( continues...) converned empathatic person I once knew; he is now married again and treats his wife with the kindness and respect he should. To me those changes were changes in the soul; you can't tell me that they were superficial that his soul was not tainted when he became violent or that it did not improve when stopped. And he did therapy for decades; it was only when the prozac was prescribed that he was able to change again.

Note that I'm not saying he was not responsible for his actions. I'm just saying he did not make the first change until he got the bad acid, and was unable to make the second until the prozac.

And if that example is flawed I'll bet you can come up with ones that aren't.

So it is one thing to imagine the soul as some kind of phantom captain seperate from the body in the face of the phenomena of death. But in the face of injury that changes how the people think and behave it gets a bit harder. Not impossible. You can add complexity to the hypothesis - imagining the connection to the body being disorted without being severed by changes in the brain. But bear in mind it is not just a matter of brain damage that lowers intelligence. You can have changes that leave you as "smart" or "cunning" or "intelligent' or whatever as you ever were, but drastically change your personality in other ways. So it seems to me that a soul that can exist seperately from the body is a more complex explanation for the same set of facts. So again it seems like the burden of proof is on anyone who wants to argue for the existence of an immortal soul, as opposed to a mortal soul that dies with the body.

Not convincing to anyone who disagrees I'm sure. And not really meant to be. Cause I also think that religious beliefs (even if wrong in my opinion) don't really make you more vulnerable to ideas that are wrong in other ways than any other approach to life. Yes I'm not exactly blind to religious fundamentalism - not Christian fundamentalism, not Islamic fundamentalism, not Jewish fundamentalism, not Hindu fundamentalism. But you know we had the whole communist phenomena which killed a hell of a lot of people which had no belief in the after life. And there were the Nazis who were essentially pagan. There are a fair number of Jews and Athesist in the U.S. on the side of the fundamentalists. There are a fair number of Evangelical Christians strongly opposed. I think your virtue and your degree of rationality (not that I think any human being including myself is all that rational) come from a deeper well than religious belief. So I'm an athesist; I think people who believe in an afterlife are wrong (while acknowledging it could be other way around). But I don't think that the mistake is an important one, and I have no desire to persuade anyone who is religious/spiritual/whatever to change. I do enjoy intellectual discussion of the point in a context where it won't distress anyone.

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And for something completely different, any Royal watchers wanting a good laugh should check out the comics series The Royals

[link]

The "King Han Solo the First" one made me hurt myself laughing.

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I want junk food, possibly something in the chocolate cupcake family, but I'm not sure I can actually justify leaving the house to buy them.

I will be spending the evening watching 'A Hole in the World' and chopping up each and every one of my credit cards. Is that enough?

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You know what I realized?

(Chorus of "What, Tep?")

My laptop plays DVDs. Laptops are portable.

I can take a bath and watch a DVD at the same time!!!! (Yes, w/the laptop on the counter so as not to electrocute myself and/or destroy the computer.)

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Well said, Typo Boy.

I can take a bath and watch a DVD at the same time!!!!

You can also use your laptop to watch movies in a hotel, or while on a train.

And for about $20, you can buy an adaptor that will let you play DVDs (or whatever) on a TV.

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I think my Powerbook came with this adapter. I watch most torrents on my TV now.

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Hee. See, I'm totally the opposite; I watch everything on my computer, cause my PC looks quite a bit better than my rather elderly TV.

And for a bit of mememe...I tried on pants I haven't worn since 1998, and THEY FIT!!! I have a cameltoe in them, so they are not quite fitting well, but they are on me, zipped, and loose in the thighs. I am so weirdly happy.

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That was fantastic, Gar.

if you can't find rational arguments for your emotional bias then you need to find a way to change it; mind you I don't think proof in any absolute way will ever be found; but I try to have a reasonable argument why my viewpoint is not insane or stupid.

I agree with this. And I think it touches on such an important point. When any person holds a belief they are afraid to question, I think it needs questioning.

The day will come when I am not in heaven or hell or reincarnated or drifting around on a different plane. I will be gone. There won't even be a little bit of me left to know that I'm gone. That was not an easy thing to accept, and once made that leap is made, belief it an afterlife seems kind of like a kindly lie told for people who can't bear a harsh truth.

I think the fear of the above (or unacceptance of the above) is more common than not, regardless of any belief in the supernatural, but surely must play into mankind's quest for answers. Does that sort of extinction of being freak out other people here?

It hasn't bothered me, but I wonder if that's because I came to my personal beliefs so young, but always had sort of a "if this isn't true, nothing is, and there's nothing after death" as my back-up understanding, if you will. Well more specifically, I always thought there was a God. I always thought that if there was a God, the Christians were most likely to be right, and if they were wrong, then I thought the Jews were 2nd most likely to be right, and then I thought the atheists were third most likely to be right. Now granted, as a American child, my most-likely-scenario-#1 and my most-likely-scenario-#2 were at least partially a by-product of how I was raised, and the culture in which I was raised. Today however, I still think the same things are likely to be true, and in that order, if anything is true.

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Does that sort of extinction of being freak out other people here?

It used to. But now I pretty much deal with it. It does make me live more in the moment because of the realization that I only have a finite amount of time to do stuff....

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Ha! Cindy, that cracks me up! I totally now see religion as a cosmic horserace in your teeny wee head:

"ANNNNNDD now we have Christianity in the the backstretch, followed closely by Atheism! Wait...wait...is that JUDAISM burning up the track, catching up with, NO WAIT -- passing Atheism! It's a hot race, folks!"

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