Fragmented souls-are you an OT Level III?
And what is this finite number of souls? I think it’s one, and the souls aren’t confined by time. When I die, my soul may go to a 16th century peasant. Another shot? Why, sure, I’ll have another!
Well, that tears it!
I just go for a drive…
If I believed in souls, I prefer the theory that there’s only one, that travels through both time and space. There’s really only one person, and this person lives every life, feels every joy, suffers every terrible thing ever done to any human or maybe even and sentient being in the universe.
Another theory I like is that Germans love David Hasselhoff.
you have no idea 
just to clarify - I wasn’t wasted when I posted - only when I came up with the theory
and really, it made a lot more sense with the 3 cosmos in me…
for the record - I am not very religious but I do believe in some kind of continuation - some day, in a serious thread, I’ll tell you all why.
Hi-Fucking-Larious. Thanks everyone for your extremely entertaining posts in this thead.
Hmm. Yes, here it is. The October seventh two thousand four entry in The Big Book Of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know
Sounds a bit like Aristophanes’ explanation of love in Plato’s Symposium. Basically, he said that humans used to be double what they are now – some a combination of a man and a woman, some of two women, and some of two men. The gods decided to knock humanity down a peg and split them in two. Love, then, is a matter of seeking completeness, and our compound origin explains why some seek members of the opposite sex and some seek the same. It all depends on what we were before the gods split us in two.
And, interestingly enough, the word symposium literally means “drinking together”. Maybe the origins of your idea have more in common with Plato’s than meets the eye.
As an agnostic, I don’t think our tiny brains can comprehend what really happens after death. So since no one can really know, why not make-up stuff that makes you feel better.
My theories change constantly when something unexpected happens and I need an explanation. A young child dies, how can we deal with this loss? I decide that soul volunteered for that duty, knowing the parents and others affected needed to go through that horrible event for a reason. Absolutely no logical reason to come to that conclusion, but thinking that helps me deal with the loss, so it serves a purpose.
And thinking that some souls are “old” or have more experience helps me to have patience with those clueless people I come in contact with. I will think of them as doing the best they can with what little they have. Makes me want to help them along. That is a good thing, so that is part of my theory. And when I really make a mess of things and start to really beat up on myself, I like to think that living with the consequences of my bad choices this time around, will give me an edge next time, so I can more easily let it go, knowing I just need to learn from my mistakes.
So if your Cosmo influenced theory serves a purpose, hey, why not?
And I like the idea that true love fits in there somewhere. Maybe during half-time tonight, after consuming a number of beers, I will contemplate adding that somewhere in my own theories.
Are you really going to play this game of posting complete nonsense, and then when someone calls you on it, you want to say, “are you really taking me seriously.”
Bullcrap.
Reconsider your ideas when you’re not drinking or when you turn 16, whichever comes first.
Uncalled for!
I posted that I had been drinking when I thought up the theory, NOT when I posted it
That you would take it so seriously says more about you than that I don’t says about me.
The reason I added the line about this theory being the result of inebriation was specifically so that no one would take it too seriously. I wanted to spark a light discussion not a heavy debate.
How about you wait to post until you’re not so angry!
Better lay off the hooch, amigo. It’s got you believing that there is such a thing as a soul.
ok - doesn’t have to be labeled a “soul” could just be “essence”.
Do you feel/believe/think that the body is only the body? that there is nothing else that makes a person who s/he is?
(and shouldn’t that be “amiga”? :D)
Hey Trunk, C’mon. Why all the fire?
YMMV, of course, but I read even the OP as sort of a tongue in cheek, these are some of the things I think about when I’ve been drinking at a wake. Sort of silly to you, but I didn’t think she was seriously over the top.
I like to get incensed as well over many religious pov’s, but this one doesn’t seem to be worthy of much vitriol.
To **Cardinal ** & Trunk and anyone else to whom this applies
Go ahead and disagree with me. Present opposing views. I have no problem with that. But never tell me (or anyone else for that matter) that I am wrong unless you have imperical evidence to back it up. Since there is no such thing, my view of an afterlife is as valid as yours.
'nuff said.
I actually think this would make a great plot for a science fiction/fantasy novel, something about aliens who have a provable “soul” carried in RNA or something that recycles through physical bodies but fragments when a body is murdered. Would make a good mystery. Or I guess romance, but I don’t write those. May have to steal it sometime.
I don’t believe in reincarnation or the standard theory of a soul either (I believe that a soul is something you earn, not something you’re given, and I don’t know what happens when it dies but I’m guessing it’s dirt), but I don’t get all the vitriol on this thread. It’s an interesting idea.
how about a SF-romance crossover? Think of the sales! 
Two sci fi ideas I’ve heard on this subject :
There are a finite number of souls, and our historically recent increase in population is due to a nuclear war on another world. That’s why there are so many weird people; they are aliens, and don’t know it.
There are a finite number of souls; our population increase is offset by the extinction of animal species. There is so much cruelty, violence and stupidity because most of the population has the souls of animals.
interesting
please cite authors/titles - I’d like to read those