My missive to a Friend trying to convince me 'eternal souls' are a real thing ...

[Irish_Dem]

30. If you get a PhD you quickly learn how rigid and narrow the academic community tends to be.

Doctoral students want to conduct research on all kinds of topics related to their fields of study,
but their advisors and committee members slap that notion right out of their heads.

Yes I understand that scientific knowledge has to carefully and painstakingly built upon current and past knowledge.
And we cannot go off on tangents with no merit.

But there should be some wiggle room for people with vision and creativity.

Religion is a constant, iconic part off human existence. But we don't study it.
Why is it there, what purpose does it serve, is it hard wired in.

Just like love is an iconic part of human existence and there is not much research on the topic.
At least until more recently.

These are not seen as serious, legitimate topics in academic research.
So we just ignore some of the most innate, core parts of humanity.

Yes I agree, I think some of the things we consider nonsensical or woo-woo will turn out
to be perfectly normal human traits that we have yet to study and understand.

I think some psychic phenomena will turn out to have scientific merit.
Carl Jung believed in the collective unconscious, etc.
Which modern day physicists talk about, all things are connected.

In fact when I listen to theoretical physicists talk, they sound just like New Age experts.
Both seem to say a lot of the same thing.