Last night my husband and I were having dinner by candlelight on our outside deck. In the balmy Florida night, we watched bats fly in the quickly darkening sky and listened to the raccoons and frogs calling one another by the water's edge. I noticed a flying bug attracted to the flame of the candle on the table between our glasses of red wine. It flew around the hot glowing light for a good 5 minutes until it couldn't resist and dove into the flame. As it's burnt body lay on the table I had to ponder; I am sitting here at dinner experiencing death, an inconsequential death to most....does this insect have a soul? Maybe I'm looking too deeply because I'm reading about the scientific proof of the existence of the soul, so far not proven in chapter 5.

Who decided who had souls? Why is one life more important than another? I'm sure that insect had a more positive effect on the planet than me, by not just using up resources and creating the world to fit it's needs as I do. Was the conception of soul created by man, because we cannot fathom the thought of losing a loved one forever or taking the eternal nap? But then, I remember being with my grandmother in her last days of life. She was talking to people who weren't there, seeing people who had passed. Was this her body shutting down, burst of memories blasting through her brain cells or were these people/souls to help her on her journey to the other side?

When, if we indeed do have souls and are the only species that do, did it start in evolution...Cro-Magnon, Ape, Neanderthal? Does that soul go on to a "better place"? Religion teaches us that is does, but only to those who believe, so what about those who don't? It doesn't make sense that good people would be sent to a place of anguish forever as in Dante's Inferno because they believed in science instead of faith.

Or are we energy and not really a soul? Once our last breath has left our body does the energy that we consumed while alive continue on to other things? Will we turn into an insect distracted by the light of a burning candle, then onto a plant to nourish a rabbit, then onto a meal for a wolf until we reach human again to ponder questions that will be answered sooner than we had hoped?