Does the soul exist?
 

well because the fact i do not beleive there is a soul i cannot answer your spoons, i think your body is just flesh. nerves and other various body parts just send your brain information and you do what you think or feel is the right or most enjoyable thing to do next. and when you die i do not beleive your soul is transferred into another body or goes to heaven i think that honestly nothing happens when you die. religions are made by the government, that's why there are different religions in different countrys and different regions, the religion always tells you to not be bad and to do things for the good of your people. isn't that a little odd to all of you?

Yes.
Energy.
It's a person's conscience/ the thinking part of their mind.
Yes. Each soul is unique.
No, when the vessel ( body ) that holds the soul is destroyed, the soul is destroyed. A soul cannot exist without a vessel to hold it.
Nope.
Sure, clones have their own souls. After all a clone is just an artificial clone.

No.

... I should never have done philosophy.
"But, Miss, they're so WRONG."
"Argue why, then."
"They're so WRONG it's so pointless to even explain WHY."

XD

It doesn't matter. It shouldn't affect how we live our lives. Now is important now.

On another note, this thread would probably do a bit better in the debate subforum.

Haha, I do not believe we have souls. Brains yes, souls no. In psychology we learn about experience vs. biology and how they shape a person. If a soul existed beforehand then these things would be irrelevant. In a sense I guess our brains are our souls...kinda going along with Claudia, if a person dies, then brain function ceases to exist and so our very being fails to exist as well.
You could also look at patients of lobotomies, their behavior changed after the surgeries....as if they were completely different people (methinks, I took this class last year so don't quoite me verbatim). If the soul in fact did exist then would that happen....a souls is the person in their entirety, so why would a measly brain surgery change all that a person is?

Hmm, if you want a real discussion starter ask your philosophy teacher about whether the future exists. That's a fun one :insane:

With today's technology, nope. I think the difficulty lies is that a soul needs a vessel and moving it would mean for a short time it would be without a vessel to exist in.
As others have said, I feel the soul is strongly connected to the brain and interacts with it. Taking it out would be mean it would have to be isolated and I see a soul not as existing as a fixed part in the brain...but as something interwoven into brain tissue.

I honestly have a couple opinions on this. An energy, an aura, a kind of sense as to right and wrong, or what kind of a person you're around, yes. I believe in that kind of soul. In an immortal soul that could possibly be saved, yadda, yadda, heaven, and so on and so forth, no. I'm a strict atheist, and I believe when we die, we die. That's all there is to it.

The conscience is a sentient feeling. It alerts us to certain things and punishes us when we're guilty. It reacts in us when we or someone else has done something that strikes our heart.

I think someone's 'soul' or their conscience certainly differs. I mean, a crazed mass murderer would have little to no conscience or soul. However, a vet or a helper at a shelter would have a big heart and a big conscience.

I don't believe anything is immortal. We are born, we live, we die. That's it. Nor do I believe anything about us can exist before birth. Perhaps in the gestation period in the womb, our mental self grows, but that determines nothing about us.

Hm. I believe that anything may have my definition of a 'soul'. Humans, clones, crabs, dogs, anything. If something can perform an act and then remember it, then it probably has some form of it.

I think anything that's alive probably has a soul. Plants don't, 'cuz they have no consciousness. Animals probably do. I'm not sure what i think about insects or anything. I think a soul is what one feels emotion from, basically. Plants for example don't have souls, at least i don't think, because they have no brain and aren't sentient life forms.

My boyfriend doesn't believe in souls though, so one time we were discussing how even religious people shouldn't be against abortion because a fetus obviously doesn't have a soul until it can hear stuff outside the womb. He said "i don't think it has a soul when it starts to form, it doesn't have a soul when it begins to hear things, and even when it pops out it still doesn't have a soul because i don't believe souls exist."

Some think the twinkle of light in one's eyes is a soul making itself visible in a world of matter. Or could it be just a reflection from a source of light? The infathomable end to our existence that our minds should just shut off at death. That our mind is just part of this machine we call a body. And if that was true, would we know? If our mind suddenly no longer existed, how would we know? We could not know because we would not exist. But at the same time, Nonenxistense sounds absurd. It sounds almost rediculous to think that something can exsist and then cease to exist. They say that an ending is another beginning and a beginning was an ending at one point in time. We have all been raised to believe in the afterlife, at least the majority of us have. Our childhood foundation has led us to believe that we are more than cells and atoms, and we have a purpose. But it just might be that we will only become rotting corpses in the ground.

Well, we have been raised to believe in the after life because we're scared to death (no pun intended) about what will happen when we stop moving, or when others perish. We are frightened of the unknown. So we make up stories about living on spiritually after we die. It's a comforting thought. Whether we do or not in uncertain, but seeing as I am also afraid of everything being nothing after I die, I certainly hope there is an afterlife to experience.

Don't be afraid, if we do not live on in the afterlife, how would we know? It's truly mind-boggling to process our own nonexistence. And if you think about it, how could we stop? nothing ever stops. But what I do know is that I don't know shit. none of us do.

I never really contemplated how I don't believe in God or an afterlife, but I believe in the soul. I guess it's odd now that I think about it. Then again, I also believe in ghosts.
I feel that the soul does exist. Honestly, my theory is that the soul is the heartbeat. It is, to some extent, the record of one's life. I think its purpose is to...keep track of the energy one has, I suppose. Considering that I believe every person is different from every other person, I would have to say that the soul differs from person to person as well. Going with my heartbeat theory, the soul could still be immortal. The energy would simply leave the body when the heart stopped beating. It could also exist before birth. If...a clone has a heartbeat, it would have a soul. Again, I'm just fitting this into my theory. Very interesting stuff to think about, I must say.

I believe that yes, the soul does exist. I believe this because I've had a ghost, haunted house experience....In a way, I think people's souls auras differentiate, like with colors. >< Its hard to explain. The soul is long lasting, I don't know if its immortal. Yes, souls exist beforehand. I don't know if clones have souls... Good question.

@Liath: I just had to say that I disagree with your comment about plants not having souls.
I think that red woods that have been living for several hundred yrs have more soul than us.

I don't know whether I believe in a soul as such, though I do believe that everything living has a 'spirit', or 'life energy'. Yes, that is everything from humans through animals right down to the simplest weed. This spirit or energy is everlasting, but I believe that it is not a constant form. By this, imagine that a person passes on, releasing that energy into the aether. That energy might well be used again to create another human life, or it might go to causing more plants to grow etc. Though it would seem that the amount of energy is finite, considering that the rate of destruction in the world seems to currently outweigh the rate of creation, I would like to think that there is a way of increasing the levels of energy that are available, but I wouldn't have a clue how.

Personally, I do believe that souls exist. At least, I want to believe so. I don't really want to stop existing. But if the soul exists, everything has one, including plants. some people think plants just grow, but if you observe, they point their leaves toward the sun. There was a tree in my front yard that was planted too close to another tree, so it grew to the right. the other tree was on it's left side. so, in a way plants have thought processes, though they grow very slowly and are stationary.

Ok, I'mma pretend I'm smart for a second.
I believe we all have a soul.
It is there before birth, and is there after we die. There is a book called "Life After Death" by a guy named Deepak Chopra, and in it he says that if a soul accomplishes everything it wanted to on earth, it will move on to a higher plane of existence. But if it still has things to complete, it will be reincarnated as a human again.

OK I find the idea that rees have souls ridiculious. That would make trees thinking sentient creatures since souls= conscience. There is no edvidence that point that that trees are sentient creatures.
Being alive does not mean one has a soul.