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[andrea]

what is a soul?

[Yanlin]

Something which theists invented so they could take over the world.

If you're asking, science has circumstantial evidence that souls do not exist. Religion has zero evidence about them.

Same with god. We actually have SOME evidence stemming from logic.

Like I said countless times before, if god exists, he's a fucking evil bastard.

[Cyx]

Bein run by chemical reactions does not exclude having a soul, does it?

No it doesn't. And I didn't say it did, did I ?
I already said I took the average christian point-of-view. So I was supposing that God cares and that he is perfect and benevolent. And I'm not arguing against the existence of God (I mentioned it was impossible); I'm arguing against the wild guess a religion made about his morality, because it isn't logical even if everything else is taken as true.

And I don't know nor care what a soul is, but apparently it's something human beings posess that hasn't got anything to do with physics.

[andrea]

(to yanlin)
and your point is? there are many religions on Earth that don't have an always benevolent God. in fact, i can't remember anything of that kind that isn't related to christian religion (not that it means anything. i am not an expert.). in the past often togheter with good Gods there were evil ones, or there were neutral ones. God doesn't have to be a nice being, if he exist.

also, a God that is always good and want everything to be good, seem... well, one sided, off balance.
why? empirical observation. we see that there are things that we think are evil. problem is that WE decide if something is good or bad. and after thousands of years speaking about that, we still can't all agree about that.
if tehre is an universal good or bad,  then evil in the world might not make God evil.
or he just don't care.
or he doesn't have consciousness.
or.... well, you can say anything about God

and, of course, he could be evil. but then if he was totally evil, we would be part of the evilness too, since we exist. or we were created just to suffer.


and what about us being just a side product of God's universe? maybe all this was created for somebody else, on other planets or on Earth in a far future. and we are just made to be part of THEIR story.

i think i am too random.

(and atheist/ agnostic/ uncaring/whatever answers about souls aren't what i was looking for. i already know these. but what is a soul for who truely believes in it... that is more interesting, isn't it? )

[¿]

Qualms about how there can be a God that allows evil? Read Eastern philosophy. 2nd time I said this. The whole yin yang thing. Duality. Blah blah blah. It's old as dirt concepts.

As far as I understand it, a soul is what part of you survives your physical death. If anything, science will be the one to prove this. Right now there's just a lot of electromagnetic phenomena no-one can investigate without being ridiculed.

[andrea]

hmm... soul is a part of our body that exist in a 4th dimension of space. after death of the 3d body, this part is free, and it gets "activated". while living, you most informations come from the 3D world, and that is where you will look for new informatons so your brain(and soul brain) won't see what sould-eyes can see. after death though, since you now only exist in 4th dimension,  you can fully use your soul-body. this is nearly immortal (i don't like true immortality much), can see and hear. being on a 4th dimension you can now see things that usually you won't be able to see and you could interact with people on mortal plane without them ever seeing you, since you don't have to enter one of the 3 dimensions to do it. (like putting your hand on a piece of paper. your hand will always be above the 2d plane, even if it touches it. 2d beings wouldn't see that hand, but that doesn't mean you can't see, hear and speak to these beings. )

so ghosts are explained.
they are the 4d part of our body. easy, isn't it?
and they have a copy of our mortal brain, and keep same shape. slightly etereal though. or maybe not.


how can my brain create such ideas?
well, it does. so i'll just put them here.

[Grek]

See, making us perfect things that could do no "evil" would be denying us free will.

Going to ask straight up, why free will? Why is it that humans being to make bad choices that will hurt them is better than humans never making bad choices or getting hurt? The arguement that liberty is superior to happiness only applies if you think that you can get more happiness making your own choices than you would be by giving up your liberty to an outside power who will decide for you. To argue that God giving us free choice was benifitial to humanity, you must argue that humanity can decide what is good for themselves better than God, who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, is able to.

Okay, look.  If no one ever did anything wrong, it would be because doing wrong would be impossible.  There is an inability to choose.  If presented with two options, both of which would have negative consequences, we would be unable to do anything, even if, say, one option would save the world, for instance.  If we can't do wrong, then it doesn't just mean we can't have the option to do wrong, but that we can't have any options at all.

If you accept the premise that God is omnipotent, than God is capable of making a world where this does not happen because there is no wrong and humans cannot do wrong. If you also accept the premise that God is omnibenevolent, than God would have done exactly that. There would be no crippling inaction when faced with evil because there would be no evil to face.

As for the earthquake, that's just physics and chemistry, the laws of the universe (or rather a side effect of them).  They are constant, and if an omnipotent being was messing around with them all the time, that would limit our choices (we would have no defined phyics or chemistry; can you imagine how much worse things would be if that were the case?)

If we assume the intervening force is also omnibenevolent, things would actually be quite awesome. I would love to have an omnibenevolent force watching over me and intervening to prevent anything bad from ever happening.

Qualms about how there can be a God that allows evil? Read Eastern philosophy. 2nd time I said this. The whole yin yang thing. Duality. Blah blah blah. It's old as dirt concepts.

Yin and Yang is a description of what is not what should be. Just saying "This is how things are." does not imply "This is how things should be." That's the naturalistic fallacy and it's made of fail.

[andrea]

free will isn't a matter of freedom and happyness. it is about giving a reason to God to create universe.

without free will, why create the universe? you just need to think about it, and you will know everything from the beginning to the end.

but if there is free will, creating it will matter, since God is giving up his power to decide what we will do, and maybe even the power to know what we will do.

really, nothing to do with freedom. the act of creation would be pointless if everything had to go as decided at the beginning. unless we live in God's sandbox, where he tests his powers. but even then, free will would be quite high on test list.

[¿]

Yin and Yang is a description of what is... That's the naturalistic fallacy and it's made of fail.

You are a very good unintentional comedian.

Tell me all mighty Grek, how SHOULD the universe be, since what IS doesn't seem to be to your liking? Obliviously there is no God because things aren't run the way that you would do it.

Why free will? Ooooo, evil. Auggghhhh. Such a fact. I'll take it anyway over being a robot.
EDIT: Damn you ninja-ing Lego-man!

[LegoLord]

Without free will we are little more than emotionless robots.  Why emotionless?  Well, if your emotions are decided for you by something else, are you really feeling emotions?

Although, I think andrea sounds very convincing here.

[andrea]

thanks i thought about that while reading your post, but it seem a good idea... never thought about free will in that way before.

[Grek]

free will isn't a matter of freedom and happyness. it is about giving a reason to God to create universe.

without free will, why create the universe? you just need to think about it, and you will know everything from the beginning to the end.

but if there is free will, creating it will matter, since God is giving up his power to decide what we will do, and maybe even the power to know what we will do.

really, nothing to do with freedom. the act of creation would be pointless if everything had to go as decided at the beginning. unless we live in God's sandbox, where he tests his powers. but even then, free will would be quite high on test list.

I am fine with this description of the Creator, as long as you also adknowledge that this description describes a being who is explicitly not omnibenevolent. This is a being that created a universe which is filled with suffering, death and despair and beings who are just as able to kill and maim as they are to love and help. This God is distant, callous and terrifying.

Tell me all mighty Grek, how SHOULD the universe be, since what IS doesn't seem to be to your liking? Obliviously there is no God because things aren't run the way that you would do it.

Firstly, I am not all mighty, nor am I trying to be edgy as you seem to be implying. I do not think that my responses are comical, so you'll need to explain your perspective to me if I am to understand what your find humorous about this discussion. Without that explaination, your observations come across as snide and somewhat offensive.

Now, to answer the question: If I were the Creator and I wanted a universe without human suffering that still looks somewhat like this one, I see a few possible courses of action that would make the universe more in line with how I think it ought be:

1) Remove free will; make humanity always make the best choice for itself.
2) Make it so that humans enjoy whatever choice they end up making.
3) Combination of both of the above. I make the choices, humanity enjoys them regardless
4) Make the laws of physics mutable to humanity, so that what they think ought be is what is.
5) P-zombies; they make choices exactly as if they were normal people but to not perceive anything.

For the record, I am not an atheist. I am a maltheist. I think that the Creator of the Universe is either unable to create a universe that is exactly as he desires it, unable to understand that his actions and/or inactions are causing humanity suffering or does not desire a universe without human suffering.

[Cyx]

Well, if your emotions are decided for you by something else, are you really feeling emotions?

Well, our emotions are decided by something else; the outside world. We are sad because something sad happened and we've little to no power over our sadness. It would seem more artificial if we actually decided what to feel and when, don't you think ? What is the deal with the Great Free Will God Gave Us anyway ? We aren't nearly as free as you seem to think. We can't do anything without a reason to do it - if you can think of anything we would do without consideration of the world nor ourselves, name it. We act for our own benefit, even good things are done for a reason (God/the society will thank us) and for self-gratification. And that's without taking into account all the physics and chemistry of our own brain and body. We are quite robotic and predictable as it is.

without free will, why create the universe?

The only reason I see for God to create an impredictable universe instead of a good one is out of boredom. A God isn't bored.

In my opinion, the "without bad there is no good" Yin-Yang fallacy doesn't hold up simply because it wouldn't be so if God didn't want it so. You could also say that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent higher being while there is no superevil higher being to balance it all out; Why then would things work differently down here ?

[LegoLord]

So you're saying that when something happens we automatically do what ever sounds the best to us, and there is no possible way for us to affect what our own brains come up with?

[Cyx]

More or less, yes. We do something because it appears to us it's what we should do. And what we think we should do is the result of an analysis made by us (consciously and unconsciously) regarding what would suit our needs, created by our body and our experiences. Actually, I'm not sure it's clear... "You can have what you want, but you can't decide what you want"... I guess.

But my main question is; given God doesn't need to be entertained and that men can be happy and benevolent with or without freedom of will, why are both free will and evil still necessary ?