"Things are entirely as they appear to be-and behind them...there is nothing."
Jean-Paul Sartre
i disagree vehemently.
aloha again,
the restless minds...
BLADE RUNNER (now on pay cable again),one of my all time fave movies is based on a novel by one of my all time fave authors PHILLIP K.DICK and his book DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?
bout a hour ago i was watching The Naked Archeologist on TV where he was talking about the Giants in Genesis,not really giants but a mistranslation of NEPHILIM "the fallen".NA talked to an Isreali scientist & lingiust who believed that Nephilim referred to hominids without souls (sic) who interbred with human females.(pause here to thumb thru Genesis,all done?)
then NA talked to another scientist who showed that Neanderthals and Homo Sap lived on Mount Carmel togehter for about 30,000 years and probably interbred.that is where NA left it showing up many of the shortcomings of pop science.the scientist mentioned that Neandterthals & Homo Sap buried their dead in the same manner et al.there is massive evidence that Neantherthals buried their dead with a concept of the After Life with burial trinkets,food & weapons just like other primitive societies.No Soul? Preposterous i say.
what has this got to do with Blade Runner?
knowing P.K.Dick from more than one novel i posit the question, if we build androids-artifical humans, how do we know that they don't have souls? might not a stray soul or souls inhabit a suitable vessel? should this effect the way we are treating more and more complicated machines and robots now? what about CYBORGS {CYBernetic ORGanisms},humans (many severely disabled) with machine parts or interfaces.where do we draw the line between man & machine? who decides? priests or scientists or governments? when do we begin thinking about this seriously?
many believe that animals like dolphins,primates,cats & dogs have souls.i agree with this idea,so might not these souls upgrade??? if not why not? is GOD(ESS) species specific? how narrowly defined do we want to go? put your ideas in COMMENTS below.
Happy Easter/Passover/whatever.
namste
sumper gumbo
mega
Hmmm... what if we just treated sentient beings in general with respect and then we don't have to debate whether or not they have souls?
ReplyDeleteI have read somewhere that one justification for slavery was that black people didn't have souls. If people get to debate about who has and who does not have something that cannot be seen, felt or measured, we're all doomed.