The Soul is Real, Essay Example

The debate as to whether or not the human soul exists is as old as recorded history. In fact, no other idea seems as pervasive and universal throughout all of human culture than the question of the soul’s existence. As Hunt remarks in his article, “The ‘Soul’: Modern Psychological Interpretations” (1994), “ No other single belief has so profoundly influenced so many human beings for so unimaginably long a time.'” (Hunt). Throughout the centuries, philosophers, scientists, artists, poets, and religious devotees have argued on behalf of the existence of a human soul while a formidable number of thinkers and artists have worked to refute the idea. The rise of evolutionary theory and modern brain science have been cited by those who do not believe in the human soul as evidence that human cognition and human life are based not on a soul, but on purely biological grounds. While it is an oversimplification to say that science has been the chief “enemy” of the conviction that the soul exists, it is science that is most often referred as evidence for this position.

For example, Hunt notes that modern science has more or less accounted for all of the qualities that were attributed to the human soul in antiquity. Hunt writes that “Everything formerly attributed to the workings of an incorporeal mind or soul could be, or someday would be, explained in physiological terms…No forces other than the common physical-chemical ones are active within the organism.” (Hunt). This is the precise area of argument that those who deny the existence of the human soul are most likely to concentrate on. In doing this, the deniers of the human soul force proof of the soul’s existence to be made on physical and scientific grounds. In other words, those who do not believe in the human soul are most likely to point to the lack of physical evidence as a primary point of their argument. Such a perspective would seem to put those who argue on behalf of the soul’s existence in a difficult position. If it were possible to measure, record, or isolate the human soul through physical means, such a demonstration would, of course, have happened long ago.

Instead of meeting this counterargument head on, those who believe in the existence of the soul are more likely to take an oblique point of view that forwards the notion that the souls is impossible to isolate and observe through scientific means because of two primary reasons. The first reason is that the soul is so deeply embedded in the fabric of reality that it can’t be separated, and the second is that the soul is not a material thing. As is noted in the book Whatever Happened to the Soul? : Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature (1998), the human soul is not so much a “thing” as a phenomenon. The book remarks that “that the soul of humans is a physiologically embodied property of human nature and thus not an entity with distinctive existence, awareness, and agency.” (Brown 99). This would of course make physical detection of the soul a virtual impossibility.

That said, the inability to observe or isolate the human soul directly should not be seen as an absolute barrier to scientific verification. After all, many aspects of the known physical world such a subatomic particles, dark matter, and gravity are not able to be observed directly or isolated. Yet we all know that these things exist. The same could theoretically be true of the human soul. Like dark matter or gravity, the physical observation of the soul can only be in its second-hand effects. Brown writes that “Physical or psychological realities are not presumed to be relevant to our understanding of the soul, nor are they thought to affect the soul’s status or well-being.” (Brown 99). This, to some extent, suggests that the soul transcends physical reality. Special care must be taken in regard to this last statement which is meant to suggest that the soul is an inseparable part of reality, indistinguishable from its effects.

This position could be interpreted as a “dodge” by those who insist that only scientifically verified physical criteria should be used to verify or deny the existence of the human soul. Interestingly enough, Hunt recounts a number of scientific data-points that seem to support the existence of the soul. Hunt writes that “So with the human mind, or self, or, if you wish, the soul. You can’t find it under the microscope, and when a person dies, there is no immediate loss of body weight due to the departure of the soul, because the soul isn’t a thing,” (Hunt). He goes on to list a number of experiments conducted by the American Society for Psychical Research which lend a scientific basis for a belief in the soul.

For example, Hunt affirms that thinkers with “Ph.D.’s in learned fields, earnestly discuss out-of-body experiences and back-from-death experiences, both of which they consider realities, not illusions.” (Hunt). Without going into the specifics of NDE’s, the potential for citing innumerable near death experiences recorded by medical patients has been an acknowledged influence on the beliefs of many doctors and nurses. Those who have experienced NDE’s often report the feeling of leaving their bodies but retaining their cognitive abilities and individuality. In this way, NDE’s may give a verifiable glimpse into the reality of the soul. Obviously, those who argue against the soul will simply view NDE’s as hallucinations brought on by physical trauma. Some instances of NDE’s involve the person who experienced death having knowledge of event that seems impossible or uncanny, as though they literally left their bodies for a short time, becoming something that is alive but not physical.

If this is the case, then the first question that springs to mind is: if the soul is not physical, then what is it? The answer to that question is complicated, but still remarkably cogent. In short, the answer is that the non-corporal aspects of the human mind are just as valid a representation as those which can be easily placed in the material realm. So, for example, according to many observers who believe in the human soul, dreams, fantasies, and the human imagination are all “windows” into the non-physical world of the human soul. The popular movie Field of Dreams delivers just such a balance of imagination and reality. The film shows that passage between the world of the living and dead is possible: “toward the end of the movie, Ray tries to cross the cornfield into the afterlife; he stays in this world only after Shoeless Joe and Terence Mann remind him that he needs to be with his family.” (Sutton and Wogan 62). The film blurs the line between the living and the dead in order to make a statement about the ambiguous place that the soul holds in space and time.

Roland Teske insists in is work The Soul (2000), that the intellect is itself the best indication of the soul’s existence. This is because, according to Teske, the intellect perceives the soul first-hand. He writes that “”I state, first of all, that the intellect is the power apprehensive of spiritual things, that is, those abstracted or stripped from matter, and of invisible things, whether they are singular or universal,” (Teske 423). Such a conception of the soul requires that the observer be receptive to some degree of ambiguity and open-mindedness. If it is true in quantum physics that an uncertainty principle is a part of the very fabric of reality then it is more or less certain that this same uncertainty principle should be at work in regard to obtaining physical verification of the soul’s existence.

Most conceptions of the soul also conceive of a life beyond death. In the Christian tradition God judges each soul according to the life’s work of the person. In the Hindu tradition, there are “two paths the soul may take at death: either the path of good works, which leads the sacrificer to the moon, whence he gradually returns to the earth and rebirth; or the path of light, by which the knower of Brahman goes beyond the moon to Brahman and does not return.” (J. 292). In either case, the soul is viewed as a measuring device by which growth and wisdom and gauged. Such a phenomenon is one that eludes physical verification by its very nature but which influences everything that is physical simultaneously.

Works Cited

Brown, Warren S., Nancey Murphy, and H. Newton Malony, eds. Whatever Happened to the Soul? : Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998.

Hunt, Morton. “The ‘Soul’: Modern Psychological Interpretations.” Free Inquiry Fall 1994: 22+.

Reynolds, Frank, and David Tracy, eds. Myth and Philosophy. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1990.

Sutton, David, and Peter Wogan. Hollywood Blockbusters: The Anthropology of Popular Movies. New York: Berg, 2009.

Teske, Roland J., trans. The Soul. Milwaukee: Marquette UP, 2000.