On 7 Mrz., 14:17, Slip Disc <[email protected]> wrote:
> I could even be Albert Einstein in my next life. Or Helen of Troy. Or
> my own grand-dad. <<<fran
>
> No fran, that is not how it works, you cannot commandeer the soul of
> someone else. You can only be "you" forever, from here in on out or
> from then on. Even in space time, would you challenge the possibility
> that the soul could retain its integrity? Soul is your being, your
> essence in life, you are who you are because of your soul.
There seem to be things you see clearly, Slip, that I don't see at all
- or maybe it's the other way round. I am who I am because I am who I
am; my consciousness, my experiences, my mind, my body and brain, my
memories, my relationships with others. A unity which I experience as
me. I don't need to call it a soul, because I regard this concept as
superfluous, much as I regard the concept of God as superfluous.
You, fran, can see the difference when you go out and about in the
world around
> you. There is obviously a huge difference between you and many other
> people, and when you ask why is that, which you have at times, you can
> simply attribute it all to the fact that your soul has accumulated
> knowledge and understanding throughout many lifetimes.
I don't see the need to posit any part of what I am as being due to
knowledge and understanding which my "soul" has accumulated throughout
many lifetimes. I am the product of the life I have lived over the
past almost 49 years, starting with the unique genetic mix of my
conception, moving through the development of my body and
consciousness and all that I have experienced in that time, everything
continuously interacting with everything else. I am not who I was ten
years ago, nor who I will be - if I'm still around - in ten years
time. Yet there is continuity here, a continuity consisting of my
consciousness in continual dialogue with my memory and in the
perception of those around me, along with a biological continual
development (even if few of the molecules are still the same after ten
years). But none of this needs some kind of immaterial soul to hold it
together.
It's rather
> simple really. As I said earlier, in this day and age when we have
> microwaves and space travel, computers, cell phones, dvd, cd, etc, I
> find it hard to believe the disbelief in this theory.
> In other words, we can store gobs of information on a piece of plastic
> but we can't have a soul?
The analogy doesn't work, Slip, in my opinion. We don't store the
information on plastic but rather on a magnetic stripe (or an or a
chip on the plastic), where binary code is laid down according to
particular magneto-electrical processes. Even if I don't understand
all the science or engineering involved, I am acquainted with the
basic principles and, if I had the inclination, could learn more about
the details. With the simple use of a magnet I can scramble it all.
The same goes for various techniques involved in modulating the
frequency of particular forms of electromagnetic radiation, such as is
the case in microwave ovens and cell phones. They are physical
phenomena, explainable by science. On a cd or dvd, "data are stored as
a series of tiny indentations known as “pits”, encoded in a tightly
packed spiral track molded into the top of the polycarbonate layer.
The areas between pits are known as “lands”. Each pit is approximately
100 nm deep by 500 nm wide, and varies from 850 nm to 3.5 µm in
length., The spacing between the tracks, the pitch, is 1.6 µm. A CD is
read by focusing a 780 nm wavelength (near infrared) semiconductor
laser through the bottom of the polycarbonate layer. The change in
height between pits and lands results in a difference in intensity in
the light reflected. By measuring the intensity change with a
photodiode, the data can be read from the disc." (Wikipedia) The soul,
whatever it may or may not be, is not subject to this sort of analysis
or discourse.
Francis
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