You probably know by now that I’m a bit of a pragmatist. I don’t totally discount the possibility of the paranormal, and pragmatism is a little too strict really, but I’m definitely of the scientific, that-which-can-be-proven mindset. I think there’s more to life than eight decades of faffing about and then decomposing in the ground. I just think it might be a little premature to assume we have a soul, an entity tethered to us in some indescribable, untenable way.
I don’t rule out the possibility of the soul, the spirit or gods, because that would be stupid. How can you claim something without proof? I sometimes wonder about those scientists and cartographers that declared our Earth to be flat. Were they sane? Were they frickin’ scientists? How about the shaman and philosophers that decreed that gods reside in the cosmos — or better yet, that stars are actually gods? Did they just pull that kind of stuff out of their ass, or did it really make sense back then? When did science actually become science, i.e. empirical? [That's another topic for another day I think.]
This is one of those situations where I wish I could be more objective. From my seat (surrounded by three computers and four screens) of power, I can glance back to the dawn of modern civilization, and scry forward to some crazy, potential futures. Were the philosophers of Athens graced with such foresight or hindsight?
How many scientists, philosophers or engineers had ideas beyond their time? Leonardo da Vinci is one example, but I can’t think of many others. Our thoughts are generally held back by the framework that supports the body and mind: society and culture. Is a tribal elder going to contemplate cryogenics? No. Is Aristotle going to think about superconducting super colliders that expose the base units of existence itself? No. If Jesus was born in the 1600s, would Christianity occur? No. Eminent thinkers are of their time and very rarely anything more.
And then there’s me, and any of my contemporaries that stop to think about the future. We’re in a position now where we can actually think about what the future might bring with some measure of accuracy. We’re about to finally get a glimpse of the universe’s building blocks. Science, at its most basic form, transforms things we don’t know into things we do know. We point a camera into deep space to find out what’s there — we split an atom to find out what’s inside. From the outside, with our weak human eyes, there’s nothing to be had from either, but science proves otherwise. The most basic action in science is measuring, quantifying. Until something is seen, it doesn’t exist: electrons didn’t exist until we measured them and their flow.
What if one day we can point some kind of imaging device at a fellow human and see their soul?
Why is that a totally crazy idea?
Right now, God and the soul can only be experienced through some kind of internalisation — through the mind’s (…) eye. Why do miracles and divine inspiration (or the deification thereof) occur only within our head? Will we one day be able to see those images and feel those experiences with some kind of artificial device? And if we can’t, why not?
Is it because the god, the spirit, your soul doesn’t actually exist?
You have two possible answers:
a) One day, we will be able to see the soul and interact with it, without the brain. We’ll be able to photograph it, stretch it, test it. The inexorable march of science means that eventually everything in the universe will be ours to play with.
And now, as we live in a universe with laws, where science rules supreme, there must be the other option:
b) The soul doesn’t exist. Gods don’t exist. They are both constructs of an incredibly powerful machine — the brain.
I wish the fellows over at CERN would hurry up and smash some protons together in that large collider of theirs. I really want to know the extent of these three dimensions we inhabit.
Eric
Jan 11, 2010
What if the soul exists outside of any perception? What if it’s wrapped up in another dimension, tethered to us by a string? What if what makes us human (supposedly above animals) is floating in some inconceivable Escher painting of a dimension? Huh, huh?
chiefy
Jan 11, 2010
I think that soul looking device would be rather invasive.
sebastian
Jan 11, 2010
Yeah Eric, I’m sure if there are other dimensions, that’s where the soul is.
Maybe it’s on the other side of black holes? Or somewhere BEFORE the Big Bang in that… er… other plane?
But if the brain can interact with it, why can’t we make a machine that also does that? And why can’t we then measure divine inspiration/miracles on some kind of scientific scale?
It probably would Chiefy. But dare I say, a lot of people have suffered in the thirst for knowledge..
Emily Jane
Jan 11, 2010
Very thought-provoking post. And “there’s more to life than eight decades of faffing about and then decomposing in the ground” was *maybe* the best take on existence ever. I like the idea that technology is going to play a role in our advancement of understanding the grand concepts of the universe. More has happened in the last century than it has in the last two thousand years, and it’s only advancing ever-more rapidly. If such a thing were to exist as to document or image the soul, I think the first step would be to create something that could do it for our dreams – everybody KNOWS that dreams exist because everybody’s experienced them, and I think the first step into proving something that exists in an ‘alternate’ (subconscious) world as it were would be there. Once that was tackled I think it would be the platform on which to start looking for the soul – because not everybody believes in souls, or Gods or what have you. But then again once upon a time not everybody believed the world was round. It’s interesting to look back at the advancements of mass acceptance in terms of scientifically provable things, and it’s an exciting thought to think of what advancements will happen in regards to mass acceptance of spiritual existence…
Thanks for such a thought-provoking post!
sebastian
Jan 11, 2010
I think this is such a contentious subject because, for thousands and thousands of years, the spirit, soul and gods have been sacrosanct.
The whole idea behind those ‘greater forces’ is that they are indomitable, unmeasurable, unanswerable to the common laws of the universe.
And suddenly we’re living in a world where that might not be true. That’s pretty big news, and not something that’s easy to swallow.
As for dreams… yeah, they’d be an interesting starting point
Any way we look at it, we have to increase our understanding of the brain. I want to believe there’s something more than just a highly-complex machine in my skull, but there’s a chance there isn’t!
floreta
Jan 11, 2010
great topic and great article! perhaps slightly off topic, but i’ve talked to people who believe in aliens because the mayan civilization, egyptians etc were SO ‘ahead of their time’ that its mind-boggling.. has to be aliens involved! yep, that’s the logical answer. *snicker* but in all due respect, i do think alien life is a possibility, but like god/religion; there is no way to prove or disprove it at this point really. so i find it funny that lots of atheists and agnostics believe in aliens yet they don’t believe in god. why is that!?? to me, it’s essentially the same leap of faith belief.
Adrienne
Jan 12, 2010
That comment about Jesus seemed a little misplaced. I understand Aristotle not pondering super conductors but why wouldn’t Christianity have been if Jesus had come in the 1600′s? It’s not really fair to say because there’s no way of knowing for sure. Not to mention, Christianity is an incredibly influential religion and the 1600′s may have been completely different and open to the Messiah’s coming without Christianity having been able to influence the several centuries before that. And, to just get all overly-excited about it, Jesus was pretty obviously more than just “of his time” – He was far beyond it and He may have come to this earth to begin this ever-growing religion at just the time that He (and apparently you) knew was best. So there.
A measurable soul would be pretty awesome though.
Arina
Jan 12, 2010
I don’t think a measurable soul is possible. Because as much as “quantifying” our surroundings has helped us, it’s also gotten us into quite a bit of a mess. For example, from what I understand I think it was quantum physics and the theory of relativity that completely contradict each other, if I’m not mistaking my theories here (I feel as though string theory should play in here somehow… hmmm). Those are both plausible theories about the universe, they both seem to make sense, and yet they can’t BOTH make sense… one of them has to be wrong. It’s like the whole “is light a wave or a particle” thing, where it changes its identity based on how you process it and look at it. It’s like if you look away, it’s one thing, but how can we really know, because when a machine processes it, and we aren’t looking, it acts like something totally different.
I think we are far from being able to predict our future, and are far from any “soul-searchers” simply because of the fact that the more we know, the more we realize we DON’t know. I have read (and heard) that some of the world’s most ingenious philosophers and scientists go by that, because knowledge is simply kind of ever-expanding, kind of like the universe.
And the whole thing with souls, although I’m not devout to religion in any shape or form or way or anything (hehe), is that I think that while humans are pin-pointable to a degree – their mannerisms, actions – psychology has helped us a great deal in deciphering the way we think and act, there are still some things that AREN’T explainable. Love included. So far I haven’t really read a definition of love that makes sense to me as a physiological result of the body or mind. The soul explains it, as vague and watery as it is. Maybe I don’t have faith in god, but I have faith in souls, although less and less often these days.
Anyway, that was rather long, but it was a good post.
sebastian
Jan 12, 2010
Adrienne — that was a little snippet of another theme that’s going around in my head at the moment
I think religion happens to be very ‘modern’. They are of their time. i.e. if Christianity didn’t make sense 2000 years ago, it wouldn’t have taken off.
There are plenty of other religions don’t forget. Jesus/Christianity replaced hundreds of other gods! The same argument goes for them — what’re the chances of the God of Wine or War being ‘invented’ today? Slim? You’d have all the Christians fighting against it for a start…
Can you see the beginnings of that argument?
Arina — the soul explains a lot of things. In fact, it explains everything that’s currently unexplainable. That’s basically its role throughout modern history… gods and souls. The thing is, the more we discover, the less we attribute to souls. Yes, you’re right, there’s always something else to discover — it hints at some kind of infinity, that’s for sure.
It’s too mind-boggling to contemplate, that’s kind of the problem. You can’t take yourself, your brain, your soul out of the equation.
Just bear in mind that many things were once NOT explained, and now they are. That’s how knowledge goes. You should read my rant on magic, it’s related to this: http://blog.mrseb.co.uk/2009/05/its-a-kind-of-magic/
Adrienne
Jan 16, 2010
I really wish I knew how to spell…tooshe?…tushay? It’s french, right.? Whatever.