We can give a straightforwardly biological definition of a human being — a bipedal primate with a developed prefrontal cortex and opposable thumbs — but this clearly doesn’t capture the entirety of the human experience. Human beings have self-awareness, the ability to experience a broad range of emotions, and the capacity for introspection. We learn, and what we learn is passed on and developed across generations: we have moved from making tools out of bronze to walking on the moon. Humans build cultures, form social relationships, create art, and understand morality. How should we understand what makes human lives valuable? And how should we think about consciousness, and about the soul?
Materialists think that everything can be explained in terms of matter and energy. On this view the human mind is only a more sophisticated version of the animal mind: consciousness is generated by the brain’s neurons and by nothing else, and there is no soul that can outlive the physical body.
The atheist biologist Francis Crick put the position about as directly as it can be put:
“your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules”
Watch
If you prefer to watch then explore this section. If you prefer to read then scroll down.
Is The Soul Real? Neurosurgeon Explores The Evidence
Discovery Science. The neurosurgeon Michael Egnor sets out his reasons for thinking that the mind is not simply the brain.
The Unity of Body and Soul | Theology of the Body
Theology of the Body Institute.
How are humans made in the “image of God”?
Breaking In The Habit.
Weighing it up
What materialism gets right
- Treating the human body as a physical, material system has led to many fruitful advances in medicine and neurology.
- Some would say that it also generates humility: humans are just another part of the natural world, made of atoms and chemical substances.
- The word human and the Latin word humus, which signifies “earth” or “soil”, come from the same ancient root — a connection that highlights how fundamental our relationship with the natural world is.
What it costs
- Treating humanity as a type of biological machine can lead to a lack of purpose, a loss of meaning and a sense of emptiness. Machines have no emotions, can’t form relationships and have no will of their own, so thinking in this way is a very reductionist and dehumanising view of human nature.
- Actions and thoughts come to be treated as the determined, somehow automatic output of brain neurons rather than the conscious choice of an autonomous person — a kind of materialist predestination, in which a person cannot influence their own future.
- And ultimately, if everything is only material then this life is all that there is, and there is no soul to continue after death.
Reasons to think the mind is immaterial
Not all scientists think in this way. The first video above is by a surgeon who does not believe that the mind is only a set of physical neurons. He presents four examples of reasons to think that the mind is immaterial.
Consciousness without much of a brain
He has had patients who are conscious with most of their brain missing.No brain area for abstract thought
Research has been done into which areas of the brain are responsible for different functions, but no one has ever managed to find a physical location for an abstract thought centre in the brain.Divided brains seem to have something immaterial 'above' them
If the brain’s hemispheres are separated, and someone is shown pictures of arrows presented to only one side of the brain at a time, it seems that the person is still able to compare the two arrows and say whether they are pointing the same way. This implies that the immaterial mind is above the material brain.Near-death experiences
Near-death experiences whilst brain dead have frequently occurred where the person knew what had been spoken about during surgery, or saw something that could be verified later. Even people born blind have been able to see things during these experiences. They seem to suggest that a non-material part of a person can leave the material body and then return to it.
Do we have free will?
Some materialists also think that free will is an illusion, despite this being completely contrary to the lived human experience of being able to choose freely what to do. Two well-known pieces of brain research are relevant to this debate.
Penfield and the moving arm
In brain experiments on awake epilepsy patients, the neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield found that he could stimulate the brain’s motor cortex to cause patients’ arms to move involuntarily. However, the patient always knew that the doctor had made the movement happen, not them. Penfield concluded that while the brain executes physical motor commands, conscious awareness and the will to act operate via a non-localised mental capacity that the physical brain alone does not fully explain, and which can’t be externally influenced.Libet and the readiness potential
The famous experiment conducted by Benjamin Libet in 1983 showed that unconscious neuron activity in the brain — the readiness potential — fires hundreds of milliseconds before a person feels a conscious urge to move. This sparked deep debates on whether humans have the free will to make conscious decisions. Libet himself disagreed that it meant free will was dead, suggesting that the conscious mind still has a window in which to veto or block the action before it happens: a sort of “Free Won’t”.
The Catholic view
“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”
The Catholic view is that humans are made in the image and likeness of God. This means that humanity is not just on a continuum with other creatures, but actually created with radical difference to them. Three of those differences show how humans reflect God.
Intellect and reason
Their intellect, and their ability to reason.Justice and moral freedom
Their sense of justice, and their freedom to make moral choices.The power to create
Their being able to co-create new things.
But a crucial further aspect of reflecting the image of God comes from the understanding of God being Trinity: a relationship of love that is fundamental to who God is. The love between the Father and the Son is the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. So humans were also created to be in relationship. We are social beings, made for relationship with each other and also to be in relationship with God. We were created out of love and for love.
The soul
“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul”
Human life is given its ultimate meaning and purpose through relationship with God. Jesus tells us that we have a soul, and that it is immaterial.
This soul can’t die. It is pure spirit, and it is the “form” of the body — by which we mean that it organises and animates the body, to make the person alive rather than just a collection of matter. It is this continuation of personal identity that survives death and enters into eternal life.