Arguments against Soul

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Super = above. Supernatural is above or outside nature. Nature in the sense of "the natural world", not in the sense of "a thing's nature". Besides, it's a disordered concept even that way, because if a cat sings opera, it's not a cat and we shouldn't be discussing it in those terms. It's an opera singer with a cat's body, and there's a reason we don't expect to ever see such a thing. It would violate our systems of categorization.

OK, you're using the term in a different way. And I agree that in that way it's pretty incoherent and unhelpful. I was just pointing out the way some people used to use it, when its meaning was entirely clear. 

I don't think the example I gave was "disordered" though it is not the kind of thing we think of as supernatural today, maybe. If the thing was a cat before, and it's a cat after, and all scientific tests I perform indicate that it's a cat, the fact that it sang Zerlina's "Batti, batti, o bel Masetto" would be inexplicable by any natural means. So, not in the nature of a cat, not explicable by natural means, whatever. 

I don't know what "old fashioned" concept you're referring to here. The only definition I can find for "supernatural" is more or less "attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature". Whatever it meant to the ancients, it's not what it means to us now, and so it's not the framing of the discussion here.

Yeah, it's sad to say that the old definitions have been so thoroughly forgotten in modern discourse. 

The Thomists and the Schoolmen, through constant vigorous debate, worked out definitions that would still be useful for us if we knew them. Including, in my opinion, the one about "supernatural." Since people continue to use the word in a way that is, as you point out, unworkable, I would have thought that a more useful and precise definition would be desirable. 

There's something very strange about the fact that all the work done earlier on these concepts, much of which would still be helpful, has been thrown out. Instead, all the hard work they did has been met with slander, as when Christopher Hitchens repeats the falsehood that they debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, and expected a numerical answer. In fact that problem was made up later as a way to insult the Thomists and was never used by them as a problem; they would have known it was incoherent if they had ever seen it. 

It means that we tend to debate the newer, dumbed down ideas about God and things -- the versions that Ken Ham likes -- as if that's all there has ever been. People in prior ages weren't stupid, and they recognized and provided answers to nearly all the objections we make today.  Not that you should believe their answers, necessarily. It's just that when a concept like soul appears to be glaringly wrong, the same problems were almost certainly seen and addressed in ancient times. Our ignorance of those answers just means our discussion stays at a low lever.

I'm not entirely sure that Aquinas is the best support of your definition of 'supernatural'.  He rejected the ontological argument on the very basis that we cannot know God's nature.  Since we can't know this, we cannot determine whether God is supernatural.

Boru