The following is offered as motivation for scientists to reconsider their position on the existence of souls, and as a warning to think about what they're doing. I point out there is not the slightest shred of laboratory evidence either for or against the existence of souls. And therefore, the belief in the non-existence of souls---the current consensus belief of scientists---is an act of the purest faith, a faith so blind and pure it would turn any creationist pea-green with envy.
You guys haven't thought about this. Not even the least little bit.
You guys don't know you're hurting people. You have no idea what you've done, the effect it's having. You guys don't know you've got blood on your hands.
God help you on the day you guys finally realize just how MUCH blood you've got on your hands.
AND NOTHING HEARD MY SCREAM
by Jeffrey A. Corkern
My path was long and hard. My path was a path of pain.
My path had driven me to the banks of the Mississippi River, to a journey through clouds of dense, confusing fog, to struggle my way over large slabs of shifting, shattered, cruel rock. The fog dragged at my skin with clammy fingers. Ice needles stabbed my lungs with each labored breath. Vicious chill sucked the heat out of my shivering body. The fog covered the riverbank with dank gray formlessness, the rocks with slick, wet, treachery. I stepped. A slab teetered and slipped from under me. I staggered and went down face-first onto a merciless edge, into starburst red agony. I rose spitting blood and continued on, wondering what the purpose was for it all, wondering if there were any meaning for my pain, if there were any meaning at all.
I had been born onto this path, into this world, this Darwinian jungle world. This was all the reality I had ever known. The journeys of others were easy. Mine was not. My journey had always been one of suffering and solitude, to my constant wondering and bewilderment.
I walked alone, as I always had, always would, in my pocket the only safety I could trust, a forty-five automatic, banging against my hip.
I came upon a dark form, a stranger rendered faceless by the fog.
"Hello," the stranger said. He wore a thick coat that kept him warm and safe from the fog's hungry cold. A child of the soft paths, a child of privilege. "Who are you?"
"I am Michael Stone. And you?"
"I am," the stranger replied, "Just Plain Old Skeptic. Did you know there are no souls?"
"Really?" I asked. Deep inside me, a spark of anger flared at the Universe’s infinite cruelty. "How do we know this?"
"The greatest scientific geniuses in all of history have assured us souls don’t exist."
"I have long suspected as much," I said. The spark flashed into a flame of rage, into a light that illuminated and distilled all the experiences of my journey into one blinding insight. "If there are no souls, the only rational thing to be is a sociopath."
Just Plain Old Skeptic smiled, a streak of white smeared against the blur.
"What an absurd statement," he said. “You are a silly woo.”
The statement stunned me. What a complete fool. I looked around for witnesses. We were an island of two in the fog, alone and isolated, beyond the reach of all justice. I raised my arm and pointed behind Just Plain Old Skeptic.
"Look," I said, "behind you. It is the great genius Dawkins himself."
Just Plain Old Skeptic actually turned his back to me to look. I drew the forty-five silent as a ghost, brought the muzzle to the side of his head and squeezed the trigger. In the fog, the crack of the round was flat and lifeless. Just Plain Old Skeptic became Just Plain Dead Skeptic. Red and gray brains pattered like gentle raindrops over the Mississippi's surface. Just Plain Old Skeptic pitched forward onto the rocks and was still.
I pulled that fine, warm coat off his body and put it on.
"Do you see it now?" I asked him. I flicked his brains off a sleeve. "Now is it clear?" I ran my hand over silken cloth as warmth spread through my being. "Once I was cold. Now I am warm. And all it will ever cost me is this spent shell. How my action affected you will never affect me. How was my action not rational?"
I bent over and picked up the spent shell. I looted the rest of Just Plain Old Skeptic's body and eased him into the river.
A gator rose and drew him under, and Just Plain Old Skeptic turned to nothing, disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
I continued on my journey, slipping and struggling over rock, feeling a deep sense of confirmation. My anger at the Universe grew into a knife of rage in my guts, a knife that twisted and burned, aching for release. Another faceless stranger rose in the fog.
"Hello," he said. His skin was soft and unmarked, without a single scar. Another child of ease. "I am Sternly Rational."
"Hello," I said. "I am Michael Stone. Did you know there are no souls?"
"I do indeed," he said. "All smart and strong people know this."
"To the Universe, you and I are nothing, then," I said. "Human beings are nothing. We come and are gone like puffs of mist. The Universe is cruel beyond belief."
"You have grasped a hard truth," Sternly Rational replied. He cast his hand at the sky. "What is puny, weak, ephemeral Man, that the mighty Universe must be mindful of him?"
"To the Universe, zero," I said, "less than the dust beneath our feet. Our thoughts, our actions, have no physically real meaning in the end."
"I see you are one of the smart and strong who can grasp this hard truth and not hide from its sting, as am I," Sternly Rational said. "One must pity those who lack the strength to face this, who must take refuge from the Great Emptiness in the delusions of religion."
"How should I act, knowing this?" I asked.
My question took Sternly Rational by surprise. He stepped back in puzzlement.
"I can't see how this would have any effect on how you should act," he said. "I haven't thought about it. What do you think it means?"
"My actions are free and uninhibited," I said. I drew my forty-five. "Since I do not exist eternally, I can escape the consequences of my actions."
"What?" Sternly Rational asked in a confused tone. "I don't understand."
"I may do as I wish," I said. "Without an immortal soul, the Universe began when I was born and will end when I die. I am therefore absolutely alone, a Universe of One. Anything I can get away with is rational." I aimed and fired. "Any feeling of connection I might have to the rest of humanity is strictly false and an illusion."
I missed my shot. Instead of smashing his head, I tore Sternly Rational's throat out, a red raw-meat wound like a great gaping mouth slashed open underneath his chin.
Sternly Rational put his hand to his throat and made a gargling sound of terrible surprise. He folded over onto the rocks making wet, bloody sounds.
He wasn’t dead. It wasn't safe to approach. I backed away and sat down to wait while Sternly Rational twitched and jerked and became Sadly Rational. I thought and watched a red stream flow into a brown one, bloom out into the water, and fade away. I brooded over the implications of this new fundamental insight as it spread throughout humanity.
The Universe didn't care. I was nothing. All humanity was nothing. Pressure clamped down on my mind from all sides, gentle, inescapable, inexorable, raw evolution itself, growing into pain as my understanding deepened.
For every human being I met, if he could kill me for whatever I had and get away with it---that was the smart thing for him to do. This was a newly discovered physical truth, the way the Universe was, an evolutionary force. Every single person I met was now a potential killer, everywhere, all the time, forever. The smarter he was, the more likely he would be to kill me.
What would this new physical truth do to the human race?
I felt a society, an entire world, crashing down in flames.
The flowing stopped. I rose, picked up the spent shell, and looted Sternly Rational's body. I rolled Sternly Rational's flaccid body to the river, tumbling it over the rocks. He went in without a splash.
Another gator rose and pulled him down in a swirl of water and Sternly Rational turned to nothing, disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
I continued down my path. The rage, the fire, jumped in me, roared and built up white-hot in my guts, began transforming me, forging me into a new being, evolving me. A line of V's formed in the river behind me as the gators followed. Around me, the confusing fog began to lift, rising to clarity, rising to final revelation.
I heard a bell ringing from up on top of the riverbank. The sound cut through the fog with a ring as clear as pure water. I looked up and saw a female dressed in a military uniform standing next to a small pot suspended from a tripod. She was swinging a bell back and forth.
“Alms, kind sir!” she called to me when she saw me. “Far, far away in a distant land, untold thousands of innocent people are dying from lack of food! Alms, kind sir, for the relief of the starving! Alms, kind sir, for the love of God!”
Far, far away? I felt a strong tug of connection, but contemptuously dismissed it for the lie it really was. They were not connected to me. There was no physical reason I should be concerned. Only if I had a soul would that be a smart thing to do. They were nothing. I wanted what I had for me. Let the innocent starve to death. That was safer. The less people there were, the safer I was.
I passed her and her ringing bell by.
Another faceless stranger appeared in my path, clad in expensive clothing, fat, well-fed. The gators sank out of sight to safety, like the perfect Darwinian sociopaths they were, to await my gift.
"I am Michael Stone," I said. I gripped the forty-five in my pocket. "There are no souls."
"I am Naïve Skeptic," the stranger replied. "Of course there are not. Such a transparently foolish, impossible notion, clearly born out of desperation and fear of death."
"People everywhere will soon finally realize what that means," I said. "Killing is smart. A rational thing to do to get what you want."
"Oh, fudge," Naïve Skeptic said, with the blindness of a lifetime of comfort. "People would never do such a horrible thing. People are nice."
"People are not nice," I said, drew and fired. Naïve Skeptic snapped backward with a little round hole in the front of his head and a big round hole in the back. He lay on the rocks staring up at the sky with a permanent stare, Forever Wide-Eyed Skeptic. "People are smart. 'Homo nice' is not what people are. People are Homo sapiens, Homo smart. That's what people are."
I picked up the spent shell. I looted Naïve Skeptic's body and dragged the idiot to the river. The gators surfaced like ancient gray submarines, sank their teeth into Naïve Skeptic, and Naïve Skeptic turned to nothing, disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
The gators and I continued our journey. My anger continued to rise. Hot-lava anger coursed through my bones, flamed in my fingertips. The pressure of evolution, of being nothing, crushed in on my skull. The fog continued to lift, patches of clear sunlight moving along the rocks.
Again I heard the ringing bell up on the riverbank, again I saw the female in the military uniform.
“Alms, kind sir!” she called. “Far, far away in a distant land, thousands upon thousands of innocent people are dying in agony from a terrible disease! Alms for the sick, kind sir! Alms, kind sir, for the love of God!”
Far, far away? I felt the tug of connection, but it was weaker this time. They were not connected to me. There was no physical reason I should be concerned. Only if I had a soul would that be a smart thing to do. They were nothing. I wanted what I had for me. Let the innocent die in agony of their terrible disease. That was safer. The less people there were, the safer I was.
I passed her and her ringing bell by.
I smelled him before I saw him.
A pungent, sweetly aromatic smell cut through the fog. The stranger stood on a rock with a burning tube of something clasped tightly between his fingers. As I approached, he put the burning tube in his mouth, took a deep drag and held it in his lungs.
“I am Michael Stone,” I said. The stranger turned to face me. His face bore a dazed, sweetly beatific expression. His eyes were shot through with viscous red lines. Although we were less than an arm's-length apart, he squinted at me as if he could barely see me in the fog, as if I were a long way away. “There are no souls. We are all nothing.”
The stranger expelled a massive cloud of smoke from his lungs.
“I am Barely Here Skeptic,” he gasped, coughing. “Yeah. It's a bitch, dude, but that's the way it is. All the scientists tell us this, and they should know, shouldn't they.” He offered me the burning tube. “Here, dude, I got the cure for it all. The finest, most expensive emotion drug in the world, primo stuff. Have a toke. All your pain will go away and you will feel completely happy, I promise. You can hide from the agony of being nothing for all of your life.”
“No.”
Barely Here Skeptic's eerie red eyes opened wide in shock.
“What?” he exclaimed. “It don't make no damn difference what you do with your life, dude! We are all helpless little nothings, man! Getting stoned and staying that way is the smartest thing to do! Why the hell not?”
“I am not weak.”
Barely Here Skeptic blinked and became sullen. He closed in on himself.
“Yeah, well, screw you, dude,” he said. “Watch this. Watch me make you go completely away.” He put the glowing tube between his lips and took a deep drag.
And he did it. The emotion drug hit him, and he went completely away, became completely unconnected to the Universe. Although his eyes were open, he saw nothing, lost in an addled haze of induced emotion. When I pressed the cold steel barrel of the forty-five between his eyes, he didn't even twitch.
He was happy.
I squeezed the trigger and blew his stoned brains out. Barely Here Skeptic became Not Here At All Skeptic. The burning tube dropped from his lips and vanished between the rocks. Barely Here Skeptic folded in on himself like an empty sack and dropped, going down without a sound.
I bent over and picked up the spent shell. I looted Barely Here Skeptic's body. I got him by the collar and dragged him to the river, gagging at the stench of the emotion drug that clung to his body.
I dropped Barely Here Skeptic into the river. The gators sniffed him for a moment, then dragged him down, and Barely Here Skeptic turned to nothing, disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
I turned and continued on my journey, wondering if there were anybody he had been connected to, anybody who would miss him.
The ringing bell cut through the fog.
“Alms, kind sir!” the woman cried. “Far, far away in a distant land, thousands of poor people have been injured in a great natural disaster! Alms for the wounded, kind sir! Alms, kind sir, for the love of God!”
Far, far away? The tug was only barely there. They were not connected to me. There was no physical reason I should be concerned. Only if I had a soul would that be a smart thing to do. They were nothing. I wanted what I had for me. Let the wounded die of their wounds. That was safer. The less people there were, the safer I was.
I passed her and her ringing bell by.
The gators saw the next one before I did. It was a man wearing a white lab coat. The gators submerged beneath the surface, leaving only a ripple behind to betray their presence.
This time, I could see his face, but did not wish to. There was nothing there that meant a damn thing.
"I am Michael Stone," I said. "There are no souls, and soon society will dissolve from within, in an overwhelming wave of slaughter, as people realize this means killing is smart."
The stranger smiled in a superior fashion.
"I am Hypercomplex Scientist," he said. He stroked his white lab coat and looked proud. "Oh, my friend, no, such an awful thing could never happen, because it would destroy the gene pool. I have spent my life of ease and affluence, which I deserve for being a genius and therefore a superior Darwinian competitor, in the study of these matters, and I know it all."
"The gene pool?" I asked. "Please explain."
"You are suffering from the delusion of free will," Hypercomplex Scientist said. "What you think is consciousness and free will are actually only emergent properties of the Darwinian non-linear electrochemical competition between your brain cells, which themselves are controlled by the structure of their genetic makeup."
"Darwinian non-linear electrochemical competition? And this means?"
"It is not what we want that controls our actions, my friend, but what our genes want," Hypercomplex Scientist said. "We are only zombies, controlled by our genes!"
I drew my forty-five and aimed it at Hypercomplex Scientist.
"Is this not Darwinian competition? What you believe in?" I asked him over the sights. "Am I not now the superior Darwinian competitor? Am I not now the genius?” I squeezed the trigger. The bullet slammed Hypercomplex Scientist backward onto the rocks, turned him into Simply Dead Scientist.
"I had a gene I didn't like once," I said to the corpse. “It was an altruism gene. I changed it. I turned it off with antisense DNA. If I can change my genes, I am controlling my genes. They surely are not controlling me. How incredibly stupid, my friend. What an absolute, utter fool you were."
I picked up the spent shell. I looted Hypercomplex Scientist's body. I picked his body up and held it over my head. The gators rose and came for Hypercomplex Scientist. I watched the perfect Darwinian sociopaths come and realized they were my brothers, my evolutionary goal, what the Universe wanted me and all humanity to evolve into. I blessed Hypercomplex Scientist to the river. My brothers the gators accepted my benison with open mouths. They pulled Hypercomplex Scientist under, and Hypercomplex Scientist turned to nothing, disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
[CONTINUED IN NEXT POST]