I always used the analogy of we are a computer. Our body is the hardware, Mind is the Software, and the Power cord is the Soul. The power that runs through that cord comes from God as he is our sustainer and maintainer without him we would not exist. I don’t know if this is exactly how the Church would describe it but I think it sounds perfect.
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I have actually developed this idea of Soul as software and even contributed it to this website sometime ago but all I got was silence. I am submitting this again in this forum and I hope somebody would take time to read it and make a response somehow.
Here goes:
MAKING SENSE OF THE CONCEPT OF THE HUMAN SOUL
A Lay Person’s Speculation
by
Pio G. Yap, Jr.
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Although I profess to believe in the existence of our soul, not being a theologian or a phi-losopher, I am not sure that I understand what it is at all. The dictionary tells us that it is the spi-ritual part of the person. But what is spirit? Why is it immortal? Or is it?
Theologians tell us a thousand times that the human soul includes his intellect and will. Not being a theologian or a philosopher I find it difficult to appreciate and much less to be ex-cited by this explanation. I tried to read this thread assiduously and repeatedly but my lack of training or intellectual tools keeps me frustrated.
Being exposed to science and some computer concepts this is my humble attempt to make sense of this ancient notion in the light of concepts that we are now familiar with. I have tried to present this to some people but nobody would make any comment about it. I even contributed this to a thread in Catholic Answers which heatedly discussed about the existence or non-existence of soul. All it did (I think) was cut short the said thread.
Some Axioms
It is a fact that most people believe in God. And it is not an exaggeration to say that many thinkers are theists. For sure, thinkers have their own notion about God which may vary with each individual. It is safe to say that many men of science are Christians and therefore we can assume that they hold about the same set of views of the idea of God as most Christians do. Two of these views which are the centerpiece of this thesis are that God exists for all eternity and that God is omniscient or All-Knowing.
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It would not be unreasonable therefore to use these tenets as the basic axioms to serve as the starting points of this thesis: That an eternal God exists and that He is omniscient. (This is Biblical. But let us start this thesis in the spirit of science.)
Before proceeding with our discussion, allow me first to present what can be considered as a self-evident axiom:
Each physical object contains the sum total of its own software.
Explanation: Consider a particular pencil. What information does it contain? It has its length, color, the amount and kind of wood it has, the amount and kind of lead in it, where the wood and its other entire component come from, and all the enumerable information contained in it. In other words, it contains all the information of what it is; and it alone has this complete in-formation Hence it contains its own software.
As software, it can be stored in a memory bank. For the complete software of an object as simple as a pencil, it may not be humanly possible to gather all its information and store it in even the most sophisticated memory bank.
But there is a memory bank that is perfect and inherently stores all the software of all that can be found in the universe. This is the memory of an omniscient God.
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I state now as a corollary: that a person consists of a set of information.
Then at the risk of sounding like someone having read and seen too many science fictions, I ask the reader’s indulgence and bear with me and decide later whether or not what follows make sense: The human soul includes all the information that makes a person who he is. In modern language therefore, we can think of the soul as software.
I find this definition to lead to some significant implications.
The key idea here is that God is omniscient. That is, God knows everything and for-gets nothing. In the language of science we can state that the idea that God is omniscient implies that information is conserved.
It may completely boggle the human imagination that in attributing to God the omniscient nature, we accept the notion that this Supreme Being has perfect knowledge of all the particles in the universe –from the largest to the smallest, for all time. As soon as God loses track of a single electron in the universe, He ceases to be the omniscient God that He is. He also ceases to be om-nipotent in the sense that He loses control of that single electron.
Based on this concept, some of our Christian doctrines about the soul becomes much more plausible and therefore, easier to appreciate.
- The soul is immortal
In the same manner that we can say that an object contains its own software, so does a human person’s body. This software we identify earlier as the human soul.
The human soul as software includes not just the information on the body (which we may consider as the hardware) but it includes the memory, intellect, emotion, the subconscious, and all the experiences of the person from conception until the very present or until death.
People usually ask, where does a person’s soul reside? Is it in the brain? If our thesis is correct, then it is not just in the brain, but throughout his entire body because it is in the entire body that the information about the whole person is found.
This resonates uncannily with what the Catholic Church teaches about the soul: “The uni-ty of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body.” (The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Sect. 365).
The soul as software resides in a memory bank. This memory bank is no less than God’s memory. This is not to relegate the soul (especially when the body dies) to some far-way inac-cessible vault. For God is present everywhere and at all time. Therefore, to say that the soul as software is in God’s memory bank is to say that the soul exists.
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From this, it follows that since God never forgets, then the soul must be immortal. When the body dies, the entire human software or soul remains in God’s memory. As Christians, we believe that even in this state, the soul retains its self-awareness.
- The doctrine of hell
This concept answers for us the hard doctrine of the eternal damnation of the unjust. For some people, the idea of hell contradicts the tenet that God is merciful. Admittedly, it is difficult to reconcile this idea with the teaching that God punishes an evil person to eternal suffering. Is it not more merciful to wipe a person’s soul out of existence?
The problem is that the idea of God reducing an existent soul to non-existence is not con-sistent with the more basic tenet that God is All-knowing. God cannot eliminate a single bit of information from His memory. To do so would be contrary to His nature as all knowing. It fol-lows therefore that the soul of a person, no matter how evil, must remain forever intact in the Di-vine memory bank. That state may be what we call hell. Hell therefore is the inherent everlasting existence of a human soul who, by choice, remains incorrigibly evil. More reasonably, theologians tell us that hell is the state of being alienated from God. To say that God may annihilate such a damned soul is equivalent to saying that God may delete such software from His memory. This is to indulge in an illogical proposition. It is also unbiblical.
- The resurrection of the body
As software, the soul includes the information of a person’s memories, emotions and his-tory. But more than this, the soul includes the information of the complete design of the person’s body as encoded in its DNA.
All these are not only stored but are also completely understood by the all-knowing Crea-tor. It would be quaint therefore, for a person to exist for all eternity as a soul only, all the time carrying within, all the information pertaining to his/her body. He or she would only be half the creature he was created to be. It is reasonable to believe therefore, that the Master Engineer will rebuild our body on the basis of the complete blueprint that our soul provides. This time, the er-rors in the blue print, which are the causes of imperfections of some people’s bodies here on earth, will be corrected. (Even human engineers correct errors and bugs as they find them in the process of constructing any gadget.)
Where would God get the material to rebuild a person’s body during the Last Judgement? This question is easily answered by considering that, given its blueprint, even a human engineer can easily build up a computer or any gadget for that matter. We must remember that the universe is an overwhelming source of matter –the stuff our bodies are made of.
What is difficult to answer is: given that our resurrected bodies are made up of matter, how would it be prevented from deteriorating again? Would the Law of Entropy be abolished by the Creator? In other word, why would it be immortal? How would it be prevented from perishing in an accidental catastrophe? How could it survive the violent end of the solar system as projected by scientists?
(More to follow…)
