- 03 Jan 2017 10:21
#14758378
Do we need to automatically connect the soul with the afterlife though? This is a religious favourite but doesn't seem necessary in order to start considering the idea.
As I said earlier:
B0ycey wrote:I like to believe we all have a soul, but the way the brain functions pretty much debunks this notion. I mean, an outer body experience can be explained if you know anything about lucid dreams. All I know for sure is that when your brain deteriorates, your essence (soul) seems to go with it. I hope I'm wrong though. I quite like the notion that I am more than just neurons transmitting with each other and a spirit of me could lingers forever while my body decays.
Do we need to automatically connect the soul with the afterlife though? This is a religious favourite but doesn't seem necessary in order to start considering the idea.
As I said earlier:
jakell wrote:The idea of a soul as a facsimile of our 'self' at death (or alternatively a previous version of this) is pretty much reflected in transhumanist fantasies of detaching ourselves from our physical bodies and pouring ourselves into a machine that will maintain our 'pattern'. There are many technical problems with the maintenance of a such a complex and functioning (ie living) pattern.
The idea of the soul as a very basic version of us (like a spark in relation to the fire it creates) is easier to contemplate.
In both these cases we are talking of something that lives after our death (although we might consider the second to be unrecognisable as our self), but do we always need to immediately connect the idea of the soul with the afterlife, as if that is its only function? Can the soul be addressed as something important whilst we are alive?
Materialism likes to reduce the human to its component parts, and posit that somehow our sense and awareness of self, plus all we think and feel arises (magically) from this complexity. Our metaphysical self is enormous though, to the extent that can overwhelm the physical, something that is self-evident in a digital environment.
I would suggest that the soul can be considered to be analogous to our metaphysical self, something that is not really recognised as a 'thing' by materialists, so here I am giving it a name so that religious and non-religious folks may at least find some common ground if they wish. Of course, the religious may want to take this basic idea a lot further, that's their prerogative.