The Soul

[Socrates the Greek]

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[SIZE=+2]WHERE DID THE IDEA OF AN "IMMORTAL SOUL" COME FROM?​

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From the booklet "What is Man?" by Keith W. Stump​

[SIZE=+2]F[/SIZE]EW BELIEFS are more widely held than that of the "immortal soul." Virtually everyone is familiar with the concept. The average religious person, if asked, would state it something like this:
A human person is both body and soul. The body is the physical flesh-and-blood "shell" temporarily housing the soul. The soul is the nonmaterial aspect, made of spirit. At death the soul leaves the body, and lives on consciously forever in heaven or hell. (Some hold that liberated souls are reborn in new bodies in a series of "reincarnations" or "transmigrations.")
Some form of this concept is found among virtually all peoples and religions in the world today. The average religious person generally takes the idea for granted.
Science, which deals with the material universe and physical data, cannot verify or deny the existence of any such soul.
How, then, can one know whether or not man really has an "immortal soul"?
Few have stopped to ask where the concept came from in the first place. Many simply assume it has its origin in the Bible.
So prepare yourself for what could be one of the big surprises of your life!

Immortal Soul
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[Dexter Sinister]

Your personal experiences are what form your perception of reality. Every person has had different experiences so their perception is different. Therefore reality is subjective, not objective

I think you're conflating reality with people's perceptions, values, and judgments about it. There is an objective reality out there that exists regardless of what people think of it, it was here long before we came along to observe it (13.7 billion years before, according to the best current estimates) and it'll be here long after we're gone.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Science, which deals with the material universe and physical data, cannot verify or deny the existence of any such soul.

The complete absence of any good evidence for such a thing, plus the fact that the concept flies in the face of everything we know about how matter and energy are organized and interact, make denial a reasonable and defensible position. Moreover, the soul, if it exists, clearly exists in the material universe and interacts with it during its time in a human body, so its existence is an empirical claim about the nature of reality, and thus ought to be testable by the usual methods of science.

 

[Niflmir]

Science, which deals with the material universe and physical data, cannot verify or deny the existence of any such soul.

If it cannot interact with the physical world, than how can it be said to exist except in the mind? If you define the soul as unphysical and unmeasureable, then you define it as nonexistent.

 

[L Gilbert]

IF people can't grasp the reality around them which is hand fed to the masses while alive, how oh how could people possibly grasp the ethereal when dead?

lmao Good point.

 

[talloola]

[SIZE=+2]WHERE DID THE IDEA OF AN "IMMORTAL SOUL" COME FROM?[/SIZE]​

From the booklet "What is Man?" by Keith W. Stump​

[SIZE=+2]F[/SIZE]EW BELIEFS are more widely held than that of the "immortal soul." Virtually everyone is familiar with the concept. The average religious person, if asked, would state it something like this:
A human person is both body and soul. The body is the physical flesh-and-blood "shell" temporarily housing the soul. The soul is the nonmaterial aspect, made of spirit. At death the soul leaves the body, and lives on consciously forever in heaven or hell. (Some hold that liberated souls are reborn in new bodies in a series of "reincarnations" or "transmigrations.")
Some form of this concept is found among virtually all peoples and religions in the world today. The average religious person generally takes the idea for granted.
Science, which deals with the material universe and physical data, cannot verify or deny the existence of any such soul.
How, then, can one know whether or not man really has an "immortal soul"?
Few have stopped to ask where the concept came from in the first place. Many simply assume it has its origin in the Bible.
So prepare yourself for what could be one of the big surprises of your life!

Immortal Soul​

If I 'ever' see or have someone prove to me that there is such a thing as a soul,
then I will study the find. In the meantime, I know what I have seen in this
life of mine, I have seen and realized the outcome of many scientific finds.
I have a good imagination, but I keep it where it belongs, and enjoy that part
of me from time to time, but it doesn't mix with my reality, and what I know
to be fact. I will not be dragged along with others imaginative thoughts that
they mix with their reality, which puts them in some grey area in life.
The idea that there is some kind of invisible soul inside of our bodies is so
far fetched 'to me' that I would feel silly thinking that it could be true.
I can't do that to myself, I must be true to myself. I am a very realistic person.
Just because someone says that I can't prove there is 'no' soul, means nothing
to me. Until someone proves there is a soul, there is not, and there is nothing
happening on this earth that makes that reality doubtful, with the exception
of the religious, and I don't enter into that world at all.

 

[L Gilbert]

If I 'ever' see or have someone prove to me that there is such a thing as a soul,
then I will study the find. In the meantime, I know what I have seen in this
life of mine, I have seen and realized the outcome of many scientific finds.
I have a good imagination, but I keep it where it belongs, and enjoy that part
of me from time to time, but it doesn't mix with my reality, and what I know
to be fact. I will not be dragged along with others imaginative thoughts that
they mix with their reality, which puts them in some grey area in life.
The idea that there is some kind of invisible soul inside of our bodies is so
far fetched 'to me' that I would feel silly thinking that it could be true.
I can't do that to myself, I must be true to myself. I am a very realistic person.
Just because someone says that I can't prove there is 'no' soul, means nothing
to me. Until someone proves there is a soul, there is not, and there is nothing
happening on this earth that makes that reality doubtful, with the exception
of the religious, and I don't enter into that world at all.

Imagine that.

 

[El Barto]

On the contrary, one should accept a claim as true only when there's sufficient evidence to justify the claim. The default rational position is to doubt all claims until the evidence is in. No, that wasn't reality, that was a delusion based on an incorrect understanding of insufficient evidence, which is pretty much my point here. Better to concede you don't know than to make it up. What's the point of living this if the meaning is assigned by some deity and nobody can claim to understand it because of the presumed mysterious and incomprehensible nature of the deity? We make our own meanings.

What i was trying to convey here was that we may not have all the means now to see things we don't understand . Nor the means to prove it as with time we know or aquire knowledge that we didn't have before. With the flat earth comment was that of perception. They didn't see beyond the horizon , it didn't mean it didn't exist as we later discovered. But then they assumed that the earth 'was' flat .
Reality that is , beyond our scope of perception isn't at all what we see, yet.
the perception of reality is just that , perception. So what is really real?

 

[Cliffy]

What i was trying to convey here was that we may not have all the means now to see things we don't understand . Nor the means to prove it as with time we know or aquire knowledge that we didn't have before. With the flat earth comment was that of perception. They didn't see beyond the horizon , it didn't mean it didn't exist as we later discovered. But then they assumed that the earth 'was' flat .
Reality that is , beyond our scope of perception isn't at all what we see, yet.
the perception of reality is just that , perception. So what is really real?

This is what I was trying to say. We have limited perception but those limits, to some degree, are socially imposed by our belief system that physical reality can only be perceived/viewed in a certain way. Thus we see a tree as a trunk with bark, branches and leaves, a separate object from ourselves. A person can be trained to see, or who has not been indoctrinated into our societies dogmatic way of perceiving reality, can see a tree as a flowing form of energy that is interconnected to himself and all things around it. Is their view of reality any more or less valid than the person who only sees the object separate from themselves?

Just because we can't see something, doesn't mean it is not there. Our physical sensors can only pick up physical data but they are crude and limited in capability. We do have other, much more refined sensory capabilities. There are many stories of people who suddenly become aware that they are in danger. They cannot see the cougar stocking them but they sense it's presence and intent. Or the car that is about to collide with theirs, or even sense that a loved one has just died hundreds of miles away.

Those sensory capabilities do not originate from any physical sensory organ. So where do they originate from? I don't have the answer but I have experienced similar incidents many times. I have seen the tree and all around it as flowing forms of energy. How could that be, if I was indoctrinated into our society's point of view? Unless you have experienced it, there is no way to explain how it happens because it is outside your realm of possibilities, your belief system about reality.

Unless a person is willing to step outside the box that they have been placed in, there is no way that they can perceive what lies beyond the box. There is no way to even perceive the box they are in. The box is the flat earth perspective, outside is the universe.

 

[eminesh]

Sometimes we "cannot stomach something", we want to "get something off our chest", our "heart bleeds" or someone "talks our head off". Behind such phrases is our experience of the interrelation of body and soul, our physical and mental condition.

The FORUM on hand deals with this topic and - deduced from it - with sex education, which plays an important role in the field of working with children and adolescents. This issue is mainly about the body - however not considered as isolated from the soul but rather in its relationship to it.
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