OK Atheist here. Could a Theist define what exactly a 'soul' is?

[Taverner]

I need to know this :)

[rug]

1. You can't define this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAQE-tHjPAc&feature=related

[cleanhippie]

15. The usual nonsense given to a serious inquiry.

[rug]

18. Here'a a serious suggestion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Tiz6INF7I

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cleanhippie]

42. And one for you, too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBAay9nPtOU

[rug]

43. Much better than your first choice.

[rrneck]

2. Ask ten people,

you'll get twelve answers.

[DeSwiss]

3. Here ya go......

This is ---------------> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otF5XwyVy2M&feature=related">Soul!

;)

[Starry Messenger]

22. I'd convert to the Holy Church of JB.

:D

[ironbark]

4. Agnostic speculation...no "exact definition".

My dear old Mum passed away a few months back.
And at her funeral and wake out came the photos and stories and recollections.
A young girl at a farm on a tricycle that I never knew.
A beautiful young woman that my father met.
A matronly Mum and Grandmother with a wicked sense of humour.

She believed in souls and heaven….....I don’t know.

It set me to wondering >if< someone/something some ‘soul’ goes on…what does it reflect?...Child? Young woman? Grandmother?.........or distilled essence of all?

They tell me that the energy that is ‘matter’ cannot be destroyed but only released and transformed.

I find it difficult to believe that the energy/ intelligence/ consciousness/ love/ laughter/ soul(?) that is a human can be destroyed.

If Mum was right…..I/we will find out.
If she was wrong…..I/we will never know.

;-)

[ZombieHorde]

5. A great marketing ploy. nt

[struggle4progress]

6. Without making reference to any particular religious beliefs, I think one can still

make some sense of this notion, simply by asking questions such as:

Who am I really? Am I who I want to be? Who should I be? Do I want to be who I should be? How do I lie to myself about who I am? How do I make excuses to myself for being other than I should be? What do I currently do that blinds me to who I am or to who I should be? How does my past, or the continuing consequences of my past, limit my ability to think clearly about who I am and who I should be? How do my actions differ from my intents? How can I change myself?

Notions like soul frequently seem to aim at such questions

[trotsky]

7. Add to your questions list:

How can the essence of someone's "soul" - their personality - change with a traumatic brain injury? And which personality will they have when they go to heaven? What if their pre-injury personality was kind and gentle, and their post-injury one brutal an unkind?

So many questions for those who believe in souls.

[GliderGuider]

8. Is someone's personality their essence?

I don't happen to think so. For me the personality is the current expression of a deeper nature, like the froth on the ocean not being the ocean.

For example, let's talk about moods. The same person can become angry or romantic or clinical or withdrawn, sometimes for extended periods of time. Does their "personality" and thus their essence change as a result? If a person has a traumatic injury causing a personality change, but then later heals and reverts to a previous personality, has their essence changed? If my reactions, beliefs and behaviour change as I age, do I become different people as a result? Does my personality really express the totality of my essence as a human being? I don't think so, but hey, that's just me.

[trotsky]

16. Emotions are different than personality.

One's soul is purported to be one's identity - the thing that makes you, you. "Personality" doesn't quite encompass the same entirety, but it comes close enough to describe the kind of person you are. Which is what the soul is supposed to control.

[GliderGuider]

27. Who says the soul is supposed to control the kind of person you are?

That's one definition of soul. Another is that the soul is simply your essential self. That simply begs the question, I suppose, but it is an alternative definition.

All of this is really about inquiring into the question, "Who am I?" One can approach that question from any point of view one wishes of course, but I think it's good to keep in mind that the question for most people is "Who am I?", not "What am I?" That distinction takes the search for answers out of the realm of the purely reductionist, and out onto much thinner ice. Scientist (esp. neuroscientists) prefer to reframe the question as the latter, because that permits "objective" investigation.

IMO, "It's your personality" is an attempt to answer the question "What am I?"

[trotsky]

28. Your "essential self" doesn't guide or form your personality?

I must admit, that's an interesting spin on things.

Clearly based on just about every conversation I've tried to have about a "soul," the operative definition for most people who believe they exist is, "something that is just ill-defined enough that I can avoid answering any questions about it." Strange how that mirrors the typical definition of "god."

[GliderGuider]

29. Nope.

My personality is one of the components of my essential self, but isn't "created by it". My personality changes over time, but my essential self endures. The Kuwaiti philosopher A. H. Almaas has developed a concept he calls "Personal Essence" that I find useful in thinking about this.

Edited to add:

Actually, to develop the thought fully, the concepts of personality, soul, essential self, personal essence or whatever you want to call it are just an illusion. "I" do not exist except as a convenient self-referential fiction, a construct necessary for living in a physical universe. "I" don't really think "I" exist at all. That's not to say that there is no general agreement about an "I" that exists, an agreement that in some way causes it to exist, but that it's not "real" an any fundamental sense.

That probably doesn't seem like a useful idea to you, but it's the key to how "I" see reality.

[trotsky]

32. So your "essential self" doesn't change, but it doesn't manifest itself either.

You have confirmed the working definition I gave. Thanks. BTW, enjoy solipsism.

[GliderGuider]

33. Nondualism isn't solipsism, though they look similar

I'm a nondualist, not just a solipsist. Here's an explication of the distinction:

Nondualism versus solipsism

Nondualism superficially resembles solipsism, but from a nondual perspective solipsism mistakenly fails to consider subjectivity itself. Upon careful examination of the referent of "I," i.e. one's status as a separate observer of the perceptual field, one finds that one must be in as much doubt about it, too, as solipsists are about the existence of other minds and the rest of "the external world." (One way to see this is to consider that, due to the conundrum posed by one's own subjectivity becoming a perceptual object to itself, there is no way to validate one's "self-existence" except through the eyes of others—the independent existence of which is already solipsistically suspect!) Nondualism ultimately suggests that the referent of "I" is in fact an artificial construct (merely the border separating "inner" from "outer," in a sense), the transcendence of which constitutes enlightenment.

In short, to a solipsist, "I" exists while to a nondualist "I" is just as much an illusion as anything the "I" perceives.

[trotsky]

34. Uh-huh.

Have fun! Go easy on the kleenex.

[GliderGuider]

35. "You" too!

:evilgrin:

[struggle4progress]

10. There is a pleasant old hasidic parable on such questions, according to which

a rabbi, asked whether the body or the spirit will be judged, answered: There was a blind man. And there was a lame man. And they heard about a good orchard and desired some fruit. But since the one who could walk could not see and the one who could see could not walk, the blind man took the lame man on his shoulders. And the one told the other where to walk. So they came to the orchard and took fruit. Now, the king who owned the orchard learned about the theft and had them brought to him. And they defended themselves. The blind man said: <\i>But how could I even find your orchard to steal fruit? I can't see! And the lame man said: <\i>But how could I even get to your orchard to steal fruit? I can't walk! And the king understood. So he sat the lame man back upon the blind man's shoulders and judged them together

[trotsky]

17. Oh that's just so deep.

Or not. Unless you are suggesting that every person with a brain injury also has MPD.

So you don't really have any answers, as I suspected.

[struggle4progress]

19. I think the word I used was "pleasant" rather than "deep"

It seems a charming and harmless little parable to me and on-point in response to your comment

Perhaps that's what confused you :)

[darkstar3]

20. Well, I read it twice, and I can safely say I see no answer in your parable

to trotsky's questions, or indeed to any questions about the existence or nature of a soul. It simply starts with the premise that the soul exists and is separate from the body, but doesn't bother to explain that or anything else outside of some nebulous judgment.

[trotsky]

25. Charming and harmless, yes.

Providing a silly superficial "answer" rather than addressing the real problems with a "soul," also yes.

Perhaps the question is just too difficult.

[Silent3]

9. A lot of "should" in that post.

Do I want to be who I should be?

Should be according to what or whom? In respect to fulfilling what purpose? If you propose some purpose as an answer, what is the context of that purpose?

[GliderGuider]

11. That struck me as well.

One of the big problems people have in life is getting past the "should and shouldn't", and arriving at the point of their own authenticity. If I accept a value as my own there is no "should" attached to enforce compliance, it simply becomes my nature.

IMO a completely realized Self is the soul.

[struggle4progress]

12. I suppose you're free to regard such questions as meaningless, if you like. But the evidence

suggests that many people over a substantial bit of history have not regarded such questions as meaningless: one can, for example, find ancient Egyptian murals depicting gods "weighing" human lives when the humans have finished living, so the notion that there are some "shoulds" has a long pedigree

[GliderGuider]

13. I didn't read that as a suggestion that they were meaningless

Just that "should" leaves the question of context wide open. There are cultural "shoulds", parental "shoulds", legal "shoulds", social "shoulds", religious "shoulds" etc. Basically anyone who has an interest in controlling my behaviour will try to get me to buy into their list of "shoulds".

The idea makes this old hippy anarchist atheist vaguely uncomfortable.

[Silent3]

14. Not meaningless, but, as GG said, very open to interpretation.

I'd further add "should" is always highly debatable, especially if there's an implicit assumption of some sort of Ultimate Authority of Should. Even belief in a deity doesn't automatically lead to a deity which as definitive rules of conduct or particular goals it wants individuals to achieve.

[onager]

38. That's from the Papyrus of Ani. Not quite the same thing.

Allegedly taken from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, as every stupid, gullible visitor to Egypt knows, who was dumb enough to buy one of these overpriced papyrus artworks.

I still need to get mine framed.

According to some sources, the papyrus was based on wall carvings, but eventually became a piece of art often commissioned by middle-class Egyptians of A Certain Age - i.e., about to have personal knowledge of the afterlife. e.g., the Ani who allegedly commissioned this one was a scribe during the 19th dynasty of the New Kingdom, or the 13th century BCE.

Reproduced below so you can follow along...

1. The newly dead person could skip the whole "weighing" thing. Those folks at the top, holding the ankhs, could vote the Recently Croaked straight into the afterlife.

Those are gods. Some sources say the major Egyptian gods - Isis, Nut, and that gang. An AEP (Actual Egyptian Person) told me they were not Major Gods, but just the individual gods of Egyptian cities.

Some gods are holding their ankhs up. That meant - thumbs up, welcome to the Afterlife! Ankhs not visible = thumbs down, yank out the Dearly Departed's heart and weigh it.

Sometimes there are 12 voting gods, sometimes 14, but always an even number. This ensured frequent tie votes, as shown on the papyrus. Stupid gods...to quote the noted theologian Homer Simpson.

2. That charming jackal-headed fellow is Anubis, the Temporary Zombie's personal guide through the antechamber of the Afterlife.

Anubis takes the Ex-Person to a scale. On top of the scale is Ma'at, goddess of justice, light, etc. etc, with a feather coming out of her head. Supervising the whole business is Thoth, the ibis-headed god of writing, government bureaucracy, etc. etc.

3. The heart of the Unliving Person is removed and put on one side of the scale. Anubis borrows a feather from Ma'at and puts it on the other side.

4. If the heart weighs more than the feather, Ammut is standing by. She's the critter with the head of a crocodile, body of a lion, and butt of a hippopotamus. Ammut first eats the heart, then the rest of Dearly Departed.

Uh-oh. Sorry, Recently Gone Tango-Uniform Person - do not pass Go, do not enter Afterlife.

5. If the heart and feather balance, Dearly Departed gets to personally meet the god Horus, the hawk-headed guy. But the best was yet to come! Taking over from Anubis, Horus escorts the D.D. into the presence of that green-skinned dude - Osiris, god of the Afterlife. Accompanied by a couple of other major Egyptian theo-celebrities, the goddesses Isis and Nephthys.

Bonus Irrelevant Trivia - the Old Gods live on! When a modern Egyptian Mom is trying to feed a cranky baby, she will hold the food up to its mouth and say : "Mut-mut-mut..." That's a direct reference to ol' heart-chomping Ammut, according to one of my favorite Actual Egyptian People.

[dimbear]

39. Bonus trivia continued........

The name Isadore, and of course Isadora, both mean lover of Isis.

Lovely name.

[onager]

44. Thanks! A couple more...

1. Most cat lovers know the ancient Egyptians had a cat goddess, Bast (also the goddess of sensual pleasure). Like most gods, she had quite a few different names.

According to my favorite Egyptian tour guide, one of those names translated to something like "funny face." The ancients would hold up statues of a grinning Bast to distract a woman going thru childbirth. And they also drug out the smilin' Bast statues a little while later, to distract the happy result of the childbirth when he or she started teething.

(My favorite Egyptian tour guide was a woman named Zahraa. Since her name means "flower" in Arabic, she used the name "Rose" for her Western customers. She had a degree in Egyptian history and spoke 4 languages. A fascinating person.)

2. One of my favorite places in Alexandria was the amazing Kom El Shoqafa catacombs. That's a huge underground Roman burial complex from about the 2d Century CE.

It was built at a time when the major religions in Egypt were "melting together," so it randomly mixes ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman religious symbology.

An incredibly weird place. A mural of Osiris preparing the dead is painted right above another mural of Persephone being dragged off to Hades.

Statues of the jackal-headed Egyptian god Anubis and the crocodile-headed god Sobek flank a burial chamber. But they are dressed as Roman soldiers, complete with armor and swords.

In one corner is a pile of randomly mixed human and horse bones - according to the experts, formerly a shrine to the Greek goddess Nemesis. Among other things, she was the patron of horse-racing and jockeys.

An Egyptian told me the human bones were those of jockeys who lost too many races. But I haven't checked that with Dr. Zahi Hawass yet.

There's a legend in Alexandria about a jockey who was badly hurt in a race, and told he would never race - or even walk - again. But he did heal and won the first race he entered after being injured. Since he had very long odds bet against him, he won a tremenous amount of money and used most of it building a new temple to Nemesis in Alexandria.

Being a Grumpy Atheist, I have to note that I can turn on the TV just about any Sunday morning and hear the same story. Only it ends with a new temple being built to Jesus instead of Nemesis.

[trotsky]

40. "Recently Gone Tango-Uniform Person"

At first I was like :wtf:

And then I was all :rofl:

[struggle4progress]

41. The theme is not only known from that one text

The Discovery of the Valley of the Mummies
... The decorative scenes show an abbreviated form of the judgement of the dead. In these scenes we see the god Osiris on his throne while Anubis weighs the heart of the dead against the feather of Maat. Meanwhile, Toth records the result of the weighing process and reports it to Osiris ... http://guardians.net/hawass/mummies.htm

The Village of Dayr Al-Madina
... At the northern end of the village, a number of small temples were built in the New Kingdom. Some of these were replaced in Ptolemaic times, and indeed, there is a well-preserved example of a temple from that period still standing ... On the left wall, Ma’at leads a figure of the deceased king toward the hall of judgment. Above him, forty-two judges sit ready to render their decision on his fate. Anubis and Horus weigh the heart of the deceased on a balance against the feather of Ma’at, and ibis-headed Thoth stands nearby, recording the result. A lion-hippopotamuscrocodile figure called Ammit sits nearby, ready to devour the heart of the unjust. At the far right, Osiris sits on his throne ... http://www.luxoregypt.org/English/historical_sites/MEMORIAL_TEMPLES/Pages/TheVillageofDayrAl-Madina.aspx

[dimbear]

21. Atheists and theist are in complete agreement,

it is what is left after the physical body is removed. Like computing profit by removing expenses from income. The only disagreement is whether what's left is anything at all.

[darkstar3]

23. Then that wouldn't be complete agreement. n/t

[LAGC]

24. There was a really fascinating documentary on the Science Channel the other day...

It was all about Consciousness and what makes you, YOU.

They had some interesting brain experiments that showed that our brain reacts a certain way and makes a decision for us a full 6 seconds before we actually consciously decide something! They were only using the example of simple things like deciding whether to raise your right or left hand, but the evidence was conclusive, the brain KNEW which way you were going to decide before you even made the choice! While it didn't rule out "free will" outright (after all, our brain largely just reflects what we consciously agree to anyway) it did strongly suggest that our consciousness is the direct result of brain activity, and once our physical brains go, so goes our "soul."

Science still has a lot to teach us in regards to explanations of how the brain-and-mind interact, I think we'll be hearing a lot more from those lines of research in the coming decades ahead.

[trotsky]

26. It has been postulated for some time now...

that our "consciousness" is merely the rationalization of our subconscious actions. We don't decide to do something, we convince ourselves that we actually made the decision. :) Interesting science being done in that area, like the experiment you mention.

[dmallind]

30. alll that shows is that "you" are determined by brain activity

Which is quite the materialist point of view. The brain knows what we are going to do for the laughingly obvious reason that the brain decides what we are going to do, because the brain IS "we". The time lag does not show a distinction between brain and person, but instead demonstrates a rather well known fact that muscles and tendons are slower than synapses and neurons that send signals to them in the first place.

Our brain doesn't reflect what we consciously agree to. Our brain does the agreeing. With itself.

Curious - what do you see as the difference between brain and mind?

[trotsky]

36. But that was the weird part.

The action - the muscles and tendons moving - preceded the "conscious" decision to move. At least with the experiment I read about, not sure if it's the same one here. I know it wasn't 6 seconds between the events, more like .5 seconds, but still a consistent delay between action and the conscious decision to act.

[Jim__]

31. "... our brain reacts a certain way and makes a decision for us a full 6 seconds before we ...

... actually consciously decide something!"

A full 6 seconds? Really? And they were testing making a decision whether to raise your right or left hand? It sounds like an awfully long time before your consciousness knows what you're going to do. It seems like you could have easily raised and lowered you hand 6 times within that time-frame.