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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Souls
Message-ID: <1206@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 13-Aug-85 08:33:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1206
Posted: Tue Aug 13 08:33:50 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Aug-85 00:24:16 EDT
References: <1195@umcp-cs.UUCP> <540@utastro.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 32

[The mightly hunter strides along, checking his many traps.  Lo!  He has
 caught something!]

In article <540@utastro.UUCP> padraig@utastro.UUCP (Padraig Houlahan) writes:

[But first, a quote from our sponsor]

>> The oldest notion seems to be of souls: beings of pure will.  I think that
>> at this time we can reject this hypothesis, or at least set it aside until
>> there is better evidence.

I put this in the original article because I knew at least one perosn would
fall into this trap.  And here we have:

>If you do not accept the existence of souls, why do you bother with the
>new testament, christianity, and things like god? I was
>under the impression that the whole thrust of christianity was 
>salvation. What's to be saved if there is no soul? 

How about the person?  People throughout the ages have erroneously gone from
"There is life after death" to "Something of the person must survive death."
This idea is strongly associated with spiritualism, in particular, and can
be traced back to ancient Egypt.  Even if we allow the possibility of life
after death (resurrection, whatever), however, I think it's safe to say that 
we know essentially nothing about what it is like, or, more importantly, the
method taking us from this life to the next.  Even if you accept all manner
of spiritualist evidence, or all of the Bible as Fact, I don't think you
need souls as an explanation.

Charley Wingate  umcp-cs!mangoe

  "Better get used to those bars, kid."