Apologist Trent Horn responds to a student who asks for proof of humans have souls. In this video, Trent defines what the soul is and presents three key arguments for its existence, drawing from philosophy, reason, and Catholic teaching.
Transcript:
We’ll start with Lucas. Welcome, Lucas!
Thank you.
You’re from Maryland?
I go to a school in Maryland, but I’m from Virginia.
Okay. Very good You got a question for Trent?
Yeah. So my question is, how do we know, or is there any proof that we have a soul? Because I got taught by my religion and by my teachers and stuff like that, that we all humans have a soul. And I believe that we all do, but how do we know?
You can’t feel the moving around in the morning?
Okay. All right. That could just be indigestion Cy.
I got a soul right now.
That’s what soul food will do to you. That’s why they call it soul food. You feel it deep in your soul when you’re trying to digest it.
Yeah.
So Logan- sorry, Lucas, Logan was a previous caller. Lucas, I would say we have to first understand what the soul is.
So the soul in classical philosophy and theology, that’s just a principle of life. And the soul is not exclusive to humans. We would say that the soul is just a principle of life. So anything that is living has a soul. It is what makes living things different than dead things. Even if you have the same matter. So the soul is the form of the body.
I mean, have they taught you about the four causes yet? Like the material, formal, efficient cause, final cause?
Yeah.
We’re going to get into that.
Okay. So the material, formal, efficient, final cause. Right. So you make a statue, right? And the material cause, like, what is the cause of the statue? Michaelangelo’s David. Well, the material cause is the marble. But you can’t just have marble into the David. That’s to say, the marble has to be arranged in a certain way to be David. But the marble doesn’t arrange itself. So Michaelangelo’s the efficient cause.
And we’ll, okay. Well, why did he make the statue that way? Well, there’s a final cause. Well, to get paid and to glorify his biblical figure and make great art and all that stuff? So, you know, we have the material, formal, efficient, final cause. This soul is the formal cause of a living thing. So even if you have a dead thing and a living thing, they could have the same exact matter constituting them. But it’s not arranged in the right way. There’s a problem with the arrangements of the soul. And it’s not just the parts themselves put together. The soul is the invisible principle that arranges the body, that arranges it in a way to make it alive or dead. So all living things have a soul.
But as Christians, we believe that God created human beings in his image, and he gave man an immortal soul. He gave man a soul that, so when living things perish, when they die, they die. They sort of, like when a plant dies, it decomposes.
Okay, so like the thing, you know, we think about why do we say it decomposes? It was together and it starts coming apart. Okay, human, you know, when things die, they come apart. They decompose. Whereas like a rock, if it gets shattered, it just gets disassembled, right? Or a cloud dissolves. But living things decompose; they have a kind of organic unity to them.
And so when a living, when a non-human living thing dies, its soul also dies with it. Okay? And God can maybe resurrect both. That’s a question about, you know, whether my dog is in heaven, that’s for another show. But typically, humans have immortal souls, so the principle of what arranges our bodies to be living continues on. And the soul is also the seat of knowledge and is able to engage in rational abstract thought beyond what non-human material things can do.
Like a dog can understand, this is a toy; I play with it, this is fun, I enjoy this, but not the concept of what a toy is. You know, or a monkey can make a tool, but does not grasp the abstract concept of a tool, for example. But humans do that.
So some of the arguments for human beings having a soul are unique human abilities that we are able to grasp immaterial abstract things. So like a monkey finds a thing and it serves the function of a tool, and it gets that. Or a dog knows his favorite toy is this square thing. But out in the world, there is no such thing as the idea of a square. You don’t just bump into the idea of a square. You bump into square things, but not what a square is or a perfect circle. I don’t know, a perfect circle is out there. But our mind can abstract and comprehend these abstract universes that don’t exist. So there must be something about us that is not just purely material. There’s something about us that is immaterial that is able to engage these abstract concepts. That’s one argument.
Another argument is that human beings have free will. Other material things just behave in accordance with laws of nature. The humans are held morally responsible for our actions. So there must be something about us that guides our actions that is not purely material and subject to the laws of nature. And many people say that would be the soul.
And the final argument is, by authority, you know, Jesus Christ. It’s God. He rose from the dead, demonstrated his divinity. And he tells us that we have souls. He tells us that it’s not worth it to gain the whole world and lose your soul. And if a guy can walk out of his own tomb, tells me I have a soul, and I don’t want to lose it. I need to follow him. I’m going to do what he says.
So a lot of different arguments there.
There is a good book actually. If you want to go deeper, the Catholic philosopher Ed Faser has a new book out on the soul. That book is called, it’s in stock here, it’s called Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature.
So that’s his new big book on the soul. It’s a great book on God called Five Proofs for the Existence of God. Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature. You might find that to be helpful.
So, all right. I threw a lot on you there. Is that helpful?
Yeah, no, that’s very helpful.
Do you know who the queen of soul is?
The Virgin Mary.
No the Virgin Mary is The Queen of Heaven Aretha Franklin is The Queen of Soul.
You should watch a great movie Blues, called Blues Brothers.
Oh, I have seen this.
You’ve seen the Blues Brothers?
Yeah.
Good.
Lucas is like, we watched it in my film study on movies from the 1900s.
(Laughter)