Before I start this question, I would like to point out that I am not going to get into any discussions with anyone about whether or not the soul exists. For this discussion, I am assuming such a thing does exist. If you do not agree with that premise, and cannot consider these thoughts without focusing on that, then this isn’t the right thread for you.
What is a soul? Religions and philosophers alike have theories about what a soul is. Is it something material, or immaterial? Eternal, or temporary? What defines a soul? Can a person be without a soul? Do animals have souls?
All these questions were posed to me during my last history class. We are discussing Roman history, though I cannot remember the exact reason we started talking about the soul. Some interesting ideas were suggested, and it made me think about what the soul was. How do I personally define it?
The Platonists saw the soul as the spark of the divine in each human. It had two parts: one from the cycle of the same, and one from the cycle of the other, which defines the change a person can experience through their life. The soul enters the body when the child is born. The soul is eternal, and after someone dies, their soul goes to the communion of the souls. There, they spend 33,000 years, thinking and considering the nature of the universe.
After that time, they get the choice of what kind of life they want to live on Earth next… one of appetite (epithymia), one of emotion or ambition (thymos), or one of intellect (nous). The theory was that you got happiness in each life, but were not complete until you could break the cycle and stay in the communion, just pondering the nature of the divine.
You’ll notice that this theory has a lot in common with other theories. The idea of reincarnation, which is present in Judaism and Hinduism. Eternal souls are common in many religions, the Abrahamaic religions most popularly.
But while those are nice ideas of what happens to the soul, it doesn’t really tell us what it is. One person in my class suggested that it was identical to character. It’s the way you act and the traits you exhibit in your life. Another suggested that it’s what defines ambition, the will to live, which brings us to the concept of the soul in Greek and Roman thought.
The soul was thought to be the defining characteristic between a live person, and a dead person. Where it was contained was debated, with some thinking that it was in the blood of the person, since blood stops flowing when you die. Others, and likely the majority, considered the soul to be in your last dying breath. The reason I say the majority probably felt this way is that the words used for soul in both Greek and Latin had to do with air, breath, or wind—psyche, animus, pneuma, and spiritus.
This brings up another point, though. Can you lose your soul? I mean, Faust sold his soul to the devil, there are people who say they don’t have a soul (I’m sure a few on this site will claim that), and some people who face incredible tragedy that say they lost their soul. According to Greek thought, you obviously couldn’t lose your soul; it was your very life force, and without it, you’d simply die.
After thinking about this somewhat extensively, I think the soul is an imprint of a human. The person’s thoughts, desires, dreams, personality, etc leave some imprint that collectively makes up the soul. As such, the soul cannot be material. You can't touch thoughts, desires, dreams, personality, etc, so you can't touch a soul.
Based on this, I'm not sure I'd say all animals have souls, but perhaps some do. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I'd like to believe my puppy can sense and feel emotions.
I believe in reincarnation to some degree, so each incarnation of the soul would possess the same basic characteristics. They are simply placed in different situations to call on some aspect that needs developing. Maybe, as the Platonists believe, our souls choose the situations. I don’t know. Either way, I do believe the soul is eternal.
I don’t think a person can lose their soul, persay, just lose direction in their path. I have a varying belief about when the soul is ‘with’ the person, but I certainly don’t believe it happens at conception. But maybe not quite when the baby is born, either. I don’t believe it is a material thing, as how can a material thing leave the body when it dies?
I still have a lot to think about, certainly, but as this blog has gone on fairly long now, I’ll give your eyes a break. What do YOU consider the soul to be?
A soul is a life, plain and simple like that.
a soul may be compared to a flame, it is a spark of energy and it is there for as long as it exists, when it extinguishes it simply ceases to be, it disappears and it is gone, it does not continue to live anywhere else, it's just gone.
~Bookworm62591♥
So, animals have souls? If not, why not?
~C
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I would say yes to that, because I believe that the soul is the mind, will, and emotions.
-Amanda-
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Animals are creatures that carry spirits, although I bring this up out of my personal believes and not out of experience…lol.
what I've learned is that animals have souls but not spirits.
you see, humans are made of body, soul, and spirit; while animals have body, and soul.
-Amanda-
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AGREED
Your soul is not a magical way in which the chemical memories of your life travel.
:)
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Everything, you have done, and will do, is chemically predisposed by matter, even the fact you are reading this message. You make no choices, only perceive a given reality.
Awesome post. Except, you didn't actually say what a soul IS. Is it sentient? Is it material?
(Personally I have no clue. I... feel like there HAS to be a soul. There's just no way I don't have a soul. And I believe in eternal existance because, um, scientifically speaking, everything that makes us up doesn't actually STOP. It just changes. All the atoms are still alive. But who knows?)
I think the soul is an imprint of a human. The person’s thoughts, desires, dreams, personality, etc leave some imprint on the soul.
Perhaps I didn't explain it very well, but I did say what I thought it was.
~C
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Yes, but you didn't really answer the questions you'd asked in the beginning. :(
I did, just not very directly, so I went in an modified the ending a little. Just for you :-D
~C
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Yay!
Though, what does immaterial actually mean? I wave my hand in the air - I'm still touching things. Atoms, quarks, tinier things. Is the soul made up of any sort of... matter at all? O:
I personally don't think so. It is made of absolutely no matter.
~C
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lol. I suppose I would consider my self souless (laughs evilly) if we're dealing with it in the common, spiritual way.
I would consider it kind of the spiritual parallel of the mind. A lot of talk about soul seems to revolve around a person's conscience, which I say is part of the mind.
Sorry that's sort of rambley ...
"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos."
Homer Simpson
I have been taught that we are made up of three parts: spirit, soul, and body.
The spirit, a.k.a conscience, is the innermost part of you. The soul is the mind, will, and emotions. The body is something tangible.
-Amanda-
There is 1 body, with electricy running it, just like any other creature. Might want to notice that before you waste your life brain to the ceiling surrounded by people supporting and engaging in such insanity..
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Everything, you have done, and will do, is chemically predisposed by matter, even the fact you are reading this message. You make no choices, only perceive a given reality.
I'm pretty sane when it comes to thinking...
but how do you figure that the body is run by electricity?
-Amanda-
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We are walking batteries or better say generators
Electrified...;-)
that doesn' t tell me how...
-Amanda-
Check out my blog
You ever go to a hospital or watch tv and see someone get zapped back to life.. we're a chemical-electric biological machine, like every creature.
Everything, you have done, and will do, is chemically predisposed by matter, even the fact you are reading this message. You make no choices, only perceive a given reality.
I can agree with that to some extent, but how do you explain the mind. It's an abstract concept, rather than something concrete or tangible.
-Amanda-
Check out my blog
Really the mind is something concrete and tangible, with receptors and chemicals, there's no magic going on in our bodies, our brains like an electic-biological computer, with responses to stimuli. I was a psychology major, you should take advanced psychology, then you'd understand how machine your thinking really is.
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Everything, you have done, and will do, is chemically predisposed by matter, even the fact you are reading this message. You make no choices, only perceive a given reality.
I'm in AP Psych right now, we've studied the brain and how it works.
I'd have to say I am a dualist though- I believe that the mind and body (the brain) are two distinct entities that interact.
-Amanda-
Check out my blog
Isn't anything, its no specifics, take college advanced psych, you learn the specifics of how things work, not just general things like in highschool.
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Everything, you have done, and will do, is chemically predisposed by matter, even the fact you are reading this message. You make no choices, only perceive a given reality.
It's a college level course. we learned specifically how the brain works, and what it's made up of, what triggers different emotions..the list could go on and on. (and it would, trust me.)
I do plan on taking some psychology in college, and I'll be ahead of the game because of the knowledge that I have and will get from AP Psych right now.
-Amanda-
Check out my blog
AP psych is what is equivalent to General Psychology in college, which I took without a book and aced because I did it in AP psych in HS(highschool). Advanced psych goes into what chemicals do what, and the real mechanics of things.
Everything, you have done, and will do, is chemically predisposed by matter, even the fact you are reading this message. You make no choices, only perceive a given reality.
Why do you always feel the need to boast about your supposed achievements?
What exactly was this "general psychology" class you took? Which college, what year?
I took it my first semester at UNO(which I explained before I went to), I believe it was fall 07.
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Everything, you have done, and will do, is chemically predisposed by matter, even the fact you are reading this message. You make no choices, only perceive a given reality.
The University of Northwestern Ohio?- just wondering
-Amanda-
Check out my blog
University of Nebraska at Omaha
The same education as basically any state university, with less cheating and paper selling then the larger ones.
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Everything, you have done, and will do, is chemically predisposed by matter, even the fact you are reading this message. You make no choices, only perceive a given reality.
I stated in my blog that this was not aimed at people like you, who want to insist that there is no soul. I could care less whether there is a soul or not, but this blog is based on the premise that there is one. Since you don't agree with it, please leave it.
~C
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So you now get to aim a bias in a blog? You get to say, only respond if you agree, and that I can't respond to peoples response which I see cued some thought out of creative_me which I like to say. If this site is going to have pushy administrators that dont want open discussion then I'm fine without sharing with you.
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Everything, you have done, and will do, is chemically predisposed by matter, even the fact you are reading this message. You make no choices, only perceive a given reality.
I have done absolutely nothing with my admin status on this blog, except delete a couple duplicate comments. This is my personal blog, and here I am just like any other member of the site. If I do anything in an admin status beyond just deleting duplicate comments, I can lose my status. And since I've worked rather hard to earn this status, I'm not about to lose it.
If I did want to be a pushy admin, I would have simply deleted your comments, rather than left a comment requesting you take the discussion somewhere else.
This is not a discussion about whether or not a soul EXISTS... if you want to talk about that, you can make your own blog on it. This blog is saying 'ok, souls exist... so what are they?' Thus, it is not appropriate to answer 'souls do not exist'.
~C
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We actually have 3 souls that interact or mingle with each other, we are in fact immortal beings that originate from the same one and only source.
The fun part! This source is accessible for all to access.
The body you use to go through life is actually an amazing piece of art!
We are created out of a mixture of both our parents which provided us with the “body soul”.
This soul contains an imprint of all our ancestors making us the product of a bloodline that goes back into a reality that is beyond our wildest dreams.
Our body soul is where we keep our memory, it’s our hard drive that records everything we do, think and experience throughout the course of our live.
We have a “mental soul”, the “I” or “ego” which is the one that takes decisions, analyses surroundings and therefore is the thinking YOU.
The mental soul is the one you can use in whatever way you wish because it contains your personal reality.
The “over soul”
Is your eternal soul that partly comes inside your physical body, partly because it actually remains in the source itself. You became to “be” when you took your very first breath of air coming inside the physical body trough a seed of light.
Not to be mistaken with seed of semen, that another seed…lol.
This seed of light contains a part from the source which goes back to the source when you breath out at the end of your ride within your physical body. Once you get back on the other side of the mirror everything, I mean everything you have experienced while in the physical body is downloaded into the source.
Depending on how you have passed your time while in the physical body you will have gained or lost knowledge on your next trip inside a physical body.
The reason why you are amongst right now in these exiting times is because you have chosen to be here. Now you might maybe regard yourself to have made a great or lousy choice, lol.
The reason why you ignore to know or understand about this is not really something to worry about, it is important you question what I’m writhing here in order to find out for yourself in this or a future life.
Once you learn to align your three souls you will see the light…lol
When aligning the souls within your physical body your life will forever change!
Faith is the only thing you need to get it done, to walk around trough life with an ego is a choice many regret on a later stage during their lives.
The reason why we are electrified is because we are lingering in energy fields.
Unfortunately for now some amongst us leave a great deal to be desired in these areas…if you catch my drift…lol.
Question everything, but in a wise way, to become a good pilot it is important to know the mechanics of the plains, this will allow you to face everything, even a world that's on fire…
It’s a long comment, but then again, already feel a disturbance in the force,
;-)
The soul enters the physical body at birth, this happens at a specific moment when leaving the womb.
The soul is triggered (connected) to the physical body when the first breath of air is taken.
All individuals that are amongst the living this very moment, have intentionally chosen to be here.
You're better than that...
So while you grow in the womb, no soul.
Suddenly you take in the chemical oxygen Bang you've got one?
Dude come on really
We didn't choose to be here, our electrical force may have chose to join with matter but thats as far as it goes.
Your a chemical electic biological creature just like the cows you slaughter, your brain is the "you" you hold important and its matter without electricity is useless, it does not leave your body after you're dead as your body stays here and its energy(lifeforce) has left it...
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Everything, you have done, and will do, is chemically predisposed by matter, even the fact you are reading this message. You make no choices, only perceive a given reality.
I’m better than what? I already showed you when I asked if you needed a buddy.
Remember?
There was reason for me to ask, well, the girls inside handle just fine and they have more fun than you might possibly perceive!
The body soul while growing in the womb is not to be compared or mistaken with the soul that joins while triggered at birth.
The body soul is what keeps your pillow and blanket comfortable and in place while you’re in dreamland, so you can enjoy the ride on the other side without having to mind catching a cold overnight.
If one would come to life, no soul, like you bring it up, “it” would be and stay no more than a vegetable living in diapers until the end of his visit...
You cant even realize how wrong you are and thats sad...
Chemical-electrics is all you are, and all you will be
As my bumper sticker says "Believing bullshit will not make it come true."
You're mistaking your "soul" with perspective, which is a product of chemical reactions to exterior stimuli... sad...
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Everything, you have done, and will do, is chemically predisposed by matter, even the fact you are reading this message. You make no choices, only perceive a given reality.
This is so weird, a bit unreal, almost like a joke,..
You’re ego is amazing, to realize how it must affect your life.
The sadness lies in your approach, that’s why I asked...
Anyhow, we will work our way around this,
Please know, it’s not that some don’t believe you, but try to chill a bit, try to bring or feel some joy when it is thrown your way...
Relax,
This is only my opinion of what I believe in. I was raised, taught and have read in the Bible that our soul is only ours. We are born with it and we die with it. Our soul's go to heaven with us. Our soul is what makes us who we are and feel the feelings we do. I am a Christian and believe very strongly in God but do not expect any person to feel the way I do.
If the term is going to be meaningful then I think the minimal qualifications for a soul are:
(1) Immaterial
I think the soul is a worthless concept unless it lives on after we die. If it doesn't, then we should call it "personality" instead. The material of our bodies breaks down so in the long run anything that has our characteristics that lives on after our death would have to be immaterial.
(2) Mind-like
If the soul does not encompass our thoughts and memories, then how can it be said to be from us? Our essence lies in our thoughts and memories.
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With that in mind, I would like to bring up some points that makes me think that no such thing exists.
Since the soul should possess mind-like properties, what about people with diseased minds? Does a schizophrenic have a schizophrenic soul? If he doesn't then is that soul REALLY have anything to do with the person who lived the life?
My mother was a caring nurse for the greatest part of her life. She developed Alzheimer's a couple of years before she died. During that time she became a demanding pest to the people around her. Is her soul that still exists like it was pre-Alzheimers or post-Alzheimer's? If it is pre-Alzheimer's then did her soul actually depart from her long before she died? If it post-Alzheimer's then should we kill people at the first signs of Alzheimer's in order to ensure their soul is OK for eternity?
Phineas Gage was a foreman of railroad crew in the early 1800's. He was well-like, a hard worker, and a dedicated family man. One day while tamping down an explosive charge the charge went off. It blew the metal tamping rod out of his hand, up underneath his jaw, and right out the top of his skull, before it landed about 100 ft away. Phineas Gage didn't even lose consciousness. He was taken to a doctor who patched the entrance and exit wounds and sent home.
He healed and everthing looked fine ... except that he was lethargic, prone to picking fights, drinking binges, and irresponsible in managing his money. In other words, his personality changed completely. He went from foreman, and upright family man to getting divorced, losing his job, and ending his days as a lonely man in boarding room. What was his soul like?
Some people have bad "cross talk" between the hemispheres of the brain. This can lead to uncontrolled seizures. One possible cure for these seizures is to cut the corpus callosum, a huge nerve fiber tract that connects the two. But this leaves the two hemispheres of the brain functioning independent of each other.
The left hemisphere has the speech function (in most people). But the right hemisphere controls the limbs on the left side of the body. In one study of split brain people a questioner asked the person if he believed in God. He answered YES (a response from his left hemisphere) while his left hand pointed to the word NO on a piece of paper. This result was consistently repeatable. Did this person all of a sudden have 2 souls? Was one going to heaven and the other to hell?
To me all these problems are solved if there is no soul and our material brains are responsible for all our mind-like properties.
Cheers,
DB
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If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
If any child which is born in 2008 would be put back in time, let’s say 40 years or so, this child would most likely be seen (considered) as a genius by all others that are sharing its surroundings…
Reason for this to happen would be because of the blue print we each and all carry inside, most are unaware they can access this blue print (knowledge) in order to gain even more knowledge.
This blue print goes all the way towards the very source of our origin.
To wonder around “down the rabbit whole” surpasses any fiction to be found around….
http://www.loveearth.com/uk/film/