As a chrstian I personally believe souls exist . I am mainly wondering if any non religous people believe a human has a spirit despite the fact they have no religion or dont believe in god ? Its an interesting question as it almost defines the basic ideals on how psychic phenomena is viewed .

Even if I wasn't a christian , I would still believe in souls .

I hope this has not already been debated

if so tell me where the post is because I cant find it .

Xeno,

I hope you understand that not every topic here has to be debated.


Yes, I think souls exist. Although, my reason for believing that is metaphysical and very unexplainable.

well of course I know not every topic HAS to be debated / discussed . It is just fun to do so... is it not ?

i believe souls exist. doesnt astral projection have to do with your soul? i have a friend that practices it.

If we don't have souls then our lives are completely meaningless and without purpose. Infact they cannot even have a rational purpose, only what we invent for ourselves. So even were I not a Believer, I would probably still believe in the existance of a soul, I think I'd go mad otherwise.

Aside from the fact that Pinecone sounds like the Oracle, I believe we have souls, just b/c.

I believe in souls. If I didn't then I've been wasting my time on a lot.

I also believe in souls but...why do we need souls to have a purpose?

I believe that our souls are what makes us creative. I think that music and art can move us and give us goose-bumps, or make us laugh or cry because the artist puts some of his/her own soul into the work. How....I don't know, but that is just what I believe. I've hear Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, heard Bach, Beethoven, and Johnny Cash. I've seen a few fine paintings that really touched my soul. It's not proof, but how can you prove it?

Good point gonzo,

Since there is no scientific way to explain the existence of souls (as of yet), we must believe in it like we do emotions. We know when we are mad or in love, etc. It is blind faith, but not so blind at the same time. It holds strong in the minds (or souls) of every human being on this earth. Whether or not it is ever a proven fact, people will continue to believe in the existence of souls. It is undoubtedly true.

Ach... I guess I’m the only one who doesn’t believe in a soul. I believe in energy. The body is a tremendous source of energy! Every creature that is alive exudes massive amounts of energy! Ever sit next to someone who was very mad but never uttered a word? Whew! The tension in the air is as thick as lentil soup!

But it doesn’t mean that one has a special conscious plasma of energy released after death! Out of body experiences? It can simply be psychic/remote viewing capabilities. That is the power of one’s brain and body, not a soul (It’s the same thing as watching TV & understanding what you are viewing, in your current reality, or what you perceive to be reality).

It is true that music can control emotions, hence; control the thought process due to the chemical reactions occurring in ones brain. These chemical reactions end up stirring all those “emotions” which are released (endorphins if it's pleasing or soothing) during whatever music is heard, and ones thought process soon follows that pattern. Passion is stirred up through the same method. Everything one senses is nothing more than chemical reactions occurring throughout one’s body! That’s why certain types of alcohol & drugs cause different reactions in different people (I react to vodka exactly the same way some people react to tequila, or rather te-kill-ya ).

I think that when one passes, sometimes your energy dissipates into the earth (calm & soothing death), sometimes it lingers in a particular area for a while and dissipates slowly over time (possibly causes a natural phenomena which people call ghosts due to a distressing death), and sometimes it may blend into a particular environment that person was concentrating heavily upon...

It’s kind of like the terminator, when the red light goes out, you’ve passed on.


But you do give back to the earth what you’ve taken I suppose. If you’re not cremated, your dead body gives life to grass, trees, bugs, etc... And memories of you lives on through those you’ve impacted in life.


I just don’t believe that we have this special conscious energy “within a prison which we call a physical body”.

The only thing I will never understand about most people who believe in souls is why only humans can have souls and animals cannot! That is by far the most ridiculous notion I have ever heard of coming from soul believers!!! If you believe that you, as an animal, have a soul, then all living creatures should have one too...

I believe whole heartedly in a soul if you want to call it enegy that's fine , I'm sure the soul is made up of some sort of energy , could even be that mysterios darkmatter that seems to be increasing the size of the universe for all we know .
I just know of too many people who appear to have had contact with what you might call the concious entity , I work with a lady who claimes to have interactive conversations with her father every year on his birthday and I personnally believe her .
My great uncle died of cancer a very common form of illness not overly sudden or anymore tragic than your usuall death , yet he still manged to come back and say good-bye to several members of my familly including my sister and my cousin while I slept mind you .
Yes a soul is energy it is the spark that gives us life you can not simply re-animate a dead body using energy you need the right type of energy a soul with personallity potential and faults....... ahh the human soul, it is a complex little beasty ..

i agree with what pappagooch stated.

I'm not religious, and dont believe in god.. i see souls and spirits being related to religion, so if i beleived in them and nt god, then i would see myself as a hypocrite

I've been off trying to find an old thread on the board about a scientist who measured a tiny decrease in the weight of a human body at the moment of death , but there are an awful lot of posts on the board that contain the word soul so here is a slightly different but still scientific study on the where abouts of the soul ..

Clicker

I found it but apparently it was first posted on our favorite tabloid World weekly news so I guess that buggers that one up .. Enjoy it anyway

Clicker

i believe soul's exist,mine's would be an evil twisted little being.maybe even a gray...... lol

Of course souls exist. Just listen to old Motown...

Back to the original argument , I took the liberty of quoting this section to point out the study was written up by a biased source , however the findings were credible .

MC I want to use both arguements philosophical and scientific , and I promise to play nice .

Man your sister should know just what kind of a bully you can be ...

P.S I not only believe in animals having a soul , I beleive my cat has been with me for atleast 3 of it's lives now ...

I've often considered myself an "Old Soul" which has nothing to do with wrinkles or age spots, but has to do with having been 'around the block' more than several times.

I have also had the pleasure of working with a Psychic or three, in this life. None of them knew each other, were in different locations around the country in which I live. Each of them nailed me the same way, as an "Old Soul" all subsequent to my own belief which began around the age of 3 years. Each of them gave practically the same information/insight into what I was going through and my connections to close ones who had already passed over. To me, this wasn't a simple coinsidence, but proof to me, that souls do exist.

Like Kismit, I equate Soul with Engergy. To me, it is the LINK that connects all animals, including those with four feet. I too remember reading about a study (years ago) that stated at the time of 'death' the human body weighed approximately 3 pounds less, indicating release of the "soul" as one left this plane of existence.

Potholer stated,

I screwed this thread up. I meant to quote PappaGooch's post on my last post and I had hit the Edit button, therefore, erasing all he had said other then what I had quoted. I feel like a jerk even though it was unintentional. I wish I could blame this on Phantom somehow.

Hey, I'm an alien embryo! Cool.

Yes... as a matter of fact, I believe souls do exist. Is there a reason why you're asking or something?

My mother always told me animals didn't have souls. I disagree. I think animals have souls too. I think all living things do. Maybe not plants, but someday I'll hit crackpot level of insanity and believe plants do too.

But yea, I say we have souls.

Everyone has very interesting points... but I still cannot see how the theoretical "soul" can actually download or even better yet, "carbon copy", all of one's thoughts, memories, and experiences from one's current "reality" and save this information to, or within, your pure "energy source" as this "energy" leaves the dead physical body.

That is an AMAZING feat... moreso amazing than any topic posted on this site. I just have a hard time believing that we all, as living creatures, have this amazing ability to do this after bodily death...

Now, I would like to point out something. I was passing by a room at this hotel I was staying at this weekend during a convention. Apparently there were numerous folks from Bethune Cookman College having a meeting and a few people were gathered in this room to enjoy their religious services. Coming from this room was the most enlightening and spiritual music (Gospel) I have heard in a while and it truly energized my mood. One can say it almost "lifted up my soul"... Very moving!!
But that is just a natural reaction stemming from the brain. My brain realized that I was hearing something very emotional & enlightening and the end result of my "good mood" was simply the effect of the chemical reaction in my brain stemming from the wonderful musical source.

This also occurs when a group gathers together and stirs up quite a bit of "energy" in that location and everyone naturally "feeds" off of everyone else... It's a wonderful thing that happens in "Life"...

In regards about, if we really have souls?

First, expirement this:

Sit in a calm peaceful room or environment by yourself.
Close your eyes and feel your breathing
Take time to realize your very existence in that particular space in the universe.
Put both your hands on your lap, dont resist, let it rest
Then, for a few minutes....make one of your hand move .........
to pick up your other hand that is resting. Pull it up, and drop it down
over and over again (your other hand that is resting must not resist
when its pulled up, it should be not completely in control of its movement
let the other hand guide it.

After you done it, you will have an idea, that our body is really dormant without
a guiding force that make it move.

Body + Soul = Human being with intellect and has the capacity to move.

Even if you dont believe that we dont have a soul, wait until you die, then see if you can still exist, even if your body rots to the grave.

The very thought that you are reasoning and thinking is one proof that our spirits/soul is house in this mortal body.

I am not religious,not in my view anyway.I believe in God,i belive in Jesus,and i also belive in Lucifer and Angels and of course the reason of this topic,the Soul.I believ that the soul is something that helps us along our way(like our concience**spelling?** ) and helps us make decisions that determine our future.I also believe that when we die,our soul is the part of us that remains with us,throughout our other lives(i believe in re-incarnation as well) and we get another chance to redeem our soul(make up for our past lives wrongs,im sure i have a few) or if we are clean souls with no mortal sins when we die,our soul will go to heaven.These are just my views on the subject

A soul?... energie?... 24 years ago when I was 13 I "left" my body and viewed the going-ons around me (including my own body below me) [See my post: near death or out of body]

Two things were very clear to me when that happened:
1 - I had no facial features abscuring my view; I had no face, or any other physical attribute for that matter.
2 - The fear I had been experiencing a few moments before was gone. I'd like to describe it as feeling "neutral". I believe a lot of our emotions are body-based and are used as a protection mechanism - like feeling if a stove is hot. Some things, however, I would like to say our "consciousness" for lack of better words, are not body-based and, perhaps, go to a realm/state of being that we, unfortunately, cannot explain or prove.

I personally didn't go that far.

I saw an episode of "Bullshit" on Showtime, where they had some scientist explain away NDA's as last minute brain functions similar to those that Astronauts experience at high G's just after they pass out. Some of the a-nauts saw the "white-light" phenomenon.

But I say BS to that episode because what they could not explain was how some people saw precisely what was going on in the immediate area while they were "dead" for a short time.

That part I did experience. God, religion, and so on... I just say "whatever".

If you ask me, I'll go with the energie theory combined with some form of continuity.

i definitly believe that the soul exsists.. ima catholic as well.. and yes i believe the soul is what keeps people going, what gives them the light of day.. its hard to explain in words what i think, but i definitly do believe in it!!

i believe i souls 2. however i believe the soul is simply awareness. animals do have souls and so do plants and trees... insects etc. the energy belief sounds interesting but got to think about that some.

here something to think about for those who don't believe in Heaven and GOD.

"one day there where to fish swimming in the water. suddenly the 1 fish sees a worm and as he getting ready to bite the worm the other stop him. "you can't eat that worm!", he says. you sees at the en of that worm is a hook, at the end of the hook is a line that reaches out beyond the water, at the end of the line is a creature that will clobber you with a stick, put you into a frying pan , eat you and give your bones to another creature to eat. "Thats all lies!" the other fish reply. He then proceeded to eat the worm and got his himself hooked. as he exit the water he saw the man. He then knew that the other fish was telling the truth but it was to late."

The Moral - some things can't see and might not be able to prove it doesn't mean it doesn't exists.

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The Waiting PLace
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Nice story, but there's something wrong with it, when looking from a human perspective. We know, for a fact; that fish, humans, boats, frying pans, hooks, lines, sticks, and bones exist

i don't believe in souls.

like i said earlier most definilty they do... its a major part of the body... when ya die thats what goes up.. of course thats a christian belief.. but i do believe in souls!

I also believe in the existence of the soul...individual and collective.

There is such a hostility surrounding religion these days, and I am admittedly a part of that. Whenever someone whips out a Bible quote on me, I want to throw up, and the current hold that religion and christianity seem to have on government is unsettling to say the least. Yet I believe in God, or a Creator...whatever you would call it. And my views on things like the soul, and spirituality, are deeply rooted in that sense of connection to a larger purpose and consciousness, and every day I try to be consciously aware of the Presence of that greater consciousness around me. That, I think, is the essence of what I call the Collective Soul (not the band, )

I won't even try to contribute to that, jayebrady; it was brilliant.

VERY WELL PUT JAYEBRADY ! I AGREE COMPLETELY.

Thanks for the comments...that's a great eye by the way Socrates.

I only really believed in a soul after I had experienced love. Really, though.... what IS a soul? I think that makes a much more interesting discussion. A lot of people believe in souls.... but do they all agree what a soul is?

The soul of a being is the consciousness of a person. Physically, it would be the mental capasity to be aware of oneself and ones existence in the world around them. On a simple scale, this could be an ant being aware of it's job in the collective and it's home. On a larger scale, this could be the awareness of a human in contemplation of how they connect to the spiritual and physical world they live in (their home, their work, their Universe, their love, their relationships, etc.)

Just because we have a soul doesn't mean we have a purpose though, and this mental awareness could die right along with the body that maintains the brain.