What's a soul, and how is it yours?

[Mr. Awesome]

This thread is for anyone who believes they have a soul. I've been pondering thit issue for a little while, and I can't find a single to reason to believe that souls exist.

What would a soul do? Every action a human being undertakes can be explained psychologically without the need to invoke the magic 'soul'.

And, how is a soul 'you'? If there's some ghost manipulating my actions without my consent, I want him apprehended. If there is something acting without regard personal experiences and opinions, it is in no way shape or form part of 'me'. It's existence undermines my free will and individuality.

So, if you have any evidence of a soul, or any explanation of why one is necessary, I'd appreciate hearing it.

[dittohead not!]

I think it's more accurate to say that you are a soul, but you have a body. One day, the body you inhabit will die, and you will leave it. The you that leaves is your soul. In other words, you are your soul, not your body. It is your soul that is in charge of what you do and don't do. The body is just a highly complex and sophisticated machine.

[Mr. Awesome]

I think it's more accurate to say that you are a soul, but you have a body. One day, the body you inhabit will die, and you will leave it. The you that leaves is your soul. In other words, you are your soul, not your body. It is your soul that is in charge of what you do and don't do. The body is just a highly complex and sophisticated machine.

I haven't taken theology courses or anything, so I hope I'm not saying anything stupid, but how is your soul independant of your brain? My brain is charge of what I do and don't do, it is me.

The brain is something we can manipulate with drugs, electrical shocks, or just hitting it with a bat. It seems to operate by the same rules as everything else. I've never really understood the brain to be the definition of a soul. Do you consider your brain to be your soul, or is it something else?

[dittohead not!]

I haven't taken theology courses or anything, so I hope I'm not saying anything stupid, but how is your soul independant of your brain? My brain is charge of what I do and don't do, it is me.

The brain is something we can manipulate with drugs, electrical shocks, or just hitting it with a bat. It seems to operate by the same rules as everything else. I've never really understood the brain to be the definition of a soul. Do you consider your brain to be your soul, or is it something else?

The brain is a sophisticated computer. You are operating that computer. If something goes haywire with the computer, then you can no longer operate it, just as when the PC you're operating now has a glitch. Drugs, electrical shocks, trauma, and disease can cause the computer brain to malfunction, just as a computer virus can cause your PC to malfunction.

[Mr. Awesome]

The brain is a sophisticated computer. You are operating that computer. If something goes haywire with the computer, then you can no longer operate it, just as when the PC you're operating now has a glitch. Drugs, electrical shocks, trauma, and disease can cause the computer brain to malfunction, just as a computer virus can cause your PC to malfunction.
Understood.

But how are we anything more than that computer? Where does computer end and soul begin? I can't seem to find a spot where the computer becomes anything more than a computer.

[JoeR]

I don't think we are anything more, albeit very advanced.

[dittohead not!]

Understood.

But how are we anything more than that computer? Where does computer end and soul begin? I can't seem to find a spot where the computer becomes anything more than a computer.

Where does your PC end and you begin? Usually at the keyboard or mouse.

Your senses input data to the computer brain, which processes it. You decide what to do with that information. For example, your senses detect a chocolate candy. Your computer memory has stored chocolate, its taste, smell, etc. The pleasure centers of the brain are stimulated by the memory, and your body desires that chocolate, but you are the one who decides whether or not you should eat the chocolate. If you're trying to lose weight, then you might decide to leave the chocolate alone despite what your brain is telling you. If there is only one chocolate, and a small child wants it too, you might decide to forego the pleasure. That decision is made by you, not by your computer brain. You make decisions every day, some a lot more important than a chocolate candy, based on what your body and brain want and what your soul, the you that lives inside, knows is the right thing to do.

[Mr. Awesome]

Ditto, the decision to let the child have the chocolate could be just a more intricate series of memories and decisions running through your brain. If you decline to eat chocolate as a self-imposed dietary restriction, it could simply be a cost benefit analysis done by your super computer brain. A soul isn't really necessary to explain either choice.

We've seen dolphins and chimps help others of thier kind at great expense to themselves, do they also have souls?

I think a clear definition of a soul would help me understand things a little more clearly.

[mataj]

I had a soul once, but long ago. I sold it to the Devil for a pack of chewing gum.

http://www.necronomi.com/projects/666/
http://www.sell-your-soul.com/
http://www.jugglemania.com/soul.html
http://www.wewantyoursoul.com/

[sub_zer0]

I had a soul once, but long ago. I sold it to the Devil for a pack of chewing gum.

http://www.necronomi.com/projects/666/
http://www.sell-your-soul.com/
http://www.jugglemania.com/soul.html
http://www.wewantyoursoul.com/

What horrible websites for the internet to have. Those should be hacked by a Christian hacking group, lol.

[Riddley]

Where do personality disorders fit? There are umpteen cases of people with multiple personalities or radical personality changes. Do those affect the soul? I am seriously asking and will not be smart about any answers I get.
There is something different from all the data retrival and input processing that we do, as the real Riddley says:
theres some thing in us it dont have no name...it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals.

[sub_zer0]

Where do personality disorders fit? There are umpteen cases of people with multiple personalities or radical personality changes. Do those affect the soul? I am seriously asking and will not be smart about any answers I get.
There is something different from all the data retrival and input processing that we do, as the real Riddley says:


Personality disorders are one of the results of sin that has happened to mankind and since sin effects the soul, I would say so. Actually anything the flesh partakes in, it effects the soul, good or bad.

[Alvin T. Grey]

I know I have a soul. Two of them in fact. One on each foot.

[burntgorilla]

Believe in souls and you end up believing in dualist philosophies of consciousness, which I think are plain wrong.

[Alvin T. Grey]

I would probably agree.....if I understood.

Sooo. Yeah. What She Said! In your FACE!!!!! :D
*So what did that mean*

[burntgorilla]

"She said"?

Philosophy of consciousness. You have dualist and materialist. Dualists believe that there is the body, and then there is the consciousness, or the soul for our purposes. Descartes was a dualist. He thought the mind could exist without the body. The problems with dualism are that the mind is non-physical, while the body is physical. How does the non-physical mind affect the physical body? Cause and effect, and all that. Also, you have questions of how the soul/mind is formed, how it stays with the body, how they are linked, how do they separate and all the rest.

Materialists believe that the consciousness arises out of the body. Without the body, there can be no consciousness. This handily gets around Descartes' worries, because if the mind experiences something, then the body must also. Therefore, the Evil Demon can't exist. I think. It's been a while since I read his stuff. Materialism also has problems, but I can't remember them. I think it's more commonl called monism or physicalism. Feel free to fix any mistakes, anyone. I'm writing off the top of my head here.

[Alvin T. Grey]

"She said"?
I have a lisp.

Philosophy of consciousness. You have dualist and materialist. Dualists believe that there is the body, and then there is the consciousness, or the soul for our purposes. Descartes was a dualist. He thought the mind could exist without the body. The problems with dualism are that the mind is non-physical, while the body is physical. How does the non-physical mind affect the physical body? Cause and effect, and all that. Also, you have questions of how the soul/mind is formed, how it stays with the body, how they are linked, how do they separate and all the rest.

Materialists believe that the consciousness arises out of the body. Without the body, there can be no consciousness. This handily gets around Descartes' worries, because if the mind experiences something, then the body must also. Therefore, the Evil Demon can't exist. I think. It's been a while since I read his stuff. Materialism also has problems, but I can't remember them. I think it's more commonl called monism or physicalism. Feel free to fix any mistakes, anyone. I'm writing off the top of my head here.
Ok, got it now.

[burntgorilla]

Ok, got it now.

Woo, h5!

[TomAZ]

A French-Canadian nun once described the soul to our class as a white hockey-puck with little wings. Every "sin" leaves a black spot on the puck, and if the puck becomes all black with "sin", the wings fall off and the puck falls into a sea of fire along with the owner of the puck for eternity.

Nice stuff to tell kids, huh?

[dittohead not!]

Ditto, the decision to let the child have the chocolate could be just a more intricate series of memories and decisions running through your brain. If you decline to eat chocolate as a self-imposed dietary restriction, it could simply be a cost benefit analysis done by your super computer brain. A soul isn't really necessary to explain either choice.

We've seen dolphins and chimps help others of thier kind at great expense to themselves, do they also have souls?

I think a clear definition of a soul would help me understand things a little more clearly.

Of course the higher animals, including dolphins, are souls too. It would help to understand the concept to say that we are souls, but have a body, rather than the other way around.

Here's a better analogy. You decide to take a trip. You (the soul) decides that the trip is necessary for whatever reason. You depend on memories stored in the brain you use to control your body to get you there. You depend on nerves and muscles to move the body in the right direction. It isn't your body that has decided to make the trip, any more than your car decides to make a trip. It isn't your brain, either. The brain stores the memories necessary and serves to control the body much as the wheel and accelerator serve to control the car. You, the soul, make the decision and carry it out.

Now the unfortunate happens. Someone crosses the double line and crashes into your car head on, demolishing it and doing considerable damage to your body. You leave the car behind as you are taken to the hospital. Once there, the body dies. Once again, you leave the vehicle, this time the body. What happens to you then, I don't know, nor does anyone else, but leaving the broken body behind is a good analogy to leaving the broken car behind. Neither the body nor the car is you. You are the soul.

[Madrigalian]

First, this is only my opinion obviously.

Second, the soul is eternal. Like all forms of energy it can be neither created nor destroyed. Except by God, the only being capable of true creation or destruction (as apposed to transformation) and as such also the only being capable of true and pure good or evil.

As an eternal being of energy our souls reside in what we loosely term "heaven" and "hell" as each are one and the same depending on our own perceptions and relationships with our creator and each other. A place where, as beings of sentient energy, we have no wants, no needs, no suffering (beyond our own self imposed) no desires, (save for experience) and no interaction with what we perceive to be the physical world.

In short, our souls are beings of immense capacity and power to learn, evolve and grow toward greater understanding, enlightenment and union with our creator and each other. With but one small failing...

No means to do so. As beings of thought, emotion, energy and power our souls have no means to "experience" anything that would teach such entities the meaning of our existance. As souls we do not hunger, we cannot perceive pain, we recognize that death is only transient/transformation, we resolve no conflicts, we travel as with thought on a whim, we may be or become whatever we wish, go wherever we desire, spend thousands of years in a moment of emotion and rest for centuries within the glow of our creator or lost from the womb of eternity by our own guilt and hatred.

So, what to do?

Roleplay. Like actors without a script. Like students without our test notes. We come into this world, (a grand stage) by choice, a world of physicality and limited means, to "experience" those things we cannot experience as beings of eternal thought and limitless energy. We come to feel pain, sorrow, anger, joy, happiness and physical pleasure. We come to know loss and success. We come to face our own demons of lust, greed, envy and desire. To battle with them for compassion, altruism and selflessness. We come knowing before hand what types of lessons we are here to learn or teach. Though that knowledge of purpose is not allowed our physical constructs. Because to know, to understand, is to cheat the experience.

No one is punnished or returned here to pay dues, though some percieve a godly pursecution, the truth is; what we came here to experience we came with the intent to grow from those experience, whether by our success or failure. Both will be carried back for us to ponder and grow from.

Some return to teach. Why would God allow a child to be born with terrible palsy? Born deaf, dumb and blind? To die within 6 short years and bring such suffering upon their mortal loved ones? How could God be so cruel to allow such pain and sufferiing in the world? Because, that child, the soul of that child, is not here to live a life of joy and happiness. The soul that would be that child came for a purpose; to teach. To teach the family and freinds on this plane, compassion. To teach the community of loss. To help all those souls with whom that life touches understand what it means to feel such pain and even what it means to know such joy as having known such a courageous life, no matter how short.

Famine, floods, disease all born on this earth to teach us what it means to struggle, to fight, to survive within our physical limitations. Sex, Drugs, Music, Food; all here to tempt our souls toward losing touch with our greater spiritual depths, to be replaced by envy, greed and personal indulgence.

War, murder, human conflict; a result of our ignorance and fear from being cut off from our higher conciousness. How will the child of a crack ***** and violent drunkard react withn this world he knows? Will he take a path of anger, hatred and violence in pursuit of survival? Or instead turn toward compassion, forgiveness and personal responsibility for his own future? What will society, you and I, learn from his choices, and what will he in turn learn from ours?

In this world we live with death as an unknown, our existance as an unknown, our lives as an unknown, we teeter on the edge between birth and destruction, good and evil (as we perceive it) and we have only our own inner voice to lead our way. That voice is the whipering of our souls, even in drugged stuper we cannot escape it... though we often easilly ignore it.

In the end, when our time has come, we return to whence we came. With full knowledge of our experiences here, the choices we made, the perceptions we believed whether they be true in reality or not. We take back with us the memory of our sufferings and our joys. We carry back with us the knowledge and experience of our successes and our failures, our own personal goodness and evil. Through which, we evolve and become greater than before we knew nothing but our existance as beings of light and thought.

We repeat this process over and over again, by choice and with full knowledge before returning, of what lessons we have returned to take part in, either as student or teacher or both. Heaven and Hell are creations of our own design. Does your soul return to the place and being of our creation closer to the creator and each other, for our learning? Or farther from the creator and our siblings, wracked with guilt and pain for the choices we made here on earth?

It is all about our experiences here and our choices in how we deal with those experiences. There is no judgement awaiting us, save for own understanding of what we did and were willing to do in a world of conflict, desire, pain and happiness. Have we returned from our play, our classroom, having learned anything that would bring us closer to understanding our relationship with God and each other? Or have we lost our way, still suffering from our choices, knowing we have so much farther to progress before we can enter into a truly enlightened path, one with God.

[heel31ok]

I know I have a soul. Two of them in fact. One on each foot.
sounds fishy to me.

[JoeR]

Like all forms of energy it can be neither created nor destroyed.

If it is a form of energy, shouldn't it be quantifiable and measurable?

[Madrigalian]

If it is a form of energy, shouldn't it be quantifiable and measurable?


Like Dark Matter or Black holes? Can we quantify or measure what we have only recently discovered to exist and only theoretically understand? Could we quantify and measure lightning before electricty was harnessed? Once, the Sun was a God, the Moon a Godess. And today Heaven and Hell remain constructs of mortal promised reward and punnishment.

Scientists today talk of the "M (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-theory)" theory. Evidence points to this (our)existance being but one membrane of reality among countless. Where the laws of physics, as we know them, apply only to our own universe among a multi-verse of creation vastly beyond our own cosmos. This theory actually expands upon the theory that came before, wherein our existance was believed to be a single vibration among at least 11 others all moving with it's own unique vibration along the same string of creation. And this theory too came from the work which taught us about the big bang, gravity and universal expansion.

My point being, no. At this time we cannot measure nor quantify the human soul. We are only barely capable of measuring or quantifying our own mortal existance, much less our immortal one.

[JoeR]

Even those things have some sort of shred of evidence or math behind them though. As far as I can tell there is no such thing for the existence of the soul. Is it simply because it is beyond our ability at this time?

[Dangerrmouse]

Aah! souls.

[burntgorilla]

Like Dark Matter or Black holes? Can we quantify or measure what we have only recently discovered to exist and only theoretically understand? Could we quantify and measure lightning before electricty was harnessed? Once, the Sun was a God, the Moon a Godess. And today Heaven and Hell remain constructs of mortal promised reward and punnishment.

Scientists today talk of the "M (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-theory)" theory. Evidence points to this (our)existance being but one membrane of reality among countless. Where the laws of physics, as we know them, apply only to our own universe among a multi-verse of creation vastly beyond our own cosmos. This theory actually expands upon the theory that came before, wherein our existance was believed to be a single vibration among at least 11 others all moving with it's own unique vibration along the same string of creation. And this theory too came from the work which taught us about the big bang, gravity and universal expansion.

My point being, no. At this time we cannot measure nor quantify the human soul. We are only barely capable of measuring or quantifying our own mortal existance, much less our immortal one.

What does string theory have to do with souls?

I can see where you are coming from with the sun example, but no matter what you think the sun is, you can still quantify and see its energy. You see sunlight, feel the heat. Black holes give out radiation, the same stuff as light. All energy is either kinetic or potential. Where does the energy of the soul fit into this? We couldn't quantify lightning, but we could measure it, and see the bloody big forks of lightning about the place. The brain is full of electrical energy, that's how the thoughts are seen. I just fail to see how a soul could possibly work.