Definition’s up to you, not based on a particular religious order. Just curious, how many Dopers believe that they have a soul?
I don’t think anyone has a soul. We’re all just dust in the cosmos.
I kicked his ass.
… and several other people’s as well.
BWA-HA-HA!!!
Absolutely. Aside from my faith in religion, it just makes sense to me. As a Dualist I just don’t see how a body can function without a soul. Just a philosophical bent…
I can’t really answer that until someone can define for me ‘soul’. Then I can work off of that definition.
(slight hijack) It’s like believing in Ghod. Hard to say one way or another until someone can define it. (although I may now be crossing over into ‘great debates’ territory…)
(Hey, that has a nice ring to it… “Crossing Over, with ArrrMatey!”)
[Simpsons] You don’t have a soul, I don’t have a soul, there’s no such thing as a soul! [/Simpsons]
Seriously, I don’t believe there is anything at all metaphysical or magical or supernatural about humans or their minds. We have extraordinarily complicated brains, which are capable of running “software” that is very complex. Like, for example, sentience. But it’s all just a function of our biology - and, to an extent, environment. (Nell didn’t do so well, did she?)
Since Mr. Excellent is, for all intents and purposes, the software running in his brain, there’s nothing of him that exists independant of that brain. When it stops operating - that is, when he dies or suffers extreme brain damage - Mr. Excellent will no longer exist in any way, shape, or form.
Closest thing to an afterlife, as I see it, is the changes we make in the world. The good we do may “oft be interred with the bones”, but it’s still possible for our names to live on in history in a positive light.
Thus, my own personal goal for an “afterlife” is to shape the world in such a way that no history of the 21st century will be complete without extensive mention of Mr. Excellent.
Of fessie, finaly you did it good thing, the soul question should no longer stay unanswered.
It depends of what you define as a “soul” if your definiton is something like “an untangible attribute unique and possesed by every human being which makes him an unique specimen” I would agrre.
Our personalities are based on different things, our experience, how we´ve been raised and our genetic inheritance. But I also beleive that there is a kind of “singularity” which determines how we attach those things to our personality.
I think I remmember a stuy on identical genetic twins that showed large differencies in their characters. anyway, I have met twins that were more different between each other than between my sister and myself (no, we´re not twins).
If this “thing” is inmortal (like christians beleive) is another debate.
As an animist, I believe everything has a soul whether it is animate or not.
I do…cuz i’m black female.
<pause>
and let the contraversial show begin.
i loooove shit disturbing
No. I don’t believe in the magical sky pixie either. I am just a hairless monkey and while I’m rather intelligent on occassion, and able to need a god, afterlife, etc. to reassure me, I am still just a monkey. When I die I’m done.
I sure do.
Hell no.
sure do… it is one of those things either you dont believe in or no one will ever talk you out of believing …
I do not get it.
yup.
Yeah, but it came from the Dollar Tree (of knowledge).:rolleyes:
By most deifinitions, I do not believe that souls exist. Therefore, I do not have one.
Haj
Doesn’t the law of conservation of energy imply that we have to have a soul? what happens to the electricity that ran our electro-chemical based nervous system after we expire?
No. The law you are referring to simply states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed- it can only change form. This often leads to speculation that energy is some sort of semi-tangible force or substance which possesses sentience and purpose, or more importantly to this discussion, memory. This is not true. What this law really means, in a very simplified way, is the energy that was used by Thing 1 has been transferred to Thing 2. For example: you push a ball along a floor and it rolls. You used your body’s energy to push; that energy was transferred to the ball and it is now being used to roll that ball. When the ball stops rolling, it has run out of energy- the initial push and whatever momentum it gathered is eventually stilled by others agents such as friction and gravity. Now the ball is still- it has no energy with which to move itself. There exists no soul, no “essence of ball” to continue that motion in whatever altered form. It just stops. So it is with your body.
I don’t believe in souls. I’d certainly like to, but I can’t- the evidence simply isn’t there, and everything we know at this point (which could change, of course) tends to lead me to this conclusion.
But if you want to get really metaphysical about the whole thing, the law of conservation of energy does imply that you will never cease to exist. Everything usable in you will be used again by something else, and in turn by something else, and so on until the(possibly) eventual “heat death” of the universe. So it can be argued that some of what was you will go on forever, or as close to as makes no difference. But it certainly won’t remember being part of you.