Do you have a soul?

[afleitch]

No. My body is composed of atoms and my brain of electrical currents in matter. The part of me that is ‘separate’ from my body; my thoughts and feelings and my words are not so separate at all. Without the matter, there would be no mind. When I die, thinking stops, being stops and the matter is broken down and recycled. Nothing of me lives on or continues to exist. How egotistical of me to think that amongst all living things, a human’s ‘soul’ gets to exist beyond death. It’s the construct of a sentient being that feels cheated by death.

If however such a thing were to exist then it is mine. Why should it belong to, or go to another entity? I’d rather it be destroyed than become the play thing of a benevolent (or not so benevolent) entity. Let it escape.

[afleitch]

If however such a thing were to exist then it is mine. Why should it belong to, or go to another entity? I’d rather it be destroyed than become the play thing of a benevolent (or not so benevolent) entity. Let it escape.

Perhaps you were just being preëmptive, but at the point you posted this, no one had brought up what happens with the soul after death, or even how long it exists afterward.  Plus, there are quite a few belief systems in which souls do not remain distinct and isolated.  After all, if one thinks of the soul as being analogous to water in a bucket, then one should expect that once you kick the bucket the water would mix together with other water.

It seems to me that if any essense of one's being exists after death, then presumably it is under your command. My mind can already acheive things that my body cannot. My mind can 'play' every leap of Beethovens 9th, but my hands couldn't play it. It can deal with me doing what my body cannot especially in the dream state. Given how weak relatively, the physical body is it seems very strange in the Christian tradition that the soul can remain under your command as it will, in the confines of your body, but when it escapes that physical burden it suddenly becomes the plaything of another entity.

Surely the soul should be more free and less hindered and by extension more 'mobile' outside of the body? Surely it should be more vulnerable encased in flesh; yet it appears that it is out of reach of other god like entities while encased and is therefore more protected. Should that be the case however then would it not make more sense for the soul to be imparted onto another body to keep it both protected and independent? If that is what you seek of course.

[afleitch]

The question posed by the OP did not confine itself to the Abrahamic traditions concerning the soul.

Neither did my responses (unlike BushOK). Yet you seem a tad perturbed that I brought it up; why?

[afleitch]

The ability to live a life where we can ponder these questions tells me we must have a soul. To think, to live, to feel, to touch, to hear, to smell, to taste, to see... these things are, to me, extraordinarily deeper than crude science. Maybe we can quantify the "hows" of these things. We will never be able to quantify the state of actually experiencing them.

That alone is enough for me to believe in something more. Here, the Bible only offers superfluous details. Actually living offers the important ones.

Actually they are not. We think in order to co-ordinate our bodies response. We feel and touch and see in order to be aware of our surroundings. We hear likewise, to lessen danger and to hear calls of our own kind. We smell and taste to ensure that we are not eating harmful substances. You cannot be more scientific than that. It's basic. There is nothing wonderous to it, nor is there as Alcon suggested, anything metaphysical about it.

I can 'wonder' without being metaphysical. Sam Harris put it best; almost every atom on this planet, everything that makes up the air and the rocks and matter and you and me; the lenses in our eyes, the calcium in our bones comes from the material left over from the creation of the sun which formed our solar system and our planet. And the sun was only formed because billions of years ago another star or stars in the vicinity blew itself up. We are all essentially made of ‘stardust.’ That’s f-cking awesome. It’s wondrous. It makes me feel amazing and incredibly small. But it’s also science. It’s not an appeal to the metaphysical.

[afleitch]

Maybe for you. And that's okay.

Sure, we can be made of atoms and stardust and this and that. But that's just superfluous. Who cares? Stars and planets and atoms? Those definitions operate in the confines of our world, not Truth. Maybe our senses are a result of the matter in our brains--hell, I'm sure some scientific process actually explains our ability to hear and see, etc. But the state of actually seeing something trumps the bells and whistles of it all. And you may disagree--I just think that's a more limited way of looking at things (as I'm sure you probably think about my thought process too ).

So the 'state of actually seeing something' isn't simply scientific, even though the fact we can see can be explained by science as you admit? If anything you are adding the 'bells and whistles' to experiences that are very fantastic but easily explainable.

[afleitch]

I don't understand why people can't grasp the fact is that everything we think and feel comes from the brain. Simple as that. There is no evidence that it comes from elswhere, no evidence that there is anything other than the brain that processes it. If you drink it affects your brain, if you take drugs, have a stroke, get shot in the head it affects your brain. When you die you cease to think.