Arguments against Soul

[The Grand Nudger]

Late to the party...but I'd say that control based theories of consciousness are the best actual -argument- against the existence of a soul. Regardless of whether they accurately model consciousness in human beings, they can at least demonstrate that the reported content associated with soul is just as easily derived from what no soul positing person would ever accept or even allow -could- possess "soul".

A toaster that could talk could say the things we say about our souls. I'm in here, I have no specific location or physical substance. I possess internal content. I am moving my attention between items of which I am aware.

-at the very least, this would suggest that even if we do have a soul, the things we associate with it's demonstration may not actually have anything to do with that existent soul.

[Mister Agenda]

Is it most relevant historians that agree that Jesus was real and crucified, or most Christian biblical scholars? Most biblical scholars are theologians, not historians, and I would exclude them from the sample of experts who agree Jesus was real.

[The Grand Nudger]

Biblical scholars.

(they don't need to be christian, hilarious tidbit, most biblical scholars aren't)

[Jehanne]

Biblical scholars.

(they don't need to be christian, hilarious tidbit, most biblical scholars aren't)

Most scholars of the Quran are Islamic.

[The Grand Nudger]

-and those guys hold as a matter of dogma that the magic book that they base their own religion on..is corrupt,inaccurate, and incomplete.

[Haipule]

What do you guys here think, what is the best argument against the existence of the soul (and therefore ghosts and afterlives)?
I used to think that the "Damage of the middle of the brain leads to two distinct personalities governing halves of the body." was an argument that would convince anybody, but, evidently, it won't. See here:
How do people who believe in souls explain away the fact that epileptic patients who have the middle of their brain severed appear to have two distinct personalities governing halves of their bodies?
In short, people respond with "Where is some reliable source for that claim?", and, to be honest, I am not sure what would be a reliable source for this. My psychology textbook saying that isn't really good evidence that's true, is it? I mean, my Croatian history textbook tells me most scientists agree Global Flood really happened.
Perhaps the best response to that is "And where is some reliable source of the claims about Maria's Shoe, and other things that supposedly prove the existence of soul?", what do you think?

From a theistic view: the word "soul" is a Germanic word. Martin Luther translated the original languages of the bible into German before it was translated into English. Unfortunately, into English, the word was borrowed instead of translating the original languages.

The idea of an "immaterial" part of man came from the Greeks. When Alexander the Great conquered the world, hundreds of years before Jesus, he brought Aristotle everywhere he went, including when Alexander conquered Jerusalem. Since there is little said in the Old Testament about an afterlife, the Jews asked Aristotle about that. Aristotle told them that there is a material and immaterial part of man. Unfortunately, it stuck.


Without quoting verses to you, the Hebrew and Greek words of the original languages of the bible are merely talking about breathing. Hebrew, nephesh: Greek, psuchE: both refer to the natural act of breathing and are used figuratively to refer to natural instinctive breathing intellect. The word in the Greek translated as "spirit"(transliterated, and not translated, from the Latin 'spiritus' which means breathing) is pneuma in the original Greek and can refer to life but is usually used figuratively to refer to information gleaned from an exterior source. When the OT says, "Animals have a soul but they do not have a spirit" merely means that animals have a natural instinctive intellect but they can't read a book.


Generally, pneuma is an inhale and psuchE is an exhale. Man does NOT have a spirit, or a soul. That is theological and not biblical. But, man does have a kardia translated as 'heart' which figuratively, and not literally, refers to the innermost being of man. The seat of who we are including our passions and desires, likes and dislikes. The info in is pneuma. What comes out of our mouth is psuchE. Good pneuma info in is beneficial and bad pneuma in is useless. Garbage in, garbage out. Treasure in, Treasure out. 


I hope this makes sense.

[EgoDeath]

I'll say it again, mostly because I like repeating myself and enjoy writing in any form... almost... Why do we need arguments against the existence of a soul? We haven't even gotten close to defining what a soul is, let alone providing any evidence for it as humans. Much like the concept of god, and many other supernatural ideas, the conversation hasn't even begun. When we haven't even defined what it is we're attempting to have a conversation about, it's impossible to have a conversation worth its own weight in dog shit.

[The Grand Nudger]

If all of the words in every post on this board were about soul, it would still only be a fraction of the existing comments on the concept. Soul has been exhaustively well defined for as long as the written word has existed. We know more about what people thought about souls than they thought about their day to day lives - because we decided that one body of literature was more important, more worth preserving than the other.

In the same way that peoples experience of a sunset can differ, peoples experience of whatever it is they're referring to as a soul can differ. We all understand the term well enough as common experiential content to use it in casual conversation, even. This obviously doesn't vouch for every item in the set - there are ideas about soul that are certainly false, and ideas about soul that are probably false. Still..it would be difficult to understand how an empty set finds itself so thoroughly described (if differently) in every culture on earth - if there weren't some there, there. No matter how many of our explanations are false, or in what specific way those explanations are false, it is at least true that we've all been describing something that's rattling around in our heads. Some thing we notice that we feel compelled to explain, and to spend so much time explaining.

I think, if you're wondering about specific descriptions of soul that might be novel or interesting - consider these. As we're most familiar with soul - it;s strongly bound to our personal identity. This is why people who hold a concept of soul like ours..but who do not believe in supernatural whatsits, understand soul as an early comment on consciousness. This doesn't have to be so, though. In some myths soul was a separate entity to being. A thing you possessed, but not a thing that defined you, personally. In others, your soul may not even reside within you, or have any essential connection to you beyond it's nature as your soul. Differences like these formed the shape of disagreements as to how the soul figured in a "right life". You might, for example, consider you soul as possession the same way that you do any other item in your possession that your life requires. We wash our cars, maintain our cars, send our cars to experts to be analyzed - in short, we perform all the day to day rituals required in order to properly care for an item of personal importance. If soul, however, is conceived of externally - the compulsion to maintain it takes on a broader scope. It may not be in your own personal interest to satisfy whatever requirements soul imposes - but duty binds you to do so anyway. Soul as an individual possession and soul as a community resource present themselves not just in different behaviors at the level of the individual - it strongly effects the development of entire societies.

[EgoDeath]

You couldn't be more wrong. The soul hasn't been defined at all.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's possible that any or all of our descriptions of soul are concepts with no referent content, and it's possible that any or all of them are wrong with respect to their content - but it's impossible to argue that those definitions don't exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul