Do we have souls?

[OriginalGeek]

52. I think the seed of doubt was planted in me

in my early teens when the preacher at the fundamentalist church I grew up in did a sermon on souls and talked about (I will have to paraphrase here as it was 35+years ago) "scientists" who performed experiments with people who they knew were about to die. They had placed these people (with their permission) on the most sensitive scales they could find that had the ability to discern changes in weight as small as micro-fractions of a gram. They then watched as the person died and recorded the smallest of changes on weight on the scale and that was the soul leaving the body.

At first I thought "Wow! That's amazing!" but within minutes I began wondering why they were trying so hard to find evidence of a soul. Shouldn't a soul by it's very nature be weightless? Shouldn't I just be accepting the soul concept on faith anyway? That's how they told me to accept everything else. Why the sudden change? Suddenly they need some experiment that proves the concept? I thought they shouldn't even have been looking for evidence. And then I thought doesn't breath have water vapor and, therefor, weight? Couldn't their soul just be a last breath leaving the body?

I lasted in church a few more years but I've been a godless, soulless atheist ever since.