Bible beliefs: Does a soul exist separately from the body?

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Over in Reddit, I asked Bible scholars

I think like Lisa said in The Simpsons that there's also a belief among some philosophers that nobody is "born with a soul" but that we all have to earn our souls through thoughtfulness.

That's kind of reflected in the stories of the original Little Mermaid (not the Disney crap) where the main character was told that mermaids had no souls and turned to sea foam after death, so she tried to gain a human soul herself by having the sea witch turn her into a human.

Another example is the Greek Myth of Psyche the mortal girl who endured much hardship to be with her husband the God Eros whom she loved greatly. After she completed her many painful trials the Gods granted her permission to drink from a cup of Ambrosia to gain immortality so that Psyche and Eros would be together for all eternity, and as a new Goddess her sacred symbol became the butterfly which symbolized the human soul transforming after death.

I never accepted the idea of a real soul. There are so many aspects of mental activity that science has shown to be functions of the physical brain, that there wouldn't be much left for a soul to take with it if it flew away. So I suppose the "immortal soul" is one of those concepts that used to seem more plausible before we found out a thing or two about how the stuff between our ears works, but it's hard for some people to abandon it because doing that means accepting that when they die, they really will cease to exist, which can be a very scary thought if you're not used to it.

I've seen the occasional bit of fiction about people who lost their souls, and the authors seem to think they'd be incapable of emotion, warmth, or moral judgements. I found them rather laughable because I see those qualities as functions of the brain.

I'm happy enough with the concept of a soul as a metaphor though. I even used the word "soul" in a song I wrote once. But that was art. When I see the word "spiritual" I take it to mean emotional, aesthetic, or artistic.

Here is one answer from the Christianity subreddit

^
I guess that explains the phrase "Asleep in Jesus" I've seen on Victorian gravestones. I can see the attraction of seeing it like that - "Being eaten by maggots" wouldn't be such a comfort to the bereaved.

Souls seem to have different qualities depending on who you read. Yesterday a fundamentalist who has just done hundreds of hours of religious training declared to me categorically that each of us is made of 3 parts - the physical body (which I don't deny), the soul, and what he called the "spirit."

Ask a Hindu. You'll get a better answer. Christians aren't really into souls.

Things are picking up in the Christianity subreddit, if anyone wants to take a gander.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/c ... oul_exist/