What About The Soul?

Francois

I don't recall that we've ever gotten into this issue; maybe we did and I just don't remember. If so, it won't hurt to revisit it; if not, it's way past time that we did.

We were all trained to believe that humankind does not have a soul, but that we are souls. This teaching came from the spiritual geniuses abiding at JW headquarters in Brooklyn, likely assisted by their undefined "spirit-led" descision making activities and with help from someone's secret decoder ring with the secret compartment.

Personally, I have 86-ed that particular piece of nonsense a long time ago. Mainly because it just took too many words to explain what should have been a simple concept. Plus, we all are aware of the usefulness of applying Occam's Razor in tight squeezes like this.

I don''t want to prejudice the jury, so I'm not gonna say any more right now. But I would appreciate having your feelings on the matter. Are we souls? Do we have souls? What is a soul? What role does it play? You know, the entire magilla!!

Waiting breathlessly for your considered responses.

francois

searchfothetruth

Francois,

I'm not going to be much use...because I haven't got a clue.

I'm still at the stage were I don't know what to believe about God, the Bible and especially the soul.

I believed the WT was right as I was brought up as one but now am very weary of believing anything.

Xena

Anyone else remember that line in one of the songs that said "fear not those who kill the body but can not destroy the soul"? I never had the guts to ask anyone how they could reconcile that with their belief that the soul dies with the body.

I don't have a belief system just yet to support any type of belief in the soul one way or the other.

aojumper

Francois,

I believe we have souls. The most I have to back this up at the top of my mind is the idea that we will go to heaven without our bodies, but with our consciousness intact. One scripture off the top of my head is 2 corinthians 5:1-10. Now here is a queestion for you... Was the New Testament written for only those who go to heaven, or for all of us? Because this scripture is one that seems as though it speaks to any and everyone... This comes from a discussion had with my JW Dad yesterday, He has so much blind faith in the Borg, it is so sad...

K

Satanus

I'm fairly sure that we are a soul having an excursion in a monkey body. Since we lost a lot of the preknowledge and prememory at some point, we are generally unable to tell the differences between motivations arising from the spirit and those originating from the monkey. I could be wrong.

SS

ScoobySnax

OK Francois..... a standard reply you could expect from me... It was always drummed into me from the Bible that scripture about the soul that is sinning, it itself will die. And the link was that Adam originally sinned, hence we all sin and die as a consequence. I still hold to this, otherwise what was the purpose of Jesus if He was not to redeem what Adam lost for mankind. Regardless of whether you hold the Bible as true or not, thats what I understood about the "soul" Of course this opens up even more questions... I tell you something though, I once had a Labrador dog called Bess who I loved (don't laugh) she seemed to know my every mood, and anticipated my every move. She died about 2 years back after 14 years of me loving her, and I just couldn't understand, why she shouldn't be accorded the same right in death as humans are, in that she would be remembered. I heard from a sister years before that animals are not accorded the same rememberance as humans who have died, are. I found that difficult to understand. What are your thoughts anyway, sounds like you're holding back for a biggy here!! ..

proplog2

Soul was ancient man's attempt to explain what "moves" animates us(anima=soul) . They thought there was something "in" us that moved us like a hand in a puppet.

Psychology struggled with the "mind/body" split. The root of Psychology is Psyche. Psychology is really "soulology". With the understanding that our thinking goes on in our brain we imagined a little man sitting at the controls and pushing buttons.

Modern psychology looks at the "organism as a whole" without the dualism of mind/body. There is nobody at the controls. There are no controls. So the Watchtower comes pretty close to the modern scientific concept of "soul". The Hebrews were basically on the right track - although Greek Platonic thinking eventuatlly impinged on their ideas.

Tertulian wrote a treatise on the soul that is very Aristotlean. Aristotle saw man as part of nature and the soul as the expression of the living body.

I don't believe in a soul separate from the body. Such a thing has never been proven scientifically. Especially with our knowledge of cybernetics and computers we don't need to believe in the backward ideas of ancient religions about how living things move and behave.

Our concept of immortatlity, soul, etc. is quite egotistical. We're so concerned that we will maintain our "ego/identity" in some sort of perpetual process. I don't think any of us are that important that we should be around forever. But enjoy your life and don't forget to leave a few offspring behind to keep the experiment going. They might enjoy their lives as much as you enjoy yours.

SixofNine

If every mention of, every thought of, and every concept of, the word soul were completely and totally vanquished from the earth tommorrow, we wouldn't even notice and life would go on exactly the same.

It is as inconsequential a word and concept as exist, even to the people who consider it important .

jmo, of course.

pseudoxristos

Ok, here's what I think about the ideas concerning the soul in the Bible.

The Hebrews initially did not believe that there was an immortal soul. Their original thoughts centered on the welfare of the tribe. As the tribe became more established, their thoughts naturally started to center more on the individuals.

Thoughts of individuals obtaining a resurrection eventually became popular; in part to rationalize the injustice of the wicked living a long and prosperous life, while the pious sometimes did not do as well.

In the time period between the OT and the NT, the Jews incorporated the Greek idea of an immortal soul. At the same time they retained many of their ideas concerning the resurrection. This lead to the confusion we currently call the New Testament.

The Rich Man and Lazarus story closely parallels many of the ideas in the non-canonical writings produced between the two Testaments. The thought that Abraham would receive the righteous in paradise (not really heaven, kind of a purgatory) is found in these writings. It was also believed that the one of the pleasures that the righteous would enjoy, would be the ability to observe the unrighteous suffer in torment, for they would both go to the same place but to different areas. A chasm would prevent them from crossing to the other area. In the end the righteous would be resurrected.

The dub claim that this is just a parable, just does not cut it. A parable uses a well known and understood concept to explain a new idea. These concepts of the afterlife were well known and were being used to explain something?

The canonical and non-canonical writings do not really provide a complete and coherent picture of these different ideas, but for some to say that the NT does not teach some concept of an immortal soul they must completely deny many of it’s scriptures. Yet the older idea of the resurrection is also there.

Personally, I would like to believe that we have a soul, but logically I cannot justify it with my belief in evolution. The point at which man or proto-man obtained a soul is problematic.

pseudo

Satanus

Pseudo

It's not a problem if you allow that animals may also have souls that carry on wherever they want after their bodies die.

SS

What About The Soul?

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