What is the Soul?

Do we have a soul? What is a Soul? Where is the Soul? It’s simply assumed that only death will shed light on these mysteries and decide once and for all if human beings have a soul. But that’s not the case. In What is the Soul, J. P. Moreland maps our immaterial selves, explains the soul, and shows quite definitively why the brain cannot be the mind and why the body must have a soul.

Recently, Time magazine featured an article defending stem-cell research on human embryos: “These [embryos] are microscopic groupings of a few differentiated cells. There is nothing human about them, except potential—and, if you choose to believe it, a soul.” This statement expresses a widely-held opinion that when it comes to belief in the soul, you’re on your own. There is no evidence one way or another. You must simply choose arbitrarily—or, perhaps, on the basis of private feelings—what you believe about the soul. Geneticist Francis Crick declares in his book The Astonishing Hypothesis that who you and I are, is “in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.” “You” are not a soul.

Regardless of how often this mantra is recited, nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, a very strong case can be offered for the view that consciousness and the soul are immaterial—not physical—realities. Thinking through this issue is not only fascinating, but a matter of considerable importance. French philosopher Blaise Pascal rightly remarked that the soul’s nature is so important that one must have lost all feeling not to care about the issue.