In several religious traditions, there are doctrines of “ensoulment,” appearing in various forms. Basically these hold that human persons, in essence, are not the product of elements contributed by their parents. Instead, our inmost and truest being is a pre-existent and immortal soul, divine in origin, that is placed in us at some point in our inter-uterine stage of development (conception maybe, or quickening, possibly) .
I don’t hold to this view. If I ask who I am and how I got to be that way, I’ll say that environment plays a major role. So does my experience. So do the habits I have formed. (I could write volumes on these points but won’t. I want to fry other fish entirely.)
One of my basic ideas about life is that I’m here, it’s great to be here, but I’m not inevitable. The universe could get along perfectly well without “Gardener.”
There are things about me that don’t come from environment or experience. I have white skin (well, pink, actually, but well-tanned from being outdoors as much as possible from late March through Halloween). My eyes are hazel. I can’t curl my tongue or whistle worth a damn. My second toes are longer than my big toes. I am left-handed. Mosquitoes find me irresistible. And, oh yes, I am a male. These are all inherited characteristics. They happened when one particular spermatozoon, donated by my father, plunged into one particular ovum lodged briefly deep inside my mother. And behold, there was me, left-handed and all the rest.
I might not have been. In fact, despite my incorrect notion at times that I am the very center of the known universe, I came into being against enormous odds. Today, for some reason or other, the average male ejaculation of semen contains a mere 20 million spermatozoa. Back in the 1930s, it was 100 million. In my case, there was one winner and 99,999,999 losers. (The actual odds were even greater, inasmuch as my parents finally disclosed to me that like a lot of other babies of the depression years I was “an accident.”)
The mathematics of personal existence are astounding, if you think about them—and if you believe, as I do, that the science of genetics is truer to the way things are than systems of theological dogma and doctrine. For any of us to be, all of our ancestors must be in the right place at the right time with the right partners—and with one lucky spermatozoon out of hordes of unlucky contenders.
Some may disagree, but I find this view inspiring. I love my sons passionately, mostly for who they are, the kinds of men they have become, but also because their existence is close to miraculous, against all the odds. And my four granddaughters and one grandson—hey, they may enrich the entire world with their contributions to human happiness and harmony with nature.
When I am at my most sane, I think of every human being in these terms, as almost a miracle.
I don’t think people who hold this view are capable of getting in an airplane and hijacking it and killing themselves and almost 3000 others for the greater glory of a divine being. Or launching a war on what seems to be Oedipal whim.
There are some problems with my position. I am strongly “pro-choice” (to use the euphemism), up to the end of the first trimester, and fairly strongly up to the end of the second. It’s a little hard to reconcile this with the notion that every one of us is a walking miracle. (Also, there are a few people here and there about whom I think their parents should have been better at birth control.)
BTW, this is a post I have doubts about. This is about the 30th draft. I may not have gotten it right.
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"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument." William Gibbs McAdoo. US Vice-President under Woodrow Wilson.
My first thought was WHY? What prompted this line of thinking today... at this time?
I have a hard time buying into "their existence is close to miraculous" part, though. No doubt, I'll be hammered for my comments but there are, afterall, over SIX BILLION of us on this rock so that would be a heck of a lot of miracles ... which would mean that it doesn't qualify as a "miracle" at all.
I just spent the day with my daughter yesterday. I recently received a message from her that was so incredibly touching, I almost posted it here, when I finished drying my eyes, just because it was SO WONDERFUL... to me anyway. You would likely have read it and not felt the same way about it that I did/do. Our perception and perspective certainly play a large role here.
I, too, was an accident and never knew my father. Only one of my two half brothers knew his father. This is not an indictment of my mother's behavior but, rather, intended to show how utterly common we really are! As "they" say, anybody can be a father...
The mathematics of personal existence may be astounding but, on the other hand, out of those millions of spermatozoa, one is bound to hit the target! The value in life is something that we add to it and interpret for ourselves, as with my daughter's message.
You could have been the result of one of those many other chance combinations and still gotten many of the same genes which, in conjuntion with the same environment, might have resulted in you turning out very much the same. Who knows!?!
I feel that I'm jumping around but my point is that the biology of creation of life doesn't impress me that much. What people can then do with it... that's what's miraculous! I believe that was part of the point you were making but I just wanted to add my $.02. Yes, all the factors combine to make us who we are but, just as in weight training, we can overcome genetics to a great extent with the right guidance and support! Our environment plays such a critical role in who we become, IMHO.
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]
I was having a discussion with a friend yesterday and he suggested an interesting notion. (He may not be original with this, but I hadn't heard it before).
He conjectured that we may be dipping our essence into this dimension with a similarity to holding one's head under water. You can't do it forever! And when we pass on from this dimension we suddenly pull our cosmic heads back out of the water, remembering the fullness of who we are.
The analogy sounds very much like the Abrahamic faiths' tradition that this life will be as a dream, and when you die, you will wake up from that dream, realize it was a dream, and enter true reality.
Originally posted by Kaiser: The analogy sounds very much like the Abrahamic faiths' tradition that this life will be as a dream, and when you die, you will wake up from that dream, realize it was a dream, and enter true reality.
Here's a quote by Wordsworth about that which we were discussing:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.
--William Wordsworth
Originally posted by Kaiser: </font><blockquote>quote:</fon t><hr />Originally posted by Tony Soprano: Whooah, sounds marijuana induced.
You're the expert. </font>[/quote]LOL. Haven't touched it in over a decade....and I thought Popeye was the expert seeing as how he's the king of non sequiturs.
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