Scientific Proof of the Soul?!

Can science prove the existence of the soul, or has the existence of the soul been debunked? In 1907 Dr. Duncan MacDougall attempted to weigh the soul and claimed it weighed 21 grams. But his experiment was problematic and only raised more questions about the soul. This is science vs. the soul.

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Thank you so much for your ongoing support. Science is greater than Dogma. Dare to be curious, but don't Drink the Koolaid!

[DrumWild]

I'd rather have a question I cannot answer than an answer I cannot question.

[anthonypc]

As far as I know I have two souls.

my proof is based in personal experience. I walk on them each day.

[ADEehrh]

Ua; I'm not fat; my soul just weighs so much! 🙄👺

[ifartmagic]

I had a coworker who believed in god... In the hardcore way. One day she started going off one day about how animals don't have souls. My internal monologue was going insane. If you can believe humans are "better" beings than an animals, you got something wrong. Don't know exactly what happens after death, though I'm Athiest, if humans have souls or spirits, Animals have them for SURE.

[Dragonblaster]

The weight loss after death is real. It is also true that this does not happen with dogs (which was taken as meaning that dogs don't have souls).

What happens is that many parts of the brain continue to function after the higher processes have ceased. So chemical reactions are still going on and producing heat, and the blood is no longer circulating, and the person is not breathing to get rid of heat, so body temperature starts to rise. The autonomic nervous system registers this: and turns on the sweat glands. That's the cause of the lost weight: evaporating sweat. And dogs sweat only through their tongues, and with the mouth closed after death, that doesn't evaporate.

[Nilsy]

Maybe some people need to read books written after Aristotle died, say two mellennia later.

[macnutz]

"The soul of the gaps." Thanks for my morning laugh.

[NEMOfishZ]

When you talk about a "hight/tall gene"
That's a good argument against homophobic people

"Your not born gay there is no gay gene"
"Well I wasn't born 6 foot tall and there is no hight gene does that mean hight is a choice and not genetic"

[RinaSalesia]

I stopped believing in a god when a pastor told me that animals don't have souls!

[adamandracheloconnor]

And what about gingers, do they have souls?

[nicolanobili]

I am a medical translator and studied the 21-gram experiment extensively, I even wrote an article about it (I will not link it, because it is written in a different language). I'll summarize the main flaws of that experiment, which shows how scarcely scientific it was:


1. The sample only included 6 subjects, an insufficient number.
2. The data relative to these subjects is incomplete. We only know if they were men or women and, for five of them, how they died. We do not know how old they were, nor are their vital signs reported... Not even their weight is specified! The doctor simply wrote the weight difference before and after death.
3. This experiment could not be repeated for the same subject, since you only die once, therefore in many cases we cannot exclude that the result would have been the same, had it been repeated; a large number of subjects would have been important also to lower this uncertainty to a minimum.
4. The doctor made a series of mistakes using scales, as he "honestly" admitted. One could question, at this point, if the results he measures were accurate or not.
5. The scales he used were not really precise, the uncertainty margin on each weighing is very large.
6. The doctor deliberately ignored the data relatve to a subject, because it was in contrast with his ideas. This is cherry picking.
7. No further study has ever been conducted to confirm the findings of this study.
8. The moment of death was not clear at that time. Indeed, there was not even a clear definition of when death occurs: is it cerebral death? When the heart stops beating?
9. The method is badly described, therefore the experiment is not reproducible.

This is just a short summary, I could go on for ages...

[Porphyrios]

But then how do they makes Philosopher's Stones? Huh?

[bobbydobalina]

Amazing... your Sunday school teacher must have hated you sitting there in that seat - Front and center.

[AtheistComet]

I remember my dad, a nurse, talking about this "experiment". Sorry, dad, there's no evidence of a soul.

[vincegonzalez]

"If one soul is fatter than others, will it be chunky in heaven?" is without a doubt one of the funniest things I have ever heard.

[Where_is_Waldo]

I've had an out of body experience just having a blood sample taken while sitting up and it actually proved to me by it's self that they're fake. You see, when I went into the hospital I didn't know where to find the lab to take the blood sample so I just went in the front entrance and asked for directions at the desk. On my way to the entrance I passed by two sides of the building and the outer walls were made of brick, that will be important later. The room where I had the blood sample taken had a window behind the chair I was sitting in with the needle in my arm and they needed five samples of blood which they were taking one at a time, all with one needle. About the time they started taking the second sample I passed out and immediately I was floating outside the window behind my body but it was my body floating outside the window behind my physical body. I could feel the sun on my back, I could feel the breeze and I could smell the fresh air. I distinctly remember looking through that window from the outside seeing that I was a floor off the ground, floating, looking through that window in the brick wall at my body when suddenly I zoomed forward without control and my "soul" body slammed into my real body and as I woke up my body jolted forward and it really felt like my "soul" body had propelled my real body forward by sucking back into it. Now that felt very real and it left me wondering. In many people it could surely have been easily enough to be convinced of a genuine supernatural experience but you have to understand that from a young age, I have always had an ability to dream very vividly and have often experienced physical touch as well as smells in my dreams so from the start it seemed debatable to me... until the next time had to have a blood sample taken and I went into the building through the lab entrance which is right next to the lab - which is at ground level and doesn't have brick walls outside and never has. The whole experience was constructed by my brain because it didn't have enough blood inside it to run my body and keeping me calm would allow others a longer opportunity to insure my blood flow is focused back to my brain before I bleed to death because the biological mechanism which triggers this reaction can't tell the difference between taking a blood sample and bleeding to death.

[acentaur]

No one know what happens after death except that it happens to everyone. And no book written by man 2000 years ago is NOT the answer!

[pommiebears]

My epilepsy presents as an angel. Well, I think she’s an angel. She has a sweet face and curly hair. This is what I see before I have a seizure. It’s the aura. When I see this face, I know I’m going to have a grand mal seizure. When I have the seizure, if I didn’t wake up....I’d not know anything about it. I’m not there for the time my seizure lasts. This is what I believe death is. You have no conscious awareness of it at all because you’re dead. My brain has no control over the electrical impulses and a storm happens which disables my I am just gone. It’s much worse for the people that see the seizure in terms of stress than it is for me. I don’t know what is happening. It’s a scary thing to watch, especially if I’ve injured my head, which happens and heads bleed more than other places. When you die....you don’t know you’re dead as you’re not aware of anything. It’s true.

[jimjams]

"Turtles all the way down". Haven't heard that phrase for a good 15 years or so.

[veganatheistandmore]

"The soul of the gaps" hahaha...
Excellent video! Thank you! :D