The Existence of the Soul

Materialists (and this would include most evolutionists) deny the existence of the soul. They claim they've looked for it, but can't find it; and thus they 'regretfully' inform us that Christianity has been refuted. One of my favorite writers is Arthur Custance. He disagrees with the Materialist claim, and I agree with him. The following quotes are taken from his book 'Journey out of Time'.

Quotes and comments;

1. 'But as Paul Weiss rightly observed, the trouble may be that we have not yet designed the right kind of research tools or methods:
"Maybe our concept of our nervous system is equally inadequate and insufficient, because so long as you use only electrical instruments, you get only electrical answers; if you use chemical detectors, you get chemical answers; and if you determine numerical and geometric values, you get numerical and geometrical answers. So perhaps we have not yet found the particular kind of instrument that tells us the next unknown." (1.)

- Weiss wonders if the reason we haven't detected the soul is that we haven't developed the right instruments; i.e. instruments capable of detecting it. Maybe, but maybe we have 'instruments' that reveal the existence of the soul; maybe things like literature, poetry, art and music, are the things that reveal to us the human soul. (i.e. we don't look for chemicals, electricity, etc. but we look for reason, language, creativity, beauty, music, etc.)

- in other words, 'War and Peace' can't be written by chemicals obeying chemical laws. If a creature is capable of great art it thus reveals to us evidence of having a soul.

- a problem might be defining the soul. The word soul seems to stand for what is supra-animal in man; ie. his specifically human abilities. (e.g. his consciousness, self-consciousness, consciousness of others, his ability to think, imagine, reason, his abilities to be creative, his abilities to use language, his abilities to use mathematics, etc.)

- soul isn't so much an object, than it is a complex of abilities.

Notes;
1. Arthur Custance; Journey out of Time - Arthur Custance/ch. 8/p.2 [Free online]
2. some people might object and say birds have music, so this either proves birds have souls, or that men do not. I deny the birds (animals) have music. There is no meaningful relationship or connection between a genetically given 'signal' system and music. (I'm listening to 'The well tempered clavier' by Bach as I write this.) Music is a difficult thing to write about, but we all recognize the difference between the mechanical chirping of birds and great music.
3. Some people might object to my proposal and say that many animals have beauty. So they do; but they don't create beauty, they are beautiful. This is akin to the difference between a beautiful young woman, and a painting of a beautiful young woman. The one isn't art, while the other is. Only the human soul can consciously and freely create beauty. Created beauty is thus evidence of the soul.
4. We might say that the soul can do what mere matter in motion cannot.
5. ''It is seemingly impossible to quantify human behavior. Thus psychology is doomed to remain an art of
uncertain value so long as it depends upon introspection and observation only. There are no instruments yet
designed to quantify the almost infinite variety and complexity of response of which the human psyche is
capable. While the behavior of the body is often highly predictable (and so encourages "mechanistic" interpretations), the response of the human soul very seldom is . . . which suggests it is not operating as a mechanism and therefore almost certainly does not arise as an outgrowth of pure mechanism in the first place.'' [A.C. ch. 8. page 2; the intro to the Weiss quote.]