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bjones
Skeptic Friend

Australia
82 Posts

Posted - 08/28/2001 :  05:06:19  Show Profile Send bjones a Private Message
Poll Question:
What is the Soul?



Results:


Poll Status: Locked  »»   Total Votes: 0 counted  »»   Last Vote: never 

@tomic
Administrator

USA
4607 Posts

Posted - 08/28/2001 :  17:38:29   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit @tomic's Homepage Send @tomic a Private Message
Consciousness can't be observed?

Hey, can anyone see this??!!!


@tomic

Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law!
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James
SFN Regular

USA
754 Posts

Posted - 08/28/2001 :  18:11:18   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send James a Yahoo! Message Send James a Private Message
I'm a soul man
I'm a soul man
I'm a soul man


The way I see it, christians are godless too...they just don't know it yet.
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ljbrs
SFN Regular

USA
842 Posts

Posted - 08/28/2001 :  18:22:48   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send ljbrs a Private Message
The soul does not exist. I will not change the usual names for the processes of and the functioning of the brain into some ethereal baloney that religious people believe exists. The word *soul* has no meaning and is only used to portray some silliness as being real.

ljbrs

Perfection Is a State of Growth...
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Dog_Ed
Skeptic Friend

USA
126 Posts

Posted - 08/29/2001 :  14:17:42   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dog_Ed's Homepage Send Dog_Ed a Private Message
...James?! James BROWN? Is that you?



"Even Einstein put his foot in it sometimes"
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James
SFN Regular

USA
754 Posts

Posted - 08/30/2001 :  18:35:07   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send James a Yahoo! Message Send James a Private Message
Nope. I ain't James Brown.

Although, you do have to admit, it is the appropriate thread for it.

The way I see it, christians are godless too...they just don't know it yet.
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tergiversant
Skeptic Friend

USA
284 Posts

Posted - 08/31/2001 :  13:53:15   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit tergiversant's Homepage  Send tergiversant a Yahoo! Message Send tergiversant a Private Message
I wish there was an option for "A string of symbols or phonemes without any coherent thinkable meaning."

I picked the "illusion" option which was a close as I could get.

"Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione."
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Donnie B.
Skeptic Friend

417 Posts

Posted - 09/18/2001 :  19:35:28   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Donnie B. a Private Message
Huh! Good God, y'all! AAAAAAAOOOOOOWWWW! Get down! Hurt me! Huh!

-- Donnie B.

Brian: "No, no! You have to think for yourselves!" Crowd: "Yes! We have to think for ourselves!"
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NubiWan
Skeptic Friend

USA
424 Posts

Posted - 09/27/2001 :  03:40:35   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send NubiWan a Private Message

Dunno, can't answer, would have to first define it. In some silliness have read, that some say there is only one soul, and that is shared by all. Kind'a like "the Force" would reckon. Dunno, but have heard that just after death, the body weighs a bit less, than when "living."

We know that the cells in our bodies are replaced about every seven years. Perhaps our very concept of "Self" over time is an illusion as well. Einstein said, "Time is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

Guess you could say the soul is what's left, after you remove all, that is physical from yourself. Nothing? OK...


"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." -Voltaire
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filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 12/31/2001 :  08:37:04   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message
I think that the 'soul' is wishful dreaming. After all, it is difficult to imagine any sort of future that lacks the irreplacable Me. The soul is pretty much the basis of all religions. Do right by whatever god (and donate to Jerry or the equivelent), and you'll have a happy afterlife, and so forth.

The ancient Egyptians and a multitude of other peoples went to great lengths to insure that souls, at least of the rich, traveled first class. Some of Earth's greatest monuments were built, just for this.

Interesting, no?

f

The more I learn about people, the better I like rattlesnakes.
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Snake
SFN Addict

USA
2511 Posts

Posted - 01/02/2002 :  00:57:45   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Snake's Homepage  Send Snake an ICQ Message  Send Snake a Yahoo! Message Send Snake a Private Message
I could not pick one of the choices.
I don't think Man is at the point of knowing yet. He doesn't even quite know what is beyond atoms. At least I think I heard that the strings are not the final particals either. So if the soul is the essence of a mans brain or mind or thoughts, I don't think we can answer or have the technology to know what it is - physicaly OR metaphysaclay.
We could speculate and make up sci-fi stories but truly we don't know.

Rap Crap is to music what Paint by Numbers is to art.
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Badger
Skeptic Friend

Canada
257 Posts

Posted - 01/04/2002 :  11:12:12   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Badger a Private Message
Looks like I'm in the overwhelming minority on this one. Let me explain, though.

I'm looking at it from kind of a quantum physics perspective. What people commonly think of as "soul" something that leaves the body when a person dies, well, that'd be the energy patterns and physical wiring of the brain while the person is alive.

Upon death, everything winds down, degenerates, rots, is burned. But the particles that made up the brain are still around, linked to different particles in different ways. Really, the atoms that were the brain, and the electrons in the chemical and electrical bonds between them have moved on to do something else for a while.

So while dead is dead and there ain't no more on the macro scale, Your head was just a pitstop in the Daytona 500 of the particle's existence.

From a personal perspective, with nothing at all to back this up but the basic human need to survive, I won't cease to exist when I die. My being has had an effect on the universe as certain atoms and particles were concentrated in a particular place for a little while, and everything's connected to everything else, so the record of me will be there in the universe.

I'm not prepared to defend the above, because it's the teddy bear that I need to cling to on occasion, and nothing more.

Just because we're hypnotized, that don't mean we can't dance. - Tonio K.
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rickm
Skeptic Friend

Canada
109 Posts

Posted - 01/04/2002 :  13:32:48   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send rickm a Private Message
I agree that after we cease to live we continue to live, but not physically or spiritually or atomically. Our lives continue in our children or anyone else we have influenced. Other than that I see no means of existence after death.

I have often said that the prospect of being reunited with family and friends in heaven sounds quite good, and if someone could ever convince me, or better yet, prove it to me, I would be the first to sign up. However many attempts have been made and no attempts have lead me to believe that there is a spiritual superman that provides such a place.



"Let me off the plane,I am no missionary, I don't even believe in Jebus..... Oh Jebus please help me." Homer J. Simpson
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Snake
SFN Addict

USA
2511 Posts

Posted - 01/04/2002 :  19:31:04   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Snake's Homepage  Send Snake an ICQ Message  Send Snake a Yahoo! Message Send Snake a Private Message
quote:

I agree that after we cease to live we continue to live, but not physically or spiritually or atomically. Our lives continue in our children or anyone else we have influenced.

Yes, I have often said that very thing. But I thought in this folder we are talking more of something phsycial or tactial.
When I walk in my garden I do think of my mother and when I look at the lovely flowers that are clipings or seeds from plants my dear friend gave me, I know they or that is their 'sprit'(whatever that may be) is living through the plants and knowledge of gardening they gave me.
I on the other hand, being an artist, will have a wealth of phsycal existance to live on beyond the atoms of my bodys demise,
through my works. Like the cave man, people millenums from now will look apon my art and ponder my meanings. LOL, wouldn't they be surprised if they really knew?

Rap Crap is to music what Paint by Numbers is to art.
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Tim
SFN Regular

USA
775 Posts

Posted - 01/14/2002 :  07:47:05   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Tim a Private Message
I dunno...

But, in typical Unitarian/Universalist fashion, I could answer that whatever you think is okay by me.

Anyway though, Snake and James may be on to something. Maybe, there is something beyond the art that makes it great. For instance, I normally avoid country music, but at this moment Junior Brown is tearin' up my speakers with his 'Stupid Blues'. I know that Son House touches me somewhere I can't explain when I hear 'Levee Camp Moan'. Oh, and when almost anyone with a grasp of the Appalachian sound delivers 'o Death' a tear comes to my eye. There is something more behind the music than technical perfection. There is a definitive lack of technical perfection, but an underlying feeling that I can't explain, and probably never will.

Maybe, it's just good art, but what makes it good? Could it be soul, (whatever the hell that is)?

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Slater
SFN Regular

USA
1668 Posts

Posted - 01/22/2002 :  18:49:50   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Slater a Private Message
What is so bad about not existing that you cannot bear the thought of it? Why would you even want to live forever?
Think of all the eons that passed before you were born. You didn't exist then and the thought of that doesn't make you shudder. Why a "teddy bear" for the eons after you die?
"If they liked it once, they'll love it again!" (Vaudeville expression)

-------
The brain that was stolen from my laboratory was a criminal brain. Only evil will come from it.
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