While I think most people visiting this section of the forums believe that we endure after death, I've never come across a train of thought that demonstrates it. Faith, beliefs, and feelings in great numbers, yes, but not logic. The purpose of this post is to do just that. I apologize if the post is redundant or roundabout, I want to be exceptionally thorough, and this is a multi-step train of thought.
First of all, we all experience emotions, which are not physical. While there are chemicals in the brain that scientists can point to for various emotions, the experience of an emotion is not that of a chemical sloshing around in brain-goo. We feel sad, or happy, or afraid, so there must be more than just the physical going on here. And since we all have the capacity for emotions, it is both non-physical and universal. For the purposes of the demonstration, I'm going to term this non-physical, shared aspect of ourselves the spirit.
However, we are not carbon copies of one another. Our emotional experiences are unique. Emotions are both universal AND unique. Now, this is a contradiction, and the only way it's explainable is if there's another, distinct, non-physical aspect of ourselves that utilizes the capacities inherent in the spirit and allows us to experience our individual emotions. I'm going to call this the soul.
So, we have a shared non-physical aspect in the spirit, and our non-physical identity and uniqueness in the soul. The question then becomes whether the soul and spirit die along with the body. My answer is no on both counts. After someone dies, I continue to experience emotions, so the shared part of me that allows me to experience emotions, the spirit, does not suddenly cease to be on anyone's death, including my own.
That leaves the soul, our "I", which is the more challenging of the two to nail down and demonstrate that it endures beyond death because it's unique to each of us. However, it can be done by remembering that the root of the soul is in the spirit. The spirit-capacities allow the soul to flourish, completely independent of the body. The soul, or uniqueness, is in no way dependent on the body, shown in how if I get a heart transplant I suddenly don't wake up with emotions of the donor, for example. The body, a physical thing, does not posses the capacity to support the soul on its own. Instead, the soul is dependent on the spirit, and the spirit is eternal. Therefore, the soul must also endure beyond death.
In conclusion, both the soul, who we are, and the spirit, our universal capacities, continue to exist after death. So far, I've only used emotions as an example for consistency, but anything that we all posses the capacity for and is not physical can be attributed to the spirit, soul, or both, and thus we continue to exist as ourselves after we die.
Thoughts?
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