Soul searching

The soul is that intangible essence of us that believers hope will survive death.  I wish I could say that the soul existed.  Sadly, I cannot. This is the first of two parts on the soul.
In this post, I look at the definition of the soul. Next time, I examine some of the science.
If one disentangles the arguments about eternal life one discovers there are two contradictory definitions of life after death in the Western tradition.  In one view the soul and the body are separated and in the other theory, they are kept together.  But these two mutually exclusive traditions are often melded together in a confusing mish mash.  How is it that two contradictory notions of life after death can exist?  Either the soul and the body are separated or are not?  Why is there no public debate about the clash of definitions?  I expect it is because either most people in their heart of hearts, notwithstanding their stated belief, don’t actually believe.  So they don’t want to interrogate the two forms of life after death.
The first form is the disembodied soul.  In this Hellenistic tradition, the soul is separated from the body and some existence is then supposed to eventuate presumably in Heaven.   
But what form of existence would there be for the disembodied soul?  Without eyes, ears, brain and mouth, the soul would be incapable of thought, sight, sound and the ability to communicate.  Souls would have an awful isolated existence of sensory deprivation.  Indeed, if they were the souls of miscreants, these souls would feel nothing of the searing punitive fires of Hell. 
The life of a disembodied soul would be one of sensory deprivation and endless tedium.  Such a disembodied existence, were it possible, would be awful, miserable anti human existence.  And needless to say, the nature of the soul clashes with available scientific evidence.  The soul, however defined, is part of the brain and so with death, comes the death of the brain and so the soul must die with the body and cannot live a distinct and disembodied state.

Michelangelo's version of the soul - the second form of a soul embedded in a resurrected body.

The second notion of life after death is restoration of the dead cadavers at some time such as the Coming of God.  This is known as resurrection.  In this form of eternity, the soul and the body remain together and both physically revive and are restored.  This notion is scientifically absurd given the poor status of the bodies after but a short time in the grave or the crematorium.  And what would happen should the atoms from one corpse be consumed and form part of a living person?  Who gets those atoms? If I shared the atoms that formed part of some historic personage, who would get those atoms on the day of resurrection and whose limbs would be mere stumps?  And I feel that most of us don’t really truly believe in resurrection.  If we did, mummification or embalming and vacuum packing would be widespread rather than cremation and rotting in the earth.  Ancient Egyptians planned for a resurrected afterlife by mummification because of the tenacity of their belief.  Modern humans have the capacity it would seem to say they believe and yet actions of cremation and burial indicate otherwise.

And the difficulty of all forms of afterlife is demonstrated in Eric Clapton’s plaintive cry to his dead baby child, “Would you know my name, if I saw you in heaven?”  He wrote this elegy after his young son fell to his death.  He is asking about the nature of the post mortal world.  What age would his son be?  Would he be a young boy child unable to recall his father?  Would the dead be ancient like Clapton will be when he dies?  Will we be an infant like his son – incapable of memory?  Will we be like many of us will be at death – with Alzheimer’s – also incapable of memory?  Clapton seems to be suggesting that there is no meaningful afterlife and the song appears to be a part of his healing as he comes to realise this.

The idea of the soul is alluring and uplifting.  The notion is found in both Western and Eastern traditions.  It gives us hope in the face of relentless, inexorable pursuit of death.  One would have to be a complete shit head to repudiate it.  I am sorry to be one of those that do.  What will I do next?  Proclaim that brain devouring zombies don’t exist?  I think that I am on safer, less contentious grounds with that one.

What do you think?

Are you a believer in the afterlife? 

Which of the two forms do you believe in – soul alone or soul and body combined?  How do you contend with the logic and evidence of the afterlife?

So now it is over to you guys.