Quite frankly, Scott Alexander's answer is more satisfying than any of these.
Reincarnation is a terrible answer! Oh, well just make you come back and suffer ten times over again and again!? Seriously? And that works as an answer?
The best answer is of course the one Job himself comes to teach - we dont know and can never know.
Your soul is your thoughts, your feelings, your sense of self. When people say something like "if I were him I would do this or that", they don't mean if I had his body, they mean that if my soul was deciding. Your soul decides.
The soul and the brain work together to some extent, but the brain actually limits the soul, because the soul is capable of much more than the brain. On the other hand, the soul controls the brain. To give a simple example: Years ago I read from someone involved in brain research that if doctors cause the brain to send out a message to do something, let's say to move part of your body, then even though the body will respond, the person will say afterwards, "I didn't do it". The "I" element was missing. That's the soul.
But although we know that the lower part of the soul works together with the body, we don't know how. The way our bodies function is complicated beyond our imagination. Each and every cell decides how to behave both on its own and together with the entire organism. I learned this from a talk I heard on how cells work, and it is amazing beyond our imagination. Cells have a whole work force performing many, many different functions, all working together. They also have a blueprint of the entire organism, a complicated transportation system, and a guard system as to what can enter and what can leave the cells. (The speaker said jokingly that you need a passport, but it's not that far from the truth.) And this isn't only in humans, it's in animals, and in plants as well. This is true even for the simplest cells such as bacteria, and it’s much, much more complicated as the organism is more complicated. How does the cell know what to do? What controls it? A lower part of the soul.
Everything has some kind of a soul in it that gives it life and existence. Even a so-called inanimate substance has some kind of knowledge in it. How does a half-life substance know which molecules should leave and which should stay? How does it know when to stop? There is a soul controlling it.
The soul has many parts to it, so it's really complicated. There is a basic animal soul that every baby is born with, but then there are higher and higher parts. Spiritual feelings and spiritual knowledge are in the higher parts. The desire to control oneself for moral purposes is also in the higher parts.
Before atheism became popular, everyone accepted that there was such a thing as a soul. That is your essence. You're not an inanimate body, you have feelings and a sense of self. The soul is you, and it is what leaves the body at death.
Actually, many people have communicated with souls after death, sometimes through dreams, sometimes through other means. I'll tell you a little story about this. I live in Israel. My upstairs neighbor (I live in an apartment building) died five years ago in an accident. Shortly after his death, he came to a friend of his in a dream and asked him to go pay someone who had sold him special ink. (He was a scribe who needed special ink). The amount he owed was 18 shekels. The friend who had the dream ignored it, thinking it was nothing. The dream kept repeating itself. The 8th time, the dead man who was asking his friend for help started to get upset at him and said, "It's very hard for me to keep coming (to this world through a dream), and it's much easier for you to just go and speak to the man who sold me the ink." The friend finally decided to do this. He was afraid of being laughed at for believing in dreams, but he saw that his dead friend in the dream was really upset, so he went. The man who sold the ink didn't laugh at all. He said that it was true that he gave Mr. Goldberg (that's my neighbor who died) a small bottle of ink, but it was a sample and he didn't expect to get paid for it.
I don't remember the ending, if the widow paid for it anyway, or what, but the story itself was written up in a little magazine that comes out every week in my neighborhood.
Quite frankly, Scott Alexander's answer is more satisfying than any of these.
Reincarnation is a terrible answer! Oh, well just make you come back and suffer ten times over again and again!? Seriously? And that works as an answer?
The best answer is of course the one Job himself comes to teach - we dont know and can never know.
But I really wish, we could know...
What is a soul?
Dear Eli,
Thank you for asking.
Your soul is your thoughts, your feelings, your sense of self. When people say something like "if I were him I would do this or that", they don't mean if I had his body, they mean that if my soul was deciding. Your soul decides.
The soul and the brain work together to some extent, but the brain actually limits the soul, because the soul is capable of much more than the brain. On the other hand, the soul controls the brain. To give a simple example: Years ago I read from someone involved in brain research that if doctors cause the brain to send out a message to do something, let's say to move part of your body, then even though the body will respond, the person will say afterwards, "I didn't do it". The "I" element was missing. That's the soul.
But although we know that the lower part of the soul works together with the body, we don't know how. The way our bodies function is complicated beyond our imagination. Each and every cell decides how to behave both on its own and together with the entire organism. I learned this from a talk I heard on how cells work, and it is amazing beyond our imagination. Cells have a whole work force performing many, many different functions, all working together. They also have a blueprint of the entire organism, a complicated transportation system, and a guard system as to what can enter and what can leave the cells. (The speaker said jokingly that you need a passport, but it's not that far from the truth.) And this isn't only in humans, it's in animals, and in plants as well. This is true even for the simplest cells such as bacteria, and it’s much, much more complicated as the organism is more complicated. How does the cell know what to do? What controls it? A lower part of the soul.
Everything has some kind of a soul in it that gives it life and existence. Even a so-called inanimate substance has some kind of knowledge in it. How does a half-life substance know which molecules should leave and which should stay? How does it know when to stop? There is a soul controlling it.
The soul has many parts to it, so it's really complicated. There is a basic animal soul that every baby is born with, but then there are higher and higher parts. Spiritual feelings and spiritual knowledge are in the higher parts. The desire to control oneself for moral purposes is also in the higher parts.
Before atheism became popular, everyone accepted that there was such a thing as a soul. That is your essence. You're not an inanimate body, you have feelings and a sense of self. The soul is you, and it is what leaves the body at death.
Actually, many people have communicated with souls after death, sometimes through dreams, sometimes through other means. I'll tell you a little story about this. I live in Israel. My upstairs neighbor (I live in an apartment building) died five years ago in an accident. Shortly after his death, he came to a friend of his in a dream and asked him to go pay someone who had sold him special ink. (He was a scribe who needed special ink). The amount he owed was 18 shekels. The friend who had the dream ignored it, thinking it was nothing. The dream kept repeating itself. The 8th time, the dead man who was asking his friend for help started to get upset at him and said, "It's very hard for me to keep coming (to this world through a dream), and it's much easier for you to just go and speak to the man who sold me the ink." The friend finally decided to do this. He was afraid of being laughed at for believing in dreams, but he saw that his dead friend in the dream was really upset, so he went. The man who sold the ink didn't laugh at all. He said that it was true that he gave Mr. Goldberg (that's my neighbor who died) a small bottle of ink, but it was a sample and he didn't expect to get paid for it.
I don't remember the ending, if the widow paid for it anyway, or what, but the story itself was written up in a little magazine that comes out every week in my neighborhood.