What is a soul? Can it die?

[Tathagata]

Do you think that souls exist? We exist, so we are made of something. But is our existence tied to this body, or are we something separate, something that will survive our physical deaths?

Maybe the only way for the soul to be immortal is if the soul is composed of some kind of matter and energy that cannot be broken down. Say, a special kind of particle whose parts can't be separated. If it can be broken down, then this creates some interesting possibilities. If our soul is broken down, what happens to the separate pieces that have broken off? Just as a figurative example, say that our souls are like houses built of 100 pieces of lego. If we disassemble them, would we cease to exist? What if we just take out 1 piece? What if each piece would be used to build a different house in 100 different cities across the world. Would there be 100 of 'us'? Will we cease to exist one day, or are we immortal?

A soul is supposed to be irreducible. If it isn't then it's no different than our current bodies without a soul.

I think that if we do have souls that they are somewhere in our brains lol. Because, people can lose other body parts and still be themselves. But if their brains are damaged enough then they may change into a kind of vegetative state. One would wonder if their souls had been damaged, because they no longer seem to really 'be there', but instead would be unresponsive to any stimulai and just stare at a wall all day. If their soul was still there, would it be aware of the situation? Or would it just be conscious in a very basic way, without any thoughts or memories at all? If we do have souls, then why don't we remember anything before we were born? Are our souls only conscious when combined with a brain, and a sufficiently advanced one at that? Do worms have souls? Or are they more like little machines that are 'living' out their lives according to their genes which act as a kind of computer program?

This post would indicate that souls probably don't exist, lol.

 

[Copernicus]

Our personality is stored in our brain, made of up interconnections. If we suffer a stroke or some other head injury, our personality can change. Surgery and medication can change one's personality as well. Our memories are also stored as information in our brain. If we suffer a certain injury, our memories can be erased. This seems to me to invalidate the concept that our body is just some sort of puppet that our soul controls, because changes to our body can change our "soul". If our body governs our personality and our memories, what is left for the soul to govern?

I think that the mistake in reasoning here is to jump to the conclusion that the soul is something that can exist independently of memories and personality. Dualism is a very natural conclusion to jump to, but all the evidence points to the fact that brains fully determine minds.

Many seem to view the soul, as it leaves the body upon death, as some sort of "snapshot" of who they are as a person at that time. But what if someone is old and has severe Alzheimer's? What if someone is in a vegetative state? The totality of a person when they are 30 is drastically different than the totality of that same person when they are 60. Does the soul have some backup copies so that when your brain, personality, and memories begin to rot away, it can load a copy of you when you were 30?

Very well said. As someone who has lived past 60, I heartily concur with your point. And I have seen people change into drastically different people at the end of life. My own mother came to forget my name at the end of her life. Yet she still remembered that I was one of her children. We are constantly dying and renewing ourselves. Memory is what ties together all of the different people that we become. She lost many of those connections at the end, but that did not change who she was.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Some here are suggesting the soul is in some way part of the mind... it is not.
It is our essence of life and the essence of God.
We neither think with nor remember with our soul.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

why do you think we have no power over our spirit/soul?

I think our spirit holds our character / attitude / who we are... I think we control that.

We have no power over our soul because it is of God.

Like God Our soul Is Pure. It contains nothing of who we are as men. It is the spark that gives us life and make our spiritual lives possible.

It is our mind (brain) that holds our character/ attitude/ who we are, and we do not even control that.

 

[Penumbra]

Some here are suggesting the soul is in some way part of the mind... it is not.
It is our essence of life and the essence of God.
We neither think with nor remember with our soul.

So do you believe every soul is identical? A spark of life?

Do living single-celled organisms have souls?

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

So do you believe every soul is identical? A spark of life?

Do living single-celled organisms have souls?

All souls start equal, They are undoubtedly effected in some way by our lives, in as much as they carry the imprint of our sins and spiritual achievements to God.
A Further question is whether a soul has an seperate Identify. The problem there is what we see as the meaning of Identity. It is clearly all that survives our death.

I believe all animals have souls, only God knows how far down the chain of life this goes. As a soul is not Dependant on the ability to reason or think, it may even reside in all life.

 

[Penumbra]

All souls start equal, They are undoubtedly effected in some way by our lives, in as much as they carry the imprint of our sins and spiritual achievements to God.
A Further question is whether a soul has an seperate Identify. The problem there is what we see as the meaning of Identity. It is clearly all that survives our death.

I believe all animals have souls, only God knows how far down the chain of life this goes. As a soul is not Dependant on the ability to reason or think, it may even reside in all life.

Based on your anglican label and your mention of surviving death, I assume you believe in an afterlife. Correct me if I'm wrong.

That being the case, if a soul does not contain a personality or memories, then "who" experiences an afterlife when that person dies? Your question of identity is an important one.

 

[Dunemeister]

The church originally held to a more first-century Jewish position that the soul was what animated the body -- i.e., "life." People, on this view, are not immortal, but immortality is conferred on the faithful. Later, as the composition of the church became more Greek than Jewish, the Greek notion of soul came to be seen as a way of underpinning the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. The "soul" was thus reconceived as that immaterial, immortal aspect of a person that survives death and provides continuity between the body that dies and the body that rises at the eschaton. Later, it became identified with what scripture calls "the image of God." Although that final move is extremely problematic, the first move (providing the metaphysical basis for resurrection) has some merit.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Based on your anglican label and your mention of surviving death, I assume you believe in an afterlife. Correct me if I'm wrong.

That being the case, if a soul does not contain a personality or memories, then "who" experiences an afterlife when that person dies? Your question of identity is an important one.

My Anglican Beliefs are qualified by my heretical ones.

I do not believe that we are resurrected in body. ( I find that unlikely in the extreme)

I have explained my views on this, fully, in the past..
However in a nut-shell...
Our souls come from and return to God on death.
Sin can not survive in Gods presence, so sin is shorne from our souls leaving them pure.

I doubt we now have any understanding of what will remain of "US" as we return to Gods Essence. We may or may not have any concept of "self".

The souls of a sinful person will have had Little opportunity to Grow during their life, and will have been heavily scarred in the process. There will be little indeed left of them after their sins are shorne away.

To Live in God may mean exactly that. To share in all that he is.
I would find that prospect far preferable to another physical life for eternity.

 

[Penumbra]

My Anglican Beliefs are qualified by my heretical ones.

I do not believe that we are resurrected in body. ( I find that unlikely in the extreme)

I have explained my views on this, fully, in the past..
However in a nut-shell...
Our souls come from and return to God on death.
Sin can not survive in Gods presence, so sin is shorne from our souls leaving them pure.

I doubt we now have any understanding of what will remain of "US" as we return to Gods Essence. We may or may not have any concept of "self".

The souls of a sinful person will have had Little opportunity to Grow during their life, and will have been heavily scarred in the process. There will be little indeed left of them after their sins are shorne away.

To Live in God may mean exactly that. To share in all that he is.
I would find that prospect far preferable to another physical life for eternity.

So it's kind of a monist or panentheist belief. Everything returns to the same god-consciousness.

 

[839311]

The "soul" was thus reconceived as that immaterial, immortal aspect of a person that survives death and provides continuity between the body that dies and the body that rises at the eschaton.

I like this idea. I think that if there is an all-powerful, good god, that he would be efficient. Efficiency is a key attribute I associate with such a god, so created these souls, assuming they are created in an efficient way, seems reasonable to me. On the other hand, consider the planet Jupiter. A giant, lifeless world, whose matter and energy is seemingly being wasted. Why is it being wasted? Or, is it somehow being used, without us knowing? Perhaps the gods are just taking their time, looking at the situation from the perspective that no life exists on Jupiter now, but one day every last particle of the planet will be used for the purposes of life.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

So it's kind of a monist or panentheist belief. Everything returns to the same god-consciousness.

That is possible.... No one has ever returned to prove differently.

I would call it more an Expectation than a belief.
I hold that true for all end of life beliefs.

If I am wrong, and I am unlikely to be right in detail, I will of course accept the truth, as will we all.

None of this changes my view, that we should live our lives as Jesus taught us.
We should not be looking to see what is in the cookie jar waiting for us.

 

[Breathe]

Do you think that souls exist?

I do.

But is our existence tied to this body, or are we something separate, something that will survive our physical deaths?

The latter.


I'm hesitant to answer the title: can it die?
I don't know. I don't think it can.
However, I don't believe in eternal hell at all. I would think that if there was an eternal hell, then I would imagine that the soul could be destroyed.

If we do have souls, then why don't we remember anything before we were born?

I can't remember anything from when I was 2, I can't recall anything off hand from when I was younger than 8, nor a large majority of my life through school. I'm 23 years old. Does that mean I did not exist until I got to a certain age?

I feel it is more physical limitations than anything: the mind cannot recall the actions of the soul, because the mind is physical. It records actions down from this life the same way we are not born with physical characteristics from past lives. If we write on a board, wipe it clean, and then write again, is it the first time the board has been written upon, or has the board been cleared in order to let new things be written upon it?

The story goes that when Buddha was enlightened, he remembered all of his past lives.


That's just my $0.02, anyway.

 

[839311]

I feel it is more physical limitations than anything: the mind cannot recall the actions of the soul, because the mind is physical. It records actions down from this life the same way we are not born with physical characteristics from past lives. If we write on a board, wipe it clean, and then write again, is it the first time the board has been written upon, or has the board been cleared in order to let new things be written upon it?

The story goes that when Buddha was enlightened, he remembered all of his past lives.

This got me thinking about the soul, and what qualities it could possess. Perhaps the soul has emotions, but not memories. This would explain why we don't remember anything before we were born, or even in our very early years. The soul could just float around after our deaths, being able to feel, and perhaps being able to make choices intuitively, or naturally, based on its instincts. What those instincts could be, I don't know. Perhaps our experience in physical bodies could shape the nature of our souls. For instance, the souls of hateful people would be affected in a way which would make them more evil. So, that soul would float around and maybe zap random passersby with negative energy. While the soul of a good person would float around and taser random passersby with good energy. Sad souls might just float around for eons in a state of misery - an unsettling thought indeed.

 

[YmirGF]

This got me thinking about the soul, and what qualities it could possess. Perhaps the soul has emotions, but not memories. This would explain why we don't remember anything before we were born, or even in our very early years. The soul could just float around after our deaths, being able to feel, and perhaps being able to make choices intuitively, or naturally, based on its instincts. What those instincts could be, I don't know. Perhaps our experience in physical bodies could shape the nature of our souls. For instance, the souls of hateful people would be affected in a way which would make them more evil. So, that soul would float around and maybe zap random passersby with negative energy. While the soul of a good person would float around and taser random passersby with good energy. Sad souls might just float around for eons in a state of misery - an unsettling thought indeed.

 

[839311]

:slap:

 

[MerryAtheist]

Greetings, All. This is my first post (I hope I spell everything correctly).

I have heard some in the Roman Catholic tradition describe the soul as a spiritual entity connected to but not part of our physical selves, that supplies our free will. Without it, we would be subject to determinism, mere automatons following the dictates of chemical reactions and electrical impulses.

They make it sound like a bad thing.

Without Free Will, so goes the argument, humanity would ultimately not be responsible for it's sins, and the Dogma of Original Sin would lose much of its theological force, and the sacrifice of Jesus would in turn become an empty, symbolic gesture.

So the soul is a necessary component which provides a foundation for much (if not all) of Catholic Dogma.

I think that particular notion is flawed because, while it makes sense in terms of theology, there simply is no empirical proof that such is the case. Much of Christian theology rests upon the existence of this unprovable non-material entity that nevertheless (somehow) interacts with the physical world in a non-measurable way.

For the Catholic (and indeed for most Christians), it's true not because it's based in evidence and proof, but because it must be true.

Were I to accept religious belief, I would expect that its most basic beliefs be grounded in something a bit more evidence-based.

 

[budha3]

Matter can neither be created or destroyed, it only changes form. Apostle once said that we shall be changed from mortal to immortality in a twinkling of an eye;" as fast as that upon the moment of death, so we should be rejoicing, because death has been swallowed up in victory.

 

[Breathe]

Greetings, All. This is my first post (I hope I spell everything correctly).

Welcome!

 

[Copernicus]

Souls are almost always thought of as disembodied minds, but that is an absurd idea when you examine it closely. Minds are clearly grounded in physical, functioning brains. We know very well that memory is tied directly to physical structures in the brain. If those areas of the brain are damaged, one suffers permanent memory loss.

My father was once in a near fatal car accident, and he shared his hospital room with a head trauma victim from another such accident. That man appeared completely rational, except that he woke up every day with his last memory being that before the crash. His family faced having to tell him every day of his remaining life that he had been in a car crash. His productive life had effectively ended with that accident, because he could never learn anything new after that.

Those who try to define the "soul" as if it were separate from a "mind" are simply fooling themselves. It is clear that most people never make any serious distinction between the mind and the soul. What is identity without memory? What is consciousness without memory? Those who would engage in such obfuscations are seldom consistent or coherent in their attempts to escape the obvious fact that conscious existence ends with the death of a brain. Consciousness is not even a permanent state in brains while they live. We all experience a kind of death when we fall into a deep sleep every night. Anyone who has undergone the dreamless sleep of general anesthesia has known death and returned to talk about it.