What exactly is a soul?!

[irmrbrian]

A Bad Guy?
No seriously
1) the ability to create, beleive, and to connect.
2) Humans, some animals (dolfins and maybe dogs),probably other life forms not on this planet.
3) yes its just a person who is inable to create or beleive and cannot develop strong bonds with others.
p.s. Create does not mean to make entirely but to generate something new alltogether a.k.a creativity.

 

[Tiny116]

One or all of 4 things.

1, Energy and impulses in the body that is required for there to be life.

2, the Conscious

3, Its our spirit

4, the thing attatched to the bottom of my shoe XD

 

[Dorian6]

They're not exactly "souls" but that's the general idea. And to answer your questions (in order)

1. it's just kind of a thing you have, like an apendix. It doesn't really do anything and no one really knows why its there. It probably had a purpose at one point in our evolution, but nobody knows what that was.

2. Everything has a soul. Literally everything, humans, dogs, cows, celery, spinach. So you can't win, even if you're a vegetarian.

3. Yes you can live without a soul. Babies don't get one until they're about 6-12 months old. So they're just a crying, pooing monster until they get a soul.

Of course there's another possibility. That it's just a human invention to give them the belief that their existence doesn't end with their death. A trifling comfort that christanity uses to strike fear into the hearts of men in order to make them do what they want for fear of their soul burning forever in a lake of fire

 

[OmegaXIII]

I sincerely believe that there is some biological basis for the soul, but as with consciousness in general we cannot fully understand it until we have a unified physical theory.

If it's a definition you want however, i suppose i would call it the essence of everything you are.

Here is a brain bender for you on the same subject. Could a robot ever have a soul? As robots have been created recently that have a base program which then independent of user input literally evolves into it's own being.

 

[Circusfreak]

I think souls are the very "me" that experiences being me.
your personality,memories,experiences are not part of your soul, they are part of your brain. your soul just experiences being you. when you reincarnate into a new body then your soul leaves all your emotions, memories and such in the dead body. your soul makes the decisions but those decisions are very influenced by your brain. it's like that you are the party of your body and your soul is the leader of that party and your soul make the decisions, but your soul does not know anything, it's just a soul so all the other members of the party must tell you what is the right thing to do. the other members is your brain

 

[BaldursBananaSoap]

I believe that they are an imaginary concept created by humans which formulates who we are as a person.

 

[ChromeAlchemist]

This ISN'T a debate about whether or not the soul exists

Well, then say so. That would be perfectly legitimate. Don't just ringfence of an area as "douche".

Now a final question before we move on is this:

Did you honestly not realise that's what he meant, or were you just being pedantic for the sake of it? No offence, but from the outside looking in and judging by your previous posts, I would go with the latter.

 

[Soxafloppin]

'Fictional'

would be my best bet.

 

[CptPanda29]

Something the people made up years and years ago so that kings can stay in power, justify global tyranny and get away with murder. Literally.

Also as the peasants of those times were rather dim so they believed that failure to do as the big man on a podium said would result in eternity in a fiery pit. Also as an incentive promising a kingdom of gold to people who shut up and do as they're told.

And so this complies with posting rules, OR SO I BELIEVE.

 

[Ghonzor]

In the Jain religion, every living creature has a soul. That is why they eat only certain vegetables grown so as not to harm anything when they are taken.

 

[CosmicCommander]

I believe the soul is mysticism-speeak for conciousness.

I mean, C'mon, if you substituted soul with conciousness every time 'soul' is used in any text, the meaning of the text is exactly the same!

 

[CHangedUsername]

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body. ~ C. S. Lewis

 

[ffs-dontcare]

escapist, for a while now, three questions have been stuck in my head

This should be interesting.

1. What exactly is a soul?

We are.

We're all souls inhabiting bodies. We don't have souls. We ARE souls.

I don't know exactly what a soul is, but I do believe that it is our consciousness (or something akin to that). When your soul leaves your body (or rather, when you leave your body), your body loses consciousness and effectively becomes a vegetable.

However, this is just my basic belief at the moment. And even then, there's comas and such to consider. When someone is in a coma, is their soul still in their body? Well, maybe that depends on whether they can still hear everything around them and still think thoughts while being unable to move a muscle. In that case, I'd say yes, the soul is still in the body, which works perfectly as an explanation IMO, provided you're open-minded about anything spiritual.
But if the person is a vegetable, completely unable to move or hear anything or even think any thoughts due to being completely unconscious, then I guess it's probably safe to say the soul has left the body at this stage, and it is only a matter of time before the body dies due to either natural causes or the medical staff turning off life support.

I do not believe that our memories, personal preferences, personality, etc are part of our soul. Those things are all formed over time throughout the person's life and are all based on that person's experiences through his/her life.

That's just the way I see it though. I'm not saying it is the end-all explanation, because that would be arrogant of me.

2. What has one?

All humans. Including cloned ones.

3. Is it possible for someone to survive without one?

Not in my opinion, no. As I said, your body is effectively your vessel on this plane of existence. Once you leave said body, it will become lifeless and limp. A completely empty vessel, no longer inhabited. It might be (or probably is) possible, however, to artificially re-animate such a vessel (i.e. a body) by pseudo-scientific or properly scientific means.

Any Douche bags who tell me souls don't exist can stay out of this thread!

Too late, it seems...

EDIT:

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body. ~ C. S. Lewis

Ah, beat me to it by five minutes.

 

[CHangedUsername]

Evangelical/Internet atheists are hilarious.

 

[Yumi_and_Erea]

It's meant to be the spiritual part of the living being which dictate our emotions and whatnot, at least that is the belief. People believe this is what drives us to do many of the things of which we can't explain the motives. So I guess based on popular belief

1. The Spiritual part of the living being
2. People
3. No

"Soul" is ironically enough the kind of music played and enjoyed by people that haven't got one.

Spoken like a true ignoramus, whether it was sarcastic or not. So you're implying Ray Charles never had one?

EDIT: Yes, I C wut he did thar, I'm tired and it's been a long day, leave me be to bask in my idiocy.

I suppose I should clarify this, to avoid confusion:

No I'm not racist, and I believe black folks have just as much of a soul as whites and others.

No I did not mean to imply that Ray Charles never had a soul. What I meant was this:
Pretty much everybody who founded and created soul (such as Ray Charles and James Brown) is now dead. While the purpose of this thread is to discuss the souls of the living, I think we can all agree that people who are long since dead no longer have one (the undead being up for debate).

As for modern-day musicians of soul and fans of the genre: All of the new ones are basically ripping of the golden oldies, devoid of any passion, originality or soul themselves, and the fans are either trapped in the past or addicted to the pretentious, facade of the newbies.

So basically it comes down to the fact that all people associated with soul are one of the following:

Dead,
Ripping off the dead,
Trapped in the past and glorifying the dead,
Functionally braindead and glorifying the people who are ripping off the dead.

My deepest respect to the folks that pioneered the genre, but let's face it folks:
Your glory days are over.

 

[Noone From Nowhere]

The current concept in popular culture seems to be to the effect that a soul is a personality save-state of some kind, something that a psychopomp can transfer to an afterlife/storage unit.
It's what Jesus (or man-god/beast-god/spirit of choice)saves either to collect or to re-incarnate.

 

[Yumi_and_Erea]

"Soul" is ironically enough the kind of music played and enjoyed by people that haven't got one.

You racist bast-

Oh, I c wot u did thar.

OT: Soul is either;

a genre of music
A spiritual concept where a persons conciousness and personality remain intact after death

I suppose I should clarify this, to avoid confusion:

No I'm not racist, and I believe black folks have just as much of a soul as whites and others.
This was a comment on the music, not on the people.

Just wanted to clear that up real quick.

 

[coldshadow]

it a existence is highly debateble but I look at it as being prety much the same thing as your subconscience

 

[sgtshock]

The way I see it, a soul is self-awareness.

When you think of conciousness and what makes us self aware, you typically think of the brain. But what is our brain? Isn't it just a mass of protein and water with electric current running through it? Isn't it just a computer with organic components instead of metal? So then why are we self-aware, but the most advanced A.Is aren't? I know the brain is a very complex organ, but self-awareness is something you can't really quantify. So until we make robots or AIs that are provably self-aware (which would be kind of difficult), I see that as the soul.

Yeah, I've thought about this before.