I am curious if anyone here is knowledgeable about the workings of the human soul. I am also seeking any information on the evolutionary origin of such a thing. I am trying to understand the soul, along side the rest of the anatomy, but I'm finding the practical information on the topic to be a bit sparse. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
Posted Apr 14, 2011, 2:13 PM UTC
I don't think "practical information" is something that will really be forthcoming.
Let me offer a few different ideas on the soul:
The Meister Eckhart/Philo view: The soul is something like a metaphysical organ. In middle and neo-platonic Judeo-Christian writings, the soul is often portrayed as man's interface with the eternal. It is a strictly non-corporeal, non-time bound organ of man which has the soul purpose of connecting to and experiencing that which is outside time and sequence.
The Leibniz Conscious Essence: I may be mis-expressing him here, but in his discourse on metaphysics he describes the soul as being a self-conscious platonic essence. That is, an incorporeal form of who we ideally are, which contains everything which will ever happen to us, and is somehow at the same time aware of itself and containing it's "person." His arguments about the self-consciousness of the essence of a person were unconvincing for me, just because he uses the necessity of a person maintaining identity in order to still be responsible for their lives (i.e. deserving either heaven or hell). This may be true, but it seems like he's arguing backwards to the nature of our souls.
The Jewish materialistic view: The soul is essentially inseparable from the body. In using the word "heart" to express our deepest identity, they were not necessarily mistaken in not using "spirit" or "mind" - but instead meant to refer to the composite of our physical selves as thinking and acting beings. John Locke once defended the notion that God could have created us as spiritual beings which were nonetheless naturalistic in our makeup, and I think this suits this view. We are bodies, but the limitation of being merely a body (as opposed to having some metaphysical construct) does not make us "un-spiritual" or restricted in any meaningful way.
The soul is not something people are in agreement on by any means. The implications of each metaphysical belief system affect how you will consider the soul (if you believe we have one at all). "Practical information" is not something to seek in the realm of speculation.
I have a hard time appreciating "speculation" as an explanation for something that a vast majority of people so vigorously defend. That said, I also have a hard time appreciating speculating about something for which I'm gathering no one even sort of has any evidence. Honestly, somewhere in all of this I expected at least the level of anecdote you get when asking about ghosts or something, but I don't even understand where a concept like the soul even comes from, or how it has persisted. I understand that people used to think disease came from some superstitious places, just because they needed an explanation and didn't have access to the right one. However, as understanding progressed, it was picked up by the general public.
Is there even a biblical basis for it? I don't understand why this idea is so popular.
The Jews and early Christians didn't really believe in a separate immortal soul. The word used in Hebrew simply referred to your living essence and consciousness. Even animals had souls in that sense.
Whether you believe in a separate immaterial soul or not (I don't really), be aware that its origins lie in Greek philosophy and religion, not in Christianity.
Even in Greek philosophy, you will find debate as to whether the body and soul are separate or if they must be considered together.
Didn't they?
1 Cor 5:1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2 Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, 3 because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
Not a bad place to start (although a bit technical, language-wise): here
You might start with reading Aristotle's De Anima.
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as CS Lewis said You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
:)
Yeah, the Christian line of thinking is really along these lines. The whole idea of Heaven isn't that your soul will be there, but that YOU will be there with a new body. So CS Lewis is right on the money here.
(Dang him and his clever rewording quotes. I think my favorite is "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.")
EDIT: So apparently I'm slightly confused. We will have the same body (not a second one), but it will just be transformed. (Phillipians 3:20-21). Also it will be imperishable (so no more rotting yay!) (1 Corinthians 15:52). So our bodies will be different.
How do you know that?
Wouldn't getting a "new body" imply that the one God made for you, in his image I might add, wasn't good enough?
This also makes the afterlife far too fleshy rather than spiritual, and that makes me draw comparisons with the Mormonism of my youth. However, man was created in God's image, not our body. I vehemently oppose the notion that God has a human-shaped body, I think the "image" notion applies more to our sense of rationality rather than our flesh.
I don't think you'll receive a different body, but a body that is free from the imperfections of the world. So, a body without the effects of age, injury, disease and the like. So you'll look like you, but perfect.
Edited my main post.
Everyone from the prophets to Jesus to Paul to the guy who wrote Revelation talk about a resurrection, in which God makes all things new. And, for the record, heaven's not "out there" somewhere. It's going to be right here.
Edited my main post.
My question is regarding the physiological details of the soul. I'm not clear how what you've said is expected to work. Are you saying that some soul somewhere is playing my body like a video game? I don't get it.
In Christianity the body and soul are seen as inseparable. There is no dichotomy between the two. The soul is your life, your intellect, your mind, etc. What is a body without these things?
Christians do not believe in a disembodied afterlife. We see our soul and body being reunited after death.
I don't think you'll find that. The soul isn't a physical thing with physiological functions. It's like asking what function your foot has in digestion, it's just not part of the same system, but it's still part of our self.
Then what sort of thing is it? I'm asking, here. If it isn't physiological, then how does it interact with my body? Does it interact with my body? Does it interact with anything? What is it, where is it, and what does it do? These are my questions. Do you know the answers?
Not as well as some probably do.
The body represents the physiological parts of ourself, where the soul consists of the philosophical parts. Our intellect, personality, etc make up the soul, they aren't part of the body, but body and soul as a whole make up who we are. The latin word for soul is Anima, it is what "animates" our bodies. A body without a soul is what we call dead. But Christians believe that the soul continues to exist (and will one day be reunited with our resurrected body), whereas you probably think that the philosophical aspects are merely a product of physiological functions and just disappear or stop being produced when the body stops breathing and pumping blood.
You really expect an answer to this question? Maybe after we get this question answered we can move on to finding out what is beyond this universe..that would be cool
Yes, I expect that there should be some undertanding about the location and function of the soul, just as there is understanding about the location and function of literally every other noun that is not describing a fake thing or a theoretical idea. That is not an unreasonable expectation. It is a little unreasonable that no one can answer this on any level. It kind of calls into question why it would even be assumed to exist.
I believe it exists because nobody likes to think of an end to their life stream
Lewis put that well. Another phrasing of a similar idea is that we are not physical beings who can have a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a physical experience.
That sounds like Platonism.
Could be. Not sure where I first encountered that perspective. I'll have to look into it.