What We Mean When We Say "Soul"

Part 1, Fighting Words

This is a series about what we mean when we say "soul." 

To start, in this secular and scientific age can we even believe in the soul? And if so, what is our soul? 

In Hunting Magic Eels I talk about the soul. Specifically, I describe how a brute materialistic description of the human person has no place for the soul. The soul is immaterial and invisible and, thus, for modern people, not real. In short, there is a disenchanted way of looking at the human person, that we have no soul, versus an enchanted way of looking at the human person, that we have a soul.

But if we have a soul, what is it exactly?

Before turning to that question I want to linger a bit today on the point I was making in Hunting Magic Eels, as that point sets up how we are going to approach the soul in this series. Specifically, I'm not going to talk much about cognitive psychology, neuroscience, consciousness, or philosophy of mind. This likely will disappoint many of you. But in this series I won't get involved in trying to describe the soul as a "thing" and how it relates to other "things," like the brain. Instead, I want to argue that when we say "soul" we're describing aspects of human life and experience that cannot be grasped by or reduced to a scientific description. Simply put, saying "soul" is to speak about the enchantment of persons. This series will describe what that enchantment looks like.

Speaking of the soul, therefore, is important in resisting the disenchantment of persons in an increasingly scientific and secular age. I want to suggest that when we stop believing in the soul, and reduce human persons to biology, something sacred and hallowed in our humanity is eclipsed and lost, something that needs to be protected and recovered. When we say "soul" we are naming this sacred, enchanted aspect of our humanity.

I will confess that I say a lot of harsh things about science in Hunting Magic Eels. Here is one of the harshest passages, and it has to do with the subject of this series:

As my friend Eve Poole points out, once upon a time, we used to have a word for the supernatural aspect of human beings. We called it the soul. In an age of brain scans and neuroscience, speaking of the soul seems outdated and antiquated, a bit of enchantment that we’ve learned to outgrow. But I bet if you asked your friends and neighbors if they have a soul, they all would answer yes. We still believe in the soul, even in this skeptical age. And we’d be horrified if anyone claimed otherwise. More and more people might doubt the existence of God, but God still haunts us. We crave the magic. We resist reducing our lives to biology. We are convinced that we are “more” than the sum total of our organs, bones, and tissues. Just like reducing redwood trees to lumber, there is something sociopathic about a purely scientific, materialistic description of human beings. When redwood trees lose their sacred magic, it becomes very easy to cut them down. And the same goes for human beings.

When I wrote this passage I dwelt a long time on the word "sociopathic." That's a pretty strong word. Did I really want to describe a "purely scientific, materialistic description of human beings" as "sociopathic"? In the end, I obviously did. 

Some readers didn't like that and other choices in the book. For example, a one-star review of Hunting Magic Eels on Goodreads had this to say:

I love the author's daily blog, but this book is not the same quality. The book makes some good points, but its main arguments are ruined by a truly horrifically naive caricature of science. Yuck.

My guess is passages like the one above, describing "a purely scientific, materialistic description of human beings" as "sociopathic," is an example of what this reviewer felt was "a truly horrifically naive caricature of science." 

Why, then, did I state things so strongly, when I could have written about science in a way would have avoided such reactions from readers? Could I have been more circumspect and conciliatory in talking about science? Yeah, I could have been.

Making things harder was that Hunting Magic Eels was published toward the end of the pandemic, and a lot of people were concerned about the science denialism going on among evangelical Christians. Many readers, along with my editors, feared that the harsh things I said about science in the book would give support to this tendency among evangelicals--from evolution, to climate change, to the effectiveness of vaccines. 

I understand those concerns, and I don't blame readers who were off-put by my "horrifically naive caricatures of science." I wrote some strong things. Still, I'm glad I used the word "sociopathic." If I had to write the book all over again, I'd pick the same word. And this series is a part of why I would do so.

Basically, when it came to science in Hunting Magic Eels came out swinging. My words were fighting words. My sense, then and now, was that one of the reasons doubt and disenchantment have become pervasive among Christians, and why many former Christians have left the faith, is that we've let science become an epistemological bully. Science has put progressive, disenchanted Christians on their heels. There's a perverse tendency among progressive, disenchanted Christians to assume that science is the only legitimate authority in naming what is "real." In Hunting Magic Eels I wanted to push back very strongly against that tendency. When it comes to science, want disenchanted Christians to stop playing defense and start playing offense.

To be very clear, I'm not pushing back on the power of science to describe the material world. I agree with how science describes the material world. I embrace that scientific consensus. When it comes to the material world, science is the best tool we have for gaining knowledge. But I do want to strongly reject the notion that science can delimit the real. The realest things in our lives are not amenable to scientific analysis, and the word "soul" is naming some of those things.

Phrased differently, my attack on science wasn't an empirical assault, it was an existential assault. Notice the care I took in the passage above. I didn't say science was sociopathic. I said there was something sociopathic about a "purely scientific, materialistic description of human beings." The key word there is "purely." To describe, for example, a human being using only the tools of organic chemistry will miss what is most important and real about that human being. Their value, their memories, their dreams, and loves. What is most important and most real about a human being cannot be empirically captured by science. And I think that truth, that science cannot describe all that is real, needs to be shouted. 

I don't think faith needs to be defensive or shy in the face of science. If anything, faith has the better, bigger, fuller vision of reality, and needs to say that clearly, forcefully and often. This series will give one example why.