The Case Against the Immortal Soul

This is just a quick post.  For many years now, I have become increasingly skeptical of the idea of an immortal soul.  I think there is a lot of evidence to suggest that we do not have souls or spirits in the traditional sense.  This doesn’t mean that there’s no God, only that we are not incorporeal souls directing physical bodies the way you might drive you car.   I don’t mean this to be a definitive answer to the question of the soul, only to play “devil’s advocate” and raise some interesting questions about its existence.

One should keep in mind that the concept of the soul in the west as far as I know did not originate within Christianity or Judaism, but rather in Greek philosophy.  As such, the old testament does not talk much about a soul or afterlife (there are a few passages that hint.)  There are also some Christian denominations, such as Seventh Day Adventists, that do not believe in an immortal soul, rather that we will be resurrected during the final judgement.  In Buddhism, the concept of an immortal soul is generally not believed in as much compared to other eastern (hinduism) and western religions.  However, Buddhism tackles this problem in a complex manner thats too much to talk about here.    Suffice it to say there is some ground here for disbelief in the traditional notion of the soul even among different world religions.

Generally when people talk about the soul, they seem to define it according more or less three things: Memory, Will and Consciousness.  That is they believe you retain your memories and personality in the afterlife, that the soul is what drives the will and allows us to make choices, and finally that the soul is the “seat of consciousness”–it is how we are aware of our thoughts, emotions and our environment.   They may say that the soul is all three, or one of the three, but they usually define it according to these terms.  Below are my issues and questions revolving around each of these concepts as it relates to the soul.

Memory

Many people believe that our memories are held or part of our soul.  If the soul holds our memories, and our memories will exist in the afterlife and are not dependent entirely on our physical brains, then people would not get amnesia from a concussion.  Diseases such as Alzheimer’s also affect memories.   Even the simple passage of time seems to erode our ability to recall events.  If memories are tied to an immortal spirit, why is this so?

Will

Its well known that drugs alter behavior, whether simple beer or prescription medicine, or something harder like marijuana or heroin.  If the soul has free-will, then why would drugs and other physical issues change our ability to make moral and rational choices?  Why would a drug that enters the body affect a ghostly spirit that is supposed to be independent of and controlling that body?  Alzheimer’s also affects behavior, sometimes as drastically as taking drugs and there have been cases of people who have suffered some sort of injury to the brain that causes their personality to completely change.

Consciousness

If the soul is “mere consciousness”, that is, just pure awareness and is not dependent on the body, then what happens to it when we’re sleeping?  We have dreams, but we also have times during the night where we do not dream at all.  At that point, we’re not aware of anything.  As far as i can tell, I don’t have any awareness until I either start dreaming again or wake up.  Its even difficult to tell how much time has passed.  One could easily imagine death as a sort of dreamless sleep.  Again, If consciousness is defined by or dependent only on an eternal, non-physical soul, why would external influences such as drugs change our mental awareness and thoughts, instead of just our physical sense such as sight and sound?