Heathen Dawn

The Jewish book of Tanya says the soul is made up of God's breath.

Kachana

Hence why our souls are so filthy and need cleansing?

Fiach

Welcome to the forum. I definitely think that the soul hypothesis belongs here because as I will try to posit, it leads to the invention of god(s).

Primitive mankind as he/she began to think more and more, and observe the world around them, they had curiosity about how things worked. We still have that curiosity. They wanted to know how springs bubbled up, riveres flowed, volcanoes erupted, rain fell, and the Sun appeared to move across the sky. They wanted to know how we flexed and extended our hands, how we thought and talked.

Since they had no knowledge of chemistry, electricity, electrochemical circuits, they could not rely on a science thousands of years in the future.

They knew that "something" made the spring bubble, and the fingers flex. Something made us think, and when we dreamed, that something could even travel to other places and times. They felt that this something was independent in its action. You could not order it to do this or that. It did what "It wanted." They assumed it was conscious. They called these somethings, spirits (souls).

Spirits moved the springs to gush water. Spirits moved the clouds and made them rain. Obviously a spirit in our body made our arms move, our fingers flex, our legs walk. This spirit's consciousness must also be our consciousness. When we sleep, it can escape our bodies and go else where. This spirit was responsible for all that we do, including thinking. When it permanently leaves our body, that is death.

Now we know that all of the above can be explained on purely natural mechanisms. We know the pathways of consciousness in the brain. We know our on-off switch is the Ascending Reticular Activating System which activates the diencephalon and the septal nuclei to make us alert and aware. Connections to the temporo-limbic lobe convey our emotions/affect, to primary sensory areas (visual, auditory, tactile) for perception, to association areas for identification and processing of those perceptions, to the pre-motor cortex to plan complex movements then to the motor cortex to activate the necessary muscles. Spect MRI has mapped though patterns, speech patterns, and even emotional and mystical experiences in the brain. There is no work left over for the soul.

How is this connected to god? Over time, mankind noted that spirits were in trees, rivers, springs, clouds, animals, and even rocks. But we are also lumpers more than splitters. Mankind began to merge the many spirits into groups of greater spirits or gods. The apex of the trend was reached by Akenaten of Egypt who merged them all into one God, Aten the Sun God. Moses likely was influenced by Akenaten's heresy. He merged all of the male and female Hebrew Gods into one JHWH (Yahweh, or Joe Hovah). Older Jewish manuscripts document the last stages of polytheism, with the plural Elohim.

So the soul, which has essentially lost all meaning in human behaviour, is essential for two reasons. It is part of the complex reasoning (using the term loosely) in creating God. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly is our delusional hope for immortality. We all want to live forever, but we know the body dies. So we can only be immortal if we have that ethereal something in us that outlasts the "mortal body."

This is why humans cling so tenaciously to the soul concept, immortality. And this leads to God and the Bible being defended so savagely from criticism. It contains all of the excuses for believing in spirits, souls, god, and immortality. Some Atheistic gomeral trying to destroy your immortality is the greatest possible threat.

Fiach

Uni-Universe

Hey Dan,

The soul resides beyond time and space. It is pure energy. The soul is the part that is said to be evolving. The soul, if it is evolving with the tool of a personality and lifetime on this planet, is not whole. The splintered aspects of the soul make up the personality. The soul does not reside within the physical realm only the personality/body do. I have heard some people say that the soul enters somewhere in the head. I do not believe that for one second. You and I are not a soul within a body but a body within a soul.

I began to think about this soul aspect a while ago. Your body is a tool that was especially designed by the soul for the purpose of learning on this earthly realm. I began to believe this even more when I learned of quantum mechanics. All matter including the body is made up of energy. DNA is exquisitely designed. Consciousness is an aspect of the personality/mind/brain but the way your mind/brain/personality turn out is designed by the larger energy force of the soul.

Does that help at all? I understand that my beliefs may be more on the side of New Age philosophy other than traditional dogma. My Christian sister however once told me that we don't even have a soul.

What are your thoughts about it?

Uni-Universe

Fiach,

I have often thought about this subject. How does the soul relate to God (or the Universe)? Think in terms of energy. The soul is a smaller energy force than the Universe. The idea of immortality isn't far out there. We all know that energy cannot cease from being (Einstein). Energy can only change shape or travel. The soul is the non-physical aspect. It is life. I can only tell you what I believe about this.

You briefly mentioned that people believed that spirits moved the clouds and that there are spirits in the trees etc. I think it is interesting how people believed this. I have since then decided that spirits are energy and because of quantum mechanics we know that all matter and all molecules are made up of energy Strings. So if you believe spirits are energy forces than we can see how trees etc. can be seen that way.

Heathen Dawn

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It's based on the Genesis account of God breathing the "spirit of life" into Adam.

Tanya is based on Qabbalistic teachings, and these, in turn, state there are three types of "wind" in animate beings: nefesh (individuum), ruach (spirit) and neshamah (soul). The Tanya teaches that animals have only nefesh, non-Jewish humans have ruach as well, and Jews, being of the highest degree of spirituality, have neshamah in addition to the other two.

And then they complain about the German theory of Herrenvolk...

Amos

The problem here is that not God but Lord God breathed the spirit of life into man and this happened before Adam was created but not until after man was created. Note also that "the soul is made up of God's breath" does not indicate that "God breathed life into the soul of man. It just means that the continuum of our soul is made up of God's breath while Lord God is responsible for the first breath of life (essence precedes existence or God could not be responsible for the continuum of life.

Man makes reference to the animal man and Adam makes reference to the hu-man or earthly nature of man in which we claim to be rational agents because we know the difference between good and evil. This takes place in Gen.3 and life was breathed into man before that in Gen.2.


All animals have nefesh because they need to exist for humans to have dominion over. All humans have ruach to have dominion over the animals and Jews have neshamah because neshamah is mytholgy specific. Neshamah is the highest to indicate that the mythology is for the survival and prosperity of the civilization and this is true until this day.

This means that nefesh makes reference to animal nature, ruach to the advanced human nature and neshamah to the superimposed Jewish nature through which we can come to an understanding of both nefesh and ruach in perpetuity.

Taffy Lewis

Dan Leach,

Welcome to the Internet Infidels Discussion Forum.

One approach to the notion of a soul that I believe is coherent and plausible is the notion that persons are irreducible features of the world. The idea is that subjects of experience are fundamental. On this view, they cannot be fully described in terms of the activity of impersonal elements. If this is so then nothing constitutes them. They aren't made of anything.

Something similar holds for fundamental particles in physics. Either they can be described in terms of more fundamental "things" (ie. string theory) or they cannot. If they can then they aren't really fundamental.

If everything can be described in terms of more fundamental elements then we are lead to an infinite regress.

Aerik Von

I think the fluids, electric impulses and chemicals make up your soul, and when you die it rolls right out your ears and pours out of your skull.

crocodile deathroll

• Consciousness,
• Conscience.
• Self
• Ego
• Mind
• Person
• Personality
• Brains
• The individual,
• Spirit
• Psyche

And the list goes on
I have seen all these words and more being used interchangably with the the word "soul"