I guess for the purpose of my education, I'll start then Professor. I will provide the caveat that I never was very good at philosophy; while I enjoyed it immensely, eventually I thought so hard that my head hurt. And my logic usually ended up having some sort of flaw; I could never seem to get around that.
You are describing the thing that makes gardener as your physical attributes: left handed, longer second toe, male, not being able to whistle well. Frankly, all of these attributes describe me as well, but they are not what I would call the essence of who I am.
No doubt the fact that we are who we are is a biological miracle. If you comprehend the statistics it took to make 'you', you can see why people rely on theological dogmas to make sense of things. Doing otherwise makes most peoples heads hurt. [img]smile.gif[/img]
At the risk of being brash, I personally believe you are confusing the issue of having a 'soul' with the issue of predestination/karma/free choice/whatever else you want to call it. I don't think that having a soul neceesarily predisposes you to be a certain person. Quite the contrary...in my belief, it is what you do with that soul that makes you who you are, not the other way around. In some theologies, the soul has a defect, a blemish (say from original sin) that tends to lead it a certain way. But in many others, the soul is innocent and pure and it is only what we do that determines who we are and how that soul turns out. (In many eastern traditions, there is actually the concept of 'harming the self; going against your soul by doing bad acts'.)
OK, now my head is hurting and I haven't even started rambling yet. Maybe you can focus this discussion down, or maybe you didn't even me to focus on the issue of 'soul'. Maybe I focused on it because of my interest in it (see my current tag line). Besides, what I know of existential philosophy can be summed up by Buckaroo Banzai: "No matter where you go, there you are." [img]tongue.gif[/img]
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