So what are you?
An insurance salesman. Go on, build a theological viewpoint around that.
So you’re a clergyman? Figures. 
I don’t know about other religions, but in Judasim, at least, the diffuclt part about discussing concepts like “soul” or “heaven” or “God” is that we literally don’t have any frame of reference for purely spiritual entities. So people are reduced to shallow metaphors and negative definations. It’s a lot easier to say “the soul is not a physical body” than “the soul is a type of spiritual energy that we cannot comprehend while we are alive because we live in a physical”.
Likewise, people try to describe heaven as “you meet God, and you have a reuinion with your dead relatives, and, um, you’re happy and all that”. Most people who think about don’t feel that “being with God” is such a fun way to spend eternity. And what if you don’t like your dead relatives? Still, the above is much easier to comprehend than " ‘heaven’ is a state of being outside of time and space. It’s more pleasurable than anything on Ea- no you don’t get bored. Yes, if you ate your favorite dessert every day you’d get sick of it, but the heaven type of happy is different. And as I said, there’s no time in heaven, so- hey! Where are you going?"
Er, am I making any sense?
You’re not so much not making sense as just not answering the questions.
What does “spiritual energy” mean? Energy is still material. If it’s energy it should still be detectable. How can a “spiritual” substance or energy be distinguished from nothingness?
How can anything exist “outside of space and time?” there is no such thing as “outside” of space and time.
I think these are ideas that are grounded in pre-scientific superstitions. The word “spirit” comes from the Latin spiritus. The word in Greek is pneuma. Both words mean “breath.” To the ancients, breath and “spirit” was the same thing. Your breath was your “soul.” If your breath left your body, your soul left with it – your soul WAS it. Ancient religions are now simply stuck with ideas based on naive and archaic suppositions. As a consequence, religious believers are forced to construct airy explications which are rich with poetic loft, but essentially empty of scientific substance.
That’s just my point. We don’t have the vocabulary to describe it, let alone understand it.
A soul is the essence of what we are, our body/mind allow our soul to access and comprehend our physical world.
That’s an utterly meaningless statement. There is no “essence” to what we are. Animals cannot be distilled into an “essence.” They are complex, organic chemical compounds.
As true as that may be, the OP assumes the existence.
I have asked this before and I still have had no reply…If death is the soul leaving the body, where does life go?
I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question. Could you rephrase that?
If you are referring to my question: People say death is the soul leaving the body. Since some also claim there is a difference between life and soul.
I would like to know where the life of the person went! To me life and soul are the same thing. I think when a person was knocked unconscious many thousands of years ago and returned to consciousness they though he (or she) had died and there fore must have something that lives on.
According to Genesis the punishment for sin was death, not loss of a soul.
My personal understanding is that it’s the body that’s the negative, subject as it is to illness, death, temptation, hunger…and death frees the soul from that earthly “prison” of sorts.
The soul is, well, the thing is that we humans don’t much like being sweaty, smelly, secreting, excreting mammals with jobs and policemen and blown transmissions. And we most definitely don’t like getting old, or sick, or dead, or having other people get sick and die, at least if we like them. Fortunately, the real us is like this thing that exists, but not corporeally, the way our nasty bodies exist, but in some other really nice way.
The soul isn’t confined by time or space, and when we die it somehow gets released and we get all infinite. Well, our good parts do; the bad parts just go away. Possibly to a lake of fire. And then we spend all our time doing something really infinite, and definitely not going to the bathroom, or eating, or doing the dishes, or having sex, or using a chainsaw. Maybe we listen to music a lot, but if so it wouldn’t have a beat since you wouldn’t be dancing. Probably something like Enya.
Anyway, the soul goes on forever and nothing is ever boring, even though absolutely nothing is going on. But really everything is going on. Also, we all become one, or we realize we were all one all along. Or maybe that’s just some Asians. At the very least, we all get along really well, in some astral way that doesn’t involve conversations about the weather, or the stock market, or what a douche bag Dr. Phil is. We’re at peace with Dr. Phil, and he is us, and we are him. This is called “heaven.”
Nobody is answering the question. Saying it’s “confined by the body” answers nothing.
What is the soul made of? What is the difference between “spiritual” or “astral” material and nothingness?
Can a soul see and hear? If so, why do our bodies need eyes and ears? If a soul can see and hear, what does it use for organs? How can it interact with light and vibration if it has no material existence?
Can a soul think and remember? If so, then why do our bodies need brains?
You’re using a different definition of the word “negative” than what SP was using. SP was saying that people were trying to define the word “negatively” in that they were only saying what it is NOT as opposed to what it IS.
Yo, what am I, chopped liver?
Your answer was reasonable as far as it goes, but I don’t think it represents what most religious people mean when they use the word.
DtC, I think we’re talking at cross-purposes. It’s nearly impossible to discuss the nature of a soul without assuming for the purposes of discussion that the supernatural exists. So let’s just take “there are some things that the laws of physics don’t cover” as a given for now, and debate how that can be possible in another discussion.
The following is my understanding of the traditional Jewish view on the soul, as well as my chain of reasoning on the matter:
Okay, so assume that there is material matter and spiritual matter. Physical matter is perceived by the senses- sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, kinesthesia, etc. Spiritual matter is perceived by… other senses. We don’t know exactly what those senses are, because while the soul is in the body, the bodily senses dominate the spiritual ones. We would have no ability to detect spiritual matter, any more than a blind person can detect color. Once the soul- the is, the core consciousness and personality of the person- is seperated from the body, the person would no longer see, hear, etc, but they would perceive reality by other means. Given that they would no longer have a brain, they would probably think differently, too.
It’s whatever you can claim it to be at the moment that’s handy. But in a nutshell, it’s the part of you which is divorced from you; which is to say that it’s the essence of you. I’m having a flashback to The Dark Crystal here.
What is the differnce between life and soul? Genesis says the punishment for sin was death, no mention of a loos of soul!