Q. Exactly! And we could begin following that thread by asking, why do you believe that every human has a soul? Because in my books it is a belief: an unconfirmed, unproven and baseless assertion.
A. Maybe not as baseless as you think…
Q. Because…
A. Because the existence of the soul is not just a Christian concept but a human concept. It is something that many have averred long before Jesus was born. Many of the ancient peoples around the world have believed in some form of a spirit that is linked to every man.
Q. Yes, they also believed these spirits would haunt you after they died and escaped from their bodies and other such nonsense.
A. What the spirits do after a person dies may be nonsense and there does not seem to have been any majority view on it from my amateur reading on the topic. But what is more important and is of our concern right now is that they took the existence of a human spirit for granted. Human spirits exist.
Q. So basically you’re saying that because the majority of peoples throughout history have believed in a human spirit or soul, then that human soul must exist?
A. I’m saying that on a balance of probability, if so many people have believed in it across the globe, then you can’t dismiss it as childish nonsense. You at least have to give it the benefit of the doubt…
Same thing with the existence of God by the way. If the majority of people on earth and in history have believed in some form of a supreme being, then you would be forced to at least begin with the premise “It would seem that a god exists.”.
Q. Ok. I’m not going back into the debate about the existence of God. Obviously if I don’t believe in the existence of the soul then I don’t believe in God…
A. …or vice-versa…
Q. Or vice-versa.
So what other evidence or arguments do you have for the existence of the soul?
A. Well first of all, the ancients arrived at the concept of the soul almost without reflection… The mysteries of birth and death, the lapse of conscious life during sleep and in swooning, even the commonest operations of imagination and memory, which abstract a man from his bodily presence even while awake — all such facts invincibly suggest the existence of something besides the visible organism, internal to it, but to a large extent independent of it, and leading a life of its own. So this forms like our circumstantial evidence.
Q. Any direct evidence?
A. Well we could reason through it…
Q. By all means…
A. So first of all we agree that living bodies are different from dead bodies.
Q. Correct.
A. And the difference between them is not something material?
Q. Depends… I could argue that the difference between them is electricity – which is something material… Moving electrons.
A. So you’re saying that the difference between a dead body and a live body is the presence of electricity in the body.
Q. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
A. If that were true, then you would have figured out how to resurrect dead bodies: just somehow put back the electricity in them.
Q. Ummm…
A. What’s the problem?
Q. That it is not that straightforward.
A. I agree. And do you know why it is not that straightforward?
Q. I’m guessing you’re going to tell me anyway…
A. Hehe! I am indeed! It’s not that straightforward because electricity is not the difference you’re looking for between a dead body and a live one.
Q. So what is the difference we’re looking for?
A. Want to guess?
Q. The soul?
A. Bingo!
Q. Dude! You’ve proven nothing! You’ve just gone around in circles!
A. Well we have agreed that the difference between a dead body and a live one is not electricity…
Q. Correct.
A. So what else could be the difference between them?
Q. Well…
A. And please note if any of your answers are material things, then my rebuttal will be the same as with electricity. Which is: if this material thing is the difference between this dead body and this live body, then by adding that material thing to the dead body, we should be able to get it living again. We would have solved immortality.
Q. Which we clearly haven’t…
A. So the difference between the two has to be something immaterial – something spiritual if we dare use the word.
Q. A spirit or soul of some sort?
A. Exactly!
To be continued…
18th September 2019