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Atheists/Agnostics/Other: Does man have a soul

Does man have a soul?

  • Atheist/Agnostic and yes, he does

    Votes: 3 5.8%

  • Atheist/Agnostic and no, he does not

    Votes: 24 46.2%

  • Other belief system and yes he does

    Votes: 11 21.2%

  • Other belief system and no, he does not

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • BTSOOM/FIIK (beats the **** out of me/fvck if I know)

    Votes: 10 19.2%

  • Cake or death?

    Votes: 4 7.7%
  • Total voters
    52
Define "soul". As it is commonly used, of course I don't believe in one. There's no evidence whatsoever that it exists therefore it would be foolish of me, an intelligent adult, to believe in fairy tale.
 
if we have a soul, in the religious sense of the word, then i doubt we'd be able to find it with an EEG, but i believe every living thing has a soul, just 'cause its depressing to think that everything we do, all our thoughts and memories simply vanish when we die, and are rendered meaningless.
 
ads1981 said:
As C. S. Lewis once said "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
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Wow, love it, thanks for posting.:)

As to soul, it's hard to say with certainty, but there's a variety of things that "soul" could be. It could be an aspect of consciousness and creative thought. It could be a form of energy in motion epxressed by human bodies. It could be an eternal "life force" (for lack of a better word. In the world of a particular psychology mode, it means the same as "psyche". Maybe all of the above, maybe none at all. Do I have a soul? Yes. Can I prove it? No. Do I need to? No. What if I don't. It's okay.:) All is well with my soul.:)
 
Yes I do believe we have something akin to a soul. A lot of research into near death experiences has created a huge anecdotal database of experiences involving separation of consciousness from the body. There is even a theoretical basis in quantum mechanics called quantum entanglement that provides a preliminary explanation for how consciousness could exist separately from the body without dissipating.

I believe we have a physical mind that is rooted in the body. It is the mind that becomes dysfunctional if the brain is damaged. In common terms, it is the human ego. It specifically belongs to your human life but it does interface with your soul. We also have a permanent, non-material mind that is also present in the body and that survives after death even though your ego does not. Some would refer to this as the "higher self" or the soul.

My own personal belief, which goes well beyond what even something like quantum mechanics could prove, is that our soul has this life planned out and most of what happens in it is part of the plan. The main goal is to simply be human and experience what that is like.
 
Orion said:
Yes I do believe we have something akin to a soul. A lot of research into near death experiences has created a huge anecdotal database of experiences involving separation of consciousness from the body. .
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I've actually been dead before. And very near death on several occasions by the standard.

When I was dead though it was the greatest experience of my life. I was in an operating room and I was flat lined, no heart beat no pulse no nothing. I was floating around in the room above the medical people that were freaking and trying to tell them everything is okay. I probably should have passed then but i did not.
 
winston53660 said:
I've actually been dead before. And very near death on several occasions by the standard.

When I was dead though it was the greatest experience of my life. I was in an operating room and I was flat lined, no heart beat no pulse no nothing. I was floating around in the room above the medical people that were freaking and trying to tell them everything is okay. I probably should have passed then but i did not.
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There are hundreds of near death experiences that people have told about. Some of them have been described on this site.

I suppose it is possible that some of the near death experiences are made up, or imagined, but no doubt many of them are real.

I have a friend who fell down a mountain. He didn't die, but thought he was going to. He told me about seeing "angels" on the way down. another friend encountered a climber who had been killed on Mount Shasta. He told of a woman and child in street clothes who told him to stay away, as the landslide was still coming down, and he could be killed himself. He wondered how they could have climbed such a mountain with no equipment. These people were soon nowhere to be found.

Of course, anectotal incidents are not scientific proof. How there could be scientific proof, I'm not sure.

Nevertheless, C. S. Lewis was right. I know that the soul exists, because I am one.
 
winston53660 said:
I was in an operating room and I was flat lined, no heart beat no pulse no nothing. I was floating around in the room above the medical people that were freaking and trying to tell them everything is okay. I probably should have passed then but i did not.
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I have a friend who ws near death for several days on a ventilator in an ICU about a year ago. He was "travelling" around the unit, privvy to some private conversations among staff, and was able to recount these stories after he regained consciousness with amazing accuracy. Really.

It sounds like you have other things to do with your life for now.:)
 
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I feel as if my soul is part of the Earth and that it has always been and always will be. I have been in Nature and will forever more.
 
Caine said:
Proof that man has soul...

brown460.jpg
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That man was a drunkard and a woman beater.

But he had soul. Just not when it came to treating others with respect.
 
Kandahar said:
If you believe that the soul exists within its hardware (i.e. the brain) then I'm not sure I understand why you call it a soul at all. It sounds like we are in agreement that there is nothing beyond the physical processes of the brain and neural patterns...
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That is like saying that there is nothing beyond the physical processes of a CPU. The software itself is more than just the CPU running the program. The software exists conceptually in an immaterial way.

A soul exists the same way that the Fibonacci sequence exists. If you write it down, then you can say it "exists" on the paper, but if you look closely you won't find one molecule of Fibonacci, you will just find a bunch of graphite. The sequence is represented in how the graphite is arranged, but if you burn the piece of paper, you won't have destroyed the Fibonacci sequence, because the sequence itself is an immaterial pattern of numbers.

Similarly, the Moonlight Sonata can be played on the piano, but destroying the piano does not destroy the Moonlight Sonata, because it is an immaterial sequence.
 
Kali said:
That man was a drunkard and a woman beater.

But he had soul. Just not when it came to treating others with respect.
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Dont forget he was a crackhead too.
 
I believe in souls. My beliefs are complicated, but they're closer to C.S. Lewis' idea that we don't have souls, we are souls-- except that I believe that the physical body is part of the soul.
 
ads1981 said:
As C. S. Lewis once said "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."

I don't know where souls fit in the greater scheme of world religions, but I know they figure quite prominently in Christianity. That led me to wonder; do people who don't believe in a deity still believe that man has a soul, it's what separates him from the animals, etc?

I hope to see some incredibly wordy responses. I want to learn.

P.S.: I'll be gone for the next 24-30 hours in honor of the 4th so will not be able to respond until my return.

Anybody else out there with me, travel safe!
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I do not believe that a "soul" exists.
 
ads1981 said:
As C. S. Lewis once said "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."

I don't know where souls fit in the greater scheme of world religions, but I know they figure quite prominently in Christianity. That led me to wonder; do people who don't believe in a deity still believe that man has a soul, it's what separates him from the animals, etc?

I hope to see some incredibly wordy responses. I want to learn.

P.S.: I'll be gone for the next 24-30 hours in honor of the 4th so will not be able to respond until my return.

Anybody else out there with me, travel safe!
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As an atheist and a humanist I believe in the human spirit but it's not supernatural or anything.
 
ads1981 said:
Please be aware that I didn't ask the question from a place of thinking I already know the answer. Having said that - what separates man from the rest of the animals?
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Self awareness, knowledge of ones own mortality, complex emotions; such as empathy, complex puzzle solving capabilities, advanced tool production, instantaneous adaptation to new environments and situations etc etc.
 
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Agent Ferris said:
As an atheist and a humanist I believe in the human spirit but it's not supernatural or anything.
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I dislike the word "supernatural" in discussions of the soul. There is nothing super about it. The soul is part of nature, just like our bodies are.
 
Orion said:
I dislike the word "supernatural" in discussions of the soul. There is nothing super about it. The soul is part of nature, just like our bodies are.
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Sorry but a thing which can not be seen, heard, touched, felt, or analyzed in any way through direct or indirect observations of any kind is either supernatural, or mystical take your pick.
 
Agent Ferris said:
Sorry but a thing which can not be seen, heard, touched, felt, or analyzed in any way through direct or indirect observations of any kind is either supernatural, or mystical take your pick.
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Or simply undiscovered.

Science is not the determiner of all things. Sorry to say.
 
Orion said:
Or simply undiscovered.

Science is not the determiner of all things. Sorry to say.
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Science can only answer that which is in the realm of science. There will be quite a bit that science will not or cannot at this point comment on. Yet, seeing is believing. And I have seen nothing which would necessitate the existence of a soul.
 
Orion said:
Or simply undiscovered.

Science is not the determiner of all things. Sorry to say.
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And this is devoid of all logic and reason whatsoever. There is as much evidence for an invisible dragon who breathes heatless fire living in my garage as there is evidence for your soul. I suggest you read Calr Sagan's "Demon Haunted World".

Oh and fyi Science is the determinant of all things within the natural world, thus anything that falls outside of the realm of science would by default have to be labeled supernatural.
 
Agent Ferris said:
And this is devoid of all logic and reason whatsoever. There is as much evidence for an invisible dragon who breathes heatless fire living in my garage as there is evidence for your soul. I suggest you read Calr Sagan's "Demon Haunted World".

Oh and fyi Science is the determinant of all things within the natural world, thus anything that falls outside of the realm of science would by default have to be labeled supernatural.
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Such arrogance.

There are thousands of plants in the rainforest that possess medicine which are yet undiscovered, yet local natives know of them and how to use them. Because science hasn't discovered those plants, would you call them supernatural?

It is the height of hubris to think that one form of understanding the world can know everything, and if it doesn't know, then no other knowledge is real.

Do you see all of the world's civilizations throughout all time talking about an invisible dragon living in your garage? No. But people have talked about the soul and its nature virtually forever.

So take your specious remarks about logic and reason and shove it. Your primitive science that has only been around for a few hundred measely years knows only a fraction of what this existence means. That's why people don't turn to science to answer existential questions. Those answers reside within us, not outside of us to be searched for and discovered in a lab.

Science deals with physical nature. It knows nothing about the world of spirit.
 
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There seems to be this popular thought that the existence of a soul is unsupported by the data. I believe this thought to be in error.

I remember where I was on September 11, 2001. This was more than seven years ago. This means that I have not one molecule shared between my current body and the one I had then. My hardware has been completely replaced. In order for "me" to exist beyond the expiration of my hardware, suggests the existence of software.

That which I identify as "me" is clearly not limited to a particular set of particles, but rather to a pattern of thought which can run on this new brain just as well as it did on the old one.

Now y'all can make up a new term for this intangible sense of self which can be empirically demonstrated to transcend the material, but the word "soul" already aptly describes such a phenomenon regardless of whether you may dislike its spiritual connotation or not.
 
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