The Soul 🦋

Nan Religion, , , ,

soul

The following was included in a comment made by “rautakyy”  (a regular visitor to this blog)  related to a discussion about “the soul” on Mak’s blog. I found his perspective closely aligned with my own feelings. What about you?

I do not know how it would feel like, if I had a soul, and I bet people who think they have one, have no idea what it would be like if they had none. Yet, what they feel about this issue seems best evidence they can put up in defence of this phenomena. There is no way we can verify any of us has one, let alone, that all had it. It can be seen as a poetic term for self, but otherwise it is just superstition and the thought of an afterlife is hardly anything but wishfull thinking. Either to avoid the thought of one’s own mortality, or the hope for some universal justice. However, the concepts of this universal justice are fairly skewed in religions. Hinduism offers future lives as insects = animals that do not have the brainpower to know their existance is some sort of punishment – a conclusion hardly any animal apart from us hominids has ever reached. Christianity offers hell, that can be avoided by joining the club, but non-members will suffer for an eternity. How is that supposed to be just on any level?

I was tickled by the remark about Hindus possibly being reincarnated as insects! I wonder if any individual who believes in reincarnation has considered this possibility?

In any event, what do you think? Do humans have souls? And is there any way/method to tell if we did?

56 thoughts on “The Soul 🦋”

  2. “It can be seen as a poetic term for self, but otherwise it is just superstition and the thought of an afterlife is hardly anything but wishfull thinking.”

    That seems about right to me.

    I see “soul” as an abstraction. I can agree that it is immaterial, because abstractions tend to be immaterial. I usually think of abstractions as useful fictions, but I’m not convinced of the usefulness of “soul”.

    Can a soul survive death? I guess that depends on how we think of it. The fiction (abstract person) Sherlock Holmes survived the death of Arthur Conan Doyle.

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  4. I sometimes get filet of soul when I eat out, which I assume (although it hadn’t occurred to me before) must be cut from a whole soul. Now it pains me to think of all those poor fish whose souls go to heaven in pieces….though I suppose that beats going to hell whole.

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  5. I didn’t have a soul until last week. I found one on sale at my local CVS and bought it for 10.99. So far, it hasn’t made an ounce of difference in my life. Maybe I’ll just return it or exchange it for some triple a batteries which I really need. 😄

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  6. There is a film with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda titled Our Souls at night. When I first mentioned the film over breakfast one morning some brightspark remarked.
    “A***oles at night? What sort film is that for goodness sake?”

    Quite…!
    And that is all I have to say about souls.

    As for being reincarnated as an Insect?
    In one of Terry Pratchett’s books, The Truth, one of the villains had a thing for antiques and when he popped his clogs he was reincarnated as a woodworm in an old desk!
    Reincarnation as an insect is an unusual concept but is not something that bugs me.

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  8. I don’t believe in a ‘soul’ in the religious sort of way, but rather think of it as the core of who we are. Do I believe in reincarnation of the soul into a different form? I’m not sure … maybe it’s possible, for it seems such a waste to have spent all these years learning and developing (well, some of us anyway) just to have it all go POOF when we stop breathing. But, I bet on nothing. Like many indigenous people, I sometimes believe in a spirit, but is that the same as what we are calling a ‘soul’? I dunno. I think … we humans would be better off worrying less about what happens after we die and worrying more about our contribution to the world before we die.

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  9. I will never use the word soul in a spiritual sense, though I love the song “Old Souls” on The Phantom of the Paradise soundtrack (which is not Soul music!)
    But I do freely use the word spirit in reference to the spirit of life that exists in every living being. Without that spirit we would be less than rocks.
    Meanwhile, your statement that “animals that do not have the brainpower to know their existance is some sort of punishment – a conclusion hardly any animal apart from us hominids has ever reached.” is a homocentric statement from the word “animal”! Until humans can talk to animals in their own language we will never know what animals think or believe. Remember, animals are our genetic ancestors, so whatever we are capaple of, or not capable of, can probably be directly attributable to our ancestors. The power to think did not just show up with the arrival of humans on the evotitionary scale. Just because they cannot speak English does not mean they have no brainpower! My cats have more brainpower than a lot of humans — in particular those humans who label themselves Republicans and Conservatives!

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    • Agreed. If you read my entire (once again too long) comment on Makagutus site, from wich this bit was exttracted, I adressed how we humans constantly try to explain ourselves as better, more important, or intelligent in comparrison to other animals (or indeed other breeds of humans). Sometimes it is by appealing to some imaginary soul and sometimes to things like awareness of our own mortality. I pointed out, that as apex predators, we are infact less likely to be in constant awareness of our own mortality, like most other animals are, as evident by their rapid escape responses to anything threatening. That said, I do not think insects burden themselves by thoughts of divine retribution. Their lives are obviously guided much more by logic, than ours and a lot less by stupid superstitious excuses to awoid responsibility. Theirs is a fairly simple life, because their neural capabilities are simple and not suited for wild imagination, like ours. Does that mean we are better, more important, or more intelligent? No.

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      • rautakyy, just so you know, I posted only part of your comment because, for me, it “cut to the chase.” It’s good that you expanded on the rest of what you wrote, but I wanted to let you know why I abbreviated it. In any case, I agree with ALL your thoughts on the soul! 😊

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      • It just means we have different motivators. An insect can have a happy life doing insect things. A bitd can have a happy life do bird things. A tree can have a happy life doing tree things. Are we really more intelligent? We know how to have an unhappy life doing stupid human hhings!

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        • Indeed. The idea of reincarnation as an insect as supposed punishment is an absurd projection of how some dude felt it must be terrible to be an insect and not a human and then went on to teach this attitude to others as some sort of “wisdom”. In the meantime insects are busy doing insect things and not the slightest concerned on humans with existential crisis, misery in the lack of justice and fairness in human created human relationships, or their death anxiety. Same of course goes for other animals, altough some that we keep as pets can sense our discomfort and may even try to comfort us because they have empathy towards us.

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          • They have more empathy towards us than most of us have towards them. Humans are not superior to anything, just different. And we have no idea what goes on in the minds of other species, because we are taught that we are superior. In reality, we seem to be inferior to most “others.” They don’t want to destroy our world.

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  10. I see the whole process of religion (and the soul it came in on) as a very skillful way to keep a relatively violent bunch of intelligent apes from destroying themselves before they even have a chance to grow into something better. Religion is basically an owner’s manual on how to behave in public (and private). Adding a soul into the mix has become a Get Out Jail Free card. And a reward for good behavior.

    Religion does seem to be losing its popularity, so maybe we have passed the teenage years in our evolution.

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  11. Some people seem to want to believe we are better than all other life on this planet. So a Soul was invented to be the ‘superior part’ of us to prove that. But if you look into the eyes of a dog, a Gorilla, or an Orangutan, (and many other animals) you can see yourself looking back. And if you can deliberately harm those animals or treat them with contempt, then you betray the very concept of being ‘better’ than them.
    Best wishes, Pete.

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  12. Boy! Is this complicated.

    I distinctly remember sitting in Catholic elementary classes and nuns (happened more than one time) telling us stories of (doubting) doctors asking believing docs to show them the person’s soul. At that time in my life, everyone I knew believed in the everlasting soul of each person.

    I now use the term in other contexts often. SOB (souls on board in aviation), the human “spirit,” a deeper human trait (I write poems), and in other ways. Since I no longer buy into the context of our soul being a surviving part of us that is rewarded in Heaven or punished in Hell (let’s not forget Purgatory and Limbo), I don’t (or cannot) see it that way (at least any longer).

    It’s a handy word. I like it and I use it. As I use the word, we all have one. As used in your post (and your questions), no, no, and no way at all.

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  15. evolution is an ongoing process, and it can take millions of years for one species to evolve. When you look into the eyes of a chimpanzee or a gorilla, you see humanity. Intelligence, and sadness. Those of us who turned into, er, us, and left them behind, haven’t really improved a whole lot. Granted, there is the body hair thing, and the jaw is a bit more controlled, but our instincts, at best, are pretty ancient. Hit, shout, kick, kill. Mine mine mine. Commandments and souls and a higher power herding us along was almost a necessity if we were going to survive long enough to evolve more.

    When you consider just how old the Bible is (any version) and the history it mentions, you realize that while much of it was cobbled together–in terms of evolution (which is always a slow train on a hot day) it’s barely a tick on the evolutionary clock. We are just now beginning the slow process of disengaging ourselves from higher powers, fairies, sprites, four headed gods and holy rolling.

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  16. Bottom line is fear of death. Some religious people don’t believe in the heaven hell thing or reincarnation to people or insects. But they believe in a soul. Scientific people often use consciousness interchangeably with soul..the cosmic mind idea etc.
    it’s all fantasy because it’s extremely difficult to imagine you will cease to exist for all time. You will cease to see people you love, a sunset, the sounds of nature, world events, new discoveries and on and on and this is very difficult to wrap your head around…hence some fantastical belief in some sort of ongoing. It’s a wish and a hope, but not a fact. And yes I can’t prove it, but I go with logic, science and the view of how things are from nature itself.

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    • And it’s arrogance to me , as well. It’s saying we are better than all other life and deserve eternal life and some of us lucky ones will get the beliefs just “right” and get to go to a special place, while others suffer. The height of arrogance!

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  17. I’ve often (and lately) wondered about where humans actually go after they die…if you think about it, we are arguably the most ambitious and forward looking animals out there. We strive, we work, we plan. Why?
    My own fantasy is that we have been here before (at least some of us) and when we die, at some point we come back as another person. You’ve heard the phrase, ‘old soul” to describe people who seem to be slightly more ‘advanced” or cognitive (if that’s even a word) than their peers…children who claim to have lived a past life, or have an imaginary friend. My neighbor had a child who would talk to a wall every day, and said this was her Uncle Peter. Her mother never even knew there was a Peter in the family, until she looked it up.

    When I was (apparently) very small I remember a voice telling me that my great grandmother was Victoria Dunphy, and Victoria’s mother was called Catherine Corkum. And whoever it was who told me, was right.

    Things like that make me wonder where we come from, and where we end up…

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  18. Soul is life and it is consciousness. The word “I” refers to spirit soul or living force inside our material body. As soon as the soul leaves the body the body stops functioning.

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  19. A soul by definition is a non material aspect of a person that outlives the rest of the body including the brain. It’s pretty unlikely I grant, and yet I do believe in the existence of consciousness as a property of matter that endures in some form outside any particular living system. The best and admittedly inadequate evidence for this is my own and a few other people’s experiences of ghosts, for want of a better word. And an intuition. My theory is that these things will one day be explained by science and incorporated into it, in much the same way as microbiology or quantum mechanics.

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    • We all have our personal perspectives of life and all that it means. And while none of us can “prove” our theories, if they make sense to us, that’s what’s important. Would you agree?

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      • Yeah, up to a point. I mean, if you see a pink flying elephant right in front of you, you’ve got two choices. One, it’s real. Two, you’re delusional. Take your pick. So I’ve gone with the ‘possibly real’ explanation of my experience, but I can also see that delusion might be a credible possibility.

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  20. I’ve always wondered if we could determine that by transplanting a fully functioning brain from a destroyed body into a healthy body with a dead brain. Maybe that would prove there is a soul/personality if the “same” person would return in the new body?

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  21. If the soul is real and turns out to be the seat of all that is good about us, I can see on judgement day a lot will be put up for sale by the powers that be with the sign, ‘One careful owner, unused.’ The owners will be heading for the heat treatment at that point.
    Hugs ( and they’re real).

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  22. Hey, Dave, just curious? How did you bet from a possibly real soul to a definitive judgment day? The one does not necessarily lead to the other. Or does it?
    And even a judgment day does not necessitate the possibility of a “heat treatment,” as you callit

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  23. “I wonder if any individual who believes in reincarnation has considered this possibility?”

    I believe in a form of reincsrnation, and it does not involve coming back as an insect as punishment. Punishment is a human folly.

    To me, soul is a religious term, and like any religion, a fantasy. People believe what they choose to believe, or are convinced to believe. Religions are great convincers.

    To Hindus: What would be the use of punishment if the being being punished has no awareness of being punished. Seems like a waste of life to me!

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