I think you have to rename it spirit, then apply all the attributes used for soul to that name. A rose is not a rose. A rare miss for Shakespeare.
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EXACTLY, What Is The Soul?
- Thread starter Skwim
- Start date
A very interesting passage. I must remember that one.
I am not averse to the idea of personality or individual character being equated as the soul. Clearly there are properties that are uniquely expressed for all of us. But is this evidence the soul or is it some emergent property of the matter that is our brain, neurons, hormones combined with experiences? We can equate functions to it, but a more concrete description is clearly not so simple.
Howard Is
Lucky Mud
That was before Aretha Franklin.
Of course I've wondered - I probably still have an Eysenck paperback from the 1960s when I first became interested in psychology and what makes us tick. Current evidence seems to suggest that much comes from our parents (genes), whilst some probably comes from our early environment and what we experience - hence so many disorders often coming from such. No signs of a soul to me. The soul is an unnecessary addition to personality and character - which are hardly fixed - and presumably where many believe the soul to be such.
I think it is the simple sadness of loss that accounts for our grief, and something that usually fades with time, for most, even if the memories will usually remain to lessen our sadness. Death of someone always reminds us of our own eventual death, so doubly troubling.
I would suspect that most pet owners (including yourself) would assign a personality to their pets, differentiating them from other pets they have or just recognising that they don't just react 'like dumb animals'. Would this indicate the existence of souls within, or perhaps more like other animals having many features common to us - that is, different personalities and characters (because they have intelligence and thinking to some extent), and hence different behaviours?
One of my bugbears - anything (like lack of souls in other animals) that tends to separate us from all other life.
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This is what is written by Baha'u'llah;
"Thou hast asked Me whether man, as apart from the Prophets of God and His chosen ones, will retain, after his physical death, the self-same individuality, personality, consciousness, and understanding that characterize his life in this world. If this should be the case, how is it, thou hast observed, that whereas such slight injuries to his mental faculties as fainting and severe illness deprive him of his understanding and consciousness, his death, which must involve the decomposition of his body and the dissolution of its elements, is powerless to destroy that understanding and extinguish that consciousness? How can any one imagine that man’s consciousness and personality will be maintained, when the very instruments necessary to their existence and function will have completely disintegrated?
Thus there is a lot to consider. Personally I do not dwell on it, I have to much to do here, still much to change.
Regards Tony
MJFlores
Well-Known Member
Everybody has it except plants, animals, bacteria, viruses, atoms and non living things.
All humans have it - believers or non believers - brother or not - you have a soul in you.
It is that thing we express our thoughts and emotions.
That is from a non-biblical but still valid stand point.
I see nature and nurture form a lot of our thoughts in this world. I see we can use should with mind to divert our thoughts towards the spiritual concepts.
I see the spirit world to come is much like a baby in the womb being born into the world. After a while we no longer know what the life in the womb was, we see a bigger picture.
We have been told the spiritual world can not be described. If we had a vision of it it would destroy the fabric of existence, as none of us would want to stay here.
Baha'u'llah gave a person a vision of the next world, hecommitted suicide, even though it is forbidden to do so in the writings. Baha'u'llah offered that as another proof of the power of this cause.
"One day, they brought the news of the death of Siyyid Ismá'íl of Zavárih. Bahá’u’lláh said: 'No one has killed him. Behind many myriad veils of light, we showed him a glimmer of our glory; he could not endure it and so he sacrificed himself.' Some of us then went to the bank of the river and found the body of Siyyid Ismá'íl lying there. He had cut his own throat with a razor which was still held in his hand. We removed the body and buried it.... " Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, Vol 2, p. 112
Regards Tony
You are welcome to your belief. I have no problem with such if that's what floats your boat. Souls just don't figure in my world view because they seem an unnecessary adjunct and just another thing to take 'on faith'.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Pretty damming evidence for a religion that claims its divinely-inspired.Depends on who you ask. Christianity has splintered into about 33,000 denominations, mostly all with differing beliefs on various things. That means we have at least 32,999 fakers out there...
...That's not even getting into the non-Christian realm.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
It's just a made up concept that gives people some kind of solace and comfort that the person they think they are will be able to continue past death.
LightofTruth
Well-Known Member
Seems like the KJV translators got somewhat confused. Look at the following passage:
Mat 16:25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
Mat 16:26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
The same word is translated as both LIFE and SOUL.
Why the inconsistency?
The ESV is just as inconsistent as the KJV.
However, the YLT, RV, ISV, and LEB all use only the word LIFE throughout the passage.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
How do you tell the difference between the "soul" and the physical brain?
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Do you want an answer within methodological naturalism with the use of analytical philosophy?
Well, there is goes. It is a part of the non-reductive emergent properties, which are correlated with the physical, but can't be reduced to the physical.
In everyday words, it is a part of what you experience, but you can't see, touch or otherwise experience it with your external senses and which you can't do with your physical body as for which, it makes sense. I.e. e.g. you can explain how alcohol influences your first person experience, but you can't experience it by looking at the science of how alcohol works in the brain. How alcohol works for you first person, you only experience first person.
How you then believe that fits in with the world as such, depends on what you subjectively believe that the world is as the world itself.
Or what you believe about death and all that, that is not within methodological naturalism. That is religion or philosophy or that you don't care.
Regards
Mikkel
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
I don't see how your analogy on alcohol is supposed to work.
Not seeing how it is analogous at all, actually.
I get what you say there though... you can explain what being drunk is, but to understand how it feels, you'ld have to get drunk at least once, because an equation will not be able to induce you with such sensation.
Sure, I get that.
But how does that relate to claims about wheter or not there is such a thing as a "soul" or how to define what a soul *is*?
The OP isn't asking about how "souls feel like". It's asking about what a soul is and how to determine that.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
We can study how alcohol works naturally using science, but we can only experience first person.
The soul is one of the those words which are cognitive artifacts, which can only be understood first person. Even the word "understood" is a cognitive artifact.
Take the word "understand". You can describe that using science, but you only understand it first person as an experience.
Hence non-reductive emergent property.
What is a number?
What is an electron?
What is time?
What is energy?
What is anything?
The question What is X? for any kind of X is well nigh impossible to answer definitively, is it not?
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
We can study how alcohol works naturally using science, but we can only experience first person.
The soul is one of the those words which are cognitive artifacts, which can only be understood first person. Even the word "understood" is a cognitive artifact.
Take the word "understand". You can describe that using science, but you only understand it first person as an experience.
Hence non-reductive emergent property.
But the OP is asking about what a soul *is* not about how the experience of it feels like.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
After your edit.
I don't know what the soul is! What the soul is(being), is metaphysics/ontology and what that is in positive as being or not, is unknown.
The soul is a word, some people believe in and others don't. What the soul is, as form of being, is unknown with science.
Science has limits: A few things that science does not do
Science can't do philosophy and religion as to what the soul is!
I can inform you with science, how the word "soul" works, but for its existence you can't use science.