(September 14, 2019 at 1:41 am)EgoDeath Wrote: Well, much like the "debate" about the existence of god, we can begin the conversation about "soul" when one actually presents a modicum of evidence that it exists.
Until then, there are no "arguments against soul" needed.
Well, there are quite a few arguments that can be made for the existence of soul. You need to understand that the question of whether a soul exists is different from the question whether there is a god. God is an incoherent concept in itself, because of the Omnipotence Paradox. Furthermore, it clearly contradicts what we observe because of the Problem of Evil. The same, however, can't be said for souls.
First of all, it's instinctual to think that a soul exist. Nearly all the cultures around the world, even once that had little or no contact with us, came up with the ideas about souls and afterlives. Sure, not every scholar of the ancient world believed in those things (the author of Ecclesiates explicitly denied that, when he or she said that dead people don't remember anything, and so did probably John, when he put into Jesus'es mouth that nobody has ever been to heaven), but it's quite clear the vast majority of people did (First Book of Samuel describes a witch which talks to a spirit of the deceased Samuel, Matthew said Apostles thought they were seeing a ghost when Jesus walked on water, Matthew put into Jesus'es mouth that people in heaven will be like angels, John said the Jews commented on Jesus'es speech "Will he kill himself? Is that what 'I will go where you cannot go.' means?", and even Odyssey, probably older than anything in the Bible, describes spirits in the underworld.). So, if you are going to claim something that goes against our instincts, you are making an assumption that our instincts are wrong, so perhaps the burden of proof is on you.
And, today, quite a few people have been brought back to life, and they tell us about NDEs. And some of those stories are really fascinating. Recently, in Book (a Croatian right-wing newspaper), there was a story about a man who saw, in his NDE, a child trapped in a building ruined by fire. And when he woke up and got better, he and a few of his friends went on to find that child. And they found him. You can say there is not enough evidence of that story, but so too is there very little evidence of the claim that people who have the middle of their brain damaged have different personalities governing halves of their bodies.
