Something I take some comfort in is that regardless of what your soul does upon death in the short term (whether it’s an afterlife of some sort that we don’t understand, a nihilistic void of nothingness, reincarnation as the soul attaches to a newly created body somewhere else in the world… whatever, no one alive truly knows or could ever know), science believes in a sort of reincarnation.
Where eventually as step one, everything that ever was ends up in black holes, and those black holes eventually decay until the universe is nothing but a uniform background of unchanging radiation, referred to as the heat death of the universe (because nothing can really physically change on macroscopic scales anymore, in order to convert energy into new heat).
And then, after ridiculously long time periods, quantum fluctuations cause the machinery of the universe to start back up again, everything re-forms, and eventually our universe ends up back where it started at the beginning of your life.
So it’s possible that you will live again, and again, and again, forever, just with no ability to remember how it went down last time. And an incredibly long wait between lifetimes (though, to be fair, if death is a nihilistic void for each person, that wait is only going to feel like two seconds and bam, you’re right back in the womb).
It’s still an exact arrangement of matter that’s identical to your original configuration. So one would think that all the properties arising from it (such as consciousness) would be the same. So it’s You Part 2 (or Part two quintillion, there’s really no way to know which loop we’re on).
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 believe in our consciousness giving us unique personalities and the ability to make complex decisions. Anything past that doesn’t make sense to me, and goes against all logic or understanding we have of the universe.
It really depends on what you mean? It’s a purposely, nearly obtusely, intangible concept. I’m not unwilling to talk about it if I get a proper definition, but my opinion would be a mere opinion formed from the facts I have on hand. I have some suppositions that are outside the realm of what science has been able to dig in to, but without actually factual backing, I also acknowledge that my ideas are conjecture that line up with how I perceive the world.
I mean, ya, if that’s how you wanna define a soul, I’ll say that exists.
As for the more common definitions which tend to extend to moving that software around and that software moving to the cloud in the case of a system failure, I have no reason to believe the brain has wifi, gps, or satellite functionality.
But if we simply describe it as “the software on the brain”, I hold no objection and can comfortably say it exists.
A soul is at best a description of the electrical and quantum interactions that take place in our brain, a personified phenotype of the sum of these things occurring in our head (and to a degree our eyes, mouth, ears, and skin).
I don’t believe in the soul in the traditional sense as it implies that there is one version of me – is my soul my 9yo self, my 20-something alcoholic self, the self as of this moment, or my Alzheimer’s-ridden self when I die? If it’s supposed to be a “perfect” version of me when I pass, then it’s kind of funny, because my spirit is, in a sense, a version of me that I’ve never actually met and wouldn’t recognize.
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. :)
I think ‘soul’ is not something which exists in itself - it is the idea of the essence of a thing, the thing which causes an individual life.
So theories go around that there are spiritual beings separate from the physical (debatable) and I personally think that it extends to all life, such that trees can have awareness which can also extend beyond their physical bodies.
As such, they obviously exist - but their exact definition and nature is quite hard to grasp. I don’t think they can survive physical death.
“Soul” is just consciousness. Which many people seem to equate to the brain here.
There is 0 scientific evidence that consciousness has anything to do with our brains. Much to the contrary actually.
Consciousness truly is one of the biggest mysteries of life. We all experience it, but the more you observe it, the less you can find it.
It may feel at first as it’s a phenomena of the brain, of the mind. But soon after you start paying really close attention to it, you realize that consciousness is behind the mind. It’s underneath it.
It observes the mind. It observes everything. And that’s what it is. Perceiving. Aware of everything.
Its the only indivisible and irreducible thing in the universe that we ever found. Consciousness just is. It is the awareness in you. It is the awareness in everything.
When we crack consciousness, all these talks of “souls”, “god”, “atheism”, will seem just silly tbh.
This makes no sense to me. It's just generic platitudes and a wild claim.
You say "quite the contrary", claiming there is scientific evidence of consciousness having nothing to do with our brains. Where can I find this evidence?
I couldn't follow any of your reasoning. Can you summarize your central thesis? Because we observe...?
I don't see how conscience could not have anything to do with our brain when that is where it arises.
There is 0 scientific evidence that consciousness has anything to do with our brains. Much to the contrary actually.
Source? Everything I’ve read on the topic suggests that it’s everything to do with the brain - damaged brain = no consciousness, even if the rest of the body fine.
Its the only indivisible and irreducible thing in the universe that we ever found. Consciousness just is.
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