Matter and Life: The Automobile Analogy
Transcript of the video:
Person in audience:Yes. You were saying that the body in the presence of the life force is what makes the body exhibit the life symptoms, and then when the life particle leaves the body then it ceases to exhibit the symptoms. So what about the argument that the reason the body ceases to exhibit the life symptoms is because there's a defect like. you know, like this person has a heart attack, you know? Just like a car when it's… when everything's running properly, the car exhibits symptoms of a car, and when there’s something broken, then it ceases to exhibit the symptoms of a car. So like, you know, you’re saying that Professor Flask's wife, you know, she ceased to exhibit the symptoms of a living person when the spirit soul left the body. Well what about the argument that the reason she ceased to exhibit life symptoms is because there's a defect like she had a heart attack, or heart failure, or there's some. . .
Jagad Guru: Why? Why…why is there this defect? If, for example, a guy’s engine breaks down, if it…if you’re just dealing with matter, it’s just a machine, and there’s no different element involved at all, then why don’t you fix the machine like you fix a car? Or put a new engine in it, keep it going? You look…what is this defect? Patch it up, and when it’s fixed, it should be able to run again. But it doesn’t run again, right? It just doesn’t run again. You can’t get it to run again. It might be in perfect shape. In fact, some people, that happens to them all the time, people die, and they don’t know what happened. There’s no reason why this person should have died. But that’s not the… you’re saying that this thing functioning is functioning like that, you know, that this, that the body’s like a car and it’s functioning like a car functions, you know, but in the first place a car is not a good analogy because the car does not have the same symptoms as the human body. A car does not, you know, have the different symptoms of metabolism, growth from within, and these different symptoms. A car is a machine. So the very fact that you’re using an analogy of a machine means that you’ve already concluded that that’s what a person’s body is. So for me to accept that analogy. . . No analogy…an analogy is only as good as how close it represents that which you’re comparing, you know, comparing it to, right? The two things you compare have to be as close as possible. How close is a car to a human body or even an ant body? It’s not close at all.
I’m not talking about a moving, functioning car now. Because usually when a person thinks of a car, he also includes a driver who’s driving it. But we’re here talking about the car without a driver. If you want to use the analogy of a car, fine, if you use a driver, okay? The person’s in the body, a person’s in the car. A person’s driving the car, it breaks down, he can’t use it any more, he leaves it. A person’s using the body, it breaks down, he can’t use it anymore, he leaves it. That’s fine. That’s a good analogy. But for you to make the analogy of a car without a driver with a human body, which has a driver, that’s not a good analogy. That’s not acceptable. They’re not close.
Jagad Guru Chris Butler - founder of Science of Identity Foundation