Re: "Spirituality" vs "Life" [was Re: MEDIA: Venter/Celera/...]

Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Tue, 14 Dec 1999 18:33:53 -0800 (PST)

On Tue, 14 Dec 1999, James Rogers wrote:

>
> My girlfriend asked me a similar question about the soul after hearing
> other people discussing cryonics. I told her I didn't know, but that the
> soul was probably suspended and re-animated with the individual, seeing as
> how the body and soul are inseperable until you are truly dead. And of
> course, you are not truly dead if you can pop back to life. That seemed
> to be a satisfactory explanation to her.
>

I got the same question from a girlfriend at one point too --

I answered:

  1. When you are frozen, the soul stays with your body, presumably because the structure hasn't decayed.
  2. When you are frozen, the soul departs forever. Implying that when reanimated you are soulless.
  3. When you die, the soul departs and when reanimated the soul returns to occupy your body.
  4. When you die, the soul departs, going whereever souls go and when reanimated the next available or nearest "free" soul occupies your body.

For the non-computer people this is a kind of [11, 00, 01, 10] logical set, i.e. all the possibilities.

If they have a personal self interest, they will probably choose (a) or (c). If they are "real" believers, they will probably be going through the Bible for years trying to figure out which case "fits" best. This explanation does away with having to stamp out the concept of "soul" (which in our society is probably a damn hard thing to do), and simply lets them choose the possibility that best fits their strange perspective of reality.

Robert