Does spirit exist?

This may seem the silliest question, because either you know that it exists, or you know that it doesn't. The answer is, of course, that it does not exist in the same way that a stone exists, or electricity. It cannot be measured in any of those ways, even though it can and should be experienced inside each of us.

To the materialist, believing in something that cannot be measured is superstition. But to us mystics, it is superstition to believe that mere matter can write a symphony, a screenplay or even HuffingtonPost. Our bodies consist almost entirely of a few familiar types of atoms. Where in those atoms is the symphony encoded? Is it in the electrons or the protons? No, the atoms are exactly the same whether they make up piece of bog or the brain of a genius. To explain the mystery that these simple atoms can cause all that we see and do, the scientist evokes the phrase "emergent behavior", which means that if you have enough of something in the right form, it changes its nature. A pile of sand behaves differently from a grain of sand, to take the simplest example. Likewise molecules behave differently from atoms, cells behave differently from molecules, and bodies differently from cells. Yes, it is all true. But making up a new word for it does not explain it.

So when life is different from the exact same amount of dead matter, it is not because of the spirit of life, but because of the emergent behavior of life. Yeah. And when humans have culture , it is not because of the human spirit but the human emergent behavior. Yeah. That explains so much more... As one scientist says to the other in the cartoon: "Thank God we're not religious!"