Here it is Saturday morning, this thread is coming to an end, and reviewing your post 23 made me wonder how you might answer the question posed in post 284 -- Would ethics have any meaning or importance to souls?
Ayn Rand views ethics, morals, and rational "values" (a rational code) as necessary for man's life on earth. She holds that man cannot live as man without using the faculty of reason to overcome all that which is harmful to human life. Usng reason, Rand holds that man is capable of knowing that which is good and bad, capable of building a set of values (a code) that leads to better life conditions, and capable of passing that knowledge on to future generations.
Rand's ethics holds that ethics does not pertain to inanimate objects or non-reasoning living entities -- that ethics pertains to man alone.
Meanwhile, Rand's esthetics (A Sense of Life) compliments (in a beautiful but unrelated way) religious beliefs concerning the soul -- we all have one
I'd appreciate your thoughts about how ethics might pertain to the immortal soul.
First, the definition of "ethic"
1 plural but singular or plural in construction : the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligationI would answer that ethics would definitely have meaning to the immortal soul. If one believes that ethics, as in moral values that govern their life and are used to solve questions such as how we treat one another, etc., then this mode of behavior would have an impact on our soul.2 a : a set of moral principles or values
b : a theory or system of moral values
c plural but singular or plural in construction : the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group
d : a guiding philosophy
While I agree with Ayn Rand that reason can lead to the knowledge of good and evil, and the reasoned ethic that one must do good in order to live in harmony with everyone else in the world, I also say that there are some things that can not be reasoned out completely, or that can be reasoned out but two different people will come up with two "reasoned" positions, opposite.
What we do today impacts where we go when we die. Our soul will continue to live. I can't say in what state, or what our consciousness is, but I do believe that our soul lives and waits for the resurrection of our bodies at the second coming of Jesus Christ. Where our soul goes depends on what our ethics were while our soul and body were united. Our actions, through personal choice and free will, are imprinted on our soul, good and bad. That soul is weighed and judged when we die, and sent to Heaven, Hell or purgatory depending on if we lived up to our ethics.
It's interesting to note that many Catholic theologians believe that non-Catholics can get to Heaven, but that a fallen Catholic was a more difficult time getting there than someone who was never Catholic at all. For example, a Baptist who never knew the Catholic Church but led a good, moral (ethical) life would have a better chance of going to heaven than a Catholic who left the church because the Catholic knows (or knew) that the church was the established by Christ and therefore was turning his back on Christ. Catholics are held, in essense, to a higher ethical standard than non-Catholics.
On your final point, I agree with Rand that ethics only pertain to man, and that man is the only living being with a soul. While God created all creatures on the face of the earth, only Man was created in His image; animals can not reason, they live on instinct alone. Even highly intelligent animals don't reason. A dog learns to obey by the negative reaction. When he chews a shoe, he is hit with a newspaper; therefore, he no longer chews a shoe not because he THINKS he'll be hit, but because the shoe hits.
I don't know if this was what you were looking for. I sort of got out of theoretical debates when I left college. But sometimes it's thought-provoking. Thanks.