Do you believe in pre-existence?

[cynatnite]

Pre-existence (also spelled preëxistence), beforelife, or pre-mortal existence refers to the belief that each individual human soul existed before conception, and at conception (or later, depending on when it is believed that the soul enters the body) one of these pre-existent souls enters, or is placed by God, in the body.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-existence

[BlooInBloo]

1. (facepalm)

[cynatnite]

5. Is there a problem? n/t

[Orrex]

2. Since there's no evidence that the soul exists, I don't believe in pre-existence, either

[Howardx]

3. no

[Why Syzygy]

4. Potentially.

Obviously, there is a pre-extant Life Force.

I've pretty much given up on the idea of immortal soul, as commonly used.
Still re-working concepts. Right now it's a known unknown.

[rrneck]

8. What makes it obvious? nt

[Why Syzygy]

10. Life. nt

[rrneck]

11. Got proof? nt

[Why Syzygy]

15. Compare yourself to a corpse.

The difference you observe is, Life, or lack of.

Alternately, view a Nova flick showing sperm swimming like crazy. What is that? Eveready?

[cyborg_jim]

21. A dead battery has the same number of particles

They are just in a different arrangement - the stored energy in the chemicals is expended by undergoing a chemical reaction leaving the overall system in a lower state of energy.

As it is for life: the difference one observes in a corpse is that chemical reactions that enabled the energy required to prevent the system from reaching a state of failure have ceased to function. From the point at which the heart stops circulating blood to enable oxygen to be transported cells in the body begin to die from an inability to respire. As brain cells die the information the brain stops being able to process information normally and the last vestiges of thought ebb away. The heat your body once generated is radiated away. Bacteria, carrion eaters, insects, fungi and the like take over and start pulling apart the system recycling the raw materials for use in their own processes. Eventually all that is left is the bones - and even they will eventually be decayed.

Sure - you can believe otherwise if you want. You can believe anything you like. But what determines whether or not something is alive is pretty much the same thing as what determines whether or not your car can go - are the all the parts functioning normally.

[Why Syzygy]

22. Thanks, yes. I choose to believe there is a difference between Life and Death.

thanks so much


"ceased to function" . And why did they cease? And why did they begin to function originally?
And where does the "energy" originate? What enables the chemicals? Lifeless matter?
Why doesn't a rock have a heartbeat? It is matter. Maybe it does!

And, what of those maggots? No Life there either?
Where does their hunger come from?

[cyborg_jim]

25. I did not say there was no difference between "Life" and "Death"

Merely pointing out that your analysis of these states is simplistic.

And why did they cease?

Any number of reasons that would lead to the inability for normal function to continue.

And why did they begin to function originally?

The system entered a state where such functions could begin to occur.

And where does the "energy" originate?

Either from chemical energy that is unlocked through chemical reactions or from solar energy.

What enables the chemicals?

Energy.

Lifeless matter?

Matter is matter.

Why doesn't a rock have a heartbeat?

It hasn't got a heart.

It is matter. Maybe it does!

A plank of wood does not a door make.

And, what of those maggots? No Life there either? Where does their hunger come from?

These statements do not seem to follow on from anything I've said.

[Why Syzygy]

24. Hey.

Sarah just loves to rearrange all those wolf particles!

"Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's administration increased its aerial wolf killing program this past weekend, which the group Defenders of Wildlife says violates current state regulations. . .The Palin administration considerably escalated its aerial wolf killing spree this past weekend, with full details only becoming clear in the hours after the killing initiated. At least 58 wolves have been killed in the Upper Yukon/Tanana area of Alaska over the past 4 days by Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) staff, which indicates that their target of approximately 250 wolves will be easily met.

The governor is even encouraging the killing of wolves that reside and den mostly on federal land, which belongs to all of us, not just Alaskans. There is no biological emergency in Alaska that warrants such measures."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3789194

[cyborg_jim]

26. I fail to see how this relates to our discussion

Other than as a demonstration as to how chemically propelling a small piece of metal to high speeds can cause catastrophic tissue damage to a biological organism preventing normal life functions continuing.

[rrneck]

27. LOL! You haven't seen me first thing in the morning. Comparison

then would be an exercise in futility.

But in the context of the OP, and in terms of the relationship to the existence of a soul and a deity, there is no objective evidence that either exist at all.

That is not to denigrate faith, belief, or for that matter, religion. On the contrary, without belief (and there are many interchangeable terms we could use here) it would be impossible to be human. Belief is half of the human condition. It's just not the half that reveals physical evidence of its existence.

We can measure energy transfer from the galactic center all the way down to the quantum level. But we will never, ever, measure any first cause that started anything, if there is one. That cause, if it exists, lies beyond the physical universe and the tools contained within it to measure anything.

To be human is to believe, and to test our beliefs against the physical constraints of life in the real world. We must never conflate belief with proof. To do so eventually results in horrible injustices.

[Why Syzygy]

28. You questioned my term, "Life Force"

aka "Energy". .. I think we agree on some issues.

[rrneck]

29. I think so.

I'm working on it m'self.

[Dogmudgeon]

66. Best. R/T. Subthread. EVER.

They don't believe me, either, when I tell them that the vibratory energy of the planets affects the brain, and, ergo, human behavior.

:thumbsup:

--d!

[Silent3]

67. "the vibratory energy of the planets affects the brain"

I sure hope this is a spoof post. It's scary how on "teh intarwebs" you can never be sure. :scared: :crazy: :eyes:

[Dogmudgeon]

72. Nope. It's for real. I can percieve vibratory energy from the planets.

And you can, as well.

--d!

[Silent3]

73. Do you even know what "vibratory" and "energy" mean?

There is light and other electromagnetic waves, and possibly gravitational waves (still theoretical), emanating from the planets, which I suppose could be called "vibratory" in that these things have wavelengths, but you get far larger effects from trucks driving down the street outside your window than you get from the planets.

The "waves" from the planets have no proven special effecst any different than waves emanated from trucks or dogs or basketballs.

But I guess since you "feel it" (in a way totally, I'm sure, indistinguishable from imagining it), that's all ya need to know! :eyes:

[Dogmudgeon]

74. I don't "feel" it. It is real.

In fact, I have used special devices to amplify the effects, too. These devices are pretty low-tech, and can be built by an amateur, but better ones can be bought for several thousand dollars -- they advertise in specialty magazines.

Perceiving the energies involves certain properties -- sometimes described as "spooky" -- that quantum physics has on the human "bodymind". It is completely scientific. Yet the field was begun very long ago by men who somehow stumbled onto these "secrets" and preserved them, usually at great personal risk.

These energies actually do drive the affairs of men. Some spend their entire lifetime involved in this. There is an entire branch of medicine based on it, too.

So don't criticize what you don't understand!

--d!
I'm writing about plain old vision and light. You want the follow-up with snark, or without?

[Silent3]

76. If this is "completely scientific"...

...let's see the peer-reviewed articles discussing "planetary vibrations". Ah, but they're aren't any because the stodgy conspiracy of established science doesn't like to be challenged by these bold new ideas, or something like that, huh?

Okay then, what is it that these "pretty low-tech... built by an amateur" devices are detecting? You call these things "vibrations", so what's their frequency? What's their wavelength? What exactly is it that's vibrating? Do the vibrations Doppler shift as the planets move around? Does each planet emit just one frequency, or multiple frequencies? Does each planet have a unique vibrational signature, and if so, what is it?

[Dogmudgeon]

78. I'll take pity on you

I have been talking about plain old light, vision, and optics.

Go to my last post and highlight the area after my sig (the "--d!"). It's there, too.

Meanwhile, pursuing your kulturkampf against all things mystical, you allowed yourself to fall into the very same trap you ridicule others for. In fact, what you wrote is essentially boilerplate text from Michael Shermer or James Randi, like the part about feeling ("But I guess since you "feel it" ... that's all ya need to know!").

You even hit on the correct interpretation early on -- and then immediately skipped back to debunkery. You wanted to debunk something from a social culture that you can't stand. You nearly blew the scam wide open, but I was able to bring you back into it without effort. Imagine if we had been playing for money.

Crying foul? Check these out ...

-- Miner's "https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/miner.html">Body Ritual Among the Nacirema".

-- The hundreds, maybe thousands, of petitions to ban "dihydrogen oxide" or "dihydrogen monoxide". The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax">DMHO Hoax is claimed to date to 1990, but I heard a version of it in the late 1970s as "dihydrogen oxide".

-- Penn and Teller have made a career of such hoaxes, ostensibly to humiliate the gullible. Long before Bullshit!, they convinced many a mark that a salt shaker contained "life-giving crystals" (They wrote about this in an episode of Skeptical Inquirer probably in the late 1980s. If you can find it, it is worth reading). They also played a http://asianbadger.wordpress.com/2007/03/31/penn-and-teller-show-just-how-stupid-moonbats-are/">DMHO hoax.

Are YOU gullible? Yes. Yes you are. And so am I. NO ONE IS IMMUNE TO DECEPTION. We deny this fundamental fact at our peril. Yes, someday someone is going to thoroughly bamboozle P&T -- who, I hope, will have a good laugh over it.

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair">The Bogdanoff Affair. This one is NEVER cited by skeptics, mythbusters, and bullshit-callers, since it was declared to be genuine by a number of Peer Reviewed, Occam's Razor-using physicists.

-- Alan Sokal's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair">Social Text Hoax which has delighted millions of conservatives, critics of postmodern criticism, and young white oppressed college men stung by P.C. tongue-lashings by college girls. Ironically, Sokal is a politically left scholar who has used postmodern criticism to illustrate subtle flaws in certain parts of logical and mathematical reasoning.

There is even a descriptive name for this practice -- Spoof or Parody Science. It has http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody_science">its own Wikipedia entry, of course. Wikipedia itself is often the target of hoaxes.

The use of language to mystify is well-known. Also well-known is the ability of strong emotion to affect a person's perception. The classical example is the person who strongly wants to believe in a paranormal or mystical phenomenon who can easily be convinced that such a thing exists. But people with strong contempt for "woo-woos" are also extremely easy to catch this way. (And you are NOT the first one I have caught in this simple hoax. I will almost certainly repeat it successfully again within a few months.)

The irony is that the rationalist/skeptic movement has created a generation of new potential dupes by stoking them on contempt for people who are accused of being irrational. Between the debunkery industry, books on Urban Legends, Allan Sokal, CSICOP/CSI, magicians posing as scientific experts, hundreds of mandatory college courses in scientific thinking (sic) that are little more than advertisements for Prometheus Books, a crop of cable TV programs, and over a thousand blogs and websites repeating the same "smell tests", millions of people think that they are beyond deception, and so guarantee their own heightened gullibility.

As a God-believing woo-woo once wrote, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16:18 KJV). And as another mentally-ill and irrational faker (who didn't exist, and I can prove it!), Jesus of Nazareth, often asserted, nobody is perfect.

I personally approve of practical jokes such as these as an educational device. See if you can catch me in one! My great regret is that gullibility used to rely on ignorance. Now it relies on arrogance.

Let me wrap this up by diluting my nice bon mot in the last paragraph -- I do not, in any way, hold you in contempt. If you have suffered bruised pride over it, well, no one is going to hold it against you -- unless you establish a career for yourself as the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_Lady">Church Lady of science. Again, I encourage you to try your own hand at it. Mysticism is an easy field to hoax, but science and/or rationalism is a vast and fertile field, as new as any celebrated paradigm and as empty as ALL of our heads are at times.

--d!
Off to contemplate ... hair.

[Silent3]

79. Every step of the way...

...I gave you the opportunity to bring up ordinary light and electromagnetic waves. It's hardly a blind spot on my part if you kept evading admitting that that's what you were talking about, and instead deliberately stuck with the vague language of woo-ery.

There's a big difference between being successfully deceived about, say, a homeopathic remedy that's supposed to work when the "active ingredient" is diluted to the point that maybe not even a single molecule remains and you're depending on water having "memory", and being successfully deceived that someone is being an idiot. The former is a very unlikely thing, and extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. On the other hand, idiocy abounds on the internet, and I don't need to be especially skeptical about whether I'm talking to a real idiot or a fake one -- especially when the line between the two might not be as sharp as perhaps you think it is.

[Dogmudgeon]

81. *Of course* I tried to deceive you.

I did not use "the vague language of woo-ery". I didn't have to. I used the exact language of science. In your first take, you got it right. Why did you go back to debunkery -- complete with emoticons?

I succeeded. How was I able to do it?

--d!

[Silent3]

82. Bullshit.

I did not use "the vague language of woo-ery".

You most certainly did. Even if by a far stretch it's possible to refer to light and radio waves as "vibrational energy", what real scientist these days uses such language? There's not really any vibrating medium involved in electromagnetism. It's only an antiquated holdover from the long gone days of the hypothetical "invisible aether" to speak of electromagnetic radiation as a "vibration" of any sort.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on electromagnetic radiation. The words "vibrate", "vibration", and "vibrational" are used not one single time in the whole discussion of the subject.

When I flat out mention electromagnetic waves and you don't then and there (white text on a white background hardly counts) agree that that's what you're talking about, then that's more deliberate vagueness, of exactly the sort woos use because they're trying to dress up nonsense in scientific-sounding words without committing to specific clear scientific ideas.

I didn't have to.

Yes, to play your prank you did.

I used the exact language of science.

There's nothing "exact" about using words borrowed from science while avoiding all commitment to specific phenomena that those words are being used for.

In your first take, you got it right. Why did you go back to debunkery -- complete with emoticons?

When I ask you if your post is a spoof, and you deny that, I'd say your flat-out lying has something to do with my subsequent reaction. (Please, spare me the ingenuous hyper-literalistic parsing and spin I'm sure you can concoct to claim you never lied.)

I succeeded. How was I able to do it?

Yeah, fooling somebody into thinking you're talking like a wooish idiot online is such a challenge -- what subtle mastery that must have required! :eyes:

You want to play this up as some oh-so-clever game to expose that I can be fooled? Well, duh. Of course I can be fooled. I've never tried to claim otherwise, so what's the point? I've often said -- and I repeated this very sentiment in my first post in this subthread -- that it's amazing how it can be so difficult to tell a spoof (and this applies to trolling too) from the real thing.

You think you've demonstrated some important point about some supposedly misplaced anti-wooish zeal that I should avoid in the future? If I ran into someone else talking the way you did about "vibrational energy", or otherwise bandying about scientific vocabulary (especially outmoded vocabulary) in vague, non-committal ways, and that person kept passing up opportunities to apply more exact modern terminology, not even confirming better terminology when the opportunity arises right under their noses, I'd again make the same demands that they back up their vague babble, and still feel completely justified treating that babble as wooery until something more precise and believable was said.

Your posing as someone who's going to teach me an important lesson of some sort, and then apparently waiting for me to acknowledge that important lesson and show you how I'm a good student of your wisdom by generously granting me the opportunity to analyze your imagined-to-be-clever trick -- well, the sheer pompousness of this whole exercise is breathtaking.

[rrneck]

83. I don't understand.

Why do you think you have done something clever?

[Why Syzygy]

77. LOL!

:rofl:

[rrneck]

6. I'd have to go

with George Carlin on that one. Originally there were only seven people. Now there are billions. Someone's printing up souls!

[county worker]

7. It sounds like you get a used soul? Or are only new souls waiting around for a body to come along?

I believe in reincarnation and I believe in the sharing of divinity so in a way I believe in preexistence but not they way mentioned.

[tangent90]

9. So do they suppose there's a 'soul factory' somewhere 'up there'

that just creates them er, as needed?, or just in large quantities for inventory...
:shrug:

[terisan]

12. I believe in the spilled mercury theory-there is only one soul or Being and it

spills itself out into an infinite number of souls that contend with each other for temporary experiences in matter as a response to or treatment for eternal boredom.

[ZombieHorde]

13. No, I do not believe in pre-existence. nt

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

14. Sufi idea on this, as I understand it

Everything is God. God wishes to experience everything, so a bit of God (liken it to a drop of water from the ocean) starts its passage through the various planes to the physical plane. The two planes I know a bit about are the angelic and the Jinn plane. The angelic plane is where praise to God is continually given, where love and similar emotions are expressed. The Jinn plane is the plane of ideas and thoughts. In order to exist on these different planes, the soul coming into physical existence has to pick up the tools needed--such as emotional expression on the angelic plane. The soul picks these tools up from the souls returning to Source, who must leave them to go from one plane to another.

Sufis don't believe in reincarnation, but rather have the thought that we "pick up" thoughts, memories, etc, from the returning souls as we journey to physical reality.

[DKRC]

16. Yes

[Silent3]

17. This reminds me of an alleged Mark Twain quote.

"I do not fear death, in view of the fact that I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

I'm not sure Mr. Clemens ever actually said such a thing, but I like the quote anyway. :)

[cynatnite]

31. That is a very good quote. I really do like it. n/t

[Uncle Joe]

18. Yes, sort of, everything on our physical existence is continually recycled, this evidence

is incontrovertible.

Mass to energy and energy to mass, ie; the tree sprouts leaves, leaves convert energy to feed the tree, the leaves eventually die returning to the soil thus fertilizing the soil with minerals to be absorbed by the roots of the tree becoming part of the tree again.

We're born with instructions encoded in our DNA on resisting disease first encountered thousands of years before we were ever born in to our current state, so we have in a very real sense passed down memory.

I see this as happening with everything on the planet, continually coming back in one form or another, even rock will decay with enough time and circumstance. In effect the Earth being one living organism, so to that end, I see each of us as having one piece of a continually recycling/reincarnating greater soul.

Maybe this is why humanity has so many different religions separated by time and distance, each with stark differences and yet also having many commonalities.

All having a piece of the truth and none the entirety, sort of like the blind men describing an elephant by touch and all having different descriptions depending on the part of the elephant, that each man was touching.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

19. Thank you for your thoughts on this

I see your point and agree with it.

[Uncle Joe]

20. Peace to you, ayeshahaqqiqa.

:hi:

[Nihil]

46. Interesting points there.

> everything on our physical existence is continually recycled

I suspect this is why so many of the old religions use some variant
of a circle in their iconography - it represents the cycles that can
be seen & experienced.

> We're born with instructions encoded in our DNA on resisting disease
> first encountered thousands of years before we were ever born in to
> our current state, so we have in a very real sense passed down memory.

In addition to the disease resistance, there are also the instinctual
reactions to a wide range of stimuli.

> I see this as happening with everything on the planet, continually coming
> back in one form or another, even rock will decay with enough time and
> circumstance.

And, having decayed and been transported elsewhere, it then reforms once
more as rock ...

Nice post Uncle Joe! :toast:

[Uncle Joe]

47. Thanks, Nihil

"And, having decayed and been transported elsewhere, it then reforms once
more as rock ..."

Or the rock breaks down and dissolves in to minerals to be absorbed by plants and to be consumed by animals.

Cheers,:toast:

[tinrobot]

52. Every molecule in our bodies came from somewhere else.

...and even during our lifetimes, we will completely recycle the molecules in our bodies many times over.

Makes you wonder which part of you is entirely "you" and not part of a larger whole.

[Uncle Joe]

53. Exactly, tinrobot and

there is something else I'm wondering about.

To my knowledge energy can't be destroyed, but it can be converted in to mass, all things contain energy, apparently even uranium has energy. If you loose your total energy, you die and your mass returns to the Earth.

My question is, can the energy become imprinted from the mass of which stores it, in effect taking on characteristics of that mass? If this energy was imprinted could that be what we consider to be a soul or spirit? As Dark Matter touches or covers everything in the universe, in effect as placenta, how would that released energy; possibly imprinted, interact with Dark Matter?

Tune in folks, these and other questions will be answered in the Days of Our Lives, or somebody else's life.:)

[Silent3]

54. "If you loose (sic) your total energy, you die" -- nope!

One great way to die, in fact, is to take on too much energy at once. That's what happens in a blast of radiation, or even a hard fall.

Life is an emergent property of a well-ordered chemical system. If you're going to oversimplify things, a better oversimplification is that you die when you lose too much order, or, to use different terminology, when you gain too much entropy.

Order, unlike energy, is not preserved. The very common pseudo-scientific concept that pins hopes of immortality on conservation of energy is not well founded.

[Uncle Joe]

55. But the ultimate result in either case is a loss of energy.

Even death by radiation with enough time lapsing, will result in the total loss of energy.

I agree life is a well balanced order, too little water or too much water will kill you just the same.

However there is a storage of energy in all living things and when it totally looses that energy, it dies, or when it dies, it totally looses that energy unless you can point to anything that doesn't?

You can stop eating and live in a dark cave and for a time you will survive on your stored energy.

[Silent3]

56. The point is that death and loss of energy are separate things.

You can die long before energy other than background heat departs from your body. For animals that hibernate, they can be in a more energetic state when dead than they are while alive and hibernating.

The idea that there's some sort of "life energy", if that's what you're getting at, is an old concept, but an outmoded one that does not bear up under scientific scrutiny.

[Uncle Joe]

57. I disagree with the idea of

any life form being in a more energetic state after death than while hibernating. I'm not one prone to saying anything is impossible but I see no comparison in those two states.

Hibernation is merely the extreme slowing down of the process of using stored energy, if there were no stored energy in the animal, hibernation would fail and the animal would die. This is why hibernating animals fatten up as much as possible before going in to hibernation, they're storing energy. Life seeks, requires and stores the food of life to live, without it, death is the only result, unless you have an example to the contrary.

While you may die before all heat totally leaves the body, it doesn't take long and the process is naturally irreversible, riga mortise will set in and the body will lose heat. When something dies all stored energy begins to dissipate, there may be some temporary exception as in the case of bombarding a corpse with radiation but even that will eventually decay. The body has lost the ability to store any life force energy.

Your ideas, thoughts and dreams are stored or active uses of energy, to some degree this can be tracked with Cat-scans. Every concrete, real world, structural achievement by humankind, both great and small, good and evil began with an idea; aka: unit of energy to manipulate the world of mass.

[Silent3]

58. You're forgetting that temperature is energy.

A fish in a frozen pond during winter, it's body temperature near, even below (due to natural antifreeze), freezing, has less total energy than the same fish just before winter that, say, just had it's skull crushed.

A freshly dead elephant has way more energy that a living rat. A non-living gallon of gasoline has much more energy than a gallon of algae.

Your ideas, thoughts and dreams are stored or active uses of energy, to some degree this can be tracked with Cat-scans. Every concrete, real world, structural achievement both great and small, good and evil began with an idea; aka: unit of energy to manipulate the world of mass.

Life certainly uses and requires energy. That's not the same thing as life being energy. Life can continue at arbitrarily low levels of energy so long as chemical organization is maintained. Death can occur with amid a plenitude of energy when organization breaks down.

When we talk about the moment of death for humans, we're typically talking about brain death. At a cellular level, however there's very little difference in the quantity of living cells in a human body just before or just after a bullet goes through the brain. Individual cells go on living until deprived of oxygen, and can keep living for quite some time after brain death if placed in a specimen dish, or if the body is put on artificial life support.

[Uncle Joe]

59. A fish in a frozen pond with natural antifreeze has a higher temperature

than a fish in a frozen pond with it's skull crushed, a freshly dead elephant has way less energy than a live elephant, just as a freshly dead rat has less energy than a live rat.

While I agree in that a gallon of gasoline may have more energy than a gallon of algae, the algae has a higher threshold to conserve energy over a longer period of time and the ability to obtain or convert it's own energy. The gasoline will quickly evaporate and dissipate. *However if the universe and it's formation along with that of early Earth resembles that of an expanding uterus and developing fetus; by form and function, everything is connected whether living or "dead," gasoline or algae, is all part of the same body. The ever going cycle of birth and death is a continuum, coming out of the same Earthly body, yesterday's dinosaurs are today's oil or birds, but there are different types of energy and I believe we've only scratched the surface.

Artificial life support is a form of energy keeping the body or cell alive, life energy is being pumped in to the body, even if the body has lost the ability to obtain and maintain or conserve energy on it's own. I would suggest that in regards to individual cells living after "death," that death is more a dimmer switch than straight on/off.

I'm not suggesting a balance isn't required but chemical organization and reaction in itself can be a form of energy, even if at measurably low levels.

There is no doubt the body stores or conserves energy, the question in my mind is, does the mass of the body or conscious imprint or alter the energy like a fingerprint?

*As I posted on another thread.

[Silent3]

60. I didn't compare the live but hibernating fish...

...to one in the same frozen pond, but with one just before winter, with all of the body fat the hibernating fish will have access to.

A body (with the right physiology) can slow it's metabolic rate and stay alive at a lower energy level than a dead animal with plenty of available chemical energy. Are you so desperate to cling to this idea that you want to make it about energy per unit of mass (thus dismissing comparing an elephant to a rat)? Even that doesn't save you when it comes to hibernation.

As long as we're at it, let's bring other forms of potential energy into play. After all, it seems you want to count potential energy stored in body fat. Then a person should be far more "alive" at the top of a mountain than at the bottom of a mountain. Even a dead body at the top of a mountain has far more energy -- all of the energy that would be released by dropping the body from the top of the mountain -- than a living body at the bottom.

There is no doubt the body stores or conserves energy...

That still doesn't mean life IS energy, or closely related to quantities of energy.

...the question in my mind is, does the mass of the body or conscious imprint or alter the energy like a fingerprint?

There's certainly no evidence that such a thing can happen. Energy, to borrow a phrase from another thread I recently created, "has no hair". It's a scalar quantity without any other attributes, no known capacity to store information other than the total quantity of it.

[Uncle Joe]

62. You're still missing my point,

your definition of energy is too narrow.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080131094056.htm


"In Dr Zhao's model, dark energy and dark matter are simply different manifestations of the same thing, which he has considered as a 'dark fluid'. On the scale of galaxies, this dark fluid behaves like matter and on the scale of the Universe overall as dark energy, driving the expansion of the Universe. Importantly, his model, unlike some similar work, is detailed enough to produce the same 3:1 ratio of dark energy to dark matter as is predicted by cosmologists."


The beginning of everything whether dead or alive, active or hibernating began with the supreme, ultimate, act of energy; that being The Big Bang. Nothing else has ever approached that level of energy.

[Silent3]

64. There's nothing in that link that supports anything you're trying...

...to say associating energy with life.

Finding grander, cosmic things to say about exotic theoretical forms of energy and talking about the Big Bang still doesn't get you one step close the idea of life being energy, or things about living people somehow being "imprinted" into energy.

Here's an analogy for you: Think about energy being to life as money is to a business. A business can't run without money, that's true. Plenty of the functions of a business depend on the flow of money. But a company can, like a hibernating animal, hunker down and stay alive for some time with very little money or cash flow. A company can be flush with money but still fail because of mismanagement -- and effectively be dead well before most of that money disappears.

Money is important to business, but it isn't business itself. Business is not a "special form" of or type of money. All of the money from a company could be transferred into your bank account, but looking at that single numeric figure won't tell you anything about the history of the company, who the employees and managers were, what products the company made, etc. That information is not encoded into the money itself, the operation of the business impresses nothing into the money that passes through it.

That money can be found in many different forms -- coins, bills, patterns of magnetism on a disk drive, pencil marks in a ledger, dollars, yen, rupees, coupons, discount cards, etc. -- none of that helps if your trying to argue that business is money or a form of money.

Hoping for some type of human immortality because the energy used by humans is conserved in pretty much the same thing as thinking a business can survive, and the corporate memory of that business be preserved, simply because the money that once passed through the business is still in circulation.

[Silent3]

68. Gack!

I hate the limited time period for editing posts. x( Yes, I do know the difference between "your" and "you're", even if I don't always type it that way. :blush:

[Uncle Joe]

70. This analogy seems more apropos to me.

Think about energy being to life as ideas,thoughts and or vision are to business. A business can't run without ideas, thoughts or vision. But a company can, like a hibernating animal exist for a time without new ideas or vision, stagnant living on it's memories of a grander past, until those memories fade in to accepting current stark reality. Then the company will be revitalized with new ideas, thoughts, and vision or die.

Thoughts, ideas, dreams and visions are indeed units of energy stored in the gray matter of the brain and sparked to activity given certain cues. According to my previous post Dark Energy acts as matter in the galaxies and as energy in the universe. So could Dark Energy be a form of colossal memory?

Did the company during it's existence make an imprint on those ideas, thoughts, dreams, visions and memories of it's workers and their families?

Were other companies ideas, thoughts, dreams and visions imprinted by memories or lessons from the former deceased company?

Did the government or nation have their thoughts, ideas, visions and dreams imprinted by memories of the deceased company? To be specific has memories of Enron or AIG imprinted them selves on the nation's collective memory?

Furthermore If the answer is yes to those questions, is there an going ripple effect?

[Silent3]

71. If that's the analogy you're using, you simply don't understand...

...what energy, at least as defined by physics, is.

My analogy fits known science much, much better than yours. If you want to play the "Well, we don't know EVERYTHING, so I can fill in with vivid imagination whatever I like game", well then, you can happily spin off into a world of vivid imagination and believe whatever you want, of course.

The best fit to current science, however, is that thoughts and ideas are encoded in chemical states in the brain, in the active, dynamic PATTERNS of neurochemical impulses traveling through the brain -- a thought or and idea is not so much the energy in the various impulses within the brain, it's the overall PATTERN of those impulses, the particular paths the structure of the brain that the energy follows, the timing of those impulses, NOT some mystical thing encoded into the energy itself.

I think you're confusing a poetic or casual concept of "energy" -- the idea of vitality, being briskly alive and aware, being innovative and imaginative, emotionally energetic -- with the physics concept of energy. You're free to use the poetic and casual use of the word "energy", of course, but the rules of physics don't cross over from the technical definition of energy to the those looser meanings.

To the extent that the laws of physics apply to what we think of as ourselves, our identities and memories, the apparently good news of the First Law of Thermodynamics (which relates to conservation of energy) has to give way to the bad news (bad news if you're hoping for some form of immortality) of the Second Law, in which disorder increases over time.

[Uncle Joe]

80. I'm just an average Joe, but thanks for the compliment regarding my imagination.

http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

However I do have a question regarding the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Would a fetus just prior to childbirth be experiencing symptoms of this Law?

One minute you're floating in a pool of liquid; I imagine experiencing reduced effects of gravity, alone in the universe, unless you're sharing the womb with seven other roommates, never having to look for food or drink or clean up after your self, maybe only hearing muffled voices if any at all.

As time goes by your universe; depending on whether you view the uterus or the fetus as the universe shrinks or expands. As you grow, maybe it becomes harder to retain your heat. The next minute the water breaks, you're being sucked through a hole half your body size, your first God does look hairy, you hear someone screaming in pain, bright lights are shining in your eyes, someone smacks you on the ass and says welcome to the new world.

I believe Physics to be a great way to explain the workings of our known universe, but that's the only purpose of Physics. It can't logically comment one way or other regarding the laws governing other dimensions or universes if there are any of which it has no basis to judge.

Regarding immortality or a creator(s) our Physics can't rule out one way or the other as our hypothesizes. theories and laws wouldn't necessarily apply outside of our known universe. Even in our known universe, we're but infants on the road to discovery, trying to determine to what's outside of our bubble would be as catfish commenting on cactus. So in regards to speculating as to extra-universal possibilities imagination has as much validity as our limited cold hard facts.

[Silent3]

84. Imagination is important, but for creativity, not as an analytical tool.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Einstein needed his imagination to come up with his thought experiments about things like people riding around on trains traveling at nearly the speed of light, but he also knew he couldn't earn any respect for his ideas by just tossing them around for people to ooh and aah at -- he knew he needed to develop a solid mathematical framework and to find real-world physical evidence.

However I do have a question regarding the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Would a fetus just prior to childbirth be experiencing symptoms of this Law?

...I believe Physics to be a great way to explain the workings of our known universe, but that's the only purpose of Physics. It can't logically comment one way or other regarding the laws governing other dimensions or universes if there are any of which it has no basis to judge.

Are you trying to suggest that fetuses inhabit a different universe!?

If so, you're once again mixing up casual usages of words with technical usages. A fetus might have a very different perspective on things, to the extent that it's aware of much of anything, but it certainly inhabits the same physical universe that we all share, and, to answer your first question, is subject to the same physical laws, including the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Fortunately for the fetus, increasing entropy is only guaranteed in a closed system. A mother and her unborn child are not a closed system. As long as mom keeps bringing in caloric energy from the outside world, energy which nearly all ultimately originates from either the sun or heat trapped within the earth -- the fetus has a chance at increasing in order and complexity so it can live to be born.

Regarding immortality or a creator(s) our Physics can't rule out one way or the other as our hypothesizes. theories and laws wouldn't necessarily apply outside of our known universe.

Things that can't absolutely be ruled out are a dime a dozen. You can't rule out that you're a unicorn hallucinating you're a human. You can't rule out that the moon really is made out of green cheese, covered up by a massive conspiracy that's been hiding that fact. If you're prepared to toss around the word "universe" lightly, and conveniently claim that whatever fancy you wish to imagine belongs to another "universe", the sky's the limit.

In a system where you can't rule anything out, however, there's nothing particularly interesting or noteworthy about something just because you can rule it in.

[Nihil]

61. That should really be a thread of its own

> Every molecule in our bodies came from somewhere else.
> ...and even during our lifetimes, we will completely recycle
> the molecules in our bodies many times over.
> Makes you wonder which part of you is entirely "you" and not
> part of a larger whole.

Things that make you go "Hmmm ...?"

:toast:

[Evoman]

23. There is no such thing as a soul. So no, I don't.

[cosmik debris]

30. I've never seen any evidence for pre existence.

And I am not likely to believe in things until I see the evidence.

[Strong Atheist]

32. Define this "soul" thing of which you speak. nt.

[cynatnite]

33. Well, I don't have a clue what a soul is or even if anyone has one. n/t

[Strong Atheist]

34. Then I would have to answer the OP with a "No". nt.

[Marrah_G]

35. Yes

I believe in reincarnation.

Hold your snark now guys, I don't expect YOU to believe it.

:hi:

[saltpoint]

36. I'm inclined to say it is beyond reach. We can take a canoe up a river

to map out its source and regard its tributaries, etc., but determination of pre-existence is a canoeless conundrum.

Absent clinical, temporal evidence that it exists, I'm not sure what practical application it has in moments when a village elder dies, or war begins, or when a child's shoelaces need tying, or when on a blue and windy afternoon at the Great Bear dunes the sun floods the surface of the lake and stops us in our tracks.

[Uncle Joe]

37. Why should practical application be a requirement

for philosophical conversation?

But to take up your point of practicality, when a village elder dies, if the elder feels comfort in their belief of an afterlife, this is a practical effect in and of it self, likewise for their bereaved family and friends.

I would presume if there were no practical effect, our bodies wouldn't produce pain killing endorphins, when we're mortally wounded, at some level, emotional and physical pain are inextricably linked.

[saltpoint]

39. That is so. But the parable of the canoe is instructive because it

does not rely on abstraction. One might paddle upstream and chart its source.

One may believe in an earlier existence, or an after-life, but it is not a chartable navigation.

[Uncle Joe]

40. Yes, but before, the canoe, map making ability and any in depth language

were created, charting rivers; at least on paper wasn't possible either, but I don't believe this prevented early man from grunting their impressions of unexplored stretches of river. From those grunts some of them ventured forth from the safety of their trees, They would go on to create the technology to enable them to explore and chart the rivers; of which they only previously were able to grunt about.

You may say, communication with an after life or or an earlier existence is impossible and I agree just as I believe traveling to the moon or people communicating on the Internet was impossible, when they lived in caves.

Before the action came the idea or many ideas and those ideas were in and of themselves, abstract and ultimately served to chart the river.

[saltpoint]

42. Understand your point on linguistic evolution but it remains that a baby

born in Barcelona will hear Spanish in her ears, even as one born in Galway will likely hear English, or in some households, Gaelic.

The cries of the baby and the grunts of the cave folk you reference have their purpose and also their nobility, but they are at once universal in expression and take shape to the map-charting level via human training and environmental reinforcement.

The impulse to explore upstream is also universal, certainly dependent upon evolved language (at least I would rather read an articulate explorer's account than a cave person's grunt), and also particular to impulse. That is, one has to agree to go on the expedition.

None of those conditions demonstrate that the impulse -- or outcome -- is predetermined or pre-existent.

[Uncle Joe]

43. Every cell in your body has died several times over since you were born.

Your DNA has stored memory to fight virus and disease that existed during those cave man days.

Therefor your body has preexisted to some degree or another since you were born, your internal survival memory, aka;DNA dates to thousands of years before you were born.

The only pre-existence not known is conscious, I believe our "long term" memory is in fact extraordinarily short.

[saltpoint]

44. Again, agree that at the cell level, there is a perpetuity; however, an

amalgam arises in particular, individual form to become the distinct 'self' of I and You.

There is biogenetic continuum from which each of us springs but 'self' cannot be determined to be present among those components. "We are stardust," Joni Mitchell suggests, but not all from the same star at the same time.

Events suggest that self, its various and varying components, may be formed through evolution. The OP asks into 'pre-existence,' which suggests that 'self' must be present, at least as it is considered in 'current' existence.

The chart upriver changes, does it not, as nature itself changes. Alexander's tomb likely was accessible by foot when he was buried; very likely it is under water now. The accumulated residue of detritus and silt at the mouth of the Nile has obscured it. The river is the same river but it is not the same. Alexander's engineers' maps would have been different from ours today.

For there to be pre-existence of self, some evidence that 'self' pre-exists is required. One may believe it to be so, but it does appear that pre-existence is not any more removed from the realm of faith than after-life.

[Uncle Joe]

45. Self doesn't need to remain the same for pre-existence to hold true.

No doubt environment and the continuous mix of genes through propagation play a part in reshaping self in to limitless combinations. However no matter which star, stardust or the space time they struck Earth, it all began with the Big Bang and in that instance everything was united. If the universe and all life within evolved from one central starting point, self is continuous no matter the reshaping of the multitudes of various combinations.

One is not the same "self" at 40 as at 4 or 50 to 15, although you may remember those ages; albeit with decreasing accuracy, your identity and personality evolve through maturity and environment and yet technically speaking you inhabit the same body; although at the cellular level this isn't so. Self evolves as does life, but life is always life and the same holds true for self. Self is more than an identity, it's a connection to the beginning of everything and even if you alter self, so long as the universe remains in tact, you can't disconnect the self.

While the Nile River may have different levels and shapes today than it did during Alexander's time, it's still the Nile River and it's still Alexander's Tomb. If the sun goes supernova tomorrow and the Earth is disintegrated nothing changes the Nile River from having been the Nile River or Alexander's Tomb from having been Alexanders Tomb, anymore than it changes Abraham Lincoln from having been Abraham Lincoln.

If the dust from the disintegrated Earth land on another planet and feed life anew, at some level there will be a connection to the Nile River, Alexander's Tomb and Abraham Lincoln.

[saltpoint]

48. No, I'm not there. "Some connection," is a microscopic technicality,

perhaps smaller than that, and won't have much to do at all with why someone like Alexander mattered to historians here and now, here and now meaning on earth from the time of his empire to this moment.

Context is particular to itself. Set and setting are everything.

Also, that infinitesimal connection does not establish context, of Self or anything else. We know that Lincoln was at Gettysburg. We have the photos. They match the other images of Lincoln in Washington and on choo-choo trains, and so forth. Same guy. There he was. We have the speech, too.

Alexander is a ways farther back in the fog. He is spoken of by many sources. Most of his biographers don't even like him much. Some hate his guts. One or two rise to his defense. But we don't know today exactly how closely he took to heart the advice of his sea captain, Nearchus. We don't know for sure if the hairy folk Nearchus witnessed along the coast of the Gedrosian Desert were in fact Neanderthals, although the description certainly appears to suggest that they were Neanderthals, surviving there long, long after Neanderthals ought to have vanished. We don't know if Alexander might have circumnavigated Africa next at Nearchus' bidding, or on Nearchus' advice.

We don't know exactly why his mother and father did not find lasting accord. Well, we know some of it. We don't know all of it.

Context is not readily transferable. It appears to have hardiness zones, like plants.

And those distances, that murkiness, that extraordinary difficulty is in the context of people who would almost die to know those answers.

[Uncle Joe]

49. The universe was "microscopic" prior to the Big Bang.

Hypothetically speaking if the dust from Abraham Lincoln settled on another planet and was fed up the food chain, some author ingesting it might be inspired to write a science fiction novel about a far away planet where some great political leader named Abraham Spock presided over civil strife, the facts may not resemble the reality in many ways, but the effect from preexistence would be there nonetheless.

Context is important only in so far as to the dimension in which we call reality. It means nothing in those quiet places in between your rational, conscious thoughts. I believe that's where everything connects regardless of distance or time. Every living thing has those empty quiet spaces in between their thoughts which serve to form the self, just as those quiet places in between the notes form the music. I would also venture to say, you don't even need to hear the musical notes on a conscious level to feel the impact, that's the power of subliminal input.

When you drop a pebble in water, the ripples go far beyond any conscious connection to it, a frog may have no idea as to why the Mayfly it was about to consume suddenly flew off, the Mayfly may not even have known. I suppose you could call this a miniature version of the "Butterfly Effect."

I believe you can't have self or life without those empty places, or at the very least to retain any sanity, and I also believe those empty places or spaces are fed by minuscule data.

In conclusion, my point is this, everything sprang from one point in time, everything in our reality is retained within that same bubble, thus everything is connected, whether we can perceive it or not.

[saltpoint]

50. "Connected" is the reality and the reality we understand is a context.

And contexts differ. O man, do they ever.

If Bob goes wee-wee in a restroom urinal and Bill goes wee-wee in a wheelbarrow behind the barn, the point really has little to do with the chemical proximities of their urine.

The context, rather, is the point.

[dcsmart]

38. i believe in premature ejaculation....but...

existence is hard enough.....pre-existence....yuck....

[TWiley]

41. No to the pre-existence thingie. Was Jesus the father of himself (incarnation)?

[kristopher]

51. I'm not even sure I believe in current existence...

The nature of reality itself is somewhat suspect if you think about it long enough.

[Critters2]

63. No. nt

[laconicsax]

65. I don't believe in the existence of souls.

Simply answering "no" to the question allows for the possibility that I believe souls to exist.

[Taverner]

69. No - but I don't believe in Leprechauns, Unicorns or Jesus either

[daleo]

75. As the Scottish Buddhist said

Pre-existence or Nae-existence.

[bball3212]

85. Jerimiah 1:5

"5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations."

Pretty obvious I would say.

[rrneck]

87. It's obvious

you believe the text that you quote, but that's it.

Welcome to DU :hi:

[bball3212]

88. Oh i believe it all

I also believe the entire Bible points to a preearth life, same with the plan of God, etc.

If there was no preearth life, then we would have been created out of nothing, which would go against the entire plan IMO.

I believe we have existed for eternity.

Oh, and thanks for the welcome :)

[rrneck]

89. Is this a belief

in terms of a feeling and a way of life, or belief in terms of the existence of objective proof?

[bball3212]

90. Well it is based on faith

in the word of God and the prophets. I certainly can't prove God exists, nor that we existed before this life. I think the order of the universe gives evidence to a creator, but I know I can't prove it to anyone.

[rrneck]

91. Ah

I can't prove it to anyone

Nor should you have to.

This human experience is a tricky business. We know so much, but we feel as much as we know. And we use one to support the other. Everything I see in the physical world sometimes seems so marvelous and eternal that it is hard not to imagine a creator. If I can imagine myself here right now, why could I not imagine myself as an eternal essence? But then I see so much suffering and senselessness in the world, surely we are just cogs in a machine that must, if this universe makes any sense at all, just pop in and out of existence by accident.

[bball3212]

92. That makes sense

but couldn't all of this suffering and senselessness be part of a bigger picture? I think most of this suffering can be pointed to mans own evilness, caused by mans own decisions, that could be part of this earthly test.

[rrneck]

93. This earthly test

is a pretty good way to phrase it.

Man's inhumanity to man might be the result of his evilness, but the vicissitudes of life on the planet are just part of the physicality of life. How evil do you have to be to cause a tsunami? And if one's interior motives can have tangible effects on the physical world, the really good people need to get to work and straighten some shit out around here.

Of course, we don't know the nature, function, or objective of the test. If there is an objective. That just leads us back to the futile effort of trying to prove the existence of a deity and a plan designed by him. Or her. Or it.

For that matter, we don't know if it actually a test the way a lot of people understand the term. A test frequently assumes a tester. It also assumes a set of qualifications that have to be met. Those qualifications assume some sort of judgment. There can be no evidence for any of those.

There is abundant evidence for those who claim to speak for the celestial judge though. I have little patience for them. Those claiming to be the proctors of God's will are all frauds as far as I am concerned.

I am confident of an "otherness", for lack of a better term. I don't think it can be named, since to use language to refer to it is to cast it in the context of the physical world. If we invest too much in a simulacrum of it we lose sight of it every time.

[bball3212]

94. Understandable

Question: When you say "There is abundant evidence for those who claim to speak for the celestial judge though. I have little patience for them. Those claiming to be the proctors of God's will are all frauds as far as I am concerned." I assume you are refering to those claiming to be prophets. Am I right? What abundant evidence is there for them?

And I believe that God allows suffering in order for us to learn and grow. You can say how much can we learn from a tsunami killing 100,000+ people etc. Well, sometimes I don;t know exactly why things like that happen. I do trust in the will and power and foresignt of God, and I know that we can be protected when we follow the will of God. Good people will die and bad people may live longer, and sometimes the righteous may be protected. But when we learn faith and patience when bad things come to pass, it is for our benefit. Of course, that means little to people who do not share that same faith.

I believe the first step for a belief in God is hope, hope that there is something better waiting and hope that righteous living will bring happiness.

[rrneck]

95. These guys

are the most cited example of those claiming to be prophets:



This guy is the funniest:



There is of course abundant tangible evidence of those who claim to speak for god as well:



We can attribute any number of things to God, but we will never be able to produce any evidence of that attribution. Faith is hope without evidence. Efforts to produce proof of God only prove that it takes a helluva lot of money to produce it.

When bad things come to pass it is never to our benefit - otherwise they would not be bad. Overcoming the obstacles those bad things represent are the good that they produce, and there is far more evidence that we do that ourselves rather than through the invisible hand of some deity.

"I know that we can be protected when we follow the will of God"

The list of people who were not protected in spite of their faith is impossibly long, but here's one:



Joan of Arc
AKA Jeanne d'Arc

Born: 6-Jan-1412
Birthplace: Domremy, France
Died: 30-May-1431
Location of death: Rouen, France
Cause of death: Execution
Remains: Cremated, (ashes thrown into the Seine)


Gender: Female
Religion: Roman Catholic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Religion, Victim

Nationality: France
Executive summary: Visionary burned at the stake

[GliderGuider]

86. Yes, though the word "pre" gives me a bit of a problem.

The words "pre-" or "before" require a linear, non-reversible flow of time. I believe that this is only a perceptual artifact of the reality we have co-created for ourselves here. That perception of time gives rise to a lot of problems when thinking about an existence that spans multiple instantiations in this reality. It requires the Hindus and Buddhists to create a revolving wheel of karma through sequential lives that is probably as close to reality as a pre-Copernican orrery was to the true operation of the solar system.

My preferred belief system is the one laid out by Seth in the channeled book "Seth Speaks" by Jane Roberts. Time is essentially a point rather than a line, with everything happening "at once". In essence, Einstein's "fourth dimension" was constructed by us in the same manner as the three physical dimensions in order to give this reality its unique characteristics. This reality that we experience is a sort of Earth School, which we have co-created in order to learn lessons that are best explored in a physical reality with physical dimensions and linear, non-reversible time. Whatt we perceive as individuals are fragments of oversouls that have chosen to be here in order to have experiences to learn various things. An oversoul may have placed multiple instances of itself in different places, times and circumstances in order to learn a variety of lessons. From the oversoul's perspective these instances all exist simultaneously, though from our perspective fragments in different times appear to be sequential. so from this perspective there appears to be "pre-existence", though that's a a crude and unhelpful way to look at things.

Is that new-agey enough for everyone?

[JustCommonSense]

96. Interesting

I find that my beliefs change over time - and now that I am open to change - experiencing what ever comes my way so to speak while trying to have peace in my spirit.

What was or is to be is becoming less and less important... what is happening in the 3d world is becoming less and less important....

But then again - I find it as waves breaking on the beach - the inward and outward dance of life...

moving - changing - becoming amazed at just the simple every day things - becoming extrodanary...

it is hard it put into words - other then I like it :)

[and-justice-for-all]

97. "human soul" There you go again...

trying to separate us from the animal kingdom.

We are not special nor unique, we traveled the lines of evolutionary development as all animals did. We are nothing more than the product of an changing environment.

We do not have a soul.