[John Freestone]

Hi pianoperformer, that's a well-phrased question.

My take on it is that there is no soul. Science has developed from philosophy and religion, which itself can be traced back to the first guesses primitive humans made about who they were and what the world was. I'm sure that science is a great improvement, although it is still based on certain assumptions, which may be wrong. Generally, as we have evolved more rigorous methods of deciding what is true and what is false, we have as a species discarded more and more myths (and scientific theories themselves become disproved or modified in the light of new evidence). From this modern standpoint, we have developed the - on the whole, rather good - habit of basing the decision of the reality of things on evidence. There is not really any sound evidence for the soul, immortal or otherwise. There is not really even any sound evidence that what we perceive as a whole gestalt of flowing experience is real. The evidence is mounting that it is an illusion we create in our brains and bodies, but it is an incredibly powerful illusion that it is hard to see beyond. Neurobiology is helping us see beyond it.

We seem almost certain to be just animals in every sense of the word, despite being rather advanced, having evolved over millions of years from simpler animals. Our consciousness, whatever it is, makes sense as an emergent property of advanced brains. The idea that there is something unique about humans, as many religions say, on this issue of having a soul, can be seen now to be bias.

However, I am playing with a tentative idea that, rather as energy is not created or destroyed, consciousness may not be, but it is easy to misunderstand that. It just means that lower animals have less awareness of their environment, plants even less, microbes hardly any, and I don't know how to reasonably end the series. It is nonsense to imagine that a microbe or a molecule has awareness the way a human being does, but a molecule does nevertheless respond to its environment.

The idea of immortality is so appealing as to be wise to doubt. Anything that feels good to believe is worth checking out very carefully. There is certainly a recycling of matter and energy, but I don't expect there is any reason or evolutionary principle that supports the idea of some kind of conscious individual returning to 'Source', or reincarnation.

If we hold this idea that there are concepts that get into our culture that have no basis in reality, and that evidence for something should be the basis for trying to theorise about what something is, many such questions become almost pointless - we can leave the idea of soul on the back burner, keep an open mind in case some new evidence comes up, and there will always be people investigating the claim - but since there is no real evidence (I know people will dispute this, it is a personal opinion), there is no need to ask what properties soul has, where it comes from, what it means, or how many we can fit on the head of a pin (oh, that's angels).