What is the Soul?

Question

In honor of James Brown I pose this important question. :)

The concept of the soul is a very western religious concept, yet there seems to be little effort to explain exactly what the soul is. Can anyone explain what the soul is? What are its properties? What does it do? What is it used for? Where does it come from? Where is its location?

Actually Wonder Weirdo, the mind is very much provable by the cognitive science school of psychology. Reliable and repeatable measures have been created to indicate various types of cognition, attention & memory.

Answer 1

In reality, the soul is much like angels and god, it's something that we have yet to prove exists. Just so you know, the mind has not been proven to exist either.

Answer 2

Oh I have been explaining what the soul is in my answers to similar questions. No it is not a western concept.
The soul is that spark of the CREATOR that It threw off of its own body to make the souls of ALL THAT WAS AND WILL BE.
It animates the physical body when it enters into it . As it did after the CREATOR made the physical universe . And let those souls that wanted to to enter and see what was made. some entered into the physical forms that were there and enjoyed the sensations so much that they forgot that the could leave the forms and also where they came from.
The location has been the subject of inquiry for along time.
As a facet of the CREATOR it is everywhere.
If you are a Christian . Jesus said that if you can not find me with in yourself . You will not find me without.

Answer 3

The Soul According to the Bible:

The Hebrew word translated “soul” is ne´phesh, and it occurs 754 times in the Hebrew Scriptures. What does ne´phesh mean? According to The Dictionary of Bible and Religion, it “usually refers to the entire living being, to the whole individual.” This is borne out by the Bible’s description of the soul at Genesis 2:7: “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.” Note that the first man “came to be” a soul. That is to say, Adam did not have a soul; he was a soul, just as someone who becomes a doctor is a doctor. The word “soul,” then, here describes the whole person.

The word translated “soul” (psy·khe´) appears more than a hundred times in the Christian Greek Scriptures. Like ne´phesh this word often refers to the whole person. For example, consider the following statements: “My soul is troubled.” “Fear began to fall upon every soul.” (Acts 2:43) “Let every soul be in subjection to the superior authorities.” “Speak consolingly to the depressed souls.” “A few people, that is, eight souls, were carried safely through the water.” Clearly, psy·khe´, like ne´phesh, refers to the whole person. According to scholar Nigel Turner, this word “signifies what is characteristically human, the self, the material body having God’s rûah [spirit] breathed into it, The emphasis is on the whole self.”

in the Bible the word “soul” applies not only to humans but also to animals. For example, in describing the creation of sea creatures, Genesis 1:20 says that God commanded: “Let the waters swarm forth a swarm of living souls.” And on the next creative day, God said: “Let the earth put forth living souls according to their kinds, domestic animal and moving animal and wild beast of the earth according to its kind.”.

The word “soul” as used in the Bible refers to a person or an animal or to the life that a person or an animal enjoys. The Bible’s definition of the soul is simple, consistent, and unencumbered by the complicated philosophies and superstitions of men. That being the case, the urgent question that must be asked is, According to the Bible, what happens to the soul at death?

The Dead Are Unconscious:

The condition of the dead is made clear at Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10, where we read: “The dead know nothing, There is no pursuit, no plan, no knowledge or intelligence, within the grave.” (Moffatt) Death, therefore, is a state of nonexistence. The psalmist wrote that when a person dies, “he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts do perish.” (Psalm 146:4) The dead are unconscious, inactive.

When pronouncing sentence upon Adam, God stated: “Dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19) Before God formed him from the dust of the ground and gave him life, Adam did not exist. When he died, he returned to that state. His punishment was death, not a transfer to another realm. What, then, happened to his soul? Since in the Bible the word “soul” often simply refers to a person, when we say that Adam died, we are saying that the soul named Adam died. This might sound unusual to a person who believes in the immortality of the soul. However, the Bible states: “The soul that is sinning, it itself will die.” (Ezekiel 18:4) speaks of “a deceased soul” (a “corpse,” The Jerusalem Bible). And Nazirites were told not to come near “any dead soul” (“a dead body”)

Answer 4

soul (sl) KEY

NOUN:

The animating and vital principle in humans, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity.
The spiritual nature of humans, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.
The disembodied spirit of a dead human.
A human: "the homes of some nine hundred souls" (Garrison Keillor).
The central or integral part; the vital core: "It saddens me that this network ... may lose its soul, which is after all the quest for news" (Marvin Kalb).
A person considered as the perfect embodiment of an intangible quality; a personification: I am the very soul of discretion.
A person's emotional or moral nature: "An actor is ... often a soul which wishes to reveal itself to the world but dare not" (Alec Guinness).
A sense of ethnic pride among Black people and especially African Americans, expressed in areas such as language, social customs, religion, and music.
A strong, deeply felt emotion conveyed by a speaker, a performer, or an artist.
Soul music.

Answer 5

God made the body from the earth, and the soul came from the breath of God, it's what let's us feel overwhelming joy or sorrow, love or hate it gives us our conscience, our capacity to feel things emotionally. when any other animal does something I can't imagine it feels one way or another about it, is this because they lack a soul? On the other hand a dog dies protecting it's owner from an intruder, is this because it loves us or because we feed it. If it is love then I would have to say it has a soul, where else could love come from.

Answer 6

According to the Bible the soul is your body.
(Genesis 2:7) And 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.
(Exodus 21:23) But if a fatal accident should occur, then you must give soul for soul.

Now the spirit is the life force within you.

Answer 7

I think the concept of the soul is pretty universal and not necessarily limited to western thought. Many asians believe in ancestor worship and other native religions involve worshipping nature spirits.

As to what it is believed to be in a religious context, it is an allusion that we are more than just the sum of our physical parts.

Answer 8

First the soul is actually not a western belief, it is strongly present in the Eastern religons as well as the part of a persons existence that is connected to the Ultimate, the greater conscience, the Nirvana, the cycle of the universe. It is the soul that is reincarnated in Hinduism and Bhuddism. that connects one witht he forces of nature in Taoism and confucianism.

Secondly the soul as a non tangible thing has no properties. The purpose for the soul in western like in eastern religions it is the eternal life, the connection to God.

Theories on what makes up the soul abound everywhere in every religion, the one I personally feel is most accurate that God imprints a message on each persons heart and in that message contains the existence of our being, our greater purpose, that message is our soul and it is our job to search for it and interpret it.

The make up of the soul has been undertaken by almost every great philosophical thinker since Plato defining it from everthing from the breath of God to the image of the heart.

This I believe does answer all of your questions, maybe not how you would like them to be answered, but it does answer them.

Answer 9

the soul is what ,makes up the person you are, it is you..
your attitude your beliefs your whole being.. I have worked as an emergency technician for 6 years, and I have seen many people die, i believe the actual body is the shell that carries the person's soul, and that when you die your soul leaves the body (which is just a shell)...

Answer 10

Your soul is your body. God breathe through Adam's nostrils and he became a living soul. The soul itself will die, it says this several times in the bible.

Answer 11

Your soul is simply your body. Did you ever hear the expression" poor ole soul" The Bible says the soul that sinneth, it in itself shall die. There are many scriptures that talk about the soul as being merely our living body.