READING THE BIBLE CAN GIVE YOU THE "WIND" SOMETHING FIERCE
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Have you ever wondered why poeple believe in spirits, souls, and ghosts?
It turns out that the very idea has sprung from a biological misunderstanding
shared by primitive people all over the world.  This misunderstanding concerns
the differences between a dead body and a living body.  Imagine a scene
from the past when our ancestors knew almost nothing about biology and had
IQs lower than a theologian.  Imagine a Neanderthal or Java man named Gorf.

Gorf has just killed a deer.  As he beats his chest and gives a primal yell in
triumph, he suddenly grimaces, grabs his chest, falls to his knees and dies.
Gorf has been eating too much saturated sabertooth tiger fat and has
subsequently developed arterial sclerosis.  Gorf's friends don't know what's
happened to him, and they examine him in alarm and quickly see that all of his
body parts are still there.  Anticipating the Christian eucharist, Gorf's
friends cut him open and devour his heart and liver in a sacred act of
cannibalism.  They realize there is no difference between the dead Gorf and
the living Gorf except for one thing - he isn't breathing anymore.  So Gorf's
friends conclude that "breath" is life.

In fact, the word "spirit" comes from the Latin word "spiritus", which
actually means "breath."  The term "holy ghost" in the Greek Bible is really
"holy breath" (hagion pneuma).  A quick check of the Hebrew Old Testament
shows throughout that all words translated as "spirit", "soul", or "ghost"
originally meant "breath", "breeze", or "wind."  As a matter of fact, in the
second creation myth in the second chapter of Genesis, god molds Adam from
the dust to make his body, but to make him ALIVE god has to "breathe" into
him.

Since breath is something that has physical reality, and can be felt and
smelled outside the body, it was natural to suppose that this "spiritus"
could carry on some type of existence outside the body.  Thus were born the
doctrines of the immortality of the soul, reincarnation, and demonic
possession.  After all, if your body can lose its soul, either by dying or
sneezing, it follows that a body can gain souls (spirit possessions) under
certain conditions.  That is why when you sneeze out your "spiritus" you
either have to make the magical sign of the cross, or someone else has to
say "god bless you", to prevent evil spirits from taking possession of
your body before your own "spiritus" can get back in.  That's probably
why when you fart you're eliminating evil spirits, as is demonstrated by
the fact that they stink.  (Is the devil actually Burritos incarnated?)
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!{ihnp4!hpda!seismo!utah-cs!uplherc}!sp7040!dale

                      SOULS FIT SHOES - NOT PEOPLE.