From: max@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com (Max Webb)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Soul
Date: 14 Sep 92 06:13:26 GMT
Article-I.D.: hilbert.1992Sep14.061326.25556
Organization: Cypress Semiconductor Northwest, Beaverton Oregon

In article <1992Sep13.033940.14207@hfsi.uucp> ata@hfsi.UUCP (John Ata FSO) writes:
>In article <1992Sep12.014420.9837@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com> max@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com (Max Webb) writes:
>>Consider: Is it lawful ... to save psyche, or to destroy? (Mark 3:4)
>>[verses deleted - psyche as life in toto]
>>
>>These verses are much more closely translated if psyche -> life,
>>...In other cases, the modern word 'soul' is used. Sometimes, 'heart'
>>is used.
>
>I am not trying to be difficult but if "life" is the more accurate
>word there, what is your point?  Why did you bother to substitute
>"psyche" for it? 

You talk as if the original was in English. PSYCHE is the word you refer to as
'soul'; when you point at all those usages of soul throughout
the Bible, you are actually referring to PSYCHE, and you should
be including the above verses. Since your translaters are mapping
into our language, with it's concepts, the concept of life and soul
are teased apart. Not so in the original...

>>In article <LEET.92Sep9095010@dove.ims.com> leet@ims.com (Lee Thomas) writes:
>>see how broad the notion of soul was. It is shown as knowing
>>love, hate, elation, depression, ... dreams,... most of which are no
>>longer considered part of the activities of the soul.
>
>You are assuming that because the authors of the bible stressed a
>certain property of the soul that that is the only thing they had
>in mind.  I find this curious.  For example, because Genesis

Read for content; they felt the soul animated our bodies, moved
the limbs around. It doesn't. I did not assume any such thing -
I am pointing the historically contracting role of the concept.

>So even in
>ordinary modern English, attributing emotions to the word soul
>seems to be acceptable.

_BECAUSE_ of prior usage in the bible. Do you really think dreaming
is a function of the soul?

>There have been numerous additions, refinements and pruning off of ideas
>of what the soul is...

Thank you that is my point. I would contend that the trend has in
general been pruning, for a long time.

>Yes, Genesis stresses that God
>infused the soul as a breath into the physical body of Adam.  But could
>it not be said that God does the same every time a child is born?  And
>yet I don't see how that detracts from the definition.

It is a statement that detracts from the definition by virtue of
being false. Poetry that passes itself off as fact for thousands
of years is pernicious stuff.

>>[You suppose]that what remains in the soul is out of reach of the tools of the
>>scientist. Wrongo, bucko; if the soul has an effect on the body,
>>then that is a thread of causality and testability that the scientist
>>can tug on; if not, then you cherish an empty bag.
>

>  As a crude example,
>let us say that there is an invisible, undetectable electric meter
>measuring the electricity in my computer.

Undetectable == Cannot detect. If nothing else, you will force what
we perceive as a QM wave collapse. Come on. You've got to hook it in
some how. You can make the interface hard to find in your model, but to
what end? Just so you have an answer when skeptics question? And when
we do end up figuring out how to detect it, as our knowledge advances
[this HAS already happened a few times] will you just come up with
some model even more fiendishly contrived to be difficult to test?

Doesn't this smell at all fishy to you? How many times do we have
to go through this cycle before we stop trying to prop up religiously
motivated assumptions?

>-- 
>John G. Ata - Technical Consultant | Internet:     ata@hfsi.com

Regards,
	Max G. Webb