Does the soul exist?

[Prometheus]

I like these ideas, Michelle, but I think your first proposition is rather weak - as far as it tries to link 'soul' with 'bio-electricity'. I'm not a science major either, but imagine that whatever electricity is active in the living brain, at death it would: a) not be of sufficient strength to "need somewhere to go" (like a charged capacitor or lightning bolt!) or enter other organisms; b) not retain any significance, meaning, information, data, etc., as it dissipates into the environment, assuming even that it does do so. Clearly energy in systems does dissipate in some circumstances, and organised energy like radio waves dissipate and retain their organisational features, but the idea that human thought, consciousness or personality might leak outward at death doesn't have any basis either in evidence-terms or theoretically, AFAIK. I think you are thinking of it more subtly, but these ideas could encourage soul-believers that there might be some scientific sense behind this, something that rescues the idea of souls from the area of superstition. It would be similar to saying that when you switch off your computer, its current electrical state dissipates: perhaps an electron here or there does, but we can't tune in to the pictures you were looking at on your photo editing software...nor do other computers booting up at the time get loaded with operating systems floating about in the ether!

The bit I like is the reminder that there is a lot of human stuff being communicated between us and recorded and mediated through libraries and the internet, a whole other world of "the humanities" and arts, and that in a purely human sense, things could be said to have a kind of 'soul' or 'essence'. What is a piece of art, music or literature? Romeo and Juliet, for instance, could be thought of as the exact form of words Shakespeare wrote, but why is it different from the physical original copy, and how can it be recognised when 'reincarnated' in a hundred different forms? Is it still the same play if we change just one word? This is where things get fuzzy and non-physical entities or ideas can take on the appearance of absoluteness and concreteness - in the area of information. And then, when we consider that what makes life life is a certain informational quality (and some would even say what makes physical objects what they are is also information), we can form some non-woo concept of 'spirit' or 'soul' I think. Also, it is because such human concepts are so precious to us and form the bedrock of most human cultures that the pure physicalism of the scientific viewpoint is feared, resisted and rejected by so many people in the modern day. We are 'soulless': Romeo and Juliet is just a bunch of data, an informational structure, and so is Windows XP.

I was actually thinking about making a post along these lines, but I think you did it better than I could have.

I just want to add to the line I highlighted: ...yet. The CIA has supposedly developed a device that can "see" what's being displayed on a visually inaccessible computer monitor ( ) by picking up the errant radio signals leaking from the monitor's circuitry, filtering out all the radio noise in the environment and then interpreting what's left. All you'd have to do to see what was being displayed on a now dormant monitor, say, an hour ago, is have a sufficiently sensitive version of this device positioned 1 light-hour away from the monitor.

Life produces minute electrical signals. I read somewhere that it's thought some aspects of cell biology may be regulated by currents in the pico-amp range. Perhaps each of us is producing tiny, potentially measurable but as yet undetected, radio patterns that could one day be discerned and recognized as those of a distinct individual. We don't have any evidence that this is the case, so for now it's just wild speculation, but even if it turns out to be true, that's still not what religious texts are talking about when they use the word 'soul'. How could it be? Some woos latch on to possibilities like this and suggest that this must be what psychics are 'attuned' to. The problem is that if this were the case, even if we're technologically incapable of measuring such signals, such attunement would still yield statistically significant observations, and there just haven't been any.

 

[John Freestone]

It took me almost 5 hours to read and try to understand everything all of you said/wrote.

Ah, it was easier for me. I almost completely ignored the Bible quotes! Your screen name doesn't leave room for confusion about where you stand!

I am deeply impressed by- and grateful for- the postings and insights of John Freestone; and I am also grateful to Perpetual Seeker, articulett, Prometheus, FosterZygote, silentknight, billydkid, and others who wrestled with the original post question(s) and who showed such patience and perseverence when confronted by those 2 JWs.

I was quite moved to read this, so thank you very much for saying it. I'm also grateful to those others and many more who post here at JREF. I've written a helluvalot, but really am still quite new here. Welcome antiChrister!

I have posted some silly soap box rants before and been justifiably chastised for them, and I promise to not repeat such foolishness!

Well, I'd support you in ranting and feel that you shouldn't be chastised for it, so go on, continue being foolish now and then. I'm sure I will.

Learning from reading and 'listening' to you all is my great pleasure, almost daily. THANK YOU! M.

Ditto.

I was actually thinking about making a post along these lines, but I think you did it better than I could have.

No! thx... Look, you did actually post some factual science. I just recalled what I've gleaned from watching TV.

I just want to add to the line I highlighted: ...yet. The CIA has supposedly developed a device that can "see" what's being displayed on a visually inaccessible computer monitor ( ) by picking up the errant radio signals leaking from the monitor's circuitry, filtering out all the radio noise in the environment and then interpreting what's left. All you'd have to do to see what was being displayed on a now dormant monitor, say, an hour ago, is have a sufficiently sensitive version of this device positioned 1 light-hour away from the monitor.

That'll be what all the UFOs are. The CIA want to know what you were looking at even after you poured thermite over your PC and ran off, and so must develop faster-than-light space travel to jump ahead of the leaked radio waves.

Life produces minute electrical signals. I read somewhere that it's thought some aspects of cell biology may be regulated by currents in the pico-amp range. Perhaps each of us is producing tiny, potentially measurable but as yet undetected, radio patterns that could one day be discerned and recognized as those of a distinct individual.

That's so interesting I want to know more. I wonder what the experimental situation is. Time for a bit of googling.

We don't have any evidence that this is the case, so for now it's just wild speculation, but even if it turns out to be true, that's still not what religious texts are talking about when they use the word 'soul'. How could it be?

Absolutely. Nevertheless, the 'fact' that living systems might produce radio patterns does open important avenues of possibility, though I agree that we can't jump to conclusions. Since life is incredibly good at 'learning' (through natural selection, I mean) to exploit almost any advantage provided by the properties of matter (especially other lifeforms), it potentially provides mechanisms whereby organisms might use a 'radio sense'. Presumably, if certain aspects of cell behaviour are regulated by these picoAmp currents, it might be reasonable to propose that the smallest organisms might make use of this - unless we know that the detection of such small currents depends on large structures for some reason (I don't know) - probably less reasonable to assume that higher animals bother to use this kind of sensory data when their survival potential could be influenced more easily through the visual, audible, etc., cues.

Now that's got me wondering about the magetic-field sense. Do humans have any? Is it atrophied, because our ability to 'home' has not been as survival-critical in our evolutionary history as it has for birds, say? (More thread searches / googling).

Some woos latch on to possibilities like this and suggest that this must be what psychics are 'attuned' to. The problem is that if this were the case, even if we're technologically incapable of measuring such signals, such attunement would still yield statistically significant observations, and there just haven't been any.

I agree. Even if I stretch my wild imaginings above to the extreme and think that we might have some vague remnant of a bio-electrical sense that could, for instance, tell me whether someone was behind me (or staring at me, etc.) without using the other senses, experiments demonstrate that it has to be so weak as to be statistically indistinguishable from non-existent. Either we have no such sense or it is utterly unusable. Of course, there are those who use these kinds of get-outs to continue believing that some gifted individuals are better than others at it, or that we might all learn to develop what has atrophied, or that if it's there at all we must discover it for the sake of knowledge itself, and continue wasting money, time and people's hope on micro-statistical (woo) analysis of ridiculous masses of (often unreliable) data, as PEAR and its offshoots do. This is like tossing a coin a trillion times and using the fact that you didn't get exactly the same number of heads and tails as evidence that there is 'something more going on' than chance would predict, and touting for funding for a better machine that will toss a coin a trillion trillion times. Banal, childish mistake. These people must have missed Stats-101, or they're just genetically disposed to have more optimism than sense!

Oh no, I've gone off on one again. Must get round to doing some work today! Still, it's fun, innit?

 

[HghrSymmetry]

As far as Rad and I, we are brothers in Christ and anything else that we interpret is really irrelevant.

Brothers now, but how about in your next life...isn't that what really counts?

If Rad is correct and he is one of the 144K, he will be in heaven with Yahweh and Junior while you're relegated to the Eden like earth existence, forever separated from your pal.

If he isn't one of the 144K, then what? He will get the Eden-earth fate and you will also?

If you're correct, maybe you will be in heaven and Rad will be in the underworld in permanent agony for believing in the wrong version.

Which will it be? The second scenario would pair you up with your friend, but that would mean your version is incorrect.

So much for the formal teachings of religion.

 

[Robert Oz]

In other words you can kill the body but not the soul. The soul is indestructible.
Your arm/leg might be missing in the body but not the soul.

It's the same as myself having teeth removed, sometimes there are phantom toothaches and sometimes they seem to be there still.
But to function still you have to adapt to the missing parts even when you chew.
To say that it never happens doesn't mean it's impossible for God to restore the missing parts. He reserves this for the other side since the fall of man into sin.

Does this mean that our soul will also regain all the hair, finger nails and toe nails we have lost throughout our lives? How long will your hair be on 'the other side'? How long will your finger nails be on 'the other side'? Will all the women have really hairy legs on 'the other side' and the men ridiculously long beards? What about all the skin our bodies shed throughout our lives?

Robert Oz.

 

[SirPhilip]

I've been becoming more skeptical lately, but one of those ideas I've been having trouble with letting go of is the soul, mostly because it is a really scary idea that there may be no soul.

A clear definition of what the word "soul" connotes first is required. In literal terms it is generally thought as a indestructible, enduring self-affirming quality; figuratively it is used frequently attached to meaningful personal qualities, or their absence. All fine and well, so why does it's acknowlegement factor so strongly in human behavior. It is actually the same as asking whether you are actually living or nonliving, or whether that distinction is tractable. So 'soul' is simply what has self determination, characteristic of being alive, that while mutable, is fundamentally immutable.

 

[SirPhilip]

Those with the strongest, most inflexible opinions seem always to be those with the least information.

Curious, they strike me as lacking in soul.

 

[SirPhilip]

Exactly JF, ... they are "brainwashed", and there is no "reasoning" with faith. Their goal is to bolster their faith by pretending to have subjected it to skeptical scrutiny. They are here to preach. They cannot learn because they think they already "know".

While you are here to drag as many as possible kicking and screaming into marriage.

 

[Prometheus]

Apparently this thread has an immortal soul.

 

[Robert Oz]

[Radrook's] arguments have a long history of arrogance, dismissiveness, vitriol, personal attacks, insults, and hypocrisy. Keep in mind that he has previously argued that divinely mandated executions are no worse than putting people into suspended animation, and death is no worse than being put to sleep, because God arbitrarily promised to resurrect everyone at some arbitrary point in the future. He has argued that he is the only one qualified to discuss scripture in any form, and if you ever dare to disagree with his infallible expertise, you deserve nothing more than to be subjected to verbal diarrhea.

Yeah, but he's got a remarkable singing voice.

 

[HghrSymmetry]

Apparently this thread has an immortal soul.

Re-animating dead threads can be semi entertaining. Giver 'er a shot sometime...you may enjoy it.

 

[SusanB-M1]

A long-time, close, and very dear, friend asked me about my soul, so I said it is just a word humans have thought up to describe a part of our personality, sense of self and so on. I then asked her how she would consider her 'soul' to be different from mine in a significant way, but she could not think of an answer. We have known each other for over 30 years, at the start of which we were both sort of nominal CofE. Since then I moved away to atheism and she suddenly decided she had a 'call' to return to a strong Christian belief. I hope she will come back with more thoughts on the subject. She is not connected to the internet unfortunately, otherwise I think she would really enjoy this thread. It might not change her mind, but she would appreciate the interesting debate.

 

[John Freestone]

Does this mean that our soul will also regain all the hair, finger nails and toe nails we have lost throughout our lives? How long will your hair be on 'the other side'? How long will your finger nails be on 'the other side'? Will all the women have really hairy legs on 'the other side' and the men ridiculously long beards? What about all the skin our bodies shed throughout our lives?

Now you're just being facetious, Robert, and you know it! 'The other side' is by definition the place where everything is/will be exactly the most wonderful way imaginable: your hair will be the right length and not need cutting, unless you enjoy having it cut; women will not grow hair at all, unless hairy women's your thing; men's beards (or women's beards) will be just the right length and, according to preference, provide shelter for families of bluebirds; our shed skin will congregate and spontaneously form sheets of the most wonderful vellum, obviating further felling of timber for paper production... I think some of you people just don't want to understand!

Curious, they strike me as lacking in soul.

Hmmm....that is curious: a direct relationship between information and 'soul'. (I've just started reading Godel, Escher, Bach )

While you are here to drag as many as possible kicking and screaming into marriage.

Is that a personal aside other people aren't meant to understand, a general sexist attack, or what?

Apparently this thread has an immortal soul.

I was just thinking that, and you wrote it. How spooky is that?

Yeah, but he's got a remarkable singing voice.

See, there's always an up side.

Re-animating dead threads can be semi entertaining. Giver 'er a shot sometime...you may enjoy it.

Give it a try, d'you mean, or a lethal injection?

SusanB-M1, I like your sig and your legs aren't bad either.

 

[HghrSymmetry]

Give it a try, d'you mean, or a lethal injection?

The former. It was a grammatical error.
Should have read.....

Give 'er a shot sometime...you may enjoy it

The 'er was simply an informal "it."

 

[Robert Oz]

Now you're just being facetious, Robert, and you know it! 'The other side' is by definition the place where everything is/will be exactly the most wonderful way imaginable: your hair will be the right length and not need cutting, unless you enjoy having it cut; women will not grow hair at all, unless hairy women's your thing; men's beards (or women's beards) will be just the right length and, according to preference, provide shelter for families of bluebirds; our shed skin will congregate and spontaneously form sheets of the most wonderful vellum, obviating further felling of timber for paper production... I think some of you people just don't want to understand!

I wasn't trying to be facetious as much as I was trying to make the point that making assertions on what we will look like on the 'other side' is ludicrous. The 'soul' we are discussing is defined as being separate from the body, so why do we give it bodily attributes like arms and legs and hair and skin?

Saying that our hair will be the length we want it is like arguing how many fairies can fit on the end of a needle. What about all the people that are unhappy with their appearance. Will people with big ears have small ones on the 'other side'? Will thin, underweight men suddenly have built physiques if they want them? Will women who were unhappy with their breasts in life take their implants with them to the 'other side'? Too many questions are raised when you claim to know exactly what the 'other side' will be like.

Although I disagree with both positions, I would be more comfortable with someone saying 'I believe in the soul, but I won't truly understand what the soul is like until I die' rather than saying, 'I believe in the soul and mine will have a crew cut with a shortly trimmed, neat beard'.

Robert Oz.

 

[SirPhilip]

Hmmm....that is curious: a direct relationship between information and 'soul'. (I've just started reading Godel, Escher, Bach )

It's clearer if sentience and intelligence are recognized as not mutually exclusive. Sentience a interchangeable term also (with 'soul'). In my outlook sentience and intelligence largely is an absence of inner conflict.

Is that a personal aside other people aren't meant to understand, a general sexist attack, or what?

No. Few would disagree Madam Inarticulett is curious in her own special, individual way, hounding Claus as she does about emotional availability while a hundred demand intellectual maturity.

I was just thinking that, and you wrote it. How spooky is that?

Our thoughts are not our own, and he talks of a "soul"! What balderdash!

SusanB-M1, I like your sig and your legs aren't bad either.

They really aren't.

 

[I Ratant]

Does this mean that our soul will also regain all the hair, finger nails and toe nails we have lost throughout our lives? How long will your hair be on 'the other side'? How long will your finger nails be on 'the other side'? Will all the women have really hairy legs on 'the other side' and the men ridiculously long beards? What about all the skin our bodies shed throughout our lives?

Robert Oz.

.
Consider that, typically of mammals, 50% or more of fertilizations, when the "soul" is infused, resort in -natural- abortion at early stages in the development of the fetus, the majority of "souls" never got to the 'hairy leg' status, much less fingernails or sentience itself.
What would such things be represented as, "beyond"?
How mobile or communicative can a 64 celled blob be?
Can it plunk the harp?
Will there be white robes in 'nano-petite' for the millimeter sized zygotes?

 

[HghrSymmetry]

.
Consider that, typically of mammals, 50% or more of fertilizations, when the "soul" is infused, resort in -natural- abortion at early stages in the development of the fetus, the majority of "souls" never got to the 'hairy leg' status, much less fingernails or sentience itself.
What would such things be represented as, "beyond"?
How mobile or communicative can a 64 celled blob be?
Can it plunk the harp?
Will there be white robes in 'nano-petite' for the millimeter sized zygotes?

`Bout busted my kidneys. Good one I R!

 

[SusanB-M1]

SusanB-M1, I like your sig and your legs aren't bad either.

Neither mine, I'm afraid! The sig came from a friend (who got it from a quotations page I believe) and, although I do tap dance, the tap-shoed feet were also found for me on the intrnet somewhere.

 

[John Freestone]

I wasn't trying to be facetious as much as I was trying to make the point that making assertions on what we will look like on the 'other side' is ludicrous. The 'soul' we are discussing is defined as being separate from the body, so why do we give it bodily attributes like arms and legs and hair and skin?

Saying that our hair will be the length we want it is like arguing how many fairies can fit on the end of a needle. What about all the people that are unhappy with their appearance. Will people with big ears have small ones on the 'other side'? Will thin, underweight men suddenly have built physiques if they want them? Will women who were unhappy with their breasts in life take their implants with them to the 'other side'? Too many questions are raised when you claim to know exactly what the 'other side' will be like.

Although I disagree with both positions, I would be more comfortable with someone saying 'I believe in the soul, but I won't truly understand what the soul is like until I die' rather than saying, 'I believe in the soul and mine will have a crew cut with a shortly trimmed, neat beard'.

It looks to me like you thought I was being serious. The wink smiley was meant to apply to the whole paragraph. I took your preceding questions about the other side as sarcastic and added my own tongue-in-cheek answer. I was saying, basically, that whoever it was (Radrook, possibly, life's too short to check) who was going on about how God could repair limbs if he wanted to and probably would in some other realm (at the end of time or whatever it was) was deluded, making up fantasies of how s/he would like things to be. I'm not sure whether the original proponent actually thinks that souls have physical bodies or parts thereof - I think s/he was saying that the soul and the body were different things, but that the body would be resurrected at the end of time (under certain conditions, for certain souls). To avoid further confusion, I disagree utterly with this. I consider it a superstition among millions around the world. At some point primitive people made sense of life and death by making up soothing stories of what would happen to them. It's not nice (biologically, we're programmed for it not to be nice) to look at one of your kin lying motionless in the dirt and know that it is your fate as well one day.

It looks like we generally are in agreement, e.g. that these questions about the ins and outs of soul mythology are like asking how many fairies on ends of needles (I think the original was angels on head of pin, but nice literary twist, actually, whether accidental or not, reminding us that angels are just fairies and even poor men don't fit through the eye of a pin ... Note to self, cut back on the weed )....

To me, the belief in a soul whose nature won't be known until death is on a par with belief in an invisible all-powerful being who created the universe and then wrote (or is it dictated?) a book about it. On the other hand, I see belief in mathematical principles and scientific proofs as only relatively more reasonable. All systems of understanding are incomplete.

 

[Toady]

If there is a soul or afterlife, it would be beyond comprehension, like a computer program attempting to understand the world outside the computer it's running on. If people are going to some greater state of being after death, they're not coming back to tell us about it. It's frustrating that we'll never know before we die.