One of the key parts of Mormon theology is the belief that we all have a "personage of spirit" within us. As the old missionary lessons taught, our spirit are to our bodies as a hand is to a glove. This "personage of spirit" corresponds to and animates our body. It is eternal and our "personages of spirit" will continue onto the next world and will eventually gain a resurrected body and be exalted.

It's a nice concept, but as these two simple experiments show, probably not accurate.

The following passage is from Phantoms in the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D., and Sandra Blakeslee

"You'll need two helpers (...call them Julie and Mina). Sit in a chair, blindfolded, and ask Julie to sit on another chair in front of you, facing the same direction as you are. Have Mina stand on your right side and give her the following instructions: "Take my right hand and guide my index finger to Julia's nose. Move my hand in a rhythmic manner so that my index finger repeatedly strokes and taps her nose in a random sequence like a Morse code. At the same time, use your left hand to stroke my nose with the same rhythm and timing. The stroking and tapping of my nose and Julia's nose should be in perfect synchrony."

After thirty or forty seconds, if you're lucky, you will develop the uncanny illusion that you are touching your nose out there or that your nose has been dislocated and stretched out about three feet in front of your face. The more random and unpredictable the stroking sequence, the more striking the illusion will be. This is an extraordinary illusion; why does it happen? [It is suggested that] your brain "notices" that the tapping and stroking sensations from your right index finger are perfectly synchronized with the strokes and taps felt on your nose. It then says, "The tapping on my nose is identical to the sensations on my right index finger; why are the two sequences identical? The likelihood that this is a coincidence is zero, and therefore the most probable explanation is that my finger must be tapping my nose. But I also know that my hand is two feet away from my face. So it follows that my nose must also be out there, two feet away."

[This experiment works on about fifty percent of people.] The astonishing thing is that it works at all -- that your certain knowledge that you have a normal nose, your image of your body and face constructed over a lifetime should be negated by just a few seconds of the right kind of sensory stimulation. This simple experiment shows [how malleable your body image is.]

The second illusion requires one helper and is even spookier. You'll need to go to a novelty or Halloween store to buy a dummy rubber hand. Then construct a two-foot by two-foot cardboard "wall" and place it on a table in front of you. Put your right hand behind the cardboard so that you cannot see it clearly. Next have your friend stroke identical locations on both your hand and the dummy hand synchronously while you look at the dummy. Within seconds you will experience the stroking sensation as arising from the dummy hand. The experience is uncanny, for you know perfectly well that you're looking at a disembodied rubber hand, but this doesn't prevent your brain from assigning sensation to it. The illusion illustrates, once again, how ephemeral your body image is and how easily it can be manipulated."


This phenomena can also be observed in other instances. Brains of people with prosthetics soon adopt the fake limb as their own. Ramachandran's experiments have shown that brains can even be fooled into thinking that cups and balls are part of the body and receive sensations from them. Most people who have played the "human knot game" have probably experienced that moment of uncertainty where they are not sure which hand in the pile is their own and have even received sensations from other hands.

If we accept that our minds are plastic and that body image is very fluid and learned, these phenomena are easily explained.

However, they present problems for this idea that a "personage of spirit" fills our physical body and provides sensation and animation. How can we "feel" that an inanimate object or a part of someone else is ours if we have a clearly defined spirit personage within us? Does a piece of our spirit break off and go inside the cup or fake hand and relay these sensations back to the brain?

The "hand in glove" model seems discredited by these experiments. There are a host of other psychological experiments that seem to suggest that our minds are based in neurons and chemistry rather than some spiritual phenomena. This experiment is one of the most interesting and brings up interesting questions about our identity and the boundary that separates the "I" from the rest of the world. That boundary is much less solid than we once thought. The LDS idea of a "defined spirit person" goes out the window too.

Very interesting stuff, though I wouldn't say it discredits all takes on Mormon theology. The simple analogies you spoke of can be credited as just that, simple analogies. But when they say our spirit resembles the body... well... that's where they go wrong. That doesn't make any sense to me. It seems like such a juvenile belief that stems from a primitive mind incapable of imagining any other form for oneself. Especially considering the idea of becoming God, and God having a man body. I mean come on, if you see all and know all, why would you have eyes? If your immortal than you don't need to eat, so why eat? And if you don't eat then why have the digestive tract and all other organs involved in nutrient intake. And if you behold all, like sight, why do you need touch and nerves? They also talk about how your blood is replaced with light or whatever. So you no longer need oxygen, and if you don't need oxygen why do you have lungs? Do we even breathe? If we do eat, what happens to the matter? It doesn't need to be absorbed so where does it go? Do we shit the food made whole again? Do we shit at all? Maybe we turn food into light ohhhhh, can't wait for some mormon scientist to blow our minds with some theory on that one... WTF? Ears... once again no need to hear, we behold all, besides.. if we're kicking it in space then they're useless. My nose... same argument.

So basically all of our senses and most of our anatomy goes straight to shit and has no necessary function. So why would it exist at all?

Mormons love talking about these questions but when they start giving answers they make no sense. They all walk around talking about this afterlife where they'll be with their family (imagining themselves at the place that they're in in life, aka a 19 yr old) eating a fat delicious steak, snowboarding, and doing everything they love here. But all of that doesn't make any sense whatsoever, it all goes to crap.

For the average Mormon, they don't have theology, they have childish fantasies.

Cool experiments,captain. Here's another one I tried and it worked for me: Take a flashlight into a closet. Shut the door and close your eyes. Now put the business end of the flashlight against your forehead, just over the eye. Turn on the light and you will see a glow in your cheek, as if you were holding the flashlight there. Why is this?

In spite of what anti-evolutionists say, our eyes are not perfectly designed. As there is only one lens on each cornea, we should see everything upside-down. The brain corrects this, flipping all we see so that we can navigate by sight. In the experiment, you bypass the eyeball and send the light right to the optic nerve through your translucent skin. The brain dutifully turns the image over, as it always does.

I like this simple one; point out that in humans there is a ratio of roughly 52% females to 48% males, then ask how God could command men to marry several woman when gender is handed out by this same God about 50/50...

Oh, how I would love to interview some poor dope in Utah who couldn't find a wife, while Brigham and his buddies were living large with the New and Everlasting Covenant.

Tho Im more buddhist christian, if I was to take the bible seriously it says there is no immortal spirit.
Just the resurrection of mortal or immortal bodies.
those who dont make it get a mortal resurrection and die a 2nd death as they foam at the mouth knowing they are dammed march in army and battle against the saints/christians who are immortal resurrected beings living in a 300 mile high/wide goldern city at the end of the millenium return to earth and a great large crowd was gathered.. So much for jehovah witness's changing the large crowd in heaven will be on earth for that 1000 years, not so. Only dead corpses and the devil bored out of his mind, waiting for the ressurection of the wicked dead
to be mortal again to gather his armies for the battle of gog and maygog the 4th world war, mortals against immortals..

Mormon belief is not fact just feeling. the bible says not to trust in feeling but come and reason together in christ and trust in the word and not trust false angels preaching another messege besides the bible..I suppose that includes peaceful loving buddhism also and proberbly because they added the nonsense of reincarnation to fuck it up...

larry john...

The astral body (which some mistake for the spirit body) is flexible, so parts of it, or even the whole, can move out and away from the boundaries of the flesh body. The astral body can be controlled thru the spirit body.

But the spirit body is pure consciousness, which by definition is infinitely flexible and fluid. So I wouldn't expect this spirit body to match entirely with the flesh body, in any case.

BTW, I sometimes can feel the wind, and the movements of clouds, trees etc., as if they were parts of my body.

You had me at, touch her nose.