Body and “Soul”

JULY 2005

The human soul. It is invisible. Undetectable by any human means. We now have technology that includes X-rays, CAT-scans, MRI, ultrasound, oscilloscopes, infrared photography, spectrometers, colorimeters, pyrheliometers—we have “meters” out the wazoo. All these and more augment our own human senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. Still, the thing is imperceptible and thoroughly invisible. But the majority of the human population nevertheless is convinced that it exists. They believe there is such a thing as the human “soul.”

The desire for a “soul” is easy to understand. We know that our bodies die and decompose, just like all other animals. But we don’t want to be just like all other animals. Who wants to stay dead? Surely we are far more important than other animals. Surely we are connected somehow to the eternal Cosmos. Surely we have a “soul.”

It is one huge philosophical leap to go from wanting something to stating categorically that the something exists. With zero proof, how did we end up doing that very thing in so many cultures in so many eras? That’s fairly easy to answer. Ego. The human ego knows few bounds. My, we’re important!

The ancient Egyptians had multitudinous funereal rites and the ruins that are still decipherable concern themselves, to a great extent, with the afterlife. From the moment a Pharaoh began his/her reign, the building of the burial site was underway. It was almost as if this life was little more than a springboard for the next. And the ordinary, everyday Egyptians took heart in the fact that their Pharaohs were gods, meant to live eternally, because that (somehow) made them eternal. Everlasting life was almost contagious, like the common cold. We humans have made little progress in understanding human nature since the days of Pyramid-building, over 4,000 years ago. I guess hope springs eternal.

But hope is not fact. Yet even modern dictionaries treat that “soul” business as if it were a given:

soul (sol) noun

1.  The animating and vital principle in human beings, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity.

2.  The spiritual nature of human beings, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.

  Whoa, wait a minute. A “soul” is not a given. There’s a lot going on in the above glib definition. (Courtesy The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, published by Houghton Mifflin Co.) And this giant leap away from logic deserves our close scrutiny. Let’s start with this “animating and vital principle” we supposedly have that is often considered “immaterial.” Severing nerve tracts (which are certainly made of matter = material) that exist within the frontal lobe (which is certainly material) is called a lobotomy. A lobotomy turns humans into quasi-vegetables, with nothing animated or vital anywhere in sight. How can this be? I thought that was the function/definition of the human “soul.” Sounds like body tissue to me. Nothing immaterial or invisible involved.

As for the “spiritual nature of human beings, regarded as immortal” I must point out the meaning of “begging the question.” That definition assumes the existence of the very entity in question. That’s like saying that God is eternal because the Bible says so, and you know the Bible is true because it is the word of God. (Many people do that, by the way, without blinking an eye.) It’s known as circular reasoning. “Soul” will take you to “immaterial” which will take you to “incorporeal” which will take you to “spirit” which will take you back to “soul.” Nice journey, huh? And in a pure circle.

Having failed miserably even to logically define “soul” True Believers then proceed to attempt to define/describe the place where human “souls” will reside after the human body dies and is separated from it. There are supposedly two places available for residence: heaven and hell. If you’re Catholic there is a third place, a temporary abode, called purgatory. (There used to be a fourth Catholic place, Limbo, but I think that’s been cancelled. Not sure.) Heaven is filled with delights, hell with agonies. Purgatory, as the name implies, is a place to purge previously unpunished sins, and Limbo is still in limbo. Oh, yes. I forgot. These places are also invisible and undetectable by any human means. See paragraph #1. So how do we know they exist? It’s because some very ordinary human beings decided almost 2,000 years ago, when the Earth was still flat (!) that they must exist. Is that enough of a reason for you to base your entire life upon such a concept? I require a bit more. Like a speck of evidence. A mere scintilla. The tiniest bit of evidence to support such an extraordinary claim. Alas, there is more evidence for flying saucers than there is for the human “soul.”

Amazingly, no one seems to care. No one asks for the slightest bit of proof for the existence of this incredible, intangible human property: the “soul.” Well, logic and evidence aside, humans everywhere believe they have those invisible “souls” which will someday reside in an invisible heaven or an invisible hell or possibly, and temporarily, an invisible purgatory. And rounding out this flight of fancy is the invisible God supervising this entire invisible realm.

[I just did a Word Frequency Check and found that “invisible” has been used ten times, not including this sentence, in this one article about “souls” and heaven and hell and God. Shouldn’t this tell us something?]

Interestingly, as I was in the middle of this article I received yet another bold, rather arrogant challenge from a Christian claiming that the Christian God “truly exists” and that my own life had no value or meaning. When I calmly responded by asking him why his beliefs were correct, while the rest of the world’s beliefs were incorrect, he begged off (as they all do) claiming that he had to leave for work and would give me a definitive answer soon. They always do that, and it always surprises me. Shouldn’t the answer to my simple question be right at their fingertips?

Anyway, he did finally get back to me. And he did everything but answer my simple question. They always do that too. He was all over the place about the meaning of life, and how “God” (his of course) explains life and then he naturally demanded that I defend my beliefs. I was hoping that the day might come when True Believers would stop demanding that I defend my lack of beliefs! There is nothing to defend! I don’t believe, okay? But I fear that day will never come because it would require a journey into logic, a thing abhorred by most believers.

The relevant part of this email exchange with a Christian is that he, too, took it as a given, that the human souls existed. He never even tried to explain it. All he tried to explain, but failed to explain, was how and why and where that soul would end up. In an email that contained 1,023 words, he never even mentioned the word “soul.” Isn’t that rather astonishing? (By contrast, my email question contained a mere 72 words. Also rather revealing, don’t you think?) Just think, in a thousand words about Jesus and God and eternity he never even typed the word “soul.” That shows how far that word has seeped into such common usage as to be taken for granted. But something as spectacular as a human “soul,” if it existed, should never be taken for granted! This would be the most amazing, awe-inspiring, um, thing, on earth! Wouldn’t it? So why then do we have to rely totally on the power of imagination to envision this incredible thing? Why is it invisible and undetectable? Don’t ask, don’t tell seems to be the order of the day, but I’m not going to accept that nonsense. You claim? You prove.

By the way, my email exchange with the Christian ground to the usual halt when, after evading like crazy and talking about everyone from Nietzsche to Ravi Zacharias, he finally came up with the ultimate circular argument. I will quote these few words exactly because they are difficult to believe:

“The best I can do, for now, is this… Christianity is right and opposing belief systems are wrong because Christianity is true.” In other words, Christianity is true because Christianity is true. How’s that for sound logic?

The Origin of “Souls”

Human emotions, fears, dreams and fevers conjure up all manner of images, expectations and voices. We dream we can fly. Does that mean somewhere, someday we will fly? Dreams are taken far too seriously by far too many, the loony Freud especially, but they are only the random firing of neurons in the brain. Unbalanced blood sugar alone can cause nightmares, as children prove regularly after going to sleep with a bellyful of sugar-laden junk food. Alcohol can produce the same bizarre dreams. Their meanings? Nothing. We want  them to mean something, and pore over possibilities, but dream interpretation is the stuff of charlatans. Ask Watson & Crick, co-discoverers of the double-helix nature of DNA.

Hospital hallucinations are so common that nurses take them in stride. The drugs give before, during and after surgery cause so much mischief in the human brain that if we really knew what all went on there we might do less surgery. But many of us, myself included, have had those very real hallucinations. Two examples. First, my own. I was once wheeled into an operating theater without being properly anesthetized. It was nobody’s fault really. I am very difficult to “put under.” I frantically tried to mouth the words that I was not “asleep” but I couldn’t make any sound. I did however see that horribly bright light focused directly on me. It was blinding. Someone obviously took some reading and corrected the situation because after that I remember nothing.

Now. If I were a True Believer I would have been convinced that I “saw” the next life in that powerful light. People have made such claims based on much less. I know what I saw and later had it confirmed by a friendly anesthesiologist who told me I must have a World Class Liver.

Second example is from a very close friend. He too was having surgery, but his was over. He was back in his room, in his bed. And he had very special visitors. They were tiny, gold humans, walking back and forth on the rail of his bed guard. He said they were sparkling, bright gold, no more than 6 inches tall, and utterly beautiful. These darling things spoke to him in wee voices. It was magical.

Now. Had he been a True Believer, he would have “known” that he had been visited by angels. No doubt about it. Claims of visits from angels have been mad based on much less. This man knew what he saw. He tried to reach out and “help” the golden beings himself, but he was too weak. These  creatures “lived” for several hours. He kept asking the nurses to help the tiny creatures, lest they fall off and get hurt. The nurses were reassuring and very, very helpful. When his powerful drugs wore off, alas, the beautiful friends wore off too.

There are millions of examples just like these, relating to our dreams, our fever dreams, our drug-induced dreams and our endless hopefulness about an afterlife. We desperately try to make them “real” and understandable. The working of the brain are only beginning to reveal some of their mysteries. But one example of a treasured myth, that epilepsy was a “disease of the Gods,” has been forever shattered. And other anomalies will soon be understood as the hallucinations they are. Oh, we’ll resist this new understanding of brain chemistry. After all, golden angels are more fun!

I do not believe in invisible human souls because there is not one shred of evidence that they exist. I do not believe in an invisible heaven or hell because there is not one shred of evidence that they exist. I do not believe in leprechauns because there is not one shred of evidence that they exist. I do not believe in invisible gods because there is not one shred of evidence that any of them exist. When evidence is presented, I will of course reconsider.

in·vis·i·ble (în-vîz’e-bel) adjective

1.  Impossible to see; not visible: invisible writing.

2.      Not accessible to view; hidden.

The invisible and the nonexistent look very much alike. 

© 2005 Judith Hayes