What is a soul anyways? Do we really have souls? Why? There are lots of great questions that can be asked about the nature of the human soul. The soul is an interesting subject, and the eternal nature of our souls is equally as fascinating.
I recently seen several questions about a soul, and I thought it would be worthwhile to take a stab at answering them. Some of these thing are just my opinion, but here are some popular questions regarding the soul of a human:
1. What exactly is the soul’s function? What does it do? Why do you think we have one?
A soul doesn’t have a function, but rather is the sum of our collective consciousness and our physical being. It doesn’t "do" anything any more than our "names" do anything. It just represents our entire element of existence. We have one because we exist, and have a conscious element to our existence.
2. What does a soul look like and where in the body is it placed?
A soul is made up of the spirit (intangible) and body (tangible). It is the fabric that represents us. It does not have a location in the body, but is the entire body plus our spiritual elements. Man became a living soul when God created us in His image.
3. Why is it that people who get their brain severely damaged change their entire personalities and become complete vegetables, if the soul, not the brain, is the essence of who we are as human beings?
The brain is our powerhouse for function, critical thinking, memories, and more. When the brain is damaged, we cannot properly function, just like when our arm is cut off, we cannot use our arm anymore. However, this does not mean we do not have souls, or that our souls are limited by our brain or physical existence.
God does not judge us or resurrect us based on our brains, for our brains quickly decay and decompose after death. God resurrects us from his memory. For example, I have a website and the database gets corrupted. However, I made a backup, and I can restore it to its original function. God is the major database for all life. He restores us from his backup, not ours.
4. If we have a soul, when exactly do we get it, and how exactly is it transferred? (When the semen meets the egg? After 12 weeks of pregnancy? After half a year of pregnancy? When the baby is born?)
We have a soul at the moment of conception. At the moment of sperm and egg joining, the complete "code" becomes set in stone, and your entire blueprint is created. All that happens after that is your cells carrying out the work to make your physical body. You are spiritually created at the moment the code is generated for you. Just like an architect can make the blueprints, and the building exists, and the only thing left is the actual construction process.
5. What would a human being be like if it had no soul? What would be the differences?
A human without a soul can never exist, since by definition (biblically speaking of course), all humans have souls. That question is like asking what would a circle be like without the roundess, or what would a square be like without corners. It is an illogical question.
6. If I traded souls with say, my sister, but we kept our brains, what would that lead to? Would there be a difference? (Hypothetically speaking, of course..)
Hypothetically, that really doesn’t make sense. Souls can’t be traded. A soul is your entire essence.
7. If you acknowledge evolution: How and why exactly would evolution favor such a concept as a soul, do you think? (It obviously wouldn’t mean anything for our survival in THIS world, now, would it?) And if you believe that God just put it into us, at what stage did that supposedly happen? Did our ape ancestors get souls, for instance? Did homo erectus get souls? Why or why not?
I agree with parts of some of the evolution theory. I disagree with the parts where it seems to indicate this all happened without the influence of a creator. I believe God created all of it in 7 days. Did he use a code (gentics), and some accelerated form of evolution at the beginning for each design for each individual species, maybe. Is 7 days relative in nature, and could mean millions of years, maybe. I don’t know the details of how God did it, or the details of creation, but I believe in God. I do believe species can adapt and change. But God is the code writer. I believe man was created initially, without evolving from other forms. The first man had a soul, and all other humans do as well. Again, we get it at conception.
8. Do other animals have souls? Like cats, dogs and cows, for instance. Or ants and lice for that matter. Where is the limit, and how exactly is it determined?
Probably not, but the bible doesn’t indicate for sure. How it is determined is that God specifically created humans uniquely from all other creation. I like to compare this to computer lingo. A simple html page or simple script is far different from a robust software application. An ant would be a simple script, incapable of any real awareness, funcitons, or anything else when compared to us. The same is true for almost any animal. God created us in His image, and created us with superior knowledge. He created us to specifically have a relationship with him, whereas someone could make the argument that everything else was merely created to make life for us possible (the life cycle/food chain). But that is just speculation on my part, and the Bible doesn’t give a real clear answer on this.
Sponsored Links
Posted under general questions
This post was written by Revelation on November 11, 2008
