If you believe in evolution, then what is the nature of the soul?

Question

I'm sure this has been asked before, but if humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor (an idea with which I do not agree, but am willing to accept that other people believe), then what is your opinion on how humans developed souls/spirits and the capacity for human traits such as speech and philosophical reasoning?

Answer 1

Are you aware that the majority of Christians have no problem with evolution? Half the Christians in the world are Catholic -- and they have no problem with it. I was taught that evolution is correct by nuns in grade school, nuns in high school and priests in college. Even the last pope said tha Evolution is much more than mere theory.

Most protestants have similar beliefs.

For all of them, the nature of the soul is no different now than it would have been to Christians before Darwin.

Agnostics and atheists who believe in evolution have no reason to conjecture on the nature of the soul -- since it is not part of their belief systems.

As for the capacity for speech and philosophical reasoning -- evolution explains them. It would be naive to assume that they ar human traits, though.

While gorillas and chimps are not capable of speech -- they are capable of advanced communication. Gorillas who have been taught to communicate via sign language score between 70 and 90 on IQ tests and show a range of emotion similar to humans. I'm convinced that if we have a soul -- then so do they.

Answer 2

No such organ as the soul. No such thing! Speech and "philosophical" or indeed any other reasoning, are a direct result of evolutionary trends which make up the human animal.
Human "spirit" is exactly that. A common acquired consciousness gained in the same evolutionary way that makes dogs dogs, cats cats and creationists monkeys!

Answer 3

Well, if your God is infinite, why would it be impossible for that "first human" to be the first being that God decided to grace with a soul? God sets his plan into motion, and creatures evolve... very slowly by human standards, but what's a million years to an infinite God? And finally, when the human body is just right, God adds the soul, and... EUREKA! A human!

Why would that be so hard to accept? What is the body, except meat? Even your Bible tells you, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." The body is nothing. If you believe that humans are special, then the only thing spiritually special about humans would be a soul. And, if that's the case, then the soul is the gift of the divine, and God could give souls to the human species whenever he wanted to.

There's too much evidence of a common ancestral history between human beings and the great apes (APES, silly person... not monkeys) to ignore it. However, if you're fixed on humans being special, why not focus on the only important thing for a religious person - the soul? Leave the biology to people who actually understand genetics, or take a class for yourself.

As for speech and philosophical reasoning... apes have been taught to use sign language. Parrots have been trained not only to speak but to answer questions. Language and reasoning skills are matters of brain capacity. However, if your parents hadn't taught you to use language and mathematics and reasoning, you'd be hard pressed to come up with those things yourself. In fact, you'd be living in a cave, trying to figure out fire, and pondering the use of a round bit of rock with a hole in the middle. And honestly... I know a lot of humans who are completely NOT capable of using logic and philosophical reasoning. Are they not human?

Answer 4

Who can prove that there is such a thing as a soul? A soul is just a self conscious individual who makes decisions. Good decisions = good soul. Bad decision = bad soul. Animals act out of instinct, however they have not been instructed that certain actions are perceived as bad in the eyes of others. So if a monkey kills and understands that the consequence will be an attack from the mother of the slain monkey, did he commit evil even though he knew there would be a negative consequence??? Bad monkey!

Answer 5

Souls and/or spirits do not actually exist in objective (physical) reality, but do occasionally manifest themselves within the subjective mental experiences of those who believe in the supernatural. (I do not.)

St. Augustine was the first to define the human soul as an immortal spirit about 390 CE. Augustine's theological goal was to explain exactly how Christ's promise of eternal life might actually be possible, because Christ Himself used only paternalistic allegories, which were considered laughably inadequate and were openly ridiculed by the educated Romans of the fourth century. Augustine combined Plato's Idealism with Aristotle's Solipsism and then asserted that God loans each new human being a tiny bit of His own immortal essence at the moment of their birth. The idea was that the experience of being alive caused God's tiny gift to grow into a complete human soul, which returned to God in Heaven, when the human eventually died. Unfortunately, like much of the faulty Christian logic of the era, Augustine makes a positive assertion (...that God gives each new person a bit of His own immortal essence.), fails to substantiate his assertion and then, because it cannot be disproved, presumes his assertion must therefore be true. Even worse, neither Idealism nor Solipsism has withstood the test of time and both are now throughly discredited. Even if Augustine's assertion of God's gift were true, the Soul he invented could not possibly work.

The truth is that the human mind is a cunning illusion, created by our own self-contained living brains. Although the ancient Greeks imagined speech required a form of telepathic communication with the gods (Idealism) and that each person's subjective mental experiences were the basis of reality (Solipsism), we now know that only the physical realm is objectively real. Unlike the ancients, modern people appreciate that their own mental experiences exist only as abstractions, created by our own brains. Now we know that speech and abstract thinking are entirely natural processes that originate entirely within the neurological structures of a living human brain. There is no doubt whatsoever, that speech and thinking evolved over hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years.

Answer 6

The idea of a "soul" is thrown out. The soul/spirit has nothing to do with speech and philosophical reasoning. We know this when people suffer brain damage and their personality is drastically changed. People that were once the most loving individual in the world can take a drastic change and start being the the total opposite. It is a fact that serial killers often times have had traumatic injuries to their brains, especially the frontal lobe which is responsible for much of the behavior that makes possible stable and adequate social relations. Self-control, planning, judgment, the balance of individual versus social needs, and many other essential functions underlying effective social intercourse are mediated by the frontal structures of the brain responsible for much of the behavior that makes possible stable and adequate social relations. Self-control, planning, judgment, the balance of individual versus social needs, and many other essential functions underlying effective social intercourse are mediated by the frontal structures of the brain.

Answer 7

This is a good question for those who believe in souls and evolution at the same time. I have no idea how they reconcile the two. As a philosophical materialist, the answer is simple. There is no nonphysical soul. Human emotions are created by activity in the brain's limbic system. Ultimately science will probably discover how the feeling of a soul is created by the brain in exquisite detail.

Answer 8

They have identified the gene that causes our complex speech. It is present in many animals, but has a very slight difference in humans, which makes all the difference. As for philosophy, that came with the increased intelligence. As for souls, there has yet to be a soul or spirit discovered biologically. therefor it doesn't not have a part in biological evolution.

Answer 9

The soul is an invention of the human mind.
It is a supernatural idea just as gods and satan are.

Particular human traits that you mention are a direct result of evolution.

And out of interest, my dogs have a limited capacity to reason.

Answer 10

Souls, in the classical dualistic definition don't exist.

Language is a very useful trait and evolved once our throats could do it. Philosophical reasoning came about once we had enough free time to just sit there and think. Our minds are capable of it simply because our brains are complex enough.