Asklemmy

It's a useful term in sentences like "This hurts my soul", but I don't need the metaphysical claims around it.

Agnostic here.

I do not think what people refer to as 'souls' has to have a physical existence nor a spiritual existence (whatever that means). What I think is that the word 'soul' refers to the sum total of a person's feelings, thoughts, and actions. That entity, even though it doesn't have any physical existence, could have effects that can be argued to be immortal.

No, I wanted to explain why I don't believe in their existance, but I couldn't write something without comming off as an asshole, so sorry.

There isn't any particular definition of "soul" that I believe in, but I think that there are many open questions about what consciousness is and how it works. Until we know more about that, I reserve my judgement on whether something that could be called a soul exists.

I think 'soul' is not something which exists in itself - it is the idea of the essence of a thing, the thing which causes an individual life.

So theories go around that there are spiritual beings separate from the physical (debatable) and I personally think that it extends to all life, such that trees can have awareness which can also extend beyond their physical bodies.

As such, they obviously exist - but their exact definition and nature is quite hard to grasp. I don't think they can survive physical death.

“Soul” is just consciousness. Which many people seem to equate to the brain here.

There is 0 scientific evidence that consciousness has anything to do with our brains. Much to the contrary actually.

Consciousness truly is one of the biggest mysteries of life. We all experience it, but the more you observe it, the less you can find it.

It may feel at first as it’s a phenomena of the brain, of the mind. But soon after you start paying really close attention to it, you realize that consciousness is behind the mind. It’s underneath it.

It observes the mind. It observes everything. And that’s what it is. Perceiving. Aware of everything.

Its the only indivisible and irreducible thing in the universe that we ever found. Consciousness just is. It is the awareness in you. It is the awareness in everything.

When we crack consciousness, all these talks of “souls”, “god”, “atheism”, will seem just silly tbh.

Curious, why did you group agnostics together with atheists?

No

No. If you can't find it in an autopsy, did it ever exist in the first place? Too many people confuse 'soul' for 'mind' (IMHO)

I don't believe it, but I some times wonder if some kind of self is preserved as energy within the universe somehow. Effectively being a soul, but in a sense of physics more than spirituality. Much like how the physical body will decay and return to the earth, the energy that makes up consciousness could simply return to the universe.

I don't think humans have souls. When we die, we do just that. I don't think we are so special to have something other species don't, so if we (humans) have them, then other species also can.

I don't think humans have souls. When we die, we do just that. I don't think we are so special to have something other species don't, so if we (humans) have them, then other species also can.

I don't think humans have souls. When we die, we do just that. I don't think we are so special to have something other species don't, so if we (humans) have them, then other species also can.

No. We are nothing but bags of meat that, over millions of years, evolved a way to think. We feel so high and mighty about ourselves that we made up "something special" about ourselves to set us apart from every other bag of meat on the planet.