The Soul does not exist (note to Mods at beginning)

Originally posted by Jonna

Originally posted by dAlen
Is it possible that its only a comforting thought?

Well, why not? It was once comforting to think that god made everything for man and that the earth was the center of the universe because of man's importance. At the time this 'perceived truth' was accepted on faith and ego because man could not test such a theory yet. Is the concept of a soul really all that different?

[edit on 17-11-2006 by Jonna]

By no means will you find me arguing your point. It is well taken.
It is indeed a point that will net settle well with most, and not even pondered on for long, as it is frightening. I believe that there are ways through science that "immoratlity" can be achieved.

But the idea that it is used to comfort is both frighening and a possiblity, but at the end of the day, one must enjoy the life that they have now. And when its all said and done, either we keep on going, or we were rich enough to own a team of genetic experts to keep us going for a few 100 more years. (as cloning is really us, that isnt an option, though stem-cells from umbilical cord blood (i.e politically correct on both sides), and even ones own stem-cells from bone-marrow, etc. might be an option for pro-longing what appears to be the inevitable.)

Peace

Dalen

Originally posted by Strodyn
There are traps in most religions to try to keep people from straying.

Bingo! Religion (not necessarily spirituality) CAN be seen as a control system in quite a few ways.

Originally posted by dAlen
Sorry, but Im looking for information from Journals of Nature, Medicine, JAMA, etc.
Actual periodicals that have a standing in the field of science & medicine.
If its there, I would like to read it, but I bet they are still scratching their heads...

I think that is the beauty in it all...

We are always looking for the answers, but sometimes, things just happen or are continuous that we cannot explain...

This is why I admire Science...Science is pretty much just trial and error for everything it encompasses......If a hypothesis is tested repeatedly, and the outcome is the same, then the hypothesis is accepted as fact. Sometimes though, things that we thought were fact are later proven totally wrong....How many times do you hear of a drug being recalled for negative effects that never showed up during testing?

One day, someone didn't understand why an apple fell from a tree to the earth down below. It was studied and studied, and then was born the concept of Gravity. We know this concept exists because we can visually see it's effects on everyday things. It fulfills our basic human need of confirmation, and thus, we accept it as fact.....

The soul is something that Science has not been able to comprehend or test. We live, we die. We seem to have an understanding that there is something to us all, making us unique from one another beyond just genetics, that we cannot understand. It dumbfounds us and we choose to either accept the fact that it cannot be explained, or we choose not to believe it at all.

People used to swear that the world was flat, and that if you sailed to the corners of it, you would fall off. How did this theory change? We tested it.

Now this begs the question, how do you test a soul?

My answer is not very complex.

We cannot test a soul at this point in time.

But, why not? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe we aren't supposed to. Maybe the hypothesis of creation is partially correct and this is one of those things that we can never understand until we move out of this plane of existence. When that occurs, why would we then regress back to now and tell everyone about it?

Do I believe we all have a unique soul? Yes.

Do I have an answer as to how that soul came in to being? I have hypotheses, but no answer.

Can I prove that we have a soul? No. It is a personal belief based on my life experiences and overall sense of awareness.

Can I even define what a soul is? No. It's an energy, or a conscience. That's about all I can guess. There aren't really words that can define it I guess...

This is a good topic, and I hope I have gotten a concept of what you are looking for....However, if it is proof of or against a soul that you seek, I highly doubt you are going to find an answer here....I don't think there can ever be any proof. It is a journey that we must all take for ourselves.

Originally posted by BASSPLYR
What I think happens regarding conciousness is this. Nuerons in small organisms are basically responsable for sensing the immediate environment and then reacting to it to preserve it's self for basic survival.

What machines don't get to have souls? Only biological things can have souls? Wheres it say that? What say the people about my CrAaaazY theory.

I just posted a part of your post...but the post was very interesting, as I have pondered along these lines. In trying to understand how the brain functions, emotions, where they come from, is it external stimuli, interal, was anything ever in us that was original, if not...then we are like computers regardless of flesh and bone, etc. Interesting line of thinking you have.

So in this sense, the soul is something greater than what normally thought of, and in a essence, really isnt a soul from the traditional view point.

Interesting indeed.

I have enjoyed all the post, and appreciate the replies from everyone.
Collectively we may get somewhere...

Peace

Dalen

Originally posted by dAlen
near-death aint good enough.

Just out of interest, how can someone who experiences something when they are, to the current medical technology, completely dead be not enough proof? Is that not evidence that the soul exists? And also people who have seen something outside of their room that they have never seen before when having an NDE, how can that be "not good enough"?

Originally posted by apex

Originally posted by dAlen
near-death aint good enough.

Just out of interest, how can someone who experiences something when they are, to the current medical technology, completely dead be not enough proof? Is that not evidence that the soul exists? And also people who have seen something outside of their room that they have never seen before when having an NDE, how can that be "not good enough"?

My apologies, it is good enough, if you can trust them.
Again, at the moment I have been looking at it more from a controlled environment to prove the existence of a soul. And near-deaths, you take the word from the person telling the story as you dont have the medical records, its not listed in medical periodicals...and if it is, its so short its questionable.

If there was a way to verify, it would be another thing.
I say this, because after reading so many peoples near death experiences, I saw in the mix those that tended to bring in their religious point of view.

One rabbi has said, "Christian goes to Christian heaven, Jew goes to Jewish Heaven, Hindu to wherever Hindus go to, etc. Until they eventually all merge into oneness with the creator."
Now if there is truth to this, then it could help explain some of the contradictions to the near death stories out there.
In a way, it seems like people continue to create their own perception once they die. (from what I have read). Kind of like an orthodox paper where it said that God would follow them like a river of fire through eternity because of his great love, and they would forever, willingly choose to walk away. Point being is perhaps people go on to live whatever it is they believe. I dont know.

But the apparent lack of verifiable proof is what gets me. And again, even those with good intent, want to believe something so much, or have confirmation that they could "stretch it" a bit, even unknowingly to themselves. As mentioned, people want to believe...they will find something to believe in, and the means to support it.

Thanks for your post.

Peace

Dalen

Originally posted by JSquared
Do I have an answer as to how that soul came in to being? I have hypotheses, but no answer.

Can I even define what a soul is? No. It's an energy, or a conscience.

It is a journey that we must all take for ourselves.

- I am curious, if you dont mind, of your hypothesis.
- Yes, it definitley seems like a journey we take ourselves, and strangley enough we drag everyone along with us.

Thanks for sharing, I look foward to reading your hypothesis.

Peace

Dalen

Originally posted by BASSPLYR
I don't think there is a soul at all. I think it's more of an illusion.

What I think happens regarding conciousness is this. Nuerons in small organisms are basically responsable for sensing the immediate environment and then reacting to it to preserve it's self for basic survival.

I feel that initially these neurons can act out their functions independantly of each other, for they aren't yet competing for resources in the organism. As things progress and become more complex the nuerons have to start intercommunicating on a basic level to fight for priority of resources within the organism.

I think there is a net effect of all these over lapping nuerons fighting for what they need, and that this inturn appears to be conciousness, eventhough it is more like a complex computerlike algorithm. The net effect of all these things are what we precieve as conciousness and we dub it a soul. I think in actuallity our personalities, soul, subconcious (nuerons arguing), and conciousness (net effect of nuerons) are really just a simple phenomina although really complex in details that is more akin to a 'ghost in the machine' concept. I feel that this phenomina will arise when anyhting gets this complex. What happens to machines when their algorythems for self preservation,maintenance, etc... develope to a point where they create a net effect that manifests as a self aware conciousness. We would have to admit that we have invented intelligent life, especially if it can reproduce it's self in any manner, and we would have to argue that the machine would have a soul, and desires.

What machines don't get to have souls? Only biological things can have souls? Wheres it say that? What say the people about my CrAaaazY theory.

Bassplyr although I have never totally rejected spirituality, I am more than aware of things like hormonal responses, and how they are so powerful especially when it comes to something like love. There is no answer to you that any religious/spiritual person can give to satisfy, as there is not answer you can give you a religious or spiritual person ro satisfy. NEITHER party imo is wrong.

I'll share a story...

My Great Aunt (grandfathers sister), now deceased, always told this story...

One winter night when they were small, probably around the 1920's, there was a gas leak in their house....Their mom noticed the cat acting funny and then it passed out....She immediately knew something was wrong and got all the kids and carried them outside.....There was snow covering the ground, and the kids had been asleep for a while, directly over the leaking gas line...

My Great Aunt CLEARLY remembered looking down at herself laying down in the snow...she remembered feeling very sad at how her body looked laying there in the snow, not breathing, but felt as though she was drifting back towards her body....She remembers seeing the neighbor pick her body up, and the next thing she knew, she was waking up in the neighbor's house.....She swore that it was her soul leaving her body...She later found out that she had completely stopped breathing, had no heartbeat or other signs of life, and had to be revived...

Do I think she was correct in what she thought happened? Maybe, but I wasn't there to know for sure...who is to say that I would know even if I was there?

Alot of the time, I try to sit and think about my own uniqueness....I don't know how to describe it, but it's is almost if I am trying to "enter" someone else's body and look upon my own...I have never been successful...I think it is because I know that they, and I, each have our own feelings, ways of seeing things, etc.....Even a mirror lies to us. We can never truely see our own self the same way that we look upon others.....It is something that has confounded me to the point of great stress at times...

There is something inside of me that prevents me from looking upon myself.....This is one of the ways I would describe a soul.....

Originally posted by dAlen
[
- Yes, it definitley seems like a journey we take ourselves, and strangley enough we drag everyone along with us.

I am going to have to WATS you for that, because it is probably the only real provable truth said here today.

Originally posted by JSquared
I'll share a story...

Thanks for sharing the story.

This reminds me alot of my story that I posted in the paranormal forum.

Although there is no readily known explanation as to why I left my body...(whatever I was), it is interesting to note that the "leaving" the body turned out not to be the biggest thing.
The point of "almost" knowing something beyond me and realizing I was not me (how do you put this in words) was very intriguing.
Please refer to my link for more detail.

One may ask, then what is your problem...for sure you know and understand about the soul.
On the contrary...it raises more questions. Until I can repeat and test this out, I dont know whats up.

But I shared that, because your story reminded me of what happened with me.

Who was looking at the body, was it a soul, or was it the mind creating the image as if it were projected outward? The mind is a tricky thing. Very interesting indeed.

Thanks again for sharing

Peace

Dalen

Originally posted by Strodyn

Originally posted by dAlen
[
- Yes, it definitley seems like a journey we take ourselves, and strangley enough we drag everyone along with us.

I am going to have to WATS you for that, because it is probably the only real provable truth said here today.

Thanks, glad you liked it.
We humans are indeed interesting creatures.

Peace

Dalen

Originally posted by etshrtslr
I would beg to differ...people have come back life after death.

Here's an interesting video here concerning the topic.

Originally posted by dAlen
- I am curious, if you dont mind, of your hypothesis.
- Yes, it definitley seems like a journey we take ourselves, and strangley enough we drag everyone along with us.

Ha!...you had to go there didn't you?

I'll be the first one to admit my hypothesis really has no way of being tested and really is a conglomerate of all knowledge I have ever gained, and a little bit of faith....

I believe we all have a soul (or spirt)....
I believe most living thing have the same (animals, plants, etc.)...
I also believe that the purpose of these souls are unknown, but that is part of our purpose for being here....We are supposed to seek that purpose....

Throughout history, countless people have sought the purpose of our existence..This has given birth to countless religions, countless philosophies, and countless ideas....Over the years, these things have been twisted and distorted to benefit goals of the flesh (to serve ourselves)

I believe that if one wades through the pool of ideas, you get back to the same basic principles.....We must care for ourselves...We must care for others...and We must care for our home (Earth, for now)...

Well then, how did we all get here? Science has tried to prove that we can come from elements that exist naturally in the universe.....Religion (the major ones at least) want you to believe that one being created this universe and everything in it....So when you get to the bottom of it, both of them can actually be right....A driving force, from nothing, could have created the elements of the universe, which in turn, could have created everything that exists...

The problem arises, that we cannot prove either one is correct, so everyone takes sides and bickers about it endlessly....We often fail to see the similarities and choose to argue about the differences......

Another problem is that there eventually has to be a starting point, and we cannot grasp that there could ever be a point that NOTHING existed....Even I don't have the answers to all of that...I guess that is where faith comes in....We cannot explain things, so we have to have faith that one day we will get the answer...

So, actually, my hypothesis raises more questions than the answers it comes up with......I can't keep typing because I am at work, but I will try to check back in tonight to explain things better......

Originally posted by WiseSheep

Originally posted by etshrtslr
I would beg to differ...people have come back life after death.

Here's an interesting video here concerning the topic.

I probably need to slow down for the night.
After pouring my 'soul' out, (quite ironic the words we use...'soul' in our expressions)...anyway, I should check out some of these links that people like you and etchrtslr have posted.

Peace

Dalen

I might have to download it and look at it later as it is a longer video, and my internet connection is unforgiving with videos unfortunately...

[edit on 17-11-2006 by dAlen]

Originally posted by JSquared

Originally posted by dAlen
- I am curious, if you dont mind, of your hypothesis.
- Yes, it definitley seems like a journey we take ourselves, and strangley enough we drag everyone along with us.

Ha!...you had to go there didn't you?

I'll be the first one to admit my hypothesis really has no way of being tested and really is a conglomerate of all knowledge I have ever gained, and a little bit of faith....

I believe we all have a soul (or spirt)....
I believe most living thing have the same (animals, plants, etc.)...
I also believe that the purpose of these souls are unknown, but that is part of our purpose for being here....We are supposed to seek that purpose....

Throughout history, countless people have sought the purpose of our existence..This has given birth to countless religions, countless philosophies, and countless ideas....Over the years, these things have been twisted and distorted to benefit goals of the flesh (to serve ourselves)

I believe that if one wades through the pool of ideas, you get back to the same basic principles.....We must care for ourselves...We must care for others...and We must care for our home (Earth, for now)...

Well then, how did we all get here? Science has tried to prove that we can come from elements that exist naturally in the universe.....Religion (the major ones at least) want you to believe that one being created this universe and everything in it....So when you get to the bottom of it, both of them can actually be right....A driving force, from nothing, could have created the elements of the universe, which in turn, could have created everything that exists...

The problem arises, that we cannot prove either one is correct, so everyone takes sides and bickers about it endlessly....We often fail to see the similarities and choose to argue about the differences......

Another problem is that there eventually has to be a starting point, and we cannot grasp that there could ever be a point that NOTHING existed....Even I don't have the answers to all of that...I guess that is where faith comes in....We cannot explain things, so we have to have faith that one day we will get the answer...

So, actually, my hypothesis raises more questions than the answers it comes up with......I can't keep typing because I am at work, but I will try to check back in tonight to explain things better......

Originally posted by JSquared
Ha!...you had to go there didn't you?

I'll be the first one to admit my hypothesis really has no way of being tested and really is a conglomerate of all knowledge I have ever gained, and a little bit of faith....

I believe we all have a soul (or spirt)....
I believe most living thing have the same (animals, plants, etc.)...
I also believe that the purpose of these souls are unknown, but that is part of our purpose for being here....We are supposed to seek that purpose....

Throughout history, countless people have sought the purpose of our existence..This has given birth to countless religions, countless philosophies, and countless ideas....Over the years, these things have been twisted and distorted to benefit goals of the flesh (to serve ourselves)

I believe that if one wades through the pool of ideas, you get back to the same basic principles.....We must care for ourselves...We must care for others...and We must care for our home (Earth, for now)...

Well then, how did we all get here? Science has tried to prove that we can come from elements that exist naturally in the universe.....Religion (the major ones at least) want you to believe that one being created this universe and everything in it....So when you get to the bottom of it, both of them can actually be right....A driving force, from nothing, could have created the elements of the universe, which in turn, could have created everything that exists...

The problem arises, that we cannot prove either one is correct, so everyone takes sides and bickers about it endlessly....We often fail to see the similarities and choose to argue about the differences......

Another problem is that there eventually has to be a starting point, and we cannot grasp that there could ever be a point that NOTHING existed....Even I don't have the answers to all of that...I guess that is where faith comes in....We cannot explain things, so we have to have faith that one day we will get the answer...

So, actually, my hypothesis raises more questions than the answers it comes up with......I can't keep typing because I am at work, but I will try to check back in tonight to explain things better......

OMG that is so true to how I believe it is unreal.....and I have run out of WATS sorry.

Amazing post. - Are you me?

I would consider myself a scientist in that I like to find the truth through repeatable experiments. I also have experienced first hand things that are not explainable by science. I believe we created the fence that I could very easily sit on.

[edit on 17/11/06 by Strodyn]

Originally posted by JSquared

Originally posted by dAlen
- I am curious, if you dont mind, of your hypothesis.
- Yes, it definitley seems like a journey we take ourselves, and strangley enough we drag everyone along with us.

Ha!...you had to go there didn't you?

Hopefully I wasnt misunderstood with my comment above. If so, you took it rather well, which is cool. But to clarify, here is what I was referring to:

I agreed that we have to make the journy ourselves, but as soon as I wrote that, i saw the irony of how Im "dragging" everyone else in my journey Im taking with the questions I pose.

Kind of wierd, it seems like the journey is alone, yet at the same time its not.
Reminds me of the entanglement theory. Pretty much that we all affect each other.

By no means was I referring to your comments in a sarcastic way...just my own irony.

Peace

Dalen

Originally posted by JSquared
Well then, how did we all get here? Science has tried to prove that we can come from elements that exist naturally in the universe.....Religion (the major ones at least) want you to believe that one being created this universe and everything in it....So when you get to the bottom of it, both of them can actually be right....A driving force, from nothing, could have created the elements of the universe, which in turn, could have created everything that exists...

The problem arises, that we cannot prove either one is correct, so everyone takes sides and bickers about it endlessly....We often fail to see the similarities and choose to argue about the differences......

Another problem is that there eventually has to be a starting point, and we cannot grasp that there could ever be a point that NOTHING existed....Even I don't have the answers to all of that...I guess that is where faith comes in....We cannot explain things, so we have to have faith that one day we will get the answer...

So, actually, my hypothesis raises more questions than the answers it comes up with......I can't keep typing because I am at work, but I will try to check back in tonight to explain things better......

I like your hypothesis, I feel like I have been floating around in a mass of ideas similar to this...but as you said, not being able to quite put your finger on it.

Seeing that Srodyn wanted you to have a WATS, but used his last WATS on my comment, I gave you a WATS...

Peace

Dalen

I assume that if Humans have an existence beyond a coporeal form then it must be that all combonations of DNA would follow the same rules. Humans IMO put way to much imortance on themselves which greatly distorts reality and if we are sould then what was our soul before we were born?

I also assume people who have near death experiences are telling the truth but thats only because they precieve it as such but infact the brain as complex as it is actualy has a mechanism that creates the experience fooling the person to think they were actualy in another realm. I know its horrible but I am in the camp that thinks death is it and unless you use science to override your mortality you are eventualy going to cease to exist in the universal constant at which your preception ended at.