Where is the soul?

[KeithH]

Nadia:

"A human IS a soul. He/she doesn't have a soul."

That would imply that the death of our bodies means the death of our souls.

 

[KeithH]

james2ko:

The bible reveals man does not have a soul--he is one. Scripture does refer to a "spirit in man"(Job 32:8; Jas 2:26; I Corinthians 2:11). This human spirit works in tandem with the brain and does not have consciousness apart from it (similar to how computer software cannot operate without hardware and vice versa)

So it seems you agree that the soul is spatially associated with the brain.

I'm not sure about your computer analogy, though. The software in a computer is, in reality, just a sequence of on/off states in the transistors inside a memory chip. The interpretation of these on/off states as "software" is a purely conceptual one.

Similarly in the brain: our personality, thoughts, emotions, etc., are really a very large, complex, and continually changing set of chemical states in our neurons and their synapses. The interpretation of these states as "personality", etc., is purely conceptual.

Finally, I find it curious that you claim that the soul gives us our personality, intellect, character, etc., but cannot do this without the brain. Well, what if the brain can do all of this without the soul? That certainly seems to be the indication from scientific experiments, which have shown that all of these things are produced by brain activity, and are seriously compromised when key parts of the brain are damaged. It would seem to me, then, that you are hanging onto the concept of the soul, but not leaving it much to do.

 

[Onlooker]

Until someone can differentiate between the soul and the body it is impossible to have a logical explanation.

I think from a science viewpoint, nothing "spiritual" added, man and beast share an organ system that conveys information via electrical and chemical method. This information system has a component that focuses attention with others (having joint or common knowledge with another=old school part definition of consciousness) [consciousness] and a component that gathers information in a reflexive manner (that is to say, no decisions are made) described as innate, survival, inborn, emotional centers and/or reptilian brain. This part would be the subconscious for man.
Man uses the neocortex to reason (what we assume to be the highest level animal on the planet) and I guess insects and reptiles are pretty much barely above amoeba and bacteria.
If you categorize every living thing as having a "common nervous system" that is expressed differently on each species and animal, then I believe you can call this a "soul", a "mind".
In summary, conscious and unconscious, can describe the "soul"/""mind" , definitely the nervous system. Once you "pith" that nervous systems' basal functions, its over, the body can keep living if you supply the oxygen to the mitochondria (the body cant help at that point).
Once you put spiritual connotations to it, it gets tricky. You have to include moral issues, level of reasoning, life after death etc.
Its the "life" after death issue that you can google and find all sorts of answers. Do animals have souls and will they get to heaven? Is it soul or spirit that get to live forever? Does the soul die or does the spirit die? If my soul is a spirit, why cant it live in heaven right now and just keep me informed?
Its easy to confuse all the above terms.
You think after all these years we would have a consensus on these terms.
Like a taxonomic rank. No confusion despite different religious orientation.
That way, when you say soul I can decide what 30 definitions of soul your talking about (lets see, he described soul domain human, kingdom adult, phylum educated, class relating to earthy objects) .
I think its time, RF starts an exhaustive taxonomic rank of all mystical and easily confused terms. Start with "good".

 

[Willamena]

Nadia:

"A human IS a soul. He/she doesn't have a soul."

That would imply that the death of our bodies means the death of our souls.

Not quite. It may also imply that "our bodies" is not what is being identified with as "human."

 

[james2ko]

So it seems you agree that the soul is spatially associated with the brain. I'm not sure about your computer analogy, though. The software in a computer is, in reality, just a sequence of on/off states in the transistors inside a memory chip. The interpretation of these on/off states as "software" is a purely conceptual one. Similarly in the brain: our personality, thoughts, emotions, etc., are really a very large, complex, and continually changing set of chemical states in our neurons and their synapses. The interpretation of these states as "personality", etc., is purely conceptual.

I wish I could give you more details but the bible does not afford us that luxury. It simply indicates this relationship exists. The computer analogy was an oversimplistic illustration of the relationship between the unseen human spirit and the physical brain. Without software (human spirit) the hardware (brain) will only operate to perform the most basic functions.

Finally, I find it curious that you claim that the soul gives us our personality, intellect, character, etc., but cannot do this without the brain. Well, what if the brain can do all of this without the soul? That certainly seems to be the indication from scientific experiments, which have shown that all of these things are produced by brain activity, and are seriously compromised when key parts of the brain are damaged. It would seem to me, then, that you are hanging onto the concept of the soul, but not leaving it much to do.

The spiritual is completely outside the realm of physical science and is therefore not subject to the "scientific method." Science cannot measure--hence cannot reveal--any life apart from matter. And so all that man can know (apart from divine revelation) is material. But what science has learned can nevertheless help immensely in understanding the composition of man.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

Until someone can differentiate between the soul and the body it is impossible to have a logical explanation. I can easily say the soul, as one member put it, is in the space between the physical body however there is really no proof and this really deduces everything down to faith. My philosophy professor once said "isn't it possible your soul is already in heaven and therefore, you really don't need to experience heaven when you die?"
I personally was confused but really I think what my professor boiled it down to is that heaven and hell are nothing more than realities beyond the reality and that the soul occupies either or on the basis of moral/religious merit. But if we experience "rivers of flowing water" and intense bliss then aren't we defining such realities basically how we view our own just in a more intense state? I believe when we reduce the soul and the experience and separate it from physical sensation I believe then we can progress into what the soul truly is.

Adam came to be a living soul. -according to Genesis 2v7.
So all of Adam was a living person.
Adam's soul was all of Adam.

Adam never existed anywhere before he was created from the dust of earth.
The invisible spirit or angelic world existed long before the visible material/physical world came into existence.

The 'river of flowing water' is part of the happy climax of Revelation 22v2.
Once Jesus ends all wickedness on earth, starting with blessing the 'sheep' like ones of Matthew 25v32, mankind will start to experience all the benefits that were originally offered to Adam at his creation which included everlasting life on a beautiful paradisaic earth.

Doesn't Revelation 21v4 sound like a description of the Garden of Eden before man's fall into sin and death?

 

[Koldo]

I usually see the Soul being regarded as the incarnated Spirit.

To say that someone came to be a living soul can also mean that it was in a former state a Spirit and that it has incarnated into an human body so it can be called a soul, or rather, a living soul.
Although the use of the word "living" before the word "soul" is rather odd given that a "dead soul" is not possible. Maybe it was written like this to imply that he acquired a living body?

The Spirit, or the incarnated Spirit ( the soul ) , is the source of our consciousness. While the brain is regarded as a tool to the Spirit. In an analogy, the Spirit uses the body just like We use our computers. The computer may be self-dependant but it needs someone to input commands into it to make it work because it doesn't have a macro that runs by itself. It is just important to say that the body actually hinders the potential of the Spirit instead of boosting it, but without the body we can not interact with this world. You may think of it as in a game, for example. While we are capable of doing a lot of kinds of movements in the real life, we are restricted to a few button possibilities when interacting in a game, but as there is no other way to interact with the game world without these buttons then we use the keyboard/controller anyway.

I believe this is the best explanation i have seen in my life.

 

[Primordial Annihilator]

Not quite. It may also imply that "our bodies" is not what is being identified with as "human."

Indeed it would also imply that our bodies and thus our souls are re incorporated and recycled back into the whole..which is of course the planet and everything in it.

A very interesting perspective.

 

[St Giordano Bruno]

The is better described as an oberservation principle where one feels they are in the center of their only private universe with a sphere of subjective reality surrounding them.

 

[Orias]

Indeed it would also imply that our bodies and thus our souls are re incorporated and recycled back into the whole..which is of course the planet and everything in it.

A very interesting perspective.

Spirit and matter revived

 

[atanu]

atanu:

It sounds almost to me as if you are interpreting common features between different individuals as a single feature that is shared by individuals. For example, if it turned out that you and I were both good at chess, I can imagine you saying that there is a single essence of chess, say, that we both have access to.

Yes. Example of ability to play chess leads to the most general category of intellect, which never dies.

The problem with your hypothesis, as I see it, is that you have to postulate the existence of some sort of universal entity that permeates three-dimensional space, like the fabled ether that was supposed to carry light. What evidence is there of such a thing, and why is it even necessary to explain our observations of human thoughts and interactions? Why is a straightforward biological model not sufficient?

No, I do not have to. Pl. read the original post. The General is never manifest except as some particular, and in this case as your and my ability to plan and think ahead.

My own hypothesis needs nothing more than 1) human brains and 2) communication between them. It is clear that both of these things exist.

If you could create even a primitive brain from a piece of matter, I could agree to you. And in a dead body, the brain does not function. The life activity, including all its particulars, is not the body that you think you are. Else, a man's dead body should be able to say "Do not bury me". :shout

...

 

[doppelganger]

The is better described as an oberservation principle where one feels they are in the center of their only private universe with a sphere of subjective reality surrounding them.

Precisely. The action is psychological and grammatical. And this is why science is often perceived by religious people as dangerous - it takes the ego out of the center of the universe. Look at how religious people responded to Galileo and how they now respond to the theory of evolution.

 

[Pegg]

Nadia:

"A human IS a soul. He/she doesn't have a soul."

That would imply that the death of our bodies means the death of our souls.

which is exactly what the bible says happens

'the soul that is sinning, it itself will die' Ezekiel 18;4

Souls can die because we are souls. Im sure you know the meaning of SOS.

 

[Hawkins]

We die naturally. We don't need God's help in order to die. We die when we just die. However, only God can make a soul die.

Whenever soul is concerned, science is futile, as science relies mainly on observations and experientations which can hardly extend fully into a realm resides out of our know 3D space. And science actually has already assumed that time-space is never limited to 3-dimension only. We are just futile about entering another spatile realm to do our research.

So whenever soul is concerned, it's almost all about 1) faith 2) experience. In terms of faith, you can describe soul as anything you like. As for experience, not many of us actually have such an experience. Even those claimed to have experienced may not actually be there experience at all but perhaps their own delusion. Even when people truly experienced, it may just be the partly perception instead of truly experienced what soul is. Alot of buddists claim that they can get out of body after some training, but from my speculation it is just a partial perception of the soul stuff.

For further venturing into the realm, you need approval. You need approval from God in order to venture into a deeper realm to do your investigation of what soul is. So if one says that he knows what soul is because he did his research by experience, he must be able to show that he actually gets the approval.

At the same time, it is a kind of confirmation that whether you truly experienced, as whenever you get the approval, you'll know that your experience is for real. And at the same time, you should know God exists.

 

[Hawkins]

Ok, something interesting. I developed a theory about what "speak in tongue" actually is.

Whenever your soul gets out of your body, the language barrier will be gone. People speaks in a very "strange" way. It is like this, when one speaks, all his audience will hear their own native tongue.

When you noticed and speculated you may wonder, who make it so? How come one speaks and all others will hear their own first language? How this mechanism works? Of course, most likely you will conclude that God exists and He made it so.

The budhists can be trained to "see" supernatural things. They call this the "heaven eye". They claim that after some training, they can get the "heaven eye" such that they can "see" supernatual things. So what is the "heaven eye"?

In my theory, whenever a certain part of your soul is made slidely away from your body, you'll be able to get such a "heaven eye" to "see" supernatural things. When some other parts of your soul gets slidely away from your body, you might experience the different type of out-of-body experience. Some budhists also claim that they can get out of their body by practising meditation. That's just an effect when you certain part/parts of your soul gets slidely away from your body. Your soul can hardly leave your body before your death. Even at your death, your soul may not be that easy to get out of your body. The relationship between your soul and body is more or less like a worm and its cocoon. When a worm tries to get out of its cocoon, it's not actually that easy as assumed, it needs to try many times and slowly in order to fully get out of its cocoon.

Now you might notice that all have been mentioned here is about how one and "visually see" supernatural things, that is, by allowing the soul be sliding away from the body, than you might partial perceive ("visually" as to your perception) what lies in the next spatial realm. How about your other senses, instead of seeing can you hearing or speaking?

Yes you can, when a certain part of your soul gets slidely away from your body, you might hear your first/native language when those supernatural entities speak.And when another part of your soul gets slidely away from your body you can speak in a way that those supernatural entities can hear their own first/native language.

Now put them up together, if one person with a slidely soul shift can speak, and another one with a slidely shift can hear. That will be the establishment of "speak in tongue". The speaker may speak either in his own first/native language or in a giberish way with his physical body, while the hearers will all hear their own first/native languages.

Now when Jews from different language all gathered together during the Pentecost, they all speak different languages and cannot understand each other. While Peter was trying to make a speech to them, but how? They all speak foreign languages, and there were thousand of them over there. It is easy, Peter spoke in his own first/native language, while all the Jews will hear their own lauguages.

Acts 2:7-11
Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”

 

[Koldo]

Your words remind me ,roughly, a lot of the Spiritism teachings, Hawkins.

The big difference here is that there is no such thing as "speak in tongue" AFAIK.

Ah, here is the part of the "Spirit's Book":

[282. How do spirits hold communication with one another?
"They see and comprehend one another. Speech is material; it is a reflex of spirit. The
universal fluid establishes a constant communication between them; it is the vehicle by which
thought is transmitted, as the air, in your world, is the vehicle of sound. This fluid constitutes
a sort of universal telegraph, which unites all worlds, and enables spirits to correspond from​

one world to another."]

And here it explain what is the "universal fluid" aforementioned:

[27. There are, then, two general elements of the universe matter and spirit?"

"Yes; and above them both is God, the Creator, Parent of all things. These three elements are
the principle of all that exists-the universal trinity. But to the material element must be added
the universal fluid which plays the part of intermediary between spirit and matter, the nature
of the latter being too gross for spirit to be able to act directly upon it. Although, from another
point of view, this fluid may be classed as forming part of the material element, it is,
nevertheless, distinguished from that element by certain special properties of its own. If it
could be classed simply and absolutely as matter, there would be no reason why spirit also
should not be classed as matter. It is intermediary between spirit and matter. It is fluid, just as
matter is matter, and is susceptible of being made, through its innumerable combinations with
matter, under the directing action of spirit, to produce the infinite variety of things of which
you know as yet but a very small portion. This universal, primitive, or elementary fluid, being
the agent employed by spirit in acting upon matter is the principle without which matter
would remain for ever in a state of division, and would never acquire the properties given to​

it by the state of ponderability."]

 

[Hawkins]

Your words remind me ,roughly, a lot of the Spiritism teachings, Hawkins.

The big difference here is that there is no such thing as "speak in tongue" AFAIK.

That statement is more "Spiritism". Read the Pentecost event to get the answer. AFAIK, the majority of Christians may disagree with your statement. "Speak in Tongue" exists, we might not know what it is though (confirmed by Paul and described in the Bible, unless you try to deny what is said in the Bible).

Moreover, I could care less about human accussations. If you have the guts, try to accuss me of Spiritism but on the Judgment Day and in front of our Lord Jesus Christ to see who is who. hehe..

 

[URAVIP2ME]

According to Acts [2vs6-11] the purpose for being able to speak in a foreign language without having to take lessons was so foreigners could hear Jesus message about the good news of God's kingdom 'in their own mother tongue' and take that information back home to spread the message about the good news of God's kingdom in their homeland.
-Matthew 24v14

 

[atanu]

A south Indian proverb says that Soul abides in dirty butthole of filthy lucre.

They are not correct of course. Actually they confused Soul with Ego.

...

 

[Koldo]

That statement is more "Spiritism". Read the Pentecost event to get the answer. AFAIK, the majority of Christians may disagree with your statement. "Speak in Tongue" exists, we might not know what it is though (confirmed by Paul and described in the Bible, unless you try to deny what is said in the Bible).

Moreover, I could care less about human accussations. If you have the guts, try to accuss me of Spiritism but on the Judgment Day and in front of our Lord Jesus Christ to see who is who. hehe..

Haha. How could this be more funny?
I actually come from a Spiritism background. And i still accept most of Spiritism teachings as plausible and logical to some extent. I don't mean to accuse you of anything! I am just saying that you remind me of things that i actually believe in.

Are you refering to this:

[Acts 2:1-6:
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.]

Please read this text about "Acts" taken from wikipedia :

Composition

Main article: Authorship of Luke-Acts

While the precise identity of the author is debated, the consensus is that this work was composed by a (Koine) Greek speaking Gentile writing for an audience of Gentile Christians. The Early Church Fathers wrote that Luke was a physician in Antioch and an adherent of the Apostle Paul. It is said to be that the author of the Gospel of Luke is the same as the author of the Acts of the Apostles.[1] Tradition holds that the text was written by Luke the companion of Paul (named in Colossians 4:14) and this traditional view of Lukan authorship is “widely held as the view which most satisfactorily explains all the data.”[2] The list of scholars maintaining authorship by Luke the physician is lengthy, and represents scholars from a wide range of theological opinion.[3] However, there is no consensus, and according to Raymond E. Brown, the current opinion concerning Lukan authorship is ‘about evenly divided’.[4]

So, in the end, "Acts" was written either by Luke or an unknown writter, not by Paul. I believe that passage of Acts may have another meaning. They could have thought they were hearing everything said in their mother tongue because they were understanding everything said, while in fact, they could be simply communicating through another manner. Anyway, the description of the event is rather vague to take a scientific approach to it.