Does "Ross Macintosh" have a soul?

[morphonius_821]

I'm assuming you mean Morph and not John - John is making a good case - Morph on the other hand is being Morph ..

I know who I am....Do you know who you are?

P.S. are you familiar with the term "consensus reality"? (You probably are but even so) You should endeavor to fully explore it...as i think some deep contemplation of this concept may yield insights for you.

P.P.S. I was wondering that too LOL tell us Kinetica who is "smokin' weed" Me or John?...

What I find odd is the unbounded faith many have that they indeed have "souls" and their reluctance to see that perhaps it is just wishful thinking.

Sorry to be concentrating on you Ross... your words just seem to be the best lead ins to my own...
And your right many people just take the word of others or a book as gospel but there are those who do not take this route.

So I think it is a huge error to presume that the existence of the soul can not be proven.

I think (more accurately) that it may well be very difficult if not impossible to prove it to someone else however
(That is if they are unwilling or unable to devote themselves to the task - through perhaps the rigorous development which often goes with various types of consciously sanctioned paths of spiritual awakening said to achieve such realizations...), it may well only be possible for them to prove it to themselves.

In the same way as it is impossible to prove to another that you are actually sentient yourself (as they know they are but equally can not prove to you) and not simply displaying every possible physical sign of being sentient but somehow actually not being so.

One thing is for sure however when you are sentient you know it... and it is fundamentally beyond words, mental pictures, or even mental concepts....
And obviously it is not hard to relate this to other people as i presume every body is and so it is understood in this respect.

Spiritual awareness is said to be an expansion of this same consciousness...but i guess taking it to places undreamed of to the average person.
And how can that which is fundamentally beyond even mental conception be explained in symbols and metaphors...it can only be hinted at and may well sound wild.
But one thing is for certain...rarely do people question the validity of such things once experienced...
You may think this to be blind faith?

But do you doubt your own awareness?
Do you doubt that you can actually see?
Do you think there is a chance that you may be mistaken and that your actually not really aware?

I didn't think so.

As even thought you do not know what consciousness is (In that you can only use a word or label to express it) and can not compare it to anything (but reality itself) outside of itself (i.e any object), it is none the less beyond question and self evident...

In fact I would say it is the only "real" thing you will ever experience.......being.

And i think Ross that that is probably the most palatable definition for soul you will find...bare awareness... your core.... Sentience itself...
Surely you possess this!

[dogbertbh]

It's a pity there's no external storage for software backups though.

I have that - it's called a "wife".

Believe me - she reminds me of anything I've attempted to have wiped from memory.

[kinetica]

No, I meant John. John is being John. Bless him, he brings out the rampant sceptic in me even more than most people!

[handrawn]

fair enough

Morph: - if I want to know what a tree is, I go look at a tree - and I examine it without letting words get in the way

Dogbertbh: - mine even reminds me not to forget what I haven't yet been told, 'cause it works both ways

[covoxer]

Whatever you're smoking, John, pass it in. That's powerful stuff and I could use some.

Hey, I don't smoke. So maybe the problem is in what you smoke out there.
After all, I'm just your imagination........

[kinetica]

You just imagine that you don't smoke. All of us outside of your blue, smoky bubble will attest to the opposite. But imagining that you don't smoke may be the least of your problems

[covoxer]

You just imagine that you don't smoke. All of us outside of your blue, smoky bubble will attest to the opposite. But imagining that you don't smoke may be the least of your problems

Stop smoking that s..t! It will kill you!

[ankhor]

Why not? Can you find any differences between biblical soul and personality, or software as I suggest?

Well, souls seem to be unchangeable, but personalities seem to be
changeable. Many people can experience a personality change due
to an accident. So the hardware does change how the software
may functon if the brain gets damaged. So in your analogy personality
can`t be the same a soul, for personality can be alltered by the hardware.

Just my patch lacking comments

[handrawn]

that might be the operating system reinstalling appropriate drivers to accommodate hardware changes [ I just hope I'm not going to regret getting dragged into this] so, then soul is operating system, personality is application software..... ....

[covoxer]

Well, souls seem to be unchangeable, but personalities seem to be
changeable.

Biblical souls are not unchangeable by means of it's behavioral characteristics. For example, the soul of the new born and the same adult person is the same soul but it's characteristics are much different. The same stands true for the psychical disorder caused by physical damage. The soul changes by learning and forgetting, by acquiring reflexes and developing opinions, finally it changes by moods and feelings all the time.