Where do souls come from?

Hence, the ultimate goal of Buddhism is THE DESTRUCTION! OF REALITY! ITSELF!

My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.

It's more THE TRANSCENDENCE FROM REALITY in Theravada...Though Mahayana has its "We will save every living being from Samsara" thing so I suppose you could consider THE DESTRUCTION OF REALITY as being their goal...Theravada sort of praises the idea of saving everything but doesn't stress it or make it the goal...

edited 13th Jul '11 11:06:55 AM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Davros was just ahead of the curve.

I have beliefs on the subject. I do not think of "souls" as an object of some kind. Your soul is your connection to God (or whatever spiritual entity you think is behind the universe, if you think there is one). It's a channel, or a pathway, not a "thing" in and of itself. What passes through that channel is non-material, but manifests itself in your consciousness as "emotional energy", or perhaps "Passionate Potential" is better way of putting it. Your potential capacity to experience passion as you regard yourself, other people and universe. Finding a uniquely individual way to direct and express this energy is the reason why I think we are here. After death, your consciousness makes use of this channel to pass back to the realm of God (or whatever). Some people have stronger or deeper channels (greater bandwidth?) than others, but everyone has one. We can use them to connect to each other, as well.

Pretty sure this fails to correspond to the doctrine of any mainstream religion, but I could be wrong.

edited 13th Jul '11 5:33:53 PM by DeMarquis

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

@ Yej

Because it is the limitation of human observation. We could come to the limit of our observation and come to a conclusion that is true within the limit of our observation.

If a chicken crosses the road and nobody else is around to see it, does the road move beneath the chicken instead?

A factory in Cleveland.

This I agree with.

"Had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in jail for child abuse and murder." -Nick Bostrom

There isn't a distinction between the "limit of human observation" and "limit of theoretical observation." If it affects the universe in any way whatsoever, we can, in principle, "observe" it somehow.

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

Hell, Even dark matter, which doesn't appear to electromagnetically interact with ANYTHING (note: as far as I know, it is the only thing that does that) is observable via a number of means, even though we can't actually SEE it.

"Coffee! Coffeecoffeecoffee! Coffee! Not as strong as Meth-amphetamine, but it lets you keep your teeth!"

Whatever humans can observe directly or indirectly in practice or theory. Is still in the physical realm. Souls are beyond the physical realm. Because humans could never extend the observation to comprehend or observe souls, humans cannot have the refinement to detect the effect of souls on the physical realm.

If a chicken crosses the road and nobody else is around to see it, does the road move beneath the chicken instead?

Hm... Personally, I think the souls recycle themselves when they die, meaning that when someone dies, their soul goes into a baby that would be born soon after.

o_o but the physical realm is the only thing that exists.

"Coffee! Coffeecoffeecoffee! Coffee! Not as strong as Meth-amphetamine, but it lets you keep your teeth!"

It is anthropocentric to have such view, it is like an extended form of geocentricism, only now what the humans can perceive is the only existence there is. Nothing else is beyond that or whatever is outside cannot effect this world in any way.

edited 15th Jul '11 2:42:04 AM by Blurring

If a chicken crosses the road and nobody else is around to see it, does the road move beneath the chicken instead?

Correction. it's the only realm that we know for sure exists.

"I'll show you fear, there is no hell, only darkness." My twitter

If souls interact with the physical realm by piloting human bodies, it seems improbable that there's no other way they interact with it.

(Has anyone else floated the idea that Heaven's made of dark energy?)

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

Who inhabits it? Humans would fall straight through it. (Dark energy and dark matter are actually different things, but I'll assume you mean the invisible stuff, not the stuff that's mysteriously expanding the universe.)

But souls (ostensibly) interact with us. They can therefore be observed, in principle.

edited 15th Jul '11 4:37:26 AM by Yej

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

@blurring: Patently false, I cannot see many things, like UV rays, or individual cells, but I do not question their existence, instrumentation works just as well. But stating that there is some quasi-here dimension or whatever that provides us with consciousness requires empirical evidence, of which it has none.

edited 15th Jul '11 5:31:30 AM by Lanceleoghauni

"Coffee! Coffeecoffeecoffee! Coffee! Not as strong as Meth-amphetamine, but it lets you keep your teeth!"

This has all made me think of other things I have read and heard...

Souls exist within Samsara (The Realm of Desire and what we call reality) and can, according to some counts, be observed. The soul splitting too can be observed. Apparently Enlightened people gain the ability to see that as well as the many realms. So souls don't really have their own realm. They exist within all the realms of sentient beings.

Though I guess you could count the space where souls go during the soul splitting and soul merging part of rebirth the realm of souls. Their time there varies based on tradition. Theravadan schools believe that the process is nearly instantaneous. Others believe that there's a longer period of time or that souls can stubbornly refuse to split.

Soul splitting and soul merging sounds romantic I think...It's the near total destruction of yourself and the merging with other bits of destroyed beings to form an entirely new one. Even though your soul doesn't want to split and wants to exist as it is forever it is torn apart and mashed together with others pieces of souls.

We need to get other religious people in here for more description fun times...I should probably look up other views on the topic. Much more fun that debating whether or not they exist...Mmm. Descriptions.

edited 15th Jul '11 10:51:34 AM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Lance: A hundred years ago, we couldn't observe any of those things. Humans aren't Sufficiently Advanced Aliens yet. There's still shit out there that we have no clue about.

My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.

No but the gods are! I wonder what they do while ignoring us...Or maybe they're not even aware of our existence!

Hmm.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Not to be completely pedantic, but we were aware of cells in cork around 1660, and UV rays were discovered in 1801...

now if there were even tangential evidence to suggest that any of these things were capable of existing, I'd be less adamant, but while I must admit that although the statistical likelihood, given current data is nigh unto 0, it isn't zero.

I just find that almost all "Spiritual" phenomena can relatively easily be given material causes, if not exposed as hoaxes. I say almost simply because documentation for everything isn't available. Granted that we do not know everything, we can still most times say "That's a something, I just have no idea what it is"

Given that, spiritual belief to me simply seems foolish. The teachings perhaps have merit, Deific figures tend to be... less convincing.

"Coffee! Coffeecoffeecoffee! Coffee! Not as strong as Meth-amphetamine, but it lets you keep your teeth!"

Souls are detectable only to the specific individual each is associated with. i.e. the data is useless for purposes of independent verification.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

but... the individual isn't a representative sample size...

DOES NOT COMPUTE

"Coffee! Coffeecoffeecoffee! Coffee! Not as strong as Meth-amphetamine, but it lets you keep your teeth!"

They don't exist.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

The idea of multiple types of souls inhabiting one body is neat. China has this idea. Hun and Po are the two sorts the exist in the body. The Hun is able to leave the body and continues on after death. The Po is what animates the body and apparently dies after death. Or something.

Hun and Po are also part of the whole Yin and Yang thing and all beings have Hun and Po.

But where do they come from...

Also I need to go jab Rott so I can get the simplified version for Hinduism...Hmm.

edited 15th Jul '11 12:31:03 PM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah