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Can one be an atheist and still believe in souls?

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Jitro
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09 Aug 2012, 1:30 pm

Can one be an atheist and still believe in souls?

TallyMan
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09 Aug 2012, 1:37 pm

Technically you could do so; but why? If you have dispensed with religious baggage where does belief in a soul fit in anyway?

slave
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09 Aug 2012, 2:28 pm

Yes, but I think very few believe in souls.
One can be an atheist and believe in any fairy tale they wish.
An atheist does not believe in any god and the concept of a "soul" in and of itself need not pertain to any god.
There is no evidence of any kind for the existence of a soul/spirit and so the majority of atheist do not believe in same.
I'm sure that there are some atheists that do believe in a soul.

Musicc
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09 Aug 2012, 2:33 pm

TallyMan wrote:

Technically you could do so; but why? If you have dispensed with religious baggage where does belief in a soul fit in anyway?

Belief in soul may not be as irrational as belief in god. At least, the center of our thoughts or the locus of our consciousness could be termed 'soul'. There is something thst makes you ... you. We can call that essence 'soul'.

enrico_dandolo
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09 Aug 2012, 3:25 pm

Sure, you could call your consciousness a "soul", but typically, souls are an essence of humanity, opposed to a material essence, the body, within a pluralist (generally dual) model.

TallyMan
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09 Aug 2012, 3:42 pm

Musicc wrote:

TallyMan wrote:

Technically you could do so; but why? If you have dispensed with religious baggage where does belief in a soul fit in anyway?

Belief in soul may not be as irrational as belief in god. At least, the center of our thoughts or the locus of our consciousness could be termed 'soul'. There is something thst makes you ... you. We can call that essence 'soul'.

I see your location is India. If you have a Hindu background you'll understand if I say that while there is an apparent atman it is none other than brahman, satchitananda. I'm happy to discuss this further if you know what the hell I'm talking about! :lol:

:lol:

roronoa79
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09 Aug 2012, 4:40 pm

If there is empirical evidence for the existence of souls, then yes.

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ReneDescartes
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09 Aug 2012, 5:39 pm

If you agree with dualism, you believe in the separation of soul and body. You don't have to believe in god to think souls or even reincarnation exists.

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thomas81
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09 Aug 2012, 7:34 pm

If some cognitive memories can be lost due to a coma or brain damage, how can any of our conscious memories survive total biological cessation?

Shatbat
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09 Aug 2012, 9:14 pm

TallyMan wrote:

Technically you could do so; but why? If you have dispensed with religious baggage where does belief in a soul fit in anyway?

Mostly this. The logic I used to reach the conclusion that God most likely doesn't exist can be used for souls, too.

Sometimes I wish I was wrong though :lol:

:lol:

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makegod2020
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29 Aug 2012, 12:08 pm

ReneDescartes wrote:

If you agree with dualism, you believe in the separation of soul and body. You don't have to believe in god to think souls or even reincarnation exists.

Yes but these seems to come in two or more variants, those that do think they are
separate but that the sould dies with the body even if it is kind of separate???

I mean all those David Chalmers types that say we have a philosophical hard problem.

Then we have the TransHumanists who seems to believe that all the content of our brain can be downloaded in hardware and then live as a kind of robot with a body of tech instead of biology
and in that way get almost eternal life.

I may lack imagination but I fail how one can do that technically. Not really a soul but something that can be moved from one body to another and even to hardware.

Kurgan
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29 Aug 2012, 1:30 pm

thomas81 wrote:

If some cognitive memories can be lost due to a coma or brain damage, how can any of our conscious memories survive total biological cessation?

According to believers of reincarnation, they don't. If reincarnation is true, you're not gonna remember who you are now when you pass your soul over to the next life.

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29 Aug 2012, 1:39 pm

slave wrote:

Yes, but I think very few believe in souls.
One can be an atheist and believe in any fairy tale they wish.
An atheist does not believe in any god and the concept of a "soul" in and of itself need not pertain to any god.
There is no evidence of any kind for the existence of a soul/spirit and so the majority of atheist do not believe in same.
I'm sure that there are some atheists that do believe in a soul.

Buddhists are atheists who believe in reincarnation. They might outnumber other atheists who don't. Personally, I don't believe in anything without sufficient evidence.

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29 Aug 2012, 3:19 pm

I was listening to an interview with Guillermo del Toro last night - the man is wicked smart and absolutely gets monsters like no-one else (I think his only peer there is China Mieville) - and he said something that really struck me:

Quote:

"I'm a guy that believes because I choose to believe. I don't have any proof, or because any denomination told me to. I believe everything has a soul. It makes it better if everything has a soul. I hate that we live in a society where if the tv is broken, if you look in the yellow pages, there's this many tv repairmen. You go to Best Buy and buy a new one. That's f****d up... I grew up as a kid naming everything. Naming - I was best friends - this is gonna tell you how f****d up my childhood was - I named every ant in an anthill in my grandmother's garden... I named my car, which is an 8 year old Chrysler, we call it 'el guapo' - the handsome one. I caress the steering wheel and say, 'come on el guapo, take me to...' - I talk to the car. But in a way these things make the world better. I believe that if you experience the world believing that everything has importance - because nothing has importance, you come to the same conclusion - if nothing has importance, then you can choose the opposite. I don't think that makes you sappy or silly or stupid - I think it's much more silly or stupid not to believe anything has importance. I love my shoes - when a pair of shoes is good to me, I hold onto them until they crumble - they are my shoes. They are not one of my shoes, they are my shoes... With my books, I remember where I was when I bought almost every book... And if I don't, it's a sadder way of seeing things. If we make a talisman out of our things, we then make a sacrament of [inaudible], and it makes our lives richer."

29 Aug 2012, 3:32 pm

TallyMan wrote:

Technically you could do so; but why? If you have dispensed with religious baggage where does belief in a soul fit in anyway?

Well TallyMan, Buddhism does not have any deities(not even 1!) and the existence of a soul is a central part of buddhist teachings. The answer to the original question is yes. You can believe in a soul and be an atheist as there aren't nearly as many logical hinderances as believing in the devine. The great mystery though is where souls came from and how they came into being....Along with what are they made of.

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29 Aug 2012, 4:50 pm

A very stupid kind of atheist, but yes.

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