Recovering Evangelicals #9 Soul and Afterlife: Science says “no” to immaterial soul
The vast majority of people — whether they be Christians sitting in the pews of our churches, or non-believers outside the church — think that Substance Dualism is a central and core tenet of Christianity. That one can’t reject Substance Dualism and still call themselves Christian.
And yet many scholars — both Christian and non-believers — who have spent decades studying this question have reasons to conclude that Substance Dualism “doesn’t work.”
Here, we go through a number of scientific and philosophical arguments against Substance Dualism, and Biblical reasons why we don’t have to hang on to this idea.
(1) Spirit of the gaps: inserting this immaterial concept into the unknown has no explanatory power, and becomes increasingly irrelevant as science continues to provide material explanations for what the soul does.
(2) The mind-body problem: the vast majority of scholars going all the way back to Rene Descartes (and even Augustine) could not conceive how the immaterial soul can interact with the material body.
(3) Thermodynamics: the constant intervention of the immaterial into our material universe would massively upset the balance of energy in our universe.
(4) Depending on one’s view of when the immaterial soul is “attached” to the material body, there will be very uncomfortable ramifications when a fertilized egg splits into two different embryos (identical twins) or two different fertilized eggs join into one embryo (a “chimera”).
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