Reflections on the soul
Isaiah 44:24 (NASV): "Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the One who formed you from the womb"
What exactly does it mean to be "formed from the womb"? Clearly a reference to birth and development, but when does that development begin, and what is being developed? Here's what we know: conception of all life on this planet is cellular in nature, whether that's fauna sperm and egg or asexual reproduction or flora pollen or seed or even just cellular division. It's cells, and we know how they work. Cells are made of multiple systems which exist on the molecular level, and molecules are made of elements, and we know how that works too. We can explain the whole process of how a human baby starts and grows, and it's basically the same process as exists in every other mammal or animal or plant species; there is nothing special about human development.
So if that development, that "forming", starts at conception, what is being developed other than just a self-aware primate? And if that is the thing - perhaps it could not be more obvious given that we're discussing the very issue - is that a soul? Clearly, that self-awareness and its depth are the distinguishing factors that no other species on earth has, so something about that constitutes the soul. If the soul is something granted us by the LORD or by any other means, then where does it fit into that brain and neural net and biology and chemistry and particle physics that is you, that is any of us? Is it part of the emergent consciousness whose existence we can already generally explain, or is it something other than that? What evidence do we have of that other something? What are its physical properties? If it has no physical properties, how does it interact with our physical properties? How does it interact with our physical properties in such a way that we have never detected it on any scale via any means of measurement we have ever discovered?
I do not have any answers to those questions, and those answers are required to defend the idea of a soul, of a thing that lives on after the body in which one's consciousness survives ceases to function and even ceases to exist. Because that is the thing which reunites with God for eternity, that thing in addition to the self-aware primate that carries its self-awareness into either eternal bliss or eternal torture. Because I have not found a reasonable and sound explanation for the nature or the requirement for such a thing to exist, nor have countless people far more intelligent than myself, the most reasonable conclusion is that such a thing does not exist, and this consciousness is all the existence that we are ever going to have.
Having no reason to believe souls exist, I see no reason to believe that a creator of such is necessary, either. God is merely the solution to an intellectually immature thought experiment, an answer to the questions of "why am I here?" and "why do I experience the reality I experience?" before the time when our collective of self-aware primates created the technology required to properly answer those questions. The existence of an Entity that will commune with our "other something" whose existence we cannot defend can neither be logically defended. At most, a deist Creator is all that can be reasonably proposed, but even with that there is no reason to assume that a Creator must be a conscious being or need to be one. If the universe has a natural, physically and mathematically sound, creation, a conscious Creator is functionally the same as that blind, natural process.
So why not just have the blind, natural process? Why not just have the self-aware primates whose brains stops working? It seems to be the only rational thing to believe in. And why wouldn't that be enough to believe in?
So if that development, that "forming", starts at conception, what is being developed other than just a self-aware primate? And if that is the thing - perhaps it could not be more obvious given that we're discussing the very issue - is that a soul? Clearly, that self-awareness and its depth are the distinguishing factors that no other species on earth has, so something about that constitutes the soul. If the soul is something granted us by the LORD or by any other means, then where does it fit into that brain and neural net and biology and chemistry and particle physics that is you, that is any of us? Is it part of the emergent consciousness whose existence we can already generally explain, or is it something other than that? What evidence do we have of that other something? What are its physical properties? If it has no physical properties, how does it interact with our physical properties? How does it interact with our physical properties in such a way that we have never detected it on any scale via any means of measurement we have ever discovered?
I do not have any answers to those questions, and those answers are required to defend the idea of a soul, of a thing that lives on after the body in which one's consciousness survives ceases to function and even ceases to exist. Because that is the thing which reunites with God for eternity, that thing in addition to the self-aware primate that carries its self-awareness into either eternal bliss or eternal torture. Because I have not found a reasonable and sound explanation for the nature or the requirement for such a thing to exist, nor have countless people far more intelligent than myself, the most reasonable conclusion is that such a thing does not exist, and this consciousness is all the existence that we are ever going to have.
Having no reason to believe souls exist, I see no reason to believe that a creator of such is necessary, either. God is merely the solution to an intellectually immature thought experiment, an answer to the questions of "why am I here?" and "why do I experience the reality I experience?" before the time when our collective of self-aware primates created the technology required to properly answer those questions. The existence of an Entity that will commune with our "other something" whose existence we cannot defend can neither be logically defended. At most, a deist Creator is all that can be reasonably proposed, but even with that there is no reason to assume that a Creator must be a conscious being or need to be one. If the universe has a natural, physically and mathematically sound, creation, a conscious Creator is functionally the same as that blind, natural process.
So why not just have the blind, natural process? Why not just have the self-aware primates whose brains stops working? It seems to be the only rational thing to believe in. And why wouldn't that be enough to believe in?
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