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From: mrsvr!mrsvr.chandra@uwm.edu (B. Chandramouli)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: Re: Body and Soul?
Message-ID: <1990Sep14.012424.21457@nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 14 Sep 90 01:24:24 GMT
Sender: prabhu@nas.nasa.gov (Dinesh K. Prabhu)
Organization: Ames Research Center
Lines: 41
Approved: prabhu@amelia.nas.nasa.gov


>From article <1990Sep13.000952.27231@nas.nasa.gov>, by hugh@cs.adelaide.edu.au (Hugh Garsden):
> 
> Suppose we accept that there is a soul, and that we are reincarnated. At
> some time, therefore, the soul must enter the body (since it comes
> intact from a previous life). When does it do this? Before we are born?
> After? At the same time? Are there any references in religious texts (please
> give them) on this?
> 
> If we accept there is a soul, but no reincarnation, then this problem
> can be explained away. We can (as one line of argument) say that the soul
> ``grows with'' the body during gestation, in accordance with those who believe
> that all matter has some form of consciousness; so the developing foetus has
> developing consciousness, which could lead to the soul.
> 
> Hugh Garsden

	Let me try to give a pseudo-scientific explanation for the
	first belief using the reasoning you have given for the second one.
	Let us hypothesize that since all matter has some form of
	consciousness, that gene (or whatever lower level sub component of it)
	has this consciousness programmed into it. ( To me this hypothesis
	is not too big a jump from the belief that all matter has some
	form of consciousness). This consciousness is the soul. So in a
	particular gene (population) pool, there are a different number 
	of "souls" simultaneously existing. Hence soul basically does 
	not die away with just the death of one person. For a soul to
	be extinct, then all the people with that soul shold die.

	Thus reincarnation is just a special case of MultiIncarnation 
	according to this "soul is hereditary" argument.

	This brings in questions like "How do you identify two people with
	the same soul?" etc. which is left as an excercise 
	to the reader. :=)

	This is purely a philosophical argument and is not necessarily
	the one I believe as a faith.


	chandra