LG,
What do you mean by life?
take a dead person and compare it to a living one
the difference in the above scenario
A bacterium is alive - does it then have a soul?
yes
8 400 000 species of life in this world - only 400 000 are humanoid (according to the vedas)
If souls "enter" a living organism where do these souls come from?
souls do not enter living organisms - they are what gives dull matter the symptoms of life
Is there an infinite supply of souls and what are they doing while waiting for physical form?
two ways to answer this
the easiest is that living entities only come to the material world when they have material desires to express (much like people only go to jail when they do crime)
a more technical answer is that conditioned souls at the time of the periodical annihilation of the material universe enter into a dormant state, much like computer file can be compacted while not in use
If there is a finite supply would that mean that at some point a person could be born without a soul, and what would that mean?
once again, you can't separate life from the soul anymore than you cab separate sunlight from the sun
If these questions seem daft then that is because they are. The soul concept is simply pure nonsense.
well lets see what you have to offer as an alternative ....
Consciousness and self-awareness (you) are mainatained and generated by the brain.
an idea popularized by science fiction but yet to make headway in science ...
When the brain is irreparably damaged then you will cease to exist.
I think we have gone over this before - there is a distinction between the conceived self (self awareness) and the self as context (consciousness)
What function would a soul perform that a brain cannot?
even a dead person has a brain - doesn't seem to help them too much in manifesting the symptoms of life however
Isn't the soul concept an unfortunate ignorant leftover from the times when the mechanism of neural networks had not been discovered
you are just simply trying to bluff
discovery of neural pathways has lead to any such "discovery"
Up until then no one could imagine how emotions and thoughts could orignate other than something magical.
you're not confusing self awareness and consciousness again are you?
It is surely time to put these silly ideas of a soul behind us and move on.
if you had something for us to move on to with, rather than anticipations of what science will discover in the years to come ( a favorite topic of sci-fi) perhaps it would be possible - as it remains however, the facts still stand - material reductionism has not lead to any discovery of the fundamental principle of life (even though its plain enough to notice the symptoms)
