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Subject: Re: ATTN JMS: Besides atheism, what are your beliefs?
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 16:20:08 +0000 (UTC)
From: jmsatb5@aol.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated

choi9999@yahoo.com wrote:
> Hi Joe,
>
> Please forgive me if I'm completely impertinent, but there are a few
> things I've always wondered regarding your take on the cosmology of the
> world.
>
> How's that for an opener?
>
> So as you've noted many times, you are an atheist. But I've wondered --
> while you may not believe in the existence of God, as many religions
> and philosophies do not, do you believe in the existence of the
> supernatural or paranormal? Of souls? Of an afterlife?

It's not that cut-and-dried, from my side of things, at least.  If by
soul you mean a single entity that arises upon death wholecloth, and an
after life as a place you go to amidst singing cherupim and
seraphim...then the answer is no.

If by soul you mean consciousness, awarness, that is not necessarily
specific to one person in its beginning and ending, that arises from
around us like a cup of water pulled from a lake, and returns to that
lake when there is no longer need for the cup, then we might have
something on which to base a conversation.

I've quietly voiced some of my assumptions in the show -- with the soul
as a non-localized phenomenon, for instance -- and there's a lot of it
in the Foundation document that I wrote and which informed both the
Minbari belief system and Dr. Franklin's Foundationist ideas, but I'm
still debating about releasing all of that.

jms