Asklemmy

I like Douglas Hofstadter's concept of the soul as a self referential mechanism. His book: 'I am a strange loop' expands on this, which is a bit more spiritual (for lack of a better word) expansion of his ideas in Gödel, Escher Bach.

It also explains how your own loop incorporates and curates the memories of the people you love and how you're able to live, and see though their 'eyes' after they have died.

So the soul of others finds an explanation in yourself, and allows you to live in in other people's minds, without any super natural constructs.

I would call myself an agnostic, and I suppose I believe in a soul... In that they are a (potentially inaccurate) way of describing the singularity of oneself.

We contain something which has conscious thoughts, and awareness of "itself" while existing. I suppose that would be a soul, no? We can remember and have individual lives with isolated moments no one else will ever know. Are those memories really only random creases in our brain? Do the feelings and deeper experiences for you wash away as nothing alongside the mechanics of those memories? What makes us... well, us?

I like to think the soul is just that, the part of ourselves that is truly unique, and can only fully be witnessed internally. The part of you that is only ever going to fully exist in the here and now, while still recalling the there and then. That which gives us the full breadth of emotion tied to deeper thought, and hopefully some understanding. That, at least, is a miraculous thing to get to experience... spiritually or not.

The immutability of a soul is a different question, one which we'll get an answer to after the physical living stops.

Word games. "God" and "Soul" are so ill-defined you can get literally anyone to agree that those "things" (thinks?) exist. If I define "soul" as "repeating emergent pattern of genetically and environmentally internal state and observable behaviour in a sentient species" I maybe could even get some people in this community to agree that such a concept exists. If I use a more religious definition like "magic non physical entity bestowed by an eternal god" all I would get is a resounding "NOO!". It is the memetics strength of those concepts by being incredibly flexible and vague that will ensure their ongoing use and existence - and questions like this one.

Nope.

No.

I think I'll remain agnostic on that one. Ask me again in 50 years and I'll probably know the answer by then. Unless I happen to somehow reach the age of 106 without dying, in which case I'll take a raincheck.

I haven't see any measurable proof of one, or any experiment proposed that would render the idea of a soul falsifiable or not. Honestly, the current debate in philosophy/neuroscience on the existence (or non-existence) of free-will seems like a more important question, that if answered in the negative would have major implications on even the definition of the word 'soul'.

Fun question though, I've enjoyed reading the diversity of thought on the matter in this thread. :)

Agnostic here brought up with Buddhist grandparents. I like the idea of reincarnation - (I don't deny not truly believe it) you need a "soul" to leave you physical body and to repeat in an endless cycle. Nirvana is when you break free of this cycle and gain enlightenment.

The idea that a part of us may live on has helped cope with mourning a lost one. But that's really it - in the face of mortality, sometimes you find mechanisms to cope. Don't think I answered your question...

I do not. What we call consciousness is, I believe, is nothing but an expression of the nervous system. When the physical body dies, that is the end. There is no existence after that.

Agnostic here, I do not believe in the soul per se. Like many others here, I think life and the universe to be a pretty magic thing in itself and no further explanation is really needed. However I do not rule out a so called "spiritual" realm, but I tend to view it as something like dark matter or dark energy, something we can sometimes see the effects of, but do not yet understand.

No.

Now ask me whether I believe in free will!

I'm agnostic. I do believe we have a soul, I just think we haven't discovered what it actually is yet. Like, scientifically we're not quite able to explain yet what makes a soul a soul. I'm not sure if a soul disconnects and "moves on" somewhere/somehow after a body death, or if it also dies out with the body, but I like to think there is a disconnection there. I agree that it makes me feel better about death in general, so yeah, maybe that's why I so easily accept such an idea?

But, it feels like more than that to me. It's fundamentally what makes each of us individualistic in terms of the choices we make. It's what makes me, "me."

I'm going to tie this in with abortion, so I apologize in advance, Lol, but I'm 100% convinced that the abortion debate will never come to a conclusion unless we discover what a soul is scientifically. Right now the picking at random physical stages, like a heartbeat or lung formation/ability only goes so far, because it doesn't explain what makes each individual so individualistic. No one will ever convince someone who believes a soul starts at conception that abortion from the start is anything but murder. (To be clear, I'm pro-life, though 100% believe there's a cut-off point).

So, to sum it all up: yes, there's a soul, though i dont tie it to any god or religion. yes, I believe one day we'll prove there's a soul scientifically, we just aren't there yet.

all these "deleted by creator" posts in a thread about atheism sound a bit ominous. @[email protected] are you ok?

i don't believe in god but i think life is infinitely profound; as profound as an idea like the soul. so i guess it depends on your definition of soul and how creative or spiritual you are

It's a useful term in sentences like "This hurts my soul", but I don't need the metaphysical claims around it.

Curious, why did you group agnostics together with atheists?