Arguments against Soul

[Belacqua]

The memory capacity of the human brain is about one Terabyte. This does not mean our brains are full to the 1tb capacity, not everyone speaks twenty languages or can memorise the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church. It matters not if a brain is half empty or full, this is still an enormous amount of data to be correlated, indexed and filed away for quick access. That big fatty lump of meat in our heads does a very good job of this, mostly.

I am told that upon the event of my death a snapshot of my entire life is recorded by an as yet unidentified process, in an as yet unidentified medium. Since the beginning of the Christian story these souls now number in the many billions and in order for them to function they need a power source, an energy supply, which would be all pervasive throughout the universe and if such a force were to exist it would stand out like a diamond on a goat's arse.

OK, this seems like a good explanation of how you picture what a soul would be, if it existed. 

First, that it contains memories and knowledge. Second that it survives after death. Third, that it would need an energy source. 

So at the beginning, we're talking about a very specific type of thing. I am not committed to there being a soul or, if there is one, what it would be like, so it's interesting to me that this is the type of thing you're talking about. 

I think it's likely that the first two (knowledge and survival) are in line with what many Christians believe. 

How about the third one? Since I don't know what a soul is or how it could survive, I don't see yet why it would need an energy source. 

[quote pid='1933338' dateline='1569053319']


One of more of these:

1. Gravitational Force
   
2. Weak Nuclear Force.
   
3. Electromagnetic Force.
   
4. Strong Nuclear Force.
   

Would spot it. But they don't. Here's why.

Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die. If you claim that some form of soul persists beyond death, what particles is that soul made of? What forces are holding it together? How does it interact with ordinary matter?

There's no way around this. But that won't stop you from trying.

[/quote]

I'm not trying to do or prove anything, except to see why people here believe what they do. 

It seems clear from what you're saying that you expect a soul, if it existed, to be a natural force or operation, possibly with some physical body as substrate, that would be detectable through the laws of physics that we currently understand. Is this a fair summary of your position? 

In the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions, souls are said to be purely noetic or ideal. That is, they have more in common with numbers and other ideal objects than with, say, gas or magnetic fields. Some people in these traditions think that such an ideal object must exist in conjunction with a physical body, and some don't. If they are right, though, and a soul is something like a number -- a form or idea -- then I don't see how any physical test could detect it. 

Do you have reasons to rule out the common traditions? Does the article you link to address this ancient view?

Love?*

To me love is more like a disposition that a person finds in himself. Desire, especially. I don't think I'd call that a material object in itself. I was thinking more along the lines of Dark Matter, though I am happy to confess that I don't know anything about that stuff.

It seems to me possible that there are things in the universe which physics hasn't yet described, particularly since physics can't even tell us what gravity is -- though we know what it does.

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Edited to add:

I looked at the link you provided. It doesn't say anything about a soul, so I don't see why it's relevant here.

He does say something interesting about gravity: he claims that since we know what it does then we know what it is. A lot of people (including Galileo) would disagree with him about that.