[fredmeneedle]

'Soul' is a synonym for 'consciousness' used to help people too afraid to think about what consciousness really is to allow them to assign a term for it, just as the concept of 'God' is used to answer the question of "why are we here" for people who cannot accept the fact that there is no real, proven, answer to that question....it's like the perennial question of "what came before the big bang" and the concept that 'time' is an entirely invented concept by humans because everything is actually happening all at once using certain quantum theories but if you delved into every nuance of life and the universe you would be in a constant state of mental turmoil. Therefore people adopt religion, amongst other things (drugs, alcohol, alien theorists, psychosis) as a coping mechanism for having to live with the unanswered questions about what is "the meaning of life the universe and everything" posed by our logical-thinking intellects. This was, in an oblique satirical dig, the point that Douglas Adams was making when he said the answer was '42'.