Books by Ian Rogers
Books by Ian Rogers
I said at the end of ‘Souled Out part 2’ that the next blog would examine the soul from a Christian perspective but - sorry - not just yet. Like C S Lewis in ‘Mere Christianity’, I want to start from an outside viewpoint and work inwards - so, one more diversion before looking at specifically Christian ideas.
If we are body, mind and spirit (soul), then there must be an interface between the ‘layers’. Fishy phenomena like out-of-the-body experiences (an honorary uncle of mine had one) and examples where a loved one had an intuition of disaster befalling a loved partner (I read the biography of a WW2 fighter pilot whose wife knew when he was shot down) hint at a realm of spirituality outside our everyday experience. If true, they add support to the idea that souls may be part of it. Of course, the same is true in reverse. If someone believes they have a soul, then - as it is unlikely that only human beings have souls - it is likely there are other spiritual beings as well. They could be big, small, nice, nasty and the biggest might be called ‘God’.
Some people have tried scientific experiments with the paranormal. The stage magician Yuri Geller demonstrated how, given a watch, he could bend the hands through the glass. A university physics department sealed varied metal rods in glass tubes and locked them in a ‘before’ cupboard. Once Yuri had held a tube it was transferred to a locked, ‘after’ cupboard.
To the scientists frustration, nothing bent in front of their eyes but some metal bars were found to be bent, in the supposedly secure ‘after’ cupboard some time later. Worse, some of the bars in the ‘before’ cupboard were also found to be bent but before they had been handled. This is the usual result of scientific investigation into paranormal phenomena. Dowsing, ouija, all these things, tend to misfired under test conditions, while continuing to be reported as ‘working’ by their advocates. And, of course, many Christians believe in the reported miracles in the Bible.
Sciences inability to substantiate the existence of spiritual things is one reason why many reject their existence. Another reason is fear. Science, people say, has eliminated superstition, witch-doctoring and harmful social power by those claiming to be ‘spiritually advanced’. Accepting even one spiritual ‘fact’, like the existence of a soul, is like holding the end of a piece of string.
If you pull, more and more unacceptable spiritual stuff comes along. Just as atheists and materialists escape the questions: at what point does a foetus have a soul? and at what point in the animal kingdom does an organism have a soul? so, too, simply denying the existence of any spiritual realm simplifies life for them. They don’t have to worry about the health of their soul, have no responsibility to a God-figure and no worries about the afterlife - but all is this based on unprovable faith in materialism that is as much a faith as is any religion!
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