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[NT] Do NTs believe in souls?

Snuggletron

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no

the stipulations of a soul are too arbitrary. What creatures get a soul? what creatures don't? Some people say certain animals don't have souls. Does a soul then boil down to the creature's capacity for knowledge and intellectual ability? That is what it sounds like these people would be saying, which would mean that infants wouldn't have souls until a certain point. But then, when does a soul arrive? If it is always there, then it must reside in every creature, even in the most mindless insects, which clearly operate on a pre-programmed script to survive. Humans do the same thing at a different level. And that I think, is the only raisin the concept of a soul or spirit exists. Nothing justifies their existences, except the fuzzy idea that we could live on after our bodies die because we've already conjured up all these gods and cute divine prophecies so why not a ticket into an afterlife?

There is a possibility, but there's also a possibility that some alien race has conceived something like our concept of a soul on a much higher intellectual level that we could never comprehend. Something like Cthulhu-Intellect. Where the gap between us and them like the gap between an insect and us now. entertaining ideas, useless to both the insect and us, though.
 

guesswho

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Souls. No. I will not believe until proven contrary.
 

Coriolis

Si vis pacem, para bellum
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My opinion of the Soul is less about the entity itself, and more about the 'energy' of a person. Science says that no energy can be either created, nor destroyed. That energy 'lives on' somewhere. Now, whether that energy retains properties of what it was previously a part of, I don't know, but I would think that it could be possible.
No, actually, energy and matter are equivalent, and one can be converted into the other, as in particle accelerators. This is the whole point of Einstein's famous equation: E= mc^2.

As for souls, I believe there is something to the human being beyond the physical, something that might even continue after death. Whether to call this soul, or spirit, or something else -- to me, that is a matter of semantics. None of this can be proven, it is a genuine matter of belief, and I won't claim to "know" or even to imagine exactly what the nature of this soul/spirit/noncorporeal entity is. I do believe it exists, however.
 

VYCanisMajoris

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No, actually, energy and matter are equivalent, and one can be converted into the other, as in particle accelerators. This is the whole point of Einstein's famous equation: E= mc^2.

As for souls, I believe there is something to the human being beyond the physical, something that might even continue after death. Whether to call this soul, or spirit, or something else -- to me, that is a matter of semantics. None of this can be proven, it is a genuine matter of belief, and I won't claim to "know" or even to imagine exactly what the nature of this soul/spirit/noncorporeal entity is. I do believe it exists, however.

So, human beings are different than other animals? I'm curious what you're religion is...?
 

Nonsensical

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just want all of you NTs to know I've keeping tallies..:peepwall:
 

Lark

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I do, I've had my doubts but I do believe in a soul and I actually believe its more feasible that we have souls and have an afterlife than it is that we will encounter a God like that of any of the great theistic religions after death. At least the more vulgar benigh old man of the skies sort.
 

Valuable_Money

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Everything you care about, everything you love, you hate, you think, you fear, the things that make you YOU are an electrically charged hunk of meat. Or rather several hunks of electric meat that work in tandem.

Corpus Callosum is a portion of the brain that connects the left and right hemispheres of brain. As part of treatment for a very severe form of epilepsy this bridge between left and right is partially or completely severed.

Immediately after the surgery the patient notices no major difference aside from the fact that he isnt having a seizure every 5 minutes. Despite this apparent normalcy subtle changes are apparent.
Things seen by the right eye are processed in the left hemisphere and vice versa(same goes for hand control). Consciousness as we know it exists in the left hemisphere. If you cover up the right eye on a split brain patient and show him a word he cant read it. However if you ask him to write it with his LEFT hand he will write down the word yet he still cant tell you what it is.
Spatial perception is located in the right hemisphere. If you take a split brain and you ask him to draw a very basic recreation of an object like a cube with his left hand he will give you a decently accurate recreation of it however if you ask him to draw it with his right hand he will almost universally create a square with a triangle inside of it. Although I said that consciousness as we know it exists in the left hemisphere it appears that the left hemisphere has a mind entirely of its own. Infact it appears to be a completely
separate, albeit mute, individual.
Alien Hand Syndrome is a possible but rare side effect of split brain. The left hand(the one controlled by the right hemisphere) acts completely independent of the will(left hemisphere) of the man. Examples include placing items in the sufferers shopping cart, smacking a cigarette out of his mouth, and even complex tasks like unbuttoning clothing.
It seems that when you split the connection between the hemispheres of the brain you cut his identity into two halves.

The truth is every single thing that makes you up as a person is located in a section of the brain and can be cut out. A surgeon could cut away parts of your very identity. I could mute you forever by cut out the speech part of your brain, or cut out the part of your brain that processes symbols and thus deprive you forever of reading.

Is there a soul? Well that would depend on what you described as a soul. A lutheran pastor once told me that after the apocalypse those who were resurrected in paradise would have no memories of their past life on imperfect earth and that the only thing connecting them to their past would be their souls.
One has to wonder what point a soul serves given that definition, apparently Im going to be happy and live forever but everything that makes me who I am will be gone. I dont see the difference between that and dieing, infact damnation as an individual seems more appealing than salvation at the cost of my identity.

If there is a soul, its an electric lump of meat in our skulls, and I imagine a good surgeon could cut it out.
 

metasapiens

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I consider everything and don't believe anything.

About our souls, specifically ... if our thoughts are just some bio-logical systems activity, I doubt this activity can infringe the laws which shape the system .. in either case I can see an interesting ray of hope.
 

Asterion

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nonsense, we have no souls. What function would they serve? Why would be need it? If we need a soul, then perhaps we may have one. What I mean to say is, the reason we have a heart, is to pump blood through our veins, everything that is apart of us has a reason to be there, even the appendix may have once served a purpose. So unless the soul has a purpose I really doubt it exists. And like suggested earlier by Jen, we don't know what happens when we die and there is no evidence of anything requiring a soul.
 

JHBowden

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Do I have a soul? I'm sure I do.

Soul, mind, awareness, consciousness, experience, spirit, the 1st person-- it all means the same thing; that we're supposedly all p-zombies has always struck me as a lunatic position, a love of tidy intellectual systems run amok.
 

Oom

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I may not be an NT, but I once had a soul. I ended up selling it for a pizza burger back when I was 13.:doh:
 

Valuable_Money

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What's a p-zombie?

A penis zombie. Its creature formed from the disembodied genitals of the dead being sown together in the vague shape of a human being and animated by demonic sexual voodoo.
 

Coriolis

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OK, so you MEANT to say "I believe there is something to all life" ? Or are you saying you're unsure of that part?
I meant to say (and did) that I believe humans have souls, or something beyond the physical body. Since I am a human, I can relate most directly to the human experience. I think it is quite possible that other anmals have the same or comparable, but I have given this question less thought, and do not have the same data to work with.
 

VYCanisMajoris

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I meant to say (and did) that I believe humans have souls, or something beyond the physical body. Since I am a human, I can relate most directly to the human experience. I think it is quite possible that other animals have the same or comparable, but I have given this question less thought, and do not have the same data to work with.
So, you don't know? I'm pretty certain we're all the same.

Ask yourself this. Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that AFTER you died things went back to the way they were BEFORE you were born. For me that means absolute nothingness. I don't remember feeling, thinking, seeing or sensing in any way shape or form before I was born.

That's exactly what I believe happens when we die.

In my estimation this idea of a soul is something that's been programmed into your thinking from outside sources. You maintain this thinking for one of three reasons :

A.Because it's just easier to go along with what everyone tells you.
B.Because it makes you cope with the idea of death better.
C.Because you don't want people to think of you as "soulless"


I may sound harsh but I think its important we all understand the world around us and are realistic about the beliefs which govern our thinking. You might say: oh well whether or not I have a soul is of no consequence to how I live my life but I would disagree. Maybe you yourself wouldn't change how you live but if more people were realistic about the world we live in we could learn to not let our ridiculous supernatural beliefs hinder the growth and evolution of our species and technology, our species would be a lot better off.
 
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I may not be an NT, but I once had a soul. I ended up selling it for a pizza burger back when I was 13.:doh:
This reminds me of the time I collected all of my classmate's signatures on a blank piece of paper. Then at the top I wrote an affirmation stating that anyone who signed the paper gave me the right to their soul. The looks on their faces were priceless....:devil:
 

JHBowden

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I think its important we all understand the world around us and are realistic about the beliefs which govern our thinking.
Followed through all of the way, and refusing to recoil from the consequences of our own thought, your view makes it mandatory to jettison language such as 'growth' and 'better', since they get deflated in the hardline nominalist view you're envisioning. Not only does the universe not take sides in your vision, we can't even claim we have likes and dislikes, unless we're using 'like' and 'dislike' as a shorthand to describe public behavioral patterns.
 
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