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Post by Gav on Apr 15, 2012 21:31:35 GMT -5
Now this is veering on nonsensical, but what about alternate universes? To what level does the law of your religion (whatever that may be) hold? Again, I'm not looking for anything serious. I'm just looking for answers to some fun and friendly questions. For me, it's exactly the same. The creator of everything (whether one calls that God, Goddess, or more than one of each) loves absolutely every soul unconditionally, and just wants them to feel loved and show love for all the other souls. She (I'm using "She" because I see the creator as a goddess) doesn't punish souls for what they do during physical life, because a soul without a physical body does not fear, it only loves. Fear and love are the two base emotions that a soul feels while in a physical body. Fear is there to help a physical life survive (it's why rabbits fear foxes, it's why trees fear chainsaws). In creatures with brains, a brain processes a base emotion felt by a soul (probably through the amygdala, where scientists think feelings may come from) into a number of things: happiness, sadness, anger, excitedness, disgust. It also helps the physical body to act accordingly, so the soul can feel comfortable in it. In creatures without brains, I think emotions are deeper and much more complex. Plants, for example, are probably above most fear-based emotions (except for fear itself). They feel happy, aggrieved, and loving (yes, grief is love-based since you're missing someone else's love). And planets and stars, as I said before, just want happiness for all who live with them (life on them for planets, planets orbiting for stars) and feel sad when people fight. So it is in every single dimension. If I may ask, if plants are above fear, why do trees fear chainsaws?  |
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Post by Breakingchains on Apr 15, 2012 22:14:25 GMT -5
^ I think what Sae said was more along the lines of that trees and plants can feel fear itself, just not other fear-based emotions. (That's what I got from it, anyway--correct me if I'm wrong on that, Sae?) I don't usually jump into discussions like this one, but this is a neat topic, so.  I'm on the fence as to whether animals have an afterlife. I know Christians debate (pretty fiercely, at times) whether they have souls, and one would seem to imply the other; but I haven't been wholly convinced by either side thus far. I do think that, if some animals have souls and thus an afterlife, those with higher faculties (great apes, elephants, etc.--those that can think and emote) are more likely to. That idea meshes with my beliefs about intelligent design. If you were designing a planet to be able to have stable ecosystems, and created one species to be intelligent and have interpersonal relationships (say orangutans), and you created another species to, essentially, breed really really fast to provide bulk food for stuff higher on the food chain (say mosquitoes), then you obviously favor the one over the other. One you'd want to make eternal (via the addition of a soul), and one is free to be transient because it just fulfills a function to keep things in working order. In that sense, there's no real life in a mosquito so much as there's a whole lot of movement and buzzing--it's like a little service drone for the world you made, a cool piece of engineering it's own way, but not really relevant compared to what it's servicing. I feel similarly about things like fungi, plants, etc. They provide oxygen, food, shelter for animals, building materials for humans, what-have-you. They're a practical provision for the animal kingdom, including us, and in that sense, an expression of love from a higher power--but I don't really think they're alive, because given the roles they take in nature (like getting chomped on to make beaver dams) and their physical structure (lack of a brain to process the world or any movement capabilities, etc.), they would be a really weird choice when dispensing souls from on high. xD |
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Post by Pacmanite on Apr 16, 2012 4:26:15 GMT -5
I believe that the soul - by which I mean the immortal and innermost part of a person's being - entered humanity when God breathed it into the first man. I'm inclined to believe that the other animals, while they sometimes do have thoughts and feelings, and can be capable of logical reasoning, didn't get this immortal breath implanted in them, and so did not get a soul.
I haven't really studied/thought very far into it, so as I mature I might get a different take on this. But at the moment I imagine humans as possessing three layers - the body, the mind, the soul. The mind contains both feelings and thoughts, and although it is tied quite firmly to the physical properties of the body (it feels pain and gets depressed in response to chemicals), it is also closely intermingled and attached to the soul. It is very difficult to cleave the mind from the soul.
Only the body dies at the death of a human. The soul, the immortal part, survives, and since mind is so closely attached to it, it goes wherever the soul goes.
I would say that animals have only a body and a mind. So when the body dies, there is no way for the mind to continue to exist by itself, because there is nothing permanent for it to attach onto. So, it just perishes. It only existed in response to physical stimuli. The mind has finished its function, it vanishes when there is no more for it to do.
Admittedly, though, I'm not entirely sure that God didn't breathe a kind of soul into the animals. It might have just been given less emphasis because the bible is meant for humans to read. "Let all that has breath praise the Lord" kind of implies that animals can worship, although this could be a rhetorical figure. It's not completely clear-cut.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2012 5:45:00 GMT -5
Admittedly, though, I'm not entirely sure that God didn't breathe a kind of soul into the animals. It might have just been given less emphasis because the bible is meant for humans to read. "Let all that has breath praise the Lord" kind of implies that animals can worship, although this could be a rhetorical figure. It's not completely clear-cut. There's a lot of talk in the Bible about creation praising God through its very existence. I'm not really sure, but I do think that verse applies to this concept, since praise is really just living and acting according to God's will. If an animal doesn't have a soul and therefore can't determine right or wrong, then it is continuously praising God by acting according to its nature. Um. I think? xDDD I ramble when I'm tired. |
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Post by Yoyti on Apr 16, 2012 5:53:05 GMT -5
Okay. Here's a new question, raised by my most recent reading I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstader. At what point in development does a human get a soul? Is it at first fusion of sperm and egg? At the zygote? The morula? The... well, you get the idea. Shakespeare teaches us that those born by caesarian section aren't actually born in the same sense as everyone else. What do you think?
By the way, thank you for your answers so far.
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Post by Gav on Apr 16, 2012 6:35:24 GMT -5
That in a sense is the crux of the abortion debate- when you have one, are you killing a human? I think it's something that is really up to the individual to decide, really. |
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Post by Nimras on Apr 16, 2012 12:47:26 GMT -5
It used to be believed that the baby was imbued with a soul when it "quickened" (when the baby could be felt moving and kicking around by the mother). It was believed that aborting the baby before then didn't actually kill a human, since it was soulless. (Abortion goes way back further than most people think, it was done via oral medication, suppositories, or "the hand." I don't think I have to explain how the last one worked.) Many people now argue for the idea of "brain activity" making one human (we are " homo sapiens" after all). You'll find arguments that aborting before brain activity starts isn't killing anyone with a soul, since it's a case of "lights off, nobody home." Brain activity start occurring in short bursts at around 20 weeks, and is fully up and running between 26-27 weeks. ( Source) But before one could really get into this argument of when anything gets a soul, one would have to define a soul. Is it the ability to know right from wrong? Is it a sense of self identity? Is it the ability to feel empathy? Something else? |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2012 15:13:27 GMT -5
^ I think what Sae said was more along the lines of that trees and plants can feel fear itself, just not other fear-based emotions. (That's what I got from it, anyway--correct me if I'm wrong on that, Sae?) Yep, that's pretty much what I mean. As to the abortion thing, I personally believe that a soul enters the moment a baby has enough of a brain to think and feel anything, which is probably pretty early on. (Of course, this is just regarding animals with brains - for a jellyfish it's very different since they don't have a brain.) I pretty much stay out of the abortion debate since it's something that can lead people to do pretty horrible things to one another. I know because a few years ago an abortion doctor was murdered and the news spread like wildfire. All I know is I'm not having an abortion no matter what (unless it's one of those things where the baby was dying and/or I was dying and usually in those situations the baby would die anyway, but it will still break my heart and I would grieve very much over my lost baby). If I conceived a child that for some reason I didn't want to or couldn't keep I would still give birth but I would adopt the baby out. |
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Post by Pacmanite on Apr 16, 2012 20:52:46 GMT -5
Hmmm...
I've been wanting to believe that the soul enters the baby at conception, because to me that's the clearest cut-off moment for when a baby is definitely not a baby, versus when it might probably be. At least at that moment all the genetic material is in one spot and has come together and created a unique creature. But I've found a conundrum. Identical twinning.
I read that for the first 14 days after conception, if the embryo is split into two pieces, it will form identical twins. It happens, we all know. And theoretically, within that window of time, even a doctor could deliberately cut an embryo in two and make two people where possibly there had been one. That I find very disturbing...
Because if the soul entered the body at the moment of conception, what happens to the soul of the embryo when it splits apart and forms identical twins? Can splitting a body split the soul? Can two people really be made from one person? Do they have two identical souls? Do they share the same soul? (I doubt that) Or does one twin (maybe the bigger piece) get the original soul, and the other gets given another soul?
I know there's been a lot of people saying that identical twins can have telepathy with each other, but the experience of identical twins I have met has generally led me to believe that they are not aware of each other's thoughts. To my knowledge there hasn't been a serious study which could prove that twins have a special connection. Doesn't mean that there necessarily isn't some kind of connection which just isn't that obvious, but if it were something as fundamental as sharing a soul, I would think that it would show. But it seems clear that the twins I have met are separate people with separate lives, that each one counts individually as a person in their own right. No one would dare argue that killing two twins is the same as killing one person.
At present, the only answers that seem to make sense to me are a) the soul is granted at conception and the twin-splitting event either duplicates the soul or creates a new one; or b) for 14 days after conception the embryo does not have a soul or at least not a solidified, stable soul.
Buuuuttt then the other question to ask is whether you need a soul to be alive, because if animals might not have souls, they could still be considered alive. Their bodies, at least, are alive.
So then the question could go back to physical factors - and I could return to my original position, that what is genetically human and forms a discrete 'body' should be considered human. The fact that it grows more and more body-like differentiates it from mere organ tissue, which stays only a part of the greater whole. I definitely don't agree that an unborn baby at full term should be considered not alive, since it has all the same amount of matter as a newborn baby. And I don't like the idea that a body could come alive at some hazy, unspecified time in between early and late stages of pregnancy, because all throughout that time it has been developing gradually and each of the stages resembles the stages just before and after. So the only moment I can see which is dramatic enough to draw a line between alive and not-alive, in terms of physical features, would be the moment of conception.
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Post by Breakingchains on Apr 16, 2012 23:19:42 GMT -5
I've had the same thought. Or even freakier, Chimerism, which results from twin zygotes actually re-merging after splitting off. I'm also strongly inclined to believe a soul enters the body at the moment of conception, but those two things give me pause. |
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Post by Nimras on Apr 17, 2012 13:50:43 GMT -5
I've had the same thought. Or even freakier, Chimerism, which results from twin zygotes actually re-merging after splitting off. I'm also strongly inclined to believe a soul enters the body at the moment of conception, but those two things give me pause. See, those two are the reasons I personally lean more toward the idea of 18-19 weeks when the brain is just about to "turn on" as it were, for when the soul appears (however it gets there). I knew two pairs of identical twins growing up, and they both argued that the idea of them being the "same person" as their twin was complete bogus. They were two pairs of people who shared the same DNA, but were completely different as to personality, likes, dislikes, and senses of humor. It would be hard to argue that they shared a soul with their twin when they were so fundamentally different in everything but appearance. |
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Post by Crystal on Apr 17, 2012 16:58:09 GMT -5
I mostly lean toward conception for the reasons Pac suggested (the specifics of identical twins nonwithstanding... I just assume they have souls however they have souls. xD)
It's the clearest cut-off point, and I do find it terribly nasty that a life or death might be decided simply by age or convenience. I mean, if we were sure that a fetus 'becomes alive' at 3 months, all well and good... but we aren't. We don't know. I'd just rather be safe than sorry about the matter.
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Post by Jo on Apr 17, 2012 17:39:36 GMT -5
My opinion regarding the abortion debate is this: life only has value if there is somebody to value it. Until a person has developed self-realisation and a will to live, then their life is only valuable if somebody loves/values them. Therefore I don't consider abortion to be wrong because if nobody values the foetus's life, it is just a ball of cells, and the wants/needs of the mother should come before it. I think it's similar to how many people get upset over kittens being killed, but have no problems with people eating meat- they value the life of the kitten, but not the life of the chicken.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2012 18:40:32 GMT -5
My opinion regarding the abortion debate is this: life only has value if there is somebody to value it. Until a person has developed self-realisation and a will to live, then their life is only valuable if somebody loves/values them. Therefore I don't consider abortion to be wrong because if nobody values the foetus's life, it is just a ball of cells, and the wants/needs of the mother should come before it. I think it's similar to how many people get upset over kittens being killed, but have no problems with people eating meat- they value the life of the kitten, but not the life of the chicken. I don't entirely agree with that but that's not what I want to talk about. Here's a hypothetical question: according to you, is it wrong to have an abortion if the mother doesn't value the unborn baby's life but her own mother does? Or her father? Or the baby's father? Or anyone close to either parent? I'm just curious as to what you think of that. |
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Post by Crystal on Apr 17, 2012 18:48:17 GMT -5
That's terrible, though, Jo; so unwanted babies in dumpsters? Suicidal people? People with extremely severe mental disabilities? People in comas for whom family cannot be found? I could argue that any one might lack either self-realization or will to live... but they all have the right to. What is self-realization, anyway? When does it start? At what point do we consider someone a person? How do you know that the fetus does not know it exists? I can understand the argument that the mother/child's quality of life would drop drastically, or that the mother would often be in a truly terrible place under pressure, or even the perspective that the child is unable to survive without the mother and is therefore a parasite (though I wouldn't agree with any of them)... but "life only has value if someone values it" can just be so terribly misapplied. And on a completely different tangent, there are plenty of people who do eat cat... and lots of people who find balut disgusting. My opinion regarding the abortion debate is this: life only has value if there is somebody to value it. Until a person has developed self-realisation and a will to live, then their life is only valuable if somebody loves/values them. Therefore I don't consider abortion to be wrong because if nobody values the foetus's life, it is just a ball of cells, and the wants/needs of the mother should come before it. I think it's similar to how many people get upset over kittens being killed, but have no problems with people eating meat- they value the life of the kitten, but not the life of the chicken. I don't entirely agree with that but that's not what I want to talk about. Here's a hypothetical question: according to you, is it wrong to have an abortion if the mother doesn't value the unborn baby's life but her own mother does? Or her father? Or the baby's father? Or anyone close to either parent? I'm just curious as to what you think of that. That's an interesting point, Sae. I don't think it's ever come up before. I'm not pro-choice in any case, though, so I've never had an opinion on it. |
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Furgo 
Michael. 
