- Joined
- Jan 31, 2011
- Messages
- 184
Recently someone showed me a pair of dueling church signs; one belonging to Our Lady of Martyrs Catholic church and the other belonging to the Cumberland Presbyterian church.
The Catholic sign declares: "All Dogs Go To Heaven."
The Presbyterian sign replies: "Only Humans Go To Heaven. Read The Bible."
The Catholic sign replies: "God Loves All His creations, Dogs Included."
To which the Presbyterian sign retorts: "Dogs Don't Have Souls. This Is Not Open For Debate."
The Catholic sign shoots back: "Catholic Dogs Go To Heaven. Presbyterian Dogs Can Talk To Their Pastor."
The Presbyterians, getting a bit snippy now, respond: "Converting to Catholicism Does Not Magically Grant Your Dog A Soul."
The Catholics, now apparently feeling cheeky, reply to that with: "Free Dog Souls With Conversion."
The Presbyterians, now feeling a bit exasperated now, states their final argument: "Dogs Are Animals. There Aren't Any Rocks In Heaven Either." (Which doesn't make sense because rocks aren't animals, but whatever)
The Catholics seize victory with their final sign: "All Rocks Go To Heaven."
Now naturally this sign war between two churches never actually happened, but it's still funny. It did give me something to think about.
Many Christians do hold to the belief that Humans have souls and Animals do not. I find this interesting. Since the signs were arguing about dogs lets use dogs as our examples as well.
Dogs are equipped with many of the features us humans are - they have two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, a brain. He will get angry if you taunt him, he will get excited if you play with him, he will whimper if you're cruel to him, he will get jealous if you give something to another dog and withhold it from him.
Humans and dogs are not so different; we both respond to stimuli, we both have nervous systems that enable us to feel pain, we both want food and sex and recreation. The central difference between us, the only difference that isn't superficial, is that while a dogs brain is designed to distinguish sense a humans brain is designed to plan and problem-solve. We're not more evolved than then, we're just differently evolved than them.
Or if you're a creationist and don't believe in evolution think of it this way: God didn't give us a better brain than a dogs, he just gave us a different brain suited to a completely different task.
That being the case, what great superiority can humans claim to dogs? Why, if god creating all living things, would he favor humans with eternal life and cheat the dog? Why create something that can think and feel in the first place if you only intend to completely destroy it and leave no trace of it in Armageddon? It seems rather arbitrary that humans have souls and dogs don't when the only difference between us worth mentioning beyond the superficial stuff - such as dogs have tails and we don't - is that we are more intelligent.
Is the soul therefore a bi-product of intellect? Then, do babies and people with brain damage and people with learning disabilities lack souls?
Perhaps intelligence is the bi-product of the soul. Then why is it that modern neuroscience can provide naturalistic explanations for human intellect? And why is it that damage to the brain causes damage to the intellect? Are intellect and soul mutually exclusive? Then why is it that souls are granted to humans and denied all other animals? And if animals do have souls then at what level of consciousness does the soul emerge? Do termites have souls, does grass? Do single celled organisms, do virus's? Do inanimate objects such as rocks and dish towels have souls?
When did I get my soul exactly? I was created when the genetic matter of my mother and my father combined to eventually form a fetus, then a child, then a teenager, and in the future an adult. I am a living thing that emerged from two living things who emerged in turn from four living things who emerged from eight living things and so on. You can go all the way back to the simplest organism back in the primordial soup, or you can go back to Adam and Eve six thousand years ago - whatever. Either way, all living things came from other living things, except for the original living thing or things. Where in all of this does the soul come into play? Do all sperms and eggs contain little soul seeds that will bloom into a fully fledged soul if they happen to be the sperm and egg that combine and eventually form a human being? Or does god personally send the spark of a soul into each fetus in the womb? What about animals that contain hive consciousnesses - bees, ants, sea anenomies and such like - does this hive consciousness possess a soul all of its own or does each component possess its own soul? And what about us? Aren't humans made of trillions of different cells? Does each cell have it's own soul? Wouldn't it suck to die and realize that your consciousness isn't going to heaven, instead each of your trillions of cells are going to heaven individually?
And what about our various stages in life? What if a man is Christian for all of his life and converts to Islam at 46 and dies at 47? Assuming that Christianity is correct he will face hell for rejecting Christ. So wait; if the soul is part of the intellect then did his soul change its mind? If so, then we have to admit that soul and intellect are connected and that gives a good chance that babies and severely brain damaged and severely mentally disabled people have no souls, or at least don't have the mechanisms that allow them to decide the fate of their souls. Alternatively, if the soul is separate from the intellect, then why would the souls be punished for what the intellect does? If my intellect decides to kill 37 people with a stapler, then why should my soul go to hell for that?
Another thing - if god decides when we die then why does he kill a man at 47 when he is a Muslim and not at 46 when he is still a Christian? If god doesn't decide, and it's all a matter of free will and happenstance, then what is the point of this supposed 'test' that we have been given? It's not a test, it's mostly luck, it's a crapshoot. If a Christian died just as he was having a doubt about Jesus, would he go to hell? That's so random! One second he's fit for heaven, the next he's not? One day an atheist is about to convert to Christianity when he is attacked by wild dogs and ripped to shreds. He goes to hell because the arbitrary date of his death was one day early? Nothing about the idea that we have souls makes any sense - it's either completely inexplicable, completely cruel, or completely arbitrary!
So instead of waddling though this indecipherable muck about souls do this instead: Ask yourself, is there any such thing as a soul to begin with? You've never seen it, you don't know where you got it, you don't know what it does or what it's for. It's eternal fate rests on your decisions, but modern science shows that all your decisions emanate from your brain, from your neural network, not from some mysterious force that resides nebulously if the confines of your being.
So, if you ask me, there is no soul. We are all soulless bags of meat wandering around trying to justify our supposition of supremacy to the dogs and the rocks. Perhaps we should just humble ourselves before nature and admit that we are not better. We don't have some invisible immortal ghost that resides in our machine that sets us apart from this world. We're just another cog in the big contraption called nature - and we're not even an important cog. The contraption would run just fine without us and our conceded notions of immortality.
The Catholic sign declares: "All Dogs Go To Heaven."
The Presbyterian sign replies: "Only Humans Go To Heaven. Read The Bible."
The Catholic sign replies: "God Loves All His creations, Dogs Included."
To which the Presbyterian sign retorts: "Dogs Don't Have Souls. This Is Not Open For Debate."
The Catholic sign shoots back: "Catholic Dogs Go To Heaven. Presbyterian Dogs Can Talk To Their Pastor."
The Presbyterians, getting a bit snippy now, respond: "Converting to Catholicism Does Not Magically Grant Your Dog A Soul."
The Catholics, now apparently feeling cheeky, reply to that with: "Free Dog Souls With Conversion."
The Presbyterians, now feeling a bit exasperated now, states their final argument: "Dogs Are Animals. There Aren't Any Rocks In Heaven Either." (Which doesn't make sense because rocks aren't animals, but whatever)
The Catholics seize victory with their final sign: "All Rocks Go To Heaven."
Now naturally this sign war between two churches never actually happened, but it's still funny. It did give me something to think about.
Many Christians do hold to the belief that Humans have souls and Animals do not. I find this interesting. Since the signs were arguing about dogs lets use dogs as our examples as well.
Dogs are equipped with many of the features us humans are - they have two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, a brain. He will get angry if you taunt him, he will get excited if you play with him, he will whimper if you're cruel to him, he will get jealous if you give something to another dog and withhold it from him.
Humans and dogs are not so different; we both respond to stimuli, we both have nervous systems that enable us to feel pain, we both want food and sex and recreation. The central difference between us, the only difference that isn't superficial, is that while a dogs brain is designed to distinguish sense a humans brain is designed to plan and problem-solve. We're not more evolved than then, we're just differently evolved than them.
Or if you're a creationist and don't believe in evolution think of it this way: God didn't give us a better brain than a dogs, he just gave us a different brain suited to a completely different task.
That being the case, what great superiority can humans claim to dogs? Why, if god creating all living things, would he favor humans with eternal life and cheat the dog? Why create something that can think and feel in the first place if you only intend to completely destroy it and leave no trace of it in Armageddon? It seems rather arbitrary that humans have souls and dogs don't when the only difference between us worth mentioning beyond the superficial stuff - such as dogs have tails and we don't - is that we are more intelligent.
Is the soul therefore a bi-product of intellect? Then, do babies and people with brain damage and people with learning disabilities lack souls?
Perhaps intelligence is the bi-product of the soul. Then why is it that modern neuroscience can provide naturalistic explanations for human intellect? And why is it that damage to the brain causes damage to the intellect? Are intellect and soul mutually exclusive? Then why is it that souls are granted to humans and denied all other animals? And if animals do have souls then at what level of consciousness does the soul emerge? Do termites have souls, does grass? Do single celled organisms, do virus's? Do inanimate objects such as rocks and dish towels have souls?
When did I get my soul exactly? I was created when the genetic matter of my mother and my father combined to eventually form a fetus, then a child, then a teenager, and in the future an adult. I am a living thing that emerged from two living things who emerged in turn from four living things who emerged from eight living things and so on. You can go all the way back to the simplest organism back in the primordial soup, or you can go back to Adam and Eve six thousand years ago - whatever. Either way, all living things came from other living things, except for the original living thing or things. Where in all of this does the soul come into play? Do all sperms and eggs contain little soul seeds that will bloom into a fully fledged soul if they happen to be the sperm and egg that combine and eventually form a human being? Or does god personally send the spark of a soul into each fetus in the womb? What about animals that contain hive consciousnesses - bees, ants, sea anenomies and such like - does this hive consciousness possess a soul all of its own or does each component possess its own soul? And what about us? Aren't humans made of trillions of different cells? Does each cell have it's own soul? Wouldn't it suck to die and realize that your consciousness isn't going to heaven, instead each of your trillions of cells are going to heaven individually?
And what about our various stages in life? What if a man is Christian for all of his life and converts to Islam at 46 and dies at 47? Assuming that Christianity is correct he will face hell for rejecting Christ. So wait; if the soul is part of the intellect then did his soul change its mind? If so, then we have to admit that soul and intellect are connected and that gives a good chance that babies and severely brain damaged and severely mentally disabled people have no souls, or at least don't have the mechanisms that allow them to decide the fate of their souls. Alternatively, if the soul is separate from the intellect, then why would the souls be punished for what the intellect does? If my intellect decides to kill 37 people with a stapler, then why should my soul go to hell for that?
Another thing - if god decides when we die then why does he kill a man at 47 when he is a Muslim and not at 46 when he is still a Christian? If god doesn't decide, and it's all a matter of free will and happenstance, then what is the point of this supposed 'test' that we have been given? It's not a test, it's mostly luck, it's a crapshoot. If a Christian died just as he was having a doubt about Jesus, would he go to hell? That's so random! One second he's fit for heaven, the next he's not? One day an atheist is about to convert to Christianity when he is attacked by wild dogs and ripped to shreds. He goes to hell because the arbitrary date of his death was one day early? Nothing about the idea that we have souls makes any sense - it's either completely inexplicable, completely cruel, or completely arbitrary!
So instead of waddling though this indecipherable muck about souls do this instead: Ask yourself, is there any such thing as a soul to begin with? You've never seen it, you don't know where you got it, you don't know what it does or what it's for. It's eternal fate rests on your decisions, but modern science shows that all your decisions emanate from your brain, from your neural network, not from some mysterious force that resides nebulously if the confines of your being.
So, if you ask me, there is no soul. We are all soulless bags of meat wandering around trying to justify our supposition of supremacy to the dogs and the rocks. Perhaps we should just humble ourselves before nature and admit that we are not better. We don't have some invisible immortal ghost that resides in our machine that sets us apart from this world. We're just another cog in the big contraption called nature - and we're not even an important cog. The contraption would run just fine without us and our conceded notions of immortality.
