Tripartite Tenets—Part 2

Now to the contentious aspect of our being: Do we have a soul? While there is little doubt about the existence of the body and mind, we find strong debates about whether the soul is real. And it's even harder to define than the mind. While there is plenty of indirect evidence for the reality of the mind, the soul is much less substantial and provable. The dictionary defines it as “the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.”

That “immortal” part is what some people object to. They might agree with the immaterial part (after all, so is the mind), or even the spiritual aspect, but how does anyone know that it's eternal? Where is there any evidence for that contention? What does spiritual even mean? Isn't the description of the spirit and soul really a circular argument—because we define the soul as the spiritual part of us, and our spirit as the soul of us? In the end, the existence of the soul is essentially a belief—something that many of us simply accept as true. Its truth does not stand on nearly as solid ground as does the mind, however.

So the tripartite view of the human being is a debatable one. The body is unequivocally real (unless you are a hard-core disciple of Descartes). The mind—even though we can't see or touch it—seems also to be real, especially if you understand some of the remarkable findings of neuroscience. What about the soul? Its existence—or not—is very open to interpretation.

I think a more relevant question on the issue is: Does it matter if the soul is real? Does it matter if it's immortal or not? To some people it matters very much. I'm not certain it does. What really matters is that we live a moral life; that we help, rather than harm. Anyone's belief in the soul or even the existence of God is, I think, not essential to creating and living that moral life. And I believe that is an important point—given that there is no irrefutable evidence for either the soul or God. Neither can be irrefutably proven nor banished. In the end, it's not my beliefs that matter; it's my actions.