I was just watching a clip of Ricky Gervais being bewildered by a Christian.

The girl in the clip talks about a soul wafting its way to Heaven to go play with the ghosts of friends, pets, etc.

I’ve a number of problems with this.

Rewarding a soul with heaven for whatever it does during life is stupid. Life has been likened to a bird flying through endless night, then very briefly flying through a lit room, and out the other side into endless night again. The idea that the eternity of journey /after/ that brief visit to life is judged by what you do during life is preposterous.

If a soul exists, and controls the body, then it must somehow be connected to the body in order to control its actions. In return, it is logical that the body can affect the soul. This implies that a soul is affected by physical laws, yet there is no evidence that a soul has ever been detected using physical tools.

If there is exactly one soul per human being, then this implies that souls can be created to match the need for them, and are created by the simple act of men and women having sex with each other. To say otherwise is to imply that the creation of a soul somehow causes men and women to have sex with each other to create a body for the soul to live in.

I don’t understand the need for a soul anyway. According to common theology, only humans have souls, yet the rest of the animal kingdom appears to get along just fine without souls. What are they needed for?