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Starwynd
Guest
Can it be possible to be born without a soul?
And if there is no soul within the body, could it still be considered life?
And if there is no soul within the body, could it still be considered life?
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Dirk_Skene
Guest
Starwynd, I think I almost get your question, but not entirely. I see by your profile you are searching. This may explaine my not geting the question as I do not know your background.
As a Christian I firmly believe we have a soul at the moment of conception.
Does this help or is your question deeper?
As a Christian I firmly believe we have a soul at the moment of conception.
Does this help or is your question deeper?
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rossum
Guest
Buddhism denies the existence of any soul so according to Buddhism no human or animal or god has a soul. Christianity has different doctrines. You might want to indicate within which religion you want your question answered.
rossum
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Starwynd
Guest
No religion intended. Here’s what inspired the question.
I was watching an episode of Angel last night called Under My Skin in which a little boy was possessed by a demon. They are able to exorcise the demon and later they confronted the demon in a cave. It explained to Angel that he had never possessed anything so black, that there was absolutely nothing there in that young boy. It was a black empty pit and for the first time he, the demon, had been scared. In other words there was no soul inside the child. Then the boy attempted to burn his younger sister alive, but Angel was able to save the girl’s life.
What this episode reminded me of children as young as ten who had killed other children. Two famous names are Mary Bell and Eric Rudolph. Mary Bell was ten years old when she killed another child and Eric Rudolph was about thirteen I believe.
In my mind there is only one way that such a thing can happen is that these children were born without a soul.
I was watching an episode of Angel last night called Under My Skin in which a little boy was possessed by a demon. They are able to exorcise the demon and later they confronted the demon in a cave. It explained to Angel that he had never possessed anything so black, that there was absolutely nothing there in that young boy. It was a black empty pit and for the first time he, the demon, had been scared. In other words there was no soul inside the child. Then the boy attempted to burn his younger sister alive, but Angel was able to save the girl’s life.
What this episode reminded me of children as young as ten who had killed other children. Two famous names are Mary Bell and Eric Rudolph. Mary Bell was ten years old when she killed another child and Eric Rudolph was about thirteen I believe.
In my mind there is only one way that such a thing can happen is that these children were born without a soul.
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rossum
Guest
In Buddhism all children are born, and live, without a soul. Different children behave differently, some better or worse then others. That has very little to do with souls or their absence.
rossum
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Dirk_Skene
Guest
It’s just a TV show. Entertainment. That’s all. I would not put a lot of stock in the things “taught” by TV & movies. Many, such as this we are discussing, are escapes from reality. Which is not nessicarily a bad thing in itself. But it is nothing to put our faith in or learn from.
I stopped watching TV about 15 years ago or more.
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That_one_guy
Guest
Take this how you will,…but TV is for losers.
Take your TV outside.Load your shotgun & shoot the TV.
seriously.
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jmcrae
Guest
Yes - it’s called “stillbirth.” The child is born dead - that is, without a soul. The soul is the life of the body. It is impossible to be without a soul, yet still alive, because the soul is the essence of life.
No, for the reasons given above. You would bury the dead child.
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jmcrae
Guest
It’s the Catholic Answers Forum; one presumes, therefore, that the answer wanted is the Catholic answer.
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jmcrae
Guest
You desperately need a hobby.
Some severely disabled children are born without the ability to discern good from evil - they lack the ability to form a conscience. Such a child might easily think of killing another child, and carry out the act without feeling any remorse.
But that child does have a soul. And it’s extremely rare for them to actually be let out of the sight of their caregivers to do anything that might come into their minds to do - they are usually identified pretty early on, and put under pretty strict watch, for the safety of others.
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Eucharisted
Guest
Firstly, please do not take television programs - like Angel - seriously, even in the consideration of spirituality or religon. They are only meant to entertain the human senses, and most of them are steeped in secularism, so be careful.
Secondly, the human person is a corporal-spiritual being: he is animal and spirit, body and soul. You can’t be a human person if you don’t have a soul. But you can be a human person if you don’t have a body, for example, the souls in heaven, hell, and purgatory. But all the dead will be raised on the Day of Judgment, all the dead given their bodies back and never to die again. So a human person is a being with both a body and a soul.
Meditation on the Immaculate Conception will do you some good, I advise. It will teach you about sanctification, redemption, creation, the sanctity of life, the love of God, and much more. You will learn more through meditation than you will through watching television, because the former leads ultimately to God, Who is the truth itself, while the latter only leads back to oneself (this is the fruit of secularism).
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Starwynd
Guest
Sigh, sometimes there is truth in TV, regardless of the format. For example, in this episode was a story about a child who was a killer. He tried to kill his sister by burning her alive and he was roughly ten to twelve years old, and she was younger than him.
It got me to thinking about real child killers such as Mary Bell and Eric Rudolph.
From Wikipedia:
Mary Flora Bell (born on 26 May 1957 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England) was convicted in December 1968 of the manslaughter of two boys, Martin Brown (aged four years) and Brian Howe (aged three years). Bell was ten years old at the time of the killings.
Unfortunately right now I’m having trouble trying to find info on the precise Eric Rudolph I’m thinking of. He was a thirteen year old boy who killed two other children half his age. What I keep on getting is the man who was accused of being the Olympic Park Bomber.
And besides, if all of TV is unrealiable and have absolutely no truth to it, then don’t watch ETWN. But that is the subject for another thread. I simply do not have the animosity towards TV others do just because. And I never will. Except for stations like the History Channel, I don’t take them seriously because for the most part they are meant for entertainment.
Added: but back to the original point of this post is that the only thing I can imagine that can cause children this young to kill is that they have no soul, because I feel that it is our soul that gives us our humanity, our capacity for love and compassion.
It got me to thinking about real child killers such as Mary Bell and Eric Rudolph.
From Wikipedia:
Mary Flora Bell (born on 26 May 1957 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England) was convicted in December 1968 of the manslaughter of two boys, Martin Brown (aged four years) and Brian Howe (aged three years). Bell was ten years old at the time of the killings.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Bell
Unfortunately right now I’m having trouble trying to find info on the precise Eric Rudolph I’m thinking of. He was a thirteen year old boy who killed two other children half his age. What I keep on getting is the man who was accused of being the Olympic Park Bomber.
And besides, if all of TV is unrealiable and have absolutely no truth to it, then don’t watch ETWN. But that is the subject for another thread. I simply do not have the animosity towards TV others do just because. And I never will. Except for stations like the History Channel, I don’t take them seriously because for the most part they are meant for entertainment.
Added: but back to the original point of this post is that the only thing I can imagine that can cause children this young to kill is that they have no soul, because I feel that it is our soul that gives us our humanity, our capacity for love and compassion.
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jmcrae
Guest
No, no - you are still misunderstanding what the soul is. The soul isn’t the “niceness” of the person. The soul is the life of the person. Without a soul, you are not merely “not nice” or whatever - you are actually dead.
What those kids were missing was their conscience - probably due to an undetected disability, such as bi-polar disorder, fetal alcohol syndrome, some other form of mental illness, or else simply a complete lack of moral formation.
Locally, we have the case of a 12 year old girl who enlisted the help of a drug addict to murder her parents and her brother. She lacks a conscience - she does not lack a soul - she’s alive, but she doesn’t discern good from evil.
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Katholish
Guest
What jmcrae is saying is absolutely correct. All living things have souls. A soul is the very principle of life and makes a thing be the kind of thing it is. Perhaps an analogy would help. When we say that the soul is that which makes a living thing be the kind of living thing that it is, we mean that the soul is the very form of man, and the body is the matter of man. The difference between form and matter is highly philosophical, but I think it is still easy to understand.
Think of a statue. Lets say that our statue is made of clay and is in the shape of a dog. In lifeless things such as our statue, form and matter are easier to see. The matter is the clay. It is the material that is used to make the statue. The form of the statue is the shape. It is possible for us to think of these things as different things, the clay and the shape, but in the case of our statue, they are two “parts” of the same thing, namely the statue.
Matter cannot exist on its own without a form. Whenever you have clay, it always has some kind of shape even if it is just a lumpy ball. It is impossible to have matter without form.
In living things, the form is not just a shape, but is the animating principle of the creature. It is true that the form still gives the shape, but it is also so much more. In living things, the form is called the soul. Plants and animals have souls as well, not just people. There is a big difference between a man’s soul and an animal’s soul, however, and that has to do with the ability of rational thought. Man has an immaterial and immortal soul, whereas animals and plants have material souls which are destroyed when the life of the animal is destroyed.
Hopefully, it is easier now to see what jmcrae means by the fact that it is impossible to have a person without a soul. It would be like saying clay that has no shape. It is not possible. A human being is a body-soul composite.
Think of a statue. Lets say that our statue is made of clay and is in the shape of a dog. In lifeless things such as our statue, form and matter are easier to see. The matter is the clay. It is the material that is used to make the statue. The form of the statue is the shape. It is possible for us to think of these things as different things, the clay and the shape, but in the case of our statue, they are two “parts” of the same thing, namely the statue.
Matter cannot exist on its own without a form. Whenever you have clay, it always has some kind of shape even if it is just a lumpy ball. It is impossible to have matter without form.
In living things, the form is not just a shape, but is the animating principle of the creature. It is true that the form still gives the shape, but it is also so much more. In living things, the form is called the soul. Plants and animals have souls as well, not just people. There is a big difference between a man’s soul and an animal’s soul, however, and that has to do with the ability of rational thought. Man has an immaterial and immortal soul, whereas animals and plants have material souls which are destroyed when the life of the animal is destroyed.
Hopefully, it is easier now to see what jmcrae means by the fact that it is impossible to have a person without a soul. It would be like saying clay that has no shape. It is not possible. A human being is a body-soul composite.
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SimonArizona
Guest
Imagine the buddists shock when they meet a man with a soul.
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SimonArizona
Guest
and without Christ she is spiritual dead. No conscience, no metanoia, no good.
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briceh181
Guest
But how can one be without a conscience? I understand having a well formed conscience or a badly formed conscience, but I don’t understand how one just couldn’t have one. IF one doesn’t have a conscience, then would that not also mean they they cannot know right from wrong so are not culpable for evil acts?
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tobinatorstark
Guest
No it isn’t possible to born without a soul. Mankind have souls that can go to heaven. Animals and other creatures do not. The Catechism of the Catholic Church goes in good detail about the creation of man, his purpose and the souls of creatures
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Dispector
Guest
I think you could argue that a psychopath is an individual without a conscience. These are the individuals that gain gratification from causing severe harm to others. Although these individuals may know what is considered right and wrong superficially, it appears they may not internalize the concept of morality as most people do. You will often see this individuals lack guilt.
The most frightening part is that normally you could not tell these people apart from other people. They can act normal because they learn what is acceptable behavior even if they feel no remorse for violating it or harming another. They simply act in their own self interest and sometimes harmful gratification.
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briceh181
Guest
I don’t agree. The Catechism talks a good bit about erroneous judgment and ignorance of conscience saying, for instance, “Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.” (CCC 1720) The gratification could possibly come simply from ignorance of conscience and outside influences that caused distorted formation, not from a lack of conscience.
It seems to me as though conscience is something that “comes with” the soul and is an inseparable part of the human person, but I have nothing with which to back that up. It just seems right. Could someone please either confirm or refute that with viable reasoning.
The Catechism also states, “If - on the contrary - the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience.” (CCC 1793)
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