What is a soul?

Question

I know this must be a common question but humor me. What is a soul, define a soul. Physical or metaphysical definition. Also how do you know you have a soul, can you prove that I have one too?

You can take your time on this one.
Thanks in andvances.

Answer 1

i think its a serious topic and this question needs a long answer..

Science Cannot Define or Perceive the Spirit

All matter is composed of atoms, and atoms are made up of more minute particles. But the spirit is a simple, noncompound entity, invisible but knowable through its manifestations in this world. We accept its existence and see its manifestations, but cannot know its nature. Such ignorance, however, does not negate its existence.

We see with our eyes. Although the main center of sight is located in the brain, the brain does not see. You do not say: “My brain sees,” but rather: “I see.” But what is this “I”? Does it have a brain, a heart, and other organs and limbs? Why are we unable to move when we die, although all our organs and limbs are there? Does a factory operate by itself, or does something else (i.e., electricity) cause it to work?

Any disconnect between the factory and its electrical source can reduce the factory to a heap of junk. Is this comparable to the spirit–body relationship? When death severs this connection, the body must be disposed of quickly, before it begins to rot and decompose.

The spirit is not an electrical power, but rather a conscious, powerful thing that learns and thinks, senses and reasons. It develops continually, usually in parallel with the body’s physical development, as well as mentally and spiritually through learning and reflection, belief and worship. As the spirit determines a person’s character, nature, or identity, each person is unique, although all of us are created from the same elements.

The Spirit Needs Our Body

The spirit must use material means to be manifested and function here. As the body cannot contact the World of Symbols or Immaterial Forms, the spirit cannot contact this world if there is no human heart, brain, or other bodily organs and limbs to mediate. The spirit functions through the body’s nerves, cells, and other elements. Therefore, if bodily systems or organs go awry, the spirit becomes disconnected and unable to command the body. Death occurs if this failure or illness severs the spirit–body relationship. Some meaningless hand or finger movements can be produced by stimulating certain areas of the brain, but these are only automatic bodily responses. The body needs the spirit, which is conscious and has free will, to produce meaningful movements.

Although psychoanalysts have offered explanations for dreams, dreams cannot be said to consist of the subconscious mind’s jumbled activities. Almost everyone has had true dreams. Many scientific or technological discoveries were seen first in dreams. Therefore, dreams point to something—the spirit—within us that can see in a different way while we sleep. Although the spirit sees with our eyes, smells with our nose, hears with our ears and so on, some people can see with their fingers or the tips of their noses, and smell with their heels.
Our face opens on our inner world, for it discloses our character. Psychologists assert that almost all movements reveal character. Such observations resulted in physiognomy, the art of judging character from facial features. The spirit determines these features.

Our body’s cells are renewed continuously. Every day, millions of cells die and are replaced. Biologists say that all bodily cells are renewed every 6 months, and yet the face’s main features do not change. We recognize individuals through their unchanging facial features and fingerprints. A finger’s cells change, but its print never does. Each individual’s unique spirit stabilizes these distinguishing features.

Our Spirit Makes Us Unique

Our body experiences uninterrupted change via physical growth and development until a certain period, gradually becoming stronger and more perfect. Decay begins when this growth stops. Unlike our body, we grow in learning and development, decay spiritually and intellectually, or stop and change direction while developing or decaying. Our moral, spiritual, and intellectual education does not depend on our bodily changes.

Furthermore, our physical structure does not affect our moral, spiritual, and intellectual differences. Although composed of the same elements, we are morally and intellectually unique. Which part receives this moral and intellectual education? Which part is trained physically? Is physical training related to learning or moral and intellectual education? Are physically well-developed people smarter and more moral than others? If not, and if physical training or development do not affect our scientific, moral, and intellectual level, why should we not accept the spirit’s existence? How can we attribute learning and moral and intellectual education to the brain’s biochemical processes?

Our physical changes engender no parallel changes in our character, morality, or thinking. How can we explain this, other than by recognizing the spirit and its function as the center of thinking and feeling, choosing and deciding, learning and forming opinions and preferences, and causing character differences?

Our Spirit Feels and Believes or Denies

Each person has innumerable complex feelings: love and hate, happiness and sadness, hope and despair, and so on. We like and dislike, appreciate and disregard, experience fear and timidity as well as encouragement and enthusiasm. We repent, become excited, and long for various things. We have hundreds of words that express human feelings. Moreover, we do not all “feel” the same way.

We may reflect on our surroundings, the beauty of creation, develop ourselves through learning, compare and reason, and thus believe in the Creator. Worshipping and following His Commandments develops us morally and spiritually until we are perfected. How can we explain this if we do not have a conscious spirit? Can we attribute them to the brain’s biochemical processes?

If we are no more than a physical entity and attribute all our movements to the brain’s biochemical processes, why should we obey any laws? As our body is renewed every 6 months, the following conversation would be entirely logical:
- Judge: When did you murder the deceased?
- Defendant: One year ago.
- Judge: The murder was committed a year ago. The defendant’s cells, including those of his trigger finger, have been replaced. As the actual murderer cannot be punished, the jury should vote for acquittal.

How can anyone be no more than a physical entity, made up of movements, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and decisions due to the brain’s biochemical processes? Such assertions are untenable. The main part of our being is our living and conscious spirit, which feels, thinks, believes, wills, decides, and uses the body to enact its decisions.

The Spirit Is the Basis of Human Life

God acts in this world through causes. However, in many other worlds (e.g., those of ideas, symbols or immaterial forms, the inner dimensions of things, and spirits), He acts directly, and matter and causes do not exist. The spirit is breathed into the embryo directly, making it a direct manifestation of the Divine Name the All-Living and therefore the basis of human life. Like natural laws, which issue from the same realm as the spirit, the spirit is invisible and known through its manifestations.

In this world, matter is refined in favor of life. A lifeless body is lonely, passive, and static. But life enables a bee to interact with almost the entire world so that it can say: “This world is my garden, and flowers are my business partners.” The smaller a living body is, the more active, astonishing, and powerful life is. Compare a bee, a fly, or even a micro-organism with an elephant. The more refined matter is, the more active and powerful the body is. For example, burning wood produces flame and carbon, and heated water vaporizes. We cannot see the electrical energy in the atomic and subatomic worlds, but we know of its presence and power though its manifestations.

And so existence is not limited to this world. Rather, this world is only the apparent, mutable, and unstable dimension of existence, behind which lies the pure, invisible dimension that uses matter to be seen and known. As the spirit belongs to that dimension, it is pure and invisible.
The following arguments for the spirit’s existence also point to the Creator’s existence:

• Just as our body needs the spirit to command and govern it, the universe needs God to bring it into existence and to command and govern it.

• Each body has one spirit that makes it alive and governs it. So there must be a single Lord, without partner, to create and govern the universe. Otherwise, disaster and confusion are inevitable.

• The spirit is not located in a specific bodily place or part. It may even leave the body and, as while dreaming, maintain its connection via an attached cord. Likewise, God Almighty is not contained by time or space. He is always present everywhere and nowhere, whereas the spirit is in the body and contained by time and space.

• There is only one sun, and the world is far from it. However, the sun is omnipresent through its heat and light, and through its reflection can even be in every transparent thing. Therefore we say it is nearer to things than things are to themselves. The spirit has the same relation with the body and each cell. This analogy may help us understand God’s relation with existence. He controls and directs all things at once like one thing, and although we are infinitely far from Him, He is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.

• The spirit is invisible and its nature is unknown. In the same way, we cannot think of or imagine God as He really is, for His Essence cannot be known. Like the spirit, God Almighty is known through the manifestations of His Names, Attributes, and Essence

Answer 2

Souls, earthly things that were created in the beginning and are still being created now.

So your body is your soul fact! Real matter, the hard stuff is found at the centre of a black hole and you thought you were made of "hard stuff" hm. Fact, the soul, the body is nearly entirely energy, ask any physicist!

Your spirit is the good or evil in you... the light or the dark

Your mind is that which is trying to link the two!

Join the two and see with your mind! see what you're missing!

Answer 3

We don't have souls. We ARE souls.

Genesis2:7;
.... and the man came to be a living soul.

1 Cor 15:45,
..... the first man Adam became a living soul.

Jos 11:11,
And they went strikking every soul that was in it with the edge of the sword...... No breathing thing at all was left over,....

Acts 27:37
Now, all together, we souls in the boat were two hundred and seventy six

Lev 7:18
.... and the soul that eats from it will answer for his error.

Eze 18:4
Look! All the souls-to me they belong. As the soul of the father so likewise the soul of the son-to me they belong.The soul that is sinning-it itself will die.

Lev 17:11
For the soul of the flesh is in the blood.....

Is the Soul Immortal?

To answer this question, let us turn to the highest authority on the subject—the inspired Word of the Creator. In the very first book of the Bible, Genesis, we learn the accurate meaning of "soul." Regarding the creation of the first man, Adam, the Bible says: "Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man came to be a living soul." (Genesis 2:7) Clearly, the soul is not what a man has but what he is. The Hebrew word used here for soul is ne'phesh. It occurs some 700 times in the Bible, and it never refers to a separate and ethereal part of a human but always to something tangible and physical.—Job 6:7; Psalm 35:13; 107:9; 119:28.

What happens to the soul at death? Consider what happened to Adam at his death. When he sinned, God told him: "You [will] return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return." (Genesis 3:19) Think of what that means. Before God created him from the dust, Adam did not exist. After his death, Adam returned to the same state of nonexistence.

Simply stated, the Bible teaches that death is the opposite of life. At Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10, we read: "The living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten. All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol, the place to which you are going."

This means that the dead are unable to do or feel anything. They no longer have any thoughts, nor do they remember anything. The psalmist states: "Do not put your trust in nobles, nor in the son of earthling man, to whom no salvation belongs. His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts do perish."—Psalm 146:3, 4.

The Bible clearly shows that at death the soul does not move on to another body, but it dies. "The soul that is sinning—it itself will die," the Bible emphatically states. (Ezekiel 18:4, 20; Acts 3:23; Revelation 16:3) Thus, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul—the very foundation of the theory of reincarnation—does not find any support in the Scriptures. Without it, the theory collapses.

Answer 4

A soul is the combination of a spirit and a body. At death these two are separated, only the spirit continues.

Answer 5

Soul is an indoor arena football team that plays in Philadelphia and owned by Jon Bon Jovi.

Answer 6

your soul is the part of you that feels emotional pain

Answer 7

a soul is a thing which u dont have !!

Answer 8

well I don't believe we have "souls".
Souls are supposedly your spirit that lives on after you die...

Answer 9

a lot of people are missing it, thats half the trouble these days!!

Answer 10

i think its the essence of life