Are there souls?

[WickedSmurf]

Simple, do you believe in the concept of souls?

1. The animating and vital principle in humans, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity.
2. The spiritual nature of humans, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.
3. The disembodied spirit of a dead human.
.....

 

[Narz]

Yes.

The brain and body are just the tools we use to experience this life.

- Narz

 

[stormbind]

I hope so. Otherwise this whole life thing is a complete waste of time.

 

[MSTK]

If there were no souls, you are saying that the human brain is like a computer, and consciousness is an illusion derived from chemical reactions.

 

[newfangle]

If there were no souls, you are saying that the human brain is like a computer, and consciousness is an illusion derived from chemical reactions.

Sounds about right, except there's nothing illusionary about chemical reactions.

Anyways, what's a soul made of?

 

[stormbind]

Anyways, what's a soul made of?

Pure energy?

 

[North King]

Anyways, what's a soul made of?

Why must a sould be "made" out of something? Presumably it is eternal, and thus outside of our universe, thus exempt from all the physical laws of the latter, thus it needs not have anything you can comprehend making it up.

 

[Smaasnekje]

What else should those voices in my head be?

 

[newfangle]

Why must a sould be "made" out of something? Presumably it is eternal, and thus outside of our universe, thus exempt from all the physical laws of the latter, thus it needs not have anything you can comprehend making it up.

You just described the characteristic properties of things that don't exist.

 

[Pirate]

I believe a soul is the ghost in the machine, like MSTK said. It is not made of anything. It is the relationship between events, that whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Science may eventually shed some light on this, but until then we call this "soul."

This reminds me of an old short story that Kurt Vonnegut wrote during the early space race, before Gemini, before any human had actually been in space yet. (The concept of what might be out there must have scared the crap out of some people!) The story is about the first astronaut that goes into space and hears all the souls talking to him, the souls of our ancestors that hovered just outside our atmosphere and filled the space beyond. It really made me think about how amazing the past century has been, how there are people still alive that can remember a time when they had no idea what it would be like to go into space and what an unreal experience it must have seemed to them. For all they knew there could have been souls flying around, waiting for us to reach them. [/extremely long tangent]

 

[North King]

You just described the characteristic properties of things that don't exist.

In our worldview maybe. But who can say bout things they cannot comprehend?

 

[CenturionV]

Yes.

The brain and body are just the tools we use to experience this life.

- Narz

Agreed.

"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. "

-Genesis 2:7

 

[Narz]

Newfangle, you could check out some Deepak Chopra, he breaks everything down to the Quantum level in a quite rational fashion.

 

[The Last Conformist]

If we take soul to signify something more than human consciousness - something that could exist without the electrochemical processes of the brain, that might persist beyond death - I don't believe it exist. Neither do I believe that there's anything "immaterial" or "non-physical" or "supernatural" about human consciousness.

 

[Plotinus]

Presumably it is eternal, and thus outside of our universe.

How could it possibly affect a physical body inside the universe, then, or be affected by it?

Modern philosophy, with the discoveries of cognitive science, had destroyed all basis for belief in the "soul" in the sense of something immaterial that could exist separately from the body. If such a thing does exist it cannot think, remember, act, communicate or do anything much at all, since we know that all these things are done by the brain. Without a brain you don't have a person. End of story.

How the belief in such a soul became widespread, and how it got tacked onto Christianity in particular (even though it's not really needed, since Christians believe in the resurrection of the body and therefore can believe in life after death without the metaphysical nonsense that is the doctrine of the immortality of the soul) is another story in itself...

 

[Mescalhead]

When the soul departs from the body, does the consciousness remain the same or does it change because the brain no longer interacts with it? How do we know how much of our consciousness is that of the brain and that of the soul? If our consciousness is purely soul, then how do psychoactive drugs affect consciousness so profoundly? Why is it that people born with deficiencies or abnormalities of the brain are thusly mentally deficient? Is it simply that the brain is a physical manifestation of the soul, and what you are in physical life is what you remain?

Does the soul have an ego? Does the soul have a notion of where it begins and the universe ends? Does the soul have memories of its prior lives? If so, then wouldn't eternal life be not pleasurable since one could dwell on their past life? They could wish to return to a favorable past or fret over missed opportunities and regrets. Even if one has pleasant memories, wouldn't eternal cognizance become banal and boring since everything would eventually be experienced and known? If the soul forgets, then what is the relevence of eternal life from our perspective? Surely if our memories were washed from us, "we" as in our ego, would cease to be. After all, isn't the sense of self a culmination of past experience and interaction with the outside world?

Would it not be consistent with our current knowledge to assume that the soul has no memrory as such? After all, memories seem to be the domain of the brain. If someone receives specific types of trauma, mental or otherwise, then does it not sometimes result in loss of certain memories? If the consciousness is a resevoir of memory, why do we not remember before we lived our current lives? If, like I said, the soul has no memory, what is the point of assuming that eternal life would mean anything? What would "eternal" and furthermore "life" mean to an entity which moment to moment receives stimuli, but fails to retain? Wouldn't it simply be more akin to a vegetable than a man? Certainly no meaningful cognition could arise from a being in this state. Does such a fate make sense for the human creature?

If the soul changes in its fundamental sense of existence, then how is it relevent to our lot? Wouldn't it simply be as meaningless and incomprehensible as the thought of non-existence? If it remains the same, again I ask, what roll does the brain play in the functioning of consciousness?

 

[Pirate]

to vote 'yes' in the poll, do we have to believe in all 3 of those definitions? The first one may be interpreted as much more open and philosophical, and not as a ghost or phantasm. I really don't think soul is a physical thing, more of a conceptual recognition of order or purpose.

 

[newfangle]

Newfangle, you could check out some Deepak Chopra, he breaks everything down to the Quantum level in a quite rational fashion.

Sounds interesting, but I don't buy quantum mechanics either.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I'd say something about you calling other people religious, but then it occured to me you're an Objectivist.

 

[Mungaf]

Oh, of course. There are these forces that can't be detected by any known means, that are not made of matter or even energy, totally independent of our bodies, that contain the essence of our beings.

Yep.