What the hell is a 'soul' anyway?

[robvalue]

The laws of mathematics are abstract, they don't literally exist as entities. They only physically exist in as much as physical brains store an image of these concepts.

If you're comparing a soul to the laws of mathematics, that means souls don't literally exist either, but are an abstract concept. I agree.

[downbeatplumb]

This is a series of questions I always ask when people start talking about souls. I'd like to collect the local soul-believers' answers on this topic, but if you don't believe in souls, feel free to add more questions.

The soul is made of information that exerts downward causation on matter and energy. Information isn't matter, but matter embodies information. Information isn't energy, but energy can transfer information. The idea of a 'materialist' solution is just so 19th century.

This appears be some words you've randomly thrown at a keyboard.

[Lucanus]

That which is being constantly created with God the light/good/beautiful/glorious/honorable/purity aspect of it is true existence, while the non-existence with polar opposite is the darkness, and it's through power of ignorance.

Why? What makes you think this is true?

The soul is equipped with forces of reason (light) and forces of ignorance (darkness/uncleanness). It's a constant battle. You can witness this battle within yourself.

Same as above. Why? What makes you think that there are "forces of light" and "forces of darkness"? What are they? How do you prove they actually exist and they are not an abstraction you use to make sense of the way you behave?

There is 72 forces of reason in summary and 72 forces of ignorance, I can tell you them according to hadiths of our Imams, but I am not going to here, because it will bore you.

You're right in saying it would have bored me, but seriously, you can have as many "forces" as you like, but if you don't prove the actual existence of any of them then everything you are saying becomes meaningless word salad.

It's what chooses between good and evil, and it's what inherits praiseworthy actions or condemned actions, increasing in value or in devalue, in positive travel towards God or negative travel away from God.

If you added an in, I'd think I was talking to Rik... But joking aside, why can't you provide any evidence for anything you assert?

We can talk endlessly about but it's spiritual in the sense it's not found in space or four dimensions, but it takes on parable forms and the next world is a manifestation of it's actions, whether good or evil, and we are creating a world within us. Every time we see sin, we open portals of uncleannness that Satanic forces can attack us with and when we do good deeds, we open portals in which obedient spirits can help us with (Angels, Prophets, Imams).

More unsupported assertions. Even if it is "spiritual", where is the evidence that anything spiritual exists? What are those spirits? How can you reliably tell me you're not deceiving yourself when you talk about them?

Can't our morality be explained in evolutionary terms, seeing as humans have evolved as social animals?

The spiritual kingdom and the true nature of our existence with respect to that, is that of an 7 earths with 7 heavens, that of 7 stages, with 6 days, and the last being an endless none ending day that will not be completed ever but is the ever last reward we are meant for.

From God's earth everything grows, his water descends and gives life to everything...and the pure blessed water is the nature we all originated upon and this is something we can spiritually see.

The soul like the brain cannot be summarized in a few sentences and you understand at all. It's an endless knowledge, and there is in it a connection to God.

Suuure, but it would be nice if in just a few sentences you could throw in just a little amount of evidence to support such a ridiculous amount of assertions.
In Italian, we'd say that "you're building castles in the air".

[robvalue]

Right, I can just say souls are really special ants. It doesn't mean anything unless I can back it up with some evidence that what I'm talking about exists outside of my imagination.

This is why science demands evidence and not just philosophical arguments. We necessarily have a filtered and simplified view of reality, so we shouldn't be confident that simple inductive reasoning is enough, even when it's correct!

[Lucanus]

The term soul was first introduced by the Greek philosophers. Its the immaterial part of you, a part of the immaterial world.

The Greek philosophers realized that Mathematics is also a part of the immaterial world.

The soul, like math, has no weight or mass, you can't see it and it doesn't alter light.

Like math, you can study its effects because the soul gives human life its fundamental essence and value.

This concept became more refined after Christian teaching met the philosophies of Plato, Aristoteles, and Socrates.

The human soul houses the core of human desire, and as such is an important basis of our understanding of personhood.

The Greeks also believed that the earth was the center of the universe. tits Evidence or GTFO.

This has implications on human dignity, human rights, responsibilities, and freedom. If you ignore these things, you see important implications, the culmination of which are the Gulags of the Soviet Union for instance, or the Holocaust, or the carpet bombing of Dresden and perhaps the destruction of Hiroshima.  

I see your point, but it still doesn't prove that the soul is an independent entity. To me, human lives have an intrinsic value too, but that's because I enjoy my life and I have good reasons to assume that other people want to enjoy their lives as well. No souls required.

All these things (dignity, rights, responsibilities, freedom), like the soul, are immaterial.

Value, like the soul, is also immaterial.

Value can generate bills of money from seemingly "nothing". In material terms, a stack of bills is nothing but paper. But money can be put to use to alter material things, such as the great cathedrals and churches of Europe, which are direct expressions on the effect of the soul on matter.

I think this is because we are organisms that have evolved to understand the world around them. The world is really, really complicated and therefore, abstract thought is a great tool to recognize the patterns that occur naturally in our experience of the world. We have an experience and we associate it to the previous experiences we've had, and we "create" the idea by keeping together the things all these experiences had in common.

Similarly, persons in material terms are seemingly nothing but DNA, or ribonucleic acids, but they can generate ideas, hopes and dreams, and put values into reality. Say for example, I value my kids, I can alter reality by reading to them at night. I made that value a reality in the irreversible past. DNA can't do that. On the other hand, our material brain is the most complex thing we know of in the entire universe. In material terms there is no way that we have any idea what a thought, or a value, or a soul is.

Good night, kids.

And this is where I get mad. Because you are completely misunderstanding and underestimating the whole of molecular biology.

1. DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid, not "ribonucleic acids".

2. People are NOT "just DNA". DNA holds the "plans" that guide the development of the structures that make out our body and the synthesis of the proteins that are needed for our organism's life. Those structures, on the other hand, are way more complex than DNA is and have different functions. Our material brain is a product of the unfolding of the reactions that many particular sequences of DNA can help catalysing by codifying for enzymes. Enzymes are, in turn, those things that actually go and catalyse the reactions that are needed to happen for our organism's development and survival.

I could go about for days here talking about gene regulation and the like, but I've got other stuff to do so if you want to go deeper in this subject, this is probably the best starting point:

http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-...0321905377

Yeah, it's not cheap, but you can definitely Google around and find some cheap second-hand copies of it somewhere.

[robvalue]

A soul, like lots of forms of woo, represents an intellectual short cut. Just make up some flowery language to describe things, rather than put in the work to find out how things actually function in reality. It's fine to use the flowery language, as long as you are aware you are being metaphorical.

Some people allow what they find acceptable and unacceptable to influence their reasoning. Reality doesn't care if you find it acceptable or not.

[Lucanus]

A soul, like lots of forms of woo, represents an intellectual short cut. Just make up some flowery language to describe things, rather than put in the work to find out how things actually function in reality.

Some people allow what they find acceptable and unacceptable to influence their reasoning. Reality doesn't care if you find it acceptable or not.

Stop being so goddamn right dude!

[robvalue]

Lol, thank you

My wife says to me, "Do they think you're a real person on that forum?" She views me as a funny little creature scampering around through life with no clue what's going on. In a loving way

[Cyberman]

How about "the soul and the mind are the brain's way of feeling what it's like to be a brain and to possess a body"?

[Cyberman]

The soul is made of information that exerts downward causation on matter and energy. Information isn't matter, but matter embodies information. Information isn't energy, but energy can transfer information. The idea of a 'materialist' solution is just so 19th century.

Whoa, that's so deep(ak).