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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Foolish me on souls again
Message-ID: <1357@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Aug-85 09:38:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1357
Posted: Fri Aug 23 09:38:30 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Aug-85 00:31:44 EDT
References: <1322@umcp-cs.UUCP> <588@utastro.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 40

In article <588@utastro.UUCP> padraig@utastro.UUCP (Padraig Houlahan) writes:

>> I see.  At A I have X, and at B I have X, so there must be a continuity
>> of X between the two.  There are so many assumptions implicit in this
>> that it's hard to know where to start.

>Well let me show you:

>  1) Let A be life before death, and B life after death,
>  2) we have X at A where X is the "we" in "we are resurrected"
>  3) we have X at B where X is the "we" in "we are resurrected"

>These assumptions are implicit in the resurrection claim. These are not
>being challanged here. Now X forms an uninterrupted succession, therefore
>it is continuous.

The assumption I was particularly referring to was the principle that
existence of something at two different points implies continuous existence
of the same thing between them.  Since this isn't even true in the physical
world, which Padraig claims to have knowledge of, why should this principle
be accepted for supernatural phenomena?

Many phenomena appear at isolated points in time without any intervening
existence of the same substance.  We tend to assert that the two isolated
occurances are different entities.  Now, the problem I see is that even if I
accept Padraig's intuition that life requires this kind of continuity, he
neglects to consider the possibility that whatever it is that characterizes
a person could be transformed into a supernatural being at death, and then
back to a material, living person again down the road.  I'll even let him
call the supernatural being a soul.  It should be quite apparent that the
soul as so defined did not exist before the person's death, and ceased to
exist when the person lived again.  So in fact, you still have the
continuity, but living people do not have souls.  This is exactly analogous
to a person driving a car at points A and B (let a be California, and B be
Maryland).  There's no implication that the person was driving a car in
between those points, even if it is the same car.  The person could have had
the car shipped to Md., flew to BWI, and got back into the car.  I think
the analogy should be quite clear enough.

Charley Wingate   umcp-cs!mangoe