In response to a previous post by a 'Christian' person, who doesn't really understand the issue and is bent on making science about Christianity.
This is a very short explanation to your question but is given in more comprehensive detail in, "How The Mind Works" if anyone should ever care to explore the topic. It's quite a good read and Steven Pinker does a good job of making the material accessible and not too technical for those of us that haven't spent our life studying Neuropsychology.
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The problem is that we literally don't know how consciousness arises at all. We know next to nothing about the human brain or consciousness.
Is it rational to make science about religion, no it is not.
But whether or not god exists or humans have a soul can only really be decided by each individual person.
Me, I've had encounters with the paranormal, from my viewpoint it seems fairly likely we do have a soul from someone else who has had other experiences it might seem fairly likely we don't
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Yes, well I'm with you in many different ways. I was a whore for foreign relations, game theory, socioeconomics and neuropsychology during my studies.
But I only ever did graduate level work on Neuropsych. If you are interested in this question of what is consciousness I do highly recommend you read the book I referenced because it isn't just Steven Pinker telling you what he thinks, he tells you what others think. Now this book is a decade old but it is a good starting point because he gives you philosophers and scientists. But of course he is a bit biased.
The graduate course that moved me the most not initially but years latter was taught by an anthropologist who rightly hypothesized that the language we speak affects our cognition. Words and more specifically tenses shape how we view the world.
This may seem off topic but again it relates to no free will. We are all slaves to the construct we were born in.
I've heard that stated before and I've seen evidence to that backs it up but the idea that we don't have free will is just too depressing for me to accept.
But I have read several of Steven Pinker's Arguments and I've yet to see a single one that even sucessfully makes a case that humans don't have souls
Me, I've had an encounter with ghosts before.
Hell it stopped me from killing myself.
There is all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff in this world that we can't explain and I think its rather arrogant to think that we have anywhere close to even a quarter of the answers