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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Souls
Message-ID: <493@spar.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Aug-85 15:46:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.493
Posted: Fri Aug 30 15:46:30 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Sep-85 11:44:06 EDT
References: <1586@pyuxd.UUCP> <1399@umcp-cs.UUCP> <1611@pyuxd.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
Lines: 95

_  Today, using my imaginary free will, I'll be a Wishful Spiritualist.

>>>> >> [Charley]    >>> > [Rich]

>>>Unless you're saying that god just rebuilds us at some time in the future.
>>>  If so, what is "rebuilt"?
>
>> Why not?
>> ..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. 

    I infer from Charley's response "Why not?" that God is the determiner of
    a reconstituted entity's identity. Entirely logical, given the axiom
    of Divine Omniscience that is de rigeur in mystical metaphysics.

    Admittedly, Charley may diverge from garden variety Christianity
    on this issue, but such creativity is commendable, not to mention
    totally logical -- given that resurrection is also an axiom.

    Besides, I bet there are more definitions of "soul" than there are
    of "free will". Here, soul simply means one's telos or final cause,
    which, in this instance, only exists when needed -- perhaps due to
    economy of means.
    
    This stroke of genius simultaneously crucifies two devils -- the
    potentially hellish Malthusian heaven and the eternally cosmic boredom
    of having to exist!

    Instantiation without constipation!!

>>>>    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...

    You mean uncompromising Goedelesque logic:

    6.4312 The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies OUTSIDE
	   space and time. (It is not problems of natural science which have
	   to be solved).

    6.432  HOW the world is, is completely indifferent for what is higher.
	   God does not reveal himself IN the world.

 	   -Wittgenstein, _Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_

    Anyway, for those who think Christian philosophers spend their time
    spewing dogma and counting angels on pins:

	   The white man, says Laurens Van Der Post, came into Africa (and
	   Asia and America for that matter) like a one-eyed giant, bringing
	   with him the characteristic split and blindness which were at
	   once his strength, his torment, and his ruin. With his
	   self-isolated and self-scrutinizing individual mind, Western man
	   was master of concepts and abstractions. 
	   
	   He was king of quantity and the driver of those forcesover which
	   quantitative knowledge gave him supremacy without understanding
	   it, he faced his bodily self as an object which he could not
	   comprehend though he could analyze and tamper with its every
	   part. He submitted to passions which, though he no longer
	   regarded as devils, were nevertheless inscrutable  and objective
	   forces flying at him from the dark outside the little circle
	   illumined by a pragmatic and self complacent moral reason. 
	   
	   The one-eyed giant had science without wisdom, and he broke in
	   upon ancient civilizations which  had wisdom without science.

    	   -Thomas Merton (introduction to _Gandhi_on_Non-Violence_, 1964)

>   The rain ceases, and a bird's clear song suddenly announces the
>   difference btween Heaven and hell.  -- Thomas Merton [really Rich Rosen]

    That, of course, is NOT arrogance...

    The brain ceases, and a nerd's mere fingers automatically announce the
    difference between Real and imaginary -- Rich Rosen [really Not Rich]

         khronos estai ouketi

-blissfully nonexistent