No reason justifies disbelief.

[fredd bear]

Funny, that in 2000 .  That the problem of evil remains such an embarrassing paradox for Christians.

I quote Epicurus again, because I think he's pithy:

       “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

― Epicurus   .

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 If they did I'can't think of any examples.

I don' want to be flippant, because I  don't  know.  Not wanting it to be true is not good enough.

I'm open to any ideas, backed up with evidence.

Augustine of Hippo basically stole all his ideas from Plato.  The whole idea of the soul comes from Greek philosophy and their concept of psūkhḗ, so much so that even the idea of Cartesian dualism is essentially a bastardisation of Platonic thought. Interesting to note that, like with excommunication, judaism didn't have a concept of a permanent soul until after the jews had to live in subjugation to christianity.  Everything in catholic thought, and most of protestant thought derives from Augustine's larceny.

 ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((0)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Fascinating. I haven't read Augustine. The mind/body dichotomy has been around for a very long time, with no consensus even today.

 I'm not doubting your claim.My discipline is Social Anthropology; I tend to be very cautious about claims  of cross cultural fertilisation. A very hard thing to prove to a high degree of probability. Quite often, correlation is simply that ,without a causal relationship.

Didn't know that about Jewish thought either.  I'm aware the Jewish concept of an afterlife is a bit vague. I once asked a Rabbi at an online Yeshiva.He said something like"we focus on life now" . Nor does Judaism have a concept of an eternal hell. That's a christian invention, which slowly evolved over centuries.

It came as a shock to me to learn that the concept of 'soul' and "afterlife'  was not universal among ancient religious  beliefs

What about the influence of the Egyptian notion of the Ka?.  I think that predate the Greeks.  I'm not going to drag in the putative enslavement  and  exodus of the Hebrews/Canaanites/Jews. Just wondering about broader influence

A most interesting post, with what is for me, a couple of original ideas.  I think I'll do some digging. Thanks.