The body and the spirit may be linked metaphysically and dimensionally. They may be the one joined essence, and they may not be linked at all. The view you choose depends on what you read or whom you talk to. When reading and watching Sci-Fi the connection between mind and body ranges from--the mind is just your synapeses fireing randomly, to--you can transplant your mind to "new" bodies as much as you want--who needs your old body anyway?

One view realizes that each body consists of a unique pattern of molecules. The body's pattern contains your mind and your body. The soul's pattern is identicle and interlaced with the physical pattern. They are not two but one.

The soul cannot go from person to person, because it is part of the pattern, which is like a body fingerprint. Even clones have separate "body prints" then their doner. If you destroy the unique pattern of cells but put them back together or re-create them in the same EXACT pattern, then the soul would still be there as long as the pattern stays the same.

If the spirit and body are different entities, then the spirit would "recognise" its "host pattern" and return to its origional body if seperated. If the pattern of the body disappears, dies or changes, the spirit would leave, not being able to find a body. This is one of the ghost theorys.

With teleportation, if one infinitesimal piece of pattern changes or disappears, the spirit, being part of the pattern also has been changed and the person will die, go mad, or mutate into something terrible.

Since your pattern is stored in your DNA, if you caught a strange contagious genetic disease, you could get into the transporter, and it would "rebuild" the old healthy pattern (from a hair or something) and being the same pattern, the soul would also be rebuilt and the person would be cured.

(this is the view used in star trek teleportation--notice they have "pattern buffers" view also in a not so good or interesting movie called "The Fly")

The evidence used to back this theory come from our knowledge of radiation and living tissue. If teleportation or anything, like radiation or whatever changes the order of cells then the body and spirit are corrupted and die.

Radiation may change or kill the body and it's pattern of molecules, or body print. What is interesting is that each person can absorb a certain amount of radiation without sickness. In essence, each person can have a tiny part of their pattern changed with no ill effect. The pattern can either heal itself, or there are tiny parts that won't hurt to change. But it doesn't take much radiation to kill a person, so the level that the pattern is able to change without a negitive reaction obviously very low.

Teleportation isn't the only scientific idea that deals with the soul/body connection.

Can you live in a body that is not your own? Could someone put their brain into a younger or healthier body and live happily forever in different bodies and still be the same person. (Idea shown in several sci-fi books and a movie called Freejack as well as others)

With clones, one could always have a young body. They could (technically) clone a person when they are middle aged and then, when that person grows to old to function well, they can transplant the old man's brain into his new body. If a mind were transplanted into a host body that is not a clone, then not only would you have to watch for tissue rejection, but possible also mental rejection. People could as easily die as go mad and kill themselves. (A semi-common theme in sci-fi actually)

Or how about using a "blank" brain that has nothing in it. A person "in need" has their mind "recorded" and then "put" or "dubbed" into the blank mind. The person has a new body, and not only that, but there are now two people with the same mind. To have a seperable mind could in fact be useful in this sence.

Even more useful that that, you could taping your brain periodically, and then, when a traumatic even takes place, you can re-writing the old or sane "recording" over the "insane" one--thereby replacing your current mind with a past mind.

(O.S. Card has several stories and a book based on this concept. "The Worthing Saga", "a thousand deaths" short story from FLUX, and "Fat Farm" short story from book: CHANGED MAN. Heinlien has a book called "Fear No Evil" on this subject.)

No one alive now has ever had ALL their cells rearranged or had their brains recorded and then still been able to live after it was over. It seems that in the sci-fi world, the mind or at least the physical brain is generally separable from the original body. With teleportation, the pattern of the body/mind mustn't be changed, but still can be nothing for a brief period of time--the time it takes to teleport. The other views seem to see no connection at all with soul and body, without even a slight hesitation on the issue. To many, you are no more than the fireing of synapses inside a grey tangles mess inside your skull.

Since I do read Dr. Who.... I can't stop an essay mentioning star trek without a short Doctor Who view paragraph.

Time Lords regenerated, that is they get new bodies and stay the same. This, to an outside would appear to be the average "mind transfer--new body" idea. But it is a bit more complicate than that. When a Time Lords regenerates, energy (of all levels) builds inside the individual regenerating and bursts. The burst of both psychic and physical energy re-arranges the body/mind pattern--creating a new pattern for both body and mind simultaneously. This is why time lords have different personalities in each regeneration. In a bad regeneration, a time lord dies or worse--goes irreversibly mad because the patterns are wrong. Time lords can still remember being the other person, but are not the "same" person even though they still are the same person.

I doubt that teleportation will come about any time soon. I think that when something happens to the body, the soul leaves, and can only be brought back by God (Lazarus the little girl etc) I don't think that it is possible--at least in our time-to transfer you mind to another body. That idea has it's interesting points. Maybe you could transfer your mind to your own cloned body--but then that would still be murder.

I think teleportation could work because it "kills" you only for an instant, and people according to hospital rules can still possibly be brought "back to life" within a few minutes after their heart stopped beating.

The new bodies people have in heaven are the kind of bodies that aren't reactive to entropy. I think that because of sin and entropy, the pattern in our bodies changes all the time--gradually. The mind stays the same, young and smart, but the body becomes old, the DNA structure runs down, and changes slightly. After time the body is old, and the pattern is no longer the way it was meant to be. It is squeezed by sin death, entropy, as it was never meant to. The soul is not reactive to entropy, so if stays the same. This is interesting because somehow the two are linked, but not completely, because the mind/soul does not react to entropy or time as the body does. It changes only with knowledge or feel and action.