If you do, then what exactly defines a soul in your view?
I do not. When the brain stops working it’s just the end. I wasn’t raised religious and I’ve never ‘felt’ anything spiritual. I respect people who do, but I just don’t - it doesn’t make sense to me.
Not that I’ve a choice but I do feel a sense of calm in the fact that when I die there’s nothing. We’re just a blip in a never ending universe.
It was here long before us and it’ll continue to exist long after us. It’s initially a very terrifying truth but eventually it becomes our most comforting truth.
The brain is literally powered by electricity. Like any device, it stops working once the power turns off. Some people have a problem facing this mortality, but I think accepting it allows you to be more present in life.
I was raised Roman Catholic.
A soul is a concept to make death less scary.
All life is an organic computer. When something dies, the computer is off, never to be rebooted again. That’s ok though.
A soul is a concept to make death less scary.
Or more scary, if one doesn’t do as one is told.
No
No. Soul is an imaginary concept for ideas and claims. And people think of different things when they think of it.
We are an inherently physical entity. A vastly complex system that very interestingly enables consciousness to arise from it.
But when you remove the body it lives in there is nothing left of it. Other than the influences it had in its past.
No.
To be honest, I’m not even sure what “soul” is supposed to mean. If your definition of soul is an ethereal consciousness separate from your physical body than I can honestly say that i believe that doesn’t exist. We have plenty of evidence that your consciousness is a function of your brain, we can see this when people experience personality changes as a result of chemical influence or damage to the brain. Someone suffering a stroke can come out of it with changes to their temperment, tastes, even interests. Anyone who’s suffered chemical depression should be familiar with the way their neurochemistry effects their personally, and the effects of drugs on people is well known.
I’ve seen no useful evidence that a soul, based on that definition, does or even can exist. The evidence I do have looks very much like no such thing is happening.
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Nope. There’s no spiritual anything. The whole universe is kinda magic on its own, why people have the need to make up bullshit is beyond me.
Souls don’t exist, you’re just your body (and brain), try to enjoy the life you have, there will be nothing else afterwards.
No, how would it work with Alzheimer’s, brain tumours and other things that affect behaviour?
Not trying to argue at all, just spitballing off your thoughts: I feel like (assuming souls are things that exist) the brain is the hardware and the soul is the software in this scenario. If your computer’s mother board develops a problem, the data on your hard drive still exists and works; the hardware just can’t compute.
That all being said I’m an agnostic and I don’t really know the answer to OP’s question. I’ve kinda always assumed there was some star trekish we-are-just-energy thing going on. But I ultimately accept that we don’t know and can’t know and won’t know until we do.
Your example is flawed because the hard drive is also hardware and can also develop problems aside from everything else. I feel like a closer match would be information stored on the cloud, but that’s just someone else’s hard drive, so… Yeah, I find the concept of a soul very weird.
Your example is flawed because the hard drive is also hardware and can also develop problems aside from everything else. I feel like a closer match would be information stored on the cloud, but that’s just someone else’s hard drive, so… Yeah, I find the concept of a soul very weird.
Your example is flawed because the hard drive is also hardware and can also develop problems aside from everything else. I feel like a closer match would be information stored on the cloud, but that’s just someone else’s hard drive, so… Yeah, I find the concept of a soul very weird.
Your example is flawed because the hard drive is also hardware and can also develop problems aside from everything else. I feel like a closer match would be information stored on the cloud, but that’s just someone else’s hard drive, so… Yeah, I find the concept of a soul very weird.
It comes down to how you define “soul”.
Do I believe there’s a consciousness that transcends death or exists separately from our physical existence, no.
But if you start talking of ship of Theseus/transponder incident/mind upload -type mental exercises, then yes, I believe “self” is an evolving pattern and a collection of experiences that could theoretically be replicated in another physical manifestation or even in a completely different medium. You could call that, too, “soul”.
That’s about how it’s explain it.
No. I believe soul is a human construct that is meant to be self defense mechanism to feel like we are special instead of bunch of meat with chemicals.
Richard Dawkins said something along the lines of : "You have a brain that works by nerve impulses, and when that decays, what could possibly be left "
if someone can give me a good definition of what they think a soul is or does, maybe i’ll have a response, but quite often, i find the concept less false, and more just ill-defined.
I believe in anything that can be proven scientifically to actually exist. Show me evidence, not anecdotal stories which further an idea of “just believe me.”
A part of humans regarded as immaterial, immortal, separable from the body at death, capable of moral judgment, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.
considering many non-humans seem perfectly capable of making moral judgements, and feeling happiness or misery (all actions which appear to be explicable by purely material means), a ‘soul’ seems unnecessary to explain such things in humans. and it seems the very height of anthropocentrism to say that humans are immortal (despite all evidence to the contrary) while everything else just dies. why would just humans have these souls instead of, say, dolphins, or wild boars, or rattlesnakes, or coastal redwoods?
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No. Souls dont exist.
“Soul” is just consciousness. Which many people seem to equate to the brain here.
There is 0 scientific evidence that consciousness has anything to do with our brains. Much to the contrary actually.
Consciousness truly is one of the biggest mysteries of life. We all experience it, but the more you observe it, the less you can find it.
It may feel at first as it’s a phenomena of the brain, of the mind. But soon after you start paying really close attention to it, you realize that consciousness is behind the mind. It’s underneath it.
It observes the mind. It observes everything. And that’s what it is. Perceiving. Aware of everything.
Its the only indivisible and irreducible thing in the universe that we ever found. Consciousness just is. It is the awareness in you. It is the awareness in everything.
When we crack consciousness, all these talks of “souls”, “god”, “atheism”, will seem just silly tbh.
There is 0 scientific evidence that consciousness has anything to do with our brains. Much to the contrary actually.
Source? Everything I’ve read on the topic suggests that it’s everything to do with the brain - damaged brain = no consciousness, even if the rest of the body fine.
Its the only indivisible and irreducible thing in the universe that we ever found. Consciousness just is.
Elementary particles would like a word.
This makes no sense to me. It’s just generic platitudes and a wild claim.
You say “quite the contrary”, claiming there is scientific evidence of consciousness having nothing to do with our brains. Where can I find this evidence?
I couldn’t follow any of your reasoning. Can you summarize your central thesis? Because we observe…?
I don’t see how conscience could not have anything to do with our brain when that is where it arises.
A soul is at best a description of the electrical and quantum interactions that take place in our brain, a personified phenotype of the sum of these things occurring in our head (and to a degree our eyes, mouth, ears, and skin).
I don’t believe in the soul in the traditional sense as it implies that there is one version of me – is my soul my 9yo self, my 20-something alcoholic self, the self as of this moment, or my Alzheimer’s-ridden self when I die? If it’s supposed to be a “perfect” version of me when I pass, then it’s kind of funny, because my spirit is, in a sense, a version of me that I’ve never actually met and wouldn’t recognize.
