UCSD Biology Department confirms existence of the human soul in light of LGBTQIA+ campus policy statement

“Ever since the rise of modern science in the wake of the Enlightenment,” says UCSD Professor of Human Biology Viz Empirical, “biology has concerned itself with what it can experimentally and observationally verify. More metaphysical considerations about the origin of life and the existence of some vivifying force called ‘the soul’ have been left to the philosophers. But last week, every campus employee was required to sign a statement circulated by Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Binky Petty. The statement, which has come to be known as Petty’s Pledge, contained an Affirmation of Existence aimed at supporting the LGBTQIA+ community on campus. Signees were required to affirm that a person’s gender was not determined by their biological sex at birth. It was after reading — and, I should note, happily signing — this document that one of my colleagues pointed out that if this was the case, then the “person” must somehow exist distinct from the person’s biology, even as it existed within that biology. Something inherent in the physical world that was itself not conditioned by the physical world. And that, as even the earliest natural scientists noted, is what is commonly referred to as the soul. Petty’s Pledge has opened a new frontier: for biology, for academia, and for all humanity. We cannot begin to express our amazement and wonder at this development.”