Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

[Thomas599]

We are NOT bodies with a soul. We are all souls who just happen to have a body at this time.

 

[Britney Spears]

In my humble opinion, there is no soul, nor religious things. Once the body dies, all brain activity ceases; there is nothing. There will be what was before birth, nothingness. If I squash a bug or spider, I would have no soul. I lean toward science and reality, not beliefs or anything like that. It's nonsense invented by humans out of fear of death. It's just my opinion and what I think with respect.
If I step on a cockroach, will it have a soul?

 

[Carrot]

We are NOT bodies with a soul. We are all souls who just happen to have a body at this time.

That is an incredibly weird statement to specify correctness of. There is no evidence that proves or disproves what you said, it would be nice it people wouldn't come up with random explanations like "Humans have souls." or "Tsunami destroyed our village, we must have angered Poseidon". It's okay to not know things, it's okay for us to not have expanations for things. It's better to not have an explanation than to make one up. I encourage seeking explanations based on facts.

You cannot answer "true" or "false" to that.

 

[locked*n*loaded]

No such thing as a soul.

 

[CanIStopTryingNow]

I don't believe there is a soul. I think this is our time to be alive, with all the good and bad in life, and when your life is over, there's no soul or consciousness left.

 

[goodlifesurfaceskim]

I dont believe our souls hold our conscious experience but they hold a message to the remaining conscious life surrounding in a way..

 

[Forever Sleep]

Personally, I disagree. I kind of like the idea of a soul sometimes but then, I don't like the idea of an afterlife or God. I don't see much evidence or reason for there being a soul. Considering so many creatures have now died on this planet, you'd think we'd have more concrete proof of something. That's not to say it's impossible but, I lean more towards 'no'.

 

[satoporu]

disagree. no such thing as a "soul"

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

i disagree. a human is just a machine , only cells, chemical reactions. it's an illusion created by the brain and the brain cells to make "you" think there is anything more.

if you look at a brain it's made up of brain cells. these neurons connect into neural networks. that's all there is.

when you go to sleep every night into a dreamless sleep you disapear proving it's just an illusion. you don't continously exist.

we exist only in the story the brain tells itself.

Frontiers | The Attention Schema Theory: A Foundation for Engineering Artificial Consciousness

The purpose of the attention schema theory is to explain how an information-processing device, the brain, arrives at the claim that it possesses a non-physic...

www.frontiersin.org

 

[the_etherealmuse]

We are NOT bodies with a soul. We are all souls who just happen to have a body at this time.

Personally, I posit that the nature of reality is imperceptible and incomprehensible to human beings. Our perception of life is limited by our senses, beliefs, notions, practices. Our sense organs could be unreliable, and all our sensory information incorrect. Human beings, though possessing evolved consciousness and cognition, are unable to grasp reality beyond a subjective level. There may or may not be a transcendental eternal energy that outlasts our mortal bodies. As far as we know though, life and consciousness is attributed to our brain, heart, and other vital organs.

 

[RinneOfAragon]

I'm probably one of very few that believe this

 

[Apathy79]

I agree with the statement

 

[Darkover]

Traumatic brain injuries and dementia disprove the existence of a soul.
My definition of a soul is an immaterial entity, separate from our physical bodies, that will be granted a place in the afterlife (Heaven, Hell, purgatory, or any other immaterial realm that our physical bodies cannot access, or transferred into another entity to be "reborn"). The key part of this is that the soul is "immaterial", meaning that physical occurrences do not impact the soul. For example, death does not damage the soul, because the soul is "immortal" and when the physical body dies, the soul is transferred into another form (whether this other form is an afterlife or a rebirth or anything else is irrelevant). We can call this the "immateriality" requirement.
The other requirement for a soul is that it is a repository of who you are. This can include your memories, personality, emotional regulation, or if you have anything else you think should have been included please feel free to comment. I will summarize these traits into the "personality" requirement.
So this brings us to the concept of brain damage. Brain damage is when you incur an injury that damages your brain. Depending on where this injury is located, you can lose your emotions, memories, personality, or any combination thereof. The classic case is the case of Phineas Gage. However, Gage was hardly the first or only person to experience this, you can find many others.
If the soul is an immaterial repository of your personality, then why is it able to be damaged by something material like brain damage? Brain damage is not the only way either--tumors, drugs, alcohol, electricity, oxygen deprivation and even normal aging can also damage your brain and alter your personality.
If the soul is not immaterial, then why is it able to survive death? Why is a minor damage able to damage your personality, but not a huge damage like the entire organ decomposing?
If the soul does not involve your personality, then in what meaningful way is it "you"?
Traumatic brain injuries can cause memory loss, personality change and decreased cognitive functioning. This indicates the brain as the center of our consciousness and not a soul.
If a soul, a spirit animating the body, existed, it would continue its function regardless of damage to the brain. Instead we see a direct correspondence between the brain and most of the functions we think of as "us". Again this indicates a human machine with the brain as the cpu, not an invisible spirit
Besides the lack of any evidence for a soul, it's pretty easy to make a human appear soulless by damaging specific parts of brain matter. The brain drives consciousness and our experience of being human, once it dies so does the concept of us.

 

[Apathy79]

I think the soul being immaterial is correct. Although in my experience it doesn't have many of the other things you mention in the 2nd part - personality, emotional regulation, etc., these are all elements of the brain.

It's meaningful because it's the subjective sense of I that you have. My main experience of this was in a car accident when I got severe whiplash rendering my body unconscious. Yet I could watch it all happen from above. The body lying there motionless, the other people around, the traffic stacking up, the bridge, the trees, everything. It was like being in a drone above it. But with no feeling for "my" body whatsoever. It was just another part of the scene, no more important than the cars or trees. Then returning to the body in hospital later was ultimately a huge disappointment. I wasn't "home" anymore. I had this body to deal with again.

Ever since then, I feel like I've known the answer to this one, thanks to an experience most don't have, so they can't grasp it. The body, the mind, it's not that subjective sense of I we think it is, it's just a vessel through which to experience the world. What happened to me also turns out to be a very common near death experience, not unique to me, much to the disappointment of me feeling special about it!

 

[Gustav Hartmann]

The mind-body problem:

• are the mind and body two distinct entities, or a single entity?
• If the mind and body are two distinct entities, do the two of them causally interact?
• Is it possible for these two distinct entities to causally interact?
• What is the nature of this interaction?
• Can this interaction ever be an object of empirical study?
• If the mind and body are a single entity, then are mental events explicable in terms of physical events, or vice versa?
• Is the relation between mental and physical events something that arises de novo at a certain point in development?

Copy from wikipedia, you can endless discuss this problem, no time for suicide.

 

[timechained]

Genesis 2:7
"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

The soul is the body + air.

 

[SVEN]

If you believe it, for you it's true.
If you disbelieve it, for you it's untrue.
Not demonstrable either way.

 

[imOK]

I think all these various and intricate explanations people came up with are because it's just a really hard thing to grapple with that existence ends. Even moreso when these explanations were formed because at that point in time, humanity knew a lot less about it's existence than it does now and death was everywhere. You can kinda see it in all religions - there's historical, regional and cultural context to all of them and religions have and do change over time with that knowledge of the world. There used to be a time where for example the catholic church strongly comdemned suicide as a surefire way to go to hell. Now, as we now more about psychology, they changed their mind. Wouldn't a supreme being that's all knowing and all seeing get the rules for the people worshipping it right on the first go? And yes, I am very aware that even that can be explained away.

It's very clear to me that the brain is the seat of conciousness. If it gets damaged enough, you fall into a coma you never wake up from, even if the rest of your body is fine. If it gets damaged somewhat, personality, memory etc. can change wildly. Chemical processes in it affect moods, to the point that we even developed drugs (of the legal and illegal kind) to change your mood and perception. It honestly is just the simplest explanation. You can "force" a soul into that picture, but not without without basically handwaving a lot away and make this entire explanation a lot more complicated than it needs to be. Souls made a lot more sense when we knew nothing about the brain and such thinking was comforting. Your kid died of a small scratch on it's leg while it was playing a week later because of an infection? It's soul is now in a better place especially if you live your life to certain rules and values. That's a lot easier to stomach than that the universe doesn't care and your kid is gone for no good reason.

And of course, where there's humanity, there's exploitation. I hope I don't need to explain how people in the past and present have abused this hope in others for their own means.

I really wish souls were real, I do.. but believing in them is rejecting all logical sense for me.

 

[Darkover]

common sense is not a gift, it's a punishment because
you have to deal with everyone who doesn't have it.

 

[Twiceler]

I see two statements. 1-agree, 2-disagree. I'm a soulless nerd.

 

[FadingSnowFake]

I believe we have a soul. Sometimes the soul just dies earlier, and we become an empty body, dead inside. Maybe until the body dies, and then the soul is set free to live again, who knows.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

We aren't bodies with souls or souls who just happen to have bodies at this time. There are no such thing as souls. Your sense of self-identity and your overall consciousness stem from brain activity. So far, this is what all the evidence we have points to. You live, and then you die. Nothing else beyond that.

 

[Pale_Rider]

I see on, or off. Zero, or one.

 

[Linda]

I can find no evidence that "souls" exist. There are just bodies.