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mo42 · 09-27-2004, 12:20 PM

Well, if you had 100 trillion 1s/0s, the average (as shown in the control) is 50 trillion of each. If in reality you get 50.02 trillon 1s and 49.98 trillion 0s, that ends up being very, very far off of the standard deviation. The odds of such an event happening naturally are about something like one in ten million; and it has been a few years since I read the report and I don't remember the details of the experiment as to number of times repeated, variations between subjects, ets.

I think that the soul is a separate thing, different from the brain. It doesn't necessarily have to live in the brain, though I suppose that would be where most of the interactions between it and matter would be. For all I know, it's on a separate plane of existence and is affecting this universe remotely.

I suppose souls origninate from God somehow, but religious texts fail to explain the origin of souls properly, so I don't have a lot to go on.

I myself am a Christian, and so follow the standard afterlife go to heaven if you're good theory.

I am unsure at what point a fetus gets a soul; that's an important issue for abortion, and I haven't properly resolved my views on it.

Souls in animals is a very good question, I've been wondering about that myself. If having self-awareness means that you have a conciousness, and having a conciousness becomes equivalent to having a soul, then we would already know that Dolphins would have them. If cats were self-aware, perhaps they would have them too. Tuna, almost certainly not self-aware, would not, nor insects nor plants.

What souls actually do... an interesting question, and much tougher to answer than I would have orignally thought. I think that perhaps they are the essence of a person and were created by God to create joy in the universe. But now we're starting to spread into a wide variety of topics.

Why souls are so hard to spot... well, lots of things are hard to spot. Gamma radiation is hard to spot. So is gravity, on the small scale. So are quantum variations. Heck, the soul could be a being of energy on another plane which has quantum entanglement with the atoms of a person's brain.

09-27-2004, 12:20 PM	#29 (permalink)
mo42 Insane Location: California	Well, if you had 100 trillion 1s/0s, the average (as shown in the control) is 50 trillion of each. If in reality you get 50.02 trillon 1s and 49.98 trillion 0s, that ends up being very, very far off of the standard deviation. The odds of such an event happening naturally are about something like one in ten million; and it has been a few years since I read the report and I don't remember the details of the experiment as to number of times repeated, variations between subjects, ets. I think that the soul is a separate thing, different from the brain. It doesn't necessarily have to live in the brain, though I suppose that would be where most of the interactions between it and matter would be. For all I know, it's on a separate plane of existence and is affecting this universe remotely. I suppose souls origninate from God somehow, but religious texts fail to explain the origin of souls properly, so I don't have a lot to go on. I myself am a Christian, and so follow the standard afterlife go to heaven if you're good theory. I am unsure at what point a fetus gets a soul; that's an important issue for abortion, and I haven't properly resolved my views on it. Souls in animals is a very good question, I've been wondering about that myself. If having self-awareness means that you have a conciousness, and having a conciousness becomes equivalent to having a soul, then we would already know that Dolphins would have them. If cats were self-aware, perhaps they would have them too. Tuna, almost certainly not self-aware, would not, nor insects nor plants. What souls actually do... an interesting question, and much tougher to answer than I would have orignally thought. I think that perhaps they are the essence of a person and were created by God to create joy in the universe. But now we're starting to spread into a wide variety of topics. Why souls are so hard to spot... well, lots of things are hard to spot. Gamma radiation is hard to spot. So is gravity, on the small scale. So are quantum variations. Heck, the soul could be a being of energy on another plane which has quantum entanglement with the atoms of a person's brain.