My theory - The Soul Limit

I've been Pagan most of my life, and I recently came up with this interesting idea. Please give me some constructive critisism (did i spell that right?) and help to refine it.

"If, during reincarnation, the soul of a dead body travels to a new body, then my belief is that there are only a set number of souls. As the population grew above that number, some of the bodies would be born "soulless" and would have no higher conscience and would be incapable of determining right and wrong. This would explain why there are so many evil people across the globe."

reply to post by crayak


but the people who are doing bad things, don't know what rigtht and wrong is, so they could be doing good, without knowing they are actually dong good. or the other way arround...

"omg, you killed your own mother"


"is that meant to be a bad thing?"



[edit on 103030p://am3023 by andre18]

Was "Before Sunset" on television last night ? Ethan Hawke's character says something just like that to a pretty girl he meets in Paris, and she says something like "That's just the type of thing Americans come over here to say to French girls to get them into bed."

The idea of "soul dilution" is interesting, though.

While the concept is interesting, I don't think it is really possible...

Sure, you can sit there and deny that evil people have souls, but the truth is, Evil people are still people at the end of the day, they might be cynical and uncaring, but at the end of the day they are just normal people who have an extremely different look on life than your average joe.

Plus while there are acts that are 'pure evil' and ones that are sort of 'grey' areas where they could be consideed good or evil depending on how you look at them, does that make 'grey area' offenders souless? such as unmarried couples (tut tut!) lol hahahahahaha

reply to post by crayak


I think you could come up with some better reasons why there are so many evil people across the globe today.

I'd like to offer some constructive criticism on this theory.

Although this is an interesting thought, no doubt, I would have to comment that it doesn't really hold.

We can safely assume, that as long as human beings have been around, evil has been present in their hearts. Therefore, back when our soul-to-body ratio was rich and plentiful, there would be no evil people. -- unlikely.

And if you can't buy that, try this one on. You say this theory explains why there are so many evil people across the globe now - this implies that we've exceeded our soul-to-body ratio *already*.

That means, according to your theory, that everyone born today - past that capacity - is now inherently evil. Even go back ten, twenty maybe even a hundred years when we ran out of souls.

I don't know the exact math, but the % of "evil people" to "good people" has a definite proportion with, of course, a mean deviation. Your model would show an amazing sharp mesa-like spike in evilness and an inverse drop on good folk.

Since we can't quantify evil or good people (solely on their actions, nonetheless) we'll never find out, but I would tend to believe after living with my folks for 18 years that they were, in fact, "good people", and born well past the meridian.

Hey, you asked

[edit on 6-11-2007 by guavas]

The existence of souls travels backwards in time, melding from many to fewer as time goes back. Just like time moves forward for people, time moves backwards for souls

So as more people are born in forward time, fewer souls exist in backward soul time, till the end is reached at the begining where only one complete soul exist.

Ok I made this up, but tried to work it into a short story and never got to far.

Well, I did ask. But you're making it sound like no one is dying. People die and release their souls, which then travel to a new body.

Originally posted by crayak
Well, I did ask. But you're making it sound like no one is dying.

People die and release their souls, which then travel to a new body.

It wouldn't matter. Because if it did, there'd have to be so many original souls, it would mitigate both our points.

say if there were, for the sake of argument, there were 1,000 original souls.

Now say there are 10,000 human beings on the planet. Half of 'em die, bringing us down to 5,000 human beings. There would be 4,000 evil people and only 1,000 good.

My point is, is you cannot have an arbitrary cut-off point of souls. There would have to be so many souls, that number alone would practically have to be infinity, otherwise we'd all be, for sake of THIS argument now, evil.



[edit on 7-11-2007 by guavas]

I have an idea that adds to crayaks theory.

What if the souls aren't going to people completely, but instead are splitting apart and going in peices? In that case, everyone would have something of a conscience.

And good and evil arent good ways to say it. In my opinion, souls are the conscience that keeps us from doing bad things.

If humans have souls, animals and plants (yeah, them too) must have them as well. Considering the amount of life that exists on this planet right now, that's a hell of a lot of souls. Now what about all the life that may exist in the whole universe? If souls exist and we have them, I don't see why alien species wouldn't have them. Meanwhile, population levels bounce around at least a little bit all the time.

Therefore, there simply must be a HUUUUUGE amount of souls. In fact, I imagine that there's a surplus so large that there are always going to be souls that are in between "incarnations" at any given point, no matter what the universal population level is.

Like others have said, I think there are other explanations for why there are so many "evil" people. Whatever evil is. Is it inherent? If someone grows up to be the most vile murderer ever known, but we know for a fact that they were a normal, happy person for at least some of their lifetime, does that mean that they didn't have a soul even during the good times? What about when this person is a child and hasn't maliciously harmed a living thing yet? Is that kid soulless because of what they are to become later in life?

No... I really don't think that the presence of souls -- whatever those are -- have anything to do with how good or bad a person is.



Edited to say: CRAYAK!!! Wow, I haven't heard that name in a while. Howlers and Pemalites and Yeerks, oh my!

[edit on 5-8-2008 by Siblin]

Interesting theory. In the Christian and Jewish religions it is believed that all human souls come from The Guf (or Hall of Souls). Everytime a baby is born a soul decends from Heaven into the newborn body. Once The Guf is empty the world will end. The first infant born without a soul heralds the death of the world.

www.nationmaster.com...

reply to post by crayak


There are no "set numbers" in the place you are talking about--which exists beyond time and space. Infinity is not the unlimited extension of a quantity, but the total lack of any limits at all. Take time as an example--in the case of time, infitity is not endless time, but an absense of time altogether.

We still don't know the limit population of the "soul".
And we don't know whats how much physical 'Containers' there is to hold the soul.

But I believe in karma, and Karma determines whether the 'Container' in your next life is going to upgrade or downgrade, Base on what you do during the time of your present life.