I'm sure this has been done to death, but I haven't seen it round in awhile and we could use something different.
The so called soul is something that is thrown around by people of almost all religions and also the new age hipsters that are "spiritual."
So what exactly do people claim the soul is? There is zero evidence that who you really are isn't just tied in with your brain. All of your emotions, memories, personality traits, etc., are up above your shoulders.
Does anyone here believe in a soul? I know a lot of people who aren't religious at all but still believe in a soul, or spirit.
So what do you guys think?
I believe in soul.
[youtube:1pi71tvz]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_WzjiTzZBA[/youtube:1pi71tvz]
I have no need of that hypothesis. All the stuff that people say the soul does is already done with good ol' cells. And since physical injury can most certainly damage the mind, whatever "souls" are they apparently don't have much to do with cognition or personality or anything else of import. *shrugs*
There doesn't seem to be a clear picture of what it is. It's a vague whatchamacallit. I doubt there is any coherent concept behind the word.
How I define a soul is simple. It's a metaphor for your identity / personality / character.
Quote from: "PickelledEggs"How I define a soul is simple. It's a metaphor for your identity / personality / character.
Or the breath that animates a living being. Or the similarly vaguely-defined "essence" of a person. Or the "spirit" of a person. (Again, quite vague) Or any of a number of other things.
It's a pretty vague/incomprehensible term right up there with colorless green ideas, customer-focused, and spiritual.
Yea, I mean, my personal definition isnt a spiritual thing. Just another word for character or personality.
8-) Prior to the seventeenth century, it was universally believed that the movement of bodies were the result of spiritual action, with God as the prime mover. Descartes replaced spiritual causality with mechanical causality, in which inanimate bodies and animals were machines moved around by natural forces. The one exception was the human being. Descartes proposed that humans possess a distinct immaterial, immortal mind, or soul, that controls movement. This duality became a funda"mental" ingredient of Christianity, as well as fitting in well with just about every other religious belief in the world.
Now I ask you, if we had a separate mind, or soul, how could disease, drugs, head injuries, traumas, strokes, anesthesia, and danger affect it? Has anyone given reliable evidence that we have a mind, or soul, without a body? When I worked in the emergency room of a hospital they had something written on the top of a wall that didn't go all the way to the ceiling. There were many people that claimed they left their bodies and floated around near the ceiling looking down or watching their surgery being done. Not one person could ever see or read what was said. Bill
8-) Not to mention that the native americans believed the steam coming from your chest if you were stabbed in the cold was your soul leaving your body.
I don't know if this would fall into the realm of "soul", but I always wondered... what if our brain was "cut off", disassembled and re-put together at a later date... would we be the same consciousness (since its the same matter) or would we simply cease to exist and it be a new consciousness with all our memories?
Quote from: "Shiranu"I don't know if this would fall into the realm of "soul", but I always wondered... what if our brain was "cut off", disassembled and re-put together at a later date... would we be the same consciousness (since its the same matter) or would we simply cease to exist and it be a new consciousness with all our memories?
I would guess it'd feel something like awaking from a coma. Or even just from sleep.
Logically speaking, what awoke would act exactly like the thing you disassembled. And "it" would probably feel like waking up from sleeping for a long time.
Whether or not the "you" that was taken apart returns or a fresh copy of BrainOS(tm) runs in there; that's a difficult question to answer. But to an outside observer; it would appear to work just fine.
The idea of a soul is really that recent? I imagine that's for western society and religion.
What about eastern ideologies?
Quote from: "Saul the not so great!"There doesn't seem to be a clear picture of what it is. It's a vague whatchamacallit. I doubt there is any coherent concept behind the word.
It is the essence of wholeness that transcends a finite eternity at the center of being. :)
Quote from: "Krisyork2008"The idea of a soul is really that recent? I imagine that's for western society and religion.
What about eastern ideologies?
Dunno. Doesn't the bible mention the soul? And I'm fairly certain the Norse mythology mentions the *soul* although that's not the word they used. Translated in the 20th century the translators associated what the Norse spoke of as 'soul'.
Quote from: "Krisyork2008"The idea of a soul is really that recent? I imagine that's for western society and religion.
What about eastern ideologies?
It goes back pretty far, at least to ancient Egyptians and Greeks, then Jews and Christians. And a lot of other religions have similar concepts (animism, an incredibly widespread belief, relies on non-human animals and objects having a sort of spiritual essence) so it's a pretty old and prolific belief. Probably predates civilization.
When I was much younger a theologian explained to me that the soul was not like what most people believe---it was not their identity, but their essence. :shock: In other words it was like energy or matter and can never be created or destroyed, only reconfigured. This is what science has to say also if you consider the soul, or your body, as being energy (matter). :wink: Bill
Quote from: "SGOS"It is the essence of wholeness that transcends a finite eternity at the center of being. :)
Deepak Chopra?
Isn't a finite eternity a contradiction? But what can we expect from someone that thinks he understands quantum mechanics and uses quantum theory the wrong way. He also said. "Matter is an illusion," and "Only consciousness is real."
He claims that quantum mechanics has provided proof for a world beyond matter, and that it provides spiritualist with a way to imagine a holistic cosmic consciousness that includes the human mind. He has concluded we can change reality---past, present, and future---just by thinking about it. I guess he doesn't know that everything in our existence is energy which is also matter.
Even photons are matter, as well as everything smaller. Our thoughts are provided by matter. This kind of thinking is top down thinking, when in fact our world is a bottom up world. It's not God first everything else from that, but energy first and everything after that. If God is pure energy than he isn't a Supreme Being. Richard Feynman is rolling in his grave. Bill
I'm pretty sure SGOS was being condescending and ironic in his post. I'm pretty sure he was showing just how vague people can be.
Maybe I'm wrong?
His quote was that of Deepak Chopra, so yes, he was, and you are correct. This spiritualist is who I was referring to also. Bill
Quote from: "Solitary"His quote was that of Deepak Chopra, so yes, he was, and you are correct. This spiritualist is who I was referring to also. Bill
Actually, I labored over that wording, trying to get it to sound Deepak Chopra-ish, although I didn't get it from him, and he hadn't even come to mind at the time. And yes, I meant it to be a satire of the pointless word salad heard from the pulpits and TV every Sunday morning. I don't know why religionists spew this kind of gibberish, but apparently the intent is to lend some kind of credibility to the nonsense.
Ahh all makes sense now.
What's the deal with this Deepcock Chopstick guy?
Quote from: "Krisyork2008"What's the deal with this Deepcock Chopstick guy?
Just another woo-meister. //http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra
As the band 311 would say, the soul you have is 'electricity'
Quote from: "Colanth"Quote from: "Krisyork2008"What's the deal with this Deepcock Chopstick guy?
Just another woo-meister. //http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra
LOL From your link under "Reception From Academics":
QuoteIn academic journals [edit]
George O'Har, a professor of English at Boston College, saw Chopra as an exemplification of the fact that human beings need "magic" in their lives, and places "the sophistries of Chopra" alongside the emotivism of Oprah Winfrey, the special effects and logic of Star Trek, and the magic of Harry Potter.[44]
Or, in short, the make-believe of fiction?
"I have a soul" is just another way of saying "I am gullible and ignorant".
I have a brain.
Quote from: "Krisyork2008"What's the deal with this Deepcock Chopstick guy?
He's a famous and successful con man.
In India the "soul" or Atman is defined as that part of a person which is immortal, indestructible and survives the death of the body.
The Buddha refuted this 2,500 years ago as a delusion. His basis for this view was the principle he espoused known as Impermanence, which simply states that in the phenomenal universe, change is the only constant. This is view I myself subscribe too in light of scientific evidence that such a thing as the "soul" clearly does not exist. We are simply a Mind and a Body and when one fails so does the other. Death is the Final Ultimate End. This is often a source of distress for people but I don't really understand that. We were all in oblivion before we were born and we didn't mind, so why should we mind after we're dead?
Just thinking about the question is more than some people can handle, so they huddle in the "I'll be in heaven after I die" belief The prime reason for religion is death.
I continued to believe in a soul even after I became an atheist. I did the whole, "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual!" bullshit for a little bit before realizing that without evidence it makes no sense to believe in something.
It really irritates the shit out of me when people believe in a soul because the term gets thrown around so often.
Heart and soul ---- the two biggest dead metaphors.