Atomic Soul
William Lauritzen
Summary
Each primitive culture over the course of many millennia was able to observe
some obvious and important things about sustaining human life: 1) humans die
when their blood flows out, and 2) humans die when they can't breath.
Further observation showed that: 1) blood evaporated into the thin air, and
2) when a body was burned it reduced to only a few ashes.
They attempted to describe these events the best they could. The ancients,
to an extent, were trying to describe what science calls "water vapor" and
"oxygen." The ancients deduced (incorrectly) that these invisible phenomena
were personal units. They may have even correctly deduced that this
something-in-the-air gets into the red-life-liquid through breathing.
The Nile River Valley humans, believing they knew the two fundamental
principles of human life, the
invisible-formless-and-personal-life-giver-in-the-air-(that-enters-the-red-l
ife-liquid), or Ka, and the
invisible-formless-and-personal-life-giver-in-the-air-(that-enters-the-chest
), or Ba, and thinking that they could prevent death, rottenness, and decay
through mummification, believed they might achieve immortality.
The ancient Nile River Valley people put the mummified Pharaoh, and his
vital organs inside a pyramid. Airshafts in the pyramid made sure that the
invisible-life-in-the-air, or Ba, and the invisible, evaporated
red-life-liquid, or Ka, could re-animate him when the time came.[34] Of
course, the time never came.
So, still buried beneath the swirling sands of the Nile desert, or neatly
displayed in glass-enclosed museum cases throughout the world, mummified
Pharaohs yet wait for their Ka and Ba to return to re-animate them.
There is no Santa Claus, no tooth fairy, no Easter Bunny; the "mothership"
is just a small studio prop, and your individual "spirit" or "soul,"
although in a sense they leave your body at death, cannot somehow be
returned to "you," a individual personality, at another time through
"reincarnation." An individual's personality is forged from their very
particular genes and their very particular environment, and for any two
individuals these are never the same, ever.
So at death, in the scientific model, the "spirit" does not leave the body:
the blood flow stops, the body ceases to take in water, and the water in the
blood leaves the body, or evaporates.At death, the "soul" of the person does
not leave the body: We now might say a trauma occurs which causes the body
to cease functioning, which includes not taking in more oxygen. Or we could
say that the genetic coding causes the cells to age and eventually die, and
respiration stops. At death, the air in the lungs leaves the body.If it's
any consolation to your immortal yearnings, the actions you take in your
lifetime have consequences that extend forever. However, in the more
accurate scientific model, through sex and DNA blueprints we create
carbon-and-oxygen-burning, bipedal (upright), ape-like, water-filled sacks,
with opposable thumbs and relatively large brains, supported by ossified,
interior, calcium frames.The individual's genes (the body's blueprint) may
be passed along to his children, sometimes along with certain values and a
lifestyle, and that may give some measure of immortality. But the individual
dies and their atoms, which are mostly oxygen, are eventually recycled as
part the web of life we call the biosphere.In the light of the scientific
model, the personal "soul" and "spirit" reveal themselves to be part of a
vast, shared, soup of atoms.
--
Bill Lauritzen
www.earth360.com
--
Bill Lauritzen
www.earth360.com
Derrick Everett
in <ybPU6.23340$L4.42...@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>:
>excepts from my article "Atomic Soul" at my web site:
>www.earth360.com
>
>So at death, in the scientific model, the "spirit" does not leave
>the body: the blood flow stops, the body ceases to take in water,
>and the water in the blood leaves the body, or evaporates.At death,
>the "soul" of the person does not leave the body: We now might say a
>trauma occurs which causes the body to cease functioning, which
>includes not taking in more oxygen. Or we could say that the genetic
>coding causes the cells to age and eventually die, and respiration
>stops. At death, the air in the lungs leaves the body.If it's any
>consolation to your immortal yearnings, the actions you take in your
>lifetime have consequences that extend forever. However, in the more
>accurate scientific model, through sex and DNA blueprints we create
>carbon-and-oxygen-burning, bipedal (upright), ape-like, water-filled
>sacks, with opposable thumbs and relatively large brains, supported
>by ossified, interior, calcium frames.The individual's genes (the
>body's blueprint) may be passed along to his children, sometimes
>along with certain values and a lifestyle, and that may give some
>measure of immortality. But the individual dies and their atoms,
>which are mostly oxygen, are eventually recycled as part the web of
>life we call the biosphere.In the light of the scientific model, the
>personal "soul" and "spirit" reveal themselves to be part of a vast,
>shared, soup of atoms. --
This is not far removed from the teaching of the Buddha as preserved in
and developed by Buddhist tradition. The Buddha Shakyamuni denied the
existence of a soul. He taught that what appears to be an individual
is an ever-changing and transient composite of five aggregates or (in
Sanskrit) "skandha". These aggregates are themselves impermanent and
changing. At the death of an apparent individual each of them either
ceases or returns to what you call "the biosphere"; in fact some of
them are exchanged with or formed by their surroundings during each
lifetime.
The five aggregates vary slightly from one branch of Buddhism to
another, but one version is as follows. The apparent individual
consists of (1) a physical form or body, (2) feelings and sensations (I
think this might include the nervous system which conveys the
sensations), (3) discrimination or perception (including the faculty of
reason), (4) compositional factors (including the will and moral
instincts) and (5) consciousness.
--
Derrick Everett (deverett at c2i.net)
http://home.c2i.net/monsalvat/index.htm