Schrödinger's Cat and Tim Pool's Soul
Correcting Tim Pool about Atheists and the Soul
Tim Pool’s podcast, Timcast IRL, is one of the most interesting shows out there at the moment. He has the platform and the ability to have serious conversations without making the discussion into a shouting match. Quite Socratic.
Recently Tim Pool claimed that one of his co-hosts, Irish-Catholic cartoonist Seamus Coughlin, was “projecting” his views onto other people. See the clip:
Seamus made the claim that everyone has a soul. Tim Pool corrected him, saying that Seamus knew that he (Seamus) has a soul, but he can’t say an atheist who thinks he doesn’t have a soul has a soul. He not being the atheist in question, cannot make statements about the said atheist’s make-up or substance.
I would like to clarify a few things; what the soul is, and why we all have one, and why Seamus can hold such a belief about everyone.
First, let’s get into some quantum theory.
Schrödinger’s Cat
Erwin Schrödinger was a Nobel Prize winning physicist. One of his most famous theories (or I guess you could call it a thought-experiment) was about cats and quantum superpositions. In short, in this experiment he put a cat in a box for an hour with some sort of contraption that had a 50% chance of killing it. Seems quite a cruel thing to do. But he considers how we think of the cat during that hour. Since there is a 50% chance of the cat being dead, the question is whether it is dead or alive. In a sense, the cat is in a “quantum superposition”, in other words, the cat is both dead and alive. The cat is “settled” in one of the two positions once we open the box. This video might do a better job of explaining it:
Sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it? Any reasonable person would say “the dang cat is either dead or alive, it can’t be both!”.
And you would be right. Schrödinger himself used the thought experiment to highlight some of the absurdities behind some theories of quantum mechanics.
But how does this relate to Tim Pool and whether our atheist has a soul? Similar to Schrödinger’s cat, Tim Pool assumes that since he is not the atheist, he cannot know if the atheist has a soul; since he has not had the chance to “measure” that for himself, he cannot know.
“Projection”
Tim Pool says that, since Seamus is not the atheist in question, he cannot “project” his views onto the atheist. He himself believes that he has a soul, but he cannot state that anyone else can have a soul (again, like Schrödinger’s cat, he has not “measured” the atheist), just like he cannot impose his beliefs of God on this atheist.
Projection is “the mental process by which people attribute to others what is in their own minds”. An example of “projection” would be if Seamus said “since I think I have a soul, that means you think you have a soul, you just won’t admit it”. This is not what Seamus is doing. Seamus is saying that everyone has a soul: anyone who says they do not is wrong. Seamus is making a statement about reality, analogous to saying “you are a human, not a cat. If you think you are a cat, you are wrong.”1
Tim is essentially arguing for “my truth”; that some people’s “truth” is different from others, denying objective or inherent truth. This is not true. There are universal truths about everything, even Schrödinger’s cat, that you cannot deny and still be in reality.
In reality, Seamus’s claims about mankind have to apply to everybody, or they are not about mankind, they are just about him. The question is not whether this particular atheist has a soul, but if we all have souls.
We can create a syllogism about this fact: every member of mankind has a soul. This atheist (I assume) is part of mankind. Therefore, he has a soul.
Going back to what Seamus was saying about defining who “man” is: a man has a body and a spirit. Both are essential to his humanity.
Think of it this way: you might have known someone who has subsequently died. You might have been at someone’s deathbed. There is a stark difference between a live and dead man. Both have the same amount of molecules as before, they are the same matter, they even might have the same blood warm within them, but they are infinitely different. As Thomas Howard so aptly put it when talking about a corpse:
“…This shape is, in effect, he; but the shape is not itself because, ironically, it is only itself. That is, in order for it to be authentically itself (i.e., a body and not a corpse), it had to be animated and brimming and quickened with something that was more than itself.”
—Chance or the Dance? Chapter 3
The soul is that Breath of Life that God gives us:
“…but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground—then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being…”
Now, if this is all true (which I certainly believe), then it must be true for all persons. If not (like the example Tim Pool gives about “not enough souls to go around”), then what gives our atheist life? When he dies, will he have something different happen to him? He would have to have something to give him life as well… like a soul…
What's in a name? that which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet;
I guess the other alternative is that the limited number of souls are “recycled” by… I guess God… and redistributed. Reincarnation is difficult to reconcile with anything. For one thing, that would require us to have a limit to growth set on us by… God. That wouldn’t really work for atheists. It makes sense that if you were reincarnated, you would have “learned from your experience” in your “other bodies”. But do we really know anyone who was “reincarnated”? I guess people claim it all the time, but is there any real evidence? It would be hard to provide evidence. On the other hand, if you did not know your experiences, then you cannot prove reincarnation, for you would not know. It would be pointless. Also, if we are just recycled all the time, how are we to get to heaven? And when we are in heaven, which body do we have?
That’s all I have to say on reincarnation.
Also, if you think about it, since this thing called a “soul” gives life, animation, and consciousness to a body, arguing that you do not have a soul is a great way to prove that you do have a soul.
One final thing I would like to point out is that since God governs logic (he being God), everything he does can be explained by logic, not because God is bound to logic, but because logic is bound to God.
In conclusion, remember that if you have a definition of mankind in your brain, it would sure make sense if it was applied to all of mankind!
These statements made about God and his Church have not been evaluated by Heaven or The Catholic Church. They were made by an 18-year old young man who likes to write. They are not guaranteed to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any spiritual condition or disease, nor are they guaranteed to be worded in the best and most accurate way. Please consult with your own priest, the Catechism, or God himself regarding the statements and analogies made in this article.
If Seamus said “if I think you are a cat, then you think you are a cat”, that would be projection.
In my opinion, that is about all Juliet has to say that makes any sense, and even she is using it on someone who does not deserve it, that is, Romeo.
Great article Boniface! This part gave me pause: "[E]everything [God] does can be explained by logic." What would Thomas Aquinas say? Kurt Godel? I enjoy your stuff Boniface -- keep it up!