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When did humans start having souls?
Obviously this assumes you agree that humans have a soul, but even if no one agrees on what the soul is – if you agree that people have them at all, then when did they start having them within the historical context of human evolution?
There are a few ways this question could be approached depending on which frame of reference you choose to use, so I'm curious to know which frames you guys find useful and most relevant.
A lot of people who believe in exclusive human souls probably wouldn't also be on board with the idea that humans evolved from something non-human. If I were to put on my spirituality hat, I'd say the easiest solution to this is that all living things have a soul.
Or that there is no "soul" outside the metaphorical definition of the term. I think that would go in line with your first statement as well.
The Catholics by-and-large accept evolution and also accept the idea of a soul.
I think they'd hold that humans gained a soul during the special creation of Adam when God infused humanoid animals with a spiritual image of himself.
Reference: https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/15091/according-to-theistic-evolutionists-at-what-point-did-humans-evolve-enough-to-b
Just to make sure I'm understanding your solution correctly, does that mean unicellular organisms have souls too?
Yes. But wearing my non-spiritual, atheistic hat I'd say there is no soul in anything.
Forgive my layman philosophy here.
To me, my "soul" is my ability to reason about myself and my place in the world. Said another way, we started having souls when we started asking ourselves and each other if we had them.
Does this mean you equate the soul to consciousness (or a type of consciousness, depending on what you think consciousness is)?
Also, what are the implications for the latter part of your comment? Does it only apply at a macro level once enough people started consistently communicating about the soul? Do people who for whatever reason never develop an understanding of language not have souls?
Can one then lose their soul through mental illness or injury?
An interesting point that might not be immediately obvious could be that we only truly became our modern selves first with the advent of language, and second (and arguably more importantly) with the invention writing.
A great book by James Gleick, The Information, goes over something similar - not necessarily souls, but more about the way we construct our thoughts and logic, and the way we categorize and pass on information.
I agree that language and writing are instrumental when examining the relationship between humans and the soul. Language is a fundamentally combinatorial system that facilitated the establishment of a complex internal life in humans, so I think it has a lot to do with the 'discovery' of the soul. Julian Jaynes has an interesting perspective on this in his book, "Origin of Consciousness."
This speaks to me, I'm definitely going to look into this book because one of the subjects that fascinates me is humanity's conception of progression up the Data-Information-Knowledge-(Understanding)-Wisdom pyramid. Thanks!
The way you phrased it, “discovery,” stands out to me. A lot of the possibilities are about ways that we could identify souls but the first question asks when they started existing themselves.
I'm glad you caught that because my use of the word belies my thoughts about whether souls could be eternal or finite – I go back and forth on it. Going back to the original comment in this thread, natural language could have simply helped humans discover what was already there, the eternal soul... or it could have birthed the very concept and thus existence of the soul, which means that the finite soul lives and dies by language.
My next question for you then is whether you (and/or Spiritualists in general) view the soul as eternal or finite?I wonder at what point in evolution living entities were imbued with a soul (in the former case), or developed a soul (in the latter case). Was it the first time organic components incorporated into a unified living unicellular organism?
I equate that with the advent of sapience... self awareness, the capacity to consider one's place in the universe.
So... a long time ago. Around about the time when cave paintings started trending, maybe.
Do you think it was a gradual process, or that it happened in a relatively small amount of generations? I'm fascinated by the mechanics that would have been required for a phenomenon like this to proliferate across such disparate populations.
And what does that mean about the nature of the soul if the process is gradual?
I believe that initially a certain mutation took hold that was dormant - inactive. This mutation was triggered by a powerful experience: near death, psychedelic mushrooms, whatever. This experience was shared amongst the local community and then beyond - and as it was shared, so was the necessary genetic mutation. It's probably likely that there was a relatively small group of the 'aware' for several thousand years - if not tens of thousands - concentrated in one region, and it took a while for it to spread and take root elsewhere.
As for the soul - as an independent 'plugin' I have my doubts. As a developmental stage of the mind, well that works for me.
Interestingly, I don't think you need to resort to genetics to explain what psychological and sociological trauma can account for over tens of thousands of years. What you've described sounds similar to what Kazimierz Dąbrowski called positive disintegration in individuals, but which I think can apply to entire organizations or societies too.
In any case, you're right, early humans had plenty of potential disintegrative catalysts to contend with due to environmental pressures alone (like massive floods, eruptions and other natural disasters), along with shamanic or otherwise spiritual experiences. So there are plenty of candidates that could have helped not only initiate but maintain the process over many generations of people via the vehicle of complex language.
Thanks for that link, I've never encountered the term. Today I learned something!