Ah, that wonderful Rick again. He tells us it's not an interesting question and then proceeds to pedanticize about it for three paragraphs. I assume any question he himself doesn't initiate falls under the rubric of "uninteresting." (Actually, his exegesis IS interesting, dammit.) Rick Moen wrote: > > Quoting BillK (pharos@gmail.com): > > > The problem with souls is that scientifically they are undetectable, > > so science cannot say whether you have one or not, or whether your > > Neanderthal parents had one either. > > Quite. It's therefore an uninteresting question. > > > In the Bible the Old Testament Hebrew words that are translated as > > 'soul' clearly mean something quite different from the Greek words > > used in the New Testament. Greek philosophy had developed the 'soul' > > concept much more than the primitive Hebrew civilisation. In the Old > > Testament the words for soul basically only mean the breath of life. > > If you were alive, you had a 'soul', because animals had 'souls' in > > the Old Testament. > > The Greek "psyche" was actually also derived from the verb for "to > breathe"; the early-Classical[1] Greeks has merely speculated a bit about > whether there's an immaterial life essence of some sort (e.g., in the > Theban poet Pindar's writings). Essentially, I would not call the > Hebrew "nephesh" and "ruah" (both loosely translatable as breath) > concepts very different from the Greek ones at all. > > (The Romans of course just punted on the question, translated psyche to > anima, and didn't bother to think about it much.) > > There's actually some bizarre conceptual distinction in many languages > between the alleged qualities of spirit vs. soul, psyche vs. pneuma, > spiritus vs. anima, ruah vs. nephesh, where the first word of each pair > is the alleged esssential life quality versus the second one being > physical breath -- but it's a bit of a muddle. > > [1] I believe Homer had _something_ on this, too, but not much. > > _______________________________________________ > Skeptix mailing list > Skeptix@lists.opn.org > http://www.lists.opn.org/mailman/listinfo/org.opn.lists.skeptix -- I am an old man and have known many troubles, but most of them never happened. ---- Mark Twain