From: ata@hfsi.uucp (John Ata FSO)
Subject: Re: Soul
Organization: HFS, Inc.
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 22:45:25 GMT

In article <1992Sep14.061326.25556@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com> max@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com (Max Webb) writes:
>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...

Again, just because its the same word that doesn't mean it has to have the
same meaning.  If you concede that the translators did an accurate job
in translating PSYCHE -> LIFE (which your previous article indicated), then
there is no problem, right?

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

Perhaps there is an interaction there, can you say there isn't? :)

>
>>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.

And what do you base this falseness on?

>
>>  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?
>

No, actually it sounds to me like you don't like non-physcial entities and
have convinced yourself that everything is verifiable materially one
way or another.  And if its not, then it doesn't exist.  Sounds like you've
put yourself in the position of never accepting anything other than 
verifiable scientific knowledge.

>	Max G. Webb


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