“Darkness is Death’s ignorance, and the Devil’s time.” – Godfather of Soul
What is a soul? Is there such a thing? Or is it an old placeholder like God?
Since science is based on empiric observations, and the soul has been generally linked to and observed with neurological activity, one could easily define ‘soul’ as the relatively unique personality or personal mental traits belonging to an individual. But as cool as neurology is, this is dry and boring, let’s go deeper.
There is one extremely important bit in the previous point – a soul is for an individual. It defines who we are by our personalities and values we hold dear. SG-1 even went the extra mile by saying that a soul can exist indefinitely as pure energy, therefore not needing a rotting body. In SG-1, a soul could actually recreate its body. In common fiction, a soul tends to retain memories as well as personality, emotions, etc. This is particularly curious as a soul appears to be immaterial, thus it has no obvious way of storing all that information.
A solution to the data storage problem is to limit the soul to a particular body. This would not explain all the out-of-body experiences we have throughout our lives (the moments we see ourselves from a spot about 5-20 metres away doing something or going somewhere that only happen for mere moments), but it would solve the data problems – everything can be accessed from our memory. This comes dangerously close to the neurological explanation as limiting the soul to a body, and therefore a brain, brings up the problem of magnetic coercing and temporary changes in personality and judgement due to aimed magnetic pulses hitting certain parts of the brain. A simple enough problem that leads to a dead end on our quest for the soul.
Therefore we should assume that a soul is not limited to a brain, therefore not merely a neurological effect of a specific brain’s structure. In this case, out of body experiences, reincarnations and Saving Hope are quite sensible options – in the first case the soul is no longer contained in the mind, gets out, wants back in in order not to perish, and does. A mind is necessary for a soul, but a soul can inhabit more than one mind during its existence. In addition, apparently new souls manifest and many old souls cease to exist. Reincarnation would be caused by an out of body experience where returning to the mind is impossible, which would mean either one of two things happen. The first being the soul perishes due to a lack of a support structure (mind), the second being that the soul finds a fresh mind, a mind of a newborn. Whether that mind is already inhabited by a soul or not is up for theological debate (as is the question of the possibility of a mind accommodating more than one soul, i.e. a split personalities complex).
In this case, we can exclude the option of memories being transferred along with the soul (or, in the best case scenario, extremely few memories). But a personality can be transferred via soul – it takes very little space and its very existence appears to constitute a soul.
This leads to an opportunity for you – what do you want to believe? Do you wish to believe that the soul is merely a result of evolution, a side-effect of complexity… or is it something more, something that can move in time and space but requires a relatively stable environment for continued existence?
So, what do you believe?
No comments:
Post a Comment