What are your views on the concept of a soul? I myself don't believe there is a soul, merely the brain and consciousness, but I'm interested to see the opinion of other atheists.

The 'soul' is something that we invented because we're scared of dying.

I don't think there is such a thing, at least not as a distinct entity residing within our physical bodies. The word would have to be an abstraction for our emotions, the experience of being alive, introspection and self awareness for me to accept its existence. But that's not what most people see it as, if they say they 'believe' in a soul.

That is what I think, based on what information I have. An educated guess, if you will. I don't make a strong ontological claim about its non-existence. But the concept of an immaterial consciousness-'vessel' that somehow retains systematized information and leaves your body to go to some other realm as the body dies seems unintelligible to me. There is no way I can come up with a mechanism for how such an entity could function, and so it would have to be taken on faith as 'magic'.

I don't believe in the immortal soul, and I would think that's pretty common amongst non-believers. "Soul" is as good a word to describe the personal nature of an individual as any though, in the same way that "mind" can describe the sum total of thoughts, feelings and drives, both conscious and unconscious. Neither is a perfect descriptor, and many would suggest there's more to them, but there is as much a "soul" as any other abstraction - it's just not immortal or ineffable.

My friend is a Buddhist Atheist, and completely believes in a soul, just no gods

Where do my thoughts go when when I die? They don't stop when I sleep so surely I don't completely switch off when I reach The Big Sleep? My being must travel to the same place as when I meditate or pray - The Divine place. Therefore, soul.

Nah. The complexity of my mind, all the abstract constructs I form & all the whizzing patterns of colours or thoughts I have (this is The Soul, imo).. they are all slowly taken from my brain as I give up unto death - then I die and melt into the dirt, never to return.

The "soul" was what pre-scientific people used to define the unconscious. Or so I think anyway. I imagine they thought that the "unconscious" or the "soul" remained alive after death, the same way that it does when we're asleep.
Now we know how the brain works, we don't need to use the term anymore.

Dennett said "yes, we have a soul. But it's made of lots of tiny robots." I agree with that.

That being understood, I have no problem with using the word "soul" as a high-level description of the more sophisticated emergent phenomena of our neural systems: personality traits, subtly differentiated emotions, empathy, ect. 

When people say this degrades the concept of "soul", I say to the contrary: it raises it, because it celebrates and ennobles the awesome power of evolution. To paraphrase the old saying, we are not fallen angels, we are risen single-celled organisms. 

I suppose for me, it was a friendship with someone who insisted she was psychic and who believed in reincarnation, she said that my eldest son and I were "old souls," whatever that means. I'm not into stuff I can't explain with empiricism, so that friendship hasn't survived.

I've been called an old soul Agrippina. They say I'm older spiritually and mentally than I am in number of years I've been here. I'm atheist, so what does that say about spiritual richness?

Greatctulu wrote:I've been called an old soul Agrippina. They say I'm older spiritually and mentally than I am in number of years I've been here. I'm atheist, so what does that say about spiritual richness?

I don't believe in spiritual richness, I do believe that people who are intelligent and who ask questions and continue learning through their lives, come across as having been around the life cycle a few times.

I use the word soul interchangeably with consciousness. I do think you'll find such a usage well attested, and it's not a very weird usage.

What's more, I think a fair share of people already use it like that, and find claims that the soul doesn't exist puzzling for exactly the reason that consciousness undeniably is there. To people who use the word as I do, such a claim would prima facie seem quite based in denial.

Finally, I think we should take back the word from those who use it to express some kind of woo, and make it more clear that the only thing there is to anything along those lines are physical computational processes in the brain that give rise to consciousness.

I think soul is a notion of personality and character that can persist into a proposed "afterLife"

- an almost certainly false notion at that, as those are tied to cognition and consciousness that are, in turn, tied to a functioning brain.

Hmm... My view on the soul...

Your soul?

My soul?

Our souls?


Ah, souls


Assholes

The "soul" could be used as a useful euphemism for one's emotional response to reality. Could, that is, if there were not so much baggage already attached to the word.

It seems to me that the word - in the sense that most people use it - is intrinsically linked with an assumption of mind/body substance dualism. Since I do not accept that such an assumption is valid - or even coherent - I tend to avoid using terms like "soul". It confuses people who are quite confused already.

Try watching your mum get dementia and then die. It was like a spluttering fountain slowly dribbling and then dying. Souls? Grade one bollocks.

Once we gave her some perfume she loved - she licked it.

This interesting lecture covers some of the essential issues which naturally occur in any discussion of this sort. You can find supporting material here.

Clive Durdle wrote:Try watching your mum get dementia and then die. It was like a spluttering fountain slowly dribbling and then dying. Souls? Grade one bollocks.

Once we gave her some perfume she loved - she licked it.

THIS!!!!!!!!! Anyone who has any experience with brain afflictions or injury knows that there is no such thing as a soul of any sort. It should be intuitively obvious to a child that souls are grade one bollocks, but delusions seem to persist.

LarianLeQuella wrote:

Clive Durdle wrote:Try watching your mum get dementia and then die. It was like a spluttering fountain slowly dribbling and then dying. Souls? Grade one bollocks.

Once we gave her some perfume she loved - she licked it.

THIS!!!!!!!!! Anyone who has any experience with brain afflictions or injury knows that there is no such thing as a soul of any sort. It should be intuitively obvious to a child that souls are grade one bollocks, but delusions seem to persist.

Nah. That would mean the idea would be falsifiable, and we can't have that. All that happens you see, is that there is a disturbance in the communication between the brain and the soul, due to the brain deteriorating. So the brain is no longer able to express what the soul wants it to express. Or something.
I'm not sure what we need brains for in the first place if the immaterial can control the material, but I'm not very sophisticated.

Greatctulu wrote:What are your views on the concept of a soul? I myself don't believe there is a soul, merely the brain and consciousness, but I'm interested to see the opinion of other atheists.

Not only do I not believe it exists, I don't think a soul/spirit can exist as the entity defined by various supernaturalists.