The instructions say 'finish the puzzle for your inheritance'.
You quickly complete the edge and nearby pieces. The picture begins to reveal a landscape scene. A wrathful, dark sky of storm-laden clouds looms over an escarpment. Illuminated in the only shaft of brilliant sunlight piercing the scene a road leads to a path, which leads to the base of the cliff and a stairway hewn ornately from the rock face snakes upward, climbing to a....
The last piece is missing!
Will you accept that you may know only the shape of the missing piece and never know to what the stairs lead? Or, will you extrapolate from the incomplete data set and deduce from the surrounding image what is most likely printed there and claim your prize?
It's not really a question, our brains spend a huge amount of time piecing together little bits of data about the world in order to calculate 'the best route for survival', so you, I, or any, would likely have no choice, the deduction would be automatic.
It's likely you have formed an image of the scene, not only of the puzzle's picture and what may be depicted on the missing piece but also the surface, maybe a table, which MUST be present in order for a human to do a jigsaw, maybe also a light source, possibly a chair as it takes a while to do a jigsaw, and the likely overall size of the puzzle, based on your own experience of the size of 1000 piece puzzles and, thereby, the approximate size of the missing piece. All may be deduced, just from a the words above (Mighty powerful stuff is brainzzz). And, while the success of the deduction rests heavily in the quality of both the calculator's equipment and the data, even the dumbest person would be able to guess the shape of the missing piece.
Even a two year old can put the right shaped peg in the right shaped hole.
Now transpose that paradigm onto biology, the 1000 piece puzzle is human DNA. Just as one knows, not only that there's a piece missing from the jigsaw puzzle but also the exact shape of that piece, by the shape of the hole which remains, so too with biology, there would be a gap in the genetic code, a hole in the biological knowledge; a group of genetic data, significant only by its absence, where biologists would be forced to conclude 'there's something non-biological/inorganic going on here" and maybe even speculate on a non-corporeal component as would befit the presence of the 'soul' of ancient fable.
If one of the body's systems, respiratory, circulatory, nervous etc, or one of the organs, were invisible/intangible but KEY to life, biologists wouldn't be able to explain the body's workings; they would be able to tell you everything 'up to a point' but DNA wouldn't tell the whole tale, there'd be mysterious, intangible barrier to full medical comprehension.
However, given that thus far no such gap has been identified in DNA, there are no strange absences, blurry bits etc, we may only assume that humanity, and all life, is a direct consequence of natural abiogenesis and subsequent evolution; the human body functions because of the genetic biochemistry alone...
As if that wasn't conclusive enough, there's a second arrow in this quiver, the Evolutionary mechanism itself; survival of the fittest.
It is widely accepted now that Evolution is fact, THE mechanism for all life. Speaking very loosely, Evolution shows, if a life-form's new genetic mutation is not of benefit to survival in the life-form's environment that 'body part' is less likely to develop; Evolution is kind of a cross between 'Use it or lose it' and 'Do a job often enough you get a callous/good at it'.
So, with that acknowledged one must ask, how does one solve the 'soul' problem? What environmental factors would have to be in place to stimulate, in a purely material, biological mechanism, an entirely immaterial non-biological mutation; the archetypal and Biblical 'Death Escape Pod'? What factors would pressurise any 'Soul-bud' mutation into becoming 'Soul'? And then, more problematically, what environmental factors would have to exist for that biological mechanism to evolve to become incapable of functioning without that immaterial mutation?
Surely we may only honestly claim 'soul' as 'likely' if it can be said to be indispensable, or at least valuable, for the survival of the biological life-form in the environment in which the life-form evolved; ON EARTH.
So, unless we can point out a soul-shaped gap in DNA, where 'SOUL' is required to cause the organic to function AND explain the circumstances by which a soul-shaped callous may be environmentally forged, surely we must concede that the mechanics of Human life are wholly explained by DNA?
And, consequentially, that 'soul' is, as I think we all really suspected anyway, just an ancient label for consciousness?
In the brilliant daylight of current scientific comprehension where our genes clearly do not display even a soul-shaped gap, can we now not assume that 'our' long held fantistical quest for a magical, spiritual core has become, and consequentially always was, merely a wild ghost chase?
Seems clear to me, Soul will soon go the way of all the other bogeymen (or women).
If you are not already convinced, as I, that humans DO NOT have a soul, there's more on the Soul tab, above.
Best practice...
ALWAYS do your own research. :)
This is one of the Too Many Questions
PEACE
Crispy
Crispy
Please leave a comment - Anything will do
The best communications are often,
THREE WORDS OR LESS
OR ONE OR MORE FINGERS!
The best communications are often,
THREE WORDS OR LESS
OR ONE OR MORE FINGERS!
