Souls?

[emjay]

If the soul is defined as the mind then the problem is that everything we experience in the mind is stored and/or processed in the neural networks of the brain. And the brain is an imperfect thing that is susceptible to damage, abnormality, and outside influence (eg drugs or surgeons poking around). Through disease, people can lose their faculties or memory years before they actually die (eg dementia). Similarly through abnormality some people are physically incapable of feeling pain or fear in life. If the mind is considered to be the soul then Theists have to explain in the case of Dementia what part of their mind continues into the afterlife - is it their mind at the point of death or is it their mind from an earlier time in life before the brain damage when they were at their prime? If it's the latter, then what arbitrary point defines when they were at their prime, given that our memories and personality are constantly changing through life anyway? And as for those people incapable of experiencing pain, what would hell mean to them if their exact mind was replicated there? Not much. It seems to me that the Theist concept of soul = mind suffers an ignorant delusion that all minds are alike.