I heard in a religious lecture once, that we are truly, our souls. When a person is dead, well, at least in the Muslim environment, we'd refer to the body, as 'the body'. We don't comfortably or naturally still refer to the body by the person's name. It has become the body of so-and-so. Why?
WE, are not our body or how we look or how we are physically. We are our souls. Our body is truly just a container for us, for our souls.
So I had a thought just now, triggered by a drama of a person having a artificial heart transplanted into his body. People have been known to live with artifical heart, artificial or make-do kidneys, artificial hands, legs, eyes, face - which are all just instruments for our souls.
Only so far, I don't think we can actually have an artificial brain in a person. The brain is the window to the soul for our body. Without the brain, I am not sure how we would access the current world and vice versa.
Back to the thought, the thought is that : if everything else is artificial except for the brain - I imagine, we would still be us. We can be like the tin-man with a brain, it'll still be us.
Although the brain is also an instrument for our souls, it is an instrument that is beyond the capability of man to reproduce - as it interacts with the soul that our human science is still unable to access or study.
There are just some things in the world, that will be beyond man's intelligence to grasps. One of them is the soul - as God has mentioned in the Quran:
"And they ask you, [O Muhammad], about the soul. Say, "The soul is of the affair of my Lord. And mankind have not been given of knowledge except a little." (Al Isra 17:85)
*moment of awe*
Subhanallaah.. God is truly the most amazing.
