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Do we have a soul?

I don’t remember who wrote it, maybe it was Richard Dawkins, but someone wrote: The basic reason we have religion is so we can believe that we really don’t have to die. That really clicks with me and soul might be an extension of that desire to not really die. After all, if we have a soul, it lives on after the death of the body. Right?

As far as I’m concerned, if I’m not dead, (and I’m not! 😉 I really don’t know the answer to this question. Some people like to talk about their near death experiences (NDE) and use that experience as evidence for a soul. My opinion on that is that those experiences are just the last neurons firing in a brain that hasn’t lost all electrical activity. A NDE is nearly dead. As the actor said in ‘Princess Bride’, “Mostly dead means partly alive”.

The concept of a soul, for me, smells like a human construct that makes it so that we don’t really have to die. But what do I know, I’m not dead yet and I hope to stay that way for a long time. Since I don’t know, who am I to suggest to someone else that they don’t have a soul?

What do you believe? Do agnostics and atheists believe they have a soul?

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AwarenessNow 8 Apr 1
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15 comments

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I pondered this question for a long time. I feel like there is something that people identify as a soul, but is not a magical eternal spirit inside you. I like music that I think has "soul" for example. The more I have thought about it, the more I think that what a lot of people think of as soul, is merely a deep level of feeling that combines the body and the mind, and is close to the truth of a whole person.

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I agree with you about NDEs. Interestingly people who have them describe them as happening exactly as their religion teaches them they will, regardless of which version of their particular fairytale the subscribe to.

As to souls, just because you don't know does not alleviate the burden of proof for those who claim they exist.

JimG Level 8 Apr 4, 2018
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The soul was the explaination for the mind by ancient man. The conscious mind was not tangible like an arm or leg. It could not be seen or touched. So it was thought to be separate from the body as they did not understand the chemical, biological and electrical synapses that makes up our consciousness. Eventually the idea that the mind still existed out side of the body beyond death was inevitable. The soul is the modern religious interpretation of this thinking. The soul is the mind now made into a mythical spiritual element.
I do not have a magical spirit. I do possess a mind. So do I have a soul? It depends on ones definition.

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Playing music for 45 years, l have seen thousands of people dance. Believe me, the vast majority of those people have no soul.

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I don't have a soul...not really concerned about anyone else.

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There is a big difference betweeen what I would like to be true and what is true, I love the idea of reincarnation but no. I don’t think you continue in any tangible way that would preserve your conciseness or life force. My purpose in living is that my kids will continue, my DNA will go on... if I didn’t have kids my purpose would be to make the world better for those that do... if Earth were to blow up tomorrow the universe wouldn’t even notice that we were gone, we have the temporary gift of conciosmess, we are lucky not chosen.

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You can accept a soul is real if you don't ask too many questions, but when you start asking questions, you quickly realize the concept of a soul is pure fiction.

If I have a soul that is eternal, then it existed before I was born and I don't remember anything about a time before I was born. If a soul is a mirror of me, which part of my life will it reflect at my death? Does a person who dies as an old man, exist as an old man for all eternity? Does a baby who dies as a baby survive eternally as a baby? Where is the soul and what does it do when I die? After all the stars in the universe have burned out and nothing but atoms float about space what will my soul do?

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Having 3 NDE in 9 years - car accident, cancer, heart failure I still can't see evidence we have a soul.

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I answered yes. This entire universe seems impossible to have ever formed, and yet... here I am. Or here we are. Or whatever it is. Maybe as long as somebody in the universe is alive, we're all alive.

Hell. I need another cup of coffee, and I don't have time to think about this shit, lol. ?

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My last encounter with a religion pusher was a guy my own age. That was nice, and we spoke more ‘matter of factly.’ Asking the usual, “Where do you go when you die?” I answered as usual, ‘nowhere.’ “But aren’t you afraid of that being the end,” followed by, “Don’t you want to live on?”

I actually seen fear in his eyes, he hasn't accepted the fact our life is limited, and obviously needs something to cling to. Maybe a rough childhood served me well, long ago I stopped fearing death, and at times ..looked forward to it…

I enjoyed our exchange, and felt as though he learned something. He’s not been back.. Religion seems like both the carrot and the stick, promises of everlasting joy ..or eternal suffering. It appears fear based, which makes us fearless? 🙂

Varn Level 8 Apr 2, 2018
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As a child, back in the Broze Age, I believed my soul was in my forearm. Mmmh, you say. Why did you think that? Well, there seemed too be something going on in there. I could feel it with my fingers. Much later, i learned that that was my pulse. No further evidence of a soul has been offered so far so no, I don't believe we have a soul.

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Near death is not death. Nobody in a NDE really went anywhere. "Soul believers" mostly get this idea from scriptures. A lot of this is because of the idiocy of Saul of Tarsus. My bible talks of man becoming a living soul and it also says the soul that sins shall die. This takes the mystery of that "you have a soul" idea completely away. Many say the soul separates us from the animals, and that animals do not have souls, yet the bible talks of spirit animals as well as people. The soul is an invention of those religious folk who fear death. The idea also furthers a concept of OBE that we humans have. (That's another subject.)
Sorry. I cannot buy into ideas of a soul.

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I have 2, there just behind my toes

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LOL!
Since Einstein and the Laws of Thermodynamics taught us that everything is ultimately energy, that space and time is an illusion, and no energy can be created or destroyed, that means we have always existed, and will always exist in some energy form.

Yes indeed but when physicists speak of energy, they refer to a different thing from when spiritualists do so. Isn't English confusing using the same word for two completely different things? However it does it so often that that's a phrase for applying the logic associated with one definition to a thing that better fits the other definition: "The fallacy of equivocation"

For example

Since only man [human] is rational,
and no woman is a man [male],
Therefore, no woman is rational.

Clearly that's nonsense. The word "man" in the first sentence means a different thing from the same word in the second sentence.

The same goes for

We are Energy,
Energy cannot be created or destroyed
Therefore We cannot be created or destroyed.

So whilst I claim no expertise in the spiritualist definition I do understand physics. The sort of energy that doesn't get created or destroyed also exists within this cup of tea in front of me. And part of that energy will shortly exist within me. The individual atoms and molecules could theoretically be tracked. Maybe in my tea is a water molecule that was once drank by Einstien or peed by Hiltler. However some of the energy is fungible it's completely interchangeable and can't be tracked. Once the the heat I take in with that beverage is joined to the heat in my body, it cannot then be said to be the same bit of heat that I pass on to my children when I hug them or that imparted to my chair when I sit on it. Yes the energy exists and always has and always will but you'd need to do a lot more than quote thermodynamics to demonstrate a sense in which this energy is "me" either before or after it is in my body.

Then if I smash the cup, all the pottery still exists. The shattered remains would weigh the same as the cup before it but it's the potter that still exists. The cup doesn't exist any more now that it has been transformed into potsherds.

There is a certain type of magical thinking that asserts eating the dead allows you to incorporate their souls. But is that really their soul or is it just the physicist's definition of energy?

In fact it is said that we are renewed every 7 years. If so then in terms of energy I'm not the same accumulation of joules as I was 7 years ago yet most would agree that I am the same person even if I've changed and grown both physically and perhaps spiritually.

If I'd only eaten peanuts in those last 7 years and all the energy in my body came from that crop I'd still be considered to have more in common with my 38 year old self than Arachis hypogaea.

It is our form rather than our substance that defines us and our form is one that is constantly transforming energy from one form into another.

It is here that I think the concept of the spirit or soul could potentially be useful. I can say that I am the same person I was 7 years ago as we share memories. However memories only go part way to express identity. Philosophers have long discussed the Ship of Theseus or "My Grandfather's Axe". British Comedy fans of a certain age will similarly consider "Trigger's Broom" We do consider even objects to have some sort of continuity of existence even as their component parts are individually replaced. We seem to share an instinctual consensus on what is persisting where. Team spirit is perhaps a less controversial but equally intangible example. The Arsenal FC I watch today have little in common with the Arsenal of my youth but they are still Arsenal. We treat them as the same entity as when they were different players, under a different manager playing at a different ground. So what is it that persists? Call is spirit, call it a soul, you could even call it a name. It's what you hope can still be found somewhere when all else appears lost and maybe in some cases in some ways it could do.

Perhaps if you have an a priori belief that all things have a sense of cyclic permanence then some of the physical laws being expressed might seem illustrative of your existing beliefs. A worthwhile validation but that's not a two way street. I believe in the laws of physics in as much as they are precise and testable. I'm afraid I can't fall back on physics to provide support for that that wider belief.

For me, if the sense in which I will persist after death is the same as the sense that I existed before birth then that's not really the soul as advertised by the Abrahamic faiths and if it refers to a cycle of reincarnation it refers to some sort of "meta me" to which I don't really identify. I see no evidence that I did exist in any sense before birth and little use for the hypothesis. The same goes for after death.

Space and time is an illusion?

@gater "For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." -Einstein.

“I regard consciousness as fundamental and matter as derivative from consciousness." – Max Planck, theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics

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Our brains are our selves, there is no ghost in the machine.

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