My bet is on God's Word
The subject of
soul has a couple tentacles that are interesting, but I will refrain from going there.
While soul is occasionally reference as the spirit of man, (subject to context) there is no immortality or transmigration of the soul……soul and spirit (biblically) are two very different things. How people use them in secular and religious dialogue may or may not reflect Gods intent.
One of the many great things about the Word of God is….. God will define things that are necessary for us to know…. which takes all the guess work out of it….so we don’t have to make things up. And if things are not defined in the Word ….we just don’t know.
Fortunately, God has defined
body,
soul, and to a limited degree …
spirit.
Body as we all know is this earth suit that we inhabit. It’s formed from the dust of the ground
Gen 2:7 and when we die it eventually returns to dust.
Soul - is what mobilizes our earth suit. soul life is our breath life. It was
created in great whales and in all mammals…first.
I could go into several other things, but since soul life is the predominant subject in your post, I will just focus on that….Although I highly doubt you will be swayed by anything I state.
The word
create is to bring something into existence that did not exist before, or to make something out of nothing…. Only God can create. And once He does …He does not need to re-create it again… He just speaks it into existence … That is evident in the first chapter of Genesis. From verses 1:3 to 1:20 God speaks everything into existence that He had already created in the first heavens and earth in
Gen 1:1
Gen 1:21 A
nd God created great whales, and every living [
chay]
creature [
nephesh]
that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
The word
“living” is the Hebrew word “
chay” meaning
life or living. And the word translated “
creature” is the Hebrew word “
nephesh” meaning
soul………….God tells us in
Leviticus what/where the soul is.
Lev 17:11 For the life (nephesh) of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls (
nephesh),
for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul (
nephesh).
The word “
life” in this verse is the same word for soul (
nephesh)
As per Biology: Oxygen is delivered throughout the body by means of the red blood cells (actually it’s the hemoglobin molecules from the red cells) that deliver the oxygen to the individual cells in the body tissue. The bloodstream also picks up CO2 from the body and returns it to the lunges to be exhaled…
When we die …the heart which pumps the blood, which delivers the oxygen to the brain …… stops….. soul life ceases in that individual person …. but is carried on through prodigy….. But if there is no offspring, the soul is gone when that person dies; there is nothing immortal about the soul….as
1Corinthians 15:50 makes clear.
1Co 15:50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption…
Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man
of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living
soul (
nephesh).
God did not create soul life in man
He made it in man it had already been created in
Gen_1:21.
God is spirit ... a spirit has no form. I believe God created spirit in man and that it was spirit that died when Adam blew it…And it was spirit within us unconditionally that God made available by way of what Jesus Christ accomplished. I believe scripture supports that ….but specifically it does not state that, so take it for what it’s worth.
Brief history of Soul
Nimrod initiated the belief in Babylon. Later Zoroaster in the Assyrian-Babylon culture embrace the immortality of the soul. Daoism adopted the belief in the Chinese culture. And many of the ancient cultures accepted the idea of immaterial of the soul
The Greek philosopher Plato who lived from 427 - 347 B.C. believed that at death the body and soul were separated, but he said, “it was not the end of the soul”, he said that “the soul was indestructible”. He believed in the immortality of the soul and its eternal rewards and punishments after death. He was a student of Socrates 469 - 347 B.C. who believe the same… as did Pythagoras before him (570 – 490 B.C.)
Origen (185-254 A.D.) embraced Plato’s teaching and believed in the immortality of the soul. He believed that death the soul departed to an everlasting state of reward or everlasting punishment.
There were others, but Thomas Aquinas 1225 - 1274 A.D. crystallized the doctrine of the immortality of the soul… he wrote that
“the soul cannot be destroyed” in
The Summa Theologica.
There is a long list of people who strung this unbiblical belief along until it became firmly entrenched in the religious doctrine…. Nowhere in the writings of man are their beliefs upheld by biblical scripture…