The Soul - is there proof?

Ana the Ist

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Since you're an atheist, you don't grasp the concept of anything besides the natural world. God is supernatural, He created the laws that govern this life. Just because the evidence shows there isn't a soul, doesn't mean squat.

Actually, a lack of evidence is a great reason to not believe in a soul.

There's many things we don't know even though we have evidence to show we know.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Can you give an example?

This is arrogance to think we know 100% of something when all we have is evidence of the known, there is still the unknown.

It's really just rational thinking...or critical thinking...those would be more accurate descriptors than "arrogance".

If you don't have any evidence that something exists...what would be a good reason to believe that it exists? That's not a rhetorical question, I'd really like to know what you think. Do you believe in elves? Unicorns? Why or why not?
 
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Ana the Ist

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Ana, I am not sure I can add much. The soul is usually thought of as a parallel self, but spirit. Conscience is something generated by our thought processes, so that's part of our physical nature.

Well I could ask questions...but I don't want to look like I'm attacking your belief in a soul.
What creates a soul? When does it begin being a soul? If, for example, you aren't aware of your "self" because of a brain injury or something similar...do you still have a parallel "self"?
 
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Albion

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Well I could ask questions...but I don't want to look like I'm attacking your belief in a soul.
What creates a soul? When does it begin being a soul? If, for example, you aren't aware of your "self" because of a brain injury or something similar...do you still have a parallel "self"?
We believe that it's something we are endowed with from birth. Whether or not a person is aware of it or believes in it doesn't really change anything. And you know that there is plenty of circumstantial evidence of the existence of souls--near death experiences, ghosts, and so on.
 
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Ana the Ist

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We believe that it's something we are endowed with from birth.

Who is "we" in that sentence? I'm just asking you personally. I've heard many people claim that the soul occurs at conception...so believe me that it's not something widely agreed upon.


Whether or not a person is aware of it or believes in it doesn't really change anything. And you know that there is plenty of circumstantial evidence of the existence of souls--near death experiences, ghosts, and so on.

Well, there's been lots of work on both near-death experiences and, ahem, ghosts....and neither has actually achieved any sort of evidence that I've ever heard of.

[/QUOTE]
 
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ElxDalto

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Actually, a lack of evidence is a great reason to not believe in a soul.

Umm not really.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Can you give an example?

Macroevolution

It's really just rational thinking...or critical thinking...those would be more accurate descriptors than "arrogance".

Not when you believe you have 100% of the answer. Its presumptuous if that makes you feel better.

If you don't have any evidence that something exists...what would be a good reason to believe that it exists? That's not a rhetorical question, I'd really like to know what you think. Do you believe in elves? Unicorns? Why or why not?

Physical evidence sure, but on a bigger level the evidence thats emotional, mental. There are people who are clairvoyant and can help people with their gift. I believe God gave us certain abilities. You can't prove that they see things without actually seeing them. Elves and unicorns, thats not really any concern in my eyes unless it's a cartoon my kids are watching. Do I believe in them, no. If I saw one in real life, I'd probably put down the bottle of scotch. :confused:
 
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Albion

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Who is "we" in that sentence? I'm just asking you personally.
Human beings.

I've heard many people claim that the soul occurs at conception...so believe me that it's not something widely agreed upon.
I don't know of any Christian who thinks that the soul is created at any other time, so I don't quite know what to say to you at this point.

Well, there's been lots of work on both near-death experiences and, ahem, ghosts....and neither has actually achieved any sort of evidence that I've ever heard of.
Oh, I'd call that unnecessarily skeptical. There are many supernatural or paranormal experiences that are hard to explain away. And there are studies that suggest consciousness after physical death and that the body loses some weight at the moment of death. None of this is proof, of course, and I don't think that anyone will ever be able to conclusively prove the soul, but how can spiritual realities be proven in the way that we'd prove the existence of physical objects anyway.
 
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Ana the Ist

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Umm not really.

Why not? I'm guessing that you probably don't believe in unicorns because you've never had any evidence of them. If you did...you might believe.



Macroevolution

What is it about macroevolution that you don't think we know?



Not when you believe you have 100% of the answer. Its presumptuous if that makes you feel better.

I fully admit it's possible that I'm wrong...but I have no reason to believe that until there's some evidence.



Physical evidence sure, but on a bigger level the evidence thats emotional, mental.

This is great...I'm gonna share this post with another poster. Just yesterday I was having a discussion with him about this. I told him that I come across posters on here all the time who believe that their emotions are "evidence" for something other than merely how they feel. They aren't. Your emotions are only evidence of how you feel about something...nothing more.


There are people who are clairvoyant and can help people with their gift. I believe God gave us certain abilities.

No such thing as psychic powers. My wife used to believe in it, even though she's an atheist, until I got her a book written by a man who was in the psychic reading "industry" for decades....and he's never met one real clairvoyant. Every single "psychic" he's ever met was a fake just like him. There's a skill to it, sure, but it's nothing supernatural.

I can get the name of the book if you're interested.

You can't prove that they see things without actually seeing them. Elves and unicorns, thats not really any concern in my eyes unless it's a cartoon my kids are watching. Do I believe in them, no. If I saw one in real life, I'd probably put down the bottle of scotch. :confused:

Exactly....they aren't of any concern....because you've never seen any. You've never come across any evidence of them. I feel exactly the same way about souls and the afterlife...there's no need for me to be concerned about it at all until some evidence is presented.
 
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Ana the Ist

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Human beings.

Well, let's just keep the conversation between us.

I don't know of any Christian who thinks that the soul is created at any other time, so I don't quite know what to say to you at this point.

Fair enough...we've heard different things from different people. All the more reason to keep it about what you believe regarding the soul.


Oh, I'd call that unnecessarily skeptical. There are many supernatural or paranormal experiences that are hard to explain away.

I've never heard of one. What I find interesting is that you called it "unnecessarily skeptical" as if it wasn't a good idea to be wary of unusual claims. I think it's always a good idea to be skeptical of unusual claims.


And there are studies that suggest consciousness after physical death and that the body loses some weight at the moment of death.

Which would be odd if one thought that the soul was immaterial. If it has mass...then it's obviously composed of matter.

I've never heard of such an experiment before....so I looked it up. Is this what you're referring to?

http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp


None of this is proof, of course, and I don't think that anyone will ever be able to conclusively prove the soul, but how can spiritual realities be proven in the way that we'd prove the existence of physical objects anyway.

Well you just suggested that very thing exactly....the idea that a soul could be weighed like a bunch of bananas.
 
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Albion

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I've never heard of one. What I find interesting is that you called it "unnecessarily skeptical" as if it wasn't a good idea to be wary of unusual claims. I think it's always a good idea to be skeptical of unusual claims.
I'm wary of them, too. However, there are too many that are unexplained for me to conclude that none of them can possibly be genuine.

Which would be odd if one thought that the soul was immaterial. If it has mass...then it's obviously composed of matter.
So it would seem, but there is no explanation, either.

Well you just suggested that very thing exactly....the idea that a soul could be weighed like a bunch of bananas.
No, I didn't. And let's be clear. I do not think that it's likely that the soul will be proven though scientific, laboratory studies. What I said is that there is so much that suggests existence beyond what our senses perceive that it would be a mistake to dismiss the possibility of the soul out of hand.
 
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Ana the Ist

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I'm wary of them, too. However, there are too many that are unexplained for me to conclude that none of them can possibly be genuine.

One of the fascinating things about "hauntings" that I've found (and I'll look for the researcher who observed this) is their relationship with pop-culture.

Prior to the release of the movie The Exorcist...claims of demonic possession were virtually unheard of. Immediately afterward though, hundreds and hundreds of claims of demonic possession were popping up in every corner of the U.S. The same situation happened with the movie Poltergeist...hardly anyone could tell you what a poltergeist was before the movie, and yet afterwards people all over the nation were claiming that they were haunted by them. This happened all over again with the movie Paranormal Activity.

I hear what you're saying though...if you have 1000 people who all claim to be haunted by ghosts, you couldn't possibly go around disproving them all. Suppose though, that you investigated 100 of them and found no evidence of anything supernatural...and in many cases you found a normal explanation for the experiences those people had.

Would it be unreasonable to assume that you would have the same results with the other 900?


So it would seem, but there is no explanation, either.

I'm sorry you lost me here....explanation for what?
 
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Albion

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One of the fascinating things about "hauntings" that I've found (and I'll look for the researcher who observed this) is their relationship with pop-culture.

Prior to the release of the movie The Exorcist...claims of demonic possession were virtually unheard of. Immediately afterward though, hundreds and hundreds of claims of demonic possession were popping up in every corner of the U.S. The same situation happened with the movie Poltergeist...hardly anyone could tell you what a poltergeist was before the movie, and yet afterwards people all over the nation were claiming that they were haunted by them. This happened all over again with the movie Paranormal Activity.
I think that's just the pop bandwagon effect that has nothing to do with whether or not such things are ever genuine.

I hear what you're saying though...if you have 1000 people who all claim to be haunted by ghosts, you couldn't possibly go around disproving them all. Suppose though, that you investigated 100 of them and found no evidence of anything supernatural...and in many cases you found a normal explanation for the experiences those people had.

Would it be unreasonable to assume that you would have the same results with the other 900?
I'd put it another way. If there are 100 investigations and you disproved 80 of them but could come up with no explanation for the other 20, would it be reasonable to assume that all of the other 900 were phony?

I'm sorry you lost me here....explanation for what?
If the soul has no weight, but the body loses some weight at death, what else would account for that phenomenon?
 
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The Cadet

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If the soul has no weight, but the body loses some weight at death, what else would account for that phenomenon?
Improper measurement of loss of fluid most likely. Although the only evidence I can find that the body loses weight at death are the experiments by Duncan MacDougall, which are seriously problematic as evidence due to how inconsistent and unclear the results are, so I'm wondering why we're taking that as a given.
 
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Albion

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Improper measurement of loss of fluid most likely. Although the only evidence I can find that the body loses weight at death are the experiments by Duncan MacDougall, which are seriously problematic as evidence due to how inconsistent and unclear the results are, so I'm wondering why we're taking that as a given.
We're not.
 
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Ana the Ist

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I think that's just the pop bandwagon effect that has nothing to do with whether or not such things are ever genuine.

So you think it's just a matter of coincidence?


I'd put it another way. If there are 100 investigations and you disproved 80 of them but could come up with no explanation for the other 20, would it be reasonable to assume that all of the other 900 were phony?

Well that's just it...I've never heard of any supernatural occurrence that was scientifically investigated where a reasonable (non-supernatural) explanation for the event couldn't be found. Perhaps if we go back far enough in time...but even then you're simply running into limitations of science in that time.


If the soul has no weight, but the body loses some weight at death, what else would account for that phenomenon?

I'm gonna guess that you didn't actually read the article, did you?
 
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Ana the Ist

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Albion....

For example, I recently had a discussion regarding "demonic possession" with another poster and found an article about a researcher who accompanied a Vatican trained/licensed exorcist on literally hundreds of exorcisms to try to document any incidents that appeared to be supernatural in any way whatsoever....

He never came across any evidence of the supernatural at all. Just a lot of disturbing emotional behavior on both sides of the ritual.
 
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Albion

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So you think it's just a matter of coincidence?
Coincidence? No. I think that a lot of people who simply view the matter as good fun started to imagine things, etc. We see the same thing with the fascination shown more recently in Vampires and Zombies (neither of which has been correctly portrayed in the pop media). These hangers-on or whatever else you'd call them don't really prove anything, not any more than the moon landing probably contributed to the popularity of Star Wars and Star Trek. But neither do I judge all issues relating to space travel by what I see in these movies and TV series.

My point again, is not that X number of paranormal investigations have proven or disproven the soul or anything else that has jumped into the mind of any readers here. It was that we cannot conclusively close out the possibility that there's something more, not with the great number of incidents spanning many decades and not with many of them remaining unexplained. If X number are disproven, it doesn't change the fact that too many are unexplained for us to say, logically, "Well, that settles it; there's nothing to these kinds of claims about there being a spirit world."
 
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Quid est Veritas?

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All this talk of supernatural phenomena and their lack of evidence is beside the point, for if you do not believe in the Supernatural than you would discount it regardless.

From Miracles in God in the Dock - CS Lewis

"I have known only one person in my life who claimed to have seen a ghost. It was a woman; and the interesting thing is that she disbelieved in the immortality of the soul before seeing the ghost and still disbelieves after having seen it. She thinks it was a hallucination. In other words, seeing is not believing. This is the first thing to get clear in talking about miracles. Whatever experiences we may have, we shall not regard them as miraculous if we already hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural. Any event which is claimed as a miracle is, in the last resort, an experience received from the senses; and the senses are not infallible. We can always say we have been the victims of an illusion; if we disbelieve in the supernatural this is what we always shall say. Hence, whether miracles have really ceased or not, they would certainly appear to cease in Western Europe as materialism became the popular creed. For let us make no mistake. If the end of the world appeared in all the literal trappings of the Apocalypse, if the modern materialist saw with his own eyes the heavens rolled up and the great white throne appearing, if he had the sensation of being himself hurled into the Lake of Fire, he would continue forever, in that lake itself, to regard his experience as an illusion and to find the explanation of it in psycho-analysis, or cerebral pathology. Experience by itself proves nothing. If a man doubts whether he is dreaming or waking, no experiment can solve his doubt, since every experiment may itself be part of the dream. Experience proves this, or that, or nothing, according to the preconceptions we bring to it.

This fact, that the interpretation of experiences depends on preconceptions, is often used as an argument against miracles. It is said that our ancestors, taking the supernatural for granted, and greedy of wonders, read the miraculous into events that were really not miracles. And in a sense I grant it. That is to say, I think that just as our preconceptions would prevent us from apprehending miracles if they really occurred, so their preconceptions would lead them to imagine miracles even if they did not occur. In the same way, the doting man will think his wife faithful when she is not and the suspicious man will not think her faithful when she is: the question of her actual fidelity remains, meanwhile, to be settled, if at all, on other grounds. But there is one thing often said about our ancestors which we must notsay. We must not say “They believed in miracles because they did not know the Laws of Nature.” This is nonsense. When St. Joseph discovered that his bride was pregnant, he was “minded to put her away.” He knew enough biology for that. Otherwise, of course he would not have regarded pregnancy as a proof of infidelity. When he accepted the Christian explanation, he regarded it as a miracle precisely because he knew enough of the Laws of Nature to know that this was a suspension of them. When the disciples saw Christ walking on the water they were frightened: they would not have been frightened unless they had known the laws of Nature and known that this was an exception. If a man had no conception of a regular order in Nature, then of course he could not notice departures from that order: just as the dunce who does not understand the normal metre of a poem is also unconscious of the poet’s variations from it. Nothing is wonderful except the abnormal and nothing is abnormal until we have grasped the norm. Complete ignorance of the laws of nature would preclude the perception of the miraculous just as rigidly as complete disbelief in the supernatural precludes it, perhaps even more so. For while the materialist would have at least to explain miracles away, the man wholly ignorant of Nature would simply not notice them.

The experience of a miracle in fact requires two conditions. First we must believe in a normal stability of nature, which means we must recognize that the data offered by our senses recur in regular patterns. Secondly, we must believe in some reality beyond Nature. When both beliefs are held, and not till then, we can approach with an open mind the various reports which claim that this super- or extra-natural reality has sometimes invaded and disturbed the sensuous content of space and time which makes our “natural” world. The belief in such a supernatural reality itself can neither be proved nor disproved by experience. The arguments for its existence are metaphysical, and to me conclusive. They turn on the fact that even to think and act in the natural world we have to assume something beyond it and even assume that we partly belong to that something. In order to think we must claim for our own reasoning a validity which is not credible if our own thought is merely a function of our brain, and our brains a by-product of irrational physical processes. In order to act, above the level of mere impulse, we must claim a similar validity for our judgments of good and evil. In both cases we get the same disquieting result. The concept of nature itself is one we have reached only tacitly by claiming a sort of super-natural status for ourselves.

If we frankly accept this position and then turn to the evidence, we find, of course, that accounts of the supernatural meet us on every side. History is full of them – often in the same documents which we accept wherever they do not report miracles. Respectable missionaries report them not infrequently. The whole Church of Rome claims their continued occurrence. Intimate conversation elicits from almost every acquaintance at least one episode in his life which is what he would call “queer” or “rum.” No doubt most stories of miracles are unreliable; but then, as anyone can see by reading the papers, so are most stories of all events. Each story must be taken on its merits: what one must not do is to rule out the supernatural as the one impossible explanation."
 
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The Cadet

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My point again, is not that X number of paranormal investigations have proven or disproven the soul or anything else that has jumped into the mind of any readers here. It was that we cannot conclusively close out the possibility that there's something more, not with the great number of incidents spanning many decades and not with many of them remaining unexplained. If X number are disproven, it doesn't change the fact that too many are unexplained for us to say, logically, "Well, that settles it; there's nothing to these kinds of claims about there being a spirit world."
My issue with this is as follows: if we're looking for confirmation of a hypothesis and all we ever find are cases where:
  1. The hypothesis is proven to not apply
  2. The hypothesis is not proven not to apply but we cannot actually provide good evidence that the hypothesis does apply
Then we've got a problem. And make no mistake, when it comes to that, the supernatural kind of batting a zero. Yeah, many of the claims are "unexplained", but you don't just get to jump from "we can't explain it" to "therefore it was <insert favored supernatural explanation here>" without good justification. And I'd kinda like to see that good justification. Because I'm not convinced that, when it comes to the supernatural, there can be good justification.
 
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