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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Putnam]

How did you come to the conclusion that souls exist at all?

[Loud Whispers]

By consulting a shekoracle

[Rolepgeek]

...well would you look at that.

Go Catholicism - I've independently derived one of your conclusions!

That's basically what I think of hell. It's that if you hate love, to be with love would be abhorrent, so would a loving person force an abhorrent thing on someone?

But then that begs the question of would it be hell if that's what you want? Wouldn't a loving God thus do whatever would bring you the most happiness by that logic? Come to think of it, it would probably be better in the long run to be with God. Can't souls change over time? Otherwise, souls are either intrinsically good or evil - that I reject. So even that makes no sense.

aaaaaaand now I'm feeling agnostic again.

Spoiler: begs the question (click to show/hide)

I am done being a prescriptivist nazi! Grammar and spelling, yes, but not words that are defined counter to their intuitive use. So I figured I would rebel against the Nazi Communist Fascist prescriptivists and use a word incorrectly.

If they actually hated love (rather than just not giving a shot in particular about the Abrahamic god in particular), they would probably prefer to be treated as if you didn't love them, which means that rather than not having them with you and thus subjected to something that hate, you should do exactly that.

I just stick with the Misotheist's Wager anyway: if I live a good life and try to help people, and there is a God, then either I will be allowed into heaven, or God is a dick and I probably wouldn't want to be with Him anyway, so it's probably for the best. :p

But don't forget purgatory. I think I'd be alright with purgatory. I know I'm certainly not perfect after all.

[Orange Wizard]

How did you come to the conclusion that souls exist at all?

The idea of souls comes from people needed some sort of eternal existence to play in with the eternalness of God. IMO this is much more easily described by saying that your body will be reassembled and not die again.
The word soul is used in the Bible, but the translation is frequently interchangeable with "heart" or "inmost being".
Most churches would consider the idea of a soul to be fairly crucial.

On the topic of hell, are Christians required to believe that there is a hell that God kicks people to if they're bad?

The Vatican definitely supports the doctrine of hell. Most other denominations will also support it. The main groups that deny hell being a thing are the feel-good baptist and pentecostal churches where everything is "Jesus loves you!" and no theology to speak of.

Hell is a fairly important concept to Christianity. I wouldn't say it's required, but denying the doctrine will almost always overlap with or be indicative of some more serious heresy.

But don't forget purgatory. I think I'd be alright with purgatory. I know I'm certainly not perfect after all.

Purgatory is a purely Catholic idea and doesn't have any Biblical support, although there might be something in the apocryphal books (i.e. in the Catholic Bible but not others) that I'm not aware of.

[Putnam]

I don't see the point of believing in one if you're not churchy, though.

[TempAcc]

The soul is a pretty dang old concept, and nah, you don't have to be a churchy person to believe in the soul. The soul was already an accepted/discussed topic among greek philosophers since pre-socratic times, and its one of those concepts that has popped up indepedently in almost pretty much every culture ever.

How did the concept first became a thing, nobody is really sure.

[Putnam]

That was before we got hard evidence that one's entire person is stored in the brain (which the Greek philosophers naturally thought was an organ for cooling the blood), though.

[TempAcc]

We have as much hard evidence about how the universe works at a quantum level as there are coins inside a hobos pocket, though. We dont even know how exactly the brain actualy works (or even why we actualy need to sleep, other then the fact we die if we dont), so assuming we know everything about something, even our own bodies, is kinda like a belief system on its own :v

[Putnam]

I didn't say we know everything, not even remotely. We see that brain damage leads fundamental personality changes, which precludes some sort of fundamental personality Thing.

[TheBiggerFish]

We die if we don't sleep?

...How did anyone find that out?!

[Frumple]

I didn't say we know everything, not even remotely. We see that brain damage leads fundamental personality changes, which precludes some sort of fundamental personality Thing.

It doesn't, actually. Folks supporting the concept of souls have noted fairly easily that brain damage leading to personality changes just means, at most, that the brain is something like a receiver, and it's the connection between body and soul that's changing rather than the soul itself. Which still exists, of course.

And they died, T. Fatal insomnia is a thing.

[TheBiggerFish]

...

Yikes.

[Putnam]

I didn't say we know everything, not even remotely. We see that brain damage leads fundamental personality changes, which precludes some sort of fundamental personality Thing.

It doesn't, actually. Folks supporting the concept of souls have noted fairly easily that brain damage leading to personality changes just means, at most, that the brain is something like a receiver, and it's the connection between body and soul that's changing rather than the soul itself. Which still exists, of course.

But that's about the point where you can believe literally anything. If the universe looks exactly the same regardless of the existence of souls, then that's a pretty cut-and-dry case of occam's razor.

[Frumple]

*shrugs* People deny the validity of the razor pretty often, P.

[Putnam]

There are cases where it's invalid. This isn't one of them. This is a pretty clear "things are exactly the same regardless of the existence of this added feature, so it's best to assume this added feature doesn't exist" application of occam's razor.