God knows you before you are born.
Modern medicine defines death as the stop of brainwaves, does this mean that life starts at the beginning of brainwaves?
Just 2 random thoughts.
And 2 completely unconnected thoughts. The brain waves argument has some merit, but we really don’t know what “human” brain waves are. We assume that someone who has already been born has them at some point (usually), but we don’t know when they begin.
But some would also argue that belief in the soul is positive because humans all have souls, regardless of their race or gender or anything else - that the shared concept of a soul is the thing that we should base our goodwill towards all people of the world on.
Sure, people have done it the other way and justified oppression of others based on their not having souls, but there are just as many people who advocate tolerance and/or pacifism, which we would all agree are positive virtues, from a religious standpoint. I mean, it’s hard for me, as a non-religious person, to oppose the Quakers, for instance, just because their beliefs are based on their reading of a religious text.
And don’t forget that the evil that you’re talking about doesn’t need religion or the lack of a “soul” to justify it. The Nazis put people to death who they deemed scientifically unfit for society - the mentally and physically handicapped - which would be the secular equivalent of massacring “infidels” for not having “souls.” Evil people are going to use whatever beliefs they can - religious, scientific, sociological, economic - to justify their atrocities.
Heck, far less, in fact. Chimps can, for instance, mourn at the death of a loved one or remember and communicate feelings about traumatic events. Fetuses can’t do any of these things. They’re not even close. Most doctors (and we’ve had this debate before) don’t even think that a fetus can feel pain in any meaningful sense until very late it’s development, let alone learn to communicate via sign language.
I think that before we can debate what/who has a soul, the onus is first on those who believe souls exist to prove that they do.
I concur with those who say that this is a meaningless debate absent any evidence that such a thing as a “soul” exists in the first place. There is no data to analyze or debate. We could talk about theological positions, I suppose, but those amount to nothing but unsupported assertions.
I don’t see that this is such an absurd idea. We use brain waves to determine clinical death, when they stop, life stops. Why wouldn’t this work on the other side of the line? When they start, life starts.
Notice that we don’t evaluate quality of thought (This would qualify as dead several political figures and celebrities). You could have all kinds of mental handicaps and you still register as alive. Likewise we wouldn’t expect babies to have reasonable thoughts, just that they register as having the function.
I have never believed in the idea of a soul, but your evocative essay makes me wish I did. Your words struck me in an unexpected and deeply moving way.
Thank you for sharing your experience with your child.
I am sure those crazy people would love to hear your opinions on those threads. 
No, he does not; there was no “me” to know. Even if my hypothetical soul did exist prior to my birth, everything that make me who I am developed after I was born
Why base your beliefs on sand ? Especially a belief that so easily lends itself to destructive interpetations; such as the worldwide crusades against abortion and stem cell research. Millions are and will suffer and die, because many people define “human life” in terms of a soul instead of personhood. And then there are all the things people do to others for the “good of their soul”; all the oppression and abuse directed at gays and heathens and infidels and atheists and so on. I really can’t imagine how any amount of good can outweigh that much evil.
Do you have any evidence that the people who ( honestly; hypocrites don’t count ) advocate “tolerance and/or pacifism” in the name of the soul are equal in number to the people who don’t, or are actively intolerant because of that belief ? When I look at the world, I see the opposite; when people want to incite compassion and tolerance, they tend to talk about such real human universals such as suffering. When they talk about souls, it’s usually to excuse ignoring other people’s suffering.
Why give them one more reason, especially a belief tailor made to the purpose ?
Thanks for your response,but if the soul and life are different, why, when a person dies it is said his or her soul went either to heaven or hell ? As I would understand it, if the body is dead (No Life) and the soul lives on, where did the life of the person go?
Monavis
Yes, Since bacterium would be alive it would have soul as much as any living thing.When a bacterium dies it is just as dead as any thing that lived.
I believe all existance is united and when anything dies it’s atoms etc. become what they were before they came into the life form they are now in, Any thing that lives or exists is part of the greater whole which is existence itself. I know not all people believe as I do and I make no claims that I am the only one who is correct. And if I am proven wrong I would not hesitate to change my thinking.
Monavis
Are you suggesting that the atoms in a living being are somehow different than the atoms in a dead organism or a inanimate object? In what way? Do they still follow the laws of physics/chemistry?
It depends on your religious beliefs. If you believe in heaven or hell, then yes, perhaps your soul would end up there after your life on earth is finished. lol, I don’t know where you’re life would go.
Then, if life and soul were the same thing, they would die together or go to heaven or hell together, wouldn’t they? Your physical body wouldn’t join it.(according to most religious beliefs having to do with an after life and all that) Life is existance, soul is the… i dont know like the essence of the being?
In the first definition of soul I posted, it says:
“regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body, and commonly held to be separable in existence from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical part.”
It says it three times in that definition that the soul is generally believes to be seperate from the body. If you believe your soul to go up to heaven or damned to hell, it leaves the dead body (which can’t be taken with you) and leaves to the spiritual realm.
Those are really good points.
the embryo isn’t exactly living, i don’t think. Perhaps we could find out first when life begins, then debate the existance of a the religious soul and when it enters or, when it would enter.
Maybe there is a certain point in time when the soul enters the body when “God” feels the embryo is officially alive, or maybe he keeps the soul until the human is ready to decide to believe in God, or to not. Maybe the argument doesn’t even really matter, because there is no way to know for sure anyway.
Another (radical prolife, anti-abortion) opinion
What we have, then, is a variety of opinions about the existence and/or timing of the soul, without a scrap of proof. Every one of those opinions is as valid as the next one. Here’s mine:
If there is a soul, it is not installed until the person can tell the difference between shit and Shinola (other brands of shoe polish may be substituted.) If the person never is able to tell the difference, she remains soulless. These unfortunates go to work for the Bureau of Motor Vehicles or do certain work for insurance companies.
The BMV and insurance companies also employ fully souled people. They have my sympathy, though. It’s no picnic working with a soulless clot who doesn’t know shit from Shinola.
You’re running a program on an old laptop - say an old version of Sims. While you are running it, you take a hammer and smash the crap out of the computer. Where did the program go?
About the same place the “soul” goes, if you ask me.
rofl, *wowwwww. * that’s the best analogy yet
Which is why I didn’t positively assert that a human fetus does have “personness” at any particular stage of development, only that there exists a stage where we can be confident that it does not. But even so, one could probably come up with criteria whereby a human fetus with a “brain bud” would outrank a chimpanzee: For instance, I suspect that the fetus is forming new neural connections at a greater rate than the chimp.
In fairness, I should also admit the point that there are probably multiple levels, or even a continuum, of degrees to which an entity should have recognized rights. Most people agree that it would be acceptable to kill a fly, a sheep, or a chimpanzee for purposes of valid medical research. Most people would also agree that it would be acceptable to kill a sheep for purposes of food, but not a chimp. And most would further agree that it would be acceptable to kill a fly just because it was a minor annoyance, but not the other two. So that establishes at least four levels of “worthiness”, fly, sheep, chimp, and human. It’s possible, then, that one might consider a human fetus to occupy some level, perhaps even a relatively high one, which is nonetheless less than that of a fully-developed human.