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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Souls
Message-ID: <1399@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Aug-85 00:42:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1399
Posted: Tue Aug 27 00:42:50 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Aug-85 11:04:58 EDT
References: <1586@pyuxd.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 66

In article <1586@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes:

>> Fine, then, it's for the last time.  I choose not to believe your
>> assertion, because both you and Padraig refuse to justify it.

>Oh, but we have, Charles.  Language.  Are you aware of language, a consensus
>among people about what sound utterances and scrawls on paper represent.
>Your utterances and scrawls are represented by the word "soul".  What
>possible reason do you have for denying this?  Are you simply trying to
>shirk the baggage that the word entails?  If so, dealing with the same
>CONCEPT (which is represented by that awful word "souls") doesn't let you
>get rid of any baggage.

That's just the point.  I am not dealing with the same concept.  The
existence of a person in some unknown form after death doesn't imply
anything at all about his present condition.  This is precisely why I reject
the word "soul".  It explicitly includes the understanding that this
"essential human" exists supernaturally before death.  I don't see any
reason to believe that "essential human" is always a supernatural entity (or
indeed, anything more than a convenient fiction) during life; and we have no
evidence, objective or otherwise, on which to base claims about its nature
after death.

Simply slapping the word "soul" on my concept is flatly wrong, UNLESS it
already includes all the implications.

>> I find it amusing that two atheists seem to have so much knowledge of the
>> possibilities of the supernatural.  I'm also amused by this persistent
>> fallacy that the existence of something at points A and B in time implies
>> the continued existence of the thing between those times.  I don't know
>> where to begin to criticize Rich's totally spurious lesson in semantics.

>If I got a "spurious lesson in semantics", it must have been Charles here who
>taught it to me.  Whether or not we are atheists is irrelevant.  The word
>soul means the part of person's existence outside of his/her physical body.
>Since you are saying that a part of a person survives after the body is
>gone, you are making reference to a thing that is very adequately and
>accurately described by that awful word "soul".  Unless you're saying that
>god just rebuilds us at some time in the future.  If so, what is "rebuilt"?

Why not?  And how would I know what the next life will be like?  I think
it's quite sufficient to point out that this whole line of discussion came
about because either Rich or Padraig (I forget exactly who) asserted that
Christianity needed souls to get free will (a statement I constested, and
still do, but let's not go into that).  I replyed that you didn't need souls
in Christianity at all.  If Rich is willing to stick forever to precisely to
the definition he gives above, then maybe he has a point.  But he
persistently hangs the assertion that souls exist during our current life.
That assertion I do not accept, since (to give just one counter example) the
soul could be created at death.  In any case, I am not convinced that you
have to have "someplace" to put the "essential human" between lives.

>>    The wind blows where it pleases

>So now Charles attributes will to the wind as well as the forces of nature...

Somehow, I should have expected to see Rich rise to THAT bait.  The phrase
is the title of a chapter in _No Man is an Island_, by Thomas Merton.  It is
about the impossibility of knowing God and the supernature.  This is what
this argument has been about.  I suppose I should have expected Rich to have
the arrogance to claim to understand God.

Charley Wingate  umcp-cs!mangoe

   The rain ceases, and a bird's clear song suddenly announces the
   difference btween Heaven and hell.  -- Thomas Merton