A conversation I was having with a JW derailed and I couldn't figure out why until I looked up "soul' in their JW-2-vol-encyclopedia. There it was, in print, under 'soul', admitting that their own definition of 'soul' is not the original Greek definition but a variant of some kind based on Hebrew.
The Hebrew definition of soul emphasizes, quite literally, the 'breath' or the 'breathing' function of a biological organism, if you can hold steady and try to grasp that. I can't. I ended the derailed conversation I had by saying something about quantum physics and scale which stunned my friendly opponent but we parted on good terms so the next time I see her, we'll still be friends however the entire process has alerted me to a huge problem in JW theology concerning definitions, and especially the definition of 'soul'.
Here's my problem: I'm a semi-literate ancient Greek philosophy student who has read enough Plato to understand that if I'm talking to someone who is going to use ancient HEBREW rather than ancient GREEk ideas to debate, then this game is over before it begins. The JW will insist on interpreting everyhing in the Bible, originally in HEBREW, quite literally and literally beyond all recognition that flowery language, metaphor and symbolism even exist. I liked that years ago but now, it's becoming a problem.
JW's think that soul is literally breath. This dumbfounds me. No wonder the conversation derailed. And this JW woman was otherwise quite intelligent and conversational too. Such a tragedy that she didn't read Plato in college/unversity like I did. No wonder WesternCiv seems to be falling apart.
Of course, cryonicists and most life extensionists reject the notion of 'soul' even in the Platonic sense so this is a problem solvable only by me, and my new philosophy of QUANTUMONICS where we consider the fact that dimensions must involve FIELDS of energy and finally information fields that can be considered by JW's, cryos, and me via quantum physics.
I never used to take quantum physics seriously, having rejected it in 1985, 1987, and then permanantly after that until 2022 when Doug Matzke broke into my resistance via his book Deep Reality and his new math "geometric algebra". He recently reinforced that idea that "conciousness is primary", solving the "hard problem of consciousness" and then taking that further by being the first in history to develop the EXISTON, the primary tiniest theoretical unit of conciousness.
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