Author Description

What does it really mean to be human? In this dissertation, philosopher, scientist, and engineer Michael Pendergast examines the issue. Are we merely rational animals who are programmed to act in certain ways and not truly responsible for anything we do, as some modern liberals and scientists would have it? or are we some mixture of body, mind, and spirit that possesses some freedom of thought and act, as the ancient Greeks and Medieval Christian scholastics would have it? Or, perhaps, are we humans are something more-something far stranger still? In the course of this examination of the human being that ultimately asks whether the soul exists, and what it is and does-or could do, if properly understood-the author is forced to examine whether science, philosophy, and even religion (especially given the paradigms they currently operate under) can answer his question. The conclusions he draws concerning science, philosophy, and religion are as troubling as the answers concerning the soul-which turns out to be nothing less than an infinite spirit that is not limited by space or time-are uplifting.