Excerpt:
The question of the soul is eternal. I’m not even sure people know
exactly what the soul is. There are too many answers for that one question.
Each answer is less and less satisfying. Really I expected something much more
concrete, but each answer sounds like a guess. Even the experts seem to be grappling
with the question. Somehow that doesn’t seem right. I feel that if someone can
spout religious doctrine with a measure of confidence, the question of the soul
is a no-brainer.
The inability to answer the question
or an answer that includes the phrase “mysterious ways,” is just not good
enough. Still, it seems like every answer is one-third science, one-third
spirituality and one-third confusion. There is no hard and fast answer, except
that most people agree that they have a soul.
If we let ourselves be guided by
movies, it is apparent that a soul has material value. It can be bartered or
sold. It can be tainted or irredeemably lost. And if the soul is held
synonymous with the conscience, does that mean that a sociopathic person has no
soul? What about coma patients? What about someone that can still walk and talk
and lacks a sense of self? Are we getting into zombie territory? And since most
people would agree that zombies are fictional, does that mean that souls are as
well?
One also has to wonder about the soul
leaving the body. Without playing Dr. Duncan MacDougall and trying to determine
the mass of a soul, forgetting to account for other factors, like absolute
repose and gas. I’m not saying that gas has density, but it certainly has
volume. It might mean something or nothing at all. And lets say the soul can
and does leave the body, where does it go? If a good soul goes to heaven and a
bad soul goes to hell, does that mean that bad people walk around with tainted
souls irredeemably marred?
I read somewhere that a soul can move
out of its body and into another. This thing I read said it was easier in
water, as if water were the perfect conductor for electricity and some
non-corporal ethereal part of the self. Who knows maybe the soul travels
through bioelectric energy? We’ve got that.
So where is he now? Did he just die?
Or did he travel?
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