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Define "Soul"

DrewD

Thinker
DrewD
Joined
Sep 25, 2007
Messages
239
Forgive me if this has already been covered.

How would you define the "soul"?

One of the more common definitions that I have encountered is, "that which lives on after death". It has also been described to me as the object that holds the knowledge of right and wrong and again as one’s conscious.

Anyway, just curious what your thoughts are.
 
JoeEllison said:
"Made-up crap"

Well, you DID ask...
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Yes I did.

I expected better though. Like "that which is made up" or a play on the wording of my post.

Oh well, you have plenty of time to make up for your lackluster effot. :D
 
DrewD said:
Yes I did.

I expected better though. Like "that which is made up" or a play on the wording of my post.

Oh well, you have plenty of time to make up for your lackluster effot. :D
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Why bother, when the people who believe in that crap put out so little effort?:cool:
 
DrewD said:
Forgive me if this has already been covered.

How would you define the "soul"?

One of the more common definitions that I have encountered is, "that which lives on after death". It has also been described to me as the object that holds the knowledge of right and wrong and again as one’s conscious.

Anyway, just curious what your thoughts are.
Click to expand...


It would be considered as the part of us that is capable of appreciating the transcendent and generating judgement which surpasses the supposedly limited qualities of our brain, which might be considered as just a logic machine. If the brain just keeps control over mundane things like memory and immediate senses then there would have to be a mechanism that can manage higher, abstract concepts.

Of course, this isn't my view! I'm just trying to talk from the perspective of someone who might believe in the soul.

And of course, if you're religious, it's the soul which gives us the 'spark of life'. We're not a brute animal because we possess this divine presence.
Don't quote me but according to Catholics our soul is actually a 'fragment' of the Holy Spirit.
 
According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying."
 
As best as anthropologists can tell, the idea of a "soul" seems to have originated with breath. The words for "soul" in many languages is related to the words for breath or throat. In some ancient writings, including "Old Testament" works, as well as some tribal myths, the word for soul is the same as breath, and the descriptions of the soul often talk about the steam that comes out of your mouth when its cold.

In some of the oldest Jewish writings, namely the Psalms and writings from Torah, your soul is basically equated to you "life breath", and is considered to be gone when you die. Things that talk about the "soul" in these writings don't consider the soul something that is separate form the body, or whatever, the word just means your "life breath".

The truly "spiritual" concept of the soul in Western Civilization, that is based on duality, comes largely from Platonic philosophy.
 
When you sneeze that's your soul trying to get out. Saying "God bless you" crams it back in.
 
Well I don’t know about your soul but my soul is the goodness at the core of my being that makes me a really nice person to know. It’s that which lives on in the memory of my family and friends when I decide to pop off this mortal coil.​
 
Erin said:
Well I don’t know about your soul but my soul is the goodness at the core of my being that makes me a really nice person to know. It’s that which lives on in the memory of my family and friends when I decide to pop off this mortal coil.​
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Why would anyone else's soul be any different? Do you think some people are born with black souls?

Maybe your family and friends would remember how special you were to them, rather than some superstitious construct of man.
 
Malachi151 said:
As best as anthropologists can tell, the idea of a "soul" seems to have originated with breath. The words for "soul" in many languages is related to the words for breath or throat. In some ancient writings, including "Old Testament" works, as well as some tribal myths, the word for soul is the same as breath, and the descriptions of the soul often talk about the steam that comes out of your mouth when its cold.

In some of the oldest Jewish writings, namely the Psalms and writings from Torah, your soul is basically equated to you "life breath", and is considered to be gone when you die. Things that talk about the "soul" in these writings don't consider the soul something that is separate form the body, or whatever, the word just means your "life breath".

The truly "spiritual" concept of the soul in Western Civilization, that is based on duality, comes largely from Platonic philosophy.
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This is probably as good an answer as you're going to get. Of course different cultures and religions have different concepts of a soul and how it acts once the body is dead.

The most basic is probably "the difference between someone who is about to die and someone who has just died."

The idea of a mind-brain duality may be have something to it, as our cerebrum functions fairly separately from our cerebellum. Our primate ancestors functioned pretty well without much input from the cerebrum. We don't perceive of our higher mental functions as being part of our body, because to a large extent they aren't.
 
circuit_bent,

Chill! I never said anyone’s soul was different from mine. I was merely commenting on my definition of my soul.​
 
A definition for soul?
The same for self, IMHO.

An illusion. Or a composite. Or emergent property, if you preffer.
 
Circuit_bent, your point about souls being different is such a valid point, yet is usually not comprehended by most believers.

We know that the way we behave is a direct result of our brain. It is simple to prove this, we just need to think about things like; Drugs, brain damage, mental disorders etc, and we can see that peoples actions are a direct results of the state their brain is in.
Therefore, if someone is to believe that a soul is something on top of this, that is ultimately responsible for chosing what is right and wrong, then they would have to also accept that people must be given different types of souls.
Ones that are bad, and ones that are good, because otherwise everyone would choose the same things. So if there were a god, who gave you a soul, and you were a bad person, then he is responsible, because he gave you a bad soul. This just really goes to show that our actions are clearly just results of our brains, and the concept of the soul is merely an ill concieved superstition.
 
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schlitt said:
Circuit_bent, your point about souls being different is such a valid point, yet is usually not comprehended by most believers.

We know that the way we behave is a direct result of our brain. It is simple to prove this, we just need to think about things like; Drugs, brain damage, mental disorders etc, and we can see that peoples actions are a direct results of the state their brain is in.
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Therefore, if someone is to believe that a soul is something on top of this, that is ultimately responsible for chosing what is right and wrong, then they would have to also accept that people must be given different types of souls. [/QUOTE]

Or, that person is possessed by a demon. Or, that person has been afflicted by the evil eye. Or, that person is the victim of a vampire. Or, that person has come under the influence of sorcery. The list of ad hoc hypotheses used to reconcile evidence that the mind is nothing but a property of the brain is nearly endless.
 
ImaginalDisc said:
Or, that person is possessed by a demon. Or, that person has been afflicted by the evil eye. Or, that person is the victim of a vampire. Or, that person has come under the influence of sorcery. The list of ad hoc hypotheses used to reconcile evidence that the mind is nothing but a property of the brain is nearly endless.
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Yep, each of which opening even larger gaping logical flaws.
 
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