Be Excellent To Each Other

haha I went on the this site is dedicated to fifi bit which has tag line of "Today you are sitting on God's lap instead of mine.'

Impossible, animals don't have souls.

Caused a bit of problems, theologically speaking, that, as the 0.1% difference between chimps DNA and humans must be the bit that has the soul so yeah.

But animal do have souls and all of them are on god's lap does that make god a crazy spinster lady?

Don't tell me that Shin is God.

No, that's Shin.

Which would be fine if DNA was all that went into making a person.

Allegedly, so, yes. To make it a bit easier, I've bolded the important bit...

Emboldened.

Wel, it's not hard to prove in practice. Identical Twins, not the same people. Differences arise whether people have the same DNA, as external differences will lead to different chemical makeups, and dcause the brain to grow in different ways.

Theologically speaking, I don't see why it would cause a problem, given God isn't matter, and so why should we be entirely governed by our material makeup. It's an entire non-issue.

Presumably this is why it isn't a theological problem that ginger kids have no souls, then?

With the greatest of respect, I fear my learned friend is missing the point.

Animals do not have souls.

Humans have souls

Souls got to heaven.

Ergo, only souls can exist in heaven.

Ergo, the souls there MUST be human

Since chimp DNA is 99.9% identical to Human DNA, the thing that makes humans have souls, but not Chimps, must lie in that 0.1%. Which means, something along the lines of a soul must be contained therein.

What happens if one adds the soul containing part of that 0.1% to a chimp?

See the problem, now?

No, cos God can do what he likes, see.

You're making the assumption that because there is only a 0.1% difference between human DNA and Chimp DNA that there is only a 0.1% difference between humans and chimps. Were there such a thing as a soul, it may be the case that the first time you pick up your own poo and throw it at someone, your soul dies in shame.

Hence heaven contains no-one from Birmingham.

God sez:



PS we did awesome contract stuff today, I really should not get quite so excited over it all.

In which case, there'd be stillborn chimps in heaven.

I was obviously making a somewhat non-serious comparison. My point is, that if you are speculating on souls, you are speculating on the immaterial. To then draw conclusions based on the solely material comparison of genetic makeup is therefore meaningless.

Do you wish to be the heartless cunt that tells them what are waiting up in heaven that Fifi isn't going to come and see them anytime, soon?

I see where you're coming from, but it's still flawed reasoning. You're assuming that it's the DNA which imparts the soul. By similar logic you could argue that some people have had sufficient DNA damage that they don't have a soul, which would be a very dangerous thing for someone to believe. (I hasten to add, I don't think that you believe that, only that it's the ultimate conclusion from that logic)

More simply, the factors that define whether one has a soul are not DNA based. DNA is not the only thing that we impart to our offspring, they also get all kinds of proteins, lipids etc. A soul, if such you want to call it, would also be one of the things passed on, a direct legacy from the first person to be given one.

You're the one that said animals don't have souls. I was the one saying that a DNA comparison is a meaningless grounding for drawing that conclusion.

OK, take a human embryo, newly fertilized. Remove DNA. Impart Chimp DNA. In the event of a birth, would the resultant creature have a soul?

Can we keep this pseudo-philosophical posturing out of Pets Corner please?

If you deconstruct something, it can't be perfectly reconstructed, sometimes it can't be reconstructed at all.

@Myp - Split it off into a new topic if you wish, things go off topic all the time, at least this hasn't descended into yet another tedious pun-fest, as is all too common.

I cannae do it, cap'n. I dinnae have the pooer.

I think there's still a few leftovers in the old thread.

The only thing I want to say about souls is this. But it will test my ability with prose - especially when I'm rushing. 'Cos I'm a bit rubbish. Anyway...

It's about the proposal that the body is physical, but the soul is metaphysical and hence can not be measured or seen, and so is outside the realm of science. That it sits somewhere above our heads or behind our eyes and plays a role in our life and directs it, but yet can survive it too. Not everyones definition of a soul is the equivilent to that of course (which says a lot on it's own) but that is the type of soul that I am talking about here.

Now,

• In physics every action has a reaction, and conservation of energy and mass and momentum all play a role in every reaction. In other words if you add every force acting on an object. Whether it be A collision in the LHC at CERN or a nerve firing then adding everything that came out up, you can work out what went in. So the body and it's actions are all physical. An arm moves, because a muscle tenses. A muscle tenses because cell contract. Cells contract because a flow of electrons reaches them. A flow of electrons reaches them because the neurons in the brain fire them off.
  
• Now for a soul to have any interaction with the physical word. For it to influence our actions (which can be observed by the movement of our hands) or our thoughts (which can be observed and decoded by recording the electron flows in our brains) then at some point this metaphysical soul must interface with the physical body. Even if that is as minuscule and insignificant as occasionally altering the random quantum chance of an electron tunneling, or whatever. Scientists can look at brain patterns and decode the thoughts of the person who's brain they reside in. They can tell the difference between thinking about a boat or a house. It's basic early stuff but it is there. As such the consciousness is at least in part located in the brain. So if a metaphysical-survives-death soul exists it must influence that brain.

Now those 2 bullet points stand in opposition. If the metaphysical soul interacts with my physical body in any way. Even just an electron in my body or a quantum wave function, then the balance between what goes in and what comes out is broken. It no longer adds up. The conservation of energy, momentum, whatever falls apart.

Now that isn't too say that this metaphysical soul doesn't exist. Maybe it does. And maybe that is what it does indeed do. But, in my opinion, what that does do is drag it, by definition back into the physical world.

If the soul, as I defined above, exists then its presence is detectable.

That might not sound important or interesting to people (or maybe Hello Titler) but I think it's tremendously important. For the soul to influence me in any way then it enters the realm of science, and thus is confined by the rules of science, and I can't see anyway it can avoid that.

Fuck OFF!
She didn't!

Yep. Don't forget spunk and an egg.

Also: What about this!

They Lied

Malc

What about this?

More Lies

Malc

Surely?

where would people sit? can you sit in heaven?

The juxtaposition of Lave's post followed by Zardoz's has had me chuckling for about five minutes. Well done, chaps.

It's not a theory, it's an argument as to why humans have souls, according to some, but animals don't, with the problem of the great apes.

What is a soul? I got accused by someone on here or WoS of not having one because I said I didn't like Green Wing. Sounds like a pretty pointless thing to have really.

I have one on the bottom of my shoe in Korea. It's my Seoul sole sole soul.

It's what goes/doesn't go to the Rainbow Bridge when people/pets die.

You're an ar-soul.

Malc

Sorry - but you've missed the obvious here. If there is such a thing as the soul, it's the thingy that goes up to see God when you die, right? That's what a soul *is* (in the most childishly simplistic explanation possible). Therefore, if souls exist, they're a creature of God, and God, being omnipotent by his/her very defintion, doesn't have to follow a single physical law, seeing as he made them all. You can't apply science to the divine.

Are we talking about the soul in the strictest religious sense, or in any kind of quasi-spiritualist fashion?

Surely the former, as the latter is meaningless, given that a hippy's "soul" does nothing.

Is James Browns soul bigger than everyone elses?

There's actually a halfway interesting discussion to be had in this thread (which was split out for the discussiuon to be had), but it's getting drowned out a bit, chaps. I can see Dave's point on the puns, tbh.

Heavy-handed modding again. *makes mark in black book*

If you can't stand the puns, get out of the, er, pun factory?

Soul is just a silly word for consciousness isn't it? People hope that when they die everything doesn't stop so they rename consciousness to soul and declare that it is somehow able to function independently of their brains.

Um, sort of. Except that the religious idea of a "soul" is that it's the consciousness plus that spark of divinity that all goes up to heaven for ever and ever and ever. I'd never considered "soul" to be non-religious term, to be honest.