For People Who Believe In Souls, And In Heaven?
Posted by: Alan in Diabetic Eye Disease, tags: Believe, Heaven, People, Souls“I can’t help letting my mind wander to the implications of Alzheimers disease for the theory of an immortal soul. Who wants an afterlife if the immediate pre-afterlife is spent clutching the arms of a wheelchair, head bent back at a forty-five degree angle, eyes and mouth wide open and equally mute, like so many of my charges at the Woodcrest? Is the “soul” that lives forever the one we possess at the moment of death, in which case heaven must look something like the Woodcrest, with plenty of CNAs and dietary aides to take care of those who died in a state of mental decomposition? Or is it our personally best soul – say, the one that indwells in us at the height of our cognitive powers and moral aspirations? In which case, it can’t possibly matter whether demented diabetics eat cupcakes or not, because from a purely soteriological standpoint, they’re already dead.”
Entries (RSS)
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:14 am
I have a simple analogy your spirit or soul is the programmer of your thoughts and memories.The body and all its sytems(including the brain) are simply the hardware and software that the programmer-soul uses to express itself. Your soul keeps aquiring and relaying data even when you think it does not.That is why mentally disturbed people who are assumed to live less than optimum human lives by fellow man for the most part (because of faulty physical equipment),even though held less morally accountable are still considered God’s children.It is our mortal eyes that make those silly distinctions but the spirit has much more to it than meets our eyes and even our minds.
That is why the human spirit is beyond comprehension,immortal and extremely powerful it’s a mirror image of its maker
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:29 am
From experience answering any religious questions in here I have found that no matter what anyone says odds are you will continue to believe what you will. Odds are you will also argue and ridicule those that believe differently. But here is my opinion.
I believe that the Bible is true and correct in all ways! It tells me that when I (we) die our soul does live on forever. It clearly states that we will not be sick or handicapped. We will have new bodies in Heaven.
So no I don’t believe that we will continue to suffer once we pass over.
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:59 pm
I’ve thought similar things regarding brain damage, and namely that you can effect major changes in personality through physical damage to the nervous system. The classic example of Phineas Gage is almost perfect.
It’s just one of many reasons I can give you for why I do not believe there is such a thing as a soul…
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Why not consider the experience of some who died and revived. See if you can explain their experience as “chemicals in the brain”http://www.near-death.com/storm.htmlhttp://www.near-death.com/mccormack.htmlhttp://www.freecdtracts.com/testimony/ga…http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=…
September 24th, 2009 at 12:34 am
wow, that’s really interesting. reading that, it makes complete sense to me, but i cant help thinking that there’s something missing. i dont believe its quite as simple as that – what it says at the end. but its definately a thinker-about-er. !
September 24th, 2009 at 2:04 am
In Christian belief, the after life is a place where we live up to our full potential. Injury and disease cannot touch us there. We are to be remade in the image that we were originally supposed to be.
September 24th, 2009 at 8:29 am
Interesting..something to think about..
September 24th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I think every one is the same age in Heaven.
September 24th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
I understand your perception and this is one I took for a long time when I was atheist.
Now I believe in a kinda generic spirituality because of some subjective events that have occured in my life. Specifically, learning to perceive chi, and all that it entails.
My understanding is that the brain provides for all our major functions we define as human life, memory, associations, internal dialogue.
The great sages all say that if you can calm the brain/mind then you will start to view life from a larger context or what is known as the witness. This is when you stop interacting with the world and with your thoughts and observe thoughts and real events as they come and go in the mind.
Some would call this zen meditation.
The point is that when you start to have this perception you “know” that your thoughts, emotions, deductions, opinions, physical actions, and data organization all stems from the brain.
If you can get in touch with this “witness” perception you realize that you are detecting the presence of your immortal soul. Not a thinking ego based concept but a purely present, observational entity without opinions or thoughts of any kind, merely the presence to recognize your own existence and your collective experience.
Recognizing this and being in the “witness” state at all times is one of the classical definitions of “Enlightenment”, a.k.a. living in the now.
Absence of ego, recognition of presence.
This is also your ability to know compared to your ability to know about. “Knowing about” involves facts and the mind, but “knowing” indicates a deep understanding of a phenomena through experience without mental dialogue.
Knowing about will eventually lead to knowing.
The ability to “know”/immortal soul is what we carry on to our next lives to accumulate experience and strength for the next level.
Sounds like a video game.
If a person is mentally deranged without the presence that we recognize as that individual, then it means the soul is no longer anchored to the brain very well. Or may be gone almost entirely, leaving only a computer full of memories and data without the proper regulation to man the logic sets, scrambling the way this data is organized and presented to external. Then they are pretty much dead.
This can explain the way a alzheimers patient can be off in lala and then come back briefly, completely concious and aware and then back to lala. Is this some major damage in the brain that heals and spontaenously reinjurs itself?
If you read about the “witness” and meditate on it you will understand the perceptive stuff pretty quickly.
September 25th, 2009 at 2:55 am
Why do you care so much whether one believes in the soul or not.
If you feel humans have no spiritual content, then you may go along happily assured in the knowledge that you and the rest of us are nothing but a bag of blood and bones with some minor electrical charges.I for one see design in all that I am,and the spirit of something born in and out of all things ever created.I am an evolutionist and I still see in all this something forever in motion.
You would make a great scientist,you have a fine and acute rational mind that could be spent on more important things than converting people to your particular brand of rationalism.
September 25th, 2009 at 3:08 am
Biblically speaking, the soul is given or provided another type of body not this body, but an immortal body (1Cor15:50-54). The christian goes to a place where there is no death, mourning, or crying or pain (Revelations 21:3,4).
It is believed that the soul would be of the same age as Adam and Eve when they were created. As you very well know, they were not born like us when they came to be. Hence, the person’s age and health or earthly physical condition, at the time of death, does not matter afterlife. What matters is the kind of living while on earth, which determines where the soul goes, heaven or eternal suffering in hell.
September 25th, 2009 at 7:40 am
I’ve worked in those fun places, and I am a pagan, firm believer in reincarnation at the moment. My answer comes from a collection of papers written for Julian, the last Pagan Emperor of Rome by his priest. In it he advocates reincarnation, however that the soul of a man can not reincarnate into an irrational body of an animal (ie the soul of a rational minded man is too complicated to be contained fully within the simple minds of mere beasts) and so it exists in that state as a guardian spirit for the animal, still partially within but mainly an observer to the animals life. This I believe is a process Alzheimers patients go through, as their minds deteriorate their souls slowly retreat to a higher position, serving as guardians to the body more than inhabitants, and this is a hard thing to go through. For the soul must watch as the body forgets who and what it is. What is a worse fate than to forget yourself? Yet… Most of the patience have a peace about them when they are not too stressed… Yes it could be drugs, but still I like to think that it is their compensation for the horrible ordeal they are going through.
September 25th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
first time i think of it this way! its a logical perspective.
just so you know, i’m an atheist, but would love to believe in souls because its the only thing that would make sense spiritually.. i think that humans are made to have at least a small spiritual side, its just how we are made, like dolphins use sonar, we need to be spiritual, and the soul is the most appealing to believe in.
now about the paragraph you quoted, the first thing i get form what’s mentioned is that if what is said is true, then all souls will be the exact same in the after life, because its true: it is not “fair” to leave a sweet old lady with mental illness living forever in heaven in the bad shape. or a tyrant with extra IQ roaming around freely and very aware in hell or heaven or wherever. right? So I think for that to happen and to be “fair” about this thing, there need to exist a god to be the fair entity.. and because I don’t believe in that I think that the soul is only a mental power that separates us form animals and makes us aware and because we have this superior power we imagine that there are souls, but actually there is no such thing.. and when you die, this awarness just disappears.. pooof
hope i made sense to you
September 25th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
When our soul passes over the veil, it is healthy, no more pain, no more deformities, no more afflictions of any kind. No mental problems either. Our place in the after life is determined by the way we conducted ourselves in this life. If we are in a state of knowing nothing going on around us before we die that’s the way God wanted it. Know the soul is still in the body and that person can hear. That person may very well know what’s going on and cannot communicate it to you. So treat them with respect and your job will be done well. We do not know what the human mind is capable of even the doctors don’t know if the mind is functioning. Look at the man that was in a coma for 28 years, no brain function on there graphs, and he woke up like it was the next day of his life. So dignity is the key word and when God wants that soul He will take him. He will be different when he pass over the veil. God bless you.