the soul), but practically speaking, I'll have to agree with you.  If
there is no soul, why do we need anything else, including laws, morality, 
science, or sci.skeptic?  You're suggesting that everything we do, including
every decision we make, is merely the result of chemical reactions in our
bodies, which is determined by the laws of science.  This means that the
will is just a myth.  Otherwise, what does your will consist of?  If your
system of belief is correct, then what is the fundamental difference between
my decision to pick up a pencil and someone else's decision to pull a
trigger?  Each of us is doing only what the bouncing molecules in our heads
have determined we should do, and neither of us has done anything more than
relocate some other molecules.  I'm seriously interested in knowing why you
bother to obey moral laws and why you are motivated to do anything if the
genesis of your decisions is nothing more than the laws of physics.

I read Paine's _Age_of_Reason_ out of curiosity and agree with him on this
point:  Some things are hard to believe, but we have to believe them because
the alternative is *impossible* to believe.  I believe in the existence of
a spirit and soul because the alternative is pointless and inconceivable to
me.
--
                          The above opinions are mine and cannot be held
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