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UCSD Biology Department confirms existence of the human soul in light of LGBTQIA+ campus policy statement

“Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

Dr. Empirical: “For the longest time, scientists were forced to posit the existence of black holes, even though we didn’t have an actual image of one, because the information they had demanded that black holes exist. Just last week, we finally got visual confirmation of a black hole with the above image — though even there, you can see it only because of the bent ring of light circling its orbit. Our conclusion about the soul is kind of like that: something that can be seen only in light of extrinsic factors, the existence of which is demanded by those factors.”
Dr. Empirical: “For the longest time, scientists were forced to posit the existence of black holes, even though we didn’t have an actual image of one, because the information they had demanded that black holes exist. Just last week, we finally got visual confirmation of a black hole with the above image — though even there, you can see it only because of the bent ring of light circling its orbit. Our conclusion about the soul is kind of like that: something that can be seen only in light of extrinsic factors, the existence of which is demanded by those factors.”

“Ever since the rise of modern science in the wake of the Enlightenment,” says UCSD Professor of Human Biology Viz Empirical, “biology has concerned itself with what it can experimentally and observationally verify. More metaphysical considerations about the origin of life and the existence of some vivifying force called ‘the soul’ have been left to the philosophers. But last week, every campus employee was required to sign a statement circulated by Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Binky Petty. The statement, which has come to be known as Petty’s Pledge, contained an Affirmation of Existence aimed at supporting the LGBTQIA+ community on campus. Signees were required to affirm that a person’s gender was not determined by their biological sex at birth. It was after reading — and, I should note, happily signing — this document that one of my colleagues pointed out that if this was the case, then the “person” must somehow exist distinct from the person’s biology, even as it existed within that biology. Something inherent in the physical world that was itself not conditioned by the physical world. And that, as even the earliest natural scientists noted, is what is commonly referred to as the soul. Petty’s Pledge has opened a new frontier: for biology, for academia, and for all humanity. We cannot begin to express our amazement and wonder at this development.”

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Dr. Empirical: “For the longest time, scientists were forced to posit the existence of black holes, even though we didn’t have an actual image of one, because the information they had demanded that black holes exist. Just last week, we finally got visual confirmation of a black hole with the above image — though even there, you can see it only because of the bent ring of light circling its orbit. Our conclusion about the soul is kind of like that: something that can be seen only in light of extrinsic factors, the existence of which is demanded by those factors.”
Dr. Empirical: “For the longest time, scientists were forced to posit the existence of black holes, even though we didn’t have an actual image of one, because the information they had demanded that black holes exist. Just last week, we finally got visual confirmation of a black hole with the above image — though even there, you can see it only because of the bent ring of light circling its orbit. Our conclusion about the soul is kind of like that: something that can be seen only in light of extrinsic factors, the existence of which is demanded by those factors.”

“Ever since the rise of modern science in the wake of the Enlightenment,” says UCSD Professor of Human Biology Viz Empirical, “biology has concerned itself with what it can experimentally and observationally verify. More metaphysical considerations about the origin of life and the existence of some vivifying force called ‘the soul’ have been left to the philosophers. But last week, every campus employee was required to sign a statement circulated by Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Binky Petty. The statement, which has come to be known as Petty’s Pledge, contained an Affirmation of Existence aimed at supporting the LGBTQIA+ community on campus. Signees were required to affirm that a person’s gender was not determined by their biological sex at birth. It was after reading — and, I should note, happily signing — this document that one of my colleagues pointed out that if this was the case, then the “person” must somehow exist distinct from the person’s biology, even as it existed within that biology. Something inherent in the physical world that was itself not conditioned by the physical world. And that, as even the earliest natural scientists noted, is what is commonly referred to as the soul. Petty’s Pledge has opened a new frontier: for biology, for academia, and for all humanity. We cannot begin to express our amazement and wonder at this development.”

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