If thers a God in charge of us that allows such deals as the one you described... we are all screwed anyhow :shrug:
Atheists and the soul
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If thers a God in charge of us that allows such deals as the one you described... we are all screwed anyhow :shrug:
If there is a soul, it's nothing you can sign away, so don't be silly. True selling your soul would be doing something that really betrays who you are, and leaves you feeling empty inside, without the will to live.
I'm an atheist but I'd sign, as the "riches" I can dream of would be eternal life in heaven.
So not only would I like to see how the devil can provide something more than that, but it'd be an interesting position to spend eternity in heaven while the devil owns my soul, if it turns out I have one and they all do actually "exist".
Other than that, I'm a cautious guy by nature so wouldn't sign anything without some evidence of the existence of a soul and the legality of being able to sign it away, and the ability of the "devil" to offer what he suggests he can.
And if he can provide that evidence, then I would probably believe in God as a result and thus not sign.
Simples, really
So not only would I like to see how the devil can provide something more than that, but it'd be an interesting position to spend eternity in heaven while the devil owns my soul, if it turns out I have one and they all do actually "exist".
Other than that, I'm a cautious guy by nature so wouldn't sign anything without some evidence of the existence of a soul and the legality of being able to sign it away, and the ability of the "devil" to offer what he suggests he can.
And if he can provide that evidence, then I would probably believe in God as a result and thus not sign.
Simples, really
kx000
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Can't buy love
Let it be.
Revelation In Space
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The problem is that when you use a word like "soul" without having any real idea of what it is you look foolish. Pretty simple, really. If you are talking about the Bible's definition of a soul you are talking about "the life of a breathing person or animal, it's blood." Those things exist.
The idea of a soul is more ancient than the Bible. It's the basis of animism, and it applies to any and all objects in nature. Cultural anthropologist Franz Boas, while studying the last primitive civilizations untouched by outsiders (in Canada, the Yukon) discovered that tribes who had no contact with each other shared a primal fear of nature, in and through all of the objects in the world around them. It was common across the cultures that if any person would upset the balance of nature in the smallest way, like stripping the leaves from a plant without putting them to good use (eating them, thatching with them, etc.) then Nature would respond, by visiting them with a fatal snake bite, or some other calamity. That is , any careless or malicious act by a human was given as the explanation for the unpredictable ways nature can behave. Before the Hebrew culture came into existence, animism was the prevailing form of superstition. Evidence of animism is found in the Bible, from the inheritance of the animist pantheon The Elohim of Gen 1:1, to the talking snake, the voice coming out of the burning bush. etc.
Souls do not exist. They are the invention of religions which perpetuate a mild form of animism. Metazoans are alive at multiple levels. They have living cells, tissues, organs, and systems. But even a hardline Bible thumper won't insist that the cells have souls, that tissues have souls, the organs have souls, and you're not going to hear them say "a digestive system has a soul" even though it can become quite volatile at times.
That leaves it to ignore all of biology and to treat animals (presumably only large vertebrates) as animated by their alleged soul, while in fact they are animated by the cells, tissues, organs and systems not understood or recognized by religions.
But the fact of life in any organism has nothing to do with religious explanations. Life springs from itself, from gametes to zygote and on to the metazoan form encoded in the DNA.
Magical Realist
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"The vast, vast majority of anti-abortion advocates have a problem with abortion because they believe the zygote/fetus has a soul. When I was anti-abortion myself, I believed that God placed a soul in the zygote at the moment of fertilization. Anything that killed a fertilized egg killed a little person. That is the foundation here."
Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejo...rtion-heartbeats-and-souls.html#ixzz3D2gfbJZu
I wouldn't sign the devil's scroll.
It would be my suspicion that despite all his fine words and promises,
that no good would come of accepting the money, and the fame, and the cars, and the fast beautiful women.
So, he can take his ill gotten riches,
and stuff them up his sulphury backhole.
The digestive system has got far more neurons than it requires for the purposes of digestion.
This article in Scientific American calls it a second brain.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/
So, if there is a soul for every brain, we each have two souls.
It would be my suspicion that despite all his fine words and promises,
that no good would come of accepting the money, and the fame, and the cars, and the fast beautiful women.
So, he can take his ill gotten riches,
and stuff them up his sulphury backhole.
The digestive system has got far more neurons than it requires for the purposes of digestion.
This article in Scientific American calls it a second brain.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/
So, if there is a soul for every brain, we each have two souls.
Ah, soul?
Magical Realist
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"The enteric nervous system uses more than 30 neurotransmitters, just like the brain, and in fact 95 percent of the body's serotonin is found in the bowels."
I've always wondered why that was so. Why this powerful mood-enhancer in an organ that SEEMS unconscious? Might there be some sort of mood process going on down there at an unconscious level?
I've always wondered why that was so. Why this powerful mood-enhancer in an organ that SEEMS unconscious? Might there be some sort of mood process going on down there at an unconscious level?
Indeed, imagining that a tiny fully formed person proceeds directly from a zygote would be the necessary way to hang on to the belief that a soul first attaches itself to the embryo only to magically appear in the integrated body of the child 9 months later.
Otherwise they would be stuck with explaining the animation of the individiual cells of the blastula, which resemble spherical algal colony Volvox (illustrated in the article you cited).
DaveC426913
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This is not a given. In some of the slightly less irrational views of God, he gave humans free will so they could decide their own fate.
And, as soon as you crack open the possibility that there might be a soul, that gives credence to this idea of a Devil. The classic Devil is a trickster, known for exploiting legal loopholes - the kind that allow singing away of the soul.
(I don't really take this seriously as I'm sounding, but it is fun to think about. But I did watch a lot of Twilight Zone, so I'm heavily steeped in this kind of thinking.)
These are the kinds of thoughts that would flash through my head as the quill hovers over the paper.
DaveC426913
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I glossed over the details of the contract, but it does explicitly specify that it is your eternal soul - the kind that lives on after your mortal body passes on.
You know there's no such thing, and your friend - with the twinkle in his eye - knows you know, and says "Yup. I ask for something that is of no use to you. You let me worry about that. This contract is a can't-lose proposition for you. I simply ask that you sign it, and you will get your riches. No tricks."
If god exists (with the attributes commonly claimed) then free will can't exist: regardless of what adherents say.
Uh, why? How?
"La la la, there it is"?
Does God honor such contracts? Would he damn someone who would otherwise go to heaven? What if you were going to hell anyway? The Devil gets your soul in that case already. What if you give all your money to the poor?
Hmmm, maybe I would sign it after all.
DaveC426913
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This does not follow. But that is another discussion.
A discussion you can debate at great length into the night with your friend, while he holds the sharp, the quill and the paper out to you.
Because once you crack open the door to the supernatural, specifically the existence of the eternal soul, it's not much of a leap to accept that there's a god, and not much of a step beyond that to the devil.
And all this, while a guy is in front of you, smiling, hoping you'll be making these exact arguments, sayin.g "Oh yeah Totally. No soul, no god, no devil. So sign."
Yes it does.
We have an entire (and humongously lengthy) thread on that very subject.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Your friend's eyes light up in glee. "Yes! Now you're thinking! Keep the money! Give it away! Bank on going to heaven with it! TRhere's no heaven anyway, right? Whatever you want to do with it! It's yours! " He pushes the paper into your hands.
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