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From: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Souls
Message-ID: <672@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 25-Aug-85 18:58:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: psivax.672
Posted: Sun Aug 25 18:58:34 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Aug-85 09:31:29 EDT
References: <581@utastro.UUCP> <1322@umcp-cs.UUCP> <588@utastro.UUCP>
Reply-To: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
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	Well, I have decided to make my small contribution to this
discussion of souls.  It is interesting to see that nobody in this
discussion has actually looked into the history of the concept of the
soul.  One person at least suggested using a dictionary of philosophy.
I have in fact done something similar, I have checked a Bible
dictionary.  The results are very interesting.  The original concept
usually translated as "soul" was quite different than the modern
popular concept.  The word was used to refer to the emotional makeup
of a person, a person's feelings and reactions as opposed to his
intellect.  This concept has nothing to do with any supernatural
"material" which survives death.  By the time of New Testament writing
the meaning had generalized somewhat to refer to the overall personality.
Even this form has no necessary implication of supernatural existance!
In fact the word seems to have meant more or less what we mean by
"ego" or self.  How the concept came to have its supernaturalistic
baggage I am not certain.  Perhaps it came from Greek dualism.  Thus
my concept of a soul is that it is a term for the basic personality or
character of a person.
	Now how does this bear on the concept ressurection and a new
life.  Obviously this implies that the ressurected person must in some
way be the same as me.  That is it must have my memories and basic
personality traits.  In other words, this person must in some sense be
treatable as a continuation of who I now am.  All this requires is the
existance of the *information* as to who I am.  Some sort of a master
backup copy of my personality would do the job.  Or death could be a
sort of transition to a new type of body.  Or any of a number of other
possibilities, including the idea that God simply remembers who I am
and starts me up again.  Only the last mentioned form is *necessarily*
supernatural.  As my father says(probably quoting someone), the person
can be thought of as the message and the body as the medium, and while
a message generally requires a medium, it is not tied to any
*particular* medium.  Thus this note originated as a series of
electrical variations in a wire, then it got converted into a set of
magnetic domains on a rapidly spinning platter, then back into
electrical variations(and perhaps back and forth several times), and
then next into a pattern of glowing posphor on a CRT screen, and
ultimately into a series of electrochemical shifts in your brain.
Yet through all of this it remains the same message.  Or to put it in
CS terms, the soul can be thought of as the software and the body as
the hardware.  The ressurection is than a case of uploading the system
to improved hardware.

	Well, anyway that is my point of view, you are now free to
comment.
-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

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