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Quote by Mike Hockney

“No one denies that we are influenced by genes and environment. What is denied is that we are determined by our genes and/or environment, that we are literally puppets that cannot act differently, that we have no moral agency, no personal accountability, that we are mere machines. No one who accepts the eternity of the soul can regard our current body, and current environment, as what makes us what we are. Only atheists and materialists hold such ideas. To deny free will is to deny the soul. Without the soul, we would indeed be machines. To put it another way, the reality of free will is the proof of the existence of the soul (since free will is impossible otherwise). People such as Sam Harris require free will to be false because, if it isn’t, his materialist belief system is false.”

Quote by Mike Hockney

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The Sam Harris Delusion

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Mike Hockney

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“Man has held three views of his body. First there is that of those ascetic pagans who called it the prison or the "tomb" of the soul, and of Christians like Fisher to whom it was a "sack of dung", food for worms, filthy, shameful, a source of nothing but temptation to bad men and humiliation to good ones. Then there are the Neo-Pagans (they seldom know Greek), the nudists and the sufferers from Dark Gods, to whom the body is glorious. But thirdly we have the view which St. Francis expressed by calling his body "Brother Ass". All three may be - I am not sure - defensible; but give me St. Francis for my money.”

“And the end of life is to fashion a soul, an immortal soul; a soul of one's own making. Because at the hour of death one bequeaths a skeleton to the earth, but a soul, a piece of work, to history. Or such is the case when one has lived, that is, when one has wrestled with the life that passes, wrestled it for the prize of the life that remains. And life, what is life? Even more tragic, what is truth?”

“All good stories follow a similar storyline: The protagonist embarks on an adventure that leads him or her into the unknown. Along the way, the main chracter encounters challenges and temptations. He or she is helped by mentors or guides who gift them with insights and revelations. In the end, they experience triumph and transformation. This popular pattern is known as "the hero's journey", and it is what your soul came here to experience. [...] [Before you came into this life, as a soul,] you chose this role and the other actors with whom you would interact. You agreed to the overall plot and to specific milestones within the story, but for much of it, the details are unscripted. You are free to choose your reactions and responses to every new experience. That's what makes it so exciting for the soul and you, the hero of this story. The problems occur when [...] ]you forget you are a soul playing a temporary human role and] you allow the role to define who you are. [...] This is like a method actor who begins to beleive he or she IS the character they are portraying. The idea is to] maintain soul awareness and step out of character every so often [and re-connect with the soul and its wise understanding of the world].”