I refuse to opine on the Terri Schiavo case. But I am interested in the modern misunderstaning of the soul, and this article makes an excellent point. The idea of the soul as the "ghost in the machine" bears no resemblance to the soul as considered by Christian thinkers. I cannot help but think that it is a throwback to the soul as breath--an indwelling animating principle which is entirely separate from the body. Naturally when we look for such a thing--the "Promethean fire" of Frankenstein, the "life force" of She, we fail to find it. We are looking in the wrong place, just as when we attempt to prove that there must be an (humanly) Intelligent Design. The universe's creator is not simply another actor in the universe, any more than the grounding of arithmetic is a number.