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casavant
New member
First, let's define "soul". I think the conventionally held belief is that your soul is the essence of you- it's the life energy in you that thinks and feels. When people speak of going to heaven or hell, they talk about pleasure/pain, which would require your soul to basically be your conscious self- capable of thought, emotion, and some sort of sensory ability. If you are in keeping with traditionally held Christian belief, the soul is basically "you" without a physical body. Also, many believe that humans are the only beings with souls.
Well, where it gets complicated for me is, where is the cutoff point? Let's say you are severely brain damaged in a car accident, to the point that you are on life support with minimal brain activity- for all practical purposes, a vegetable. Is your soul still there? Did it change? Did it already leave? What formerly made you "you" is no longer there. Or maybe your soul is kind of in hibernation- it's there, but you have no access to it. But this would mean that essentially your soul was something totally seperate from your conscious self. If this is the case, you as you know yourself are never going to heavne or hell. You're going to die and rot.
Another scenario- you're born severely mentally handicapped. You never develop beyond the mental capacity of a newborn infant. What is your soul like then? Where does it reside? Some may say that the body is limiting the spirit. Well, if that's the case, we are all limited in some way, aren't we? If there's a perfect version of our souls somewhere, why are we being judged here on earth? And how would your current consciousness transfer to that soul when you died? It wouldn't really be "you", would it? What about animals? Certainly, we have some really smart chimps that are far more intelligent than severely retarded humans. Do they not have souls?
What do you think?
Well, where it gets complicated for me is, where is the cutoff point? Let's say you are severely brain damaged in a car accident, to the point that you are on life support with minimal brain activity- for all practical purposes, a vegetable. Is your soul still there? Did it change? Did it already leave? What formerly made you "you" is no longer there. Or maybe your soul is kind of in hibernation- it's there, but you have no access to it. But this would mean that essentially your soul was something totally seperate from your conscious self. If this is the case, you as you know yourself are never going to heavne or hell. You're going to die and rot.
Another scenario- you're born severely mentally handicapped. You never develop beyond the mental capacity of a newborn infant. What is your soul like then? Where does it reside? Some may say that the body is limiting the spirit. Well, if that's the case, we are all limited in some way, aren't we? If there's a perfect version of our souls somewhere, why are we being judged here on earth? And how would your current consciousness transfer to that soul when you died? It wouldn't really be "you", would it? What about animals? Certainly, we have some really smart chimps that are far more intelligent than severely retarded humans. Do they not have souls?
What do you think?
