Why the soul does not exist

Why the soul does not exist

Darwin has deprived us of our souls.

If you really understand evolution, you understand that there is no soul.

That I am an individual implies that my soul is a holistic entity rather than an assemblage of parts.

This indivisible essence allegedly endures from one moment to the next without losing or absorbing anything.

Darwinian evolution rejects the idea that my true self is some indivisible, immutable and potentially eternal existence.

All – ALL – biological entities from elephants to oak trees to Homo sapiens to DNA molecules are composed of smaller and simpler parts that ceaselessly combine and separate.

Elephants and cells and Homo sapiens have evolved gradually as a result of new combinations and splits.

Something that cannot be divided or changed like the soul cannot exist.

The human eye is an extremely complex system made of numerous smaller parts such as the lens, the cornea and the retina.

The eye did not pop out of nowhere complete with all these components.

Rather it evolved step by step through millions of years.

Our eye is very similar to the eye of Homo erectus, who lived a million years ago.

It is somewhat less similar to the eye of Australopithecus, who lived 5 million years ago.

It is very different from the eye of Dryolestes, who lived 150 million years ago.

And it seems to have nothing in common with the unicellular organisms that inhabited our planet hundreds of millions of years ago.

Yet even unicellular organisms have tiny organelles that enable the microorganism to distinguish light from darkness, and move towards one or the other.

The path leading from such archaic sensors to the human eye is long and winding, but if you have hundreds of millions of years to spare, you can certainly cover the entire path, step by Darwinian evolutionary step.

You can do that because the eye – unlike the soul which is imaginary – is composed of many different PARTS.

If every few generations a small change slightly changes one of these parts to better adapt to the environment and give the organism a survival advantage which results in these changes being magnified in future generations, say the cornea becomes a bit more curved, after millions of generations traversing across species and genus and orders and families, these changes can result in a Homo sapiens eye.

If the soul or the eye were a holistic entity, devoid of any parts, it could never have evolved through Darwinian evolution which is the only way evolution works – by natural selection.

That is why Darwinian evolution does not allow the existence of a human soul. An indivisible, immutable, eternal soul or God cannot result from a step-by-step evolution.

Natural selection has produced a Homo sapiens eye because the eye has parts.

But the imaginary soul has no parts.

If the Sapiens soul evolved step by Darwinian evolutionary step from the Erectus soul, what exactly were these steps?

Is there some part of the Homo Sapiens soul that is more developed than the soul of the Erectus? But the imaginary soul is supposed to have no parts.

You might argue that Homo sapiens souls did not evolve, but appeared one bright day (or dark night) in the fullness of their glory. But when exactly was that bright day?

When we look closely at the evolution of Homo sapiens it is embarrassingly difficult to find that bright day or dark night!

Every Homo sapiens that ever existed came into being as a result of male sperm fertilizing a female egg.

Think of the first baby to possess an imaginary soul. That baby was very similar to her mother and father, except that she had a soul and they did not.

Darwinian evolution can certainly explain the birth of a baby whose cornea was a bit more curved than her parents’ corneas. A slight change in a single gene can account for that.

But Darwinian evolution rejects the birth of a baby possessing an eternal soul from parents who did not have even a shred of a soul.

A single change, or even several changes are not enough to give a species a soul or an imaginary essence that is secure against all changes, including death.

Hence, the existence of the soul is firmly disproved by Darwinian evolution.

Evolution has been proven to be gradual change and it rejects the production of everlasting entities.

The closest thing we have to an essence of being Homo sapiens is our DNA, and the DNA molecule is a vehicle of change rather than a seat of eternity.

QED.