Soul is a slippery concept that philosophers have argued over for thousands of years. Certainly lots of people would go with USS Triumphant's definition, plenty more would go with the Western definition of soul as that special quality that God breathes into bodies at birth (conception? - not sure, Christianity confuses me on this one), plenty would go with the Atman idea of Hinduism - we are truly One with the Universal Soul in some way (this also appears to be the Vulcan religious belief - but it's not clear how exactly the katra fits into that). Others might just call it the human awareness of Self versus More than Self and the hungering of Self to merge with that More than Self, which is basically the spiritual impulse, which has apparently been present in every human society since human beings came to be. What's fun about something like Star Trek is that you get to postulate how lots and lots of different cultures might conceive of soul (or not, as the case may be).
He looks like he either just saw a...Soul, or, he is Deep Within and One with his Spirit Guide. And, wow, 'Frakes, I was just writing about him in another Thread. Would the Crystalline Entity have a Soul?
Does the Crystalline Entity having a soul? I suspect that had it, like Data, aspired to be Human, or Human-like in an earnest and meaningful manner, then it might, eventually, attain a soul, much like V'GER had. What seems to make Humanity the envy of the Galaxy is the fact that we do, indeed, have a soul. But seeing the forest from the trees is very difficult, and in STAR TREK, we've complicated our Spiritual Lives, for the most part, by becoming so scientific. As Spock so eloquently stated in THE MOTION PICTURE, "logic and knowledge are not enough." And by the way ... yes, Chakotay is one of my favourite STAR TREK characters! Unfortunately, VOY just wanted him to be a really good Number One for Janeway and didn't give him very much room to grow, outside of that. Still, Seska did impregnate herself to entrap him, and there were other, occassional, episodes where Chakotay got to do something different. And his spirituality was, unfortunately, kind of given a spin and used mainly to illustrate obvious points on the show, but yeah ... I still appreciate his attempts at being spiritual. When Roddenberry decreed that the STAR TREK universe is essentially athiest ... he'd stumbled. Fortunately, Rick Berman recognised this ...
I make fun of him from time to time, but, truth to tell, I did like the concept of "him" in the beginning, and do remember thinking that it would be good to inject some spirituality into Trek. The Action, Humor, Morality, Good/Evil, Diversity (such as it was) were all there. Spirituality, done a lá Trek, would have been great to explore and let ripen. But, Alas. And, I bet 3 bars of GPL and an Orion Slave Girl that part of Beltran's reticence and diminishing was related to the way the writers did and did not use his Character; as you so correctly say above, "...a really good Number One." I think it would have been a different, deeper, more interesting show with a more openly and allowed Spiritual Chakotay.
I agree completely that Robert Beltran - and STAR TREK fans - were not well-served by making Chakotay's belief system a caricature. Exploring who and what we are, and by extension, what we're capable of, is at the very heart of STAR TREK. What it all comes down to is that it's much better to keep that carrot dangling over someone's head, rather than to let them in on the answer. Take that carrot away and the cart stops moving. You're at a stand-still. The exploration into the question "Do I have a soul" has to be its own reward. For example, it would certainly help define one's Moral Center, as well as strengthen one's resolve in other matters. There's alot to be gained from it. And besides, the religious and moral implications of confirming that the Human Soul exists in STAR TREK might be too difficult for a writer to contain in an episodic sense. For example, now that the essence of an indvidual's life is known to be immortal, doesn't that make Human Life cheap? That is, what's to be concerned with if someone dies or gets killed? Only their imperfect, mortal body is in death ...
Early Christians felt that way. One Roman governor laughed at Christians who came of their own free will to confess that they were Christians, and said, "if you are so eager to die, there are plenty of ropes to hang yourselves and hills to throw yourself from - please do not make me kill you." I just read an interesting article about Chakotay and how he was treated as a Native person. His spirituality was commented on, specifically how he seemed fine with other crew members participating in his sacred rituals with no preparation or belief, indicating that the writers had no understanding or respect for a serious treatment of the character's spiritual beliefs or his ethnic identity - a pattern of treatment of Chakotay's character which really upset Beltran.
And those stereotypical flute cues ...!!! According to wikipedia, the trusted, reputable source for all accumilated knowledge & wisdom, adds this observation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakotay#Concept_and_development "In developing Chakotay, the producers sought the assistance of Jamake Highwater, a writer of more than 25 books of both fiction and non-fiction related to Native American myths and traditions. Highwater was a controversial choice of advisor, having been exposed by Hank Adams and Vine Deloria, Jr. as taking a fake Native American ancestry in order to sell books. Around September 21, 1993, Highwater gave seven pages of notes to producers regarding Chakotay's backstory but his tribal ancestry was unresolved." Once again, there's this lack of enthusiasm and determination that is so common when it comes to Hollywood doing anything more than it has to/wants to, so that the show can go on. These people are DreamWeavers, that's all. They just want to entertain, knowing full-well that it's not the same as curing cancer. So ... yeah, stuff like this inevitably comes up, even today. These are the people who are informing the STAR TREK universe of its "enlightened" stance on The Human Condition ... including whether or not we've got a soul. Ah, well ... it's all make-believe, folks.
Aren't you just describing the mind and calling it a soul? What is the difference between a mind and this thing you're calling a soul?
Trek use terms like "neural energy" then there are those episodes where a persons neural energy or whatever can be displaced from a body and put into another and then back again. But all of that is really jumping the shark, I think. There are some scientists that actually claim they have scientific proof the soul exists. Dr. Lanza believes in the multiple universes idea, and claims something called a double slit experiment proves it. He says the mind migrates into a multiple universe. He claims to have proof this happens. Another one named Dr. Hameroff claims that all your mind is contained as information in your brain cells where quantum activity is occurring. At death it is released from the cells and continues on. And then there are scientists that claim that studies from near death experiences prove there is a soul, or at least something else to human consciousness. That is, if you can understand exactly what they're talking about-- I wonder exactly what their "proof" is. Interesting.
Generally the mind is believed to die with the body. The soul is generally believed to outlive the body. In Star Trek, for instance, the Vulcan soul (the katra) has been demonstrated to outlive the body. Other possibly ensouled creatures appear to be incorporeal and/ or have immortal bodies.
I actually KNOW this happens. Subjectively. *Objectively* I would never claim to be able to prove that it does, and I am even open to the possibility that the reason I believe it is true is because my brain got damaged. You know, I actually think this makes sense, but the part that always gets left out when people describe this happening is what is supposed to hold the quantum activity (or whatever they are calling it) together as a single entity (rather than mingling with everything else and "becoming one with everything" or "entering Nirvana" or "obliviating") once there is no longer a meat entity to hold it together. This concept forms a big part of my weak hypothesis on what might be going on with ghosts (if there is anything other than delusion) - *parts* of the pattern of a person (either that "quantum activity" or patterns in an environment created from interacting with it or the brain's magnetic fields or whatever) linger in an environment where they were a lot, and when those portions of the pattern interact with *your* meat brain, you see something they did or feel like they did or see something they were thinking about or.... you get the idea, I trust. They should be careful messing with such. Even if all a soul IS is the emergent property of living beings also known as self-awareness, it might be possible or even inevitable to end up with a different "soul" or, effectively, person, just by rebooting the hardware like that.
I'm kind of a skeptic on this, but I really this type of reasoning. It distinguishes between New agey thinking and objective self aware thinking. So, Dr. Lanza is one of the "multiple universes" theorists. Remember that TOS episode "Spectre of the Gun" where Chekov thought he was "dead" because he only thought he got shot? It was only an illusion, but Chekov bought into it. Lanza is basically saying the same thing--death is an illusion. He claims when your biological body ceases functioning, your consciousness enters some adjacent universe. (It is interesting that people who claim to have OBEs claim that they encounter a world just like ours, but always slightly different.) So Hameroff claims that a certain component in our brain cells "hold" and process quantum information (the mind). He calls them "microtubules". Yep, he's serious. When the brain cells stops functioning, it releases it and the consciousness out into the universe. If the person is revived, the information returns to the components, along with the memories the experiences the person may have had out of body. Which explains NDEs (supposedly). Here's and interesting thing about all of this: OK, forget the white tunnel, relatives, God, blissful feelings and all. At the end of the NDE, a voice or someone will usually tell the experiencer, "you can stay here, go back to your body", or something like, "you can't stay, you have to go back". And then the person suddenly finds themselves waking back up, in their body. So if this is just an hallucination, are we saying that every individual has some component in their brain, especially designed to imagine them hearing someone tell you to "go back" when they're having a NDE?? Just out of curiosity, that's always been an odd one to explain.