A search for the Soul

What is the soul? Does the soul really exist? The soul is the spiritual part in us that keeps on living after we die.

Man has a dualistic nature; man is composed of a physical body which is visible, and a soul which is invisible and immortal unlike the body which will die. Scientists and theologians argue about the concept of the soul. This is a similar debate like that between evolutionists and creationists.

From observations and experimentation, many scientists claim that the soul does not exist. On the other hand theologians argue that every human is endowed with an immortal soul. Emotions and moral reasoning are terms associated with the soul. Thus the soul is the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel and by which our body is animated. But biologists and neuroscientists are discovering that these are actually built in our genes and brain structures. The brain scientist V. S. Ramachandran (University of California) states that, “There may be soul in the sense of "the universal spirit of the cosmos" but the soul as it is usually spoken of, "an immaterial spirit that occupies individual brains and that only evolved in humans" - all that is complete nonsense. Belief in that kind of soul is basically superstition.” Georgetown University theologian John F. Haught states that, “Instead of eliminating the notion of a human soul in order to make us humans fit seamlessly into the rest of nature, it's wiser to recognize that there is something analogous to soul in all living beings”.

Scientists are materialists; all that is physical is real for the scientist. But science cannot prove everything. Since the soul is invisible; therefore it cannot be proved by science, but this does not conclude that the soul does not exist. Taking into consideration we have no scientific proof that God exists since He is a spirit; but that does not mean that God does not exist. Dr. Charles Tart, a professor of psychology emeritus at the University of California says that we need both science and spirituality to make us human.

As mentioned above this is a similar debate between evolutionists and creationists. Men maybe regarded as an evolutionary process that came into existence, or else as the Bible states that men was created by the Almighty one. My view is that man is the result of an evolutionary process BUT everything governed under the hands of God; thus combing the evolutionary and creationist theories. We as humans tend to deny the existence of the invisible. But the soul does exist; in fact in Genesis there is written that God blew the breath of life in man after creating him. We think that science can solve all the mysteries of life and can give us an answer for everything forgetting that God is above all science!!! If we believe in an afterlife we should exist in some form either as visible (but the body dies and gets rotten) or as invisible……….maybe the soul?

Maria Camilleri