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What actually do JREF religious believers believe?

How do the souls migrate over the vast distances in the universe? That would seem to require magic.
 
Well, I'm quite open to the possibility of souls and whatnot, should evidence ever be presented for them, but let's skip the evidence part for now. More important, I think, is to clarify what is that soul thing supposed to be, and how does it work. And especially the edge case, so we can also have a clear idea where the concept ends and what it doesn't do. E.g.,

1. Ok, I'm perfectly fine with "all life" having souls. But at one point, there weren't even cells and such. All the planet was a big bowl of aminoacids and RNA bases, and a bunch of self-replicating RNA. It qualifies as life, albeit only barely. Which would make it such a useful edge case.

So did the whole planet have one huge soul? What happened to it then, when life turned into self-contained cells? Did the planet die, effectively?

Or did every self-replicating RNA strand have a little soul?

2. Life also does include single-celled organisms. And I'm ok really with bacterias and amoebas having little souls. But then presumably so do the sperm and egg.

So, when a sperm and an egg fuse, does one soul go to heaven? Which one? Or do they have half a soul each? Does only one of them have a soul? (The ancients did believe that only the guy's seed matters, and the woman is kinda like the flower pot in which it grows.)

3. What happens for identical twins, which do come from a single zygote? Does an extra soul get created when one cell goes stray and results in another fetus? Or is one (or more) of the twins a soulless p-zombie? Or what?

4. What happens for chimeras? That's the polar opposite of identical twins. For chimeras, two fraternal twins merge into one in the womb, and result in a person that's a patchwork of cells with different DNA. Sometimes even some cells are XX and some are XY. And it seems to be far more common than we ever imagined.

So does one of the two souls die and go to heaven? Or does the resulting person have more than one soul like the ancient Pharaohs? Or what? How does it work there?

5. People with their brain lobes separated develop two different consciousnesses, and often with radically different beliefs, morals, etc. Basically each brain half repairs by remapping to allocate neuron columns to the missing functions, and starts working like an independent brain.

Do these people have two souls? One soul that holds two radically different sets of views and thoughts? Or does the soul have nothing to do with what you think? (In which case, why would God punish the soul, if it had nothing to do with it?)
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, I'm quite open to the possibility of souls and whatnot, should evidence ever be presented for them, but let's skip the evidence part for now. More important, I think, is to clarify what is that soul thing supposed to be, and how does it work. And especially the edge case, so we can also have a clear idea where the concept ends and what it doesn't do. E.g.,

1. Ok, I'm perfectly fine with "all life" having souls. But at one point, there weren't even cells and such. All the planet was a big bowl of aminoacids and RNA bases, and a bunch of self-replicating RNA. It qualifies as life, albeit only barely. Which would make it such a useful edge case.

So did the whole planet have one huge soul? What happened to it then, when life turned into self-contained cells? Did the planet die, effectively?

Or did every self-replicating RNA strand have a little soul?

2. Life also does include single-celled organisms. And I'm ok really with bacterias and amoebas having little souls. But then presumably so do the sperm and egg.

So, when a sperm and an egg fuse, does one soul go to heaven? Which one? Or do they have half a soul each? Does only one of them have a soul? (The ancients did believe that only the guy's seed matters, and the woman is kinda like the flower pot in which it grows.)

3. What happens for identical twins, which do come from a single zygote? Does an extra soul get created when one cell goes stray and results in another fetus? Or is one (or more) of the twins a soulless p-zombie? Or what?

4. What happens for chimeras? That's the polar opposite of identical twins. For chimeras, two fraternal twins merge into one in the womb, and result in a person that's a patchwork of cells with different DNA. Sometimes even some cells are XX and some are XY. And it seems to be far more common than we ever imagined.

So does one of the two souls die and go to heaven? Or does the resulting person have more than one soul like the ancient Pharaohs? Or what? How does it work there?

5. People with their brain lobes separated develop two different consciousnesses, and often with radically different beliefs, morals, etc. Basically each brain half repairs by remapping to allocate neuron columns to the missing functions, and starts working like an independent brain.

Do these people have two souls? One soul that holds two radically different sets of views and thoughts? Or does the soul have nothing to do with what you think? (In which case, why would God punish the soul, if it had nothing to do with it?)
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I don't know the answers to your questions. I believe in the basic concept of a soul as well as the basic concept of a creator. Both of these concepts are common in many if not most religions and are part of my personal beliefs.
 
RoseMontague said:
I don't know the answers to your questions. I believe in the basic concept of a soul as well as the basic concept of a creator. Both of these concepts are common in many if not most religions and are part of my personal beliefs.
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Why do you believe without proof?
 
RoseMontague said:
The theory of a creator or God makes more sense to me than the theory of no creator or God behind creation. I don't see either theory as being proven.
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Who or what created your god? And why did your god make 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999 percent of the universe inimical to human life? Why did he wait nearly four and a half billion years to put human life on Earth? If you think that the universe was created for us then that is taking hubris a bit too far.
 
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RoseMontague said:
It is my opinion that it can. We just need something that will observe it. It is like the recent pictures made of the DNA strands. Amazing.
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So as it stands currently, you're not aware of any physical effects manifested by this soul you posit?

If not, what does it do?
 
RoseMontague said:
The theory of a creator or God makes more sense to me than the theory of no creator or God behind creation. I don't see either theory as being proven.
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It's just a false layer answer that makes people feel good. It answers nothing unless you can say where god(s) came from.
 
RoseMontague said:
If you are asking for evidence, I don't have it. I think it is fair to say that more things exist than we can observe. I believe in the existence of a soul.
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You are probably right. More things exist than we can observe.
However, there are more things that we can not observe because they just do not exist.
 
Hi RoseMontague,

How do you explain the fact that when the brain is physically damaged, through injury or disease such as Alzheimer's--we observe the intellect--the "person"--apparently damaged as well? Where is the soul in all this? Shouldn't that have remained whole?
 
AdMan said:
Hi RoseMontague,

How do you explain the fact that when the brain is physically damaged, through injury or disease such as Alzheimer's--we observe the intellect--the "person"--apparently damaged as well? Where is the soul in all this? Shouldn't that have remained whole?
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Yes, I believe this is correct.
 
dafydd said:
Who or what created your god? And why did your god make 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999 percent of the universe inimical to human life? Why did he wait nearly four and a half billion years to put human life on Earth? If you think that the universe was created for us then that is taking hubris a bit too far.
Click to expand...

I didn't say this. I think it is highly arrogant to think the universe was created for us.
 
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