Another question would be, if Satan is a bad guy and “bad souls” go to Hell, why whould he torment them? Wouldnt he want to REWARD bad people?
Another intersting idea from the great George Carlin : "In the beginning there were two people. Two souls. Cool.
Now there are 6 billion people. Where did all the souls come from? SOMEONE IS PRINTING UP SOULS!! Doesn’t that lower their value?"
These were GQ responses? Good grief!
Not a theist, but I will play one on TV: “possession of souls” rather obviously (to the degree that religions embrace the concept at all) seems to be mainly about fealty/slavery. That is, it’s in the sense “I have fifty souls in my employ at my Burger King location”. It’s all about who you have control over, or you have working under you (in the case where the relationship is not coerced).
The reason why souls are being traded rather than just people is because in these religions, “people” die, “souls” are eternal. Neither God nor Satan has a lasting interest in your temporary shell; they’re interested in the long-term relationship. So the term ‘soul’ is used. Exacerbating this is the fact that clearly, even if Satan or whoever has claimed your soul, he obviously isn’t controlling you yet on earth. So the presumption pretty unilaterally is that the claim doesn’t take effect until you actually die. This is overtly specified in the case of Faustian stories; you can play for the rest of your life, but only when your “time has come” do you die and have your soul taken. (Sometimes you’re taken “body and soul”, but the soul is always the point.)
So. Soul-trade is about acquiring servants/slaves/people-as-possessions. That doesn’t answer the question: why do it? Clearly the answer would be different for the different agents involved, and depend on which fiction/dogma you are using. As possible explanations go, the most charitable one would seem to be “I claim your soul so that the other guy doesn’t get it”, when the other guy wants you for a more nefarious purpose. In this case it would be faux-ownership to protect freedom, sort of like citizenship in a country. All other explanations are based on selfish benefit for the enslaver, be it to satisfy ego, establish a workforce, to have company in misery, or to stock the buffet with.
Short answer is that Satan is a dick.
Longer answer involves some stuff about the souls actually tormenting themselves, as it takes a basically self-loathing person to be committed to Hell.
Very long answer involves considering the source of the reports that Satan actually does torment souls in his care.
If soul = life then wouldn’t my tomato plants have a soul as well? They certainly possess life… well… all except that one on the end of the row.
Love it!
Guffaw Now THAT was funny!
Soul food, huh?
Anyway, in fiction, the souls of virgins and children seem to be especially desirable, so I gather there’s a high depreciation rate.
Oh please. Let’s not bring mythological creatures into the discussion!
“Virgins”! What’s next? Unicorns and fairies???
Since when? Dragons and Unicorns like virgins, but they’re dealing with the person, not the soul. Can you give examples of God or the Devil preferring virgin or child souls? (Souls specifically; “suffer the little children” was talking about mortals.)
Well, there’s the documentary The Devil and Max Devlin, in which Elliot Gould, seeking to avoid an eternity in Hell with Bill Cosby, can salvage his own damned soul if he can deliver three young replacement souls…
I think the simplest way to look at a soul is that it is the essence of who that person is outside of their physical being, a culmination of their thoughts, feelings, memories, etc. As such, I think the desirability of owning another’s soul becomes quite clear. Consider, a slaver owns the bodies of his slaves, but he cannot meaningfully control their thoughts, feelings, or memories; instead, he can only utilize the person’s body. As such, owning a person’s soul would be the ethereal equivalent of slavery, in which one is able to exert meaningful control over those aspects.
This is why I could image a being such as Satan desiring the ownership of souls or even other mortals as well. Certainly, that degree of control over someone is far more powerful than simply controlling their body, and as many beings (mortal or not) desire power, it should logically follow that they’d desire souls.
Another perspective would be that souls are not discrete. Instead, they are more like little pockets of a larger, interconnected web, or pieces of a universal soul. And this could make for other interesting possibilities. Of course, many who subscribe to this view could argue that, as part of the universal soul that his soul is no more his to give or for another to receive than one could give the fountain at the local park to another member of the community.
Anyway, if this is the perspective one takes and that it is possible to own multiple souls, it actually could, in a way, make one more “powerful” because one would then be a larger part of this. I suppose, if taken to an extreme, that if one possessed enough souls, one would, in essence become god, or at least a god. Or maybe he would just have a greater potential for influencing all others as the strongest piece of this structure of souls.
Take your pick.
To gain the soul’s skills and memories? And because there can be only one?
You should also be able to “incorporate” souls. e.g. the souls of BP and Exxon go to hell but not their shareholders.
The question I’ve always wondered is why the soul-bartering system is so capitalistic, and who enforces such an exchange?
Why would someone need to give their soul to Satan instead of just taking what Satan has to offer and giving him the middle finger? Why does Satan not simply take souls from us puny humans?
And why is the ratio for souls always seems to be 1:1, where favors, small or large, are priced with the exactitude of an atomic clock? Why can’t, for example, someone exchange a short few hours in hell for the ability to fly? Or the left leg part of your soul for an equal amount of wealth?
And if the soul is so valuable, why isn’t god himself, or his angels, out bartering for souls in the afterlife stock exchange?
I wonder if the notion of “selling one’s soul” ultimately can be traced back to that remark of Jesus’s (which was quoted by George Harrison in the Beatles’ “Within You, Without You”):
A big one for me is: Are souls created equal? If I’m a stupid jerk, can I blame god for giving me a stupid jerk soul?
The usual rule is that Satan is simply forbidden by God from taking souls that aren’t sold or given to him.
I’ve seen that one:
I also recall a short story where a guy rented his soul to Hell, spent a few days in a sort of spiritual waiting room and popped back into his body in a jail cell. “The Popsicle Stick Killer, that’s what they called you!”
An old time author named Mack Reynolds wrote one like that; a guy sold his soul, did good deeds with the power he was given, then was surprised to end up in a place that didn’t look like Hell at all.
“What makes you think that only the other side is interested in souls? This is not Hell, nor am I a demon.”
Well, blaming God for that is something a stupid jerk would probably do, so… yes.
One doesn’t get the impression that Satan offers partial deals very often. (And I’m not sure souls are supposed to be divisible anyway.)
All I know is that I got a great Peavey guitar amp for my soul back in '78.
Seriously though, are souls blank slates?
Different debate, fun thread, not this one.
I can’t contribute in the way you want, because I don’t believe in the soul, but I’ve found the best answer came from the mid-80s version of the Twilight Zone episode called “Eye of Newton”. IIRC, the Demon played by Ron Glass answers the question “What do you do with the souls you collect?” by saying after a reasonable markup, they sell them to one of the big chains. On one planet, there’s a race of sentient binary digits, and the Professor could possibly work his way up from a decimal to a fraction.
It’s as good an answer as any, IMO.