A Horror Story

Do I have a Halloween story for you! Ghouls and goblins are nothing compared to this.

The fundamental concept dividing atheism (matterism) and all the religions is not God. It is the soul. We know at least a little about what the faiths have to say about the soul. But what does a matter-oriented viewpoint say?

The soul is the most immediate apparently supernatural “object” most people encounter. If we want to be rational in how we regard and talk about life and ourselves, the soul as we know it has to go. I know you most likely want to argue this point. But stay with me for a few moments.

If the soul is a false concept, how then to understand being alive? What is aliveness?

My viewpoint -- and I appreciate the irony of my phrasing it this way -- is that the soul doesn't exist. We don't have a soul. The soul is a myth. It has been and is a convenient way of speaking about ourselves but it introduces immediately a distortion. It misrepresents.

The idea of "soul" arises when we try to explain ourselves. But just what exactly do I mean by "we"? The question of "soul" is a question about "who am I?"

For me, the problem of the "soul" is really a roundabout way of stating a problem the body has. For me, the fundamental thing is the body. We each are a body. This seems to be a pretty obvious assertion from someone whose way of viewing the world is materialistic. But what isn't realized sometimes when the human situation is posited this way is what us being a body implies.

If we each are a body, and I am saying we each are, then each body has a problem: how to relate, how to present itself, how to appear, particularly in the presence of other bodies. The body's solution to this problem (and it is a problem, since how the body does this could cause the body harms instead of benefit) is to create a package of behaviors and ways of expressing, and even an identity (the hardest concept perhaps, since it requires self-awareness) by and through which it relates to all the other bodies around it.

Today we talk about things like figuring out how to make our cars drive themselves, and how to make robots. These problems, very real problems, get close to the same engineering problem every body has, except the human body has this problem from its conception (or at least from very soon thereafter). The body in this sense is like those machines, but what it has created to solve this problem has been us. We are the invention of the body. We have been created to solve a problem the body has -- namely how to interact with other bodies. The reproductive imperatve resides in the body, in the DNA, and to accomplish that, the body will do whatever it takes. Even create us! Since we humans have become complex, and numerous, the body has created a complicated interface through which it relates to other bodies.

So we are that interface. We don't exist except for this. We have no separate existence despite a great deal of talk to the contrary. And when we die, it is simply the body failing to maintain its interface.

I appreciate how much this idea matches language and concepts found in the computer world. I also appreciate how often the ideas of one discipline end up moving over into another, and that spiritual ideas have across the years often developed out of ideas adopted from other disciplines. I see this view of myself and mankind and life as just that, the application of ideas developed in an entirely different area of inquiry. So I also appreciate ideas such as this one may undergo further radical transformation as other areas of life contribute in new ways to how we talk and think about ourselves.

But for now this is as far as it goes.

Of course this idea is to some degree what every atheist believes or understands. It is not really new. But its implications don't often get explored. What are some of the implications (besides the fact there is nothing that dies except the body, so don't worry about it)?

First, this idea explains how it can be that creatures other than humans have soul-like features. Clearly we should expect the interface the body makes to have evolved just as has the body. Second this formulation of the "soul" makes who-we-are closer to other natural epiphenomena, things that happen incidental to the existence or activities of something else. What do I mean by epiphenomenon? There's lots of examples -- the world is filled with them.

Light reflecting off a stream is an epiphenomenon. It can make a flickering pattern, entrancing at times. The sound flowing water makes is an epiphenomenon. Of course neither of those is self-aware. That's the big difference between epiphenomena of inert objects and epiphenomena of self-aware systems.

The issue of self-awareness is worth exploring. If we are defining self, how then to do that by talking about self-awareness? It seems tautological (self-referential), and it is. And we are (self-referential)! Just as the body has the problem of how to relate to other bodies it also has the problem of how to relate to itself. It doesn't make sense for the body to get into a fight with itself (although we sometimes talk about that when we discuss people being conflicted or ambivalent, but that's something apart from this discussion). The body has to deal with itself as soon as it has the possibility of tripping over itself. So complicated bodies have to have some self-awareness, and need that self-awareness to the degree they have the possibility of tripping over themselves. Think Dr. Strangelove, with the right hand fighting the left.

Do you know what happens when the brain is split in half? This is possible to do, and it has been used as a medical treatment for seizures. When the brain is split, each hemisphere functions as if it is a separate individual. And occasionally, one side reprimands the other! There's lots of accounts about this, and stories can be found in books by authors like Oliver Sachs.

So we exist – us, you and me -- as a convenience to the body. But because we, the body's interface with the world (and self), have become more complicated, we have become a force in and of ourselves. The emergence of something new is really the story of life. The pattern of emergence has repeated itself since life appeared on this planet.

Coral is a single cell creature that likes to aggregate and build deposits of calcium. Coral builds castles. It partners with an algae to do this. The result is the Barrier Reef in Australia, more than 1000 miles of sculpture. Coral's habit, a mechanical habit, has altered the movement of the ocean.

So too has the interface the human body has created, only more so. We build jettys, and ships.

From my point of view there is a general trend in the development of body interfaces -- they are becoming more independent from their bodies. I am referring to a developmental or evolutionary-historical trend. This suggests humans may be an intermediate form on the way to freeing the body's interface -- call it "spirit" -- from the body. If that happens, we won’t be able to call it "human spirit" any more, of course. I realize this seems "over the top", especially to atheists and materialists who eschew spirituality. But nevertheless it seems an accurate depiction of the trend or alignment of all life in aggregate. Someday (just how is anyone's guess) life may find a way to free the interface it has made for bodies. Actually it is probably more accurate to say the interface itself (again, that’s us) will accomplish this liberation.

So for All Soul's Day, remember where your "soul" came from, and what it is. People have sought and been awed by miracles since earliest times, but have overlooked the greatest miracle of all, that what started out entirely as a convenience has become an independent (to a degree) entity. The body's crutch has grown wings and taken flight, and hints it might even someday manage to free itself entirely from its origins. Does this not qualify as a miracle?
10/27/05