I don’t believe in souls. I believe our consciousness is an evolutionary trait, and we are just organized matter with an organ that allows to record our experiences, create correlations and theories, and make decisions for survival’s sake. The side effect of having this organ is that we recognize our consciousness and try to explain it, and our guess about a “soul” is probably somewhere on the level of our guess that lightning is thrown by an angry Zeus from Mount Olympus. We just haven’t gotten to a scientific explanation for it. Maybe we never will.
But I don’t begrudge people their theories, and I think the OP is an interesting one. It kind of agrees with my personal theory that we are all simply matter/energy, and when we die our matter and energy are simply changed into another form of matter/energy. For example, your body decomposes into earth, which can become transformed into something something else, like a tree, which could create a fruit eaten by a child and becomes some cells in that child’s body and thus your matter is “reincarnated.”
now THAT I like!
IMO, the OP is as plausible as anything else. I certainly don’t believe in heaven at this point. It is slightly more comforting to think of my sisters’ souls as living on, than the Big Eraser coming along and removing them permanently.
Not so sure on the fragmented bits, but I’ll play along.
One or both is from one of Spider Robinson’s short stories I believe; I really don’t remember.
O-soul-o-mio! 
[HIJACK]
sOME
:smack: :smack: :smack: Sorry! Mad browser with mind of its own decided to post the thread for me before it was done.
I’ve got a theory. It might be bunnies.
you know, they’re not as cute as everyone supposes…
The “finite number” of souls bit immediately made me think of the exam question on “Is Hell Exothermic or Endothermic”. For those that don’t know…
My general thought process for the OP was huh? huh? Oh. Right. Sure, go with that if you want. No harm there, move along.
The Racoon Hat god was inspired tho.
Hey, maybe every living thing has a soul, even really small, easily disregarded things like amoeba and bacterium and stuff like that. So it’s not like the supply of souls runs out-- maybe you’re just a reincarnated spirocete or paramecium? That would explain the Bush administration anyway.
But seriously, though, maybe?
Pour me one of those cosmos, willya?
:dubious: It’s MPSIMS, party-pooper. Nyah. Go to GD for stuff that makes sense!
Some of the storyline of Babylon 5 is relevant to this thread.
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Due to a misunderstanding, an earth ship fires on a Minbarri ship. The Minbarri declare war. They kick major butt and earth-controlled territory keeps shrinking. Finally, earthships are deployed in a last ditch line of defense around the earth itself. The full Minbarri armada closes in. A few hours later, the Minbarri offer their unconditional surrender to earth’s government.
It’s eventually revealed that this is because
Human pilots were taken captive and interrogated as preparation for the conquest of our planet. The interrogation answered a question that had troubled the Minbarri for a long time. For a few centuries, each generation of Minbarri is smaller than the one before it. The interrogation revealed that some of the human pilots had Minbarri souls. The Minbarri population has been decreasing because they have been reborn as humans. Horrified and ashamed that they have been killing their own kind, the Minbarri surrendered.
now that’s an interesting plot twist
Well put.
I can’t believe I’m posting this, but… In Jack Frost (horror movie), it turns out that the soul exists, it’s a chemical in the body, that’s how this criminal’s ‘soul’ fused w/ the snow he was melted into when toxic waste sprayed him (don’t ask). So he became a mutant killer snowman. And he dies at the end of the movie, but part of his dna gets mixed w/ the good guy’s dna, so they share souls a little bit when he comes back to hunt the good guy in the sequel.
So, there ya go. There’s some inspiration for your story there ;).
It’s not any of the stories listed, but John Brunner’s The Vitanuls is about what happens when world population exceeds all the peoople who have previously lived – the new people lack souls, and are basically automatons. Published in F&SF in 1967:
Years ago, I caught a segment of some very late night show ( haven’t seen it before or since) and it was talking about prodigies. ( I have no idea if the whole of the show was about reincarnation and geniuses/genusii)
The theory that I caught ( and it made sense to my tired brain and still does) is that prodigies are actually the parts of reincarnated souls of very talented people whose music (or whatever the talent is) must live on.
Which, in my mind, explains alot and makes sense in my tiny universe.
So, I shall subscribe to your drunken theory newsletter quite happily.
Someone suggested I should start a webbased cult and see what happens