Current Events > Is it silly to believe that humans have souls?

(+) Yeah! (+)

In a dualistic sense (separate from body, even if it may interact with body), and it survives physical death and provides an afterlife.

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So when it comes to souls and ghosts, why is it that anytime i watch a haunted places tv show or YouTube video, the ghosts in question are always period ghosts from like 1901 and before? Very rarely do you hear about a ghost of someone from 2002 wearing FUBU and listening to Limp Bizkit.

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Believing in the supernatural is absurd. Period.

Yes, given that with enough technological progress that we could theoretically revive any human body from death, the idea that there is some kind of record that leaves the body makes no sense.

The reason for our existence is still a mystery, so it's only natural for some people to ponder if done part of us continues on after doing in this world.

Of course the cocept of a soul is hard to break down scientifically....
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Umbreon posted...

The reason for our existence is still a mystery, so it's only natural for some people to ponder if done part of us continues on after doing in this world.

Of course the cocept of a soul is hard to break down scientifically....

There is no "reason" for our existence because that concept doesn't even make sense. It implies we have some sort of ultimate destiny and other oogie-boogie bullshit. If you're talking about the cause for our existence then that one has a much more scientific answer.

The concept of a soul cannot be broken down scientifically because awkward literalists turned the concept of a soul into something meta-physical when it was only meant to be taken metaphorically. There is no "soul" in the sense of some kind of literal physical conglomeration of energy that contains your consciousness and memories and remains intact after death in a neat little orb or a transparent bedsheet kind of thing.

All of this ultimately arises from miscommunication between people who speak extremely metaphorically and people who listen extremely literally.

TheVipaGTS posted...

So when it comes to souls and ghosts, why is it that anytime i watch a haunted places tv show or YouTube video, the ghosts in question are always period ghosts from like 1901 and before? Very rarely do you hear about a ghost of someone from 2002 wearing FUBU and listening to Limp Bizkit.

This.. is actually a really good point, lol.

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RoboLaserGandhi posted...

Umbreon posted...

The reason for our existence is still a mystery, so it's only natural for some people to ponder if done part of us continues on after doing in this world.

Of course the cocept of a soul is hard to break down scientifically....

There is no "reason" for our existence because that concept doesn't even make sense. It implies we have some sort of ultimate destiny and other oogie-boogie bullshit. If you're talking about the cause for our existence then that one has a much more scientific answer.

The concept of a soul cannot be broken down scientifically because awkward literalists turned the concept of a soul into something meta-physical when it was only meant to be taken metaphorically. There is no "soul" in the sense of some kind of literal physical conglomeration of energy that contains your consciousness and memories and remains intact after death in a neat little orb or a transparent bedsheet kind of thing.

All of this ultimately arises from miscommunication between people who speak extremely metaphorically and people who listen extremely literally.

i get where you're coming from, i just choose to believe because i can and want to.
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Only if you think other animals also don't have souls.
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EverDownward posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

Umbreon posted...

The reason for our existence is still a mystery, so it's only natural for some people to ponder if done part of us continues on after doing in this world.

Of course the cocept of a soul is hard to break down scientifically....

There is no "reason" for our existence because that concept doesn't even make sense. It implies we have some sort of ultimate destiny and other oogie-boogie bullshit. If you're talking about the cause for our existence then that one has a much more scientific answer.

The concept of a soul cannot be broken down scientifically because awkward literalists turned the concept of a soul into something meta-physical when it was only meant to be taken metaphorically. There is no "soul" in the sense of some kind of literal physical conglomeration of energy that contains your consciousness and memories and remains intact after death in a neat little orb or a transparent bedsheet kind of thing.

All of this ultimately arises from miscommunication between people who speak extremely metaphorically and people who listen extremely literally.

i get where you're coming from, i just choose to believe because i can and want to.

How do you choose to believe something?

humans have souls, but filthy mutts and other assorted animals don't

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

EverDownward posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

Umbreon posted...

The reason for our existence is still a mystery, so it's only natural for some people to ponder if done part of us continues on after doing in this world.

Of course the cocept of a soul is hard to break down scientifically....

There is no "reason" for our existence because that concept doesn't even make sense. It implies we have some sort of ultimate destiny and other oogie-boogie bullshit. If you're talking about the cause for our existence then that one has a much more scientific answer.

The concept of a soul cannot be broken down scientifically because awkward literalists turned the concept of a soul into something meta-physical when it was only meant to be taken metaphorically. There is no "soul" in the sense of some kind of literal physical conglomeration of energy that contains your consciousness and memories and remains intact after death in a neat little orb or a transparent bedsheet kind of thing.

All of this ultimately arises from miscommunication between people who speak extremely metaphorically and people who listen extremely literally.

i get where you're coming from, i just choose to believe because i can and want to.

How do you choose to believe something?

you just do.

i mean, there's more to it than that but those are personal reasons.
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TheVipaGTS posted...

So when it comes to souls and ghosts, why is it that anytime i watch a haunted places tv show or YouTube video, the ghosts in question are always period ghosts from like 1901 and before? Very rarely do you hear about a ghost of someone from 2002 wearing FUBU and listening to Limp Bizkit.

Yeah Ive seen that meme too.
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RoboLaserGandhi posted...

EverDownward posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

Umbreon posted...

The reason for our existence is still a mystery, so it's only natural for some people to ponder if done part of us continues on after doing in this world.

Of course the cocept of a soul is hard to break down scientifically....

There is no "reason" for our existence because that concept doesn't even make sense. It implies we have some sort of ultimate destiny and other oogie-boogie bullshit. If you're talking about the cause for our existence then that one has a much more scientific answer.

The concept of a soul cannot be broken down scientifically because awkward literalists turned the concept of a soul into something meta-physical when it was only meant to be taken metaphorically. There is no "soul" in the sense of some kind of literal physical conglomeration of energy that contains your consciousness and memories and remains intact after death in a neat little orb or a transparent bedsheet kind of thing.

All of this ultimately arises from miscommunication between people who speak extremely metaphorically and people who listen extremely literally.

i get where you're coming from, i just choose to believe because i can and want to.

How do you choose to believe something?

He's right, EverDownward. Science knows everything about the universe already. Souls obvs don't exist. Don't be silly.

I'm still debating this myself, on whether they're real, OR they are a result of man's deep seated need to find meaning in the suffering and strife of life.
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I believe that what makes up the human body is entirely physical. However, I also believe that there are experiences that cannot be necessarily understood from physical information.

Its the classic Colour Scientist thought experiment. Imagine that Mary is born in a white room and never sees anything red with her eyes. She nonetheless learns and understands everything that we scientifically know about the colour red, such as the wavelength of red light and the workings of the human eye. Does Mary learn anything new when she sees a red apple for the first time?

Id argue that yes, she learns what its like to experience red. And I think that human life is full of experiences like that. If you know the position and action of every neuron in my brain when I experience certain things, you still wont understand the experience that I had.

Again, I dont believe in anything non-physical like God or a soul, but I think that the human mind has experiences that cannot be conveyed to others through physical data.

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Fossil posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

EverDownward posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

Umbreon posted...

The reason for our existence is still a mystery, so it's only natural for some people to ponder if done part of us continues on after doing in this world.

Of course the cocept of a soul is hard to break down scientifically....

There is no "reason" for our existence because that concept doesn't even make sense. It implies we have some sort of ultimate destiny and other oogie-boogie bullshit. If you're talking about the cause for our existence then that one has a much more scientific answer.

The concept of a soul cannot be broken down scientifically because awkward literalists turned the concept of a soul into something meta-physical when it was only meant to be taken metaphorically. There is no "soul" in the sense of some kind of literal physical conglomeration of energy that contains your consciousness and memories and remains intact after death in a neat little orb or a transparent bedsheet kind of thing.

All of this ultimately arises from miscommunication between people who speak extremely metaphorically and people who listen extremely literally.

i get where you're coming from, i just choose to believe because i can and want to.

How do you choose to believe something?

He's right, EverDownward. Science knows everything about the universe already. Souls obvs don't exist. Don't be silly.

Science knows enough to rule out meta-physicality.

Don't pander to the "god of the gaps" fallacy.

I don't consider it silly. I don't personally believe it, but I don't think someone believing that to be silly.

TheVipaGTS posted...

So when it comes to souls and ghosts, why is it that anytime i watch a haunted places tv show or YouTube video, the ghosts in question are always period ghosts from like 1901 and before? Very rarely do you hear about a ghost of someone from 2002 wearing FUBU and listening to Limp Bizkit.

@TheVipaGTS , The more modern ghost are still chillin in the afterlife while the older ghosts been chillin in the afterlife for awhile so they're interesting in peaking into the future to see what technologies have been thought up. Once they see them and know of their existence, they can then use them in their afterlife as well. I think you're trolling tho. There is no way you didn't know this
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The Hebrew word we translate as "soul" is really a very different concept from our modern ideas of souls, which are taken from Greece.

The word is "nephesh", and a literal translation would be "throat". It's obviously a very physical image. Now, because both everything that you need to survive passes in through the nephesh, and most of what defines a person's character passes out through, the symbol came to represent a person's whole existence--body, mind and spirit.
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RoboLaserGandhi posted...

Science knows enough to rule out meta-physicality.

Science doesn't know shit in the grand scheme of things.

@Lost_All_Senses posted...

@TheVipaGTS , The more modern ghost are still chillin in the afterlife while the older ghosts been chillin in the afterlife for awhile so they're interesting in peaking into the future to see what technologies have been thought up. Once they see them and know of their existence, they can then use them in their afterlife as well. I think you're trolling tho. There is no way you didn't know this

Truuu....How could i be so naive

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RoboLaserGandhi posted...

Science knows enough to rule out meta-physicality.

This must be bait...
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with all the bad shit happening in the world i would say no, no it's not silly to say that scumbag humanity doesn't have souls.
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RoboLaserGandhi posted...

Science knows enough to rule out meta-physicality.

Don't pander to the "god of the gaps" fallacy.

No it doesnt. Science is a wonderful tool but there are many mysteries that seem untestable with science, like the cause (or lack thereof) of the Big Bang. Even if you have an idea, like God did it or it followed from a Big Crunch, its impossible to even conceive of an experiment to test those guesses. That removes it from science (for now).

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It's not silly to me, just egotistical. Why are we the only species on the planet that gets this treatment? Are we somehow special and therefore subject to something after death? No, not to me. We are just animals like every other species.
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I'm not religious but I can kind of believe that there's such a thing as an animalistic spirit or soul that exists in some capacity somehow after we die.
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thanosibe posted...

It's not silly to me, just egotistical. Why are we the only species on the planet that gets this treatment? Are we somehow special and therefore subject to something after death? No, not to me. We are just animals like every other species.

i mean it definitely derives from people's fear of death...they don't want to just end, so the idea of souls living on in some sort of dimension was added in...be good and your soul will be good and live forever. Its just that the idea of it, especially today, is kind of dumb.

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Where the fuck are all the caveman and dinosaur ghosts
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TheVipaGTS posted...

thanosibe posted...

It's not silly to me, just egotistical. Why are we the only species on the planet that gets this treatment? Are we somehow special and therefore subject to something after death? No, not to me. We are just animals like every other species.

i mean it definitely derives from people's fear of death...they don't want to just end, so the idea of souls living on in some sort of dimension was added in...be good and your soul will be good and live forever. Its just that the idea of it, especially today, is kind of dumb.

I would say most, but I think it's mostly Christian religions are the same ones that teach humans have a soul, or something that lives on after death, but animals don't. Which seems a bit egotistical since to them we are all of God's creation.

That said, yeah, as you mentioned it comes from a fear of death and thinking that we are someone special and there is more meaning to our lives than our mere existence.
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TheVipaGTS posted...

So when it comes to souls and ghosts, why is it that anytime i watch a haunted places tv show or YouTube video, the ghosts in question are always period ghosts from like 1901 and before? Very rarely do you hear about a ghost of someone from 2002 wearing FUBU and listening to Limp Bizkit.

The comforting thing though is the knowledge that when you die, your clothes go with you to the Afterlife.
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Cheese_Crackers posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

Science knows enough to rule out meta-physicality.

Don't pander to the "god of the gaps" fallacy.

No it doesnt. Science is a wonderful tool but there are many mysteries that seem untestable with science, like the cause (or lack thereof) of the Big Bang. Even if you have an idea, like God did it or it followed from a Big Crunch, its impossible to even conceive of an experiment to test those guesses. That removes it from science (for now).

If it's not testable by science then that is synonymous with "not real".

I don't think you get what science is. It's an explanation of reality. If something inherently "can't be explained", congratulations, it isn't real.

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

If it's not testable by science then that is synonymous with "not real".

I don't think you get what science is. It's an explanation of reality. If something inherently "can't be explained", congratulations, it isn't real.

No need to be condescending. I'm perfectly clear on what science is.

I disagree that "testable by science" equates to "real". Sounds like you aren't open to being convinced otherwise though.

But for anyone else reading that's interested, I don't believe in the supernatural at all. I am just lead to believe from my personal experiences that my human experience cannot be understood by other humans through scientific means.

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Cheese_Crackers posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

If it's not testable by science then that is synonymous with "not real".

I don't think you get what science is. It's an explanation of reality. If something inherently "can't be explained", congratulations, it isn't real.

No need to be condescending. I'm perfectly clear on what science is.

I disagree that "testable by science" equates to "real". Sounds like you aren't open to being convinced otherwise though.

Correct, because it's an invalid use of logic.

im not surprised at the amount of people saying yes, the way they act on this board explains everything.
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Not silly at all. Here is a thought experiment that deals with the concept of self.

Okay let's say we have reached the tech of exact copy cloning and Star Trek teleporters exist.

A person gets in the teleporter, it takes their molecules apart, and then the molecules are put back together exactly the same.

The afterlife concept make this easier to understand. Maybe the person could be in the afterlife wondering why he didn't teleport while what was their molecules are in a new person exactly like him or the teleport did indeed transfer the "soul" with the molecules.
Something that may be unknowable.

I mentioned the cloning tech because for sure you know the original is dead if you didn't use the same molecules, copied a person, and killed the original.

The results are nearly an even split. Wowee.

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I thought the yes option would have more votes than it does, given CE tends to be very physicalist/materialist

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RoboLaserGandhi posted...

Fossil posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

EverDownward posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

Umbreon posted...

The reason for our existence is still a mystery, so it's only natural for some people to ponder if done part of us continues on after doing in this world.

Of course the cocept of a soul is hard to break down scientifically....

There is no "reason" for our existence because that concept doesn't even make sense. It implies we have some sort of ultimate destiny and other oogie-boogie bullshit. If you're talking about the cause for our existence then that one has a much more scientific answer.

The concept of a soul cannot be broken down scientifically because awkward literalists turned the concept of a soul into something meta-physical when it was only meant to be taken metaphorically. There is no "soul" in the sense of some kind of literal physical conglomeration of energy that contains your consciousness and memories and remains intact after death in a neat little orb or a transparent bedsheet kind of thing.

All of this ultimately arises from miscommunication between people who speak extremely metaphorically and people who listen extremely literally.

i get where you're coming from, i just choose to believe because i can and want to.

How do you choose to believe something?

He's right, EverDownward. Science knows everything about the universe already. Souls obvs don't exist. Don't be silly.

Science knows enough to rule out meta-physicality.

Don't pander to the "god of the gaps" fallacy.

Science can't rule out something that can't be falsified. Metaphysics is by definition unfalsifiable, therefore science is wholely unable to say jack about concepts like the soul of a man.
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Smashingpmkns posted...

Where the fuck are all the caveman and dinosaur ghosts

If they exist (they most likely don't), they would probably haunt wherever the surface level used to be, or have long since dissipated.

Some people think the Loch Ness Monster is a ghost.
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Ghosts of Ghosts

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