this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
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And do believe that I, this random guy on the internet has a soul

I personally don't believe that I anyone else has a soul. From my standup I don't se any reason to believe that our consciousness and our so called "soul" would be any more then something our brain is making up.

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[–] dbug13 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I would say look into near death experiences. Now i understand most think that these experiences are just DMT trips the brain takes, which is why I recommend looking into the case of Dr. Eben Alexander, specifically, a neuro surgeon that had a highly documented near death experience. He had a near death experience while his brain was non functioning and non responsive, monitored by his fellow neurosurgeons, his brain wasn't functioning to release the DMT, and shouldn't have been able to retain any memory at all, and yet had a near death experience that he remembered during the time of documented brain death.

http://ebenalexander.com/books/living-in-a-mindful-universe-a-neurosurgeons-journey-into-the-heart-of-consciousness/

Also, there are quite a few videos on YouTube interviewing him.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

There's zero evidence for a soul

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

If you were literally the only person in the history of all people, to have a soul... would it suck? And if all that happens to a soul is that it fades away after death, like a ghost, would that make having a soul better, or worse?

[–] LopensLeftArm 1 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Yes, I believe both that I have a soul and that you have a soul as well.

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[–] mindbleach 1 points 9 months ago

There is no such animal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Based on your post and use of language I don’t because you’re probably a bot.

Provide for me the reclamation and the that gen that propore:: Thanks then you’ll need to know snaking g guy the thought about it though and maybe we can do Kant ideas though. A soul though, who can really know.

What do you think about that? Do we have ?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I like to see it as what we call a soul is simply the hashcode of our being. They're technically not unique, but as you're the only you they are. It's not some guiding spirit to your conciousness, it's who you are. The choices you make, the experiences you've had, the things you've thought and the conclusions you've reached, the sum of your being, encoded.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

i like to think that consciousness is a necessary illusion similar to early 'parallel processing' solutions running on a single threaded processor.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Yes, I believe humans and animals have a soul. Certainly believe so after reading books by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Ah, but don't you feel it? You have played this act before, and you will do it again. Like living fractals we rise again and again. Or perhaps we fall over and over.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Yes, when I meditate I can percive the soul of myself with my consciousness. This cannot be explained or thought, it can only be experienced. And as I am a typical human, I extrapolate that every human has a soul.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There was a woman who said during an alien abduction that she saw a glowing light taken out of the top of a dying man and put into a younger clone of himself. Where afterwards the old body died. So talking about this as if what she said did indeed happen:

If it's possible to transfer consciousnesses between bodies, the collection of electric energy in our body is our soul I guess, and the rest of us comes from the unique layout of our cells/nervous system which this electric energy runs along.

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[–] agamemnonymous -1 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Everyone believes that they have a soul, the contention is the nature of the soul. You have an intangible essence which inhabits your body, and you identify with your "self". Some people think it's some kind of immortal ghost that gets to live in the clouds with other immortal ghosts when the body dies, some people think it's an emergent phenomenon of some variety which disappears when the body dies. These are differences in explanation, secondary to the ontological question of existence.

The "I" in your statements is proof of your soul, any disagreement is really just pedantic quibbling over terminology because you believe the term has been tainted by explanations you don't agree with. Even if your brain is "making it up", it's still a phenomenon. Your subjective internal experience is made of "soul", your concept of self is made of "soul". The entity asking the question and reading the responses is your soul, simple as.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The "I" in your statements is proof of your soul

It's proof of consciousness. If you're using "soul" synonymously to "consciousness", well, certainly not everyone does so.

In the use of language I learned, "soul" is the superstitious concept that religious people use, and since I don't believe in superstitions, I certainly don't believe that I have a soul.

I definitely possess consciousness, though, in the sense that I recognize contiguous piles of atoms as "objects" and one such object is my own body.
In turn, I would not say that my consciousness asks questions and reads the responses. My body does that. My 'mind' and 'consciousness' are just characteristics of my body. And "I" is my body, too.

[–] agamemnonymous 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Of what substance is your consciousness composed? Certainly your body is made of chemical matter: proteins, lipids, water, etc. Is consciousness itself, the subjective experience you identify as yourself, made of matter? Perhaps there are regions of the brain which fire in conjunction with a sensation, but is the sensation synonymous with the meat in which it resides? I'm speaking internalistically, how "you" "feel" from the inside.

A computer program can be likened to the electrical activity in the hardware. It is not itself the hardware, though it's certainly linked. Your body is the hardware, your consciousness is the program. Are "you" also organized electricity, or something similar? Does that imply that electricity can have the same subjective experience as you?

I think you have it backwards. You're prescriptively deciding that souls are superstitions, so you don't believe in them. I think descriptively, that we certainly observe souls, and it merely falls to us to discover their nature. Certainly some people ascribe superstitions to them, but tying superstitions to the weather or the sea or salt doesn't make any of those things less real. Why subjugate your own fundamental observations to someone else's superstitions?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (5 children)

That's a weak argument. Using this, anything you can refer to has a soul, which is just the idea of that thing in your mind.

The idea of Ohio is intangible, but does Ohio have a soul? How about Clippy? Betelgeuse? Every self call ever made? That person who appeared in your dream once?

You've quibbled yourself out of meaning anything. The existence of intangible identities is related to what people would call a soul, but you've reduced the definition to be unreasonably broad. Your idea of soul is meaningless and isn't what the OP is talking about.

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