Nala

[Originally posted to Tumblr in "Solving Cubes" on May 18, 2013]

The third in a series of drawings to commemorate my favorite character designs in the world of animated film. I have 13 characters picked out.

Have any good-looking characters in mind that you think I should draw? Send me your requests for number 14!

3) Nala

Nala has an elegantly simple design, but what I think I like most about her is that despite her simplicity, she can be very tricky to draw. It’s more difficult to make a drawing look like Nala than it may seem. There are intricacies about her that, if neglected, leave the lioness on the paper looking nothing like her. You can draw a lion in the Lion King style, you can color her with Nala’s simple shades of peachish tan, but she won’t truly look like Nala without those those thick ears, a wide muzzle, smooth cranial lines, blocky toes and body lines, and green eyes stretched up and diagonally. Drawing Nala, at least for me, is akin to drawing the likeness of a real person - you’ve got to get almost everything right in order for the art to be believable.

When the look is right, Nala is feminine yet rugged in her movements and attitude. She doesn’t need flashy colors or exaggerated proportions to be interesting. Placing lines just right is enough to make her beautiful.

Drawing by me, pose original, character ©Disney

Kenai

[Originally posted to Tumblr in "Solving Cubes" on May 17, 2013]

The second in a series of drawings to commemorate my favorite character designs in the world of animated film. This will be a two week series, and I have 13 characters picked out.

Have any good-looking characters in mind that you think I should draw? Send me your requests for number 14!

2) Kenai

Kenai from Disney’s Brother Bear has played a pivotal role in my personal drawing style. He resembles Kala in many ways: for example, the mass he carries lower in his body gives him a plushy weight while thinning him out elsewhere. His paws resemble Kala hands, too, having think, round pads. Kenai’s facial expressions in the film are artistic turn-ons for me, as are his body movements and the way his clumsy bear frame carries all that fur. My favorite thing about Kenai is the role of skin and fur bunched around the nape of his neck and hanging down to his chest. It resembles the loose fur on a dog or cat’s neck, which you might be tempted to grab, stretch, and knead just to see how flexible it is. I’ve used this “neck hoodie” on wolf designs for years, and I’ve found that it’s a great way to make a thin character look fluffy without putting apparent weight on it.

Love me some Kenai, and I’m forever grateful for the things I’ve stolen from him.

Drawing by me, pose original, character ©Disney

Kala

[Originally posted to Tumblr in "Solving Cubes" on May 16, 2013]

The first in a series of drawings to commemorate my favorite character designs in the world of animated film. I have 13 characters picked out.

Have any good-looking characters in mind that you think I should draw? Send me your requests for number 14!

1) Kala

Kala is Tarzan’s adopted mother in the Disney film. I’ve loved Kala’s look since I was seven and saw Tarzan in theatres. She has soft, plump curves, expressive eyes, and warm colors that show her gentle nature; this is in contrast to the scruffy fur, tiny eyes, and powerful build of Kerjack, who’s…not as gentle. Kala’s design serves her perfectly because it solidifies her role as a mother, as someone you’d be glad to have scoop you up. The body mass that rests so low on her body gives her a limp noodle sort of look, pillowy to the touch. When animated, though, Kala can display gorilla strength and agility while maintaining that padding that makes her so motherly. Her look is welcoming and as comfortable as home while allowing her the ability to protect and defend - precisely her role in the story.

I’d be quite happy if Kala walked into my room on a bad night. I’d burrow myself into her fur, feel the warmth of her belly, let her wipe my tears and sing me to sleep. Plus, if we ever had to break out of the house, I know she’d never drop me.

drawing by me, pose original

Feuds in Climate Control: Warm People vs Cold People

[Originally posted to Tumblr in "Solving Cubes" on May 22, 2013]

I recently came home from four months in the tropics to a broken air conditioner. Now, for a spindly southerner who’s been sitting around naked sweating off water weight for a semester, this was all fine and dandy. Midwestern American spring is breezy, shady and mild compared to weather in which, even sitting inside, one is wiping sweat off one’s upper lip all day, every day.

But most Americans don’t experience that, not just because they live where it’s a comfortable 75 degrees out, but because we in the West have legendary climate control.

Much of my family is heavier than I am (which isn’t really saying much), and while I spent the earliest years of my life in Tennessee, they’ve mostly grown up in central Illinois. They like it cold. Cold. Because to me, having the AC at 72 degrees is akin to sitting on ice cubes. And unfortunately, my Illinoisian family members are usually the ones controlling the temperature of my living spaces.

So the AC is fixed now, and I’m walking around in a sweatshirt, still cold, wondering how my family and I could solve this problem. How do we address conflicts that arise from biologically different temperature tolerance? There doesn’t seem to be a clear answer.

• Naturally warm people often claim that “you can only take off so many clothes.” But naturally cold people can just as easily say to turn on a fan, drink cold water, actually take your clothes off and sweat a little bit.
• Admittedly, most people don’t want to walk around without clothes on or drenched in sweat. Fair. But naturally cold people wait all year for summer, and we don’t want to spend our inside summer time wrapped up in blankets and dressed like it’s football season.
• Cold folk can claim that turning the AC up or off will save energy, but warm people can say the same of heat in the winter.
• My mom has a hard time working around the house when it’s 82 degrees (perfect for me and Dad) because she sweats a lot and gets tired easily. Meanwhile I have a hard time working around the house in 72 degrees (perfect for Mom) because my limbs freeze, my hands shrivel up, and my skin dries out. Plus there’s only so much I can do while wearing a blanket.
• Sometimes warm folk tell cold folk to just go outside in summer and warm up there. That’s a common solution for us, believe me. But a lot of our business is not outside when we’re at home. Besides, sometimes it’s cloudy and breezy. Sometimes it’s 72 degrees outside and 72 degrees inside. Why even have the air on at that point?
• I’m sure warm folk would say the same to us if we told them to cool off in cold weather by going outside. The things you need to be doing aren’t generally outside, are they?
• These problems often boil down simply to body type. I do get cold to the bone and shrivel up like a lizard, and it’s because the only place I have body fat is in my skinny thighs. But people with normal or high amounts of body fatdo feel ill and tired when it’s warm because their bodies absorb that heat.

The only solution I can think of is to somehow alternate control over internal temperatures; then it at least won’t be the same people bitching all the time. Everyone will be bitching!

But I have a feeling the feud between the Ice Queens and the Heat Misers will continue as long as humans have the luxury to complain about climate minutia. Because I’m biased, this is for my fellow coldies. Until the planet heats up and we all live in post-apocalyptic outdoor villages, may we huddle in shivering solidarity as the lords of air conditioning dictate our facilities. Warm people, maybe we’ll feel sorrier for you when the world boils over.

My Relationship with Intoxicants: It's Complicated

[Originally posted to Tumblr in "Solving Cubes" on April 19, 2013]

I fear I won’t make many friends by posting this, and that I might lose a couple given recent events, but I feel the need to organize my thoughts and share them on the off chance that someone identifies with me.

Throughout my adolescence I have had an internal conflict with mind-altering substances.

In junior high and early high school, drugs and alcohol were in a completely different universe as far as I was concerned. As an only child, I knew I could never get away with doing either since my parents would almost certainly find out about it (and they eventually did). I hardly had any friends apart from the internet and my family, let alone friends who partied, so it wasn’t even something I could make a choice about, really.


- imgur

Junior and senior year in high school brought some experiences, which were fine until I was busted by my parents, grounded for a month, developed heavy guilt about it, and refused to engage in it ever again (or at least for a while).

In high school and even during my first year of college, partying had this dark, skanky color to it in my mind. I associated the word “alcohol” with big high school or college parties, with low lights and loud music I was never able to get myself to like, with half-naked people making out in the corners, cheating on their partners, picking up people just for sex, getting stupid drunk and forgetting all their convictions about right and wrong until they spewed out all the evil onto someone’s couch.

- goodreads.com
Something like this (see: behavior with which I don’t really identify)

I confess most of this impression had to do with a lack of experience and education. But part of my anxiety with intoxication had also been borne from what I had seen of marijuana in real life.

I had found several times - even for my best friends with whom I had the most in common - when kids experimented with marijuana, they would almost unfailingly become borderline dependent on it. Getting high multiple times every day, driving high, wasting their freedom and opportunities by smoking and then not doing anything, gradually giving less of a shit about things in general, causing conflict in their families. It has often gotten to the point where my friends are bored around me when weed isn’t involved.

So there have been several times, both in high school and in college, when I have developed relationships that were extremely important to me, but after a while I could no longer bond with those people because they picked up some kind of substance to use every time I was around them, and I didn’t want a part of it.

My image of parties as dark and skanky entities extended into this past winter break, and I am thankful that since I’ve been of drinking age in Thailand, I’ve been able to get to know that scene a bit better.

I can now honestly say that I have been drunk, that I have been to bars and clubs and parties and drunken beach-fests. I’m extremely glad that I’ve done that, because now I don’t tremble in my own little world when I’m at those things anymore. I don’t have miniature panic attacks or find it impossible to speak to anyone. A party environment used to be paralyzing to me – now it’s relatively normal.

When I was on Koh Tao recently, I had an epiphany as I was watching a crowd of young, drunk people party around some fire dancers. I watched girls shake their asses in men’s faces, bros hold their beers in the air. I had people slur at me trying to be friendly and clever. I saw vodka sweat dripping down people’s faces and had some drunk asshole push me over into the sand. I imagined watching this scene with absolutely no context: no visible environment, no music, just people standing in clumps ingesting things, entertained by the dizziness and in turn ingesting more. I saw a crowd of animals with their neocortices – the thing that essentially makes them human – switched off.

In that moment, suddenly partying wasn’t a mysterious grown-up thing anymore. It wasn’t intimidating, but absolutely absurd.

- imageshack.us

This isn’t to say that I stand against turning off your neocortex every once in a while. I’m not against smoking a doobie to see things in a different light, or downing a tasty cocktail and feeling your fears melt away for a while. I’m not even against partying or doing stupid things young people do. I’ve gotten a lot of good stories from things like that.

What I’ve found in Thailand is a happy medium between being deathly afraid of substances and being married to them. Thanks to medication and an all-around better attitude toward things, I’m now better able to enjoy intoxication, so I understand why people like it. New experiences have opened me up to the possibilities of that world.

But there’s still this little chip on my shoulder about using most or even half of one’s free nights as drinking or smoking time. I could say it’s because I’d rather my friends spend their time thinking about important things, or going to new places, or saving their money. But ultimately what I think it’s really about is that I don’t want to lose any more friends.

I value time spent with people when I’m coherent, fully present, bonding with them as real people with real curiosities and real fears and real flaws. There’s nothing I enjoy more than when someone else fires up my brain, when I’m deep in conversation and literally feel myself shaking from excitement in my seat.

What I fear is that all my relationships conducive to that are doomed to vanish when others find substances and can’t enjoy those simple moments with me anymore. I fear all that meaning I find in friendship will be lost on booze and THC, that I will no longer be enough, and once again I’ll be left to sit around and wait for another temporary someone to relate to.

But maybe that’s just me.

Eusocial Powerhouses: Ants

[Originally posted to Tumblr in "Solving Cubes" on April 5, 2013]

The strongest and most successful species on the planet tend to be those that are eusocial – that is, they can live in large societies organized into hierarchical divisions of labor. This distribution of strengths serves the ultimate purpose of expanding the society. The thing at stake is never the individual organism or even its offspring, but rather the community as a whole. Such a community becomes a single organism in its own right.

Eusocial animals have fascinated us for centuries. We often see ourselves in them, noticing developments they made long before humans did. The most impressive eusocial animals tend to be insects, who are able to build powerhouse societies that are millions strong. These insects, despite their reputation as having a sort of “hive mind” that we may interpret as collectivist or soulless, exhibit astounding intelligence for their size and simplicity.

Allow me to introduce a series on eusocial animals and their tactics for flourishing. How do these species compare to each other? How to they compare to us, and what can we learn from them?

ANTS
The ant is a formidable example of social cohesion and sheer power. Ants are known for their strength and ability to organize. Though no single species can do it all, the basic physiology and mentality of the ant is so flexible that it can develop diverse strategies for supporting its colony. Many of these strategies are eerily similar to the complex behaviors that allowed humans to conquer the world.

StrengthAnts are notoriously powerful creatures. Naturalist and insect researcher Debbie Hadley explains here how a single ant can lift an object 50 times its own weight. The secret lies mainly in how powerful its muscles can be compared to its body size. Strength compared with a small and lightweight body also allows the ant to run fairly quickly on its small scale. It is true that an ant lifting such heavy objects is comparable to a human carrying a car over her head, but it’s also worth noting that a bigger ant would not be able to exhibit such strength. So no, ants wouldn’t necessarily be able to take over the world if they were human size.

Single ants are often seen using their strength and dexterity to wrestle down insects many times larger than they are. The ant’s true strength comes when it teams up with other ants. One African ant species can form its colonies into rafts that float on water in the rainy season. They hook themselves to one another and become surprisingly buoyant. Each ant will create an air bubble around itself when pushed underwater, which allows the raft to survive as a whole with a collective air pocket around it while submerged.

- 500px.com

WarfareThe most powerful ants in a colony are the warriors, which are hand bred by nurturer ants to grow larger and stronger than the other workers. A common definitive feature of a warrior ant is its enormous head, which is occupied by a tiny brain and enormous muscles that work its huge, piercing mandibles. Warrior ants are the most strongly adept for battle, but any ant has the ability to fight enemies with the help of a colony’s numbers.

Ant colonies organize raids against other colonies and insects. A colony of bull ants can kill an entire hive of bees. Using the strength of their mandibles and sometimes claws on their legs, ants can pin enemies down and puncture their bodies. Smothering an enemy this way kills it quickly. Even a flying insect is vulnerable if it is not able to fly off before a single ant reaches it. Ants can lead strategic invasions and retreats, and they can defend the nest from impressive predators. Some ants can even sting and inject venom into their enemies.

- votingwithmyfeet.com

Social OrganizationAnts predominantly communicate using pheromones. When a warrior grabs hold of an enemy, she will release a pheromone that alerts others to attack with her. In order to keep track of the locations of food sources, ants will leave invisible trails which others follow. They build strategic underground living quarters, with chambers used for different purposes and tunnels linking them to one another.

There tend to be about six types of citizens in an ant colony. Most important is the queen, who is solely responsible for generating eggs and larvae. She is enormous, being tended to by the workers and given enough nutrients to reproduce in massive amounts. Protected along with the queen are her larvae, which are helpless and must be fed by worker ants.

Occupying another caste are the male ants, who are typically only used to fertilize the queen. In some flying ant species, males will fly off to other colonies, but even then they will die after mating with females. Male ants are often referred to as drones.

Female ants, on the other hand, comprise every worker in the colony, making an ant colony mostly an enormous sisterhood. Largest are the warriors mentioned above. Medium in size are ants that take on jobs such as building, transporting food, and reinforcing warriors if necessary. The smallest workers are those that stay deeper in the nest, breaking down food and tending to the queen and her brood. These ants are responsible for raising new generations, and by feeding each larva differently, they have control over the quantity of ants the colony will have in each size and class. If the colony is experiencing increased threats, more warriors will be raised – if threats are low and the focus is on expansion, smaller workers will be in higher demand.

- sunnyscope.com
A warrior ant. That head is all muscle, and those mandibles gonna getcha.

AgricultureLong before humans began centralizing food sources by tending to organisms they would eventually eat, ants were doing the same thing. Many ant species rely on farming for sustenance. Most famous are leaf cutter ants, who bring chunks of leaves into the nest and chew them up into a mush of enzymes. This mush feeds their crop, a fungus that they eat. Remove the fungus from their nest and the ants will die.

Some ants even keep livestock. A popular tradition for several species of ant is to take control of an aphid colony and care for them like shepherds. When well fed, an aphid will produce a surplus amount of honeydew, a liquid rich in sugars. Ants can used this food source by spooking the aphids into expelling some from their bodies, effectively milking them for food. Ants will protect their aphids from enemies, even moving the herd to locations that are safer or richer in nutrients.

- lifescapes.org
An ant tending to its aphid herd, probably harvesting honeydew

AntibioticsSome ants have even developed resistance to disease and pests by coating their bodies with antibiotics. Cameron Currie, a bacteriologist at the University of Wisconsin, discovered that when left unkempt, leaf cutter crops will be overtaken by mold within a few days. He then learned that a waxy secretion found on ants working deep in the nest is actually a form of bacteria present in about half of all antibiotics used by humans. This means that ants were able to evolve a resistance to dangerous organisms in order to continue the safe production of their food, and this bacteria is continuously able to evolve along with the mold it is used to control. It is likely that ants have been using antibacterial technology for 50 million years.

- animals.about.com
Ant drugs look a little like powdered sugar. Yum?

___________

These are a few reasons I have a fearful respect for ants. Maybe evolving to larger sizes would not end up serving them well, but I can’t help but imagine ant societies on a larger scale and trembling at the thought. I picture enormous insects with crushing jaws, motivated by the prosperity of their communities, who would destroy everything we’ve created without remorse and with only a fraction of the intelligence we possess. I appeal to you, evolution, to keep ants small. Probably best for all of us.

Sources:
http://insects.about.com/od/antsbeeswasps/a/10-cool-facts-about-ants.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL3sHuK3iGE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp8DefiZ9RU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzIzeFPCFWI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43id_NRajDo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH3KYBMpxOU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=GhGno2BIts0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7asMhwLWW4M

Being humble when making claims about the natural world

[Originally posted to Tumblr in "Solving Cubes" on March 17, 2013]

Here’s an idea, a practice we could all get into. When you make a statement or an implication about nature (biology, ecology, zoology, chemistry, physics, etc.) but you don’t actually know if what you’ve said is true, you have to follow what you’ve said with a disclaimer:

“I don’t know if that’s how science works.”

Or, if you’re typing, initialize it:

IDKITHSW

You know, in the hope that when people glorify knowledge and learning, they also avoid glorifying conclusion jumps.

What Science Has to Say About the Soul

[Originally posted to Tumblr in "Solvings Cubes" on Feb 26, 2013]

Below is a relatively lengthy look at what science is and is not currently saying about the existence of the soul. Is it real? Plausible. Necessary?

There were about three hypotheses that I thought warranted attention and criticism. To wrap this all up I will try to summarize what the scientific community most consistently has to say about the soul these days.

 

1. Confirmations of the Christian Notion of the Soul

 

R. R. Reno- involve.christian-union.org

I found a few attempts to confirm, using scientific discoveries, that there exists a soul consistent with what Christianity and other Abrahamic traditions have recognised for centuries. I found them tremendously frustrating and laughable because they completely misinterpret scientific findings, making huge leaps to confirm a theory that they already believe is true.

 

Such writers glorify empirical evidence when it seems to be on their side, but do so in relation to a concept that they would probably consider true regardless. Experimental evidence is secondary to being convinced in this case, and this is not scientific and should not be presented as so.

 

This article by R. R. Reno of FirstThigns.com is a good example of one that presents itself as scientific but so isn’t. The writer is articulate and explains some scientific things correctly, introducing the article with factual information. What he does repeatedly throughout the article, however, is compare scientific findings to seemingly congruent Christian explanations. For instance:

 

“In a recent MRI study, “The Vulcanization of the Human Brain: A Neural Perspective on Interactions Between Cognition and Emotion,” Princeton brain scientist Jonathan D. Cohen has looked at patterns of brain activity while subjects respond to moral dilemmas and make moral decisions. It turns out that the brain patterns related to moral decisions need to be trained. The soul must be disciplined.”

 

In three sentences, Reno goes from describing the results of the study to concluding that there is a trainable soul (something the conductor of the study did not conclude). Reno argues that because this study suggests moral thinking patterns are largely set in place by experience, this means we possess souls capable of moral growth on a path laid by God.

 

“When I read Cohen’s results and analysis, I felt as though Aristotle and his views of the soul were being vindicated rather than overturned.”

 

Reno’s gut feelings and how they mirror Aristotelian texts are not scientific - they are strictly theoretical. Even if Reno is right about this, he would have to back up his theory with many more studies and the input of other scientists and theoreticians. Other possibilities would have to be weeded out, which absolutely has not been done here. He has no intention of doing any of this; Reno simply takes the study he likes and applies it to what he already thinks, then calls it a day.

 

“So much for the confident materialists who thought they had the facts on their side. Today’s science seems to confute yesterday’s scientific propagandists…Daniel Dennett, call your office: The human person is pretty much what the Christian tradition has always assumed…We’re animals with rational souls capable of remarkable change and development.”

 

This jump he makes is enormous, and he’s so confident about it. This guy is not a scientist and has no legitimate say in what neuroscience reveals unless he actually goes to the length to test his hypothesis. I have not seen any Christian articles that approach the science of the soul much differently than this guy does - I invite anyone to challenge me on that.

 

 

2. Biocentrism

 

Dr. Robert Lanza

- theosophywatch.wordpress.com

 

Biocentrism is a “theory of everything” developed by medical doctor Robert Lanza with some help from Deepak Chopra. It argues that, according to recent scientific studies, the universe does not really exist except as a result of a conscious being’s perceiving it. Subjective experience, says Lanza, is still a phenomenon scientists do not understand, but thanks to experimentation we now know that quantum systems behave differently when we observe them than they do when we’re not. Given the nature of current physical mysteries, Lanza says, remaining problems would be solved if biology were credited as the basis for everything, not physics.

 

If this consciousness-creating-reality theory were true, one could describe human consciousness as a sort of universal soul having control over all that is perceived to be real.

 

I encourage you to do some extra reading for this, because I found two articles that have challenged this in more informed ways than I can. The most obvious problem I see with the theory is that it would require drastic disproofs of physics as we understand it in order to make sense. Lanza seems to be making a fallacy I notice often, which is that because science has so far failed to explain certain phenomena, these mysteries therefore cannot be explained by science - or, if they can, it would require a drastic reexamination of things that so far have not caused experimental problems.

 

Besides, Lanza and Chopra are not physicists, cosmologists, or mathematicians. Though they may reference studies that could support their theory in certain circles, they have plenty of room to make misinterpretations given their lack of expertise. This is one reason to be skeptical of their conclusions.

 

The two articles I suggest reading for a more informed take on discrediting this are A-Unicornist’s “Is Biocentrism Worth Taking Seriously?” and Vinod Wadhawan’s “Biocentrism Demystified”. Of course I would also suggest reading Lanza’s writings to see his own words and ask your own questions.

 

3. Quantum Consciousness Theory

 

Dr. Stuart Hameroff

- whatthebleep.com

 

This third citing of science as proof of some kind of soul is probably the most difficult to describe and therefore to question. Stuart Hameroff, an anaesthesiologist studying consciousness, has proposed his own theory on the origin of consciousness, arguing that its basis lies on the quantum level, inside the cells of neurons in the brain. According to his theory, there may be quantum information that does not perish with the body, but rather is part of the mathematical structure of the universe. This information therefore reflects some universal truth that lies within our brains when we live and still exists when we die.

 

Frankly, I do not know enough about quantum mechanics or particle physics to argue with this effectively. Nonetheless, that is precisely what concerns me. There is a certain degree of “wat?” about his theory that is likely to leave the average listener mildly convinced that it is plausible, but still way too confused or uninformed to argue for or against it. I worry that some see the simple existence of this theory as a sign that scientists are on the way to proving the existence of the soul, which is precisely what Hameroff suggests.

 

The fact is this is generally not accepted or even taken seriously by scientists. Important aspects of it have been labeled as misrepresentations or even false assertions of what physicists have discovered thus far. If you’d like to see some scientists, including physicists and neurophysiologists, question Hameroff about his theory, try these two videos: 1 and 2.

What Science is Most Consistently Saying About the Soul

 

- physics.gla.ac.uk

 

What you will see from all the above theorists is a common disdain for the “materialism” with which most scientists currently see nature. To many people, the image of humanity as an insignificant, impermanent, and immensely fragile component of the world is offensive. They feel belittled at the idea and celebrate theories that suggest otherwise.

 

But given what we know about the nature of the cosmos, particularly since the discovery of the Higg’s boson last year, particle physicists will tell you that we can now definitively know there is no such thing as life after death, nor is there a soul by which to make this possible. They can argue this because every significant space in the Standard Model of Particle Physics had been experimentally filled. Any other forces that we have not discovered must be either too weak or too short in range to have any significant effect on our everyday life.

 

There is no particle in the Standard Model that serves a soul-like purpose. So not only is a theory of the soul unnecessary for explaining certain holes in scientific knowledge, but it is absolutely impossible unless physics as we know it is drastically overturned. As physicist and cosmologist Sean Carroll said inhis presentation at Skepticon 5 in November, 

 

“If you believe there’s some way that you have an immortal soul that travels from place to place, then you are not just saying we don’t know how it works - you are saying that our current knowledge of the laws of physics is wrong, which means you better give me a good reason to believe [that].”

 

Otherwise, the theory does not hold water. Hundreds of people have devoted themselves to intricate studies of physics in order to draw us closer to the truth about the nature of reality, using extremely advanced technology to do it. The math is there, the experimental evidence is there, and the rationale is there to verify the Standard Model. If you think scientists are missing something and the soul is a part of it, then you’ll either have to take it on total faith or start doing some serious work.

 

Sources:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/biocentrism/201112/does-the-soul-exist-evidence-says-yes

http://www.neuroethics.upenn.edu/index.php/penn-neuroethics-briefing/science-and-the-soul

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2008/10/brain-science-and-the-soul

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/quantum-scientists-offer-proof-soul-exists/story-fneszs56-1226507452687

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/do-we-have-a-soul-a-scien_b_850804.html

http://nirmukta.com/2009/12/14/biocentrism-demystified-a-response-to-deepak-chopra-and-robert-lanzas-notion-of-a-conscious-universe/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmdJtSwH9O4

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/05/23/physics-and-the-immortality-of-the-soul/

http://www.theaunicornist.com/2010/11/is-biocentrism-worth-taking-seriously.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrs-Azp0i3k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI_F4nOKDSM