What is the soul?

To be good soldiers of Christ and good Catholics Sister Atilla (the nun) demanded that, in fourth grade, we write about our souls. She wanted us to describe our souls and what it meant to our love of Jesus and the ole man.
Well, I always envisioned a soul to have a form that my older cousin Rip told me about(he was in the fifth grade).
I deduced that A soul was this thing, it was like a little body that was all covered with mazola all over and was without any clothes on so it could run up and rub against other souls and this would be fun when older souls got around each other. He said that boy an girl souls would rub against each other and pretty much theyd keep each other occupied. Iwrote up something to that effect and my mom was quite shocked at how Id gone and become this evil minded kid whos
gonna go to hell.
She told me that a soul was more like a box that God kept stacked in a huge room until we die and then the little guy inside the box, who would be me-well,my ghost . He would come out nd live a life forever worshipping God and Jesus and Mary.

I liked the whole thing that rip told me much better so I made a sort of hybrid version of the two concepts and even kept the mazola in there.
Sister Atillah smacked my knuckles and sent me to Father Stanush for penance.

Rather than making a big deal about it, Father Stan let me off with a coupla Hail Marys and a "perfect act of contrition' and to make a firm commitment to God denouncing the practice of "Self abuse" (I had no idea at the time what self-abuse even was, I thought I was promising not to ever slice up my arms or beat myself with a stick)
Sister Atillah, shes The bitch.

A soul cannot be easily defined in words possessed by humans.

Well put Stur, owing to our dualistic language and logic. I'd supposed the soul is everything about one except his body; but I suppose it might be included too

Then there's my notion that He/She/It isn't supernatural

Ah, but what if there is no He or She or It and all is one and one is all? Perhaps there's just one giant intermingling of a zillion or more universes and each universe is in truth one soul.

Indeed Stur us apodictical existential pantheists maintain exactly that

However we'd suppose there's only one such

And what if bullfrogs had wings, they wouldn't bump their ass.

..our shadows taller than our souls?

I think trying to define the soul as a 'thing' is useless..we've been trying to do it for the last fuckzillion years and so far no one has convinced no one not only what it is, but the terms are not even agreed upon..

So, my definition of the soul is that it is a collection of all the things that make us who we are. So, if I wrote an essay about all your non physical attributes and were, for arguments sake, able to capture it all, that would be your soul.

Of course its impossible to get it all..so we can settle for capturing part of the soul..

And if that doesn't work, we'll take your name for a clue and say that its defined as a strip of leather that's typically attached to other leather or like materials with the ostensible effect of covering and thus protecting the bottom of the foot..

The soul is some made up thing that some people came up with long ago so they could threaten it with eternal torment if you didn't do what they wanted you to do.

In the 'alternative science' movement proposed by Goethe in opposition to Newton's 'mechanicalness', the concept of 'spirit' (Geist in German) figured as the origin of that knowledge which could not be attributable to experience (phenomena). Obviously, some religionists took this to be akin to personal 'soul', others to an impersonal 'holistic consciousness', and those like Nietzsche, discarding concepts of morality or transcendent purpose, interpreted it as 'Will'.
The fact remains that 'life' in general, and 'consciousness' in particular elludes what we call 'scientific explanation', such that even what drives this human activity we engage in here remains transcendently 'mysterious' !

So a human creates the term. Why not call it the "furbish plebny"??

I think you and I are alone on this track. Oh well.
For the sake of my eternal plebny, I will move over to a thred with something more tangible, like anchovies on pizza.

I see that you too have joined in. I have no idea what the hell youve said so all I can do is wait for the punch line.

I think it should be "We're the Aristocrates!"

(Google if you don't know that dreadful joke)

Sarah Silverman, "It's not something I put on my resume anymore. ".

Gilbert Gottfried did the whole thing on Howard Stern after Stern went on Sirius. I was in the car. Im driving an listening to Gilbert do "the Aristocrats", its getting grosser und grosser. Im unable to turn it off. I hadda pull over > I was late to a site meeting thanks to this joke.
(its supposed to be THE dirtiest joke in the ENglish Language, Im sure Izzy the Push will try to find something dirtier. Id welcome that, caue rally, there was only one punch line in The Aristocrats and you had about 2 weeks of set-up.

I know. It's not at all funny, but at a certain point you just think "well, I've listened this far...."

I view the soul as your consciousness. Your soul IS you. Your body is like a vehicle, and your soul pilots it.

No Skeleton, your brain pilots your body.

If something like paralysis occurs, the brain can no longer make a connection to certain parts of the body.

Are you saying some soul is the same way, and if you are injured or made sick in such a way that paralyzes some part of you, some soul has somehow "disconnected itself"?

Your brain forms your personality over the years, and through the rest of your life, by reactions to experiences it has had, witnessed, been told etc.

If you open up the body from stem to stern, there is no "soul" located in it, but there is definitely a brain.