Indeed, if there is no soul, there is no afterlife, no possibility of punishment
or reward or elevation. I would hazard the opinion that the existence of a
soul is a more important feature of religious belief than the belief in any god.
Think about it. What if there was a God, but no soul? That reduces God to a
magical genie, who can cause certain events to occur on Earth. So what? We
don’t see much evidence of this.
Thousands of people are not getting healed magically at Lourdes. People of
one faith are not appreciably better off than all the others. Students who go
to a particular Shinto shrine don’t all pass their college exams with high
grades. No, it’s not love of any gods that motivates people, it’s the prospect
of eternal life and the fear of death, and to address that issue you need an
indestructible or transitional soul, not a god. You can postulate having a soul
without having a god, but you don’t need a god if you don’t have a soul
(unless the god is going to help you kill your enemies – provided these
enemies don’t have chariots of iron, which was too tough for the Hebrew god
[Judges 1:19]). I wonder how YHWH would do against tanks, if iron chariots
were too much for him before?
Now it’s interesting that none of the holy books actually define what a “soul”
or spirit is supposed to be in reality (please correct me if I am wrong about
this, but I can’t find a reference anywhere, although many animist religions
were much more specific on this point). Some ancient commentators
equated it with breath, perhaps because they witnessed the typical
exhalation of humans when they die. Also, there is some comment in
Hinduism that there is really no individual “soul,” but each “soul” is part of
and the entirety of a greater existence. But even in this case, there is still an
existing “soul” (call it a spark, if you like) manifested in each living thing
(either as one entity, part of a greater entity, or the sole and only entity –
but something is still believed to be there).
But, hold on now. We can detect individual radioactive atoms in a human
body, and regularly do. If we can detect something as elusive and
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