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PSU: I don't have a life, mind if I borrow yours?
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[Ignore Me] #1 | ||
Lieutenant Colonel
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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?
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![]() ![]() Retired NC CR5, Cerberus Company. Not currently playing PS2. Anyone with a similar name is not me. My only characters are listed in my stats profile here on PSU. |
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[Ignore Me] #2 | ||
Major
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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. |
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[Ignore Me] #3 | |||
Corporal
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[Ignore Me] #4 | ||
Lieutenant General
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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. Last edited by Figment; 2012-06-17 at 05:15 AM. |
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[Ignore Me] #5 | ||
Lieutenant General
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http://www.parascience.org.uk/articles/equip.htm
Scientific ghost hunting! None of this scifi channel "oh oh oh must be a ghost!" stuff. |
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[Ignore Me] #7 | ||
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. |
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[Ignore Me] #8 | ||
First Sergeant
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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. |
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[Ignore Me] #9 | |||
Second Lieutenant
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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. |
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[Ignore Me] #10 | ||
First Lieutenant
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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. |
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[Ignore Me] #11 | |||
Brigadier General
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Really, it's a zero sum game. The entire universe adds up to zero. It always has, and it always well. The positive and negative forces will just take different forms over time, and one of those temporary forms are human brains. What would make the form of energy and matter that we call a brain be so special anyways? Who are we to say that a group of atoms forming a brain are more than the sum of the parts of a group of atoms that form a cloud of gas? We like to think our brain, mind and "soul" are more important than a cloud of gas, but does that make it so? I think our brains are just passing transitional stages of matter and energy, and when that matter and energy stops being a brain, it stops being us. The matter and energy that held our form continues on in new forms, but our form is fleeting. If I have a soul, then everything has a soul, from the entire universe down to each quark, and the term starts to be meaningless. The major question is whether or not anything that makes the human brain significant to us carries on after the brain is gone, and I haven't seen any particularly good reason to think there is. |
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[Ignore Me] #12 | |||
Souls and afterlives and these sorts of things do not have a scientific basis so far. What you wish to believe about them is your own prerogative. However, to indict human understanding of the natural world because it cannot explain something that is for all intents supernatural is a bit silly. Take solace in whatever belief about the soul you wish, but also realize that when it comes to understanding the behaviour of the real world, scientific inquiry wins every time. |
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[Ignore Me] #14 | |||
Second Lieutenant
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Also, what does religion do, exactly? I know what science does, but last I checked religions absorb money and manufacture lies and molested kids, as best I can tell. Oh, they also run some hospitals I guess. Staffed by doctors who probably don't default to exorcisms as first treatment. Anymore. And another thing... the energy crisis is very much real. And we don't live in a universe of infinite matter and energy... both of those things are found in limited resource. Besides, only something like 5% of the entire universe is made up of energy and matter we can observe. The rest is "dark" and invisible. Gotta be trollin'. |
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[Ignore Me] #15 | |||
First Sergeant
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![]() To outright say the Religion represents the act of "absorbing money/molesting kids/and creating lies" is just as silly as saying science is bullshit. There are major groups of bad apples in both groups saying they represent such group. ![]() Last edited by Vecha; 2012-06-25 at 02:08 PM. |
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