Prometheus, i'm thinking a lot about your comments and I find them very interesting. I'm not a philosopher, so I'm not able to prove the existence of a soul for you, though i'd like to
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I would like too, but that doesn't have any influence at that what we will really find. I would like to find a god and a soul and a heaven, etc etc. But I rather want to find how nature really is and accept her as she is.
But let me comment that neither I am a qualified philosopher and that in general a scientist of some kind do research. Contemporary philosophers most often work outside the field of science. Which I think a soul would not be, if it existed.
For me whatsoever the daily life suggests the existence of a soul at every moment. I feel and I think. I can enjoy listening to or playing beautiful music. If someone offends me my soul hearts very distinctly and I feel its existence even more than I like...So I seem to observe soul every day.
I am not sure how you define a soul. But to me, especially in this context, it would be some sort of 'organ' that stores our personality after we have died so that we can live in the afterlife or that we can be reincarnated.
Now, this definition has little to do with how one feels or how one can enjoy music. I think we can be sure to say that I don't have a soul. But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy music as much as you. Or that I have less sophisticated feelings, etc etc.
I have seen people claim that they were godly creatures and that I was a monkey because I supported darwinistic evolution while they believed in creationism. Regerdless of souls or no souls, regardless of ki, of karma, of creationism or evolution. We are all the same people.
Neurology and psychology do not conclude that the emotions human experience are impossible without souls. On the contrary. Using chemicals and drugs we can influence our feelings and emotions. Do you think that heroine has a particular influence on the soul? Actually, I think I have heard someone else make a similar point but a lot stronger. But I can't remember. I will try to look it up.
Why shouldn't I assume the existence of a soul?
Because there is no evidence for it. The fact that you feel like a human feels does not mean souls exist. I don't know exactly where you make this jump of logic, but you do somewhere.
How long this soul exists is the next difficult philosophical question...
Well, since souls 'purpose' is generally to make an afterlife possible and since these are often eternal we also know how long the souls decribed by these ideas exist according to these ideas.
...and I'm sure there have been written tons and tons of pro and con books about that subject. But don't claim there is no definition of what soul is, there are for sure millions among philosophers and psychologists.
But can anyone tell me how a soul works? If, like you seem to think, a soul influenced emotions we consider to be as typically human then can you decribe how this proces works? Is the brain linked up through the neural network? Does adreneline affect the soul? And when one dies is the soul something invisible containing my entity that floats into heaven? If so, what kind of matter is it made? Is it made by cells similar to the other cells in the human body? How do they differ with other neurological cells? Or is it a new form of matter? Where does it fit in with the standard system? Charge? Mass?
These are all needed for a theory of the soul to be presented. I am talking about a scientific theory and no that does not mean the same as those people that say: "Ooh, evolution is just a theory" think it means. I want a description that is complete so that we an go and look if it is true.
But yet I haven't met the person that could prove me all that definitely. Can you?
What do you want me to prove? The lack of existence of the soul? Or something else? I didn't quite get it.
Now I won't go into this before you answer this with the fear of wasting valuable bandwidth. My posts are already too lenghty.
The belief in soul, afterlife and so on indeed doesn't automatically take away the fear of death.
No, it doesn't. And this is so strange to me. If you believe that you go to heaven and if you truely believe it is eternal bliss. Then why not join right now? Of course the reason would be that suicide is a sin. But then when god takes your life, I would be absolutely delighted.
The fact that those people still don't want to die makes it very hard not to assume that their faith isn't as strong as they claim. And I think that goes for most religious ideas. I believe, and I don't use the world often, that these people, in the back of their mind, know it is all non-sense. No disrespect to the people who delude themselves, they can still be as nice or as bad as any other human, but I do believe this is probably true.
I probably would be less scared of death if i knew there is nothing after it. So fear of death is no reason for me to believe in soul and afterlife.
What do you fear then? Judgement? Hell? Uncertainty? I guess the main reason for fear of death, which I will now claim I don't have but when it happens I will probably not be so sure anymore, is uncertainty. Death is a major event in your life. You don't remember birth or conception of course. So this is really the only big event you ever experience. But you don't know what happens to you after you die. Now for some reason the human brain does have a problem imagining how it would be when you do not exist. The reason is of course that it is both impossible and unneeded if it were not. So we have this big event, with all kinds of expectations but absolute uncertainty as well; no one has returned to us back from death to tell us what it was like. And as far as we know it isn't possible.
I also want to know that one should be sceptical when making conclusions about ones own motivations. You cannot analyse the functioning of your own mind. I have a long list of things about myself that I have been trying to explain to myself and others. These lists are becomming longer and longer and I am becomming less certain that I will ever be able to understand my own inner workings.