If man was created in the image of God, does that include all hominids? Does that include Neanderthals? Did all hominids therefore have a soul? If the answer to these questions is yes, then where is the record of these people? Would they not have the gospel as children of God?
Neanderthals were intelligent humans that had a social structure and practiced such things as burying their dead, and adorning themselves with jewelry, etc. Were they just an experiment of God, and never actually given a soul? How do we explain the fact that they lived at the same time as homo sapiens? When did homo sapiens start having souls? Did they always have a soul? That would mean that for 100s of thousands of years, there have been humans on the earth with souls, but they did not have religion until around 6000 years ago, and the Neanderthals never had religion, at least not the true religion of God based on Jesus Christ. How can this be? Does God only love some of his children and not others?
Looking for the Perfect Indoor Bench
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Before the influence of the Greek concept of the psyche on Hebrew thought, the bible's authors only spoke of a man having breath (spirit), and any living creature was called a "soul". The belief in consciousness after death was explicitly denied in the Old Testament. Ecclesiastes 9:5: "For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten."
Even the New Testament speaks only of a promised resurrection of the dead at the end of time, with two notable exceptions: Jesus relates a parable of a rich man burning in hell, and later on the cross Jesus says to the Good Thief, "I say to you, this day you will be with me in Paradise".
The former was a parable which was intended to convey a truth about the need to convert before death and judgment, not necessarily to convey actual conditions in the afterlife. The latter can be explained by the fact that the original Greek text did not use commas, so the insertion of the comma after the word "you" was an arbitrary choice of the translators. If the comma is moved, the passage then reads "I say to you this day, you will be with me in Paradise" which allows for the traditional understanding of a bodily resurrection at the end of time rather than a disembodied state immediately after death.
So what are your thoughts about Neanderthals?
Neanderthals are in the same boat we are in, Rick. There's no "soul". When they died, they ceased to exist anywhere but in the mind of almighty God, and if he sees fit to bring them back to life for a second bite at the apple, that's his prerogative. It's only when you insist on the existence of an immaterial soul that you end up with these curious boundary effects, and the questions about when did animals become worthy of having souls.
Linux angle: Using DOSBOX I have reconstructed the Amstrad 1640 computer I had long ago which ran the GEM windowing interface, and I have even supplied the original software I had on a set of floppy disks which were gathering dust. This old Amstrad computer lives again, and it will live forever so long as there is a Linux, but from 1998 until 2008 it was not "conscious" while it sat up in my closet scattered on dozens of floppy disks.
I like your interpretation of soul (or lack thereof). It makes sense. So tell me what you think happens to someone after death.
Rick, to understand what I am saying, you must grasp my firm belief that consciousness is the activity of a brain, which is a wonderful and complicated object, perhaps the most complex set of organized matter in the universe. There can't be a pure disembodied consciousness, not even a deity. That doesn't make sense to me. To have thought, there has to be something that thinks, and when our brains die, there is no more thought.
Now in the scriptures we are promised a new body and brain which will think the same thoughts, but you open a new can of worms with speculation that there would be no continuity of identity between you "now" and you "then". But these promises of a life in the hereafter weren't provided to the original Hebrews.
In the Old Testament there was an attempt to create a tight one-for-one relationship between sin and death, righteousness and life. Unfortunately, this rarely panned out. The wicked often flourished, became rich and lived long, healthy, productive lives. The poor often fell sick and were cut short from the blessings of life. This resulted in the development of a theology of a settling of accounts post mortem. If a child was murdered before enjoying the blessings of life, God was to make it up to him with eternal happiness. If a wicked person lived a full and happy life, God was to settle the score with eternal torments in hell. The result is a theology which reflects human psychology more than divine truth.
Ok, I follow the lack of soul and end of consciousness track. So if what you say is true, then what is the purpose of our existence (assuming there is a deity)?
Or are we our own deity? Or is the species the deity?
Or is teresita the deity?
Ok, I follow the lack of soul and end of consciousness track. So if what you say is true, then what is the purpose of our existence (assuming there is a deity)?
Before I can get to that part, I have to convince you of a certain philosophical concept that doesn't really have a name. There's no "ism" that covers it, and I can really only circle around the edge of it.
Here's one part of it: The most compact complete representation of a thing is itself. In other words, suppose there's a giant redwood and you wanted to create a computer model that tree, complete. Suppose your computer was so advanced it used atoms to store information. Surely you see that to have a complete and accurate "model" of the tree, you could do no better than to just have the tree itself. So God's perfect knowledge of the Redwood is encoded in the Redwood itself.
This works for historical events as well as trees. Now what do you suppose would be the ingredients of a self-aware "soul" ? It would be a lifetime of memories, including memories of Redwood trees and interactions with thousands of other self-aware souls.
That is the purpose of our existence. God is creating from scratch billions of independent thinking beings. He could do this just in his mind, some say, but if the most compact representation of things and events is the thing and event themselves, then it makes no difference to say whether he is doing this in his mind or he is doing this on the stage we call the universe.
The universe is the mind of God.
And why do we say there is hope for a Second Life? Because God has perfect recall. There is much good in the present life. It was intended by God to be enjoyed to the fullest extent. But it would make no sense for God to go through all that effort to create billions of point-awarenesses only to see them fade to nothing like sea foam at the end of the First Life.
Ok, then if the universe is the mind of God, then we really don't know if we are being written to memory or being read from memory, do we?
Tell me more.
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