What is a Soul?

Question

what do you think?
how would you describe it?

Answer 1

.... the soul..... is us. its who we are.

the soul is who we are forever and ever.... it's our minds, and it is us without the body that contains it.

being created in the image of God (if you believe that stuff) we posses eternity in our hearts........ we are eternal beings. Therefore our soul........ is us.
Part of our souls is the consciousness that causes us to evaluate our existence........ *thinks* After our bodies stop working, we die........yet, we are still alive.
*thinks* so in reality, even after we as human beings 'die'.....and are burried, we really never die. We are still alive forever and ever. and we (our souls)end up somewhere of the only two choices available.... but the soul....... is us.

Answer 2

Good question.

If it's postulated that consciousness, or awareness, or sense of self resides in the soul, it's difficult to see how this can be reconciled with the complete oblivion which accompanies general anaesthesia. How could a straightforward chemical, injected into the bloodstream, anaesthetise a soul so that it effectively ceases to exist during this time? If consciousness, in the form of a soul, were some kind of supernatural faculty, it would seem implausible that it could be completely disabled by a chemical.

How about some of the other things which we regard as essential parts of what makes a person what they are? How about love, compassion, reason, empathy, memory, conscious thought, character, 'spirituality' and so on? Well, there is really no plausible doubt that all these things are properties of the physical brain - We can alter all of these properties very simply with alcohol or other drugs, and observe how they change in people who have suffered significant brain damage. Previously placid people become uncontrollably violent, intelligent people become imbeciles, and so on. Stimulate the brain artificially, and the subject reports corresponding mental activity, e.g. 'religious experiences'. We can see from brain research that all these things - thought, emotion, sensation, character traits and so on - are correlated with activity in the brain, and some things can be identified with specific areas of the brain.

So, if all these faculties and characteristics of what we regard as the 'person' reside in the physical brain, as seems to be undeniably the case, and they all cease when the person dies, then what is left to be attributed to a 'soul'? As far as I can ascertain: Nothing. If there is no part of us that can continue after death, then there is no 'afterlife'... and if there is no afterlife, then most of religion is null and void.

Answer 3

It is us, our real self. The body is not the house of the soul. The body is a portion of the soul, abandoned at "death", like the skin of a snake, but only for the small portion of self that exists here. The soul is not small, but much larger in many ways than the body, and extends in, but does not fully occupy the physical world, like a pencil stuck through a piece of paper. All you see as a creature of the physical world is the part that is actually through the paper, not the whole pencil.

So it is with the soul.

Answer 4

http://www.victorzammit.com/articles/nde&sixthsense.html

Quote:
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For his latest research, 60 patients at Southampton General Hospital's coronary care unit were interviewed after heart attacks had left them temporarily brain-dead. Seven reported near-death experiences - defined by characteristic features such as a feeling of leaving your body, going through a tunnel and entering an area of "love, bliss and consciousness".

"The significance of this is that after a cardiac arrest you lose consciousness within eight seconds; within 11 seconds the brain's rhythms become flat, and within 18 seconds there is no possibility of the brain creating a model of the world - so the brain is down," said Dr Fenwick.

"Yet whenever we asked people when their near-death experiences occurred, they said it was during unconsciousness. If that's true, their experience was occurring when there was no blood flowing through the brain - and consciousness would appear to exist outside the brain."

It could be argued that their experiences occurred in the few seconds between brain functions being restored and the return of consciousness. But recent research on a patient in the United States, where traces of electrical activity in the brain were closely monitored, suggested this was not the case.

"That study and other evidence points to the mind and brain not being identical, and it seems that the mind may operate in part outside the brain as a sort of field which works in the same way as a TV receiver receives programmes through the airwaves," said Dr Fenwick.
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Answer 5

your soul is at the very core of you and makes up all of who you are as a person. God gives everyone a soul it is up to you what you do with it. If you make the right choice God will grant you life eternally in heaven. It's up to you

Answer 6

I think a soul is a type of energy in the body.

Answer 7

The dust of the earth + breath of God (spirit) = a living soul.

Answer 8

Read the Holy Bible for yourself and find out. The answers are there for the reading. Get your self a New Living translation which is written in plain modern English.

Answer 9

An imaginary object created by people who want small donations from a large number of people.

These same people will also (ironically) "save" this soul of yours.

Answer 10

When spirit and body combine, you have a soul. When one dies, the spirit leaves the body and there is no soul.

Blessed be