| No Soul?
Posted: 7/27/2005 10:33:31 PM | This post isn't geared towards any religion in particular, its simply a concept that is universal. One that I struggle with every waking second of the day.
The Soul,that which animates biological matter, the breath of life that brings us consciousness, that which lends substance and humanity behinds ones actions. The vessel through which we proceed unto the gates of heaven, reincarnate into the next life, join the spirits of our ancestors or whatever one believes. The universal concept of the soul entails duality between mind and body, something that remains even after the flesh is destroyed.
Unfortunately because of this duality the soul cannot be observed, other than hocus pocus nobody has even remotely claimed to give scientific validation to the concept. Logic and commonsense dictate that we have no soul, modern science and understanding of diseases that attack brain function would also suggest that the soul is nonexistent. Modern science essentially asserts, with good reason, that we are essentially nothing more than our brains. That we humans and the rest of the animal kingdom are nothing more than flesh and bone.
Its a question I'd like to avoid but unfortunately I'm a philosopher, a thinker, and the notion of having no soul deeply frightens me. Simply because in some finite amount of time I will pass into nothingness, I will cease to exist and my small time in this universe will not even be a spec on the cosmic radar. This depresses me greatly and leads me to the conclusion that on the one hand life is pointless, a mere joke perhaps, on the other hand one could say because our lives are so short that they are all the more precious.
We really have no good reason to believe in souls, how do you smarter people (the non dogmatic ones) rationalize this and the potential consequence that life is meaningless as a result? | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/27/2005 10:38:15 PM | | Whew. I thought this was going to be a thread about white men. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/27/2005 10:56:20 PM | | White man can't jump, unless he's from BC and his name happens to be Steve Nash. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/27/2005 11:12:08 PM | | White men don't have to jump, they own the team. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/27/2005 11:17:04 PM | You can get very confused about ideas and words when you forget what language is. Language isn't reality. It is a system of symbolic representation we use to think with and communicate experiences. Some things exist entirely as concept within the framework of ideas. These concepts don't have a real version. You can invent an idea and think it all day, but when you go looking for it outside your thoughts you won't find it. For example, what instrument would you use to measure the presence of "amusing"?
The soul is an idea and it represents a sense we have of ourselves. It is a way we expereince ourselves. It is in your mind that the idea of a soul exists. It is a thought, a word, not a real thing. What does this particular word stand for in reality? Interesting problem when you consider that reality itself is such a word. This is the box of language nobody can think outside of. We can point beyond the realm of words, but whatever lies beyond must remain unsaid and unknown. It's best this way because we can make of ourselves what we wish. That's your free will. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/28/2005 11:12:25 AM | | You're right. Ther's no soul, no afterlife, and no meaning to life. So live life to the fullest and decide on your own meaning of life. Create your own destiny. Life is a high wire act, enjoy the thrill (or the view as you fall). | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/28/2005 11:52:12 AM | | Yes we do have a soul...some people have astral travelled, left thier body, or had near death experiences. This proves beyond a doubt that we have a soul. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/28/2005 11:55:52 AM | | Astral travel is sure proof that a soul exists. Get a good book on it and experiment with a friend. Meet each other outside your body, record what happened in private and see how it matches with your friend's record. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/28/2005 1:42:55 PM |
Yes we do have a soul...some people have astral travelled, left thier body, or had near death experiences. This proves beyond a doubt that we have a soul.
I understand experiments have been performed where people were supposed to travel astrally into a locked room and read what's on a piece of paper. They never got the right answer.
But even if all these things do occur there are alternate explanations. For example, in the field of parapsychology there's a phenomena known as remote-viewing. Remote-viewing allows people to see things at distant locations, even at different times. Being able to see into the future suggests that this is not simply the soul travelling to a location, gathering information, and returning to the body. Unless, I suppose, you believe the soul can travel through time. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/28/2005 2:04:42 PM | | Which is why I suggest people meet each other outside their bodies. You cannot mistake that for remote viewing and I have done it successfully. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/28/2005 2:15:00 PM | Astral sex? Now thats the ticket!
What chemical is best for this?  | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/28/2005 2:55:20 PM | I have been thinking on the concept of a soul quite a bit lately. I think the reason behind that, at least partly, is because I have been reading the philosophy of PD Ouspensky who discusses in depth the idea of our consciousness, our awareness, control over them etc....
Anyway, obviously since I'm still thinking about it, I haven't come to a decision or a rational means to explain myself yet, although I do believe we have a soul.
I'll just say this for now: Energy cannot be destroyed, it simply changes shape. Therefore that 'energy' that animates our 'bag of flesh' as it were, will still be when the flesh is no more.
Also, it would be beneficial to know how those adding to this thread define and view a 'soul' since I've come across various different perceptions.... | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/28/2005 3:01:21 PM | | When energy goes from heat to light does it still know istelf as light or at all? The transition from life to death removes the identity of the energy we have alive as our soul. It goes away like sound to silence. Enjoy it while you are alive! | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/28/2005 3:19:47 PM | Actually it goes from particles to waves, (Einsteins theorys), and the particles modulate the waves much like the audio from a radio station modulates the carrier you look for on your radio dial...
But the big question is this for all you Christian Cats out there...Iff we convert from solids to light waves...then how can we suffer in Hell without a body? Kind of blows the whole Hell theory dont it? | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/28/2005 6:55:13 PM | There's a solid distinction between the concepts of Soul and Spirit that I believe needs to be reconciled.
The Spirit is the energy that fills a being. It can be equated to the Astral Body. There is a whole system working within your body and slightly outside of it similar to the nervous system and the blood system. It's a network of energy channels through which Chi or Liquid Energy travels. The Astral body, or Spirit, is Solid Energy - which isn't to say it's completely rigid, but that it can take shape. It's more of a mushy fuzz than a solid.
The Soul is your deepest essence. It is what defines you as YOU. The soul is the observer within yourself. It's not your mind - your mind is in your brain which is part of your body. It's not your emotions, those are in the body too. The Soul is the part of you that reads the thoughts and feelings. the part of you that is aware. The Soul is behind the scenes, watching and influencing, controlling the mind and body to an extent. The Soul is what decides when to resist urges, to fight tendancies. The Soul is what we call 'consciousness'. Though that's only from the human perspective.
In the framework of the universe, the soul is the translation point between the macrocosm and the microcosm. It's what channels the Universal Will and Purpose down into the vessel so that it may act on the material plane. It's the part of us connected with the universal being.
Hope that clears things up. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/28/2005 7:48:00 PM |
Which is why I suggest people meet each other outside their bodies. You cannot mistake that for remote viewing and I have done it successfully.
You know, James Randi will pay you BIG BIG bucks if you can demonstrate it for him. Check it out! I would be extremely interested to witness this experiment myself, though I can't afford to reward you as richly as he can. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/28/2005 8:25:53 PM |
the notion of having no soul deeply frightens me.
Yup. It frightens everyone. That's why I have said elsewhere that belief in metaphysics is essentially self-centered. The concept of non-existence is so utterly terrifying that thinkers recoil from it before they have even had a chance to consciously realize what it is that they are recoiling from. Like a drowning shipwreck victim, they seize the nearest notion offered to them in their panicked flailing.
Other people, not so much thinkers as drinkers, recoil before they even start to flail, grab a beer instead, and go through life "fat dumb and happy". Resolute in their denial, they simply refuse to consider their mortality and insignificance, and that seems to work for them.
And then there are nihlists and existentialists, who accept and embrace the brief skein of their own lives. But I've never met one who I could call happy.
I don't like to talk too much about my own philosophy, because the fact of my own beliefs doesn't make them any more or less true, or valuable. Whether I believe it or not, what is true will be true. Or so I believe. I've been told by a neighbor that he thought he and everyone else were simply figments of my imagination, in some kind of reverse-solipsistic fantasy. I suspect that's not true, though it's hard to prove.
I believe that a = a. ^F = T. T !=> F but F => T and F => F. I believe in the syllogism and the law of the excluded middle. I believe that my five senses are almost certainly true guides to reality - that I am not living in a dream or a fantasy, that I am not a brain in a vat being cleverly misled by some incredibly sophisticated being or technologies outside the vat. Or, barring that, that my experiences are at least a reliable guide to how the puppetmaster/vatmaster will continue to manipulate my senses in the future. Otherwise I might as well go barkingly insane right now. For that matter, if my senses do not in fact reliably mirror the nature of reality, I am effectively insane already. So let's set that branch aside for now. Yes, that's a conscious choice I made - to reject insanity. If I *am* insane, then I guess it hardly matters what I believe. So I also believe that I am not insane, which is really just a practical shorthand for saying that I accept the limits of my own abilities to think and sense, and choose to work within them rather than trying to do something which is impossible.
If that gives you any glimmer of clarity, you're welcome to it. I think I'll stop here since I've lost almost everyone in the room at this point. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/28/2005 8:27:47 PM | | Did people have souls before it rained? | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/28/2005 9:11:00 PM | Being an Agnostic priest I have developed my own understanding of souls and spirits and such.
As is the agnostic way I do not necissarially believe any of this, but neither do I disbelieve it.
One way to reconcile the apparent discrepency between soul and body damage is that damage to the brain, and to a lesser extent other parts of the body, can weaken the connection to the soul. This nicely sidesteps the issue with a logical rationale.
I am also oddly comfortable with the concept that after death is nothing. The reason I am comfortable with this idea is I would far rather not exist than live on eternally judged by something I would likely feel could never truly understand my experience, regardless of the reality of that feeling. Sometimes I feel that I would be much more comfortable as an aethiest, but that would require a faith that there is nothing, and faith is something I have a very hard time mustering.
Another ideal that works well is that the soul is not your personality, it is not your feelings, it is not your thoughts, it is merely your unthinking essense. This is in effect a very pessimistic view as for all intents and purposes, you would be nonexistant if you died, there would just be a ghost that may or may not house some vague rudiments of your memories and thoughts.
Finally there is the belief that the body dictates the soul or spirit, but when the body dies, the spirit gains autonomy. This is handled such that if you suffer brain damage and your personality changes dramatically, if you died you would retain the last personality you had. This can in some cases be very frightening, or very comforting.
In the end, it is up to you to come to terms with whatever ideas you believe are possible or you put faith in. I am content to live life faithless and observant. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/29/2005 6:44:27 AM | [qoute]Unless, I suppose, you believe the soul can travel through time.
That is a definate possibility since there is no time or space upon death..at least not in the earth sense. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/29/2005 8:13:44 AM | | There are some that believe that the 'soul' can be found in the aura - or rather that the aura IS the soul. It's possible that memories and emotions from past existences are stored in the form of energy and are contained in that field that surrounds us and therefore has a great effect on our physical bodies. Some believe that the aura is a reflection of the state of the body - for healing purposes - but I have my reasons to believe it's the other way around. That if the aura/soul is ailing it's reflected in the body. My basic reason for thinking this? Why is it that happy people seem so much healthier? | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/29/2005 8:24:39 AM | | The Druid received travellers from all over the world and convinced an Egyptian philosopher that black was white. After that, he turned and said white was black until in the end the unfortunate man did not know whether there was any such thing as color at all... and maybe there isn’t. One day the Druid went too far and argued there was no God and no soul. He told the king that logic was the source of all truth, and if you could not see a thing it didn’t exist. A spirit came and told the Druid that he was wicked to destroy the beliefs of his people with his mind, and that he only had a few hours to live. He would be saved from evil if he could convince the king there was a soul. The Druid commanded the king to cut his throat and at the moment of his death a white butterfly flew out. Butterflies are thought to be souls hovering on the edge of heaven waiting to get into paradise. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/29/2005 11:00:57 AM | | I read about some research where a MD had a bed rigged for his dying patients with a scale on it which weighed the patient as they were dying. He concluded that the soul or whatever it is, does not weigh anything! | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/29/2005 11:56:33 AM |
Why is it that happy people seem so much healthier?
They're probably happy that they're healthy. | |
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| No Soul?
Posted: 7/29/2005 1:11:55 PM |
Why is it that happy people seem so much healthier?
Because it is hard to be happy when you'all are sick and hurting! Kind of like asking "Why are pretty girls with perfect figures so much sexier?" | |
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