On Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:10:25 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Wed, 12 Dec 2007 11:02:27 -0800, Darren New wrote:
>> 
>>> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>>> I don't know that it does - is there evidence/proof to suggest that
>>>> it does?
>>> Do you know who Abraham Lincoln was?  George Washington? Adolph
>>> Hitler? Julius Ceaser?
>> 
>> What's that got to do with souls?
> 
> I'll let you think about it first, for a while.  Ask yourself what a
> soul is, and what makes a difference between a live and a dead person.

The last couple of days have provided an opportunity (unfortunately) for 
me to do just that - one of my coworkers' grandsons was killed in a car 
accident yesterday.  He was about 12 years old. :-(

So yesterday was a little crazy, which is why I hadn't replied yet; I was 
there when my coworker got the call from one of her daughters with the 
news.

What it seems you're talking about (reading ahead to your next message) 
is our self-awareness and our ability to learn from others based on a 
model of expectation of how someone would react or behave given a certain 
situation.

My initial thought (before the events yesterday) had been about the 
differences chemically, biologically, and mechanically between a living 
person and a dead person - not entirely unlike the difference between a 
car that works and a car that doesn't work.  Both are machines (a car and 
the human body), but people's self-awareness is the difference between an 
animate object and an inanimate object - a car can't feed itself (unless 
it's Speed Buggy), but under normal circumstances, we can.

I like your idea about immortality/reincarnation.  Going to have to give 
that some more thought now. :-)

Jim

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