If you think that I'm referring to the definition as what theists see it as, think OTHERWISE. this one is not like theirs (in fact, it can apply to non-living objects and it's not going to heaven or hell when we die, contradicting their definition, read on).

I've come across this book in my Local Barnes and Noble bookstore without a clue as to what its content is. When reading the insert, it caught my eye:

["What do we mean when we say "I"? Can a self, a soul, a consciousness, an "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can we understand this baffling emergence? Deep down, a human brain is a chaotic seething soup of particles, on a higher level it is a network of abstractions that we call "symbols". The most central and complex symbol in your brain or mine is the one we both call "I". An "I" is a strange loop in a brain where symbolic and physical levels feed back into each other and flop causality upside down, with symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. For each human being, this "I" seems to be the realest thing in the world. But how can such a mysterious abstraction be real- or is our "I" merely a convenient fiction? Does an "I" exert genuine power over the the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the all-powerful laws of physics? How do we mirror other beings inside our mind? Can many strange loops of different 'strengths' inhabit one brain? If so, then a hallowed tenet of our culture- that one human brain houses one human soul- is an illusion."]

- "I Am a Strange Loop"  Douglas R. Hofstadter,  Basic Books  2007

What the main point is, the soul of a being is its awareness of its place and of itself, its "I". the size of the soul is determined by how strong this "I" is (e.g. humans have a bigger soul than a gnat, which probably is barely aware of itself, most likely just topping a flush toilet system's self-awareness at best). And yes, non-living objects can have this property (a computer may have a soul, but its much smaller than a human because its abstraction of "I" is very weak, next to non-existent, an earthworm has more soul than most computers and if a robot becomes self-aware, then they qualify as having a measurable soul). if its just pushed by the laws of physics, then it's ' hallucination by an illusion'.

It's a very interesting and in-depth book. The author addresses number theory, some points in quantum mechanics, complex systems at different scales, self-referencing sentences, analogies, patterns, bits of chaos theory, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, feedback systems, axioms, philosophical ideas, some aspects of neurology, and anything else i probably overlooked. I recommend a read of this book.

did i cite my source right?