A few weeks back I had a conversation IRL, which I am now so-oo sorry not to have on a chat log or e-mail or somewhere. And as it has been bugging me on and off, I had to try to get it out. I might not be able to replicate the dialogue very exactly and I will avoid telling about that other person - so, K., your private thoughts are still safe and I hope you're not mad at me for publishing this.
My memory of the conversation starts with me trying to explain how the issue of soul or life-force was explained in the end of Ender's Saga (Orson Scott Card's series, specifically books "Xenocide" and "Children of the Mind"). Long story short, they find out that there is an aiua (wrong accentuation here) for every living being and every living cell. How some of them are strong and some weaker, how in humans (or any other sentient beings) there is a central aiua holding all of the others together and that way if this aiua is leaving the body the body dies (there are far too many details to the theory and I will not tell about all of it here - if interested, read the books - I am not too sure I got these details I did put here right).
Which made K. ask me whether I do believe in the existence of souls.
This is a tricky matter, but to my mind nobody has explained well enough for me to understand, how a body can be alive if there wasn't a soul of some sort. Somehow I doubt that if some intelligence (our own bio-engineers?) would put together all component parts they would get a living being. Or more pointedly, if there is a person who is for example suffocated and the suffocating agent is removed - why does he or she still remain dead (all physical parts are still the same, unharmed, person has just stopped supporting life for a short while)? So I have to say that I still believe there has to be some kind of soul to every living being. I would welcome it if anyone could point me to an article or other piece of knowledge, which could disprove it to me understandably, but as yet nobody has come out with evidence of that (I admit, I find it hard to believe in soul but I have not explored the subject very throughly as well). Not knowing a way to explain it to myself I put it amongst the things humans have not explained yet. Not to me anyway.
Now you know, this is my piece of superficiality. I do consider very doubtful all the stories about ghosts and life after death etc, but as long as there is no way to definitely disprove their existence I remain ever cautious about the matter but tending to be sceptical.
Somehow the conversation then took us to yet a bigger question - is there a god (or many gods)?
I would vote for No, but - something I haven't heard anyone else saying, something that gets so puzzled looks to missionaries on street (and there is a missionary church near my home) - I think it does not matter if there is a god. What I believe is that god helps those who help themselves. Which in my mind really means - do what you have to do and you might get what you aim for, god or no god. Just praying won't help.
Let me explain it further. Humankind has grown, evolved out of a very primitive state. In my mind it is very similar to how children grow up. At first they are very dependent but then they learn to do things by themselves - from eating to walking to getting food to taking responsibility in life to ... And just as there was a need for a parent in our childhood - someone to depend on, someone to take care of us, to explain the world, to teach us, to love us - primitive peoples found the need for god. So they found or created one. Someone all-mighty, all-knowing and all-loving and all-forgiving. Someone to get counsel from at the time of emergency. Someone to trust in if you couldn't control the situation yourself. It is so good to feel there is some other great plan and your mishaps might be for the benefit of that greater and more important plan. But at this time we know that the prayers are not always answered and the religions have been used for evil as well as support. And why should we pray to a god that doesn't answer? Isn't it better for us just grow up and take our life's, humankind's life's reins into our own hands? I won't deny the right to love god or gods still, just as I love my own parents more and more, but they are more proud of me if I can make it on my own. In fact, in a stage in child's life parents knowingly withdraw their control to let the child make its own mistakes, to find its own feet.
The conversation went to some other path, but what I would like each person to ponder for themselves - religious or not - we have grown so much from our primitive roots that we have a responsibility to all of the world, to all other life as well as our own. The world as the planet and the world as all the countries and states in it. The world as all the people. We have grown smart enough to find ways to cooperate for the better of all. God or no god - we need to get matters under intelligent control. God will help us, if we help ourselves.
I don't know if we ever got to the point where I would try to explain why people should be moral - god or no god, life after death or not. I try to be anyway.
And I really don't remember if we got to discussing the possibility of life after death - or maybe I just waved it off as "there's no way of knowing" (as I would today to that question) or maybe our most delicious Italian food arrived first...
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So long, and thanks for all the comments...
9 comments:
"how a body can be alive if there wasn't a soul of some sort"
Are bacteria alive? If yes - we are from couple months to a year away from first fully man-made bacteria. When does it gain soul? At first living cell? When it divides for the first time?
There is no soul. Furthermore, there is no need for soul.
If you claim that only we, humans, have a soul - what makes us different from other animals? Cognizance? Abstract thought? Humor? Sorry, all ravens, dolphins, chimpanzees, even elephants and dogs have all that to some extent. If we would have bred dogs for intelligence all the time that dogs and men have lived together - scientists estimate that dogs would have equal intelligence to us.
It is nice and comforting to think that we have "something special", that lives on after we die or something that makes us different. But.. I just cannot see that.
Enough of that, I have to work now :P
I think bacteria is just as alive as we are. I don't know about that manmade bacteria though I have heard of the wish to create it. If it really does live then there is room for reconsidering. If it won't... There's too much room for interpretation, among those that somewhere someone did something wrong.
I would like you to explain a bit ore why there is no need for soul...
I'd gladly "explain a bit ore", but unfortunately, I am not as good as you when it comes to writing. Maybe some Lumumbas and lots of philosophy after the movie night next Tuesday?
But as a thought material - why should we even need a soul? If bacteria are alive, how about mitochondria - when they were incorporated into eukaryotic cells, did we gain their souls? Do spermatozoa have each their own tiny soul?
And viruses and prions, subcellular living organisms, do they have soul? When you have a flu, do your cells carry extra souls? And considering you have 10x as much bacterial cells on and in your body when you are healthy, how does having 1000 trillion or 1 quadrillion extra souls in your body affect your soul?
Yes, I am biologist by training, as you well know :P
"But as a thought material - why should we even need a soul?"
To be alive. The body itself is a wondreful machine, and it works. But only when there is some reason, some driving force. I call it soul. Without it the machine is off, dead.
As for where to the limit of what has a soul or what doesn't - plants are alive as are individual cells as are spermatoza, viruses and bacteria. Mitochondria and eukaryotic cells is a bit beyond me to answer - I have barely an applied informatics degree as opposed to your advanced biologist training :) What isn't alive - stones, plastics and other material, if you don't count the bacteria living on and in them.
But about movietime, Lumumbas and philosophy - we'll see, if there is even a movie and the time next Tuesday... And I am not good at arguing orally :D
Fact is, that I don't know the truth, probably noone does, I only can tell what feels right to my intuition. As there is yet no way discovered to measure the existence of such thing, there is also no way to refute its existence. We can only speculate.
You people have invaded my turf... at the first available occassion I promise to try and compress my thoughts on the matter into words and post them here. I can say right now, that I disagree with you both :P
As promised, here are my thoughts on the matter, as I currently understand it.
I'm afraid the post is going to be way too long and not very coherent :)
I have read Ender's Game and afterwards felt no desire to read anything else from Card, however I believe that
your explanations give a good enough idea what he's talking about (sounds like the Force to me).
Anyway, in order to keep this thing short, I'll focus on your beliefs on soul. You ask:
"...how a body can be alive if there wasn't a soul of some sort".
and under soul you seem to understand a motivating force, which is external to body:
"Somehow I doubt that if would put together all component parts they would get a living being. Or more pointedly, if there is a person who is for example suffocated and the suffocating agent is removed - why does he or she still remain dead (all physical parts are still the same, unharmed, person has just stopped supporting life for a short while)?"
This kind of belief is called animism and it is one of the earliest mystical beliefs in humankinds history: belief, that
things are alive and move through the influence of external, invisible forces. (By the way, it existed long before
the belief into Gods and organized religion arose. Ancient people simply believed, that all that moves and changes is alive).
Current scientific understanding is indeed different. Let's imagine a fireplace - fire requires that wood achieves a
certain temperature and that there's a constant flow of oxygen. If you block the flow of oxygen, fire stops and temperature of wood starts to fall. You do not expect logs to start burning again when you re-introduce the oxygen, for in the meantime
another factor - burning temperature is too low.
Similar oxydization process occurs in our cells, only this time its biochemical. Cells also constantly "burn" foodstuffs using oxygen and when fuel or oxygen is missing, cell's "fire" "goes out". Body's regenerative system replaces a dead cell with another.
Why do humans die then? Human body is not just any gathering of cells but a "society" of highly specialised
cells. Certain combinations of cells, known as organs, have taken over certain tasks in it. Other cell combinations
rely on their work in order to keep their own life process going. Heart keeps the "fuel flow" going to ensure the
life process of brain cells. Certain brain cells must constantly direct the beating of the heart.
If an error in this circle occurs, all systems of the body start to collapse one after another until "fire of life"
is gone even in the last cell. In order to revive the body then, you had to "reignite" it *cell by cell*, something
that is beyond the ability of current technology.
The task of the science is to construct theories about reality. A theory, no matter how "nice", has to be abandoned
when we discover facts that can not be explained by it. Ptolemy's geocentric world system explained everything
medieaval human could observe, except why sometimes some stars, fixed on a "chrystal sphere of a heaven" seem to move "backwards". And when more and more astronomers started to think about it, we discovered more and more facts that Ptolemy's
system could not explain - until a new, heliocentric world system was constructed, one that explained away all these tiny
inconvenient observations. :)
Now, in order to abandon the current scientific understanding of life and death in favor of an external (material or immaterial) source for life's process - lets say Card's aiua, Lucas' Force or ancient belief into "animus" - you'd have to present a fact that could not be explained by current theory but could be explained by yours: a resurrection of a dead,
decomposing body (because aiua decided to return in there?) for example, could not be explained by current theory and
would prove it wrong.
Actually I have a lot more to say about your ideas on God (I basically agree) and I also planned to explain where my
worldview differs from that of dukelupus and modern science (I do believe into human spirit that is governed by very different laws from the material brains that generate it). However, the comment is already too long
and when I start there, I won't shut up before good fifty pages of text :) Looks like I have to write a book one day :P
Please, Mongolian DW, spell it out for me - what is the condition that has changed in the body while it was suffocated? To me it seems like it is pro-soul argument - soul has left and therefore there is no life. Maybe when you say "fire of life" you mean the same thing I mean by "soul" because I definately believe that each individual cell is alive.
And I would very much like to read your thoughts on the matter of God, but if it is 50 pages then you probably should start your own blog (or do you already have one?) or really, write a book, and give a reference to it here.
The condition that has changed in body during suffocation is that the oxydization process in cells has stopped
and they can not restart it by themselves. Exactly like fire, once extinguished, can not start
by itself even if you fill the fireplace with wood and paper and ensure that it has access to oxygen.
In order to restart the fire, you need to light a match and create the burning temperature.
In cells we would need to do the biochemical equivalent of the same thing, but in order to revive a completely
dead body, it should be done in all its cells at once - and before the breakdown of cell structure has started.
Unless I get you completely wrong, your Soul is something that is independent of cells, something that can
decide to leave the cells or return as it pleases. At least this is how I understood it - possibly because
I'm too much influenced by my own education on these matters.
When I speak of "fire of life" I mean something that is created *by* the biochemical cell activity. I understood
your Soul as the opposite - something unmeasurable that *causes* the cell activity. When it's there, cells live.
When it decides to leave, cells stop living - but the Soul *itself* continues to exist somewhere.
That is how animists imagine it, anyway. (On a side note, this is how scientists a few centuries ago understood
ordinary fire too - read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston . Is this similar to your theory of soul?)
Now, if I got you wrong and you see the Soul as product of cell activity, there's still the question - what kind
of product? Is it the mystical force field of George Lucas and O.S. Card, unlimited by laws of physics as we
know them, providing a convenient explaination for claims about telekinesis, foresight, telepathy etc?
Or is it just a biochemical process, in essence not different from fire and rust?
I've been thinking about having a blog for a while now, but something always comes in between and I'm also
afraid to say something I might regret later. I have learned the hard way, that if I wish to have a social life,
its better when I shut up most of the time. :)
Actually I don't know about Lucas's Force so comparision to that is wasted on me. And as you haven't read the Card's theory (which I believe he loaned from somewhere as well) yourself then it is better to go on without these analogues.
But you've got me a bit wrong still. I think soul cannot return to the body as it pleases - or otherwise it would and murderers would have to be much more through to kill anyone. I don't know if the soul survives death of the body at all. I don't know if it ever can exist without the body - and I didn't even think of using it to explain telekinesis, foresight, telepathy etc. Or anything at all really, other than my belief that life cannot be just a bunch of chemical reaction.
I don't think soul is something physical, something measurable or identifiable with modern scientific equipment or simple human senses; I don't think it could fit in modern scientific theory. I think science doesn't even think of asking the questions necessary to find the reason for there being a soul (as I could see previously here as well) - and so cannot even start finding it. I cannot formulate the questions myself, but there is an intrinsic feeling of a soul being there. Might be my psychological background, might be the culture room I have grown up in, maybe I so much like to have it here, but even when I have stopped believing in astrology, tarot's, handreading, numerology, etc, I have not been able to convince myself that there is no soul.
Neither have you.
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