If 2 beings come together and create a baby, do they lose part of their being? In a sense they build all of this physical attributes that create the physical offspring, but where does the soul come from? Is it a part of each parent or is the offspring body merely a vehicle for another soul to enter?
(I envision a line of sould awaiting their turn to enter a new body and when their # is up, they enter whatever physical thing (human or likewise) to live.)
(That is to say if your belief is that everything has soul…I do)
Could the body be alive before the soul enters, or does the body grow to a certain point and then the soul enters? I’m not sure on that measure. What if on the other hand, each parent does break a piece of their soul off, combines the parts and a new soul forms and grows along with the physical attibutes, thus creating whatever life form.
Then obviously anything can be created. Take for instance man and horse. Scientific research can mix phisical attributes such as chromosomes, etc. and after time and work create a new life (hybrid). So what are the boundaries? Yes, things can reproduce, but, for lack of better terminology, any type of 1/2 breed or multi-breed can exist and may have already done so, which has brought us to the current existence we know. So does that rule out God??
Please explain what you mean if you say “soul”. It is a very ambivalent word, as for me. But who said there is anything like soul.
There is no proofs for soul existence.
It sounds for me more like “life after death” … those wicked theories when the soul leaves the body and enters another one, but no one can say if it’s a fact or our vivid imagination.
A couple of hundreds of years ago all for people ‘unknown’ things were depicted/considered as magic. People looked for an easy explanation. They asked the priests and so on. Such events as bad weather were considered as fury of God. The same goes to soul and all the stories about heaven and hell.
That is my personal point of view. I might be wrong.
But I agree with Smooth: no one can say what is it we have inside of our bodies. If it’s soul or something else…
I think the soul is supposed to be a logic-defying, non-provable immaterial entity. Whilst I think the idea of a soul is ludicrous, that doesn’t mean its not there. I don’t think rules like having to come from somewhere and being in a queue apply. I don’t think u can really prove or dis-prove anything exists, never mind something that is logic-defying and immaterial. All you can do is show yourself whether u and/or others can imagine, sense or deduce something. Which isn’t proof at all really. Science is as much based on belief as anything religious. Maybe belief defines a soul’s existance. Sounds ‘realistically’ stupid. Doesn’t mean it’s not the the case. I should be willing to accept either it either way. But since I’m conditioned to only believe what is ‘’‘‘proven’’‘’ to me (in very very inverted commas) I find its existence, like I said, ludicrous.
I get the feeling that this is the sort of answer I give to every post now
O.k.
Imagine “Soul” is just the human “word” for, existence within the body that makes that body act, react, think,…etc.
So to go to the root of the question…what might you think happens when two types of existence come together…does the offspring come directly from the original two as a byproduct or would it be its own new existence that came from something else?
Tell me what you think.
ahhh, so you mean basicly energy. Like the brain operates on energy, and since it is a semi accepted fact that energy can not be created nor destroyed, you are saying that the energy in our body transfers into our children. I think that could only happen from mother to child. NOT from the father.
And xplicit^, I have to say your Avatar kicks ass!!
well, if I assume that our mind/brains is responsible for our actions, except people who lack self-control.
Do you mean if someone has a splitting personality or like Smooth has staded above:
And of course physically seen, energy can be only transformed, but it doesn’t disappear.
Yeah thats all very well and everything. But you’re still rigidly restricting yourselves to logic. I don’t know how something that doesn’t follow logic would work because of course I can only think logically. But just because I can’t conceive it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I don’t think that the soul is supposed to be based on logic.
Tell me any theory of how you think everything works, and I would be ready to believe it, but I would not be ready to believe that no other ways of everything working that could apply too or instead. Unless you were sure. But thats not possible for a non-all-knowing being to know.
I think strong belief, no matter how much it is admired and encouraged, is naive and closed minded. Devout scientists or atheists or theists are perhaps the most foolish people around. They may be right. But being wise isn’t about being right. Its about being open minded. And since, no matter how intelligent you are you can’t know anything for sure, you can only use that intelligence effectively for wisdom. And so it is the most intelligent of us that are the most wise.
I am not saying that the soul is in fact the true end all. I am meerely saying what if, to see what other people think. This was supposed to be a guided discussion where you tell me what you might think. Instead you cast stones on an innocent gesture of intelligent thought exchange.
You sound as though you are close minded by saying I am restricting myself to logic. Logic has nothing to do with the conversation.
I put a question out there in hopes of finding another’s intelligent perspective on where or how they think the (word/meaning)of “soul” came about and whether they believe in it or not and why don’t they believe in “soul,” and what do they think of, might be another riddle to the existence of “soul” (as a religious “close minded” person) might think.
the mind and brain may have nothing to do with a soul, but what do you think the connection is. and what might the connection be with personalities and “soul?”
And could you tell me your connection to the quote about energy…is energy connected in some way to “soul?” How might you make that connection.
And why do you say that the energy can only be transfered from the mother? There was energy that brought the mother and father together, so that might cancel out that thought
All I want is to see how far we can dig into the thoughts here. Nothing has to go logically or in any specific manner...I just want to find out why you answer the way that you all do....what helped you derive to your conclusion. And by understanding we all will become a little more wise. Isn't that why we are here?
obscure_reality hit the nail on the head...guide the discussion and see where our minds take us (Openly)
Sorry about that Ted. I am responsible for knocking this thread into a completly different direction. I sort of believe in the soul, but when I sat down to think about what you proposed, I had a hard time. So I questioned the soul.
I think that humanity came up with the idea of a soul because they needed to explain death. It wasn’t enough to say that we went to heaven after we die, they needed to explain what part of us goes there.
I just got into a debate with an Imperial friend of mine (Imperial friend meaning another member of XXI) about souls. It was about clones. If someone cloned you, does that clone have a soul. Maybe that is another thread all together. Maybe in religion.
Smooth…
On the contrary, Smooth!
That is exactly what I am talking about…I want to see what other things this question brews up. The question you asked is very similar to mine, with the respect to…does the offspring have a soul (whether naturally, as humans might think today); or by cloning. I just asked the question you might arrive to next. Does that soul, if it is to be, (1)come from the “parents,” or (2)is it another existence that eventually comes to be or (3)is there just no other soul??? But then what makes the body function…what is that unexplained energy that makes the body work, if there is no soul in the clone? I might be a little off, but That is what I gather from your thoughts. Please feel free to ask your Imperial friend these questions and see what He/She thinks. I would like to here more.
This is the type of universal thinking I am talking about.
Well, in further thought I believe that if the soul does exist, it would come from a line of loose souls. Kind of like if someone dies in India right now, as the Earth turns it would be sucked into a new fetus immediatly. I sort of believe in reincarnation. But give me more time to really think about this.
I see in your arguments the problem that later philosphers arised towards Kant’s Noumena.
i.e. If we can’t really know or experience something why should we even believe that it exists?
You claim that we will never be able to know if there is a soul because it is logic-defying and immaterial, so I ask you why should we even take this thing into account? It might very well exist but since it doesn’t affect our world in anyway there is no reason discuss it.
I agree with you that science far from being a certainty, but even if we see it just as describing reality as we perceive it instead of really knowing it, I still believe that is much more useful to try to exclude unknowble variables from which ever system we conceive.
As for the soul, well it can very well be that the soul isn’t anything material.
Aristotele thought of the soul as an accident, something that didn’t have an ontological reality. He didn’t see any difference in saying “I have a soul” and “I have beauty”, they both couldn’t exist outside the subject in which they are.
So if as aristotle thinks the soul is just the capacity to move, feed oneself and reproduce what causes it?
i.e. If we can’t really know or experience something why should we even believe that it exists?
Because it is a presupposition of human reasoning processes that there is a persisting entity doing the reasoning.
You claim that we will never be able to know if there is a soul because it is logic-defying and immaterial, so I ask you why should we even take this thing into account?
Because it contains our power of freedom, and morality categorically obliges us to make it the first cause of our actions.
It might very well exist but since it doesn’t affect our world in anyway there is no reason discuss it.
It does affect our world, when it causes an action, and that is the very reason to discuss it.
I agree with you that science far from being a certainty, but even if we see it just as describing reality as we perceive it instead of really knowing it, I still believe that is much more useful to try to exclude unknowble variables from which ever system we conceive.
Good point, but science only moves forward from axioms. Kant was trying to provide the necessary presuppositions of metaphysics and morality, precisely so that they could move forward in a scientific fashion. He was only concerned with what we must assume, which is why he made the point that the self is unknowable.
These are not my answers to those objections, they are how I imagine Kant would answer. I don’t think those are the objections that work against Kant. Sounds like you’ve been reading Russell’s interpretation of Kant, or someone similar. Russell was a really bright guy, but his analysis of Kant was shit. Try Hegel for some decent objections. Or read the Critique of Pure Reason and try to get at what Kant is saying. Its not as simple to reject as invoking a Humean empiricism. I believe Hume is the main person Kant is responding to. He had Hume’s objections in mind when he was writing. So trying to dismiss Kant with Humean objections doesn’t work very well.
A soul as stated in the bible is a the combination of both body and the breath of life. A soul isn’t earned or its not a seperate entitiy that has the appearance of ourself and is translucent and can go through walls. Too much TV and other things have contributed to this idea that we become seperate from our bodies when we die. It comes from the philosophy of the immortal soul that according to biblical record was spread by the great enemy of God. God said you will die and he said you will not. Some believe that the soul can’t never die, that we become angels, or wandering spirits, or we get reincarnated to something else or someone else. The truth as stated out of the mouth of God is that we are a living soul and not a soul and body combined. Our bodies become animated when we are given the breath of life or the spark or energy of life, if you will, that basically makes us a living soul.
