The Soul

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The Soul

Postby hive_king » Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:02 am

This seems to have come up on the board and I thought it could use its own thread.

What exactly IS a soul, beyond "the part of you that lives on after death." What is the purpose and point of a soul, and how would a person truly without a soul in their body be different than one with a soul? Reflecting back, religion seems to be startlingly ambiguous on these questions.
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Postby luminousnerd » Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:13 am

A soul is your aiua of course. :lol:

(editing for clarity)

Seriously, though, OSC might be on to something with that. I don't really know, so what I'm about to say is just a theory of course, and an unproveable one at that (if it could be proven, it would be by some physics guru, not me). But here's what I tend to believe...

There is one "aiua" if you will, that controls YOU. That is your soul. It doesn't so much control you, as it IS you. It is all of your characteristics. I think of it in terms of your 'stats' a la a racing video game. You've got your acceleration, your speed, etc, and each is marked X out of 100, the higher the better.

Except with your soul, it's not acceleration, and it's not definitively "better" on one side. You could have a meter that says "evil" on one side and "good" on the other, and your points are somewhere in the middle. Although I suspect there are thousands, if not billions or countless statistics, and each one is way more specific than "evil" and "good".

And then, your soul gets hooked up with a body; more to the point, a brain. And the brain starts gaining knowledge, and as you go along, the soul (you) make(s) decisions throughout your life based on those stats and the knowledge you've acquired.

In this theory, two people with identical pasts (and subsequently, identical brains) might make completely different decisions in a given scenario based on what their soul thought was right, not because of knowledge alone, but because that's how that person is.

It also accounts for the fact that people in general tend to make decisions without knowing every variable.

Your soul could leave your body, and lose all of the knowledge and history that the brain holds, and still be "you". It's not a physical item, that's why it doesn't die with the body. It isn't actually "alive" perhaps, depending on your definition...since it doesn't need food, etc.

Like I said, all is a theory. I'm almost certainly wrong on several points if not the whole idea :)
Last edited by luminousnerd on Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby hive_king » Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:26 am

Lum, I would appreciate it if you would keep the thread clear from incoherent, indistinct ramblings.
The Makeout Hobo is real, and does indeed travel around the country in his van and make out with ladies... If you meet him, it is customary to greet him with a shot of whiskey and a high five (if you are a dude) or passionate makeouts (if you are a lady).

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Postby luminousnerd » Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:48 am

Yeah, sorry. Maybe this one's better.
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Re: The Soul

Postby suminonA » Mon Feb 05, 2007 9:24 am

What exactly IS a soul, beyond "the part of you that lives on after death." What is the purpose and point of a soul, and how would a person truly without a soul in their body be different than one with a soul? Reflecting back, religion seems to be startlingly ambiguous on these questions.
Are you asking for the "religious" definition specifically, or are you also interested in how atheists/skeptics define that concept?

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Postby jotabe » Mon Feb 05, 2007 9:40 am

As i see it, that concept of soul is a vestige of the ancient philosophic schools, preserved by religions out of convenience.
The origin of soul is both in looking for the essence of beings (soul would be the essence of humans), and looking for the cause of movement of animals (animal comes from anima, the latin word for soul, that means "move").

Since essences were thought to be eternal (after all, what causes a chair to be a chair, the essence, is eternal and immutable, and doesn't depend on the actual materials, that are thought to be an accident), the soul would be too.

And the same way that the old philosophical concept of "essence" has been dropped long ago, that concept of soul should have gone away with it, but it didn't. Mostly because religions incorporated it into their theology, and came to be somewhat dependant on it.

The same as Aristotle, and unlike the mainstream Christianism, i don't believe in an immortal, immaterial soul. For me the human soul is both mortal and material, it's part of our body. If our soul was immortal, then what would be the point of resurrection?
Not only that: we know (more or less... we are working on it) that data is storaged into our brains. We are coming to detect how personality feedbacks on certain neuronal circuits. If both memory and character are bodily, what is left for that supposed immaterial soul? What is the point of it?

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Postby Fish Tank » Mon Feb 05, 2007 10:41 am

Yes I don't believe the soul lives on after we die.

Our, "soul" is who we are and what makes us different from others. Our memories and experiences are a big part of our "souls" Our appearance, voice, thought are all part of our soul.
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Postby Slim » Tue Feb 06, 2007 12:45 pm

Here's what I believe.

The Spirit where your personality comes from. It is made out of matter, but is refined -- we can't see it with our natural eyes. Each person's spirit looks like thier physical body, but perfected. It's the real "you": your physical body is a temple for the spiritual body.

It's what gives you life. Physical death is the separation of the body and spirit. You live on as a spirit, but the physical body dies. Ressurection is the reuiniting of the spirit and the body, never to be seperated again. When spiritual and physical bodies are separate, one cannot recieve a fulness of joy.

Satan and his angels are spirits who will never recieve physical bodies. That hasn't stopped them from trying, though. Again, having a physical body is a prerequisite to escaping misery and obtaining a fulness of joy.
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Postby eriador » Tue Feb 06, 2007 1:32 pm

o.O

-.-

o.o

-.-

O.o

I don't think I can say anything to that, except that I think that the philosophical soul, if it were to exist (;)) would be entirely non-physical. The suggestion that a soul is "rarefied matter" seems ridiculous to me. My view of the soul is that it would reside on a "higher plane" than our physical, mortal bodies. If it were to exist.

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Postby hive_king » Tue Feb 06, 2007 2:08 pm

The soul is your personality? The problem I have with that is that "personality" seems to be perfectly explainable as coming from nature and nurture. For instance, I am an amazingly big smartass. However, my mother is a huge smartass, my sister is huge smartass, as far as I can tell, my entire family is pretty much heavily sarcastic. For amother thing, I'm usually somewhat shy in groups, but growing up i learned it was in my best interest, that it was a good idea to keep my head down and keep quiet in groups. Evrything about the personality seems to be from biology or from upbringing. How does this factor in the soul?
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Postby Jebus » Tue Feb 06, 2007 3:38 pm

Jota, I put forward that you are actually an Atheist working to bring organised religion down from the inside.

And I'm fairly sure I'm right.

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Postby jotabe » Tue Feb 06, 2007 3:40 pm

*shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh*
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Postby lyons24000 » Tue Feb 06, 2007 5:28 pm

The soul is you. It is not some separate part of the body. The Bible says that the soul can eat, bleed and die and that man is a soul. Therefore, the soul cannot be separate.

Genesis 2:7-"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." (KJV)

Ezekiel 18:4-"Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die." (KJV)

I can't remember the other verses. The NIV at Genesis 2:7 uses "living being" instead of soul but the Hebrew word "Nephesh" actually means "soul" and not "living being". At Ezekiel 18:4 the NIV uses "soul".
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Postby pooka » Sat Feb 10, 2007 7:33 am

I thought Magic Street really took the discussion of soul to interesting places. While I don't fully accept the idea of the Ecclesiasticists that there is no immortal soul (Resting on Christ's statement to fear them that can kill body and soul in hell) I do depart from most of my sect in recognizing that the brain is a physical organ, and without it there is a lot of stuff we won't be able to do. In one presentation I know (a multi-media screen at the Nauvoo visitor's center) the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints taught that the spirit is our memories, feelings, and beliefs. Well, I actually could be off on the second two, but the memories was really the one that I wondered about if we don't have a brain.

But then, who knows how much of memory is in the brain. I think a fair amount of emotional milieau is stored in our fat tissue, like an LSD flashback except it's a chocolate sundae flashback and whatever stress caused you to eat that sundae.

I also make a clear distinction between 6 classes of feelings.
..............In..........Out
Body.....Sensation..Emotion
Others..Projection..Expression
H.P.......Impression..Aspiration

H.P. = Higher power, God, Enlightenment.


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