this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
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I don't know the correct meaning of soul enough to answer but I want to think there is.
I was brought up an atheist by science focused parents so I never believed or was taught about any religious as in a doctrine but rather as myths people believe. I envied sometimes how people would gather to pray and how much relief they seemed to feel because of it. Growing up a certain way, had me experience some fucked up shit and I really, really wished there was an answer to it aside from "well, grownups are shitty lol". Maybe having a little bit of magical/spiritual thinking would have helped me cope in better ways, but who knows.
Now I am older, still non religious but a bit more conscious/observant about how I percieve the world around me and while I know how many things work/ exist, I like to thinkk there is also a bit of an unexplained component that I cannot fully grasp that is a bit like magic.
Of course. That's where quantum comes in.
The way I see it is that people believe in a God of Gaps, meaning that when something doesn't yet have a scientific explanation, it is explained away by magic or divine work.
If you look back, things like lightning were interpreted as the wrath of gods, but of course nowadays we know that is not the case. As more and more scientific discoveries were made the idea of gods was becoming less and less powerful, and less and less needed, specifically because most things can be explained with science without the need of the supernatural or the divine.
As such, I firmly believe we will reach a point where gods are no longer needed at all. In fact, I'd argue that most things a regular person ever needs to think about can be explained by science, one notable exception being quantum physics, but I think it's fair to assume that most people don't just think about quantum physics, I think.
Now, on souls.
I would just like to mention an experiment by Duncan MacDougall that aimed to prove that "A soul has a mass", thus also proving there's a soul in the first place, so with this experiment, there are a few flaws.
But before addressing those, let me give you a quick explanation of the experiment (if you know it, skip to the next paragraph). The experiment involved getting tuberculosis patients and weighing them, up to and after their death, as in literally putting them on scales and leaving them there until they die, at which point he would be actively observing for changes in mass.
First, and most notably, it is not considered scientific, as he only had a sample size of 6. With such a small sample size, it's pretty much impossible to prove anything.
Second, the weight loss only happened in 2 of the 6 patients, where 1 of them lost and then regained weight at and after death, and the other lost a bit of weight but didn't regain it. That one patient that lost 21 grams was the only one used by MacDougall to prove the soul has weight (and is often used to prove the existence of it), and you can see why it is thought of as unscientific.