I was just wondering if the Ex-JW's here now believe you have a soul, or do you still hold on to the Borgs claims of man/woman not having a soul. I for one know we do.
Man Has a Soul. What do You Believe Now?
by Treborr Jones 13 Replies latest jw friends
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hybridous
I always thought that this particular JW teaching had some credibility. I always defined a soul as a 'piece' of life, as a human or animal. And when a human or animal dies, that particular 'piece' of life is extinguished.
Over the years though, I've taken that premise to its logical conclusion and come up on some tough questions. If a man or a dog is a soul (a 'piece' of life, that is), what about single celled organisms? And if single celled organisms are souls, what about the millions and millions of cells that make up a more complex organism, like a human or a dog? Do every one of my body cells have a soul, or are they a soul? And what about the person called Hybridous? Is my soul a conglomerate of all those millions of souls of my cells? There's really no end to the questions.
May I ask how you know that I have a soul?
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Skimmer
Perhaps things are clearer if you consider instead that you ARE a soul that temporarily happens to have a body.
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hybridous
Skimmer, that sounds like a combination of JW and traditional Christian doctrine.
The questions now raised are:
1. Where and what were my soul before I had this body? Did I exist?
2. Does your premise hold for all creatures on this planet? From apes, dogs and cats, down to paramecium and bacteriophages and such...if not, where's the cut-off point?
Not playing around with you, but these are real questions that I ask.
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Seeker
If you mean by 'soul' a person, a lifeforce, a consciousness, then I'm with you. If you mean an immortal soul, there is a distinct lack of evidence for this, and thus I do not believe it. However, I'm willing to admit I don't know otherwise, and if I die and my consciousness somehow lives on, I'll accept that as a bonus. But for now, no evidence = no belief.
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philo
I find it a dodgy question. Its as impossible for me to answer as asking whether I have a have.
philo
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Skimmer
Hello hybridous:
1) A soul has no pre-existence apart from a physical body. It comes into existence at conception (or fission for less complex life forms.)
2) A human soul is immortal while others are not as a human soul has at least the potential for self consciousness and an ability to receive an understanding of God.
Catholic teaching considers evolution as an acceptable belief (it is taught in all Catholic schools) and nearly all Catholics I have known agree that humans and other primates had shared ancestors in geologically recent time.
There was some point of discontinuity in hominid evolution where consciousness appeared and that was the branching point.
Catholics generally believe the account of human creation in the first few chapters of Genesis to be nearly all figurative. But they do teach that at one point there was a literal Adam and Eve who are the parents of humanity. Whether this happened thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of years ago is more of a scientific question instead of a theological one and Catholics leave science to the scientists.
Interestingly, there have been reports in the past couple of years detailing DNA nucleotide drift (the molecular clock) in humans that lend credence to a single female ancestor for the entire human species. (She is jokingly called "Eve" in the journal articles.) Could this be the case? If so, could she have had a single mate?
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drahcir yarrum
I am now absolutely apathetic as to whether man is a soul or has a soul. Since, aside from faith, one cannot know rationally if there is life after death, I consider the entire issue as irrelevant.
I tend to believe that we all have one shot at this thing we call life and if we squander it, then we have simply squandered it. Who cares? History should have convinced us by now that life isn't sacred, it's cheap. Every minute of every day, people die in ways horrible and peaceful.
I sometimes think that as I get older I'm acting too warm and fuzzy.
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Zero
Jehovah's Witnesses' teaching about the soul did not originate with the Watchtower. This is one that Russell adapted from Adventists. Various other sects through the centuries have viewed soul in the Bible the same as the Watchtower. Having given it some independent study, it is one of the very few things I agree with the Watchtower on as far as how it was viewed by the Bible writers.
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JanH
Skimmer,
There was some point of discontinuity in hominid evolution where consciousness appeared and that was the branching point.
You are aware, I am sure, that this is an assertion with no supporting evidence whatsoever.
Interestingly, there have been reports in the past couple of years detailing DNA nucleotide drift (the molecular clock) in humans that lend credence to a single female ancestor for the entire human species. (She is jokingly called "Eve" in the journal articles.) Could this be the case? If so, could she have had a single mate?
This is a misunderstanding of the whole concept. I sometimes lament that biologers have this like of metaphors. Even as a joke, as you correctly note that it is, the term "mitochondrial Eve" is very vulnerable to misunderstandings, especially among those who want to take the Biblical creation myth fully or half literally.
What is Mitochondrial Eve? If you look back over the generations, you will have four grandparents, two of which are women. One of them is the mother of your mother, and thus your one and only grandparent in a purely maternal line. Every generation back will have one and only one such person. This goes all the way back to the time when sexual procreation first developed.
It is also the fact that the further you go back in time, the higher proportion of the population has no ancestors currently living. Not too far back, evolutionary speaking, you could find a single woman (and perhaps one man, but we cannot know) who proved to be the parent of all currently living human beings. This person was not very remarkable. The genes were healthy, sure, but mostly this survival was due to individual cunning of many of her later descendants and a heck of a lot of luck.
Was this the mitochondiral Eve? No. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the mother only; the male's mitochondria is in the lost tail of the sperm cell and do not give anything to the offspring (except, arguably, a good headstart!). Thus, the "random" changes in the DNA that happens due to mutation will not be messed up by sexual mixing. It is therefor easier to make a very good estimate of how many changes have been made to this DNA, since the rate of mutations is more or less constant, and thus estimate how far apart species now living once drifted apart.
This means it is possible to estimate when the latest female in a single maternal line actually lived. This woman is who they called called "mitochondiral Eve". She was certainly human like you and me, and not more unique than her siblings, and not notably unlike her parents or their parents again. As noted, luck and individual cunning in later generations made this woman, ignorant about her fate, the mother of all currently living humans in the purely maternal line. Since there were, given the number of generations, millions more ways to be an ancestor than through a purely maternal line, it is very certain that this woman was not the most recent common ancestor to all presently living humans. She is scientifically interesting for reasons having to do with DNA research only, but that she existed is an absolutely trivial fact, like saying you once had one great grandmother in the maternal line.
That some religionists have taken this to mean anything religiously significant stems purely from the fact that some scientist had a bit too strong sense of metaphor.
- Jan
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Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. [Ambrose Bierce, The Devil´s Dictionary, 1911]