Someone told me, long ago and far away, that there was a scientific study where at the moment of death the human body mysteriously loses approximately one and a half ounces of weight. The conclusion, allegedly, is that is the weight of the soul leaving the body.
It’s a romantic notion, a little difficult to believe, but romantic. I’m an agnostic so the notion of a soul or not a soul isn’t the hard part to believe, I accept that there’s all sorts of shit I don’t know. It’s hard to believe both the precision and competency and sheer cold bloodedness it would take to do that study; mostly the competence.
Surgeons actually use a sharpie to make sure they are cutting or scoping the correct place. I still have an indelible A on me from a colonoscopy, wonder where the alternative was? I’m kidding, but not by much. The idea of having a person dying on a human sized scale precise enough to accurately gauge within an ounce and a half is pretty hard to imagine, let alone doing it often enough to declare a pattern.
I bet I could google it, but not to my satisfaction. I’m guessing, for instance, googling weight of a soul has some curious links, some being a number larger than my patience can endure, from three to a million. But, if we take for granted that not only are the results pure and definitive but also that the conclusion is accurate, what is one to do with that information? Sell soul diet pills or soul weight gain? Put coins on the table too and see if any of that substance loses value as well? Put the dying body on a scale/centrifuge table and see if we can separate the wheat from the chaff as it were?
I guess there’s a theological problem as well; the weight of all souls being equal. And the converse too, weighing a birthing mother and seeing if at the moment of birth there is a gain of one and a half ounces. For the pro-lifers, I guess, from the moment of conception until birth seeing at what point an unaccounted for ounce and a half appears. Getting mom to stay on the scales for nine months might be a bit rough. And, suppose that gain doesn’t happen in those nine months (the weighing of conception would take some fancy math). You’d have to raise the kid on scales too, even harder and fancier math as kids start off at six to ten pounds and by puberty they weigh … more.
Oh, yeah, from silly back to theological, or less silly than weighing conception. The idea that Hitlers soul and mother Theresa (to whittle down several billion to two) weighs the same kind of makes the soul a bit like an appendix. No chains for Marleys ghost, no unbearable lightness of being. Just an ounce and half of mass deserting the sunken ship.
I’m not really arguing for or against anything. Just taking my typing fingers for a stroll. You guys/gals rock.
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