More theological discussion *inspired by the "God" thread*

[medjay]

Where does a person's soul come from? The creation of a child is a physical/chemical process so I doubt sperms and eggs do anything to create an individual's soul. So where, then, does the soul come from? Are we born with it? Does it enter us? Are some people born without one? Does every person born posess a brand new soul or are there "old souls" out there?

Let's have at it . . .

 

[HeavyStick]

Opinion: It is developed as the person does.

 

[medjay]

Opinion: It is developed as the person does.

Can someone be born without one?

 

[phrodeau]

Spirit equals air. Spirit enters your body for the first time when you are born, and leaves your body when you die. At no time during your life are you without spirit. Every inhalation renews your spirit, making it fresh and clean.

A sneeze forces you to expel your spirit, and as your spirit is renewed, a blessing is in order.

Bad spirits can possess your mind and affect your actions, like toluene or butane.

If you sense bad spirits in your home, you should open a window and call Dave Lennox to cast them out.

 

[HeavyStick]

Can someone be born without one?

Maybe it is "given" when the fetus develops some level of consciosness.

 

[Shingen]

So does a cloned baby have a "new" soul or does it have the same soul as its "host?"

 

[medjay]

Spirit equals air. Spirit enters your body for the first time when you are born, and leaves your body when you die. At no time during your life are you without spirit. Every inhalation renews your spirit, making it fresh and clean.

I think there's a bit of a difference between a person's spirit and a person's soul.

And still . . . what is it that makes you unique? Your definition of spirit is a good one and it also implies that it is changable. Renewable. But wouldn't your spirit more effect your everyday living and not the overall being of your soul?

 

[Minkey Boodle]

"I've got soul...and I'm superbad."

I think our "souls" are deeply rooted in our individual personalities and ways of being. While I think that maybe "something" is innate within each of us, soul is highly influenced by environmental factors.

 

[glamorilla]

or it coul be a series of electrical responses that go off in our brains.

 

[Hillbilly_Honey]

These are very interesting questions...I'm anxious to see others opinions. I most definitely believe that the soul is born with the physical body...each person's unique and every person possessing one. In all honesty, I think the soul is the very essence of who we are. It's not our intellect or our physical body that drives us. I think it comes from a deeper place. Perhaps life experiences play a huge role in molding our soul...whether we become a good person or a bad person. I'm sure it evolves as we do.

Course I could be full of shit...it IS very late.

 

[medjay]

I don't believe souls are created. I think we were always here and we will all always be here existing within one huge "God" conciousness.

From time to time individual souls will decide it is time to experience an existence in the flesh. I think we subconciously choose the host shell that will accomidate us as well as choosing the parents we will be born to. We're all master's of our own destiny and the creators of our own existence.

When you come across a person who gives off the aura of being an "old soul", he/she is in possession of a soul that has made this terrestrial journy more times than others.

(I said before I believe in the whole reincarnation thing. )

 

[70/30]

Best skeptical argument

I also believe in much of it--definitions shouldn't be readily comprehended. I also don't enjoy organised religion.
http://www*******-literature.com/dostoevsky/brothers_karamazov/34/

Fyodor Dostoevsky--The Brothers Karamazov Part 2 Chpt 34

"You know, dear boy, there was an old sinner in the eighteenth century who declared that, if there were no God, he would have to be invented. S'il n'existait pas Dieu, il faudrait l'inventer. And man has actually invented God. And what's strange, what would be marvellous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man. So holy it is, so touching, so wise and so great a credit it does to man. As for me, I've long resolved not to think whether man created God or God man. And I won't go through all the axioms laid down by Russian boys on that subject, all derived from European hypotheses; for what's a hypothesis there is an axiom with the Russian boy, and not only with the boys but with their teachers too, for our Russian professors are often just the same boys themselves. And so I omit all the hypotheses. For what are we aiming at now? I am trying to explain as quickly as possible my essential nature, that is what manner of man I am, what I believe in, and for what I hope, that's it, isn't it? And therefore I tell you that I accept God simply. But you must note this: if God exists and if He really did create the world, then, as we all know, He created it according to the geometry of Euclid and the human mind with the conception of only three dimensions in space. Yet there have been and still are geometricians and philosophers, and even some of the most distinguished, who doubt whether the whole universe, or to speak more widely, the whole of being, was only created in Euclid's geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in infinity. I have come to the conclusion that, since I can't understand even that, I can't expect to understand about God. I acknowledge humbly that I have no faculty for settling such questions, I have a Euclidian earthly mind, and how could I solve problems that are not of this world? And I advise you never to think about it either, my dear Alyosha, especially about God, whether He exists or not. All such questions are utterly inappropriate for a mind created with an idea of only three dimensions. And so I accept God and am glad to, and what's more, I accept His wisdom, His purpose which are utterly beyond our ken; I believe in the underlying order and the meaning of life; I believe in the eternal harmony in which they say we shall one day be blended. I believe in the Word to Which the universe is striving, and Which Itself was 'with God,' and Which Itself is God and so on, and so on, to infinity. There are all sorts of phrases for it. I seem to be on the right path, don't I'? Yet would you believe it, in the final result I don't accept this world of God's, and, although I know it exists, I don't accept it at all. It's not that I don't accept God, you must understand, it's the world created by Him I don't and cannot accept. Let me make it plain. I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidian mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with men -- but thought all that may come to pass, I don't accept it. I won't accept it. Even if parallel lines do meet and I see it myself, I shall see it and say that they've met, but still I won't accept it. That's what's at the root of me, Alyosha; that's my creed. I am in earnest in what I say. I began our talk as stupidly as I could on purpose, but I've led up to my confession, for that's all you want. You didn't want to hear about God, but only to know what the brother you love lives by. And so I've told you."

 

[Samuari]

The clasical understanding equated the spirit with what we now call the personallity (ie. reason, memory, humor, logic, etc.) The soul, on the other hand was that part of the person that is immortal and included the spirit, and the those physical characterics that help make us who we understand ourselves to be (ie. bieng fair skined with blue eyes is a part of how I see my self as well as how I am seen. In some ways it defines me and makes me diferent than I would be if I had an olive complextion with black eyes.)

 

[p_p_man]

I've always considered the soul...

as being the dynamo which drives the elecro/chemical machinery, that constitutes our bodies, along.

I think we all understand that the brain works by millions of electrical particles interacting with one another, electrical particles created by chemical reaction. Thus the brain being the 'controller' of the human body is able to control that body by further interaction with the electrical particles in the cells outside of the brain area.

The whole is kept moving by the dynamo.

Dynamo is probably the wrong word. Maybe a better way to describe how I view it is as a self generating electrical network that slowly wears down in time, or is abruptly terminated by accident.

So the 'soul' forms as the foetus develops and needs more complex chemical/electrical activity in order to survive...

ppman