I do not subscribe to any religion, but I have done enough reading in this subject and I will share the reasons why a soul cannot be destroyed by any means, therefore it goes on living after life.
The first argument is quite simple. It's a traditional Scholastic argument for an immortal soul, taken from the presence of two operations which are not operations of the body. Basically, the body does not do these things, so there must be something else, what we would call a 'soul' creating these operations:
1. Abstract thinking, as distinct from external sensing and internal imagining; and
2. deliberate, rational willing, as distinct from instinctive desiring.
Human thought is not limited to sense images like pyramids; it can understand abstract universal principles like triangles. And my choices are not limited to my body's desires and instincts. I think, I feel, therefore I am.
Still another power of the soul which indicates that it is not a part or function of the physical body and therefore not subject to its laws and its mortality is the power to objectify its body. For example, I can know a stone only because I am more than a stone. I can remember my past. (My present is alive; my past is dead and my future is created in my head through thought.) I can know and love my body only because I am more than my body. As the projecting machine must be more than the images projected, the knower must be more than the objects known. Therefore I am more than my body. I am a soul!
Another quite simple piece of evidence for the presence of an immaterial reality, or soul, in us which is not subject to the laws of matter and its death, is the daily experience of real magic: the power of mind over matter. Put it this way, every time I deliberately move my arm, I do magic. However, if there were no mind and will commanding the arm, only muscles; if there were muscles and a nervous system and even a brain but no conscious mind commanding them; then the arm could not rise unless it were lighter than air. When the body dies, its arms no longer move; the body reverts to obedience to merely material laws, like a sword dropped by a swordsman. Our body is the sword, our soul the swordsman.
Still another argument from the nature of soul is that it does not have quantifiable, countable parts as matter does. You can cut a body in half but not a soul; you can't have half a soul. It is not extended in space. You don't cut an inch off your soul when you get a haircut. Yes this can be used as evidence as to why we do not have a soul, but on the contrary. Since a soul has no parts, it cannot be decomposed as a body can. Whatever is composed of parts can be decomposed: a molecule into atoms, a cell into molecules, an organ into cells, a body into organs, a person into body and soul. But soul is not composed, therefore not decomposable. It could die only by being annihilated as a whole. But this would be contrary to a basic law of the universe: that nothing simply and absolutely vanishes, just as nothing simply pops into existence with no cause. But if the soul dies neither in parts nor as a whole by annihilation, then it does not die. What is the smallest part of an atom when you split it? No longer matter, so what is it? Upon dying matter dies. When matter dies, atoms transform into photons (= energy), where does all the aggregated energy of your trillions of atoms go then if energy never dies? Phew.
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I do not subscribe to any religion, but I have done enough reading in this subject and I will share the reasons why a soul cannot be destroyed by any means, therefore it goes on living after life.
The first argument is quite simple. It's a traditional Scholastic argument for an immortal soul, taken from the presence of two operations which are not operations of the body. Basically, the body does not do these things, so there must be something else, what we would call a 'soul' creating these operations:
1. Abstract thinking, as distinct from external sensing and internal imagining; and
2. deliberate, rational willing, as distinct from instinctive desiring.
Human thought is not limited to sense images like pyramids; it can understand abstract universal principles like triangles. And my choices are not limited to my body's desires and instincts. I think, I feel, therefore I am.
Still another power of the soul which indicates that it is not a part or function of the physical body and therefore not subject to its laws and its mortality is the power to objectify its body. For example, I can know a stone only because I am more than a stone. I can remember my past. (My present is alive; my past is dead and my future is created in my head through thought.) I can know and love my body only because I am more than my body. As the projecting machine must be more than the images projected, the knower must be more than the objects known. Therefore I am more than my body. I am a soul!
Another quite simple piece of evidence for the presence of an immaterial reality, or soul, in us which is not subject to the laws of matter and its death, is the daily experience of real magic: the power of mind over matter. Put it this way, every time I deliberately move my arm, I do magic. However, if there were no mind and will commanding the arm, only muscles; if there were muscles and a nervous system and even a brain but no conscious mind commanding them; then the arm could not rise unless it were lighter than air. When the body dies, its arms no longer move; the body reverts to obedience to merely material laws, like a sword dropped by a swordsman. Our body is the sword, our soul the swordsman.
Still another argument from the nature of soul is that it does not have quantifiable, countable parts as matter does. You can cut a body in half but not a soul; you can't have half a soul. It is not extended in space. You don't cut an inch off your soul when you get a haircut. Yes this can be used as evidence as to why we do not have a soul, but on the contrary. Since a soul has no parts, it cannot be decomposed as a body can. Whatever is composed of parts can be decomposed: a molecule into atoms, a cell into molecules, an organ into cells, a body into organs, a person into body and soul. But soul is not composed, therefore not decomposable. It could die only by being annihilated as a whole. But this would be contrary to a basic law of the universe: that nothing simply and absolutely vanishes, just as nothing simply pops into existence with no cause. But if the soul dies neither in parts nor as a whole by annihilation, then it does not die. What is the smallest part of an atom when you split it? No longer matter, so what is it? Upon dying matter dies. When matter dies, atoms transform into photons (= energy), where does all the aggregated energy of your trillions of atoms go then if energy never dies? Phew.
January 10, 2009 - 3:02pmThis Comment
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