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Of man and his soul.

Article Excerpt
The question whether we human beings have a soul which survives death is certainly of central importance. Here we are going to investigate what the different religions and especially the Christian church has to say about man and his soul--and also, what the church is now saying after the theory of evolution has appeared and has established itself. Furthermore, we are going to show how absurd the notion of a soul is--that there cannot be a soul. This has, of course, consequences for the belief in a god. If there is no soul and life after death, then there is no 'Beyond' as a domicile for the souls and no god as the creator of the souls.

Before Darwin published his thesis (On The Origin of Species, 1859) that we human beings descended from apes, everyone believed that a god had created man--Adam--according to that god's likeness, some 6,000 years ago out of clay. Afterwards the god injected a soul into that clay figure, which miraculously changed the clay into flesh and blood. Then, from a rib of Adam, Eve was made. This religious fantasy is called 'Creationism' in the USA and is even today taught in the USA in many schools and is really believed by many people to be true.

As Darwin published his thesis, he was immediately attacked and ridiculed by various religious groups. However, the Catholic Church showed surprisingly great restraint. Apparently, it had learned its lesson from the Galileo Affair, and in November 1992 the Roman Catholic Church rehabilitated Galileo Galilei fully and admitted that the church had been teaching something wrong regarding the motion of the sun. (According to teaching of the Church, the sun and the stars were circling around the earth, and the earth was the center of the world). The Roman Catholic Church did not want to commit another mistake and was silent as Darwin published his work. Since then, Darwin's theory has been verified many times and finally, in October of 1996, the Pontifical Academy of Science of the Vatican publicly declared the evolution theory of Darwin to be true, with one qualification: The soul of human beings is not the product of evolution but came from 'God.' In this manner the church saved its doctrine that 'God' has created mankind. According to the church, human beings without a soul would be just human-looking mindless animals.

This new doctrine of the Church about the soul implies that should there be a human being in this world who feels and acts or lives like an animal, like a beast, a sadistic murderer, or a bloodthirsty statesman for instance, 'God' must have forgotten to give him a soul!

Since we human beings have obtained a soul from a god, a soul which is immortal, we will have a life after death; but all the other living creatures will not have a life after death, since they never got a soul from that god. They are creatures of evolution only, not 'God's creatures.' There was a time when Christian thinkers denied animals even to have a consciousness and a mind (Descartes). When a tortured animal screams, that is only a mechanical reaction, comparable with the sound of an organ, when you press a key on it. However, confronted with scientific evidence, the church was forced to admit that animals also have a mind and a consciousness, as do we human beings.

According to this new doctrine, the Christian god did not create the world some 6,000 years ago, but as the 'Big Bang,' which happened some 15 billion years ago. "God said: There shall be a Big Bang. And yeh, there was fire and stuff!!! And God created the first human being not out of clay, but took a manlike creature produced by evolution, and made a full human out of him by giving him a soul." That this new doctrine about the creation of the world and mankind does not agree with the biblical story does not bother the Roman Catholic Church very much, because they know: the people believe blindly everything that a priest is preaching, without asking questions.

In this new Christian doctrine announced by the Vatican, there is no room left any more for the 'Garden of Eden' with Adam...