Argument for a soul?

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Zephyr, Dec 5, 2005.

  1. Zephyr Humans are ONE Registered Senior Member

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    Many religions tell us that the soul is infinite - unbounded. It can comprehend all time and space.

    Most humans would agree that, as far as we're aware, we're extremely limited. I, at least, can't read and discuss an unrelated topic at the same time; I can't even remember the details of something that was in front of my eyes a few seconds ago. The idea of knowing everything seems laughable.

    Hope would say a soul exists and at some point these limitations will fall away. Scepticism would say, if you're limited now - don't expect it to get any better. Objectivism would say that this is beyond the bounds of our knowledge, even more so because it is so limited.

    What do you think?
     
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    What does it mean to comprehend something? To form an extraneous symbol of it in your mind? Symbols by their very nature are abstractions of reality. The limitations of your mind can be rather easily experienced in the psychedelic state. Informed by this experience, I can say that we are already inherently unbounded, but the boundries are what let us think. To know everything is to be everything, and no thinking is possible. Thinking requires something known, and other things as yet unknown. Between the two there is a movement.

    I think the thing you are referring to is possible, but it will happen with our conscious minds, connected to computers, where our thoughts can be made symbolically real. Once all minds are connected in virtual reality, this will be the heaven and hell of mythology, a place where all our dreams and fantasies will manifest, all ideas shared with all conscious beings, a playground of the mind.
     
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  5. Einstuck Registered Senior Member

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    It amazes me that the secular mind can reject the 'illusions' and spiritual realities that form the subject of religion, and then seemingly feel compelled to offer a secular version of the same 'myths'.
     
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  7. KennyJC Registered Senior Member

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    The problem with the argument for a soul is that these are the same people that say the world was flat, is 6,000 years old, that the universe was created in 7 days, and of course that evolution is 'fantasy' because God of course created Humans overnight fully formed.

    You wanna listen to people who say the soul exists?
     
  8. RoyLennigan Registered Senior Member

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    i think that our physical bodies limit us to our individual abilities and that in dying, one is no longer limited physically so that consciousness as well as the physical chemicals that make up our bodies are released into the universe. one has free will during life because of their ignorance, not despite it. one can no longer retain free will after death because one loses ignorance and therefore loses the ability to act without knowing the infinite (or nearly so) effects of their actions.
     
  9. RoyLennigan Registered Senior Member

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    thats a rather extreme stereotype. i know christians are not the only people who believe in a soul. and i doubt that all christians believe everything you said, even though the majority would.
     
  10. KennyJC Registered Senior Member

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    Of course they wouldn't. Anyone who agree's with anything I say can not be a 'proper' Christian as Adster would say.
     
  11. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    Einstuck,

    Reading one person's opinion and speculation doesn't in anyway describe the secular mind.

    What are spiritual realities? Don't you mean religious fantasies?
     
  12. The Devil Inside Banned Banned

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    of course they are fantasies....but that doesnt make them untrue. to make a broad, sweeping statement about the truthfullness of a religion (pro or con) is idiocy. there is no way you can know what is true, and what is false.

    so yes, by reading one opinion of one person (you), i can form a pretty good description of "the secular mind".
     
  13. KennyJC Registered Senior Member

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    Do you realize the odds of one religion even having half of the things it claims to be true? And that is if there is a God...
     
  14. RoyLennigan Registered Senior Member

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    extremely bad. but that doesn't make it untrue. it just makes it improbable.
     
  15. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    the devil Inside,

    But the opinion was from 'spidergoat' with which I disagree. The term 'secular mind' is taken in this context to apply to everyone with a secular worldview. Since I am secular but disagree with that opinion then your conclusion becomes invalid.

    Secular people have vastly varying views on what brought them to their stance. My point is that you cannot classify them neatly as a group by examining the opinion of one of them.
     
  16. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    what does this say for religion? why does society have a need for this stuff?
     
  17. VitalOne Banned Banned

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    actually the soul may exist

    Why? Well for one thing scientists haven't even found out exactly how we gain consciousness. "There are many blank areas in understanding the brain dynamics and especially how it gives rise to consciousness". I don't know why people seem to find it so unbelievable that there is something separate from our body, the soul, that always exists. It doesn't seem unreasonable at all.
     
  18. KennyJC Registered Senior Member

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    So because we do not yet understand the complex workings of the brain, that means something outside our brain gives rise to conciousness? It is totally unreasonable, and you are using your bias to look for mystical evidence for a creator which simply doesn't exist.

    All the evidence points to the fact that personality, thought, memories and all other mundane functions which form complex life are within the brain. Until we discover otherwise, your wishful thinking is wholly unreasonable.
     
  19. VitalOne Banned Banned

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    Don't get so defensive. I never mentioned a creator, nor mystical evidence. You know it's not unreasonable or irrational.

    Personality, thought, memory, and other mundane functions should be within the brain according to some doctrines, it's the material mind. However, the same doctrines also state that you are not your thoughts, nor your personality, and that you actually do nothing, it is your material body acting, not you, you are actually just the observer over these things.

    So until someone discovered the Earth was round, the Earth being flat is totally rational, and the Earth being round is totally irrational? Without complete knowledge on the subject, you can't exclude either from being true, nor can you accept one to be completely true, as you are doing.
     
  20. TheAlphaWolf Registered Senior Member

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    the soul just doesn't add up.
    first off, WHAT is a soul? what does it do? does it keep your emotions, thoughts, etc? where is it?
    If the soul is this immortal immaterial thing with no substance or anything, then how does it affect the brain? as KennyJC said, personality, thought, memories, emotions, etc. are in the brain. Something immaterial cannot influence something material. For souls to be true the brain would have to completely ignore physics/chemistry.
    and why does the soul completely depend upon the brain anyway? what is it about the brain? if there really WAS something immaterial that affected the material world, why does it ONLY affect the brain? it would be a much better design if the soul affected the muscles and everything else instead of the brain, as the brain takes up a lot of the body's energy and is easily damaged. If the soul directly controled the body, there would be no need for a brain, and we could save energy, etc. Heck, why does it even have to be confined to the body? if in essence we ARE just some ghost thing that controls the material world, why even bother somehow controling the brain so that it tells nerves to tell the muscles in my arms/hands to press the stupid buttons that in turn do something I'm not aware of that does some other things that ultimately end up posting the patterns of my muscle contractions/neurons firing on the internet? it just seems so stupid.
    How does the brain affect the soul? something material cannot influence something immaterial. How do your thoughts or whatever go to your soul? do they get stored there? why? how?

    and why is it that if you damage say the hippocampus of a person, their memories fail? surely a soul shouldn't be affected by the state of the brain. If the memories are stored in the soul, then the soul could just tell the other parts of the brain to act on those memories.
    and say you have alzheimer's... and you die... do you still have alzheimer's? is your poor soul somewhere out there trying to figure out what it is because it forgot? I can just see it now... a poor lonely soul traveling the universe in search for something... what? it forgot.

    and speaking of forgetting, I forgot what I was going to say next. lol. Stupid "soul".
     
  21. TheAlphaWolf Registered Senior Member

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    oh yeah, I was going to reply to
    True, we're not EXACTLY sure how we gain consciousness, but we are sure that it's not in one magical step... you don't have it now, now you do!
    it's in many steps. At first everything you do is mechanical, then you start being able to act not on instinct, but out of experience, at first you're not conscious, you're just a stupid cell. at first children are not able to recognize themselves in the mirror, then when they are able to they're not able to recognize themselves on tape (video), then blah blah blah.
    stages of development. Don't ask me about details, ask a child psychologist or something.
    They seem to go agaist the concept of a soul don't they? you either have a soul, or you don't. You don't just "grow a soul" do you?

    yet think about this... the brain does develop. You DO grow a brain.

    the brain IS the soul... there's no external ghost entity. You're just body/brain.
     
  22. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    Vitalone,

    Well it isn’t a doctrine since there does appear to be massive and extensive clinical evidence to support this as actuality.

    Then that would need a strange definition of “you”, since without memory, personality, emotions, and thoughts, what is left? Let’s imagine it is some form of eternal mystical energy, if so then without any of those real factors its existence is essentially meaningless, it may as well not exist for all practical purposes. And how would something without any senses observe what the material body is doing? How would it remember anything without memory?

    The most rational conclusion is that you are your mind since there is nothing to indicate otherwise and no reason to consider anything else.

    Ok so using that analogy we should proceed with what we perceive until we know better, i.e. you are your mind. Much like Newton’s laws of motion seemed fine until Einstein updated them.

    But here the issue is presented as if there was a clear credible choice, but that isn’t so. The soul concept was derived from incredible ignorance of how the brain operated and when superstitions were rife. We now know there is a direct correlation between brain activity and memory, thoughts, personality, and emotions; traits that were once thought to be the realm of a mystical soul. Why then, in the light of these scientific facts, should we continue with the redundant concept of a soul and assign it even more mystical redundant properties?

    The only reason it would seem to propagate the meaningless of a soul is to support ancient institutionalized religions that depend on a soul being true.

    The soul is a fiction – let’s move on.
     
  23. RoyLennigan Registered Senior Member

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    Are you so sure about that? I'm not advocating what people usually describe as a 'soul', but recent studies have shown otherwise. The electromagnetic field created by (or perhaps part of) the brain is not confined to the brain.

    This field forms when an embryo's brain has developed to a certain point. The energy that makes up this field has no determined source (meaning, it could come from the apple you eat or it could come from something else, it could come from practically anywhere). Studies show evidence that this EM field is at least as individualistic as the owner's personality (this field could possibly describe a person more accurately than any other aspect of their being).

    One abstract claims that their experiment showed that this EM field has some affect on the mind through a kind of feedback system. This would mean that a person's [being; consciousness; soul; personality; psyche; mind; etc.] is not completely limited to their brain and body. This does not mean that it is not physical, though. It could be explained by physics, or perhaps a more advanced version of our physics.
     

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