Thoughts on the concept of the soul
2019-08-06

I am not a religious person. Pointedly. I donate to atheist non-
profit groups, and feel that I would have to have absolute proof
of a deity and even then largely do not feel that they would be
deserving of worship. I do not expect ants to worship humans just
because we, in many ways at least, are more powerful. The 
subject of god is not the thought here today, though I will add
that I fully support anybody searching for truth in the universe
in any way that makes sense to them so long as they are open to
proofs and facts as they become available (this goes for me as
well).

The thought I had earlier was about the soul. I do not believe
in a divine spark, or immortal soul. However, I got to thinking
that if there were souls that lived on after our lives here on
earth they would not be much like us as we are now. So much
of who we are and how we act is a response to hormones and other
chemicals produced by or ingested and processed by our bodies.
Any 'soul' that might exist would seemingly be bound to the
body's responses to those. However, detatched from a body and
thus the interference of these checmical interactions... what
would be left? I suppose some kind of energy/pure being/etc.
But we, largely, are able to feel joy, fear, pain, hunger, love,
etc. due to these checmical interactions. So following this
thought through to what I feel like is a natural conclusion: if
souls exist as separate from the body, when removed from the 
body they would largely be removed from emotions. Which brings
up the question of what the judeo-christian heaven must be
like for these souls (assuming this conception of the soul
would have a place in that construct). It seems like it would
be a largely cold and detached place or state of being. Not
swayed by desire/want or even need. What would interactions
between individuals be like? Do things like joy and desire
and fear and love exist without the chemical interactions we
experience at all times? Are they universal constants? Or
are they simply a result of physical biology?

I'm not sure what made me think along these lines. I do not post
stuff of this sort usually, but the thought process took me for
a little ride and I decided to write it down.