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Feelings/soul do they exist and if so what are they?

Hawkfish

Hawkfish

Annoying Hawkish
What is anger, happiness, hatred, and joy? Do they exist or is it just hormonal instincts. Is it a illusion? Is there such thing as soul? Or is it just religious stuff that we are spoon fed.
I'll join in later
 
Oh boy, this is going to be interesting...

I, personally, believe there is a soul that holds our memories, personality, etc., allowing us to pass into a sort of other existence. Not a heaven or anything, but... Something...

Then again, that could easily be the fact that the idea of just... ceasing... is impossible for me to imagine
 
Ah, I think I have a conversation on this with my friends <.<

Anyway, to answer your first slur of questions, those emotions are only states of mind, nothing but reactions cause by people or things. I would think that only some are actually hormonal. As for the illusion, no, if they are states of mind they can't be illusions unless the person is acting.

Now, for the soul, there are many explanations to the question. Too many to list in fact. They only way to answer that question would to define a soul. What would a soul be, in your opinion?

Edit:
I, personally, believe there is a soul that holds our memories, personality, etc., allowing us to pass into a sort of other existence. Not a heaven or anything, but... Something...
Click to expand...

Yes, but if souls were this, then that would mean when a person dies, so does their soul. If no, then the memories must continue on, and the soul continues to live. Which means they either move to a new body. But to do that, they must loose all you have said a soul to be. Which brings me back to what I said, with another question. What defines a soul, and where do they come from?
 
Dragon_night said:
Yes, but if souls were this, then that would mean when a person dies, so does their soul. If no, then the memories must continue on, and the soul continues to live. Which means they either move to a new body. But to do that, they must loose all you have said a soul to be. Which brings me back to what I said, with another question. What defines a soul, and where do they come from?
Click to expand...

Erm, wait, what? I think you misunderstood me. I meant that a soul holds our memories, personalities, etc., and our brain can access them. Maybe a sort of energy or something, but yeah. The soul itself ISN'T that stuff, it CONTAINS that stuff, and leaves the body when we die, allowing us to continue to exist as it brings all that stuff with it.

Sorry if I wasn't that clear before. And sorry if I am not that clear now XD

Oh, of an interesting note, apparently a doctor once weighed people while they were dying, and measured how much a soul weighs...

Somehow, I think something else caused the body to become lighter, and not the soul leaving it
 
Oh, of an interesting note, apparently a doctor once weighed people while they were dying, and measured how much a soul weighs...
Click to expand...

fun fact: it wasn't 21 grams
 
I decided these are really two different things, so;

Re feelings: I don't really care either way. Happiness, sadness, anger and all the other are real enough for me. If someone wants to say how they're just hormones and neurotransmitters, go right ahead, but my reactions to things are what makes me me.

Re souls: Absolutely. I honestly believe that a person is more than their physical body and people don't stop existing just because thier body ceases to function.
 
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The soul doesn't weigh anything, because it isn't tangible. I dislike the word really. I don't think feelings are just instinctual things formatted by the brain at all. I have loads of different theories in my head, some of which I can't recall now, including the ones I hold as being better ideas. XD

One is that when babies are born, they have simple feelings; sadness, happiness, and at very under-developed stages. But as you mature your feelings become more experienced, and soon your 'soul' for lack of a better word can generate more and more feelings, for different situations, and with varying shades. Which is a reason towards why some thirteen year olds have better control of their feelings, and are less instinctual and more fulfilled than others, and why some can't understand certain concepts, because their brains, or rather souls, haven't accumulated the right amount of experience.

...starting to sound like an RPG
 
I don't think souls are real. It just seems like a convenient explanation invented by humans because, as somebody else said, it's impossible to conceive of just not existing. But just because we can't conceive of it, doesn't mean it can't happen.

Thus, I also think emotions and all that are hormones, controlled by neuro-transmitters, that sort of thing. It doesn't prevent me from taking my feelings seriously, though, or appreciating that I have them. :P

But to be completely fair, there is a possibility that souls could exist. I just haven't seen any hard evidence for it yet.
 
The best reason I have for believing in a soul is that if a person who believes in souls and a person who doesn't both die and live on as souls, the person who believed gets to say "I told you so." You can't show off if you're just rotting in the ground.:sunglasses:
 
Heh, camerupt, that's the kind of rationalization I used when I was a young child to allow myself to swallow the religion being shoved down my throat. But then I realized that was a really stupid reason to justify spending my life (probably the only life I will have) believing and perpetuating lies.
 
Mirry said:
Heh, camerupt, that's the kind of rationalization I used when I was a young child to allow myself to swallow the religion being shoved down my throat. But then I realized that was a really stupid reason to justify spending my life (probably the only life I will have) believing and perpetuating lies.
Click to expand...

Wow, you really are cynical.
 
Why is that cynicism? I like to think of it as logic. It simply isn't logical to believe in souls (or religion). My common sense rejects it. If it makes some people happy, good for them, but it doesn't make me happy. One could say, I would rather cry over the truth than smile over a lie.
 
Feelings exist doubtlessly, that's clear enough.

As for the idea of a soul, I can't bring myself to believe the soul exists. I believe that we just cease to exist as anything more than a corpse when we die. The majority of people evidently can't cope with this concept.

I agree with Mirry by the way, that's not cynicism and the 'I told you so' idea is a long-standing one and a load of bullshit in my opinion. Don't you think it would be better to die and be proved wrong as an atheist, and live forever in eternal bliss, than be proved wrong as a Christian and cease to exist?
 
The soul only exists as a poetic term that can be used in songs when the lyricist can't think of a good word.

*coughmusecough*
 
I think that it's a poor question; this is solely a matter of faith, and thus impossible to come to a proper answer. A debate about this will go nowhere, as the nature of the soul is such that it is impossible to prove or disprove its existence.
 
Somebody agrees with me, yay. |D

I think the word "soul" is indeed a good poetic term, but, as Weavile said, I think many individuals have their own concept of the "soul" that is different from everybody else's, and so it's hard to argue whose concept is correct when nobody really knows. :3 Though to me, the lack of proof tends to sway me toward the opinion "souls are imaginary".
 
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