Yes, I know you resent it, Bill, but I've been observing this hard-like-a-rock faith in both the mystically-inclined and the scientifically inclined all my life...and I have waxed cynical about it.

Remember, my father is an engineer and his brother was a nuclear physicist on the Manhattan Project, both of them very opinionated men with no spiritual inclinations whatsoever... ;-) I have observed both of them being blatantly wrong about any number of things on many, many occasions. Why? Because they had a rock-hard opinion, based on partial knowledge or even NO knowledge of the subject under discussion, supported by a great deal of faith that the view they already had MUST be the only right view. Once they voiced that opinion, once it sprang from their lips, they clung to it against all reason, because of faith...and the natural desire of any ego to defend its chosen ground.

People with opinions are blockheads. They search out whatever shreds of information they can find to support their opinion. They discount or ignore what does not support it. They are almost impermeable to anything that doesn't support it. They have no patience for another point of view. They are NOT truly objective.

Here's an interesting thing, Bill. My father said that he saw the spirits of men leaving their bodies when they were killed in front of him in WWII during fierce combats with the Germans.

"What did it look like?" I asked.

"It looked like the person," he said, "like a cloudy image of the person leaving the body."

"So then what happened?"

"It just moved a few feet out of the body and then vanished."

"Did they look aware of the situation?"

"Yes. They looked very upset or shocked, usually."

"What do you make of it? Do you think it indicates there is a soul that survives the death of the body?"

"Well....(shaking his head and grinning to indicate his unwillingness to buy anything THAT way-out)....I don't think so...I think whatever consciousness was there when a person was alive just disperses at death and vanishes, but I'll tell you this. The body that remains is just a piece of meat. The person you knew is simply not there any more, and you can feel that right away."

Now, Bill, the truly incredible thing about all that is THIS: That experience prompted NO curiosity in my father about anything spiritual in the years and decades that followed. None. He remained, as he had been before, a person who is only interested in material, verifiable, tactile stuff, science, math, engineering, machinery, physics, etc...

I ask myself, how CAN a person have an experience like that and not be at least curious about whether or not there is a soul that survives death?????? How could that be?

Faith. That's how. Rock-hard faith in his familiar view of reality. And the sheer tenacity of the average human ego to cling to its established opinions...no matter what. That's faith.

My father, to this day, has shown no interest in spiritual matters of any kind, and I'm sure he never will.

As for his brother, the man had the spiritual abilities of a potatoe and a personality so arrogant and nasty and unpleasant that being around him was no pleasure for anyone. He may have known a lot about physics, but when it came to human relationships he was a complete idiot. I would call that spiritual ignorance of the highest order.