Can you prove or disprove the existence of the soul or spirit?

[Imploded Tomato]

Every way I an think of describing spirit and soul constitutes a 'religious statement'. You are trying to marriage faith and science with this. A soul or spirit means you believe in such or usually is linked to some sort of 'religion' and that's as far as I suppose I can go with being as universal as possible and staying within guidelines. What I think I can safely say additionally is that humanity in itself has not been able to reach the tools needed to scientifically identify what it is - if believed in. The same way that we discovered fire. At first it couldn't even be fathomed, then when found it was a mysterious hostile sparked, and after we reached for grasped the tools of fire. In time learned how to use it, identify it, quantify it and even change it to suit our needs.

It could be that souls and spirits live in a 7th dimension or something, a layer that is so close that we don't even realize that we are touching it yet it permeates everything, and since they actively live on that dimension they can reach back into the other dimensions, much like how we are able to walk linearly, left and right plane, up and down, etc. This last idea is as pure as possibly I can equate to a scientific speculation, barring the above explanations.

I like your perspective. I've always thought of the soul/spirit to be a form of undiscovered undetectable matter that coexists with our reality. I consider the soul/spirit to be our true selves where as the body is a shell. If we can exist with an active consciousness in the form of biological flesh, then perhaps there are other forms of consciousness that take shape with a different form of matter unknown to mankind due to our limited senses. Science is still understanding different forms of matter such as "dark energy", "dark matter", and "anti matter", and there is still many unanswered questions and discoveries to be made. This is just my philosophy of coarse. 

 

[BoluBolu]

First I have never saw a soul or spirit in reality, but one day in a midnight, it was a damn stormy raining that my back kitchen is flooded with splashing rain. It was a dark night because suddenly the electricity is off, I go to the living room, and sat there.. Not long I hear an annoying sound coming from my back kitchen, it was  a sound of a slow foot step that walking through flooded water, you know the srasshh.. srasshhh.. srasshh.. ? It was horrible, suddenly I become so scared but cannot move, Yeah I'm alone at all. Then I forced my body to move and check it, when I got to my back kitchen entrance the sound is vanished.

I cannot explain it, why..

That is a real story in my life. I just think that it's a ghost or something like that. It has the power to make you scared, so when you suddenly feel really scared and the chilling thing comes, I believe a spirit is in near you. But what I believe is, if you forced yourself to be brave and face it regardless anything that will happen, it will dissapeared. For my principle is, "I already lost, if I don't being brave and face it, than the outcome will be the same, who knows?"

So yeah, I believe that ghost is exist, want to prove it? Go to a haunted place like graveyard or something like that, when you feel chilling, and an annoying sound is heard, that''s the time you prove that ghost is exist.

 

[whitesphere]

I believe there are just too many little things in life that point to a type of existence we can't yet understand scientifically.  How, otherwise, would some kids have detailed memories of a place they've never been?  Or somehow not only know about a murder and who did the murder but correctly identify where the body was buried?  Or kids who somehow seem to have extreme talent in something they clearly never practiced?

Or people who seem to somehow know when someone else was going to call --- before the phone rang and when no call was expected.

The whole out of body experience thing.   How do some of these people find out information, that was in a completely different room they've never been in before?

What exactly makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up if someone is behind you?  And what exactly IS the observer which causes a quantum superposition of states to collapse into a concrete one?

Now I don't believe by any stretch that none of these has a rational scientific explanation.  But all of them?  I have no idea exactly "What" causes all of these, but I believe very strongly there are facets to our existence we don't have any scientific explanation for.  So, yes, I believe very strongly in the concept of a soul and afterlife.  Perhaps, someday, if humanity survives, we will start to watch science reach a point where we find proof for these ---- maybe the soul exists in a different dimension. 

So science and spirituality will merge to produce most interesting things we would call miracles today.

 

[SergeX]

Is something I would like to believe, but the lack of experiences with supernatural events makes me bear a lot of ceticism about existance of those things. After all, the word and concept of what we know as "soul" or "spirit" is an invention by I dont remember who. Maybe was Plato? I'm not sure.

But to think that rationalism can explain the whole universe is silly. If we see the modern day theories of science, they are pretty much like fiction. No one has ever seen a quark particle, yet it exists because theres a lot of evidence about it, concrete results of the influence of it. So... Spiritis and that kind of stuff can be questioned, but not completly discarded. Theres always a space for that idea cuz after all, the universe is somehow unreal and weird and theres a lot of phenomena still not explained.

 

[Scinaya]

Disproving isn't even possible usually. You would need another theory that excludes the existence of ghosts and prove that correct to do so... XD So I honestly doubt, that can be directly disproved. There really is no scientific evidence towards it either. Some people have experiences on such, but those are very subjective. There is no recording or video or other evidence that is known to be unaltered or tinkered. Or which don't have other explanations. It just cannot be proved to one direction to another and maybe that is what draws people in it?

I am, too, drawn to supernatural stories and the ideas and they give a nice chill down my spine. Earlier I did believe in ghosts on some level, now I just enjoy the concept and the human creativity that draws from those ideas. I haven't had any honestly supernatural experiences, even though I have vivid imagination and sometimes could almost excite myself into seeing weird stuff, where was none. As a teen I enjoyed the supernatural concepts enough to really wish they were true, but in the end I am less afraid of dark and sleep my nights better nowadays. XD