milk_manSomething can be logical without being empirically proven
The concept of a soul or of God is not logically contradictory- there can be meaningful discussions about both subjects. But simply because it can be meaningfully spoken about, it by no means proves that one or both actually exists. I can think of a unicorn or flying spaghetti monster and have meaningful conversations about them, but such logical ideas do nothing to prove either's existence.
And this leads us to the distinction between belief and knowledge. You can believe something without it being factually true, but you cannot know something without it being factually true. Knowledge is belief with a true account. I know that I am writing in a forum on NS, that my name is Matt, that I am human, etc. I know these things because there is a true account of them. We do not have a true account of the soul or of God or of unicorns etc. Therefore we cannot know if there is a soul or know if there is a God or know if there are unicorns etc.
The next part is very crucial- do you act based on belief or on knowledge? When it comes to every single issue/matter in the world, we demand evidence before we act or not act. If your friend comes to you and says that your girlfriend is cheating on you, you will demand evidence before you make a decision on what to do. If he doesn't have evidence but says that he only thinks it might be happening or that he saw it in a dream, you wouldn't break up with your girlfriend- only a fool would do so. You can apply this to everything else we do in the world- architecture, engineering, buying food, choosing a new bike tire, whatever- but for some reason, when people talk about souls & God, they are ok making decisions purely based on belief and on insufficient evidence. And quite often, the results of doing this are very scary and downright frightening. People are burned for being witches, or murdered at a concert, or thought to suffer for all of eternity because your God is not my God, etc. All of this is a result of believing things based on insufficient evidence.
milk_manThe argument being is that we have souls and they do not, and that's what differentiates us from animals
That is the theological argument as to why humans are different from non-human animals, but not the only argument. Self-consciousness, rational thought, practical reason (ethics/morality), free will, autonomy, etc. are all used to differentiate us from non-human animals. These distinctions go back to Aristotle up to Kant and continue on today. All of which are based on sufficient evidence. And this is ultimately the failure of anyone trying to solve the Mind/Body Problem (the problem of locating the soul and how it interacts with the body)- there is no evidence to prove the soul actually exists. It is merely a non-contradictory idea.
