What do the Major Religeons say?
What do YOU say?
Buddha said that no person has a soul. So this major religion, or philosophy, says no.
Buddhsim stands alone in denying the existence of a soul. We do not have a personal soul or self. In these thought of “self” we develop feelings of “me” vs “others” and this leads to many problems and conflicts.
On a probability scale of 0 to 1, my marker is an infinitesmal distance away from 0. I don’t see any proof that there is such a thing as a “soul” if it is defined as a separate, intangible entity that occupies our bodies.
Does anyone have a soul? What is a soul? Where does it reside? How big is it? Where did it come from?
All I can say is that the nervous system and glands of a fetus is not that of an infant. Therefore its capacity to process information as far as I can tell is limited to basic biochemical processes.
How then do you explain free will, Mr. Simmons? Or do you believe that there is no such thing as free will?
Why do you have to have a soul to have free will? I don’t see the connection.
How does the lack of a seperate intangible entity negate free will? How does it’s presence account for it?
Although we’re straying pretty far from the OP…
the word ‘soul’ gets thrown around rather looslely - I think I have a “soul” (but not the variety that exists separately, was made by a god, or survives the death of my body.
my ‘soul’ = consciousness + spriituality
no, it did not exist in utero,
At what point of growth are we talking about here?
happyheathen, are you saying that once the baby is born and is “conscious”, then they have a soul?
If we are nothing more than our physical bodies, then our actions are determined exclusively by the laws of physics. Even the act of believing that there is no free will would be determined exclusively by the physical interactions of our body and surroundings.
If a tree falls onto one’s car, one does not blame the tree. After all, the tree was merely obeying the law of gravity. Similarly, if human beings are nothing more than their material components, then there is no point in blaming or commending them for anything. Whatever they say, do or think would be merely the outcome of physical processes, such as the chemical processes within the human brain.
—If we are nothing more than our physical bodies, then our actions are determined exclusively by the laws of physics. Even the act of believing that there is no free will would be determined exclusively by the physical interactions of our body and surroundings.—
If we are anything more than our physical bodies, that doesn’t in the least explain “free will” is and how anything could have it.
“Free will” is a non-concept in my book: even if you could make up different laws for whatever alternate “ignatural” realm you are proposing to move the debate to, or even have no laws at all, I still doubt that you could even explain what free will is or how it could work.
“We” may well be more than our prsent understanding of our phsyical bodies. But you can’t present an “explanation” purely by negation (it is whatever is not physical) That’s nothing more than evasive hand-waving: “oh, it’s superdupernaturalisticexpealadosious, so stop asking me questions about it!”
—If a tree falls onto one’s car, one does not blame the tree. After all, the tree was merely obeying the law of gravity.—
Actually, one certainly can blame the tree. When asked what fell onto the car, the answer is the tree, whether it "chose’ to fall or not. If you don’t want trees falling onto your car, you do something about this, exactly as you would if trees “chose” to fall.
—Similarly, if human beings are nothing more than their material components, then there is no point in blaming or commending them for anything.—
So… if we follow your reasoning, then there’s no point in blaming or condemining them… does that violate some natural law? It’s perfectly possible that our psychological attributions are misleading.
But then, I don’t follow your reasoning. The entity that does the act can certainly be blamed whether or not it chose to act. If someone developed a willess robot that was programed to destroy, no one would let it run around killing people simply because “oh, it’s not it’s fault!”
First off, my ability or lack of ability to explain “free will,” if such exists, has no bearing on whether or not a soul exists.
The way I explain the concept of “free will” is that it is an ad hoc concept invented to transfer responsibility for the existence of evil away from an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent God and onto his creation.
All the concept of “free will” means is that we can make choices. It doesn’t explain why some people choose to do evil.
And, one more time, it doesn’t have a darned thing to do with the existence or non-existence of a soul.
I don’t know what “the major religions” say on this question. I recall a part of the Old Testament in which injury to a pregnant woman, causing the death of the fetus, is assigned a penalty of similar degree to injuring a cow; this suggests Judaism did not regard the inhabitant of the womb as ensouled. As to Christianity, I don’t recall mention of this specific question in the Gospels; I am not familiar enough with the other New Testament books to comment.
Acknowledging lack of detailed familiarity, I have the impression that the Judeo-Christian scriptures treat that part of the person that might persist after bodily death as something that develops, just as we think of “personality” or “character” developing over time as a result of experience and choice. There is certainly a “something” with memories and individuality that outstrips death, as shown in the OT “Witch of Endor” episode, as well as Jesus’ promise to the crucified thief, the general promise of eternal life, etc. But the modes of continued existence vary, and may have little to do with the classical Greek concept of the animating “breath,” which is the basis of our word “spirit” and is usually taken for the image of what a soul should be. (Note, however, mention of the breath of God in the first chapters of Genesis.)
My own belief is that the soul is best understood as the metaphysical “self,” and thus the genuine “person,” associated with a given human body–the haver of experience, the seat of the Will. Whatever the nature, form, or substance of the soul, it is definitely a “something,” and thus capable of perpetuation by a being powerful enough and clever enough to effect same.
I do not believe that the soul comes into being at the moment of the union of sperm and egg. I incline to the idea that it pre-exists and becomes gradually more and more joined to the growing body during the gestation period, in approximate parallel to the development of the higher nervous system. I do not find absurd the idea that the body is not completely “ensouled” for even some time after birth.
There is significant discussion of the modern dualist hypothesis in the works of Sir John Eccles and Sir Karl Popper.
this is one of the greatest questions about the human brain.
what is consciousness? what is the difference between awareness and self-awareness?
personally, i think a soul is basically the information history in the human brain.
when a human walks around and have experiences, neurons in the brain are fired, and an opinion is made, based on the history of the brains experience, and it’s neural memory network.
and because no human has the exact same history, an information history is created, making the brain have ‘unique’ views. i think because we interract with other humans, we understand that we are not that other person, and we try to develop our own mind because of society.
the soul then, i believe, is created when a human reaches the age of 2 and up.
a fetus doesn’t have enough history nor developed a sense of self at that age. of course, hugely debatable, this is my opinion, based on what i’ve read.
If you want a complete explanation, then no, it’s not sufficient. However, if physical characteristics can not account for free will, then it is entirely reasonable to say that some non-physical component is necessary – whatever that non-physical component may be.
Free will: The ability to freely make choices (as opposed to, say, those decisions being ordained by the laws of physics).
Moreover, we don’t HAVE to know how it works to believe that it exists. People knew about gravity, long before they knew how it worked (and to this day, we still don’t completely understand how it works!).
Nobody’s saying that we should not ask questions about it. Please stop presenting strawmen arguments.
Nobody’s saying that the existence of a soul is a complete, testable explanation for free will. Rather, the point is that physicality can not adequately explain free will, so it is entirely reasonable to say that some non-physical attribute is necessary to explain it.
One could, but that person would be a fool. The tree, after all, had no choice in the matter.
Huh? Who said anythign about “blaming or condeming” being a violation of natural law?
The point is that it is irrational to cast blame on something that had no choice in the matter. Do you blame your car wheni t breaks down? Do you blame the vending machine when it swallows up your quarters? I suppose you could, but that would be the act of an irrational madman.
Ah, but you opined that there is no reason to believe that a soul exists. It seems to me that the inability to account for free will, using purely materialistic grounds, indicates that there is reason to believe in a soul.
Mind you, I’m not claiming that this constitutes complete, incontrovertible, scientifically testable proof. The very nature of free will and non-physicality would preclude scientific testing. However, I’d say that there is clearly reason to believe in the existence of a soul – especially in the absence of any testable alternate explanations.
I’ll merely repeat my accounting for why the concept of “free will” originated: “The way I explain the concept of “free will” is that it is an ad hoc concept invented to transfer responsibility for the existence of evil away from an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent God and onto his creation.”
the concept of free will is subjective and objective.
subjectively it can mean alot of things, like how man wanted to keep god ‘clean’ and blaim humans like david said.
but really, does the meaning of free will really matter?
we all know we don’t have free will in this world.
subjectively we can make ourselves outcasts, and go kill people saying we have free will. but free will objectively is still dampened by what we have learned and experienced.
once we know how to clear our head of everything he have learned, we have free will. i don’t think humans have this power though.
You are aware that the laws of physics allow for both indeterminacy and randomness, right?
If there is a nonmaterial “soul” of some sort in my body, where does it go when I am under general anesthesia?
sorry, no.
when spirituality develops, I don’t know - I suspect it is after 2, and before puberty. IIRC, the RCC seems to think age 7 is when a person becomes fully culpable for his/her actions. This seems to tie into the concept of “free will”, which, as this thread demonstrates, is closely linked to “soul” in the beliefs of many Christians.
OTOH, I was baptised at age 10 (E.U.B., now United Methodist), so that group apparently thought THAT was a magic number (we had been attending that church for years before the baptism, so I infer that my age was the reason it was done when it was).
[sub]Tom~ - is it OK to infer?[/sub]
Bottom line: if somebody wants to say 7, I’m inclined to agree.
what happens to one’s soul when one is sedated?! Is this a serious question? how, pray tell, could anyone possibly even guess? Where does it “go” when you dream?