So last night me and my girlfriend Emma had a really good discussion about stuff. I believe that human beings have a separate entity or soul that is not bound by the restrictions of the body. Ie I believe that the mind can exist outside of the material world. Thus is capable of transferring itself past death. Emma believes the opposite. She thinks that people are born with a mind or soul that is fixed to the body. In essence she thinks that you are not born with a soul that has a personality imprinted on it.
Ha ha I here you say if you have ever been around when we have discussed the issue of whether gay people are born gay, or its their life experiences that determine their sexuality. I say ha because Emma believes that gay people are born gay which implies that she believes that the soul per say is born with an identity which goes against what she really thinks which I have written about at the beginning.
Make your mind up MJ.
Look at me
Mark Ryan
- Too broad a church
- Newcastle upon Tyne
- 27 Something with exceptional taste in things
4 comments:
Well she would be right. You are not born with a personality - it develops according to those around you. You say that to be born gay 'marks' an identity. People are rarely known/identified through their sexual preferences.
The identity of a person is their very being - what makes them 'them'.
This makes no sense to me. Firstly, I'm not sure sexuality can be described as part of the soul or a state of mind, as you suggest (though that's not to say the two don't have considerable effect on each other). Let's assume for the time being it is: You believe we are born with a soul that has a personality already imprinted on it, yet believe sexuality is shaped by the environment, this contradicts your initial suggestion that sexuality is an element of one's soul.
Are we also to assume the soul's existence in a human body is the first instance of it's existence? If you believe the soul lives on after death, surely it's entirely plausible that it also existed prior to the physical birth of the human being that it then inhabits. This being the case, sexuality as an element of the soul would already be established at the point it inhabits the new born baby, again suggesting that sexuality is something we are born with.
It seems to me that genetic predetermination of sexuality is different to believing there is an imprinted personality caged within a 'soul'.
So you can be genetically predetermined to be more likely to be straight/bisexual/gay (or, perhaps to a lesser extent, upbeat/depressive; shy/confident etc.) - and therefore born with it - but your personality and identity - the way you react to situations, how you deal with emotions etc. - be shaped by your life experience.
People seem to me to be empty vessels to fill, but vessels that are made of a flexible material that has a tendency towards a certain shape.
So, on the side of Darwin and evolutionary theory, I appear to agree with the aforementioned 'MJ'.
Only 17 minutes ago did I also fully realise that as Emma's viewpoint contradicts other things she believes in, and so does mine. Cant believe it took me the best part of three days to realise that.
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