Why do we even have a soul?

What do you believe is the purpose of someone's soul?

I mean, it seems a bit useless in life doesn't it? It doesn't seem to do anything while you are alive. Supposedly after death your soul moves on to heaven or hell, but is that really all it is there for? Surely there has to be a reason to have one in the first place other than just so you can live an afterlife.

Here is a short list of things I believe my soul can do. Why a short list? If you know me well enough, you know I tend to write a lot in these posts, over explaining. This saves space.

I believe no such thing exists in this universe. There is no evidence for its existence what so ever, so i don't understand why operate or think we have one. I know it doesn't do any harm or practically doesn't have any effect even if you do believe such a thing exists, but i don't get the point of believing in it in the first place.

Heaven and hell, or afterlife in general is another thing which we do not have any evidence to suggest such a place exists, so believing or operating as if they were real doesn't make any sense to me.




Current science suggests that our mind is the only thing that dictates our personality.




How do you know this supposed 'soul' doesn't need any sleep?




What if souls, god, heaven and hell don't exist? That is what you should be thinking about, in my opinion.

Did someone say souls?!

Please don't take offense from what I'm about to say, because I'm not a religious person so I kind of fail with these subjects. :(

Your question seems to imply that we do, in fact, have something spiritual in us - a soul or call it however you will. Before questioning what's the soul's purpose, I would question if we actually have a soul in the first place.

And honestly, I feel it's a question best left unanswered, or for philosophers and theologians to think and debate upon, because the day humanity discovers the soul exists and, worse still, manages to interact with it, it'll be either a catastrophe or, at best, it'll create further rifts between different cultures.

...yes, my faith in humanity is kind of wavering, what with the current state of the world and trivial, everyday stuff.

This is basically what I think about the concept of a soul. Idea of a soul is something to explain 2 things for 2 different sects.
1. Religion and the concept of either your soul resurrecting, going to heaven or hell, or becoming one with nature.
2. Spiritualist who believe in ghosts. A soul allows them to believe there are lost ones still wondering the planet.

Soul is just a term nothing more. Our brains dictate our dreams, our personalities, and so many other things that go on within our bodies.

While I'm religious, I don't believe in the concept of a soul or if I did I'd think of it in the same sense as our conciousness or is just another term used for the same concept. More or less like your brain it controls your personality and your thoughts. But I don't believe in such a thing itself rather than just the human conciousness in its place.

That's the best way I can put it, people think of it as the supernatural element that makes a human what they are but I think that's it's the same thing as a conciousness if anything. Or the culmination of your thoughts, feelings and such things that make up the person in place of a magical substance within someone. How does this lead on to me believing in religion and why I think there is an afterlife without one? Guess I'll figure it out when I die.

If it's alright with you I'd like to stick with what I believe in. Ideally I'd like to believe that science is indeed there but that there is in fact a god and Yadda yadda yadda

I know that is impossible though. The very idea of all the major religions goes against all the science and facts we were taught in school. Society isn't helping either.

Sometimes I don't know what to believe in anymore. But I want to keep my current beliefs that there is something spiritual inside us. I dunno. I just know that what I do believe in, the things I pray for...

Sigh. I don't know how to explain it, but I just feel I can't abandon these beliefs that I've had since childhood

As long as religious people try to justify stupid laws or impose their own rules on other people by what they personally believe in, it is not alright!




And nobody is taking that away from you, you asked a question and i gave my answer to it.




How did you abandon the belief that santa claus is real? Or easter bunny, or tooth ferry? I presume you believed in those in your childhood?

Irrelevant to main topic, but interesting nonetheless

I am not overtly religious myself but I do believe that we have souls. The reason why we have one, I think, is that it makes us alive and who we really are.

So I can harvest them to summon Satan.

I miss Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey.

It really depends on what you believe in. What culture, race or creed you maybe in there is always a belief in death that there is something more to a human.

Soul relies on the presupposition that there is a God.

So since there is a God, we can assume that God created us.

Since God created us, that means we have purpose in life and on this Earth.

With our body, God tethered our souls to it.

A soul is something that is everlasting, something that cannot be destroyed.

Now whether or not you believe in God, what we all ultimately want in life is Everlasting Happiness and Undeniable Truth.

How, you ask, can something be everlasting and be the ultimate Truth? It's God.

Since God is a being that is Eternal (Meaning he didn't begin and he will never end) we too will need something that can match his being so we can be with him (Of course we can't "not" be something without a beginning since we had one. We need something that won't end)

What's that something to match his being? It's our soul.

That, OP, is why we have a soul. Your soul is you.

I do believe largely with what you've described what we call a soul to be, and while I'm not a religious person myself, I do believe that there is something that we cannot explain that makes us human.

If you break a human being down to it's base components, It's really no different from disassembling inanimate objects like a microwave, or a rock in the end, and If you were to put these two piles of assorted matter beside one another, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. So what exactly is it that makes this mass of elements a human being? At what point did these things all come together to form the first cell, the first organism to be sentient?

From where we stand now, looking at it from a purely scientific point of view, this question is impossible to answer. Nothing remains of this first cell, so we'll never be able to prove conclusively why it came to live in the first place.

In my mind, the soul gives the answer to that question, albeit rather vaguely. It's what ultimately gives us life, it's what allows us to be alive.

Sure science may give us an answer at some point, but for now, as a scientist myself, I'm perfectly comfortable believing in this metaphysical explanation for something that cannot truly be rationally explained.

And since there is no god, i doubt there is a thing called soul either.




If there is something we cannot explain or do not know, how do you explain or know there is something called a 'soul' in every human being?




Tables and trees are made from the same elements, yet our description of the object is what defines it. Stars and human beings are made from the same elements, yet our own description is what creates the difference between those two.




As of now, science and human beings don't know the answer, yet.




If the question is scientifically impossible to answer, it means what ever answer you come up with then is purely fantasy and subjective. Soul is a concept based on fantasy, not reality.




So you believe in souls because it makes you comfortable and because the real answer to your previous question is 'we don't know'?

Why did you feel the need to edit the word presupposition when I was just explaining what the soul is and what's its purpose?


Also, the God argument is for another thread.

The word 'assumption' better described the word soul.

Why? Its the nature of the soul.

Without a God there is no soul.

So presupposition is the proper term.

And in order to believe in either one, god and soul, you have to assume they exist, have faith in other words.