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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Souls
Message-ID: <1611@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Aug-85 13:13:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1611
Posted: Wed Aug 28 13:13:07 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Aug-85 08:34:45 EDT
References: <1586@pyuxd.UUCP> <1399@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week
Lines: 42

>>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.

Fine.  Then you are obliged to explain what it is that makes the "person"
at time A the SAME "person" at time B.

>>>    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.

As opposed to a Christian claiming to understand god, his motives, his actions,
etc.  That, of course, is NOT arrogance...
Charley Wingate  umcp-cs!mangoe

   The rain ceases, and a bird's clear song suddenly announces the
   difference btween Heaven and hell.  -- Thomas Merton
-- 
"There!  I've run rings 'round you logically!"
"Oh, intercourse the penguin!"			Rich Rosen    ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr