Why do we even have a soul?

Impressive? It's not that hard, but what makes you say that I changed the meaning?

You are right, i was being sarcastic.




We can scientifically explain all the things you claimed 'soul' does, without your assumption of having a 'soul'.




You say this soul is some kind of force, well if that was true, if this force actually existed, we could measure it, we could study it, we most likely would have already found out about it, but like i said, we can already explain scientifically all the things you tried to explain with the word 'soul'.

So for something to exist, we have to be able to study it and measure it?

No, not for something to exist, but for us humans to understand something, we have to be able to study it and measure it in some way.

For us to be able to claim something to exist, we have to be able to study it and measure it in some way.

Why limit yourself?

Limit myself?

Which one you prefer, believing in fairy tales and non-true things which in themselves most of the time limit you more than the free reality you actually live in (like pretty much every religion does), or make most of the actual reality you live in without believing in fairy tales and non-true things?

I understand that some people believe in somethings, because it makes them happy and use that as a basis for believing in it, like when you die your soul flies into heaven or some other nonsense like that or using a fictional story trying to teach something, like Santa Claus only gives presents to the good kids and not the bad ones.

But i seriously don't understand why reasonable adults believe in stupid stories to try and almost artificially make them supposedly feel better. Hey, if you feel sad or depressed about ebola virus killing thousands of people in Africa, just tell yourself that it isn't really happening, right? If you feel sad or depressed about ISIS beheading innocent people, just imagine it actually isn't happening, right? That ought to make the reality we live in better, right? Just believing that bad things never actually happen, because why limit yourself to the actual reality you are living in?

In my opinion, i don't limit myself in anyway by not believing unproven things, i don't limit myself by not believing something because of faith.

Those who do seriously believe in unproven things, or seriously believe something because of faith are the people who limit themselves. They become (are) more gullible to be scammed, tricked and fooled, and also these same people limit the lives of other people who are not as gullible and stupid as the faithful and the 'believers' are, because they vote on stupid laws and want other people to believe the same bs they believe in. (Obviously not everybody is like this, but a good majority is).

I've written quite an extensive article on how to prove or disprove the existence of the human soul (tl;dr - existence of soul depends on the definition of soul, read Plato & Aristotle on that - they give a pretty good definition of what soul is/does; turns out, it's not half as useless as it seems), but here is a summary of what I think soul is:

Soul is a social concept. It allows to define people by just a few traits, make human beings have special dignity and fundamentally as a way to escape the inevitability of death.

When somebody is defined as a "teacher" or "builder" or "student", we build a simple mental representation of how a "builder", for example, is ought to look and behave. This exercise allows us not to dwell on incredible complexity of others. It also makes us prejudiced and susceptible to manipulation when we hear some such simply defined group referred to as dangerous or otherwise undesirable.

Having a special dignity: we are not born here by chance in a meaningless world; we are here to fulfill a certain mission, commonly known as the meaning of life. This idea allows for motivation, hope and desire to progress.It is useful as a psychological barrier from uncertainty of this world, which leads to the inevitability of death.

We build incredibly complex definitions and functions to escape the fear of death. Entertainment, definition of soul, god, ghosts and many more are all examples of how we try to escape the inevitable. Because uncertainty has a large potential for death, we create plans, seek some kind of mission to fulfill and are risk-averse in general. Even the notion, that something has a plan is already better than no plan at all. To allude to a recent example of this line of thought, we will have to look no further than the Dark Night movie series, where the Joker explains this as follows:

You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan".

tl;dr: soul is a social concept based on limitations and fears of our mortal coil.