Secular arguments for the existence of the soul

[namax91]

I need an answer as soon as possible. I’m giving a persuasive speech in my college public speaking class. The topic I picked was the Christian belief in the immortal soul. I’m trying to use arguments that don’t presuppose the truth of the Resurrection, so it would be convincing to secularists. I’m going to argue in favor of the definition of “soul” found in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia: “the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel, and will, and by which our bodies are animated.” From here, I’m going to use arguments from Tim Staples’ Seven Proofs for the Natural Immortality of the Human Soul, in order to argue for the immortality of the human soul. Unfortunately, I can’t find any arguments for the fact that there is an ultimate internal principle by which humans live. Does anybody know of a source that I could cite where someone successfully argues this? I have four days before I give my speech. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you very much!

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I need an answer as soon as possible. I’m giving a persuasive speech in my college public speaking class. The topic I picked was the Christian belief in the immortal soul. I’m trying to use arguments that don’t presuppose the truth of the Resurrection, so it would be convincing to secularists. I’m going to argue in favor of the definition of “soul” found in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia: “the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel, and will, and by which our bodies are animated.” From here, I’m going to use arguments from Tim Staples’ Seven Proofs for the Natural Immortality of the Human Soul, in order to argue for the immortality of the human soul. Unfortunately, I can’t find any arguments for the fact that there is an ultimate internal principle by which humans live. Does anybody know of a source that I could cite where someone successfully argues this? I have four days before I give my speech. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you very much!

I think the sources you have mentioned are about all you can say without going into what we know by faith. Make your best argument and let the audience decide for themselves and that is the way I would present the argument.

Pax
Linus2nd

 

[dmar198]

I need an answer as soon as possible. I’m giving a persuasive speech in my college public speaking class. The topic I picked was the Christian belief in the immortal soul. I’m trying to use arguments that don’t presuppose the truth of the Resurrection, so it would be convincing to secularists. I’m going to argue in favor of the definition of “soul” found in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia: “the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel, and will, and by which our bodies are animated.” From here, I’m going to use arguments from Tim Staples’ Seven Proofs for the Natural Immortality of the Human Soul, in order to argue for the immortality of the human soul. Unfortunately, I can’t find any arguments for the fact that there is an ultimate internal principle by which humans live. Does anybody know of a source that I could cite where someone successfully argues this? I have four days before I give my speech. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you very much!

One argument for the soul is based on the difference between a corpse and a living body. In the morning a man is alive, but by the evening he may be a corpse. Now what is the difference between the two? It’s not a difference of material. There is no chemical you could add to the corpse that would make it alive again, nothing material could do that. But there is a difference. Therefore, there is a nonmaterial element without which the body is a corpse. Catholics call it the soul.

A second argument for the soul is based on justice. If there is no life after death, there is no justice. Good and evil are not balanced in this life. Good people often suffer, evil people often do well. Also, if there is no future life, there is no true morality. Rob, lie, murder – only be careful! The only way true justice can be served is if we have a soul that lives on after death, where a sentence of judgment awaits. But if there is no soul, then there is ultimately no justice and no morality either.

A third argument for the soul is based on the law of nature. Human beings naturally believe in life after death and in many cases look forward to it. Fr. Rumble’s book “Radio Replies Volume 3” uses this as an argument that the afterlife is real: “Could anyone conceive that God would form that most delicate organ of hearing, the ear, so wonderfully adapted to every kind of vibration, yet endow no objects with the power of causing sound? The whole tendency of the ear would be to hear, yet it would never do so because its complementary object would be wanting. Every natural tendency implies and has an object.” Therefore, something exists which corresponds to our natural expectation of an afterlife.

 

[polytropos]

This is probably my favorite argument. It’s not directly an argument for immortality, but rather an argument for immateriality. But you can argue to immortality from there.

The basic thrust is this: Physical processes are undeterminied. That is, if you consider any physical process (like a calculator computing a sum), it instantiates infinitely many functions. That this is true can be seen by considering the work of some 20th century analytic philosophers. Which function (addition, or something else) a calculator is computing will depend on how it would respond to other (name removed by moderator)uts. But since it will never compute for every set of (name removed by moderator)uts, there is no fact of the matter about which function it is computing. The function it is computing is underdetermined by the physical data, and this is not merely epistemological.

But our formal thinking is determinate. When we sum two numbers, we are really adding, and we can know this without having computed every possible pair of (name removed by moderator)uts. So some formal thinking is not a physical process.

(If you have questions or want more resources on this argument, PM me.)

 

[polytropos]

One argument for the soul is based on the difference between a corpse and a living body. In the morning a man is alive, but by the evening he may be a corpse. Now what is the difference between the two? It’s not a difference of material. There is no chemical you could add to the corpse that would make it alive again, nothing material could do that. But there is a difference. Therefore, there is a nonmaterial element without which the body is a corpse. Catholics call it the soul.

An issue I take with this argument is that there is also a difference between an animal’s corpse and living body.

(I think a materialist could also plausibly dispute the claim that “It’s not a difference of material.” There is no chemical that you could add to make it alive again, but there are patterns of activity in a living body which, the materialist would claim, are what make it ‘alive,’ and when they cease, you have a dead body. I think you could plausibly argue from the difference between corpses and living bodies to the existence of a soul in the Aristotelian sense of that which animates, but that would not get you to immortality.)