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The Soul
#31
RE: The Soul
(May 16, 2011 at 7:48 am)fr0d0 Wrote: Soul in some definitions is fully human. There's lots of mention (in the bible) of feeding the soul. And even losing the soul to follow Christ (I saw yesterday - must cross check that one(maybe someone else could expand)). Where the spirit is part of God (God being father son and spirit) and our likeness to him. Our spirit can be empty (denial of God) or open to it. As I understand.
This is just a different name for what most people would refer to as the psyche, which does not require any sort of seperate force or entitiy. The concept of the soul is not neccessary to futher oneself spiritually and the abillity to better oneself in such a manner is not proof of a soul.

Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
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#32
RE: The Soul
I may be opening myself to ridicule here but I'm open minded to the possibility of "souls" existing, by which I mean some sort of X-factor at the core of our self-awareness and experience.

The brain and how it works has always been a fascinating topic for me. I remember watching this one documentary about how the brain restructures itself according to the needs of the user (studies on people who've worked different jobs that require different skill sets). It makes me wonder exactly what that "user" is.

That said, if souls do exist, they clearly depend on the brain for sensory input and memory storage and access. I remember one experience in my younger days when I was waking up in an unfamiliar place and, being fuzzy headed from the previous night, for a split second I couldn't remember where I was or how I got there. It felt like I was searching for some "file" in this computer we call a brain. This experience underscored for me how memory is external to our experience, stored and accessed in the brain much like a hard drive. It can be lost prior to death due to injury, illness or other factors.

From this basis alone, I had to conclude that a heaven-like afterlife was extremely unlikely. If injuries to the brain can cause loss of memory, how can we retain our memories when the brain is completely destroyed by the process of death? If our existence continues after death, it won't be one where we remember this life.

We also depend on the brain for sensory input. Hormones and other factors give us impulses. Other documentaries on the brain and our behavior that I've seen reviewed case studies of people experiencing inappropriate feelings of rage or loss of the sex drive due to brain injury. Still, we can sometimes work against our impulses if we can summon enough resolve. The men in both cases studies I just mentioned realized their impulses or lack thereof made no sense and were able to seek help. I'm inclined to see self-determination as steering a sail boat at sea. You're dependent on the winds and tides but sometimes you can work within them to take the boat toward your goal.

If it turns out that there is some kind of energy or whatever that is that x-factor, "soul" for lack of a better word, than they can be studied and we'll better understand their properties one day. If not, it still might be useful to use the word "soul" as a metaphor for the very real process of our self-awareness.
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#33
RE: The Soul
I think we already had a recent long thread about souls, their properties and arguements for and against. That being said I will do everyoen a favor and not rehash old arguements. I believe the soul exists and that it is seperate from teh mind and brain. I believe that they by nature are not eternal, but survive bodily death, and can be destroyed.
"There ought to be a term that would designate those who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, since the word 'Christian' has been largely divorced from those teachings, and so polluted by fundamentalists that it has come to connote their polar opposite: intolerance, vindictive hatred, and bigotry." -- Philip Stater, Huffington Post

always working on cleaning my windows- me regarding Johari
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#34
RE: The Soul
(May 17, 2011 at 10:08 am)DeistPaladin Wrote: I may be opening myself to ridicule here but I'm open minded to the possibility of "souls" existing, by which I mean some sort of X-factor at the core of our self-awareness and experience.





Ridicule or not, thanks for sharing your opinion. Just because I see no logic in a soul/spirit existing, doesn't mean that if I'm proven wrong, that I won't readily admit that I had no idea what I was talking about. The possibility is of course there, but to me is highly unlikely.

(May 17, 2011 at 10:38 am)tackattack Wrote: I think we already had a recent long thread about souls, their properties and arguements for and against. That being said I will do everyoen a favor and not rehash old arguements. I believe the soul exists and that it is seperate from teh mind and brain. I believe that they by nature are not eternal, but survive bodily death, and can be destroyed.

Yeah, sorry that I wasn't more careful on not checking if there were older threads about it. '-_- It's just a really recent thought for me, and I like being part of the discussion, it's never the same to read other people's opinions afterwards.

When I was young, there was a god with infinite power protecting me. Is there anyone else who felt that way? And was sure about it? but the first time I fell in love, I was thrown down - or maybe I broke free - and I bade farewell to God and became human. Now I don't have God's protection, and I walk on the ground without wings, but I don't regret this hardship. I want to live as a person. -Arina Tanemura

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#35
RE: The Soul
I think Cinjin Cain makes an important point. We associate the soul with features of consciousness. But much of who we are occurs in the subconscious. In automatic driving, wherein we drive without really being conscious of what is happening in our driving, is the soul in control or something else? Is the subconscious a part of the soul, and if not, who is she? In some very famous experiments in which a bundle of nerves connecting left and right halves of the brain were severed, for medical reasons, it was found that, lacking the communication between the two halves, each acted independently, possessed of unique wills and personalities. Did one soul become two? Were there two all along? Perhaps there are even more!

Another thing I think is worth bearing in mind is that the soul is a metaphysical trope specific to certain cultures. It might even be an archetype in the Jungian sense. However, when cheesy documentaries talk about what the Egyptian's believed about the soul, a lot of it is nonsense -- the Egyptian beliefs about the person are far removed from the western concept of a soul, believing there to be five seperate parts, each having different roles and different timelines (See Wiki, Egyptian Soul; It's a confusing article I won't claim to understand, but one thing's clear, "This ain't your Daddy's soul."). I won't claim expertise in Buddhist psychology, but from what little I understand of Buddhism, what we call the self, which most align with the soul,that part is illusion -- not real; so what part of the western concept of the soul do Buddhists agree with? I don't know, but it's likely a strained agreement. I won't claim to be knowledgeable about Chinese metaphysics, even though I am a Taoist, but I'm not aware of the idea in either Taoism or Confucianism. I don't know offhand what the Greeks believed, much less other ancient cultures like Sumer, Akkad and Babylon, but likely they too had unique ideas of what it is to be human. As westerners it's an unfortunate tendency to "see clearly no farther than our hands can touch" [1] and fall into the trap of believing the idea that the concept of the soul is a natural and universal idea. It is not that simple.

I too have a longstanding interest in the soul, though I deny "the soul" and affirm the mind/brain. Human consciousness is a very mysterious phenomena. Our awareness, our minds, are like nothing that we see in the world itself. Where does it come from? How does it do that? Good questions. In my philosophy group, we tend to break down the answers to these questions into two ballparks: the physicalists, who believe mind is just the activity of certain configurations of matter, called brains; then there are those who we say "believe in special sauce" -- that sure there's something physical involved, but there's also some special something more, and the physical can't explain the weird, mysterious things like "what is redness" and "how am I aware". From my perspective, I am an Eliminative Materialist. I, like the physicalists, believe that mind is no more than matter, but go even further in suggesting that once we fully understand what is going on in the brain, many of our concepts of mind -- what a belief is, a memory, an emotion, a thought -- will be eliminated as not identifying real "things" in the mind -- that our current concepts of mind will be eliminated and replaced with an entirely different set of concepts, rooted in what the brain is actually doing. Now as a flavor of physicalist, I contend that features of consciousness are nothing more than variables in a computer taking on different values ("is_tree(true).in_view" etc.), but I confess it's hard for me to fully conceive how this acts. I believe, that if anything, consciousness has to be viewed as a process -- not a state -- values can't get up and dance the dance that is consciousness by themselves, consciousness is the dance! But what does it mean for a process to be aware? [2] I think it may be akin to the problem of conceiving of something that is both a wave and a particle, the classic wave/particle duality of quantum physics; it's not illogical, just not something our minds can form a single, coherent 'picture' of in our heads.

[1] Marge Piercy, "Song Of The Fucked Duck"
[2] I've even added process philosophy -- a branch of philosophy that treats processes and other motions through time as ontologically as primary as classic metaphysics treats 'things' -- to my reading list.
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#36
RE: The Soul
The soul theory is due to the fact people cannot fathem the fact that there is nothing once they die they beleive they must continue living and that they cannot stop. the soul is just used as an excuse to explain how people can live on after death in heaven

rereligious people have no imagination lol
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#37
RE: The Soul
I believe in soul/spirit. I believe its preaty much your conciesness. Its the part of you that makes s choice when presenter with options. The part of you that feels good and different. The part of you that continues on.

So yeah , I would say soul or spirit is all of the above.

Thanks
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#38
RE: The Soul
(June 17, 2011 at 6:03 pm)Pel Wrote: I believe in soul/spirit. I believe its preaty much your conciesness. Its the part of you that makes s choice when presenter with options. The part of you that feels good and different. The part of you that continues on.

So yeah , I would say soul or spirit is all of the above.

Thanks

But what about the robot part of you that lives in the scientifically untestable plane of robots? There is just as much evidence for the robot part of you as there is for the soul. That's my take anyway; why believe in a soul when there is zero evidence that it exists?
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#39
RE: The Soul
Rhiz, I have had some strange experiences such as nightmares in wich I felt presence of evil so strong that I am convinced that it was from the outside. I was totally tormented In these nightmares by evil looking characters. That's why I believe in some sort of evil spirits. So I thought that they were creatures like us who decided to be bad.

There is a hadis(second source of Islamic teachings) that says that nightmare are from shaitan. That doesn't make me believe in Islam but I think that those religious Muslims who wrote those things simply contemplaited and got some things right or close to right.

So if evil spiritual beings exist I don't see those of us who choose good would not continue on. By the way I would rather look at civilised law of a good country to define good, not the quran hadis or the bible. I actually think that budhist ethics are preaty good but they don't believe in God and I do.

Rhizo and everyone else , this is an honest answer as to why am I certain, but even before these experienced I was a believer only now being a deist I discover God and devine in general by thinking what makes sense to me. For instance hell just makes no sense especially not eternally hell. I think that many religious scriptures that are followed were inspired by evil spirits.

Sorry everyone for going a bit of the subject. I thought I might explain a bit more.

Atheists, muslims, everyone, the God I believe in loves you all and wants you to remain good and honest. And after reading traditional scriptures it is only natural to end up atheist.

Thanks
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#40
RE: The Soul
Pel, you're not the only one with nightmares. As a kid, always when I was stressed, I used to see a dream where a tornado was chasing me. No matter how far I tried to get away from it, it would follow me. It was a dream filled with anxiety and fear. Later, after I'd started working, I would see a reccuring nightmare, that would make me wake up screaming. I was at my work and closing the place when customers just forced their way in. Every order I took would get fucked up in some way and the customers were getting angrier and angrier all the time. It ended when they had me cornered and their faces would melt away, giving way to horrific monsters underneath.

Now, dreams are merely our subconsciousness going through what has happen in the days before. Since the customers at my work were a demanding bunch, and sometimes really mean, it was no wonder that I would use that symbol in my dreams when I was stressing about anything. The tornado symbolised to me just the same, there was some situation in real life that needed to be taken care of, and as long as I was stressing about it, the more I saw nightmares, especially these two.

In other words, it's just your mind showing you something. Try and figure out what's stressing you during the daytime, what kind of symbolic language you use, and I think you'll realise what your dreams are about. In dreams there is no outside evil, it's all in your head.

And Pel, please don't get offended by this, but go see a psychologist if you're having nightmares of gross magnitude. No one should suffer from the anxiety and pain those kind of dreams bring and talking to a professional might help sort out your thoughts.

And we should be good and honest for our own sakes and for others. Not because of a made-up god. Wink
When I was young, there was a god with infinite power protecting me. Is there anyone else who felt that way? And was sure about it? but the first time I fell in love, I was thrown down - or maybe I broke free - and I bade farewell to God and became human. Now I don't have God's protection, and I walk on the ground without wings, but I don't regret this hardship. I want to live as a person. -Arina Tanemura

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