How I lost my soul

Discussions on the subject of reincarnation made me start thinking about memory. A hundred years ago memory used to be mysterious stuff that could be described as being part of a non-physical soul - because scientists couldn't explain it in physical terms. Now that human memory can be described as biological structures and interconnections of neurons (even though the mechanisms for learning are still not well understood), why should we think that the soul would keep a supernatural backup of the biological memories? How can you remember things that happened in a past life when the memories of that life were stored in biological wet-ware? How and when does a spiritual backup memory get implanted in a new human brain?

I look at the history of human understanding of nature and can see a parallel in our understanding of mind. When nature was all a mystery we believed that gods made everything happen. They made the sun rise and the grass grow. They were actively involved in the on-going maintenance of the universe. When the mechanistic nature of some natural processes were discovered, we reassigned the roles of gods. They were responsible for creation of a fully working universe and a lot of seemingly-random events. As we learnt more about nature and discovered more about how things had come to be over the past millions of years we decided gods were responsible for the architecture that made all the natural processes possible, and occasional inexplicable events. This trend has got to the stage where most scientists expect there is a natural explanation for any observable event. The need for any god in an explanation has disappeared.

What about soul or spirit? (I'm prepared to mix these terms because both are poorly defined and virtually impossible to distinguish.) Some ancients believed there was a body-spirit segregation. The spirit contained knowledge and intelligence. It was the supernatural part that would live on after the body had decayed. A more prevalent belief today is that there is a body-mind-spirit segregation. We can assign knowledge and intelligence to mind, and assign our spirit the role of consciousness, self-awareness, supernatural-awareness and life beyond the grave. Hidden underneath this belief is the idea that when our spirit lives on, it will take with us our values, beliefs, intelligence and memories - the things that we think of as being "us". But now science has shown us how our brains' biochemistry explains our memories and our intelligence. The need for spirit as a supernatural explanation is disappearing. The list of functions that will live on after death is getting smaller and smaller.

My behaviour is part hard-wired and part learnt. I have reactions and perceptions that have been shown to be inherent to a human without training. I have behaviours that have been learnt or conditioned by my upbringing. The way I perceive things in the world around me is based on the neural connections made in my brain over many years of life. My skills as a pianist are based on neural connections formed by long hours of practice. My imagination and creativity are attributable to my ability to mix and match ideas from a huge associative memory repository - all residing in my biological brain. If I have a soul and it doesn't have a complete spiritual copy of these memories, then how can my soul retain my values? How can my soul be me? If someone could reprogram your brain so that you lost all your memories and all the acquired skills that made you unique, but made you a completely happy person, would you want it done? I know I wouldn't.

To be continued.