A friend of mine, who studies philosophy, recently told me that he stopped believing in evolution because he started to believe in the soul, and also can’t explain the emergence of inteligence.
Does believing in the soul pose some kind of problem for accepting evolution?
Look at the origin of the concept of a soul. It isn’t addressed in the OT and was added to Jewish writings and Christian theology after it was developed in Greece.
Given the long history of homo sapiens before there is any indication of what we call intelligence (or modern behavior) I believe there came a point where a “spark” occurred. There is no way to prove this spark came from God but it is what I hold.
Not in the slightest.
It does (or should) pose a problem for anyone who knows about monozygotic twins, conjoined twins and chimerae.
On its face, evolution isn’t the most problematic challenger. I would put embryonic development and the connection between genotype and phenotype as more problematic. These are all natural processes that affect the development of the human brain. If these aren’t a problem, then I fail to see how evolution would be. At its most basic, evolution is the process that led to our genomes which then go on to produce us in our mother’s womb.
I would say that the question of how the soul comes to be (is expressed) would be a different question than what the soul is.
I would say it would be similar to a software, it depends on the hardware to exist/be expressed, and the change in hardware (both improvement, worsening or defect) would affect how the software works, but not because the software was changed.
And I think that’s already an answer also to whether the evolution would be any problem.
I appreciate your reply!
There are many, many views on the soul within just Christianity, much less across all religions. The two main camps are Monism and Dualism, but there is a lot of overlap between the two.
If the genome is the software and our physical bodies are the hardware, then I fail to see why it matters where that genome came from. Whether our genomes are inherited from Adam and Eve or if they evolved, it is still software giving rise to hardware in the analogy. It would seem to me the biggest hurdle is the soul being produced by a physical genome to begin with, if that is what is being proposed. If the soul is imbued into the body by some divine process, then evolution would matter even less. Its just our physical bodies, after all. Why would it matter if our physical bodies are the product of physical processes?
In this analogy I meant about the soul.
In this case the soul is the software, and the physical part (which includes the genome) would be the hardware.
Exactly! This is the conclusion I wanted to come up with with my analogy.
Thanks for the polite reply 
Well one thing I would ask your friend is what is a soul? While at it I would ask them to define what is a soul and what is a spirit and what is a body and what is a heart and what are the guts and how does he define them all differently using the Bible? Most likely he can’t. Most can’t. I can’t even really. Seems that there was not a singular belief within the Bible on it .
In genesis soul seems to just mean a living body. A living body with the breath/spirit of God is a living creature/living person/soul and a body without the life/spirit of god is a corpse. Same for both humans and animals.
Here are some verses.
This is Genesis 2:7 NRSVue
7 then the LordGod formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
You’ll notice the word there is living being. This is what it says about living being in Bible hub.
This is many translations. You can see how it typically translates living being.
Here is it in Hebrew.
https://biblehub.com/text/genesis/2-7.htm
Now here is the word for being/nephesh.
https://biblehub.com/hebrew/5315.htm
You’ll notice it says it’s from a root word for “ to breath” and that the word can be translated as soul. It seems the concept of soul was something heavily influenced by high the KJV translated nephesh.
You’ll notice one definition is also creature. So I’ll show you that verse as well so that you can see a human and an animal that is breathing are both called souls.
https://biblehub.com/text/genesis/1-21.htm
Here is a Bible project podcast on it.
Not quite – the OT has a concept of the soul, but that concept got replaced by a Greek one thanks to the Septuagint and the lack of a matching concept or word in Greek.
Why?
Useful view.
Because a lot of people claim that the soul becomes associated with the body either at or soon after conception - which would mean twins either have only half a soul, or they share a soul despite being separate people, or the soul is somehow duplicated when they split.
I agree, the soul is a concept that is more mystery than anything else. Our own attitudes towards our physical construct changes drastically depending on context. For example, it is interesting to see peoples’ responses to human genetic modification, and then compare that to what people say about a loved one at a funeral. The same person can take seemingly contradictory positions in different contexts, but none of us really think it is a problem. We may consider our genomes to be an integral part of who we are in one context, and a disposable container in another context.
Being an atheist I can’t speak for Christians so my lack of concern for evolution and the soul is a bit hollow, but having read many of the posts here at B, I don’t see a roadblock.
I really do not see the problem here. Science could not detect if God made a special case and gave humanity “Souls”. It would seem that many Christians do not have nay problem just accepting the scientific view as the methodology of God and therefor “insert” Him without changing anything else.
I have come accross the assertion that the Soul is not a Christian view but Greek, however the traditional recanting of the two great commandments is
You shall love the Lord your God with all you heart, your soul and your mind ff
If the soul represents our individual uniqueness that persists whether we have a physical body or not, then evolution does not impinge on that. (IMHO)
Richard
Though I’m not an atheist I fall into very similar stances. Such as I think the soul is just a living body and I think the spirit is just wind. From what I read it seems that ancient Jews believed that the breath of god was the wind, and when we breathed in the wind we received his spirit and when we die, the last thing we did was breath our spirit back out into the wind. Same word is even used for breath/wind/spirit.
Then that I also don’t believe in intelligent design. I don’t think evolution or the cosmos was guided by any intelligent being. I don’t think Satan or demons existed. Maybe miracles did at one time but not now. I view prayer not as communication with god but as mediation. I’m not even sure if the resurrection was physical but was allegorical. Heaven to me seems to be heavily mythicized.
I guess when I think of the being we call god I mostly lean towards 1 of 2 processes. One is that there is a multiverse and within this multiverse some sort of being has found a way to move between them or be in several at once, and the other part is that I think maybe somehow during the development of the universe, somehow something begin to develop sort of like a conscious internet or something and we tap into it.
Neither of those things are atheistic, and I’m obviously not an atheist, but if there was a spectrum of belief in the supernatural to the belief that the supernatural is not real, my arrow is far more towards the atheistic side.
Reminds me of the poem with my favorite title ever, as it rolls off the tongue:
Here is a brief excerpt relevant to the topic and link to the full poem:
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
No.
And I do not believe in the rational soul of Plato and the Gnostics. But evolution has nothing to do with it. The conflict is with the Bible and other scientific findings. The rational soul comes from other religions which teach the transmigration of the soul – not to mention all the fun entertainment from books and films (which I enjoy just as much as anybody else). It is all the evidence from medical science which contradicts the notion of a non-physical puppet master controlling the body. And so one does well to distinguish between the fun fantasy and reality of life as we experience it (even as a Christian).
I do believe in the spiritual body spoken of by Paul in 1 Cor 15. What is the difference?
So like other things, the only connection is the will to reason and question the unthinking ideas and dogmas of a religion which has strayed rather far from its roots.
I go one step further to say this breath of God is just the origin of the word “inspiration,” and it is the ideas from communication by God which changed us and brought the human mind to life.
Medical science, particularly neurophysiology, cannot test whether there is an external non-physical soul affecting our decisions. If such exists, then it has to convey its decisions to the physical structure of the brain at some point. There is no scientific way to determine whether the first physically detectable changes in the brain, signaling the start of a decision, are promptings from a dualistic independent spirit versus interactions of an interlinked nonmaterial spirit and physical brain versus purely chemical processes.
Likewise, having a spirit could gradually develop evolutionarily, possibly reflecting design and guidance of the process by a creator. It could be an emergent property that appears in complex form once an organism develops a certain level of intellectual capacity. It could be implanted at a chosen point by a creator. We don’t have the data to decide much of anything about the origins or nature of the spirit
Thoughts of emergence aside, the soul is an immaterial object that many believe in due to what we deem Revelation from God. It will be mysterious by its very definition. Attempts to understand or critique souls will generally be a fool’s errand. It would be like trying to understand how God creates and sustains the universe ex nihilo. Biological science has nothing to say about immaterial and spiritual things.
For me, either you accept what Jesus/Scripture says about souls or you disagree with both or somehow claim these statements are true in what they intend to teach but use outdated and accommodated philosophy to teach about proper behavior. I consider the last option disingenuous and the least honest response in dealing with the issue. There is no conflict between evolution and souls. For all we know, there may be a dualism involved with our brains and souls. Or there isn’t. We can’t test it, know about it or not know about it scientifically. Some can call souls superfluous in light of advances in biology/neuroscience or try to abuse Occam’s razor but that is nonsense since we have Revelation, Church tradition and more importantly, the words of Jesus telling us to not worry about those who can kill just the body.
I am not saying we will ever be able to explain or not explain the emergence of intelligence with biological evolution, but this looks like a God of the gaps argument. It’s not inherently wrong. There may ultimately be some inherent otherness to humans beyond scientific explanation. You would be a bad scientist if you stopped looking for an explanation but your philosophy of science is bad if you absolutely rule out the possibility of unexplainable otherness going in. That is just intellectual hubris symbiotically wrapped in a logical fallacy.
Even a full explanation of the brain and thought does not rule out souls anymore than the water cycle rules out me saying God creates rain or anymore than reproductive biology rules out me seeing God as forming people in the womb. All that happens, every law, every process, every molecular motion is upheld and sustained by God at every instant.
If we can explain the intelligence of humans, great. We are understanding the work of God’s hands. If we can’t, okay. We can’t fathom all of God’s creative work or the mysteries of the universe. Neither matters when employing what I deem a better Christian doctrine of creation and when you don’t mistakenly lose the debate before it starts by assuming a “naturalistic explanation” excludes God. The water cycle in children’s textbooks doesn’t refute God as creating rain. That is bad theology that is just embracing intellectual atheism. Many modern people approach the world confusing methodological naturalism in science with philosophical naturalism. So these questions cause us trouble when they shouldn’t.
For me, every scientific explanation and discovery strengthens my faith. When I think about why the universe is even comprehensible or why my thoughts correspond to reality, Jesus is my answer. Christopher Baglow wrote:
So science does nothing but glorify God and strengthen my beliefs although I have to admit, evolution can look cruel and bloody to many modern people, myself included.
Vinnie
I don’t understand why evolution but not reproduction, would pose any problem wrt the soul.
How does acceptance of the scientific study of the process of reproduction, including, for example, genetics (the random genes from ancestry, plus some random mutations, etc.) account for the soul? How does reproduction explain the emergence of intelligence?
To be clear, I am Not arguing against the existence of the soul, intelligence, etc. What I am suggesting is that evolution does not pose anything novel over and above what everybody nowadays accepts of the scientific study of reproduction.
Simple answer, no.
Evolution exists, interacts, and occurs on the “physical” plane.
Until proven otherwise the “Soul” is not a “physical” component of the body but a “metaphysical” one.
Different “sandboxes”…and are not equivalent.
ab uno disce omnes,
Ken
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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