Is there really a such thing as a soul? Or is it an emotional concept?

If we had a soul, what exactly would it consist of? An electrical energy perhaps? An invisible element, like the wind? And what would be its purpose? Would it be that which controlls our mind? The source of life as we know it, in memory and emotion?
Is there really a such thing as a soul? Or is it an emotional concept?
a) no


b) yes, in that it%26#039;s an invention of an emotional need.
Is there really a such thing as a soul? Or is it an emotional concept?
The soul is the result of brain flatulation
Reply:There doesn%26#039;t appear to be any evidence to suggest the existence of a soul. Certainly it doesn%26#039;t control our minds, if it did then its effects would be measurable and it would be detected. And memory and emotion are certainly controlled by our brains, not souls.
Reply:Many people like to believe in the idea of a soul, and we often look to the empirical world to bolster our religious or spiritual beliefs, searching for corroborating physical evidence. Just such scientific proof seemed to come in 1907,when a Massachusetts doctor named Duncan MacDougall devised experiments that he expected would actually measure the soul. Using six terminally ill patients on a specially-constructed scale bed, he measured their weight before, during, and after death. His results were mixed, but he concluded that there was indeed a very slight loss of weight, 21 grams on average
Reply:a) What do you mean by soul? Different people have different definitions. If you are talking about the religious %26quot;immortal soul%26quot; concept, there is not evidence for it, so I say no, there is no such a thing as a soul.





b) The rest of the questions are irrelevant. There is no soul.





c) The wind is not an element, nor is it invisible.
Reply:I%26#039;ll tell you what I think, the soul is the part of our being that lives on after these bodies of ours die. What it is made up of, I don%26#039;t know, but it%26#039;s the thing that we%26#039;re here to develop through life%26#039;s lessons. It%26#039;s purpose, we cannot know, we can never fully explain that, because we cannot say for sure WHY we%26#039;re here, or even HOW we got here.


One thing that I know for sure, it is the most integral part of us, and remains as much a mystery as anything else that baffles the human mind. It%26#039;s beyond our comprehension.
Reply:Yes, we have a %26quot;soul%26quot; in the sense of an immaterial part of us that gives rise to consciousness.





Consciousness must be rooted in the immaterial (in my opinion) because it%26#039;s the only view that can provide a successful account of qualia -- the phenomenological %26quot;events%26quot; of life. Wiki %26quot;qualia%26quot; for more info.





What is the substance of the soul, if not matter? Well, I%26#039;m tempted to go with Descartes on this and insist that the soul is %26quot;made of%26quot; thought itself. That is to say, the soul%26#039;s essence is *thought* -- in the same way matter%26#039;s essence is *extension*.
Reply:I am an atheist who belives in the soul:





%26quot;...that as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul...





%26quot;[Man must earn self-esteem] by shaping his soul in the image of his moral ideal...





%26quot;...the first precondition of self-esteem is that radiant selfishness of soul which desires the best in all things, in values of matter and spirit, a soul that seeks above all else to achieve its own moral perfection, valuing nothing higher than itself—and that the proof of an achieved self-esteem is your soul’s shudder of contempt and rebellion against the role of a sacrificial animal...





%26quot;[Man has been taught] that his body and his consciousness are two enemies engaged in deadly conflict, two antagonists of opposite natures, contradictory claims, incompatible needs, that to benefit one is to injure the other, that his soul belongs to a supernatural realm, but his body is an evil prison holding it in bondage to this earth—





%26quot;A body without a soul is a corpse, a soul without a body is a ghost—





%26quot;[Man has been taught that there is a] split between [his] soul and body...





%26quot;[Man%26#039;s] vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man’s spirit, [ ] is his self.





%26quot;[American freedom] could not stand on the mystic split that divorced man’s soul from his body.





%26quot;That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call “free will” is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.





%26quot;This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning.





%26quot;The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit.





%26quot;I covet no man%26#039;s soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.%26quot;





%26quot;For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone.%26quot;





%26quot;[The word %26quot;we%26quot;] must never be placed first within man%26#039;s soul...%26quot;





Many of these quotes are from “The Soul of an Individualist,” from %26quot;For the New Intellectual.%26quot; Some are from from the novella %26quot;Anthem.%26quot;





But all were written by the most ardent atheist of the 20th century, Ayn Rand. And I stand by every word about the soul that she wrote, because it was my soul she was describing.
Reply:I believe emotions/the soul are simular........Blessings Yahoo
Reply:Yaoi hit it pretty good. Someone also wrote %26quot;We don%26#039;t have souls, we have bodies. We are souls.%26quot;





How else do we explain our very essence?
Reply:How far-fetched is the idea ?





There might be something to it.





Maxwell predicted radio waves.





Hertz then discovered radio waves.





I%26#039;d rather trust my own judgement that believe someone else pontificating that souls did not exist.