Is our soul an alien ?

[webMaster412160]

I have been asking this for quit a long time. I want to know what you guy's think of it.

Our body is our machine, we move,work,eat,think with it. We use it to move around and communicate with other persons. But when we grow older, our body is slowly dying, and our organs failing, and then we have to undertake all kinds of operation to keep us working as we should do.

But our soul, what is that ? Really ? I don't know ?

Is our soul an creater that needs a host, like the human body ? Or is our soul a mind alone ?

This are strange questions indeed, please tell me what you think.

[Amorphos]

If the soul exists, then I would think that the body should be more likened to the term ‘alien’, rather than the soul. After all if existent, the soul enters the body at birth then leaves at death, thus the material body is extraneous to it and hence ‘alien’.

A courageous thread to post.

[Poach]

A quote to get you thinking: "You do not have a soul. You are a soul, you have a body." I know not who first coined it, sadly.

As an Atheist I don't believe in a soul, but should the soul be proven to exist I would not consider it an alien. Considering "Alien" is a word for foreign (or extra-terrestrial in todays world, more commonly...) I don't see how the soul can be considered one, as it would be an integral part of our body (thus not foreign) and all humans are born with one (hence not an alien occupying our bodies).

Unless through some crazy workings original humans had no souls, aliens invaded their bodies and integrated their own reproductive system into our own thus putting their children into our own...

[cupoftea]

This thread is soooo..... Weird, to say the least.

But nvm, I'll let other people have their share, I don't believe in a soul, i think the soul of a human body are its brains.

[Ratbag]

..Our soul... an alien... You are just begging to be flamed aren't you?

[Phier]

As most people who know my postings can tell you....

I have no soul.

[Taxandrius]

There is no soul,
only a personality

and -if it existed- why would our soul be an alien ?
Plz. next up, the big pink elephants topic.

first 'god' then 'soul'. When do secondary schools start decent philosophical education instead of the immoral religious indoctrination

[Amorphos]

first 'god' then 'soul'. When do secondary schools start decent philosophical education instead of the immoral religious indoctrination

Its quite plausible that there is an archetypical or form of everything that exists ~ a duplicate of some kind [call it soul/spirit for want of better terms]. Unless we philosophers agree that you can get something from nothing [e.g. the universe]. As for god, I don’t know what that would be a duplicate of.

Morally I agree about education though, indeed ethics and morals should all go in the philosophy section.

[Manco]

The question you should be asking is whether you have a soul at all.

And how do you define soul? The mind, which is just a bunch of electrochemical processes? Or some divine aspect?

[Saladin_2008]

the soul is an idea that humanity created with their brain, something we physically possess and can study
ive been raised a catholic but i find its teaching hard to believe (especially when then they tell me that they are fact rather than a guide line of moral behavior)
every religion likes to think their right and find almost every other religion ridiculous, its happened throughout history...go back and time and tell the ancient the egyptions about Christ, they will think it just as far fetched as many of the monotheistic religions of today find their polytheistic religion
religion as an organization was created to control masses, and solve problems that couldn't be soved conventionally

[Amorphos]

Tank

the concept of a soul adds no surplus value.

I postulate it thus; imagine the mind, brain and soul are all connected to a switchboard, if you unplug a line then you no longer get any info from it. For example if your vision was such a line, then unplugging it would make you blind. The thing is, you are still exactly the same person right! You have just been denied access to a function. We could say that the mind still has the ability to see even in a blind person, but it is as like we are wearing a blindfold…

Eventually if you unplug everything, there is just you left as if in a black box without any way of interacting with the world. This is what its like to be in a coma, the soul/mind is in very deep sleep. The way I see death is that the switchboard ceases to exist, all your ‘minds’ functions are thence no longer limited by their given ‘blindfolds’.

What happens next is anyones guess, but reasonably we can imagine either a nirvana style emptiness, or an elyseum style communal imagination. When we consider that the world we actually see is a subjective imaginary vision of the world, then the ‘imaginary world would be every bit as real, except that we wouldn’t have photons etc telling brains that material things are out there.

[Lance-Corporal Jones]

The question is, if there is such a thing as a soul, why should it be an alien, of all things?

[Tigrul]

The human soul is the sum of electrical impulses which occur between the neurons of our electro-chemical information processors. The human soul, as best to our current knowledge, disappears during (the final) death. ("the final" because people get resurrected every now and then thanks to modern medicine, in which case the patterns developed by the electro-chemical processor resume until the next shut-down)

[basics]

" The human soul is the sum of electrical impulses which occur between the neurons of our electro-chemical information processors. The human soul, as best to our current knowledge, disappears during (the final) death."

Tigrul,

The moment a baby takes its first breath is the moment when God has breathed life into it. Before that was it not an integral part of its mother in whom it survived? These electrical impulses are but the effect of a programme that on separation from the mother wouldn't work but for the God-breathed soul.

Genes and DNA are no more than programmes that make up what is the complete body, but that body is useless unless something beyond it gives it the input to do anything. That's where the sould comes in, because by it we not only move but actually think, these thoughts being stored into memory wherein we learn.

I remember watching a science based programme on the BBC where that week the team were in Sweden to watch for the first time a baby's brain being formed. You could actually see the thousands of wire like objects making their connections one to the other and where there was to be no connection the wires moved on until they found the right one. At the end the presenter, a well known science boffin whose name escapes me, said, " We now know that the brain is programmed but who programmed it?"

[cfmonkey45]

Yes, L. Ron Hubbard, the Great Science Fiction Writer/Con Artist/Prophet prophesized it.

[Copperknickers II]

There is no soul, it is a completely illogical animist disillusion, why anyone believes in it is just beyond me. It is like, in fact worse than, being a creationist.

[Amorphos]

There is no soul, it is a completely illogical animist disillusion, why anyone believes in it is just beyond me. It is like, in fact worse than, being a creationist.

Fact 1; the mind creates the image of the world we live in and it is not light that we see.

Fact 2; the mind is [edit; is not] purely electricity or all electricity would be conscious.

Fact 3; nothing can emanate from nothing, everything, absolutely everything including the universe emanates from something. This makes the universe and everything in it the product of a greater reality.

This is just an approximate outlining of the possible reason why there could be a soul, it may not be so, there may simply be something more universal or infinite from which all things derive. All I am saying is that the questions are as yet unresolved, so we shouldn’t be so sure until we know!



whatever the answers are, i fully expect all of us to be wrong about it.

[Poach]

Fact 1; the mind creates the image of the world we live in and it is not light that we see.

Fact 2; the mind is purely electricity or all electricity would be conscious.

Fact 3; nothing can emanate from nothing, everything, absolutely everything including the universe emanates from something.

I'm assuming here you meant, for fact 2, the mind is NOT purely electricity. So, here we go...

"Fact" 1: Prove it, sounds like some pretty crazy philosophical speculation to me. Infact, most scientific information on the subject states the complete opposite of what you claim as "fact".

"Fact" 2: On my assumption, false. We do not understand how the mind works but your claim is basless. Example: Banana is purely fruit therefor all fruit is yellow. Isn't going to fly mate.

"Fact" 3: Emanate means to effuse, give out ("the lamp emanated light"), so your statement either makes no sense at all or you're just saying "The Big Bang" happened in a fancy way, which has nothing to do with souls.

Also, just incase you were confused, the word "fact" means backed up with evidence, a truth one can prove through experience or observation. All 3 of your "facts" seem to have gaping holes...

[scarybandit]

Yes. He's called Crackers and he gives me moonbeam bananas when I kill people.

[My Favorite Martian]

But our soul, what is that?

It is you and "not you". It is alien, insofar it is "not you" - like, in: "Two souls alas are dwelling in my breast!"