And do believe that I, this random guy on the internet has a soul
I personally don't believe that I anyone else has a soul. From my standup I don't se any reason to believe that our consciousness and our so called "soul" would be any more then something our brain is making up.
I believe that my consciousness is a thing I can point to as being my essence. You could maybe call that a soul, or you could maybe not. Either way, my consciousness is the collective consciousness of countless single-celled organisms all working to make my singular self function. You could maybe call the manifestation of all these processes into a greater thinking singularity as a "soul", more akin to the way in which a city might have a "soul" made up by the people that live in it. I don't believe I have a ghost, and I believe that my consciousness is conditional, derived from my biology, but consciousness itself is as good as anything to call a soul
So I guess, in short, no XD
Whenever I listen to that old-time 'a rock and roll I feel soothed, so I must.
When I was younger, I became a "rational" and "atheist" type - I have to thank my parents for that. They were the scientific but spiritual type and allowed me to come to my own conclusions, rather than forcing religion down my throat. I'm glad, too. Because when I met religious people later on, I was able to look at the absurdity of it all and brush it off.
But now I'm older, and I sometimes wish this weren't the case. I truly wish I could believe in a soul or a heaven/hell or reincarnation or any other form of higher being than us. I get it. I get why people do. The world is ruled by evil people who do terrible, evil things and this belief in a higher authority where they will one day be judged, and all the innocents who suffer will finally have peace... it's the only way to cope with it.
I don't believe in a soul, but I wish I did.
My thinking is the same and I get what you mean with wishing that you'd believe in a higher power but I'm not sure if believing in a higher power would actually put me at ease. A god would be something we have no control over and who, to some degree, would have to judge things as good or bad, even if they're not objectively one or the other. It also kinda puts me at ease that life is just over when you die and there's no deeper meaning to life. It means that I can live however I see fit and I don't have to worry about going to heaven or hell or whether I'm following the path that was set out for me. I also think that it's better to accept that bad things just happen, be that to you or other people, instead of just saying that some god wanted it to happen like that. It means that you actually have to work to fix issues and can't just rely on some higher power to do it for you.
You raise very valid points. Those are absolutely concerns I might have too if I actually believed in a god - am I following all the rules, am I good enough to get the good ending etc etc. It's good to not have illusions that a higher authority will take care of the problems of this world and actually work to fix it ourselves.
And in moments of hope, when things are improving, it seems we as humans are succeeding in that. But looking at the world now, those moments seem fewer and fewer. It gets harder to keep working on improving, or even thinking that we can improve.
But I don't want to just say injustice is natural and bad things will always happen and cannot be stopped. Individually, yeah - there will always be people who do things that are not good. But on a societal scale? A better world is possible. In this aspect, having a belief in a higher authority, one you believe will be "good" and "just" can help centre you and give you hope. I guess, spiritual rather than actually religious. But I can't even believe in that.
What I meant was that bad things will always happen simply because we're so many humans and a few bad ones will always exist, not because it's some sort of natural thing we can't stop. I absolutely agree that we can, and should, always work to make the world a better place. Religion might help you stay hopeful in that aspect but it doesn't help you in actually doing something to make that happen. Without a god, all issues are caused by humans, which also means that those issues can be fixed by humans. On one hand, it means that we need to do everything ourselves and don't have someone or something helping us but on the other hand, it also means that we can fix everything ourselves and we don't actually need any help.
Define to me concretely what constitutes a soul, and I will tell you. Do cats have souls? What about frogs? Snails? Amoebas? Trees? Or people on life support?
I have a self-aware consciousness. If that's what counts, then yes. However, this means that many people by the same definition don't.
Only correct answer here. First define "soul". So far no human has ever been able to define it, so how do we know if we have one?
Honestly, rather than a "yes" or "no" I'm just gonna say that I don't think anybody's given a clear enough definition of what would constitute a "soul" to even make the question mean anything.
Recent studies suggest that much of consciousness/information synthesis is not in the neurons themselves, but the electromagnetic fields that they generate. Is that a soul?
What about the gut microbiome and how much of an oversized effect it has on a person's day-to-day experience? If the soul is some manifestation of your non-physical existance, would it be affected by those very physical little buggers, since they can affect your mood so much?
Even if you go to the classic religious context about a conscious experience that exists after death, you still have to answer whether or not they can wander earth, or, as some christian denominations think, they're all in heaven, hell, or purgatory so you'll never ever need to care about a non-embodied soul on earth anyway.
I think qualia and the philosophical zombie thing pokes a hole in the whole non-soul thing but I'll admit that I don't have a good materialist explanation.
I'd wager that consciousness is some sort of emergent property of matter operating on a dimension we can't directly interact with. 70% of our understanding of the universe doesn't come from directly observing stuff, it comes from observing the effects of it.
That doesn't mean that you have an eternal soul that survives death, just that consciousness is a bit more complicated than the current materialist explanation.
Personally no, and neither does anything/one else, its a very limited religious-brainwormed concept mostly used to just go around and call things 'souless' which is all in fun when its a terrible movie or something, not fun when its people and the concept is used to harm them. Its all material and its near countless interactions in many, many forms all the way up and down, in forms we know well and those we have yet to study.
During NDEs your brain glitches out as you're basically dying (and if you're really dead technically you're not human anymore anyway, just sayin, the pop-mythical soul seems to imply permanent human-ness lording all existence in a linear fashion whether directly or by symbolic language) and having OBEs is nothing mystical, in fact reasonably easy to recreate when fully well and alive, so its hard to say those as some concrete evidence for a pop soul concept or against it. I think its the brain making stuff up for now since life is hard and filled with stuff it can't handle.
A lot of things people call 'soul' in pop reference can be taken away quite easily by mere illness, time or even falling out of social graces.
Out of body experience, the illusory perception that you're hanging outside of your body, people that have NDEs (near death experiences) report it a lot but you can trip that sensation while very alive, people with hard core dissociation type conditions for example, other more boring things like sleep deprivation, trauma and stress, or simple meditation and perception games.
I don't believe, because I do not care about the existence of the soul...
No and no. Physics is pretty thoroughly buckled down at this point, leaving only some very extreme situations unaccounted for, and it doesn't really provide a way for us to not be made of meat.
That goes for any other form of mind-body duality and as a result any afterlife, as well.
I don't know the correct meaning of soul enough to answer but I want to think there is.
I was brought up an atheist by science focused parents so I never believed or was taught about any religious as in a doctrine but rather as myths people believe. I envied sometimes how people would gather to pray and how much relief they seemed to feel because of it. Growing up a certain way, had me experience some fucked up shit and I really, really wished there was an answer to it aside from "well, grownups are shitty lol". Maybe having a little bit of magical/spiritual thinking would have helped me cope in better ways, but who knows.
Now I am older, still non religious but a bit more conscious/observant about how I percieve the world around me and while I know how many things work/ exist, I like to thinkk there is also a bit of an unexplained component that I cannot fully grasp that is a bit like magic.
Nothing suggesting the primacy of metaphysical stuff, but in the same way its fine to talk about the soul of a nation, it's fine to talk about my soul. I don't think its magic, I just think there's a connection with the rest of the universe and other conscious people that is healthy to cultivate, and the effects I have on those relationships will continue after I die (likewise, other people's relationships have affected my life even after they've died). I don't think there's any reward of doing so outside of the health of those relationships. I do think certain behaviours and beliefs are poisonous to this "soul", but we can also talk about mental health and how we should be emphasising community etc.
But it's all just physical stuff in the end, and if a meteor hit Earth tomorrow and scattered our material there isn't anything left over like a bunch of angry ghosts floating around. Not even anyone to mourn what could have been.
