The Soul: A Poll

Discussion in 'Religion & Philosophy' started by usfan, May 28, 2020.

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Do you believe in a Soul?

  1. Each individual retains their unique characteristics that define them as a person.

    8 vote(s)
    28.6%
  2. Each person's essence returns to the Source, but all individuality is lost.

    1 vote(s)
    3.6%
  3. There is no soul or afterlife, just the material universe.

    8 vote(s)
    28.6%
  4. I haven't a clue.

    11 vote(s)
    39.3%
  1. usfan

    usfan Banned

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    There are at least 3 possibilities, regarding a soul, in humans or other living things:

    1. Individual. Each soul is unique, and carries the individuality of that person to an afterlife.

    2. Life Force. Each person has a spiritual essence, that returns to the Source, upon death.

    3. Materialism. The physical and material is all there is. Death is the end of each life.

    There may be hybrids and/or blends of these basic possibilities, but these are the most common beliefs, regarding the Soul and an afterlife.

    To personalize the poll, any explanation as to why you believe as you do would help. What reason(s) have been factors in arriving at your current belief?

    The poll has no significance, really, but merely reveals the beliefs of the posters, here.

    And, as a reminder, tolerance and freedom of conscience should be foremost, in considering the opinions of others. There is no need to mock or ridicule the beliefs of others, and such responses only reveal religious bigotry.

    The implications can be examined, for each belief, if you wish. Religio/philosophical beliefs are the root of everyone's worldview.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2020
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  2. Bjorn

    Bjorn Active Member

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    I haven't got a clue, and I'm ok with not knowing. Was once mildly religious, like a deistic "Cultural Christian" - which is/was a pretty common way to believe here in Denmark. I've always examined my faith, and always questioned whether or not I felt they make sense. At some point, they just didn't, and now I'm somewhere between non-biblical agnostic deist, and just agnostic. Specifically, in regards to the soul, I would (sort of) want it to retain all traces of its living individualism. But then again, depends on the nature of the eternity. Yet, what I want to happen and what will happen are two different things - as my continued lack of winning the lottery or wishing dictators would burst spontaneously into flames can attest to. At the end of the day, and at life's end, I will fear dying, then. Comes with accepting not knowing, accepting that it's not meant to be comfortable. Death just is and doesn't need to care about meaning. Only thing I can do is to leave few regrets and some good memories behind for the living -soul or no soul..
     
  3. yardmeat

    yardmeat Well-Known Member

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    Personally, I look at it this way: the passage of time is likely an illusion, so we're all "eternal" in the sense that the past, present, and future are equally real. Time is just another dimension, ultimately. As Einstein said of the loss of his friend, "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
     
  4. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
    And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
    What do you think has become of the young and old men?
    And what do you think has become of the women and children?

    They are alive and well somewhere,
    The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
    And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
    And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

    All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
    And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

    I tend to agree with Whitman, and Whitman, in some ways, tends to support the idea of time as a human construct. We are made of atoms and molecules that are returned back to the world when we die and they become like those leaves of grass. The idea of an immortal soul is not inconceivable, but I don't believe it, at least not in the conventional sense.
     
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  5. An Taibhse

    An Taibhse Well-Known Member

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    I will eventually know the answer..... or, I won’t. I am in no hurry for either possibility, what will come will come. It’s interesting to play the game.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2020
  6. Hawkins

    Hawkins Active Member

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    Soul carries the real you. It carries at least the sense of touch, sense of hearing, sense of sight (I couldn't tell about taste and smell as I didn't have a chance to speculate that). It has memory and thinking power possibly with some sense of a near future concerning yourself at least. I can't tell if this futuric sense can be trained up. It's not easy for a soul to go out of a body, as a body somehow can force the soul back into position. Soul is mostly transparent (to other humans) while spirit can have a shape. Thus to someone given the ability to watch, a soul may look like a worm having difficulty in getting out of its cocoon which is our body.

    I speak for myself by my own experience and speculation though.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2020
  7. David Landbrecht

    David Landbrecht Well-Known Member

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    There is at least a fourth possibility:
    All that is perceived, remembered and cultivated is totally ephemeral, existing only on the mind of an individual during that individual's life.
    Mind you, that is not saying such is the case, merely another possibility.
    Ultimately, we don't know.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2020
  8. Lucifer

    Lucifer Well-Known Member

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    It is no more or less valid than presuming that everything we know, or think we know, every sensation, every decision, every feeling and circumstance is all just a sublime facsimile of a world that no longer exists, but runs as a simulation of a reality that someone wished it to be.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2020
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  9. An Taibhse

    An Taibhse Well-Known Member

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    Of course, perhaps there is a God, the created everything at the moment I was born and arranged all the history, evidence and back story to f*** with me.... Evidence God is a woman.
     
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  10. Lucifer

    Lucifer Well-Known Member

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    And God's name is Karen. LOL
     
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  11. An Taibhse

    An Taibhse Well-Known Member

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    No wonder I endure what I do.... I keep calling out the name Sue. I guess I am violating the no God before me commandment.
     
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  12. dadoalex

    dadoalex Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    None of the answer is for me but #2 is closest.

    This life is a learning evolutionary experience.
    When we pass our beings will retain the experience but not the memories.

    "Experience?" The essence of being.

    Could a nut possible conceive of being a tree?
    Can an egg understand what it is to be a bird?
    Could a zygote possible conceive of being a person?
    When we die we will become something else.
    That something else will still contain our "being"
    But it is impossible for us to conceive of what the Next is.
     
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  13. An Taibhse

    An Taibhse Well-Known Member

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    I am curious, at what point does a soul become enjoined to the physical body in this reality? At conception? At birth? Somewhere in between?
    And, what happens if a woman aborts? Does the soul get on the next train?
     
  14. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    people lose their memories while alive, so I suppose it's not hard to imagine they could lose their memory when leaving this life

    but your soul will grow and live on again in a new life, filling a new brain with data

    that inside voice is the real you, but your brain allows it to interact with this world
     
    Last edited: May 29, 2020
  15. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I think it's in between, I think the body is a vessel and when it's able to support life, a soul is quick to enter

    I think the soul can leave the body before the body dies as well

    natural or doctor assisted abortions could be where people go down the tunnel of light and then return to this life
     
    Last edited: May 29, 2020
  16. modernpaladin

    modernpaladin Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I chose the first option, but I would imagine our characteristics will change when we lose our physical body (or move to a new one). But I do believe our souls are individual- I will be a separate entity from you in the next life/afterlife. I imagine that my experiences in this life will have an impact on who I am in the next, but I also imagine that my perception will be substantially altered from this to the next.
     
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  17. Distraff

    Distraff Well-Known Member

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    Heaven is just the human version of that special farm they sent you dog when you were a kid. There is no evidence of an immaterial soul, or that it is capable of surviving without the brain.
     
  18. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    it's also possibly time is not the same when we die, and we can be reborn in the past, present and future, thus given enough time, we could actually be all the life we see - no way to really comprehend what could be - so many things are possible
     
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  19. modernpaladin

    modernpaladin Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Thats an interesting idea!

    Everyone who claims reincarnation memories claim from the past, but maybe thats just because we don't have a record of future events for reference.

    Maybe 'seers' are reincarnated from the future?
     
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  20. David Landbrecht

    David Landbrecht Well-Known Member

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    If "soul" exists, it may well be one entity that individuals share without encompassing. One partakes, along with everyone else, of this "soul" that has always existed. A "soul" may not be the proper term.
     
  21. David Landbrecht

    David Landbrecht Well-Known Member

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    Truly, especially in today's world, people seem all too ready to "sue" in vain.
     
  22. Gelecski7238

    Gelecski7238 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The entry is usually made shortly before birth, according to one source that I recently read, but I can't recall what was that reference.
     
  23. An Taibhse

    An Taibhse Well-Known Member

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    I have lived with people that know nothing of Abrahamic religions; do they have souls, and if so, are their souls barred from ‘paradise’ after death? Basically, an ignorance = no paradise proposition?
     
  24. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    I've actually thought along those lines for a long time. Humans seem to have always had a sense of spirituality, which hints at a connection of some sort to a "spirit" or whatever we want to call it. That doesn't mean we have to accept one of a handful of concepts or definitions.

    If a bunch of atoms can come together and form some kind of energy that we refer to as consciousness, we might also imagine a larger Over Soul as Emerson called it, that we are all a part of. Emerson saw a connection between all things, whether living or inanimate. If we can store information in a slice of silicon -- essentially sand -- could it be possible that there is some kind of energy common to the universe that would allow us to have a collective consciousness? A sort of naturally occurring super computer? We might be the individual mediators of our own experiences, but suppose we add that to an Over Soul and think of that Over Soul as our spirit that lives on, or even our God?

    I certainly don't know, but for me, it seems a much better explanation of the soul.
     
  25. Gelecski7238

    Gelecski7238 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    There is the larger consciousness system according to Tom Campbell. We are living in a virtual reality. The present individual lifeform is just a temporary avatar, subordinate to the immortal oversoul. The latter is a multifaceted composite of individual extractions from multiple lifetimes.

    A sense of the blending in the bigger picture can be obtained from Far Journeys by Robert Monroe, pages 120-123. The copyright is general, all rights reserved.

    I am in a bright white tunnel and moving rapidly... a transparent and radiating tube. I am bathed in the radiation which courses through all of me, and … envelop my consciousness and I laugh with great joy…The…flow is two directional…the flow moving past me in the direction from which I came is smooth, even, and undiluted. The flow that I am is moving in the opposite direction …it is organized in a more complex form…it contains a multitude of small waves impressed upon the basic. I am both the basic and the small waveforms, moving back to the source. The movement is steady and unhurried, impelled by a desire I know but cannot express. I vibrate with joyous ecstasy just by the knowing.

    The tube seems to become larger as another joins it from one side, and another waveform melds into me and we become one. I recognize the other, as it does me, and there is the great excitement of reunion…How could I have forgotten this! We move along together, happily exploring the adventures, experience, and knowledge of the other. The tube widens again, and another I joins us, and the process repeats itself…our pattern grows stronger as they move in phase. There are variegations in each, which when combined with another, create a new and important modification of the total that we are.

    …another I enters the waveform flow…the first I perceive as returning from a completely nonhuman sojourn. Yet the intermesh was near-perfect and we become so much more. Now we know that, somewhere, a consciously controlled physical tail, much like a monkey’s, is useful in ways…(including)communication.

    …one I after another joins us. With each, we become more aware and remember more of the total…We are one.

    We divert from the underlying waveform and move away from it. We watch motionless in unified respect as the action of it continues away from us into an infinity. We also perceive easily the smooth originating wave coming from such infinity and dissolving into the pattern from which we came.

    From the InSpec (Intelligent Higher Species): Flowing through all of us is a coherent energy that is our creation, that displays immensely the reality of the whole as far greater than the sum of its parts. Our ability and knowledge seem without limit, yet we know at this point such is valid only within the energy systems of our experience. We can create time as we wish or as the need arises, reshaping and modifying within the percept itself. We can create, enhance, alter, modulate, or eradicate any percept within the energy fields of our experience. We can transform any such energy fields one into another or others except for that which we are. We cannot create or comprehend our prime energy until we are complete.

    We can create physical patterns such as your sun and solar system, yet we do not. It has been done. We can adjust the environs of your planet Earth, yet we do not. It is not our design. We can and do monitor, supplement, and enhance the flow of the human learning experience, as well as other(s)…of similar content throughout space-time…so as to prepare properly… for the entry and meld into the totality that we are becoming.

    You are still incomplete. There are parts of you yet to be transformed…. Each of us is incomplete. That is why we remain at this point, to reach back and gather additional and remaining parts of us until we are complete….[then] we move into the creative return flow again… (and) leave this reality.

    (…to what destination?)... We believe it to be the source of the radiation, the creative emission and return. Communication is closed with those who have continued. The desire to continue occurs upon completion…difficult to transmit in a form we an understand. There have been attempts by those completed who are to continue, without success.

    (For those who would die, there is life.
    For those who would dream, there is reality.
    For those who would hope, there is knowledge.
    For those who would grow, there is eternity.)


     
    Last edited: May 29, 2020
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