Can o' worms: Soul

p0intman · 2012-06-17, 12:12 AM

Originally Posted by AvacadoEight

I would sell my soul.

Right. That should be enough to open this can wide open. However, a few caveats:

The existence or non existence of a soul or anything similar does not mean there are any sort of higher beings. This thread has nothing to do with that.

This is a discussion on the possibility and ramifications of souls, or post-death energy of some kind, whatever you call it, remaining somewhere of significance. Many cultures and areas in the world have stories and myths of ghosts, souls, spirits and so fourth.

Do they exist? This so far has not been proven, or disproven. They could be hallucinations of various kinds, and I would contend that they are just that. The human mind is a powerful and not fully understood device.

With that... your thoughts on ghosts and other kinds of spirit-matter?

Vash02 · 2012-06-17, 04:40 AM

what definition are we going on here?

Souls in the sense that there is a being (your personality) occupying your body then this has been pretty much disproven with people who have suffered head trauma and now have completely different personalities.

Figment · 2012-06-17, 05:13 AM

Not to mention instable chemistry leading to personality and psychological disorders being treatable with medicines to a certain degree.

'Ghost' sightings can be caused by a sound frequency of around 20Hz which can cause a blurring in vision, particularly in the peripheral vision. As humans want to see patterns in everything, especially instinctively look for human patterns for survival and social reasons, it is not strange people interpret things in something they can relate to. Same with sounds they can't interpret immediately.

Now, this doesn't explain everything away, but my impression would be that if there was such thing as ghosts and souls, we are not seeing enough of them. I also question the credibility of stories of traumatic events leading to ghosts returning elsewhere and perform certain routines or certain things they liked to do, or interact; As all those things are rather demanding on capabilities. Besides, if that were an echo of a soul or bodily energy, why would that be limited to dead humans?

To me ghost routines sound like conditions are met to make a house get into a specific climate state that induces certain observations. Mostly a building constructive thing and I don't mean like Ghostbusters skyscraper architecture.

Arcticus · 2012-06-17, 05:03 AM

Originally Posted by p0intman

...
This is a discussion on the possibility and ramifications of souls, or post-death energy of some kind, whatever you call it, remaining somewhere of significance. Many cultures and areas in the world have stories and myths of ghosts, souls, spirits and so fourth.

Do they exist? This so far has not been proven, or disproven. They could be hallucinations of various kinds, and I would contend that they are just that. The human mind is a powerful and not fully understood device.

With that... your thoughts on ghosts and other kinds of spirit-matter?

I think I'm in that category of people who equate the mind/soul with the pattern of electro-chemical energy in your brain and its changes across time. Assuming we're not living in a simulation, it seems that energy patterns that change themselves in complex ways ( more complex than how an electromagnetic wave self-propagates) require a material medium. By "material" I mean that it requires mass as a medium in order to change from one point in time to the next. Sure, I can store your mental pattern and send it using radio waves, but how does that pattern change in a meaningful life-ish way?

Figment · 2012-06-17, 05:26 AM

http://www.parascience.org.uk/articles/equip.htm

Scientific ghost hunting! None of this scifi channel "oh oh oh must be a ghost!" stuff.

ItsTheSheppy · 2012-06-17, 11:06 AM

There really hasn't been any rigorously tested evidence to suggest that there is, so I'm going to go ahead and doubt that souls exist until it can be reliably demonstrated that they do.

Warborn · 2012-06-17, 12:38 PM

Well, relating this to an other thread, if you alter the chemistry or structure of someone's brain through trauma, or hell, even through simply growing up and becoming an adult, you fundamentally change the "person". Even though we hold the same DNA we did as children, our brains have changed so much that it is only a technicality that we are considered the same individual we were when we were 5 years old, or however old we want to arbitrarily pick.

Similarly, you get a blow sufficiently damaging, or experience hypoxemia for a sufficient duration (3 - 5 minutes), and you will experience brain damage. Or you have a stroke or some other event which causes a non-fatal ischemia and necrosis of brain tissue. Either way, these events can lead to complete changes in personality, behaviour, memory, etc. You can become a totally different person through brain damage.

So, if simply changes to brain structure or chemistry are able to bring about a very dramatic change in personality, how is it that we might expect complete destruction of our brain to enable us to pass on to a new life with our "person" being intact? It is clear that who were are is intrinsically linked to our brains, and yet when we die our brains are destroyed. I do not see any reason to suspect that we would be able to survive death via an unseen "soul" given what we know.

Vecha · 2012-06-17, 09:23 PM

I'd like to think there is. But there's many, many more reasons to doubt there is one than to believe there is one.

Our personality is effected by the many environments, situations, family, etc...so maybe the soul is above our own body, personality, ego. It is merely using us to learn and grow.

I also personally like the idea of reincarnation...past lives that shape us.

Having a radical trauma that changes your body's personality would be an experience for your soul to learn and experience from.

I'm mostly thinking outloud. Rambling nonsense

Anywho, to me, it is nice to think that there is a soul after death, but I'm not going to ignore all the logic that leans on the idea that there isn't. So, I respect those opinions that lean on debunking it.

ItsTheSheppy · 2012-06-18, 07:36 AM

Originally Posted by Vecha

I'd like to think there is. But there's many, many more reasons to doubt there is one than to believe there is one.

Our personality is effected by the many environments, situations, family, etc...so maybe the soul is above our own body, personality, ego. It is merely using us to learn and grow.

I also personally like the idea of reincarnation...past lives that shape us.

Having a radical trauma that changes your body's personality would be an experience for your soul to learn and experience from.

I'm mostly thinking outloud. Rambling nonsense

Anywho, to me, it is nice to think that there is a soul after death, but I'm not going to ignore all the logic that leans on the idea that there isn't. So, I respect those opinions that lean on debunking it.

To back up the portion I have bolded above, we have scene many instances where damage to the brain can change someone's personality. Either through chemical imbalance or injury, people can find themselves unable to recognize faces or remember names, might lose their short-term or long term memories. We have found that introducing certain elements can improve or strip away the brain's capabilities, thus altering the personality and abilities of the individual.

Are we to believe that at the moment of death that personality is freed from the brain somehow and, what, reverts back to its peek functioning? Everything we understand about consciousness hinges critically on the brain functioning. If you get knocked out cold, it's not like you just lose control of your motor functions and are stuck inside your body, patiently waiting for your brain to reboot. You shut off. You wake up sometime later confused and disoriented.

All of the evidence we have at our disposal suggests that everything we understand about consciousness, our personalities, and our very understanding of existence is fundamentally reliant on the brain's functions, and those functions can be demonstrated to be purely physical. Neuroscientists can isolate specific areas of the brain that are responsible for various things, from moods to motor function, and stimulate them.

There is, however, absolutely no evidence that there is another element at play. A presence that inhabits the body independent of the brain's functions. People who have suffered brain damage and are unable to think, act, or feel as they once did don't retain those abilities somewhere, unusable. They lose them, because the brain lost them.

Immigrant · 2012-06-24, 06:05 PM

Soul is defined as something immaterial beyond the bounds of physical universe (not consisting of matter nor energy). We have never seen nor proved something that not either matter or energy, nor could we ever possibly.

As far as I'm concerned it's only an idea, human construct designed to help weak cope with their own mortality or loss of loved ones.

Neurotoxin · 2012-07-05, 02:01 PM

Here's a curveball - teleporters. When you use a teleporter, does your entire being transfer across, or do you die and the version people see on the other side is a soulless replica?

Another version of this is the TRON digitizer. When The Dude is digitized into Encom's network, what happened to his soul? Dis it gut sucked in the machine too? Does that mean the MCP could have killed him and captured his soul, or would it have derezzed with the rest of his code?

Also, when does the soul begin? The moment a sperm finds its way in an egg? Or is it more along the Jewish traditional lines, where life only begins when God breathes your first breath into you? Where does it come from, does it grow with the fetus, or is it summoned down as raw ethereal matter from Heaven?

Neurotoxin · 2012-07-08, 07:08 PM

Originally Posted by Neurotoxin

Here's a curveball - teleporters. When you use a teleporter, does your entire being transfer across, or do you die and the version people see on the other side is a soulless replica?

Another version of this is the TRON digitizer. When The Dude is digitized into Encom's network, what happened to his soul? Dis it gut sucked in the machine too? Does that mean the MCP could have killed him and captured his soul, or would it have derezzed with the rest of his code?

Also, when does the soul begin? The moment a sperm finds its way in an egg? Or is it more along the Jewish traditional lines, where life only begins when God breathes your first breath into you? Where does it come from, does it grow with the fetus, or is it summoned down as raw ethereal matter from Heaven?

Not trollin', these are legitimate questions, this is the place to ask 'em. Anyone wanna give it a shot?

Also what part of a soul would transition to an afterlife? The thinking, good will towards others (part of thinking), physical appearance? Is that even the soul, or just body and brain?

ItsTheSheppy · 2012-07-08, 07:28 PM

Originally Posted by Neurotoxin

Not trollin', these are legitimate questions, this is the place to ask 'em. Anyone wanna give it a shot?

Also what part of a soul would transition to an afterlife? The thinking, good will towards others (part of thinking), physical appearance? Is that even the soul, or just body and brain?

Yeah, saw this question posted at Cracked. I agree with their assessment that at the moment that you're atomized, you're dead. Whoever you were is gone. What's assembled on the other side is your twin, and has all your memories and identity, but isn't you.

MasterChief096 · 2012-07-07, 12:21 PM

Warborn you missed the whole point of Eclipse's comment about the star.

Yes, we know, through science, how stars are born and their life cycles, as well as how they die.

What we don't know is why any of the constants in our universe are set to their parameters. Why does gravity exist? Why did Hydrogen come from nothing during the big bang, then coalesce into the first stars and galaxies? What is the blueprint for all the physical laws of our universe?

I think that is what DJEclipse was getting at.

**Malorn** · 2012-07-07, 12:44 PM

Meh.