What is the soul?

Answer 1

A:

Religion says that the soul is that part of us that will live after the physical body dies. It was once thought to have been the source of intelligence and our ability to think and have emotions, but science has replaced that. Since the soul can not be detected, it is regarded by believers as a spirit. Non-believers regard the soul as an imaginary construct that allows us to believe that death is not permanent.

B:

If you want a valid and useful definition of soul then you need to decide what is meant by the word life and thus what is meant by the word death. With science and technology flourishing, it is evidently becoming harder, rather than easier, to distinguish life from death. This is because from the point of view of scientific materialism (not science itself), the universe is only material; and that means that defining life has now become a major technical problem.

The nature of death has always been a central concern of the world's religious traditions. It has long remained a major challenge to philosophical inquiry.

Even now, nothing has changed. Currently the main challenge in scientifically defining death is in distinguishing it from life. Death either refers to the moment that life ends, or to the moment of onset of the state that follows life.

Determining when death has occurred therefore depends upon having precise conceptual boundaries that will discriminate the states of life and death. But this is problematic because there is little consensus over how life might be defined. (see related link below).

We cannot see or detect that which sustains the ongoing life in a human being or that which gives us consciousness; so science can only describe physical conditions that may lead to death through the disruption or cessation of organic processes. Of itself, science simply cannot tell us what life is; scientists can only analyse or measure whatever it is they can detect. They cannot therefore give us any more than sophisticated descriptions of the material structures of, and the physiological processes taking place in, living things.

From a purely 'scientific' (actually, scientific materialist) point of view, life is just a mix of physical and chemical activity. From the point of view of someone who has just lost a friend or a family member, death is recognizable by the loss of humanity, the departure of the human spirit.

So the answer to this question hangs on what you consider to be giving you life and consciousness. Is it the invisible and inaccessible, innermost you - your human spirit, or is it just the combined chemical constituents of a material body?

If it's the latter, you clearly do not need a soul because, while an android/humanoid does need the semblance of an organic body, it does not require a spirit (instead it requires digital circuitry and a power source).

If it's the former, you do have a soul. The soul is the ongoing expression of the life in a creature's spirit through the means of its material body. While some may regard such terms as "old-fashioned" they are as vital and relevant as ever; since nothing has replaced them.

Your soul is the outworking of your spirit/life through the means of your material body - it is the living you as observed and experienced by others. See related link below:

The spirit does depart the body at death, but it cannot be inferred from this that the spirit/soul is immortal. The biblical position is that your eternal future (everlasting life/death) depends on the nature of your relationship with God.