If there is a soul and there is one in a fertilized egg, then god is the biggest sinner of them all because he allows/causes so many miscarriages. 

I have tried to explain to myself how a soul can possibly exist, and no matter hw hard I try, I always end up sounding like an absolute wacko whenever my ideas become words.

Permutation City by Greg Egan comes to mind.  

Let's try my explanations for the soul: 

 (1) The soul is the seat of consciousness

Maybe. But that still makes you wonder what it is. If it can't be perceived by normal means, it must be a form of energy not yet discovered. Or a form of matter that can't be perceived. If so, how can the human brain connect to it? Is the brain capable of interacting with a form of matter or energy that nothing else can interact with?

Crazy enough?

(2) The brain, better yet the mind, can go beyond time and space.

So, when a person dies, the  mind continues to exist, fed maybe by the brain when said brain was alive. This would imply that there is some sort of connection between the mind and the brain that trascends science as we know it today. Dying would mean just dying in time and space.

(3) This whole universe is run by machines, sort of a Matrix-like universe where our memories are stored in our brains, but they are also stored in supercomputers that will last even more than we do. 

(4) Life existed long before matter did, as energy beings from another dimensions (maybe). Somehow they created life in this dimension by manipulating matter little by little and began to inhabit material bodies. When the material body dies, the energy lifeform just goes back to his friends and says, "Nice material life that one was," and looks for another body to inhabit. Our lives are sort of an amusement ride for energy bodies that live in another dimension.  

(5) Electromagnetism = the soul

If brain waves are souls, then if you ever see a ghost approaching you, call 911. The electromagnetism of the cell phone may interfere with the ghost's electromagnetism and drive it away.  

I agree that if souls exist, they must be made up of something, and presumably of something that could retain a complex structure in the absence of a physical body (possibly even a more complex structure than a physical body). Between matter and energy, I would say that energy would seem to be more likely because I would expect matter to be easier for someone to have observed already than energy would be, but I could very well be wrong about that. I wouldn't limit the possibilities to just matter or energy, however.

I've seen other people assume that everything that exists must be either matter or energy, but both matter and energy occupy space-time, which according to relativity bends to produce the effect we know as gravity. If space-time can be bent, it must exist, and I don't see any reason to assume that it's somehow composed of the same matter-energy that it contains.

Also, realize that it's not necessary for the brain to have the ability to interact with a soul if a soul has the ability to manipulate a brain. If that were the case, it would help to explain the mystery of neuroplasticity, although there could certainly be other explanations for that phenomenon that we just haven't discovered yet.

So far, it doesn't sound any more crazy to me than quantum mechanics.

That's an amusing way of putting it. This explanation would appear to be compatible with explanation 1.

This explanation I think is actually refutable. First off, to say that "Electromagnetism = the soul" implies a bidirectional equivalence between electomagnetism and souls. Electromagentism can be found in abundance everywhere, so that would imply that souls exist everywhere. This by itself is not a refutation, but also consider that electromagnetism is rather mutable. Computers, radio waves, and magnets are just a few ways that we manipulate electromagnetic waves... and just imagine what would happen to a person's soul who got an MRI scan at a hospital. To me, electromagnetism is too easily altered to be stable enough to comprise a soul which would be durable enough to outlast a body.

Well, I think "genocide" is too strong a word for masturbation even if each sperm does have a soul. Also, I don't consider Christianity (nor any religion for that matter) to be a reliable source. However, you make a very interesting point, and you can take this line of conjecture a step further and apply it to other cells with some amusing consequences.

Assuming that souls exist but that sperm do not have souls, another interesting question would be if stillborn babies ever had souls. According to wikipedia (unreliable, I know, but convenient), a large percentage of stillbirths have unknown causes and that even extensive testing and autopsies haven't been able to explain the phenomenon. Of course, that hardly constitutes proof that souls exist, but between that, the unknown location of the seat of consciousness, and the unknown mechanism of neuroplasticity, I'm hesitant to dismiss the idea of souls entirely. Although, now that I think about it, an interesting question would be whether or not those unexplained stillbirths tend to happen at around the same time during their pregnancies....

And it is also a genocide of souls. My own words.

There can be no doubt that the idea of a soul is dangerous. No soul means no heaven which means no reward for religious martyrs. I don't see suicide bombers strapping bombs to themselves or flying airplanes into buildings if they didn't believe that their souls would continue on to some eternal paradise.

But more than dangerous the idea of a soul is just stupid. It surprises me that this is even a debate on an atheist forum. Are we seriously questioning whether or not the brain is the seat of consciousness? For at least two centuries we have been able to link brain trauma to unconsciousness and amnesia and radical changes in personailty. Consciousness altering drugs can affect your memory and even render you unconscious. We can pinpoint the exact areas of the brain where long term and short term memories are stored, where sensory information is processed, emotions (even the emotion of love) originate, and where much of our personalities are created. We know that consciousness begins in our senses and ends in our brains so where is this soul? We know that we cannot see without eyes, hear without ears, feel without cutaneous or kinesthetic senses, taste without taste buds, or smell without a nose, or process and store any of these senses without an amygdala, or any brain at all and we also know that all of that rots and turns to dust when we die. So how do we suppose we would still be conscious? That's just beyond ridiculous. This is a conversation i would expect to have on a fundie website.

Actually, one of my Christian friends insists that people physically get into heaven, even though there are also dead physical bodies left behind. (He's one of those Christians who believe the eucharist is both physically bread and wine and physically body and blood at the same time, despite looking and tasting exactly the same as ordinary bread and wine.) So, even if you could somehow prove that souls don't exist, I don't think that would stop religious nuts. I would argue that the dangers you attribute to the idea of a soul are actually dangers of religious belief.

Well, technically atheism just means a lack of belief in a god. Also, naturalism just means that everything that exists follows natural laws (which me may or may not understand). So, the idea that people have souls is not inherently inconsistent with either atheism or naturalism, although specific people's beliefs in souls may be inconsistent with both atheism and naturalism.

I would conjecture that the reason you're surprised by this debate is that you haven't seen evidence to suggest that souls do exist. I would further conjecture that this would be the case for most atheists (and most theists as well). Therefore, an atheist who believes that souls exist would be a minority within a minority. But as atheists, we should all appreciate the fact that being in a minority doesn't mean that we're wrong. It doesn't mean that we're right either, and a good debate can be very helpful for identifying gaps in knowledge or reasoning.

You make some excellent points here. Our brains do perform all of these functions. However, your statement about the beginning and end of consciousness doesn't seem to follow. People retain consciousness while in sensory deprivation chambers. And, unless your definition of 'consciousness' is 'the state of being awake and aware', I would argue that consciousness doesn't end when we're put under anesthetic or when we fall asleep... rather, it appears to shut down for a while (some might call this an altered state of consciousness).

I don't know of anyone that would disagree with the statement that our conscious processes (awareness) take place within the brain. I also don't know of anyone that would disagree with the statement that our lower subconscious processes (instinct) take place within the brain and/or endocrine system. I think there would be more disagreement about our higher subconscious processes (intuition). Chris Angel fans might remember the episode of Mindfreak where Chris almost drove his motorcycle into Carrot Top, but his intuition told him to stop (unless of course you choose to believe that the performance was just a trick, but if you've seen all of the Mindfreak episodes, you'd have to admit that a lot of his tricks are rather difficult to explain within the bounds of our traditional understanding of physics).

"The seat of consciousness", however, doesn't refer to sensory processes, emotions, linguistic processes, or other specialized functions of the brain. It refers to a "unitary awareness" of our own existience. It's worth mentioning that even though we would say that a sleeping person is unconscious, that person may still be aware of dreams or of changes in their physical surroundings. Of course, there was also a case study of a woman whose corpus callosum was severed who subsequently had to literally fight off her left hand to keep it from choking her to death, and even in people who haven't suffered brain damage, it's entirely possible (if not common) to have disagreements between the different aspects of one's personality. Consider the case of addicts consciously trying to stop a behavior, but feeling compelled to continue.

So, the question is where is the soul? Well, I think if we could see it (with or without technological assistance) we probably wouldn't be having this debate right now. As far as evidence to suggest that souls exist, I consider the following as valid: knowledge, skills, or beliefs held from early childhood without evidence, practice, or experiences that would explain their presence; consistent reporting of the nature and/or experiences of a person's past lives (although, this one is really tricky, because it's hard to know who to trust... to go from 'evidence' to 'proof', there would have to be double-blind experiments conducted with large sample sizes and careful controls to prevent cheating); memories of or intuitive hunches about past lives that could be corroborated by historical evidence (although this would only constitute evidence for the person with the memories/hunches, since other people couldn't know that such a person wasn't lying).

If you define seeing as receiving information through the eyes, feeling as receiving information through the ears, etc., then yes, we need eyes and ears to do so. But, it's common for people to perceive information as sight and sound even when the source of that information is not the eyes and the ears. Ignoring hallucinogenic drugs, there are dreams, daydreams, and flashes of insight... not to mention phenomena like synesthesia. But, from those senses we make observations, and form ideas, and opinions.

There is no evidence that i'm aware of to suggest that any of this information is entirely lost when we die, any more than formatting a hard drive would destroy information that had been backed up to a compact disk.