do you believe in an afterlife? do you believe people really have souls?

To me i find it hard to believe a person has a soul. To me the person is the brain. when the brain dies the person is gone.

I guess this is my opinion but it makes me feel so insignificant and small to know im only temporary. What do you think and why? Do people really have souls or not. If so what brings a person their sence of self?

thanks

You know, I think people might just have souls. I don't know why I think this though but honestly, if they didn't what would be the point? And I have to believe there is some kind of point to my life - to anybody's.

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I've always questioned whether or not people have souls.. I really hope we do have souls, otherwise life seems kind of pointless.

I don't believe in souls or in the afterlife at all. IMO it is not possible for such things to exist. Nothing near that type of thing has ever been scientifically proven to exist. There is no conclusive physical or observational evidence to suggest the existence of a soul or an afterlife. Nothing that cannot be explained by "earthly" means has been shown to happen to people after death. Therefore i dont see any reason to believe in it. Its just something that was made up by the creative imaginations of certain people.

I agree with the TC the brain is basically the person, once the brain dies the person dies.

this is the fallacy of wishful thinking. This fallacy occurs when one claims something is true just because they want it to be true. You are saying people have souls just because you hope people have souls otherwise in your opinion life would be pointless. But this fallacious because there is no evidence for souls.


LINK:

Wishful Thinking

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Interestingly enough, while you point out that apollo-might had a fallacy, you just committed one yourself. Every heard of special pleading?

The entire idea of an afterlife is based off of faith. At one point in time, there was no proof the earth was a sphere or that the earth wasn't the center of our universe. There's a difference between no evidence for a belief and evidence that contradicts a belief.

Based off the idea that some people believe in paranormal activity, I wouldn't go as far as saying there is no proof of an afterlife. It's how you interpret the evidence, or lack there of.

There is no evidence to interpret that i am aware of in the case of souls and the afterlife. if there is, please show it to me or tell me about it.

On the other hand, there are plenty of accounts of medical professionals looking at and studying dead bodies and not noticing a single thing paranormal about or around the body.

Accounts of people seeing ghosts and such usually are either doctored photos or videos, fake stories to get attention, or occur under questionable circumstances with few witnesses and are unverifiable. However, accounts of people seeing dead bodies or seeing people die or visiting graveyards and burial sites and noticing nothing paranormal happen very often. So observation tells us that when a person dies nothing paranormal happens.

And if you know of any evidence other than "faith" that suggests the existence of an afterlife and souls then present it.

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I'm somewhat confused by this question. Define "soul," please.

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if we were created in god's image
then when god was a child he
smashed fireants with his fingertips
and avoided the tough questions

I'm not sure, but I think so.

i sold my soul to my sister.
haha ya know that Simpson's episode where Bart ate Lisa's soul.
well my sister wrote
"Emma's soul'
on a piece of paper and ate that.
LOL and i actually believed it i was so upset.

but to answer the question yes, i think people have souls.

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Are we talking about a physical body part, like the heart or intestine, or are we talking about the largely metaphorical differences between, say, people and animals?

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if we were created in god's image
then when god was a child he
smashed fireants with his fingertips
and avoided the tough questions

What would you define as "hard evidence?" Paranormal investigators use several devices, such as electro-magnetic field meters, temperature sensing equipment, dowsing rods, motion sensor devices, ion detectors, Geiger counters, digital thermometers, infrared and night vision cameras, hand held digital video cameras and digital audio recorders.

As I said before, what you make of any "evidence" that comes with this equipment is up to you. However, any paranormal activity would count as an afterlife or some sort of left over soul.

If the entire idea sounds like a bunch of bull sh!t to you, congratulations, but it doesn't prove the idea of an afterlife to be false. So souls and the afterlife must revolve around the deceased person?The various stories are fake because you find the idea to be a load of crap, not because they were disproved.

You also seem to believe that paranormal activity, if it exists, has to be visible to humans. Souls usually relate to religions and going to an eternal peace after death; those stories don't include you or me watching white blimps skyrocket upwards after somebody dies.

i know how paranormal investigators try to find things out. but it all really is a load of crap. i have never seen a single convincing piece of evidence to prove ghosts exist.If a piece of evidence has multiple interpretations then it is not a convincing piece of evidence. Even when paranormal investigators find something they usually can only speculate about it. for example i saw a show on T.V where a couple was talking about a ghost in their house. They took a few pictures that showed a big black mass in the corner that looked nothing like a human. Not that hard to do if you interfere with the camera as the picture is being taken, or rather before it is taken. And then they had a team of investigators come and they set up a thermometer. They noticed the temp. dropped when the doors were closed and the A.C wasn't on. Again not conclusive. And audio recordings can easily be faked, hell i could fake one without any special equipment. And disturbances of electro magnetic fields are not conclusive, they could be caused by a number of things. Recordings by any kind of camera of ghosts and other supernatural things are usually either doctored, or what is being seen in the footage cannot be said to be a ghost or even shaped like a human for sure. And if people cannot touch ghosts, then motion sensors wont do anything. If people could feel ghosts, in other words if they were solid and touchable then im pretty sure everyone would be running into them quite often. So motion sensors are useless. I dont know what a Geiger Counter is, and as for the ion detector all ions are visible. And if a ghost the size of a human was made of ions the ghost would be visible or touchable most likely both.

Also yes the afterlife and souls have to do with a dead corpse. If a soul is to proceed to the afterlife it must leave the corpse right? Some activity must occur within or around the dead person for anything like that to happen.

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Well, I really don't think it can be proved one way or the other, and I'm not bothered what is the truth, seeing as there is nothing I can do about it. Just have to wait until I snuff it, I suppose.

But this if-there-is-no-soul-then-life-must-be-pointless-and-therefore-must-be-crap idea interests me. Why, if death really is the final end, does life have to be so pointless? Most of us have still got 60, 70, 80 even years left to live. The things that we achieve and do in life can give great satisfaction. Say I go skydiving, and after the experience all I have is a memory. I could argue that because I have only a memory, the whole experience was pointless. When I die, I'm not even around to care (unless I have a soul that is, in which case it will probably remain a memory). Just because we may perceive a pointlessness to life doesn't mean that one, there is, or even two, that it's a bad thing. We can still enjoy life, and find a point to it ourselves. And once you behave as if that point is there, then it might as well be.

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