Back to that soul thing

I was recently amused to see that the same questions I was pondering earlier here hit the New York Times here

I believe I brought up the same issues, though they wrote better and had experts they could quote.

There was some interesting history. In 1950 Pope Pius XII said ““Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.” Googling this phrase leads to a rats nest of philosophical contortion. None of which (well none of the 198,000 hits I actually looked at) considers the possibility that this soul thing is just a figment of hopeful imagination or even works through when twins get souls. Then I see that Pope John Paul said “considering the mind as emerging merely from physical phenomena” was “incompatible with the truth about man.”

Is not.

Is too.

Is not.

I’m infallible, so there.

And he was just warming up by laying out the truth about mind. Just wait for it on the soul thing.

Hmm. So if this soul thing is not based in physical phenomena then I guess imaginary people could be just as soulful as physical ones. I bet there’s a religious divide by zero trick in there somewhere. Good thing they got their “get out of paradox free” card.

According to the Times it was Descartes’, “I think, therefore I am,” that cast animals into the non-thinking and non-soulful abyss. And this is being undermined as biologists are showing more and more similarity between animal thought and human thought.

I was pleased to see that the “man has a soul, animals do not” thing has religious opponents, including apparently Thomas Aquinas. I’ll have to read more about this. I’d like to know how he justified the treatment of animals. Being a Saint and all.

If you’re looking into this New York Times article, I’d also search for other mentions of people quoted there; V. S. Ramachandran, Nancey Murphy (of the Fuller Theological Seminary), John F. Haught (Georgetown University) and Kenneth R. Miller who wrote “God After Darwin”.

And Dr. Haught was prepared to grant souls back way past Neanderthals, all the way to Australopithecus afarensis (though he quibbled about their souls “shape”). If that isn’t religious tolerance, I don’t know what could be.