Is There a Soul?

[itinerant1]

but the Spirit is unchanging in it’s potential, and it is what makes us all equal deep down.

If potential, unchanging or not, is attributed to the Spirit, then God is not a perfect being.

 

[itinerant1]

The only documented case of a man who reached the pure perfection of uncovering the Spirit, and for this he was known as the Son of God because he was a perfected soul, meaning that the Spirit which is the force of God was pure in him, and we all know this man as Yeshua Ben Yoseph, or as he’s more commonly known Jesus the Christ. He only needed one last incarnation to learn some specific lesson for his Soul to completely unfold leaving only the Spirit making up his personality, and it is why he was able to perform such amazing miracles because as I said, the Spirit is God Himself essentially and is able to alter the illusion we call reality.

We all have our ways of expressing the inexpressible.

Will update my response to your questions once I am out of class, just felt like adding a bit…

Did you make this up yourself or is this some New Age version of the Christianity you came across somewhere? This is not the Jesus of the Gospels or New Testament. Whence comes these eccentric ideas?

 

[itinerant1]

Jesus was not “God incarnate” anymore than we are all God incarnate.

I guess this perfected one had an identity crisis because He claimed to be God incarnate, especially when he said “I am He”, and then the Jews tried to kill him for blasphemy because He claimed to be the God of the Hebrew Scriptures who had revealed his name to Moses as “I Am”.

Have you been reading the Gnostic Gospels? Is that where you get your offbeat ideas?

 

[lemondiesel]

Have you been reading the Gnostic Gospels? Is that where you get your offbeat ideas?

LOL no. Check my profile, I have uploaded a few pictures of just a few things that are apart of my spirituality.

Other than that, I do not want to explain more. Many of you will think its silly n dumb beliefs.

 

[itinerant1]

LOL no. Check my profile, I have uploaded a few pictures of just a few things that are apart of my spirituality.

Other than that, I do not want to explain more. Many of you will think its silly n dumb beliefs.

Thanks. I will check out your profile. I respect different beliefs, but in a forum like this I am used to debating opposing views, so I automatically go into critic mode. True to form, I have been critical of some of your ideas, but don’t take it personally.

 

[Geremia]

I am interested in the scientific evidence that leads you to conclude that people do not think with their brains. Please state this evidence and explain carefully how it supports your case.

The brain is a sensory organ. A human’s intellect or intellectual soul, soulone and only which is united to his body as form is to matter and is uniquely created by God for him, does not depend on matter like the brain because an intellectual soul is incorruptible and subsisting, and the soul is not a body. Remember: Just as “to have a soul” means “to have life” or “be alive,” so, too, does “to have an intellectual soul” mean “to have an intellect,” “to be rational or thinking,” or “to have a human soul,” since all these things imply each other. A human is a rational animal.

Anyways, there are many ways of approaching your question, but I think the most direct is to prove that a human’s soul (a rational soul) is subsisting, i.e., that it does not depend on matter like a bodily organ for its existence. St. Thomas Aquinas, answering the question “Whether the human soul is something subsistent?”, says:

It must necessarily be allowed that the principle of intellectual operation which we call the soul, is a principle both incorporeal and subsistent. For it is clear that by means of the intellect man can have knowledge of all corporeal things. Now whatever knows certain things cannot have any of them in its own nature; because that which is in it naturally would impede the knowledge of anything else. Thus we observe that a sick man’s tongue being vitiated by a feverish and bitter humor, is insensible to anything sweet, and everything seems bitter to it. Therefore, if the intellectual principle contained the nature of a body it would be unable to know all bodies. Now every body has its own determinate nature. Therefore it is impossible for the intellectual principle to be a body. It is likewise impossible for it to understand by means of a bodily organ; since the determinate nature of that organ would impede knowledge of all bodies; as when a certain determinate color is not only in the pupil of the eye, but also in a glass vase, the liquid in the vase seems to be of that same color.

Therefore the intellectual principle which we call the mind or the intellect has an operation “per se” apart from the body. Now only that which subsists can have an operation “per se.” For nothing can operate but what is actual: for which reason we do not say that heat imparts heat, but that what is hot gives heat. We must conclude, therefore, that the human soul, which is called the intellect or the mind, is something incorporeal and subsistent.

I find this sort argument of St. Thomas very cogent, because he is basically addressing whether the intellect is based on matter, like genetics or the brain, or not. This comes from his , lib. 2 cap. 86 n. 4-5Summa Contra Gentiles and , lib. 2 cap. 89 n. 3ibid.:

…] the intellective soul is the most perfect of souls and its power the highest [and] its proper perfectible subject is a body having many different organs through which its multifarious operations can be carried out; and that is why the soul cannot possibly be actually present in the semen separated from the body …] The intellect, which is the proper and principal power of the intellective soul, is not the act of any part of the body, and therefore it cannot be divided accidentally as a result of the body’s being divided [as through cell division]. Nor, then, can the intellective soul be so divided.

...]

Hence, from the hypothesis that the human soul is brought into being  through the active power in the semen it follows that its being depends  upon matter, as with other material forms. But the contrary of this has  already been proved. The intellective soul, therefore, is in no way  produced through the transmission of the semen.

...]

And the hypothesis of the soul's presence in the semen from the  beginning would entail the further consequence that animal generation  takes place solely by way of partition, as with annulose animals, where  two are produced from one. For, if the semen were possessed of a soul at  the moment of its separation, it would then already be endowed with a  substantial form. But in every case substantial generation precedes the  substantial form; it never comes after it; and if any changes follow in  the wake of the substantial form, they concern not the being but the  well-being of the thing generated. Thus, the engendering of the animal  would be completed with the mere alienation of the semen; and all  subsequent changes would have no bearing upon the process of generation.

But this theory would be even more ridiculous if applied to the  rational soul. For, first, the soul cannot possibly be divided as the  body is, so as to be present in the separated semen; and second, it  would follow that in all extra-copulative emissions of semen, without  conception taking place, rational souls would nevertheless be  multiplied.

 

[Geremia]

Summa Contra Gentiles, lib. 2 cap. 86 n. 4-5 and ibid., lib. 2 cap. 89 n. 3

Here are some better links to the above works; the text is available online:
, lib. 2 cap. 86 n. 4-5Summa Contra Gentiles and , lib. 2 cap. 89 n. 3ibid.

 

[grannymh]

Wow editing last 2 secs on this forum

The Spirit is the pure essence of God that is within all of us, the main thing that makes us “in God’s image”. .

Since you mentioned “in God’s image” –

Because Adam was created in God’s image, he was established in friendship with God. “in God’s image” means that humans alone are called to share by knowledge and love in God’s own life. Thus humans are called by grace to a covenant with our Creator. The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual, body and soul. Soul refers to the innermost aspect of the human being, that which is of greatest value, that by which he is most especially in God’s image.

Refer to paragraphs 355 - 368,
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, ISBN: 1-57455-109-4

One can put paragraph numbers and topics in the Catechism’s search bar in link www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm

Blessings,
granny

The human person is sacred.

 

[lemondiesel]

Since you mentioned “in God’s image” –

Because Adam was created in God’s image, he was established in friendship with God. “in God’s image” means that humans alone are called to share by knowledge and love in God’s own life. Thus humans are called by grace to a covenant with our Creator. The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual, body and soul. Soul refers to the innermost aspect of the human being, that which is of greatest value, that by which he is most especially in God’s image.

Refer to paragraphs 355 - 368,
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, ISBN: 1-57455-109-4

One can put paragraph numbers and topics in the Catechism’s search bar in link www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm

Blessings,
granny

The human person is sacred.

humans were created in gods image because “god saw it was good” which therefore we can “see it was good”

God gave us the consciousness to notice beauty

 

[Image_of_God]

I’m sorry that I keep reviving this thread, but the topic is just so fascinating to me. I was just talking with a friend about the topic recently and we really had a good discourse about it. I just feel so earnestly that the soul does really exist…that there is a spiritual principle, a constant essence in the human person that is, although connected to the body, distinct from it. When I feel something, like a table or wood, it is a bunch of nerves and electrical signals that help me sense its texture, but it is also me, the soul that I have that feels them.

While we should not underemphasize the impact the brain has in our intellectual activity, I feel so strongly that something other than the brain is at work in it. Maybe it’s my Catholic faith, but I feel that there is an entity greater than just a brain behind my eyes.

 

[lemondiesel]

I’m sorry that I keep reviving this thread, but the topic is just so fascinating to me. I was just talking with a friend about the topic recently and we really had a good discourse about it. I just feel so earnestly that the soul does really exist…that there is a spiritual principle, a constant essence in the human person that is, although connected to the body, distinct from it. **When I feel something, like a table or wood, it is a bunch of nerves and electrical signals that help me sense its texture, but it is also me, the soul that I have that feels them. **

While we should not underemphasize the impact the brain has in our intellectual activity, I feel so strongly that something other than the brain is at work in it. Maybe it’s my Catholic faith, but I feel that there is an entity greater than just a brain behind my eyes.

I think you are starting to realize the true spirituality, the true oneness of the universe.

 

[grannymh]

I’m sorry that I keep reviving this thread, but the topic is just so fascinating to me. I was just talking with a friend about the topic recently and we really had a good discourse about it. I just feel so earnestly that the soul does really exist…that there is a spiritual principle, a constant essence in the human person that is, although connected to the body, distinct from it. When I feel something, like a table or wood, it is a bunch of nerves and electrical signals that help me sense its texture, but it is also me, the soul that I have that feels them.

While we should not underemphasize the impact the brain has in our intellectual activity, I feel so strongly that something other than the brain is at work in it. Maybe it’s my Catholic faith, but I feel that there is an entity greater than just a brain behind my eyes.

Glad to see you.

I’ve been feeling a lot of tables lately since I am getting new dining room furniture.
I’m to the point where I can sense differences in finish.

I believe it is my soul with its immaterial intellect that goes beyond the surface of the table. Maybe it is called conceptual thinking. I know what the nerves and electrical signals are telling me and then I think about grandkids finger painting on the table or racing toy cars across it.

I feel love for my family just by running the tips of my fingers across a table. And of course gratitude that I will be able to enjoy a delightful time with the little ones sitting, standing, spilling, banging around that table which in reality can only provide electrical signals through my nerve endings. Praise God for my soul!

Blessings,
granny

Human life is precious.