What's a soul?

[Lone--Wanderer]

Re: What's a soul?

Personally, I think the whole "soul" thing came up when people decided that they were afraid of dying and had to make themselves happy again by saying that you never really "died", just left your mortal body.

And, there is a point in living. This planet has a delicate balance of flora and fauna, and it needs to be kept in balance by everything else. Like a living cell, Earth needs care from the inside out, and the life-forms on her exist to keep every other life-form in check.

Humans are an illness in this cell; we're everywhere and rapidly killing / destroying everything. Sad thing is, nothing can really kill us all but something that would screw the entire planet over as well. We're like AIDS or something.

[x6tence]

Re: What's a soul?

If we can agree that an amoeba doesn't have a soul, then we can agree that a human doesn't have a soul since a human being is simply a very complex evolved form of the amoeba having undergone several billion years of changes. At no point under the processes of evolution did any magical soul creation take place.

Stating that a soul exists is basically going against the principals of the teapot theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

Also, someone dies and they are brought back a few minutes later. There is "transfer" that occurs during that time.


Another bit of evidence. After 3 days of development, cells are undifferentiated. That means if you seperated them into 200 pieces, it would form 200 identical individuals. The possibility that this could occur completely invalidates the possibility of a soul existing.

No soul, you aren't special, get over it.

that all depends what perspective your coming from either religious or scientific.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: What's a soul?

Conveniently enough, one of those perspectives happens to be wrong.

[Master_of_the_Faster]

Re: What's a soul?

I would like to say that even though science (as shown on devonin's chart) doesn't contain any end. Religion on the other hand does contain an end. The problem is that religion jumps straight to the end with ignoring contradicting evidence. That doesn't make religion wrong (unless proven wrong). It simply means that there is a chance that religion is wrong. Science on the other hand, doesn't have any chances of being wrong because every idea is proven and even if the idea doesn't seem to be provable, science would have the intent of proving an idea 100% and honoring the fact that there might be contradicting evidence to an idea. Science is clearly the better perspective because when something is proven, it is 100% right, but when religion deals with and issue, there is a chance that something might be wrong. Why take a chance and go with religion's perspective when you can clearly be guaranteed a 100% chance of ideas being proven in science (or atleast the intent of proving it 100% without skipping straight to the end)?

[devonin]

Re: What's a soul?

Why take a chance and go with religion's perspective when you can clearly be guaranteed a 100% chance of ideas being proven in science (or atleast the intent of proving it 100% without skipping straight to the end)?

I wonder what Pascal would say to this....*ponder*

[jewpinthethird]

Re: What's a soul?

All humans have a soul.

All flammable products contain phlogiston.

[devonin]

Re: What's a soul?

I really do love the entire concept of Phlogiston. it is right up there with spontaneous generation.

The fact that at the time, by the technology available, they seemed like such reasonable explanations, and yet now we consider them to be completely absurd really makes me wonder just how well we think we know things, just because we know them "better" than we used to.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: What's a soul?

I wonder what Pascal would say to this....*ponder*

I wonder what criticisms there are of Pascal. Actually I don't, I could recite most from memory.

Also yes, the human soul is just like Phlogiston. Following the proof of Phlogistons existence, you can prove the souls existence by the fact that a human being weighs less immediately as soon as they die. XD

[devonin]

Re: What's a soul?

Well, the "At least with science you have the -intent- to gain 100% proof for a premise, instead of religion which skipped to an answer and will hold it in the fact of even directly countering evidence" line of thought is an interesting counter-argument to Pascal, even though Pascal would presumably say "Even if, I'm still better off" since Pascal was less concerned about being -right- and more concerned about being safe *grin*

[Kilroy_x]

Re: What's a soul?

That's not the problem. One of the bigger problems with Pascal's wager is that it presents the issue as if there is only one religion and only one God in contention. Given all the world's religions, the wager becomes quite another gamble. That's just the beginning of the problems though.

[devonin]

Re: What's a soul?

Well, it seems that in this forum virtually all religious discussion is done within the context of christianity in some form.

Bear in mind also, that the terms of the wager are generally parsed as being a choice between believeing the Christian God or believeing in no God at all. Not just "A god or not"

[Master_of_the_Faster]

Re: What's a soul?

You really can't counter 100% truth or the intent of gaining 100% truth unless all you want to do is manipulate people.

[devonin]

Re: What's a soul?

Er...sure you can. "You are trying to find 100% truth, haven't yet, and we believe we have"

It isn't an especially -good- counter to it, but it is a counter to it. Also "Trying to gain 100% truth is a waste of time, because 100% truth is inherantly impossible for humans, because we have too many fallible means of measuring evidence"

[Master_of_the_Faster]

Re: What's a soul?

Er...sure you can. "You are trying to find 100% truth, haven't yet, and we believe we have"

This is indeed a counter to what I said. I can see the faults in what I said, but science will resolve anything that is said to be false.

It isn't an especially -good- counter to it, but it is a counter to it. Also "Trying to gain 100% truth is a waste of time, because 100% truth is inherantly impossible for humans, because we have too many fallible means of measuring evidence"

As for this idea of countering what I said, it is best to just leave these thoughts on the left side of your chart (even if they aren't provable). There is no need to be one sided or have a chance of being wrong on issues that aren't provable at all. These are matters that humans should probably not be concerned with if it really is the case that an idea is inherantly impossible for humans to gain 100% truth with.

[devonin]

Re: What's a soul?

Well, carry that through to its logical conclusion: If there are things that it is impossible to know 100% truth about, how is that a logic against religious belief?

You've been pointing out a lot that simply because science is willing to consider contrary evidence more commonly than religion, that science is simply superior in terms of knowing the truth of the word, when by any reasonable standard, they are completing theories.

Religious people, in general, are prepared to accept that a higher power is capable of directly communicating truth to humans...and that such a power does possess 100% knowledge on the subjects of which it has passed down truths to humans.

Scientific people, in general, are prepared to accept that the only path to truth is through experimentation, testing of theories, discarding ones with evidence against them that can't be explained, and working towards what they assume will eventually be 100% truth to humans.

Along the same line as Pascal's Wager, time will out on whether Science will one day disprove all the tenets of religion, or whether science will eventually simply prove its say to what many religious people have believed all along.