This entry will concentrate on the relation between science and the theistic religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, where theism is the belief that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing perfectly good immaterial person who has created the world, has created human beings 'in his own image,' and to whom we owe worship, obedience and allegiance.
Many things besides human animals can be persons on this view: an angel, a god, a machine, an animal, an immaterial soul, an alien, etc.
He held in the Phaedo that I (and all persons) will survive the death and destruction of my body insofar as what I essentially am is a simple, immaterial soul, something whose own essence is being alive.
The circumstances of one's life are, by and large, immaterial to the person he or she becomes.
The soul, though an immaterial substance, is the person only when united with its body.
In Christian theology St. Augustine spoke of the soul as a "rider" on the body, making clear the split between the material and the immaterial, with the soul representing the "true" person.
How are we to regard this "congregation of bodies / united into one immaterial body, a fictive person / around whom the air is blurred with money"?
Whatever the race or culture of that person is immaterial; it doesn't matter if they are famous and wealthy, or unknown and poor.
(Note that this is a problem as much for the believer in immaterial souls as for the person who believes only in bodies.
But species, al-Kindi argues, are immaterial; therefore the soul is immaterial.
If, however, we are nonphysical (or immaterial) minds or souls or persons who are embodied, then even the complete annihilation of our physical bodies does not entail our annihilation as persons.
