The Soul Problem

Do you believe humans have souls?
Have you ever seriously considered the ramifications of such a belief?

For starters I would assume:

• Everyone has one unique soul
• Your soul can and does interact with your body
• Your soul is within you from the time you are a zygote

I assume the first point is the most readily accepted by the religious community.  The second point is vital because otherwise your soul does nothing; it just is.  A soul that simply exists and never interacts is a useless entity containing no information about your personal self that many people attribute to souls: personality, morality, emotional response.  The third point is important to what I will be saying, here it is interesting to note that religious people are unclear on when the soul enters the human body.  Since many people oppose abortion because it is taking a life and the fetus 'has a soul' I decided that the zygote stage was a good time to obtain your soul.

Soul Arithmetic
1 + 1 = 1     -------     The case of the chimera and the vanishing twin: 
  Sometimes two zygotes merge and become one, a chimera, or one fetus is absorbed by the other or by the mother, the vanishing twin.  In both of these situations it seems two souls are moving into one body.  Can one person obtain two souls?  Or does one soul disappear to go to limbo or heaven or hell?  That soul didn't get to experience anything and clearly should have never been created; unless it fuses with the other zygote/fetus' soul.  Perhaps the fetuses do not yet have souls, maybe a soul is endowed at birth - this is the only easy remedy to this crazy soul addition.
 
1 + 0 = 2     -------     The case of the monozygotic twin:
  Monozygotic, identical, twins emerge from one single zygote.  The zygote splits in two - does one soul become two, are they each one half? Maybe a new soul is suddenly conjured up, but one of them received a soul first.  Why wouldn't god simply avoid the whole awkward situation and avoid creating identical twins?  Maybe souls are not placed into zygotes, but fetuses can be re-absorbed.  Man, soul addition just makes no sense!

If souls are not obtained until the fetal stage, then they follow a funny rule of waiting until a stage arbitrarily defined by man and abortion is fine until the fetal stage.  If souls are absent until birth, then abortion at any stage should be acceptable, I mean the developing human has no soul!

Soul Meets Body
 How does your soul interact with your body?
Typically we assume the interaction point is within the brain - I mean a soul might interact with your hand, but to what end?  (It would certainly be amusing to coin the term 'soul-job',  Are you looking at porn?  Nah, just getting a little soul-job!).
Back to the issue at hand (no pun intended) - the soul must change something in the body to interact or there is no interaction.  For you soul to guide you, either in action or in thought, then it must cause some neural movement.  No conscious/subconscious action takes place without brain activity.  For the soul to interact, something material must be influenced by something spiritual.  The spirit must supply energy to move a material part (even if it is only some neurons).  In doing so the soul is adding energy to the physical universe.  The most basic principal of physics, conservation of energy, has just been violated.  Over time and over the entirety of the human race this soul/body interaction would lead to a lot of additionally supplied energy.  I side with physics on this one - sorry.

Maybe the soul doesn't do anything?  Well congratulations, you have a useless soul.  It's ok though, you probably don't have a soul.  If the soul was the center of personality, morality, emotional response, of all that makes you - you, then we would expect that brain damage would not significantly alter all of those areas.  However, brain damage can significantly alter all of them, it can make you think you are an entirely different person with a different background who will sincerely have completely different emotional responses.  It would seem that such a person's soul has even become drastically confused/damaged.

I'm sorry (not really) but there is just no solid foundation for the naive belief in a soul.  Besides, when you talk about your soul - you sound dumb.