Consciousness and the death of the soul
Unraveling the seam between mind and matter will cause the "self" to disappear in a few hundred years, a co-discoverer of DNA predicts.Francis Crick, who shared a Nobel Prize in 1962 for the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, says that as humanity develops a scientific understanding of consciousness, the concept of a soul separate from the body will fade from human discourse.
"The view of ourselves as 'persons' is just as erroneous as the view that the Sun goes around the Earth," he says in The New York Times this week. He predicts that "this sort of language will disappear in a few hundred years."
"In the fullness of time," he continues, "educated people will believe there is no soul independent of the body, and hence no life after death."
Crick comes to that conclusion, of course, from a materialist perspective. But his confidently predicted "end of the self/death of the soul" isn't that far off from some religious understandings of the transformation that occurs at the moment of enlightenment or as the outcome of theosis, the divinization of the human.
All of this points toward the tantalizing possibilities of dialogue between brain science, pastoral theology, and the Wisdom traditions of world spirituality.
Imagine a dinner conversation between Francis Crick, Abba Dorotheos, Albert Einstein, the Buddha, and Jalaluddin Rumi . . . .
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Thursday, April 15, 2004
Comments:
Post a Comment