Video is from the Veritas Forum. Lots of interesting discussions. I am still new to what they present, but it appears consistently well-reasoned and intelligent as they discuss deep issues.

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Personally, I find that if one accepts the idea that there is universal human goodness, or universal and unalterable moral qualities, one is effectively agreeing to the existence of a soul in every person. In order to claim there is a baseline from which goodness should being with, you must acknowledge that existence isn't pure chance and chaos, but instead has a certain external direction. One does not need to identify said external direction (be it God or anything else) in order to take this view. I would also suggest a person believing in the existence of a soul will fundamentally work to encourage them to better behavior in some fashion. Belief in something positive beyond your pure physical form will typically induce such tendencies, from my personal experience in life.

5638760 I believe there is a soul in everyone. Weather you are religious or not, as long as you try your best to do good your soul will reflect that. I know an Atheist and she's very kind so I think her soul must be pretty pure (Despite what she says)

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This isn't a bad idea, I'll use it whenever I get the chance to evangelize somebody.

The soul is simply... you. A person is not their body or even their brain. Human life is not physical. We are simply attached to our bodies. This is easier to understand in modern times than in ages past. We have movies like Avatar or the Matrix which depict an analogous system. In Avatar, the body was controlled remotely. The "person" was not in the body. In real life, there is a similar separateness. The body can die, but you, as a person, merely disconnect.

Thus, you could say that life is not physical either. This is why life cannot be created by any physical process not already including life. It's funny how simple the concept is, but the more someone tries to dig into it with secular biology, the more convoluted and impossible it becomes.

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Personally, I find that if one accepts the idea that there is universal human goodness, or universal and unalterable moral qualities, one is effectively agreeing to the existence of a soul in every person.

But they aren't agreeing with that, though.
'Cause all you're doing is relabeling morality as 'The Soul'. I mean, there's nothing stopping you from doing that. But most people aren't going to accept your change of definition, so it's of pretty limited utility.

There's plenty of totally reasonable explanations for people being good. Game Theory, for example, deals a lot with how playing a positive sum game (ie, a benevolent one) can be simply better for all parties than personal greed, in the long and short terms. And mind, despite the name, it applies with lots of behavioral, economic and social situations.

To say nothing of the idea of how creating a trend of benevolence will lead to you living in a better, safer society. And the more we contribute, the more momentum we give said society.

And all of the instinctive stuff with us being a social species, who wants our family, friends, tribe, whatever to be happy.

I mean, I happily use the word 'Soul' all the time. Lots and lots! I think it's a great and illustrative word to use to talk about your deepest bits and selfhood. People get it, when you use the word. It's not like atheists are in ignorance of what the word is supposed to mean. At least not in western culture.

But you aren't gonna be winning many atheists over by playing with definitions. What atheists are gonna want is tangible proof that there's some external bit that makes up 'You', aside from the brain and your particular hormone soup. Until you have that, you're just going to watch their eyes glaze over, and see them politely nod and provide monosyllabic replies, to avoid seeming rude as they tune you out.

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I look at it from the perspective that if the universe operates as a more atheistic view dictates, through a lot of chaos and random chance, it becomes immediately improbable for virtually every single human to have the same basic grasp of morality. To an extent, this suggests something beyond the merely physical factors in order to sustain that kind of connection or repeated common trait. Even in private and without other humans present, we have a tendency to sometimes show compassion to regular animals in ways that provide us no practical benefit. It is in acknowledging that something bigger is at play that I am of the view that one accepts the existence of the human soul, or similar explanations, that seem to touch something beyond the physical realm.

Also not interested in winning over atheists or anyone else. As I'm neither Christian or any other path that encourages preaching, it is simply not something I think about. Besides, I've found a spiritual path is extremely personal, and you only progress when and where you are personally ready for it. Additionally, one is only pretending if they are trying to rush their progress, as well.

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becomes immediately improbable for virtually every single human to have the same basic grasp of morality

Why? Is it immediately improbable for every single dog to a food-obsessed creature that makes barking sound and wags its tail when happy?

Like every other species, we have inbuilt drives and needs and instincts.

And those inbuilt drives and needs would often be in place because they increase our odds of survival. By, say, a social species creating a society where they don't all kill one another. Killing is, unsurprisingly, rather detrimental to society.

But also keep in mind, universal morals aren't quite so universal as you might think. The people you run into in modern western society are saints compared to almost every other time in human history. Morality has evolved. Society has evolved. Justice has evolved. Go back a thousand years and you would be shocked by a near universal lack of empathy and decency. Our culture now just happily programs us to think this is normal human behavior. But it isn't, really. It's just that our current behavior is awesome. And that awesomeness has a lot of cultural momentum behind it. And unsurprisingly, that makes our cultures quite idyllic. A win for everyone.

As for altruism, well, it happens with animals too. At least with social mammals. That might give you a hint that it's an important social function.

5638760 That video was actually insightful. I feel smarter now and that's rare for me.

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Fair enough.

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The Veritas Forum tends to do that a lot, I've found.

One of the biggest things that stood out for me was not an argument but an experiment by Dr. Wilder Penfield who did not believe in a soul at the time. In his experiment he would monitor the brain and ask a patient to move their arm. When they did a certain part of the brain would be activated. He would ask them if they moved their arm to which they would reply yes. Afterwards he would stimulate the same part of their brain artificially with an electronic signal and their arm would move. He would ask them if they moved their limb and they would reply that it moved by itself.
It proved what he already knew, that the brain is just a giant control panel for the body but it also brought a question. A control panel must be acted upon by an outside force in order to manipulate a machine (In this case the body). Dr. Penfield activated the brain in the second part of the experiment but it left him wondering what activated it before. In short we know and can see that we use our brains to control our body and we can see the brain being activated but we can't see what is activating it.

The body is important but is merely the vessel that we use to operate on this particular, temporary plane of existence but that the soul is what exits the body once this phase of existence comes to end.

5638760 I would describe it as a person sitting in front of a computer. That's all our brains are, just organic computers, after all. Some people have powerful computers, some people have weak ones. If a piece of the computer is damaged or poorly made, it affects how well the user can manipulate it. Computers glitch, get old, and break down, and must be repaired regularly to stay functional. The soul, then, is the user, a completely independent "thing" with no known form that controls the body, the computer, through UI options like a mouse and keyboard, and makes decisions based on what the computers display tells them. If you control the display and UI, you control the user, even if said user is ultimately unaffected.

Death, then, is merely the user turning the computer off.