Having abandoned what little religious belief I did have at a young age I have never really examined religion much, in fact I have learnt more about Christianity from MyNew24 in the past few months than I ever knew before.
Reading your article entitled “The God Delusion” (published 29/10/1012 09h00) I was suddenly hit by the realisation that the Christian belief is actually based on two things that there is absolutely no verifiable evidence of, namely a God and a soul, I have watched the debate raging between both sides regarding the existence of God but the existence of the soul is something that I would like to get more clarity on.Christianity is the belief in divine judgment and eternal life, so basically complete your mortal life on Earth abiding by the rule book (Bible – admit you’re a sinner and Jesus died for your sins) and if you successfully complete this task before your time is up then your soul will go to the good soul parking lot where it will aestivate until judgment day.
What is a soul? Well no-one really seems to know, everyone seems to have their own interpretation, could you elaborate? When is the soul inserted into your mortal body? Again, no-one seems to know, but I am getting images of the movie Avatar.
If God created all the billions of souls in the first place why does he need to test them? Surely he already knows if they are good or not, or was he cleaning out the garage one Sunday and found an old dusty box marked “Souls – untested”?
And why is the same quality control test not applicable for all souls, surely these souls must be tested against the same criteria? For example:1. How can a soul that has lived on Earth for just 6 months be judged the same as one that has lived on Earth for 90 years, or 900 years in the case of some of the Biblical characters?2. Why are some souls brought up in staunch Christian households, hearing about God everyday and regularly visiting Church/Sunday School and other s do not have the same benefit of this “head start”, like souls in Muslim, Jewish, Hindu etc families?3.
Souls that were tested 1000 years ago had a distinct advantage over souls tested in the modern world, I mean if you did not know where the rain came from and an older and wiser tribal member told you that God created it, then it was far easier to accept this answer back then, but now we actually know where rain comes from, surely it is not fair to judge us the same?Then there is the question of the soul testing ground, the entire universe and more specifically the planet we know as Earth, now as an all powerful God who can create anything he wills, why did he create such a complex soul sorting machine? Surely a simple machine where you put a soul in the one end and it gets sorted into a good soul and naughty soul box at the other would be more practical, why create a huge sphere of molten rock with massive slabs of hardened, cooler rock on top?Why have over 300 000 species of plants, 1.8 million species of insect, 32 000 species of fish and 10 000 species of bird on this planet, I have heard of elaborate before but this is extremely overboard, I mean it is just a machine to sort souls, right? He is after all going to destroy everything once the last soul has been tested.
Also, if it is just human souls that are here to be tested, why do other creatures also live and die, if they have no soul they surely are not to be judged?With over 7 billion souls alive today, plus all those that have already died plus all those that will still be born before judgment day, just how many are there supposed to be?
Surely as this is the cornerstone of the Christian belief the Bible, or Jesus, should have been a bit more specific about what the soul actually is, and when it is inserted into our bodies and just how many there are to be tested at judgment day?To the best of my knowledge the closest a person has come to giving any answers about the soul is a certain Dr Duncan Macdougall who estimated the weight of the soul at 21 grams.
It would be interesting to get your take on the existence of the soul.
Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on MyNews24 have been independently written by members of News24's community. The views of users published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.
