Having a "soul" and being "spiritual" are not exclusively tied to being associated with any certain theology. I happen to lead a full, positive, socially responsible and fulfilling life without church or god or any of that stuff. When I die my body will go to ground while my lifeforce will join the ever-growing pool of energy that encompasses the higher planes.

Seeing how the Grid and it's occupants are basically avatars for their users in the "real world" it's doubtful that they have an actual "soul"... but then again when a thing can't be so clearly defined it therefore can't be confidently attributed to an "artificial" being.

Quorra certainly presents a wonderful enigmatic twist on the whole theory tho...

Ram64 Wrote:It's impossible for a program NOT to have a soul. As stated in the first movie: "You may get rid of us, but our spirit is in every one of the programs we create!" This is why programs look like their users. Clu has to have a soul.

This.

Essentially, when you write a program from scratch, or even write another "you", it looks like you and will share some similarities.

Personalitiy will differe though. Tron isn't exactly Alan, Alan seems a little meeker, Yori seems more "playful", Sark is the one who is ultimately under the MCP even if Dilinger is suposed to be in charge in the real world, and Clu and Flynn definitely have differences of opinion.

IluthraDanar Wrote: Ram64 Wrote: Disc Warrior Wrote:I brought this up awhile ago but is it possible for a program to have free will if they can't think for themselves? ALL programs have free will. The only thing they CAN'T control is their task, which they MUST do. Otherwise programs can do whatever they want. Now maybe these are just the programs that are in Clu's world, but they do seem free to party a lot. That isn't a viable directive, right? "Go thou and party. Be sure to keep track of the glasses you dirty up."

Exactly! They don't seem to have tasks. I suppose all of the programs that are associated with running the system do, but anything extraneous that provides services for users, like word processing and graphic design programs, really have nothing to do with just one user who hasn't been at the console for 20 years. What else are they gonna do? (I wonder how relations are between them and the system programs that still have to work...) Flynn's Grid is probably like one big rave, man. No wonder Clu's rectifying everybody...he might as well put them to good use.

HooDooMan Wrote:This may be a bit tangential to the topic here, but I thought there was an interesting parallel between the Biblical story of creation and the solar sailer scene where Flynn removed the damaged code from Quorra. In the Bible, God "breathes life" into Adam. In the solar sailer scene, after Flynn removes the damaged code, he gently blows air (or breathes) to re-start Quorra's triple-helix DNA rotating again. It's almost like he's restarting a heart or something. I know she had to have her system reboot after they replaced the disc, but I just thought the whole breathing thing was an interesting analogy.

I wondered why he had to breathe on it. Seemed playful but he was being serious I suppose.

Well, like I said, I'm not a particularly religious person, more animist than anything. But I look at my soul as being the part of me that is ME. Life force can animate anything but the soul, or spirt if you will, is what makes that animation me. Just my belief.

According to Walter Gibbs, he feels that each program written by one person holds a piece of that person's soul in it, but as others have pointed out, programs can be written by many people, so now what, Walter?