Avery on new-age religion

"Avery, you're a programmer about everything," said one of my friends a few days ago.

Okay, I admit it, I'm an addict. Here I go again.

One of the big science vs. religion debates is about whether we actually have souls, or whether our brains are just big sacs of chemicals and electrical impulses. Today I realized that the question is really an easy one.

Of course our brains are sacs of chemicals and impulses. Which is like saying that our computers are just boxes of sand with electrons bouncing around. It's true, but that doesn't mean the software doesn't matter, even though it's just made up of those electrons.

Software is like your soul. It's there, made up of electrons, but it has an existence that matters much more than the individual electrons do. It can even move around and multiply, conforming other boxes filled with electrons to match its own structure. And its pattern was created, put there for the first time, by a power greater than itself.

Where does your soul go when you die?

That's simple too. Just because one box of electrons dies, the software doesn't disappear. Its pattern has had many effects on many other boxes, and the resulting patterns are just as important as the original program, and just as influenced by its creator. Software might change, but once it becomes part of the network, it's never really gone.