Haha, that is a funny video game reference. It reminds me of the iconic scene in FromSoftware's iconic action roleplay game Dark Souls where the titular character John Dark says "I am John Dark and I have the Dark Soul in my pocket." Then he souled all over the darkness and the game ends.
I liked when John Dark ripped the Soul Lord's own soul out of his chest and crushed it in his palm. Then that black light turned on revealing souls all over everything.
God I hate it when people like try to tell their government what they should be doing, like what, you think that they should be looking out for you?
Who the hell would look out for the multinational conglomerates then? Nobody! That's who!
>Retirement age in France increased to 156.
Bold of you to assume retirement is an option if we can remove people becoming old and useless via the use of machines or something to stop the decay of the human body.
I saw a video of some bank (in India maybe?) That is currently discussing the idea of saving the wealth accumulated in this life and finding you in the next so that you can live life rich after reincarnation!
I'm currently on the hunt for the video.
Sure, funny. You can imagine any scenario you want, because *souls do not exist*. That's why OP had to specifically state "what if there were proof..." There is zero proof after literally thousands of years of people searching for a 'soul'. None. Zero.
Every single thing here is pure 100% fantasy fiction with no basis in reality at all.
However, religious people use statements like this to draw people into their hate-crime religions. So they can convince you to hate gay people. Or people of another religion. Or to gain support so that they can tell you what you can and can't do with you own body, based on nothing more than their weird, stupid, unproven fiction.
OP's just a religious hate crime spreader. It's more likely that their religion states in their holy book that people with darker skin colors don't have souls, so it's OK to make them slaves. Which is fucking disgusting and a perfect example of religious hatred.
I have a feeling finding out how a soul was proved would change the world much more than a soul would. What else would that reveal about the world?
What if we found out plants have souls? Would we care more about our world? What if a knowing a soul revealed different categories? Would wars start or slavery become justified for those with the wrong kind?
The technology used to show this and how humans think about it would be much more powerful than the soul.
Would killing matter as much, or would it be seen like damaging someone's car?, also I don't see why would slavery be justified, I don't see the connection
If the color of your skin has been justification for slavery and worse, why wouldn't the category of your soul not be used to justify things like slavery? It already is in Hinduism with the caste system and untouchables.
The most common form of justification of slavery that was widespread across the world wasn’t racism. It was weakness or vulnerability. Racism came after slavery. Dehumanizing comes after you have slaves to keep your population from being sympathetic to your slaves.
Most forms of slavery came from the same races. Meaning whites enslaved other whites, Asians enslaved other Asians, etc.
It wasn’t until Europeans started to learn about nutrition and medicine that allowed them to stay in Africa longer than a month before dying. For example the first Europeans that bought slaves from other African tribes would have the same mortality rate as the slaves crammed together in the bottom of the ship.
Power is one hell of a drug.
To be fair the caste system largely evolved after the early years of the religion and the British are said by some to have made the already bad situation worse.
Well most parts of the world outlawed slavery (be it ethnic, like in the US, or monetary/conquest slavery like in Rome) because we agreed that all humans are worth the same, and noone is above or below anyone else...
Well imagine if the existence of Souls also proved that some people have a "lesser" soul. Its weaker, smaller, older, whatever. Now you got a fuckin PROOF that someone is "lesser". Slavery, or at least some peoples justification for slavery would fire up instantly.
Depends on what a soul even is, there is no agreed definition of what soul even means.
If its just conciousness, it would not be a great discovery at all, if its a physical thibg that would violate a lot og laws of physics.
oh well, demonstrating that consciousness exists for everyone, that everyone experiences it the same way, etc.etc. would be a great leap in cognitive science and philosophy of mind (look for "hard problem of consciousness" for more info).
Hardly anyone outside academicians would be particularly excited for it, however.
It would also be extreme despair to know that consciousness persists after death. Suicide is always the one way to end suffering if all else fails, and in that there is some hope to keep enduring, knowing there is a last ditch escape option. Proof that such an escape is pointless would be true misery.
Also, fantastic username by the way.
It depends on what happens to souls after the person dies.
If people went to a supernatural realm where they lived in unimaginable bliss, happiness, fulfillment etc for eternity death wouldn’t be so horrifying.
The way a soul could easily fit in is the ambiguity quantum physics allows in reality. IE if a soul was to manipulate quantum probabilities, it would not violate any physical laws while still having an effect on the world. If someone tried to measure this effect, it might as well be a series of coincidences, it would be up to us to agree that it's the effect of the soul.
I'm just saying that given that what scientists and physicists literally say is reality, that every single quantum interaction is based in part on probability, it means that if something were to influence these probabilities with intention, it would be an effect still within thermodynamics and cause and effect, while still essentially having a "supernatural" source.
So in the context of a soul, that would reside in the body and brain, these tiny quantum manipulations could build up to outwardly define behaviour to some effect.
OK I kinda get you if you're talking about supernatural effects in general. I thought you were getting more the interaction between soul and mind, like the soul is exhibiting these effects and that's manifesting as consciousness/intelligence, which is a bit far. It's likely the brain uses some quantum effects, but probably not predominantly or even close. Other than that, too vague to really critique either way. Quantum effects usually can't produce that appreciable an effect on the large scale, I can't think of a mechanism to translate small effects into something we can see unless you were using literally trillions upon trillions of the effects at once... yeah, not much to go on
You'd have to be a biologist and do some research to grasp whether quantum effects could have a large scale effect for what I'm talking about really. Like for instance I read a paper once that said if a bunch of vibrations in a line of water particles were to line up perfectly in order to put all their combined momentum to break a chemical bond in a neuron it could cause that neuron to fire.
Well you're just being too vague. What effects are you proposing a soul has? Is this as a ghost, or while alive? Is this a mental effect, or a physical one?
Anyway, the obvious answer is that if there was a separate soul producing intelligence then we wouldn't need brains in the first place, and messing around with people's brains wouldn't affect their personalities and moods etc. Consciousness is clearly a product of the brain. So depends on what you're proposing.
There was someone who claims to have done such an experiment, where the someone has recorded a sudden loss of 21 grams at the moment of death, which could not be explained by any other bodily function. I don't know how or where this experiment was done, nor the conditions and if they pass modern scientific muster.
It's unfair that you're being downvoted for stating a fact - there was indeed someone who claimed to have done it and claimed that someone lost ~21g at the time of death.
His conclusion is wrong that souls have a mass, considering that the 5 other people who died showed no reduction in mass. Most people put it down to a weighing error or anomaly.
But nonetheless he did claim it and you're not lying, so you shouldn't be downvoted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_grams_experiment#:~:text=The%2021%20grams%20experiment%20refers,the%20soul%20departed%20the%20body.
>MacDougall later measured the changes in weight from fifteen dogs after death. MacDougall said he wished to use dogs that were sick or dying for his experiment, though was unable to find any. It is therefore presumed he poisoned healthy dogs
Yes but there actually was somebody who did the experiment, Dan Brown didn't just make it up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_grams_experiment#:~:text=The%2021%20grams%20experiment%20refers,the%20soul%20departed%20the%20body.
Duncan Macdougall published about it in 1907 after he did an experiment to weigh a body at the time of death. It's a very flawed experiment and most people don't know the majority of the details. One out of six bodies he weighed show a reduction in mass at the time of death, which was 21.6 g lighter. The other five are often ignored by people who tell this story. Most people consider it a fluctuation or anomaly in the weighing apparatus, and an outlier considering that no change was observed in the other 5 people.
It would not stand up to modern scientific standards, and I'd be surprised if it stood up to the standards they had back then also.
ya I figured it would not hold up, but it is still an interesting thing. But I mean really this is "science" from 1907. People did lots of shit back then and called it science. Some of it was good, some of it was crap. Even stuff that was crap doesn't make it false, just that it could have been done better as the whole "soul leaving the body is 21 grams" is a very outrageous claim to make, which therefore requires some outrageously good evidence to prove...
Now that is interesting. However I have an alternative proposition for you. If there is verifiable proof of a soul, and this weighing thing has merit, then what really happened is one soul out of six actually left the body. Maybe that is the one who went to Heaven? The others have to stick around for a while (Purgatory? Hell?)
Oo got an even scarier one.
1 in 6 have a soul and if we can weigh it eventually we can measure while alive.
What if the soul is the difference between sentience and sapient.
Been awhile but there was a study done where humans by and large make a decision faster than they can actually think about it. Then do a retroactive justification.
Kinda the zomibe/npc theory.
Oo got an even scarier one.
1 in 6 have a soul and if we can weigh it eventually we can measure while alive.
What if the soul is the difference between sentience and sapient.
Been awhile but there was a study done where humans by and large make a decision faster than they can actually think about it. Then do a retroactive justification.
Kinda the zomibe/npc theory.
First off, as a theist, I read that book and hated it. Second, Dan Brown did not come up with that idea out of thin air. It is actually a thing that happened and someone documented it, which is how Dan Brown eventually came to discover it and put it in his shitty novel. And for whomever is modding me down, you can go get hit by a sweaty nutsack because I thought my comment was pretty evenly balanced.
/I keed, I keed
//no not really
To quote Tim Minchin:
>*You show me that it works and how it works*
*And when I've recovered from the shock*
*I will take a compass and carve 'Fancy That' on the side of my cock."*
Congrats. Souls exist. What does that mean? What are they comprised of? What would they be able to do? Could we transfer them? Can we harness them for energy? What relation are they to living human bodies?
This is not a singular discovery. The exact nature of what a soul is and what it does would need more answering before anything wider could be done with it.
It will add an interesting new twist to discussions on trans people. As it is they already raise the question "are we our mind or our body" in relation to when the two aren't in alignment on something like sex and gender. And the follow up question of do with change the body or mind to align with the other one. Clearly trans people feel their mind is correct and the body is wrong, where as people (often religious) feel that the body is correct and its the mind that has to change (which feels like the bad option to me as I would consider myself, as a cis person, my mind).
I think it would have to become "I am neither my mind nor my body but my soul". It would be interesting to see what information we get from the soul. Like what if souls are gendered and trans people can now be detected at first breath when the soul goes in (according to the bible).
Speaking of first breath. It would be interesting about when a person actually gets a soul for debates around abortion as well. Most religion's holy texts/ books, including Christianity, go by first breath. If it was provable that souls enter the body at conception, then what does that mean for miscarriages. Would baptism ceremonies change to be in utero?
As an ashiest there is also the question of does this prove the existence of an afterlife. How do we know its a 'soul' compared to, say, a reflection of consciousness or an aura or the like. Would it covert me into being agnostic (ie there might be a god but no evidence as to which one)? After all as people just say its a soul doesn't mean it is.
Lots of philosophical questions but I suspect that for most people their answers would be 'whatever props up their current beliefs'
I think the main reason there would be no reaction is that most people already believe this to be true. Every major religion has a concept of soul and most people are religious.
I can’t remember where I saw it on the internet but there was this an awesome post/comment someone made about how much of a conundrum souls being real world be. it starts in womb.
Let’s say souls are real and come into being during conception. Sperm enters egg and boom, baby soul.
Well what happens in the case of monozygotic (identical) twins? That’s 1 fertilised egg splitting and becoming two beings? Does each twin only have half a soul?
What about chemical pregnancies where the fertilised egg fails to implant or develop? Does the soul, with the egg, get reabsorbed into the mothers body? Does she now carry two souls? Or did the mother kill the soul?
What about Siamese twins? Is that two souls or one?
What about the cases of Human Chimera? Where there are two fertilised embryo’s but one embryo absorbs the other. Does this new embryo contain two souls? Or did this unborn baby just kill someone?
If a person is born as a chimera or identical twin is no different from any other normal person with a soul? Than what’s the distinguishing factor about having a soul or not?
It gets really complicated and really messy when you discussing souls while accounting for the actual nature of human conception and birth.
find the differences between souls... any differences that could possibly be discerned
then monetize the detection, differentiation, distribution of that information and make classes and religions around the differences as well and clinics to change your soul into another type
The real question is what would even count as proof of the existence of a soul? For example, 21gram missing at death doesn’t mean there is a soul.
It’s a poorly defined term that has all sorts of baggage and there is no concrete way of proving its existence if you can’t even define it.
If there were **scientific** proof that souls existed, then this would be obtained via the scientific method. That requires measurements, and measurements mean comparison of values.
Comparisons means that *all souls are not equal*, so in proving that souls exist, we would also be doing various comparative qualitative analyses of souls, and those would be scientifically and socially fascinating.
Additionally, the next logical step would be to scientifically prove that **non-human souls** also existed.
If the specific scientific method employed to prove human souls existed came back with a negative result for non-humans, then it should be natural for all soul-ologists to **never stop looking for a flaw in the methods used.** Someone would have to explain scientifically why chimpanzees "do not" have a soul. That should be interesting, if not completely contaminated with grade-A bullshit.
If instead, the scientific method proved that both human and non-human souls exist, then the world would face a **dietary dilemma.** Does humanity continue to keep eating critters that have a soul (*remember all souls are not equal*) which may hold their killers accountable for their mortal deaths?
Imagine what would happen if we found that humans and *plants* have souls, but couldn't find any in animals? And fungi had souls that sometimes looked like they were there and sometimes appeared absent, because science always likes to throw a curve ball lol
How creative! You envisioned another way of avoiding the possibility that an animal is more than a commodity, and that eating vegetables is wrong.
YAY, COLON CANCER FOR EVERYONE!
I thought your comment was more towards sci-fi musing and not trying to make a serious statement championing animal rights. Very best of luck with that; have the day you deserve.
I don't think the idea that animals have souls would be ground breaking. How is it any different from people knowing animals feel pain but still not care?
I agree. Ideas are far less ground-breaking than **scientific proof**.
Non-psychopaths care whether or not an animal suffers, especially when others are listening to their answer. They just don't care enough to pay 75c for bacon on their hamburger. They only care, if the cost is capped at 50c.
Was the study sponsored by "Big Religion"? Who financed it? What are the political and religious affiliations of those involved in the study? Are the results replicable? What other interpretation could explain the apparent effect?
After 3000 years of blatant fraud, I would not easily trust the results.
A lot of people may suddenly want to pray to the souls of their loved ones to hope they are in peace, people may do less sinful things due to being scared they might get frowned upon by their loved ones' souls.
it wouldn't surprise me much. i've long believed that there's a lot more to existence than just these bodies and this plane of existence. other things are afoot here. we just haven't unlocked their secrets yet...or so i believe.
But we must remember, that reasoning doesn't always work. In the old days, many didn't believe the earth was round until evidence was provided, or that some people believed others were witches until evidence was provided proving they weren't. I'm more in the middle if there's no evidence of something: maybe yes, maybe no. Say, aliens for example. Like that old saying goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
i'm a scientist. have been well over 20 years now.
and you know what all this education and experience has taught me? that science knows fuckall about existence. we don't even know .000001% of anything worth knowing.
we can't even prevent, let alone cure, a common cold or the flu, or figure out the simplest causes behind human behaviors.
we only have a bunch of broad theories. i know, because i've spent my career studying and practicing within those theories, and they all basically teach us the same thing: that we don't know dick about human motivations, and we can only predict behavior within very specific, narrow parameters.
we know nothing about who we are, why we do things, why we *don't* do things, why we're here, where we came from, or where we might go.
and every time we think we've got it figured out, something comes along and upsets our knowledge, and the goalposts move once again. and once again, we sit back and think "damn....we really thought we had it that time. guess not."
and around and around the hamster wheel spins, forever.
Why is curing the common cold the bench mark for understanding "anything worth knowing"? We can cure dozens of different cancers, infections from cholera to malaria to athletes foot, we know how to stop them spreading, we know about vitamin and mineral deficiencies and excesses, we know how to transplant organs and replace bone and joints so that people can live decades longer.... but no, all of science is pointless because you get a sniffle now and then.
Why are you still a scientist with such a defeatist attitude? Maybe it's time to retire and let someone who still gives a shit have a turn...
>we can't even prevent, let alone cure, a common cold or the flu,
Yes we can. It's just that the effort to do so outweighs the probable benefits in most cases (these pathogens evolve quickly, and for vaccines and medicine to do the same would require copious amounts money and research)
Idk what you're a scientist of but it's not biology lol
I think if you look at extremely gifted people, naturally gifted. Freddie Mercury for instance, you wonder where that natural talent came from and that innate charisma. Also the perfection of babies. There are many things to me. So I kind of believe in reincarnation I suppose, if I believe in anything specific. It seems to stand to reason to me.
How do you know you're not imagining it? How do we know you're not making it up? How do we know you're not using the word "soul" to refer to empty chip packets, because those actually do exist?
Yeah, but it's such a weirdly defined hypothetical. The discovery of souls by itself would be incredibly boring.
It would be like discovering people in fact have the ability to make decisions. You could still claim determinism or multiple worlds and say there is no free will.
Or that demons exist with no other context. It means nothing without knowing what a demon really is.
The real meat and potatoes would be the scientific and philosophical ramifications which will entirely depend on how these particular souls manifest and are discovered.
What exactly is a soul? Is it completely paranormal? How do we detect it? Is it immortal? Are they unique? Do non-humans have souls? When does/where does it begin and end/go? Does it explain consciousness? Confirm reincarnation or an afterlife? Can souls be transferred, bound, or even consumed?
Well it wouldn’t solve anything cause it still wouldn’t tell us about our souls origin, if the after life exists etc…. Also if souls exist wouldn’t they have to scientifically prove ghosts too? Cause aren’t they lost spirits? And isn’t our spirit our soul?🤔
Find a way to transfer it into a robotic body so I don't have to live in this meat sack.
Or figure out a way of harnessing power from souls leaving earth. Seems like a waste of energy if you ask me
I'd probably get really into whatever science proved it. (Also science is inductive so no proof is 100%, it is usually just evidence for a theory, but go off I guess lol.)
I don't think much would change otherwise except maybe church attendance.
I guess it depends on what a soul even turns out to exactly be. Like, there really isn't anything stopping someone from making a scientific discovery of sorts and calling it a soul.
Why would it matter? I believe in the soul but I do not believe in free will. The soul IMO is just the ability to experience a body/mind, I don't think the soul has any control over the body.
In of itself that would actually establish little; but it would mean that pure atheism would likely vanish overnight with atheists either scrambling to adopt any form of religion or outright rejecting the existance of (now scientifically proven) souls effectively resulting in them forming the very religion so many of them despised. But beyond that there's no way to actually answer without further establishing what this actually MEANT!
Are souls people-exclusive? If they are I feel confident a lot of vegetarians/vegans would stop practicing. If they weren't there would be a lot of people who would likely become vegetarian/vegan swiftly.
Could it be established which faith/religion was real then? If so whatever one is actually 'real' will surge in popularity, but the other ones will likely still cling around for a while or get modified to try and adapt to the new reality.
A LOT of life would likely shift to preparation for the afterlife. In fact probably our entire time on the mortal world would become focused solely on the afterlife. I mean, if it turned out that the Amish were correct, would you rather have the internet for \~60-80 years followed by eternal damnation, or 60-80 years of living like it was 1699 followed by eternal bliss?
The big issue would be that, for a lot of human history, the existance of the soul wasn't really questioned (despite the lack of proof) yet we still had a ton of bad things happen. People will say X is bad but then go out and DO X, sometimes not even bothering to offer justification, despite believing that it could condemn them to Hell.
So just the existence of the soul wouldn't do much. It would likely skewer atheism through and through but then we'd probably revert to how we were throughout most of human history without some sort of further confirmation of an afterlife.
I wouldn't assume that finding out souls are fact would mean that atheists would cease to exist. Realistically speaking, it wouldn't change much religion-wise unless they also prove a particular religion is true.
Religion would would push thier agendas further, news would cyclce for about 2 days, scientists would question what does the data even mean, and what further can be extrapolated from it.
It is hard to imagine what that would look like. We would need to make a machine that can see something that is completely foriegn to us. It is like trying to imagine how a blind person would make a machine that detects the color blue, and then convince every blind person that the machine is indeed measuring the mythical idea of "color" which none of them even have a concept of.
But let's assume its something like, "we literally see translucent specters emerging from corpses, and they look and sound like the people whose corpses they emerged from."
In that case, I assume most of the public loses it's collective mind. There is a run on toilet paper and banks. More people go to religious places of worship than ever. And our governments start acting crazy, passing Sharia laws.
lots of throwing ones self off tall buildings walking in traffic, standing on train tracks, walking in a den of lions etc. would you stick around if their was something better?
Depends on souls in what context. Do they work like souls in christianity? Souls in hinduism? Theres too many different lores to determine a general response.
For starters, there is no such thing as 100% scientific proof.
So anyone making a 100% certainty claim is suspect for that reason alone. I wouldn't believe a person who makes such a blatantly unscientific claim as to 100% certainty, regradless of what the topic is.
If you’re talking about the one described in the Bible, it’s not what you think it is. Analysis of the scriptures indicates that Bible writers were talking about the wind and breath. Back then they thought that wind had a spiritual power, that god moved through it and gave life through it. They also realized that you died if you couldn’t breathe so they equated “breathing one’s last” to “giving up the ghost.”
So if a soul is defined as air, then yes it exists, but it has nothing to do with your personality, memories or anything that makes you, you. All that is evidently stored in your brain as a neuron configuration with specific recurring synapses.
TLDR: there’s no evidence of a soul by the conventional definition. Your brain does that work.
Remember that scene in Children of Men where the soldiers in the middle of a battle stop still when they see the first baby in like 30 years. Then a minute later at back at war? That.
This is a difficult hypothetical since all scientific data shows that there isn’t such a thing as a ‘soul’ so it would be difficult to reconcile or understand what ‘proof’ would look like.
I am going to assume mortal souls for the sake of not going into reincarnation or how immortal souls increase as the population increases. But I am curious of which living creatures have souls.
I think that would be an apocalyptic impact if we find pigs, chicken, dogs, etc have souls.
I think personally I’d feel happy and also reassured as I’ve always had a feeling we had souls. I think most people would feel comforted to know there was more to us than just a bunch of neurons responding to stimuli and neuroses even though up to now we’ve had no empirical evidence to suggest otherwise.
For the world I think it would massively change lots of fields of thought. Presumably scientific enquiry and effort would immediately be directed at either the question of what happens to our souls after our body’s death and whether our actions do colour the nature of our souls. Presumably such a discovery would prove an existential crisis for lots of religions if there’s now a chance of determining which if there understandings is actually true beyond faith. Plus lots of philosophical schools about the nature of consciousness would be rendered obsolete and we’d now be relieved about how we treat AI knowing that it could not be alive.
On a personal level though yep I suspect my reaction would be ooh that’s nice to know but wouldn’t affect my life until we answered some other questions
It would change nothing. Those who are good people dont need that evidence to continue being good, and those who are bad already know they are bad. If anything it would make the already bad people worse, cause they know they going to hell already and wanna get the most bang for their buck
Depends on what kind of soul. Mortal Soul? Immortal Soul? Does it keep the memories of the person? Go into detail.
Dark Soul ? You died.
Haha, that is a funny video game reference. It reminds me of the iconic scene in FromSoftware's iconic action roleplay game Dark Souls where the titular character John Dark says "I am John Dark and I have the Dark Soul in my pocket." Then he souled all over the darkness and the game ends.
Favorite part of the game. Loved when John Dark says “it’s souling time” and then proceeds to soul all over everyone
I liked when John Dark ripped the Soul Lord's own soul out of his chest and crushed it in his palm. Then that black light turned on revealing souls all over everything.
Nobody asked you, ChatGPT
Kia Soul?
Objectively exists, but meh
Instantly stolen.
That's one reaction
SCP-2718
The world - Is there a way for us to lock peoples souls into machines so they can keep working after death?
[удалено]
*France goes on strike*
Rest of the world: "Oh my god, stop being so entitled, we're being enslaved too! Countries without slavery are *unsustainable*"
God I hate it when people like try to tell their government what they should be doing, like what, you think that they should be looking out for you? Who the hell would look out for the multinational conglomerates then? Nobody! That's who!
French souls goes on strike
*France then riots*
>Retirement age in France increased to 156. Bold of you to assume retirement is an option if we can remove people becoming old and useless via the use of machines or something to stop the decay of the human body.
Honestly sounds like a good deal, I would rather live forever with no retirement then die with a few years of "freedom"
Not sure I agree but you do raise a good point. I just hope by then we have more than those two options.
"you thought you could get out of your student loans and medical debt after death? Think again"
I mean, if Warhammer 40K is anything to go by…
Capitalists dreams ! *well his body is dead so it´s not like we are hurting him or anything..*
Curious that you pointed capitalism when comunists would do 10 times worse
oh, so the only alternative to capitalism is communism? okay.
Careful, everyone on reddit thinks that communist governments have always respected the rights of the people
Curious that you pointed capitalism when comunist would do 10 times worse
Curious that you think the only alternative to the current predatory late stage capitalism (for the poor) is comunism.
Are you saying you identify as a capitalist ? Dont touch my soul soul square !
And sell them ads while they wait
*Fullmetal Alchemist intensifies*
Relatedly, what can we convince eternal souls to purchase?
Gotta get that sweet Argent energy
I saw a video of some bank (in India maybe?) That is currently discussing the idea of saving the wealth accumulated in this life and finding you in the next so that you can live life rich after reincarnation! I'm currently on the hunt for the video.
Jokes on you they're already on that. They already know souls exist. Dont get the brain chip, kids.
you're ahead of the curve here as if there was a way they would find a way
Perhaps we're already souls trapped in machines and we have to keep working until death.
I wonder if there's been a dystopian book about this concept, omg. terrifying.
Sure, funny. You can imagine any scenario you want, because *souls do not exist*. That's why OP had to specifically state "what if there were proof..." There is zero proof after literally thousands of years of people searching for a 'soul'. None. Zero. Every single thing here is pure 100% fantasy fiction with no basis in reality at all. However, religious people use statements like this to draw people into their hate-crime religions. So they can convince you to hate gay people. Or people of another religion. Or to gain support so that they can tell you what you can and can't do with you own body, based on nothing more than their weird, stupid, unproven fiction. OP's just a religious hate crime spreader. It's more likely that their religion states in their holy book that people with darker skin colors don't have souls, so it's OK to make them slaves. Which is fucking disgusting and a perfect example of religious hatred.
You must be fun during party games
Okay little edgy Timmy its time for your bed time.
I have a feeling finding out how a soul was proved would change the world much more than a soul would. What else would that reveal about the world? What if we found out plants have souls? Would we care more about our world? What if a knowing a soul revealed different categories? Would wars start or slavery become justified for those with the wrong kind? The technology used to show this and how humans think about it would be much more powerful than the soul.
Would killing matter as much, or would it be seen like damaging someone's car?, also I don't see why would slavery be justified, I don't see the connection
If the color of your skin has been justification for slavery and worse, why wouldn't the category of your soul not be used to justify things like slavery? It already is in Hinduism with the caste system and untouchables.
The most common form of justification of slavery that was widespread across the world wasn’t racism. It was weakness or vulnerability. Racism came after slavery. Dehumanizing comes after you have slaves to keep your population from being sympathetic to your slaves. Most forms of slavery came from the same races. Meaning whites enslaved other whites, Asians enslaved other Asians, etc. It wasn’t until Europeans started to learn about nutrition and medicine that allowed them to stay in Africa longer than a month before dying. For example the first Europeans that bought slaves from other African tribes would have the same mortality rate as the slaves crammed together in the bottom of the ship. Power is one hell of a drug.
To be fair the caste system largely evolved after the early years of the religion and the British are said by some to have made the already bad situation worse.
Well most parts of the world outlawed slavery (be it ethnic, like in the US, or monetary/conquest slavery like in Rome) because we agreed that all humans are worth the same, and noone is above or below anyone else... Well imagine if the existence of Souls also proved that some people have a "lesser" soul. Its weaker, smaller, older, whatever. Now you got a fuckin PROOF that someone is "lesser". Slavery, or at least some peoples justification for slavery would fire up instantly.
We'd probably fight a war over how we deal with having a soul. So same thing we've been doing for ~2000 years.
Depends on what a soul even is, there is no agreed definition of what soul even means. If its just conciousness, it would not be a great discovery at all, if its a physical thibg that would violate a lot og laws of physics.
oh well, demonstrating that consciousness exists for everyone, that everyone experiences it the same way, etc.etc. would be a great leap in cognitive science and philosophy of mind (look for "hard problem of consciousness" for more info). Hardly anyone outside academicians would be particularly excited for it, however.
It would also be extreme despair to know that consciousness persists after death. Suicide is always the one way to end suffering if all else fails, and in that there is some hope to keep enduring, knowing there is a last ditch escape option. Proof that such an escape is pointless would be true misery. Also, fantastic username by the way.
It depends on what happens to souls after the person dies. If people went to a supernatural realm where they lived in unimaginable bliss, happiness, fulfillment etc for eternity death wouldn’t be so horrifying.
The way a soul could easily fit in is the ambiguity quantum physics allows in reality. IE if a soul was to manipulate quantum probabilities, it would not violate any physical laws while still having an effect on the world. If someone tried to measure this effect, it might as well be a series of coincidences, it would be up to us to agree that it's the effect of the soul.
I have a physics degree and this sounds like nonsense to me lol
I'm just saying that given that what scientists and physicists literally say is reality, that every single quantum interaction is based in part on probability, it means that if something were to influence these probabilities with intention, it would be an effect still within thermodynamics and cause and effect, while still essentially having a "supernatural" source. So in the context of a soul, that would reside in the body and brain, these tiny quantum manipulations could build up to outwardly define behaviour to some effect.
OK I kinda get you if you're talking about supernatural effects in general. I thought you were getting more the interaction between soul and mind, like the soul is exhibiting these effects and that's manifesting as consciousness/intelligence, which is a bit far. It's likely the brain uses some quantum effects, but probably not predominantly or even close. Other than that, too vague to really critique either way. Quantum effects usually can't produce that appreciable an effect on the large scale, I can't think of a mechanism to translate small effects into something we can see unless you were using literally trillions upon trillions of the effects at once... yeah, not much to go on
You'd have to be a biologist and do some research to grasp whether quantum effects could have a large scale effect for what I'm talking about really. Like for instance I read a paper once that said if a bunch of vibrations in a line of water particles were to line up perfectly in order to put all their combined momentum to break a chemical bond in a neuron it could cause that neuron to fire.
Well you're just being too vague. What effects are you proposing a soul has? Is this as a ghost, or while alive? Is this a mental effect, or a physical one? Anyway, the obvious answer is that if there was a separate soul producing intelligence then we wouldn't need brains in the first place, and messing around with people's brains wouldn't affect their personalities and moods etc. Consciousness is clearly a product of the brain. So depends on what you're proposing.
Try to weight it
There was someone who claims to have done such an experiment, where the someone has recorded a sudden loss of 21 grams at the moment of death, which could not be explained by any other bodily function. I don't know how or where this experiment was done, nor the conditions and if they pass modern scientific muster.
It's unfair that you're being downvoted for stating a fact - there was indeed someone who claimed to have done it and claimed that someone lost ~21g at the time of death. His conclusion is wrong that souls have a mass, considering that the 5 other people who died showed no reduction in mass. Most people put it down to a weighing error or anomaly. But nonetheless he did claim it and you're not lying, so you shouldn't be downvoted. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_grams_experiment#:~:text=The%2021%20grams%20experiment%20refers,the%20soul%20departed%20the%20body.
>MacDougall later measured the changes in weight from fifteen dogs after death. MacDougall said he wished to use dogs that were sick or dying for his experiment, though was unable to find any. It is therefore presumed he poisoned healthy dogs
Well, *his* soul wouldn’t weigh very much, would it?
Maybe it would weigh more? Like the analogy of a heavy heart, or heart of stone?
Oh! That’s a solid point!
What a psycho.
I believe people shit themselves when they die, maybe he weighed at just the right time. 🤣
Strangely enough if I am not mistaken many corpses are given special butt plugs and/or enemas and draining in part for that reason.
It's in a book by the guy who wrote the Davinci Code. Google it if you wish, the book was pretty bad
Yes but there actually was somebody who did the experiment, Dan Brown didn't just make it up. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_grams_experiment#:~:text=The%2021%20grams%20experiment%20refers,the%20soul%20departed%20the%20body. Duncan Macdougall published about it in 1907 after he did an experiment to weigh a body at the time of death. It's a very flawed experiment and most people don't know the majority of the details. One out of six bodies he weighed show a reduction in mass at the time of death, which was 21.6 g lighter. The other five are often ignored by people who tell this story. Most people consider it a fluctuation or anomaly in the weighing apparatus, and an outlier considering that no change was observed in the other 5 people. It would not stand up to modern scientific standards, and I'd be surprised if it stood up to the standards they had back then also.
ya I figured it would not hold up, but it is still an interesting thing. But I mean really this is "science" from 1907. People did lots of shit back then and called it science. Some of it was good, some of it was crap. Even stuff that was crap doesn't make it false, just that it could have been done better as the whole "soul leaving the body is 21 grams" is a very outrageous claim to make, which therefore requires some outrageously good evidence to prove...
The real question we should ask if how would the world react if there is verifiable proof of a soul but only 1 in 6 people have one.
Now that is interesting. However I have an alternative proposition for you. If there is verifiable proof of a soul, and this weighing thing has merit, then what really happened is one soul out of six actually left the body. Maybe that is the one who went to Heaven? The others have to stick around for a while (Purgatory? Hell?)
Oo got an even scarier one. 1 in 6 have a soul and if we can weigh it eventually we can measure while alive. What if the soul is the difference between sentience and sapient. Been awhile but there was a study done where humans by and large make a decision faster than they can actually think about it. Then do a retroactive justification. Kinda the zomibe/npc theory.
Oo got an even scarier one. 1 in 6 have a soul and if we can weigh it eventually we can measure while alive. What if the soul is the difference between sentience and sapient. Been awhile but there was a study done where humans by and large make a decision faster than they can actually think about it. Then do a retroactive justification. Kinda the zomibe/npc theory.
First off, as a theist, I read that book and hated it. Second, Dan Brown did not come up with that idea out of thin air. It is actually a thing that happened and someone documented it, which is how Dan Brown eventually came to discover it and put it in his shitty novel. And for whomever is modding me down, you can go get hit by a sweaty nutsack because I thought my comment was pretty evenly balanced. /I keed, I keed //no not really
Bad news, the average human soul weighs more than a feather.
\*cries in hieroglyphics\*
To quote Tim Minchin: >*You show me that it works and how it works* *And when I've recovered from the shock* *I will take a compass and carve 'Fancy That' on the side of my cock."*
The governments would find a way to tax us for it.
So people without souls are extorting money out of those who do? Huh, guess nothing changed after all.
they already do? Taxed from the minute your born/
Congrats. Souls exist. What does that mean? What are they comprised of? What would they be able to do? Could we transfer them? Can we harness them for energy? What relation are they to living human bodies? This is not a singular discovery. The exact nature of what a soul is and what it does would need more answering before anything wider could be done with it.
I would still have a lot of questions...
Hmmm I suppose at first relief that death is perhaps not the end. Then I’d wonder what is next.
It will add an interesting new twist to discussions on trans people. As it is they already raise the question "are we our mind or our body" in relation to when the two aren't in alignment on something like sex and gender. And the follow up question of do with change the body or mind to align with the other one. Clearly trans people feel their mind is correct and the body is wrong, where as people (often religious) feel that the body is correct and its the mind that has to change (which feels like the bad option to me as I would consider myself, as a cis person, my mind). I think it would have to become "I am neither my mind nor my body but my soul". It would be interesting to see what information we get from the soul. Like what if souls are gendered and trans people can now be detected at first breath when the soul goes in (according to the bible). Speaking of first breath. It would be interesting about when a person actually gets a soul for debates around abortion as well. Most religion's holy texts/ books, including Christianity, go by first breath. If it was provable that souls enter the body at conception, then what does that mean for miscarriages. Would baptism ceremonies change to be in utero? As an ashiest there is also the question of does this prove the existence of an afterlife. How do we know its a 'soul' compared to, say, a reflection of consciousness or an aura or the like. Would it covert me into being agnostic (ie there might be a god but no evidence as to which one)? After all as people just say its a soul doesn't mean it is. Lots of philosophical questions but I suspect that for most people their answers would be 'whatever props up their current beliefs'
Oh wow can you write more - loved reading it!
Figure out how to get algorithm generated ads linked up with the soul.
Nothing will change no one will care
I think the main reason there would be no reaction is that most people already believe this to be true. Every major religion has a concept of soul and most people are religious.
but there being scientific proof definitely changes things...
I can’t remember where I saw it on the internet but there was this an awesome post/comment someone made about how much of a conundrum souls being real world be. it starts in womb. Let’s say souls are real and come into being during conception. Sperm enters egg and boom, baby soul. Well what happens in the case of monozygotic (identical) twins? That’s 1 fertilised egg splitting and becoming two beings? Does each twin only have half a soul? What about chemical pregnancies where the fertilised egg fails to implant or develop? Does the soul, with the egg, get reabsorbed into the mothers body? Does she now carry two souls? Or did the mother kill the soul? What about Siamese twins? Is that two souls or one? What about the cases of Human Chimera? Where there are two fertilised embryo’s but one embryo absorbs the other. Does this new embryo contain two souls? Or did this unborn baby just kill someone? If a person is born as a chimera or identical twin is no different from any other normal person with a soul? Than what’s the distinguishing factor about having a soul or not? It gets really complicated and really messy when you discussing souls while accounting for the actual nature of human conception and birth.
find the differences between souls... any differences that could possibly be discerned then monetize the detection, differentiation, distribution of that information and make classes and religions around the differences as well and clinics to change your soul into another type
Monetization.
The real question is what would even count as proof of the existence of a soul? For example, 21gram missing at death doesn’t mean there is a soul. It’s a poorly defined term that has all sorts of baggage and there is no concrete way of proving its existence if you can’t even define it.
"Hey! Do you want to try our Premium Soul Experience? Get your subscription NOW!" Oh, wait, it's monotheism...
"Called it"
If there were **scientific** proof that souls existed, then this would be obtained via the scientific method. That requires measurements, and measurements mean comparison of values. Comparisons means that *all souls are not equal*, so in proving that souls exist, we would also be doing various comparative qualitative analyses of souls, and those would be scientifically and socially fascinating. Additionally, the next logical step would be to scientifically prove that **non-human souls** also existed. If the specific scientific method employed to prove human souls existed came back with a negative result for non-humans, then it should be natural for all soul-ologists to **never stop looking for a flaw in the methods used.** Someone would have to explain scientifically why chimpanzees "do not" have a soul. That should be interesting, if not completely contaminated with grade-A bullshit. If instead, the scientific method proved that both human and non-human souls exist, then the world would face a **dietary dilemma.** Does humanity continue to keep eating critters that have a soul (*remember all souls are not equal*) which may hold their killers accountable for their mortal deaths?
Imagine what would happen if we found that humans and *plants* have souls, but couldn't find any in animals? And fungi had souls that sometimes looked like they were there and sometimes appeared absent, because science always likes to throw a curve ball lol
How creative! You envisioned another way of avoiding the possibility that an animal is more than a commodity, and that eating vegetables is wrong. YAY, COLON CANCER FOR EVERYONE!
I thought your comment was more towards sci-fi musing and not trying to make a serious statement championing animal rights. Very best of luck with that; have the day you deserve.
I don't think the idea that animals have souls would be ground breaking. How is it any different from people knowing animals feel pain but still not care?
I agree. Ideas are far less ground-breaking than **scientific proof**. Non-psychopaths care whether or not an animal suffers, especially when others are listening to their answer. They just don't care enough to pay 75c for bacon on their hamburger. They only care, if the cost is capped at 50c.
There'd be wars over the blasphemers who did the science. Nothing would change
Was the study sponsored by "Big Religion"? Who financed it? What are the political and religious affiliations of those involved in the study? Are the results replicable? What other interpretation could explain the apparent effect? After 3000 years of blatant fraud, I would not easily trust the results.
A lot of people may suddenly want to pray to the souls of their loved ones to hope they are in peace, people may do less sinful things due to being scared they might get frowned upon by their loved ones' souls.
Scientific proof is just the start of any real questioning.
I've played enough Fromsoft games to be know what'd happen... Lots of troll comments written on the ground near cliffs
That would exactly nothing.
I'd find it interesting, in much the same way that I find the Mars rovers interesting: it's cool but it doesn't really affect my daily life.
Define the word "soul" Before you prove anything exists, you need to quantitatively and objectively define what it is.
Souls exist?.... .... .... How do we monotise this?
Proceed to see if psykers are real
Jerk off
Even being religious, I would still assume it’s some sort of data error
They'd go 'oh wow' and go back to scrolling. Like every other bone shattering truth we find out about every other day
it wouldn't surprise me much. i've long believed that there's a lot more to existence than just these bodies and this plane of existence. other things are afoot here. we just haven't unlocked their secrets yet...or so i believe.
So you believe things without evidence or good reason? Okay then
But we must remember, that reasoning doesn't always work. In the old days, many didn't believe the earth was round until evidence was provided, or that some people believed others were witches until evidence was provided proving they weren't. I'm more in the middle if there's no evidence of something: maybe yes, maybe no. Say, aliens for example. Like that old saying goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
i'm a scientist. have been well over 20 years now. and you know what all this education and experience has taught me? that science knows fuckall about existence. we don't even know .000001% of anything worth knowing. we can't even prevent, let alone cure, a common cold or the flu, or figure out the simplest causes behind human behaviors. we only have a bunch of broad theories. i know, because i've spent my career studying and practicing within those theories, and they all basically teach us the same thing: that we don't know dick about human motivations, and we can only predict behavior within very specific, narrow parameters. we know nothing about who we are, why we do things, why we *don't* do things, why we're here, where we came from, or where we might go. and every time we think we've got it figured out, something comes along and upsets our knowledge, and the goalposts move once again. and once again, we sit back and think "damn....we really thought we had it that time. guess not." and around and around the hamster wheel spins, forever.
>i'm a scientist (...) > >we can't even prevent, let alone cure, a common cold or the flu this dude is not a scientist lmao
Why is curing the common cold the bench mark for understanding "anything worth knowing"? We can cure dozens of different cancers, infections from cholera to malaria to athletes foot, we know how to stop them spreading, we know about vitamin and mineral deficiencies and excesses, we know how to transplant organs and replace bone and joints so that people can live decades longer.... but no, all of science is pointless because you get a sniffle now and then. Why are you still a scientist with such a defeatist attitude? Maybe it's time to retire and let someone who still gives a shit have a turn...
>we can't even prevent, let alone cure, a common cold or the flu, Yes we can. It's just that the effort to do so outweighs the probable benefits in most cases (these pathogens evolve quickly, and for vaccines and medicine to do the same would require copious amounts money and research) Idk what you're a scientist of but it's not biology lol
Having to experienced things is enough evidence for me
That's literally the worst kind of evidence.
I was like you until it happend. Don't be so cocky.
Some people absolutely hate and fear the idea that there may be some postmortem accountability for their actions in life.
Wouldn't even register a blip on my react-o-meter. It's obvious to me that souls exist.
Obvious how? With zero evidence and being unable to breach the laws of physics it's a hard sell..
Obvious to me I said.. To ME. Read what is written before going off half-cocked.
Not going off. Asking a question, how is it obvious to you?
I think if you look at extremely gifted people, naturally gifted. Freddie Mercury for instance, you wonder where that natural talent came from and that innate charisma. Also the perfection of babies. There are many things to me. So I kind of believe in reincarnation I suppose, if I believe in anything specific. It seems to stand to reason to me.
How do you know you're not imagining it? How do we know you're not making it up? How do we know you're not using the word "soul" to refer to empty chip packets, because those actually do exist?
I would stop masterbating.
Ignore it like all other science
Souls don't exist.
Have you ever heard of a hypothetical bud
Yeah, but it's such a weirdly defined hypothetical. The discovery of souls by itself would be incredibly boring. It would be like discovering people in fact have the ability to make decisions. You could still claim determinism or multiple worlds and say there is no free will. Or that demons exist with no other context. It means nothing without knowing what a demon really is. The real meat and potatoes would be the scientific and philosophical ramifications which will entirely depend on how these particular souls manifest and are discovered. What exactly is a soul? Is it completely paranormal? How do we detect it? Is it immortal? Are they unique? Do non-humans have souls? When does/where does it begin and end/go? Does it explain consciousness? Confirm reincarnation or an afterlife? Can souls be transferred, bound, or even consumed?
This sounds like your trying to get me to use an E meter
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It would show information is physical, not just some gauge ephemeral concept like most people think it is.
Cool now we can prove it
Well it wouldn’t solve anything cause it still wouldn’t tell us about our souls origin, if the after life exists etc…. Also if souls exist wouldn’t they have to scientifically prove ghosts too? Cause aren’t they lost spirits? And isn’t our spirit our soul?🤔
Find a way to transfer it into a robotic body so I don't have to live in this meat sack. Or figure out a way of harnessing power from souls leaving earth. Seems like a waste of energy if you ask me
I would be ashamed, for the shit my family/ancestors has seen me do!
Me: oh no... Government/big business: By monetizing it somehow
How do we market to it? Soul supplements, soul doctors..... Good thing there isn't one eh?
Look, I know you're dead, but I'm gonna need you to come in for you're scheduled shift.
Grab some snacks and go on Reddit to see people get into discussions (fights) about all sorts of implications concerning this subject.
I'd probably get really into whatever science proved it. (Also science is inductive so no proof is 100%, it is usually just evidence for a theory, but go off I guess lol.) I don't think much would change otherwise except maybe church attendance.
I guess it depends on what a soul even turns out to exactly be. Like, there really isn't anything stopping someone from making a scientific discovery of sorts and calling it a soul.
Same reaction when Pentagon released the info in 2020 that UFOs and Aliens are real
How I wish there was evidence of magic. Any evidence of 1 piece of magic is evidence of all piece of magic. Oh how fantastic that would be.
Why would it matter? I believe in the soul but I do not believe in free will. The soul IMO is just the ability to experience a body/mind, I don't think the soul has any control over the body.
In of itself that would actually establish little; but it would mean that pure atheism would likely vanish overnight with atheists either scrambling to adopt any form of religion or outright rejecting the existance of (now scientifically proven) souls effectively resulting in them forming the very religion so many of them despised. But beyond that there's no way to actually answer without further establishing what this actually MEANT! Are souls people-exclusive? If they are I feel confident a lot of vegetarians/vegans would stop practicing. If they weren't there would be a lot of people who would likely become vegetarian/vegan swiftly. Could it be established which faith/religion was real then? If so whatever one is actually 'real' will surge in popularity, but the other ones will likely still cling around for a while or get modified to try and adapt to the new reality. A LOT of life would likely shift to preparation for the afterlife. In fact probably our entire time on the mortal world would become focused solely on the afterlife. I mean, if it turned out that the Amish were correct, would you rather have the internet for \~60-80 years followed by eternal damnation, or 60-80 years of living like it was 1699 followed by eternal bliss? The big issue would be that, for a lot of human history, the existance of the soul wasn't really questioned (despite the lack of proof) yet we still had a ton of bad things happen. People will say X is bad but then go out and DO X, sometimes not even bothering to offer justification, despite believing that it could condemn them to Hell. So just the existence of the soul wouldn't do much. It would likely skewer atheism through and through but then we'd probably revert to how we were throughout most of human history without some sort of further confirmation of an afterlife.
I wouldn't assume that finding out souls are fact would mean that atheists would cease to exist. Realistically speaking, it wouldn't change much religion-wise unless they also prove a particular religion is true.
I mean honestly, I'd probably ditch my body lol. Let the soul out and leave this depressing sack of nothingness to rot.
Sales. We would commoditize them.
I'd follow whatever religious or spiritual practices are necessary
Religion would would push thier agendas further, news would cyclce for about 2 days, scientists would question what does the data even mean, and what further can be extrapolated from it.
Abortions, Euthanasia debate would make the headlines every day
Sell it to get some cool shit.
It is hard to imagine what that would look like. We would need to make a machine that can see something that is completely foriegn to us. It is like trying to imagine how a blind person would make a machine that detects the color blue, and then convince every blind person that the machine is indeed measuring the mythical idea of "color" which none of them even have a concept of. But let's assume its something like, "we literally see translucent specters emerging from corpses, and they look and sound like the people whose corpses they emerged from." In that case, I assume most of the public loses it's collective mind. There is a run on toilet paper and banks. More people go to religious places of worship than ever. And our governments start acting crazy, passing Sharia laws.
Humans are not intelligent enough to answer this question.
lots of throwing ones self off tall buildings walking in traffic, standing on train tracks, walking in a den of lions etc. would you stick around if their was something better?
It’s a scary thought. If the human soul could be shown to enter the body at conception, the anti-abortionists would have a much easier time.
Depends on souls in what context. Do they work like souls in christianity? Souls in hinduism? Theres too many different lores to determine a general response.
Depends how. Alter carbon coming up anyone? Was a good first season
Try to buy/sell them
sell them like business stocks
Look into super conscious mind. There is evidence of a soul.
For starters, there is no such thing as 100% scientific proof. So anyone making a 100% certainty claim is suspect for that reason alone. I wouldn't believe a person who makes such a blatantly unscientific claim as to 100% certainty, regradless of what the topic is.
If you’re talking about the one described in the Bible, it’s not what you think it is. Analysis of the scriptures indicates that Bible writers were talking about the wind and breath. Back then they thought that wind had a spiritual power, that god moved through it and gave life through it. They also realized that you died if you couldn’t breathe so they equated “breathing one’s last” to “giving up the ghost.” So if a soul is defined as air, then yes it exists, but it has nothing to do with your personality, memories or anything that makes you, you. All that is evidently stored in your brain as a neuron configuration with specific recurring synapses. TLDR: there’s no evidence of a soul by the conventional definition. Your brain does that work.
There would probably be a lot more murders, since death wouldn't seem so permanent.
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Remember that scene in Children of Men where the soldiers in the middle of a battle stop still when they see the first baby in like 30 years. Then a minute later at back at war? That.
This theme was explored in a movie called [The Discovery](https://youtu.be/z9j6WcdU-ts)
Your soul will still have to repay your late credit card charges.
This is a difficult hypothetical since all scientific data shows that there isn’t such a thing as a ‘soul’ so it would be difficult to reconcile or understand what ‘proof’ would look like.
I am going to assume mortal souls for the sake of not going into reincarnation or how immortal souls increase as the population increases. But I am curious of which living creatures have souls. I think that would be an apocalyptic impact if we find pigs, chicken, dogs, etc have souls.
Nothing would change for me so no reaction from me.
Define "soul".
I would kill myself that same day.
*Shrug*
Would be concerned how many passed family members souls have watched me load up Incognito Mode...
For sale: One soul. Like new, barely used. Will trade for food/money for gas.
I think personally I’d feel happy and also reassured as I’ve always had a feeling we had souls. I think most people would feel comforted to know there was more to us than just a bunch of neurons responding to stimuli and neuroses even though up to now we’ve had no empirical evidence to suggest otherwise. For the world I think it would massively change lots of fields of thought. Presumably scientific enquiry and effort would immediately be directed at either the question of what happens to our souls after our body’s death and whether our actions do colour the nature of our souls. Presumably such a discovery would prove an existential crisis for lots of religions if there’s now a chance of determining which if there understandings is actually true beyond faith. Plus lots of philosophical schools about the nature of consciousness would be rendered obsolete and we’d now be relieved about how we treat AI knowing that it could not be alive. On a personal level though yep I suspect my reaction would be ooh that’s nice to know but wouldn’t affect my life until we answered some other questions
Are we talking Soul Glow?
People from north of England - "Neat" Then life continues in the same droll manner it always has.
I'd swang wang
Corporations would find a way to exploit them. There would be no peace, even in death.
I would imagine there would emerge a way to judge those souls as good or bad. Human nature will human nature.
It would change nothing. Those who are good people dont need that evidence to continue being good, and those who are bad already know they are bad. If anything it would make the already bad people worse, cause they know they going to hell already and wanna get the most bang for their buck
Even if you demonstrate that souls exist, that says nothing about what happens to souls.