Wednesday, October 18, 2017

On the Locations of Spirits

Philosophy is weird. I just read a (fortunately fictional) story about a man who had his brain removed. As the nerves connecting his brain to his body were removed, they were replaced with pairs of radio transmitters and receivers, so his body could still send signals to his brain, and vice versa. After the operation, the man looked at his brain, which was then suspended in a life-supporting vat of some translucent liquid. Physically, light was bouncing off of the man's brain into his eyes, which sent a signal through a line of nerves to a radio transmitter, which relayed the signal to the brain, which was the organ that was actually observing the image of itself. But that's not how it felt to the man. As far as the man was concerned, he was standing in front of the vat, looking down at his brain. His consciousness (or spirit, if you will) felt like it was still attached to his body, though I think it was actually still attached to his mind.

But thankfully, and more importantly, we don't actually have to figure out where his spirit or consciousness was, or where anyone's spirit is. Being composite beings with spirits, brains, and bodies can be confusing, but we don't need to understand that yet. For now, it will suffice that God understands how we exist and knows where our spirits are. There's a lot about philosophy that I don't understand, and probably won't understand for a long time. Thankfully, though, I don't need to understand it. God knows how this all works, so I can trust God to make sure everything works out the way it should, so every spirit goes where it's supposed to go, and maybe God can explain this to me when mine gets there.

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