Is There A Real You?

[Rayaan]

1: What is a soul? Is it the same as the sense of self which Julian Baggini is talking about?

2: Do Muslims never change throughout their lives? For example, would you say you're exactly the same as you were when you were two years old?

3: If souls exist, how do they operate in the physical world? What if souls create a sense of self because of how the human brain works? I don't believe in souls but I've sometimes wondered how my soul would operate in the physical world if I had one.

1. Yes, the "soul" and the "self" sound pretty much the same thing to me. Why? Because, basically, I think of the soul as the most fundamental quality that makes up the self. It is at the core of the self. Maybe the soul also has a physical dimension to it, or maybe it doesn't, but I don't know.

2. Yes, Muslims certainly change throughout their lives, like everyone else. I'm not arguing against that because that's a fact.

3. I can't think of any way to describe the operation of souls in a physical sense. In my opinion, it just has to be felt; it's a complete human experience. The soul is something that we have to gradually discover within ourselves, not anywhere else.


Muslims also believe that all souls have something in common, which is that it has an innate natural disposition (or tendency) to believe in the existence of God, and to believe in His absolute one-ness. I've been thinking that maybe that is the source of the sense of "self," because it matches with how we view our own selves: We think of ourselves as being one, or whole. We automatically combine all the self-related memories into a single self. But this "single self" that we imagine is not precisely single in reality; there are millions of different selves that are interacting with each other. The only universal self which is one/whole/unitary/single has to be God.

According to the Quran, a memory of who God is has been pre-installed in every soul - even if you are an atheist now - and we have all testified to this. This is that before we were thrown into the physical world, all souls were gathered in the presence of God and then He asked us: "Am I not your Lord?" And then every soul replied, "Yes, we have testified!" (Surah 7:172). So, we all testified that God exists. It's only that we don't remember this covenant anymore. We can't retrieve this memory from way way back, but the memory is still ingrained in our souls, and I believe that this is what creates and shapes our sense of the self.

I think this idea has at least some support because even current research on human psychology suggests that there is a strong link between memory and the self. This is known as the Self-Memory System (SMS), where one's memory is the data base of the self. Here are two interesting papers about that:

http://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/k.allan/page...%20jml.pdf

http://faculty.washington.edu/agg/pdf/Se...81.OCR.pdf

So going back, if the knowledge of God is the first thing that was installed in our memory system, and if the Self-Memory System theory of the self is true, then that memory (i.e. the knowledge that there is a God) must be the primary thing that causes the sense of self to emerge. This idea corresponds with another verse in the Quran where it beautifully states that when people forget God, they have also forgotten their own selves (or their souls): "And be not like those who forgot Allah, so He made them forget themselves" (Surah 59:19).

Put in another way, the verse is telling us that we cannot find our true selves without finding God first. Unless one becomes mindful of God and remembers Him frequently, he cannot set out on the path of real self-understanding. Without God, our sense of self is more of a pseudo-self. We may think that we understand ourselves, but we don't. We'd have forgotten our own selves without even knowing it.

[paulpablo]

So going back, if the knowledge of God is the first thing that was installed in our memory system, and if the Self-Memory System theory of the self is true, then that memory (i.e. the knowledge that there is a God) must be the primary thing that causes the sense of self to emerge. This idea corresponds with another verse in the Quran where it beautifully states that when people forget God, they have also forgotten their own selves (or their souls): "And be not like those who forgot Allah, so He made them forget themselves" (Surah 59:19).

Put in another way, the verse is telling us that we cannot find our true selves without finding God first. Unless one becomes mindful of God and remembers Him frequently, he cannot set out on the path of real self-understanding. Without God, our sense of self is more of a pseudo-self. We may think that we understand ourselves, but we don't. We'd have forgotten our own selves without even knowing it.

So the millions of people in history who worshiped idols never knew themselves until Abrahamic religions came into play. Or do those idols count as god?

[max-greece]

Rayaan,

Sadly there is now strong evidence, really strong, against the whole idea of souls, afterlife and such like. I posted this a couple of days ago:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-25977.html

As for the idea of self in some ways I am the same guy I was when I was 25 but in many ways I am not. I read some of the things I wrote then and have no memory of writing them. I am often surprised by the things I said. Even for things I do recall I regularly find myself thinking about them as if it happened to a third party. Emotional events tend to be more about "me" than intellectual or physical ones. I have no idea if others experience things this way or not.

[pocaracas]

if the knowledge of God is the first thing that was installed in our memory system,

That's a mighty big "if", which I'm not willing to grant, just because some book says so.
I'd wager that many around this forum aren't willing to grant it either.

[Rayaan]

So the millions of people in history who worshiped idols never knew themselves until Abrahamic religions came into play. Or do those idols count as god?

Those millions of people deceived themselves by going against their innature nature (which we call "fitrah"), which is to believe in only one God.

And their idols are not gods except in their own self-serving desires. God has no physical representation.

Sadly there is now strong evidence, really strong, against the whole idea of souls, afterlife and such like. I posted this a couple of days ago:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-25977.html

I've watched about 20 minutes of that video here and there, but not the whole thing. But none of those are actually evidence against souls and an afterlife. It was quite interesting so far, but the whole talk is mainly a philosophical and scientific perspective on life and the universe. I didn't hear anything there that disproves the existence of souls nor an afterlife.

[paulpablo]

I've thought about the topic of this thread throughout a lot of my life.

Doing certain things in my life has made me realize how much chemistry and your brain effects who you are.

Having an orgasm for the first time for example my first thoughts were "WOW why do I not want sex anymore?"
It sounds stupid now but at the time I didn't know it worked like that, for months I'd been an emotional, obsessive, aggressive maniac and all because of the testosterone effecting my thoughts.

Taking ecstasy for the first time, one minute you're stood thinking about the hum drum general thoughts you normally have then the next second your pupils are actually dilated with pleasure and you feel you can punch down walls but you don't want to because you just want to talk to and love everyone.

There's just too many outside factors I don't know what makes me me. Is it my balls or the pill I've just taken or what my parents taught me or my environment?

[KichigaiNeko]

There is no "real you" no soul, nada niente, zip. Most of "you" is just an environment for bacteria, virtues and fungi.

You are just a pigment of your imagination. (Assuming you can see the colour spectrum...which I might add is very small)

[paulpablo]

So the millions of people in history who worshiped idols never knew themselves until Abrahamic religions came into play. Or do those idols count as god?

Those millions of people deceived themselves by going against their innature nature (which we call "fitrah"), which is to believe in only one God.

And their idols are not gods except in their own self-serving desires. God has no physical representation.

Sadly there is now strong evidence, really strong, against the whole idea of souls, afterlife and such like. I posted this a couple of days ago:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-25977.html

I've watched about 20 minutes of that video here and there, but not the whole thing. But none of those are actually evidence against souls and an afterlife. It was quite interesting so far, but the whole talk is mainly a philosophical and scientific perspective on life and the universe. I didn't hear anything there that disproves the existence of souls nor an afterlife.

To those people they were worshiping a god, and everyone who worships a god is doing it for a desire to avoid the threats and warnings of the gods who they are slaves for.
Your god for instance punishes disbelievers like me by roasting my skin then replacing it with another skin and doing that process repeatedly for an infinite amount of time. I assume you want to avoid that?

[max-greece]

So the millions of people in history who worshiped idols never knew themselves until Abrahamic religions came into play. Or do those idols count as god?

Those millions of people deceived themselves by going against their innature nature (which we call "fitrah"), which is to believe in only one God.

And their idols are not gods except in their own self-serving desires. God has no physical representation.

Sadly there is now strong evidence, really strong, against the whole idea of souls, afterlife and such like. I posted this a couple of days ago:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-25977.html

I've watched about 20 minutes of that video here and there, but not the whole thing. But none of those are actually evidence against souls and an afterlife. It was quite interesting so far, but the whole talk is mainly a philosophical and scientific perspective on life and the universe. I didn't hear anything there that disproves the existence of souls nor an afterlife.

Watch the rest.

[Chas]

In this short talk, philosopher Julian Baggini, author of The Ego Trick, enlightens the audience about one of the most fundamental of philosophical questions: What is the self? Is it something stable and unitary as we think it is? Is it even real?

Julian believes that the sense of self emerges in us without any essential or permanent self actually existing. So the sense of the self is just an idea, an idea which is created in us by the summation of our countless thoughts, emotions, desires, intentions, memories, etc. Although I don't agree with this view (since I believe in the existence of "souls" which are thought to be something permanent), I've been pondering on this. Where does my sense of self come from exactly?

The sense of self comes from the evolved simulation software of our brains. We don't experience the present directly, we experience a constructed model of it.

And this is not a philosophical question, but a scientific one.