If you do, then what exactly defines a soul in your view?
No.
I’m agnostic, so obviously my view on that is that we simply don’t know.
Something I take some comfort in is that regardless of what your soul does upon death in the short term (whether it’s an afterlife of some sort that we don’t understand, a nihilistic void of nothingness, reincarnation as the soul attaches to a newly created body somewhere else in the world… whatever, no one alive truly knows or could ever know), science believes in a sort of reincarnation.
Where eventually as step one, everything that ever was ends up in black holes, and those black holes eventually decay until the universe is nothing but a uniform background of unchanging radiation, referred to as the heat death of the universe (because nothing can really physically change on macroscopic scales anymore, in order to convert energy into new heat).
And then, after ridiculously long time periods, quantum fluctuations cause the machinery of the universe to start back up again, everything re-forms, and eventually our universe ends up back where it started at the beginning of your life.
So it’s possible that you will live again, and again, and again, forever, just with no ability to remember how it went down last time. And an incredibly long wait between lifetimes (though, to be fair, if death is a nihilistic void for each person, that wait is only going to feel like two seconds and bam, you’re right back in the womb).
So if nothing else, at least there’s that.
A soul is at best a description of the electrical and quantum interactions that take place in our brain, a personified phenotype of the sum of these things occurring in our head (and to a degree our eyes, mouth, ears, and skin).
I don’t believe in the soul in the traditional sense as it implies that there is one version of me – is my soul my 9yo self, my 20-something alcoholic self, the self as of this moment, or my Alzheimer’s-ridden self when I die? If it’s supposed to be a “perfect” version of me when I pass, then it’s kind of funny, because my spirit is, in a sense, a version of me that I’ve never actually met and wouldn’t recognize.
No. Souls dont exist.
Answering my own question: I’ve always identified as an atheist but I still believe there’s more to us than just atoms.
In my view, there’s something in our consciousness that gives you identity and defines who you are, why you perceive the flow of time and the sequence of events that happens to a specific person (you). It’s why from my perspective I’m the main character of my story and everyone else is essentially an NPC.
This is what I would call a soul. I don’t believe they’re immortal or anything, however.
I’d imagine you’re rather unique. I have a hard time imagining atheists believing in something as nebulous as a soul.
EDIT: Please don’t downvote OP, if anything this is a more interesting discussion thread than just “No, we’re just meat and electricity”
Tbf I don’t see anything weird in being an atheist and believing in souls in the philosophical sense, as a part of consciousness in humans, animals and perhaps advanced AI in the future (but it’s a whole different topic) that lets us experience reality rather than being glorified chunks of matter which just exist.
Maybe there’s a better term than soul for this, but it has nothing to do with the concept of afterlife.
No. I believe soul is a human construct that is meant to be self defense mechanism to feel like we are special instead of bunch of meat with chemicals.
No
I don’t believe in a soul that’s separate from the body, or that lives on afterward. But the way that “inanimate” matter can spin up thoughts and feelings and a consistent personal experience that can last for decades… It’s almost fair to call that thing a soul. It’s fair to talk about nurturing your soul and growing a soul.
“Soul” is just consciousness. Which many people seem to equate to the brain here.
There is 0 scientific evidence that consciousness has anything to do with our brains. Much to the contrary actually.
Consciousness truly is one of the biggest mysteries of life. We all experience it, but the more you observe it, the less you can find it.
It may feel at first as it’s a phenomena of the brain, of the mind. But soon after you start paying really close attention to it, you realize that consciousness is behind the mind. It’s underneath it.
It observes the mind. It observes everything. And that’s what it is. Perceiving. Aware of everything.
Its the only indivisible and irreducible thing in the universe that we ever found. Consciousness just is. It is the awareness in you. It is the awareness in everything.
When we crack consciousness, all these talks of “souls”, “god”, “atheism”, will seem just silly tbh.
There is 0 scientific evidence that consciousness has anything to do with our brains. Much to the contrary actually.
Source? Everything I’ve read on the topic suggests that it’s to do with the brain - damaged brain = no consciousness, even if the rest of the body fine.
Its the only indivisible and irreducible thing in the universe that we ever found. Consciousness just is.
Elementary particles would like a word.
Curious, why did you group agnostics together with atheists?
No.
I think that people are attracted to the idea of a soul because they would like to think that there is something unchanging about them. A desire for constancy in an inconstant world.
What I have experienced wild changes in my own behavior, thoughts, desires, fears, drives, and whatever-might-have-you. Certainly, I am not the same person I was when I was an infant or when I was a child or when I was a young man or - I suppose in a more subtle way - I will be after I finish posting this and get some lunch.
I argue with myself. Blame myself. Bargain with myself. Pump myself up. All as though there are different selves within me at all times. By this I conclude that I don’t really have a self, but more of a collection of personalities, characteristics, and traits that are more or less dominant at any given moment. I am large, I contain (thank you Walt) multitudes.
I am comfortable with my inconstancy and inconsistencies. Generally at peace about having selves rather than a self.
I see no evidence of a soul. And I haven’t the need for one that would drive me to delude myself into thinking I have one nonetheless.
I want to believe in the existence of souls, however ultimately we just don’t have the evidence to back it up.
It’s kind of really hard to say if I belive in something or not when you don’t offer a definition, I don’t believe in anything outside of the brain, consiousness and what makes me me, which could be a definition of soul, I do believe in, but again, that’s just a result of my brain braining.
Word games. “God” and “Soul” are so ill-defined you can get literally anyone to agree that those “things” (thinks?) exist. If I define “soul” as “repeating emergent pattern of genetically and environmentally internal state and observable behaviour in a sentient species” I maybe could even get some people in this community to agree that such a concept exists. If I use a more religious definition like “magic non physical entity bestowed by an eternal god” all I would get is a resounding “NOO!”. It is the memetics strength of those concepts by being incredibly flexible and vague that will ensure their ongoing use and existence - and questions like this one.
