Existence of the soul

Hi,
I was thinking the other day and i thought of this idea. I was just wondering if it was any good or not. I decided to post it here because there seems to be a large number of athiests at this site, and they are the ones who will provide the most valuable feedback to it. as they hold beliefs contrary to this one i think. sorry if it is not revelent enough.If there is no soul then your brain would be all there is.
Your brain is wired in such a manner to keep you alive, reproduce and keep you away from harm, these are instincts.
If your brain was all there was why would you be able to do things contrary to these instints.
Since people can go agianst what your brain was wired to do, does that mean that there is something more than your brain? (the soul for simplicity)
Examples- fasting you go agianst your brains will to eat.
piercings- you allow yourself to knowingly get hurt.
chastity - you go agianst your brains will to reproduce
quitting addictions- your brain is rewired so you "need" that drug to function normally. since people can quit cold turkey you go agianst your brains will.
suicide- your go agianst your brains will to survive.
the list can go on and on in this fashionthis thought of mine can also explian why somethings are religious things like fasting, piercings, circumcisions (for jewish people),chastity, because you are asserting your souls dominince over your brain.How could this soul evolve because it must have as many animals do not have this "soul". and since there is not a good answer for this then does that serve to prove for something more or different than naturalistic evolution, God or otherwise

It's called "kin selection". It means that individuals do things that are bad for themselves, but good for their relatives. If you save more than two of your brothers at the cost of your own life, you've basically allowed more copies of your genes to survive than if you had lived and they had died (because you share genes with your relatives.)So, that's how apparently altruistic behavior could arise through natural selection. Other explanations for the other stuff have to do with an evolved ability to form social groups, and the tendancy of humans to conform to the morals and tastes of their group. Also humans are terribly introspective, and so we dwell on things, which can lead to the destructive thought patterns that herald suicide. You'll notice that humans, when they kill themselves, do so not generally because of intense physical pain, but generally more intangible hardship. (I find that significant, anyway.)Basically you've identified nothing that requires a soul to explain - and the "soul conjecture" is far from being the simplest explanation, anyway. It raises far too many questions. What are souls made of? How do they interface with the body? Why are they undetectable if they can influence bodies? You may be half right - in many societies part of attaining adulthood is a sense of mastery over the base desires of the body. These body modification rituals may very well be an outward sign of someone's domination of their physical instinct and desire.

I think that you are underestimating both the human brain and other life. Other mammals and birds are able to come up with behaviour that goes beyond simple instinct (as anyone who has tried to keep squirrels off a bird feeder can testify - if there is a way to get at the food a squirrel will probably find it).

Body, mind, soul.Three increasingly abstract ways of describing the same thing.

here i would argue that the squirrel is acting within his instinct to gain food. your point doesn't really have a animal going against it's brain.
here is a simpler expression of the idea. a no "soul" animal or person in my idea could be likened to a machine that only does what it is programmed to do. the brain to my understanding is wired to survive, reproduce and avoid bodily harm. however since a my a real person (maybe some animals) can go against this wiring than I think that that logically hints at something more powerful than the brain.

your kin selection argument is weak, the ability to sacrifice for others depends on the person. a person with my self control and some balls is able to do that. a person without these qualities would not be able to do that. a good example of this is in saving private ryan when the coward translator cowers by the stairs while his two friends get killed. And if a person is able to sacrifice for the good of the "cause" aren't his genes better and shouldn't natural selection keep those better genes alive instead of risking them?
in the case of intangible hardship, how much hardship the person can take depends on the person's will to survive. some people are tough enough to take it others are not.
this being tough enough, bravery, and self control depends on the strength of the person's "soul". their mastery over their instincts.
Half Right? i think my description fits the situation perfectly.

my model seperates the body/brain from the "soul" because the body/brain is wired to do certian things and the "soul" can override the body/brain.

I think you're selling the brain, particularly the human brain, short. It's a pretty complicated little machine, and able to come up with some subtle stuff. Yes, there is some hardwiring, but upbringing, surroundings, peers, and such lead to new connections that aren't the same from person to person.
Some immortal part of "me" is a swell idea for many people, but I'm confident that when the voltages inside my skull all go to zero, that will be The End. Finis. Over. Nada mas.

the most basic hardwirings of the "pretty complicated little machine" are the instincts to eat, live, and reproduce. Since a person (maybe some animals that i can't think of) can go against those hardwirings of the pretty complicated little machine than the machine probably isn't the thing which is ultimately in control. As to the "Nada mas" stuff it is unfortunate that you think that way. and have you heard of ghosts which are unexplicable?

And yet, is supported by observational and genetic evidence. Whereas the "soul hypothesis" is supported by no evidence. And yet animals do it too, so apparently it has nothing to do with the person - it has nothing to do with whether or not you even are a person. Ah, so we're using movies now as evidence?And remember, we're talking about kin selection. (Tell me now if you don't know what "kin" means.) So whether or not a guy gives his life for his pals is not relevant. Whether or not he would give his life for his kids, or his brothers, or enough of his cousins, is. But that's exactly what kin selection does. More copies of the individual's superior "altruism" gene survive because he's laid down his life for his siblings, who share his genes (and posess, between them, more copies of each gene than are found in the single individual). So yes, kin selection preserves more copies of the gene. What about that didn't you understand? Except for the fact that there's no such thing as a soul. That's why I said you were half right.

Sure, the most basic ones. And what better way to maximize reproductive and resource opportunity than with co-ordinated, co-operative effort? And what achieves that better than symbolic language and social organization? And what achieves social organization better than cohesive, internalized moral codes?You've presented nothing that can't be explained by starting from the basic instincts you've already identified. That's the thing. The same processes that cause altruism, voluntary childlessness, and even suicide stem directly from behaviors that, in general, maximize the reproductive success of human beings. No, they're very explicable. They don't exist. Very simple explanation, really.

The squirrel's MOTIVE may be instinctive, but how about the ways it goes about attacking the problem ? Why are squirrels so effective at gettign past barriers DESIGNED to stop them ? If squirrels operated on simple instinct then they should not be so effective at solving the problem of how to get the food.But if you really want to discuss the existence of the sould, then wouldn;t it be better not to rely on highly questionable assumptions about the brain and instead look at actual evidence of what the brain does do ?

The most basic hardwiring is none of the above...it is to pass your genes to the next generation. Anything that gives you an advantage will be selected for....thus, altruistic behavior in humans and animals makes sense..saving your sister's kid at the cost of your own life ensures that some of your genes make it to the next generation and thus increases your fitness....and Caspar the friendly ghost is easily explicable...he is a cartoon

Whether by instinct or not, a bacterium eats, lives and reproduces. But it has no brain. So there is no reason to assume that there is a causal connection between eating, living and reproducing on the one hand, and brains on the other hand. Whatever a brain is for, it's not for oozing instincts like those mentioned. Thus, there's no reason to think that there's 'something' going against the hardwirings of the brain. On the contrary: this 'something' (the mind, consciousness) is the result of those hardwirings in action. The mind is what the brain does. And when the brain stops doing its thing, the mind is a goner.Cheers.[This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 08-19-2003]

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my model seperates the body/brain from the "soul"

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And that's your first mistake right there.

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the body/brain is wired to do certian things and the "soul" can override the body/brain.

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Or the conscious mind can override autonomous response?