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Most Religions Believe In An Afterlife

SalixIncendium

अहं ब्रह्मास्मि
Staff member
Premium Member
We can see in our daily lives that a mother conceives and the child becomes a living being. We also see that at a certain point, the body becomes dead. So, there is something that comes into the fetus and something that goes out of the body. This is this something I call the soul.
Only if one's perspective is from the inside out. There is the perspective that this "something" (which isn't really a 'thing') is eternal and the fetus/body/soul appears upon that.
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
Meanwhile, any excuse for a bit of Shakespeare;

C86CB3E8-3FA4-43FD-B928-8B92D6D713C6.jpeg
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
Except that you did. Here's the posting sequence:
I said: That can never be established since the soul is a mystery.

No, I never said that they were bare claims with nothing to show for it. You were the one who said that.
==> so you pretty much said there that there is nothing to show for it, other then bare claims in scriptures, which are to be "just believed". The only way to establish belief in it, is believing the claims in scripture. That's pretty much literally what you said in that exchange.
Yes, that is basically what I said, and then I said "No, there is nothing to talk about unless you believe what it says in scriptures."

You consider scriptures to be bare claims but I do not consider them to be bare claims, so that is the issue at hand.
Do you wish to take it back? If yes, fine. But then I will just repeat my question: how do you establish that there is such a thing as a soul? Last time you answered that it can't be established.
I am not taking any of it back. There is no way to establish that there is such a thing as a soul because the soul is a mystery of God.
I understand. You pretend "personal" justification is the same as proper justification.
If you can't show me, then, as I said, you have nothing to show.
My personal justification is proper to me.
What is proper to me is not proper to you and vice versa. You cannot determine what is proper for me or anyone else, even of you think you can.
 

cataway

Well-Known Member
The soul may be considered an appearance in me, but I am not a soul.
Strong's Concordance
nephesh: a soul, living being, life, self, person, desire, passion, appetite, emotion
Original Word: נֶפֶשׁ
Part of Speech: Noun Feminine
Transliteration: nephesh
Phonetic Spelling: (neh'-fesh)
Definition: a soul, living being, life, self, person, desire, passion, appetite, emotion
 

SalixIncendium

अहं ब्रह्मास्मि
Staff member
Premium Member
Strong's Concordance
nephesh: a soul, living being, life, self, person, desire, passion, appetite, emotion
Original Word: נֶפֶשׁ
Part of Speech: Noun Feminine
Transliteration: nephesh
Phonetic Spelling: (neh'-fesh)
Definition: a soul, living being, life, self, person, desire, passion, appetite, emotion
And as I said above, all of these appear in me.
 

Pawpatrol

Active Member
yes ,for now you are a living soul , some day you should expect to die ,which would make you a dead soul . comparing life of a body as if it were a lit candle, when the flame is snuffed out where did the flame go ?? no were ,its just gone .
The soul doesn't die. It's taken away.
 

Balthazzar

N. Germanic Descent
After life expectation, as I understood it most of my life equated to "I'm not gonna worry about it. Today is more important than what might come after." At 53, I'm like ok ... this sucks. My view of the afterlife is changing. I require hope. Life hasn't been easy. I've allowed too many years to pass without receiving that which I've been working for, which amounts to a better life, better relationships, and greater understanding of truth.

But, alas ... in my struggle comes a new hope and one not so easy to accept. What do I do? I live as I aspire something to be as if it already is, yet being absent from that which I require for myself. Whether there's life after death for me is still a moot point, but I do need that hope if only to continue as I need to continue - to be that for myself now and those I intend to impress myself upon...one day, someday, this life, next life ...

I don't know. Maybe all of these, or maybe none if nothing ever manifests as I intend in this life, which necessitates my hope for it to manifest in another.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I could show you MY justification but it would not be justification for YOU. Do you understand what I am saying?
Yes. He's a critical thinker. If you have your own argument that begins with the same evidence but comes to a different conclusion about it and which you accept as justification of your conclusion, it means that the reasoning of at least one you is fallacious.

He uses the academic standards for valid reasoning, that is, he uses the same rules of inference in an effort to avoid making the same logical fallacies. If your reasoning leads you to believe things not supported by the evidence you cite, then it's what I have called rogue logic in the past. The following are all from posts I left on RF:
  1. Why "God does not exist" is a positive claim

    There are all kinds of rogue logics out there that allow people to justify whatever conclusion they prefer, but one set of rules for generating sound conclusions with a lot...
  2. What is Evidence?

    One is free to use whatever rogue logic he chooses to connect that evidence to his conclusion, but if it isn't valid (fallacy-free) logic, the conclusion has no truth value.
  3. How Much Do You Doubt God's Existence?

    ...evidence comes from academia. Those rules are tried and true. They work. You don't have to understand or apply that yourself, but if you use rogue "logic," you've gone off the reason reservation and your conclusions have no value to the critical thinker. And those ideas have no practical...
  4. Understanding the holy scriptures is impossible unless God gives you the interpretation

    ...that works. There is only one method that generates demonstrably correct ideas. There's no reason to believe the messengers. This is where rogue methods for evaluating evidence fail one. If one looks at the messenger's words and deeds and they appear human, then he has no reason to believe...
Why do you think that going to a spiritual world after death is full of difficulties, simply because the nature of the spiritual world is unknown to us?
We know of no spiritual world or spirits. We could just as well say that gremlins are in Narnia and be on no more or less firm a footing than you are now: pure, unevidenced speculation about poorly defined and never observed entities.
 

Copernicus

Industrial Strength Linguist
Why do you think the only solution is to believe in reincarnation?
I don't think reincarnation is the only solution but I have yet to find another solution that makes sense. The basic problem with the Abrahamic view is that where the souls arise and where they go after death, is remains unclear and it is full of difficulties.

I do not think that reincarnation gives you any better solution than that souls are created and assigned to bodies at birth or some stage of a pregnancy. The human population has expanded exponentially over the millennia, so were all of those souls just floating around for millennia and waiting for enough host bodies to occupy?

The real question is whether there is such a thing as an immaterial soul that somehow gets attached to a physical lifeform. A more logical view, based on the evidence of how mental faculties work, is that brains developing in fetuses create all the mental faculties that living human beings have. We can conclude that, because we observe how physical changes to brains alter those faculties. What you are thinking of as a "soul" is just an effect of physical brain activity. Therefore, when brain activity stops, the mind/soul stops existing as well.
 
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Trailblazer

Veteran Member
I do not think that reincarnation gives you any better solution than that souls are created and assigned to bodies at birth or some stage of a pregnancy. The human population has expanded exponentially over the millennia, so were all of those souls just floating around for millennia and waiting for enough host bodies to occupy?
I do not know why think that all these souls would be floating around, disembodied? I believe that the soul will have a new body, a spiritual body, after the physical body dies and the soul crosses over to the spiritual world.
“The world beyond is as different from this world as this world is different from that of the child while still in the womb of its mother. When the soul attaineth the Presence of God, it will assume the form that best befitteth its immortality and is worthy of its celestial habitation.”
(Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 157)

“The answer to the third question is this, that in the other world the human reality doth not assume a physical form, rather doth it take on a heavenly form, made up of elements of that heavenly realm.”
(Selections From the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 194)
The real question is whether there is such a thing as an immaterial soul that somehow gets attached to a physical lifeform. A more logical view, based on the evidence of how mental faculties work, is that brains developing in fetuses create all the mental faculties that living human beings have. We can conclude that, because we observe how physical changes to brains alter those faculties. What you are thinking of as a "soul" is just an effect of physical brain activity. Therefore, when brain activity stops, the mind/soul stops existing as well.
I agree that brains developing in fetuses create all the mental faculties that living human beings have.but that does not mean that what I am thinking of as a "soul" is just an effect of physical brain activity.
 
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