At What Point Is The Soul Created?

[sittingrelaxing]

do animals have souls ?

imo souls are only useful if you believe we've been before or believe we'll come again,which is why religions over centuries have controled followers and insist that souls are god given...

[Owderb]

I know of plenty of Arsouls

Owd

[d_L_t]

Well it must be good because knowone has ever come back.

[HvyFuel]

Or everyone has come back.

[Guest ironlungs]

i believe the soul can be described to be the beginning of your life, which starts when the ovum is penetrated by the sperm, and a new being comes to be. or it could be, when the baby takes its first breath and the soul enters the vehicle which it will use for the time the body allows it.

so, what happens when you die in your sleep and you stop breathing, where does your life energy go to(and your soul), according to physics?

[ninorc]

Souls are not created or destroyed but are aspects of universal (god) energy experiencing themselves subjectively through successive incarnations, like droplets of water that derive from and return to the great lake of universal consciousness. At precisely what point in the gestation process the soul enters a baby's body while it is in the womb is a matter of speculation and varies, I imagine, according to one's religious affiliation. However, if we accept the premise that unborn souls select their parents and thereby choose the physical vehicle in which they will traverse their life on earth, it should be clear that any human intervention in the development of a foetus will incur karmic consequences.

[Guest FD]

it should be clear that any human intervention in the development of a foetus will incur karmic consequences.

interesting, but can u explain this bit further? u mean like smoking when pregnant or what?

[EnigmaticOne]

interesting, but can u explain this bit further? u mean like smoking when pregnant or what?

Maybe he means IVF etc rather than smoking when pregnant.

[ninorc]

u mean like smoking when pregnant or what?

I meant more like terminating pregnancies, but the issue of smoking while pregnant and the possible ramifications of that may be interesting to explore: Smoking is bad, as we know, but so what if its not harming anyone else? Smoking while pregnant may harm the foetus - it says so on the packet - so its probably a good idea to not smoke while pregnant and a mother who is mindful of that fact and doesn't smoke, despite her cravings, may be assumed to have accrued positive karma points by resisting her urge to smoke for the good of her baby. Whereas smoking while pregnant might be seen as a selfish act that could negatively effect the baby's development. I say 'could', because we don't know. Perhaps the consequences of the mother's not smoking might have been worse? She might have become so wound up, or stressed out, that she got into a violent argument, or behaved in an irrational maner that lead to a catastrophic accident! We don't know, so who are we to judge? We can, however, be confident that god knows precisely the effect that a mother's smoking will have on the development of her baby and that this has been explained and agreed by the unborn baby on a soul level during what we might call the womb selection process Edited July 3, 2006 by ninorc

[EnigmaticOne]

Meant to say but forgot, my belief is that if humans have souls they probably come into being or whatever when the unborn foetus starts to have a heartbeat of it's own. Which is around 6-8 weeks gestation.

EO.

[Arnold Layne]

Not read the whole thread but here we go...

I don't believe we "have souls". But a human person may be considered as soul, just as they may be considered as body, or mind.

But first you need to define "soul".

[sibannac]

After much debate within my own mind and contemplation i've decided

Fourth rule applies

[Magic]

sorry to hijack thread, but i keep reading references to sibannac's 1,2,3rd rule, am very interested in these rules, where do i find em, please link

[The Major]

"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" (Matthew 16:26)

The current English word "soul" may have originated from the Old English sawol, documented in 970 AD. "Sawol" has possible etymological links with a Germanic root from which we also get the word "sea". The old German word is called 'se(u)la', which means: belonging to the sea (ancient Germanic conceptions involved the souls of the unborn and of the dead "living" being part of a medium, similar to water), or perhaps, "living water"

The word "soul" did not exist in the times of Jesus, Socrates or Aristotle, and so the quotations, interpretations and translations of the word "soul" from these sources, means that the word should be handled very carefully. One might go as far as saying that the word "soul", in the sense we use it today, did not exist in Hebrew or Aramaic, and only partly in Greek. Ancient Greeks sometimes referred to the soul as psyche (as in modern English psychology). Aristotle's works in Latin translation, used the word anima (as in animated), which also means "breath". In the New Testament, the original word may sometimes better translate as "life", as in :

"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" (Matthew 16:26)

If you exchange the word "soul" for "life" in the sentence above, the statement may seem less profound.

JB.bmp

Edited July 3, 2006 by The Major

[Arnold Layne]

Aristotle's works in Latin translation, used the word anima (as in animated), which also means "breath".

Interesting. The Hebrew Scriptures speak of "Ruach Adonai". "Ruach" is translated as "Breath", "wind", "spirit". Thus in Genesis 1, The spirit (ruach) of El moved over the surface of the waters

In the New Testament, this is closely linked by John's Gospel with the concept of "ho logos" (The Word). The relation of word and breathe is clear.

But

What is "person"?