This is one part of a 2-part video on the
existence of the soul. At the end of this video, make sure to check
out the other bit. If the soul is purely supernatural, how does
it influence the natural world? If it does exist, one would expect the soul
to leave traces of its existence. In 1901, a physician in Haverhill, Massachusetts
attempted to prove just that. His name was Dunctor Docan Mcd… Doctor Doncan… Dunctor Docan McDoo… His name was Dr. Duncan MacDougall (say that
ten times fast). He performed an experiment to check for the
existence of the soul - by testing to see if it had weight. He placed the beds of terminally ill patients
on industrial scales. Attempting to account for air in the lungs,
bodily fluids, and sweat evaporation, Dr. MacDougall determined that at the time of
death, the soul loses 21 grams of weight - the weight of the soul. Or so he thought. But there were a few problems with the experiment. Dr. McDougal’s sample size was tiny. Unlike modern-day clinical trials that examine
hundreds or thousands of cases, McDougal only studied six patients. The 21 grams result occurred in ONE of the
6 patients - who he reported as losing three-fourths of an ounce (on a scale that was only sensitive
to within .2 ounces). That means that 83% of the patients he studied
yielded a different result. Now two others did lose weight at the time
of death, and then more weight shortly after. Patient 2 lost 28 grams at the time of death
then another 18 after they determined the heart stopped, for a total of 46 grams. While Patient 3 lost 14 grams at the time
of death, then 28 grams several minutes later. Did their soul-packets evaporate in chunks
or something? Lastly, patient 5 lost 11 grams of weight,
and promptly gained it back. A yo-yo soul! They stayed dead though. With results like that, if this was a highschool
science project, it would’ve gotten a failing grade. Wait though, didn’t I say that he studied
six patients? Yeah, well according to McDougal, patients
4 and 6 died before he could properly adjust/calibrate the scales, so he disregarded these results
entirely… and the other three. And selectively reported his findings based
on the one data point that confirmed his bias. Which brings out another flaw in the experiment. Dr. MacDougall set out to prove a belief he
held rather than to see if he could disprove his hypothesis. Which is how science works. And it wasn’t a blind trial, meaning he
could easily influence the results or selectively report on whichever data points matched his
bias - which is exactly what he did. Not only that, but MacDougall didn’t even
have an accurate way of determining the exact time of death. Does the soul leave when the patient breathes
their last breath, when their heart stops, when brain activity ceases? But even if his scales were precise and accurate
(which they don’t seem like they really were) and his methodology was sound (which
it wasn’t), the body losing weight at the time of death is in no way confirmation of
the existence of a soul. If it’s ethereal, why would a soul even
have weight? Why would half the soul evaporate, delay and
then the other half flitter…. on down to hell? Why the weight discrepancies? If some souls are fatter than others, will
you be chunky in heaven? Why are some souls slower and others fast. If a soul has weight at all and isn’t lighter
than air, how can it float to heaven? And speaking of heaven and hell: What if someone
suffers a personality-altering brain injury and also develops severe retrograde amnesia,
forgetting everything that they know about religion up to that point? Previously they were a bit of an obstinate
& self-righteous twat-waffle but now are pleasant, selfless, and kind. When presented with religious teachings, though,
the beliefs they were raised with and once held dearly now seem preposterous to them. They reject them entirely. Is their soul judged as pre or post amnesia
them. Do they go to heaven, hell, both, or neither? Or, a severe brain injury leads a patient
to develop anterograde amnesia and all of their 50 years of memories as a godless heathen
are preserved, but they’re no longer able to form new memories. Their procedural (working) memory is intact,
allowing them to live in the moment and have brief coherent conversations with someone. Conversations that they promptly forget. In several different conversations they enthusiastically
accept several different religions presented to them and then immediately forget their
new-found faith. If the soul is separate from the brain, does
their soul forget its religion? By this point, you may be questioning traditional
concepts of the soul, but perhaps you or someone you know had a spiritual experience. Are these not a glaring example of the existence
of something beyond this natural world, or are spiritual experiences simply a concoction
of our brains? If spiritual experiences are a fluke of the
brain, we would expect to be able to recreate them by physically tampering with our cranial
bologna. And we’ve done just that - creating spiritual
and even out of body experiences using magnets, electrodes, centrifuges, and drugs (I cover
all of that more in depth in my video on near death experiences). There are so many other neurological oddities
and clinical cases (or even viruses) which I could cover that affect the mind. Strokes, temporal lobe seizures, brain injuries,
or disease can alter people’s personalities and impair any and every neurological capability
we possess. If the soul exists outside the physical world,
why is it so prone to physical damage? Where does the soul even reside? And if the brain accounts for all functions
previously attributed to the soul - functions that can and are impaired by brain damage,
then what’s left for the soul to do? Some people argue that our internal monologue
(that inner voice in our head we hear when we think) is the communication of our soul. Except that some people don’t have an internal
voice at all and others have more than one! Still others attribute our conscience to the
soul. But do psychopaths who lack a conscience lack
a soul? Psychopaths often have either have smaller
than average amygdalas or amygdalas that don’t function properly. If you were to damage this region of a non-psychopath’s
brain and it resulted in them losing their conscience, did you just slaughter their soul
but leave their physical body intact - operating as a living soulless meatsack - demonstrating
the superfluous nature of the soul? Do animals have souls that live on after death? If so, where do they go, heaven or hell? If they go to hell, what a cruel god. If they go to heaven, does god love animals
more than humans to give them a blanket pass. And if they don’t have souls, and are purely
controlled by their physical brains, then why do humans need souls to do largely the
same things? And if we are controlled by a soul - a man
in the machine - a supernatural puppeteer pulling the strings, what allows that little
homunculus of a soul to think? Does it have a mechanical chemical brain? Or does it have a soul doing the thinking
for it. Which has a soul doing the thinking for it
which has a soul doing the thinking for it… and it’s an infinite regress of soul turtles
all the way down! Now some people will argue that we’ve mapped
the brain and a few functions of the mind have not been pinpointed to a specific brain
region - therefore: souls! But that’s about as ignorant as claiming
that because we’ve mapped the human genome and haven’t found THE height gene, that
height isn’t influenced by our genes. Just as, with genetics, where multiple genes
can affect one trait, in neuroscience multiple regions of the brain work together to give
us each brain function. Our knowledge of the brain is far from complete. But that doesn’t mean you can fill those
gaps with whatever the fluff you want. Neuroscience itself is a very new field - and
we’ve really only had the technology to look under the hood for a few decades. Filling the few remaining holes in our understanding
of the brain with “We don’t know for sure, therefore the soul does it.” Is a soul-of-the-gaps argument that becomes
vanishingly arguable as we fill the pieces of the puzzle. Now I’m not here to tell you what you should
or shouldn’t believe about the soul - just to urge you to think about the hard questions,
dare to be curious, but don’t drink the Koolaid. Now don’t forget to check out the other
part of this two part series on the soul - where I explore the arithmetic of souls - there’s
some really interesting clinical cases you don’t want to miss. And if you enjoyed this video and would like
to support more videos like it - you can make a one-time donation on Payal (the link to
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for your ongoing support. You freaking rock. And as always, dare to be curious but don’t
drink the Koolaid!
No
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
Simply, NO.