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Comment by ReactiveJelly | Hacker News Reader

There's a negative consequence - If the line between life and non-life is blurry, that means there isn't a clear place for souls to fit in. If life can be completely explained as an emergent property of individual non-living parts, (ultimately, atoms aren't alive, even though they make up living things) then we can't tell whether souls exist in our universe or not.

This isn't a big deal for science, but it's a moral victory for atheists.

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> If the line between life and non-life is blurry, that means there isn't a clear place for souls to fit in

If "souls" aren't defined precisely enough that there's an experiment that give different results depending on whether they exist, then the statement "souls exist" is meaningless, and anyone saying it is not even wrong.

> This isn't a big deal for science, but it's a moral victory for atheists.

Theists won't care, although I suppose some will mutter something about separate magisteria.

The concept of a soul is a rich one, and for many people is largely metaphorical or figurative. You can subscribe to a materialist account of our cosmos and still draw meaning from the idea of a soul.

I am hesitant to agree that it's a moral victory - maybe it's more of a victory about metaphysics? (also, what is a metaphysical victory? :))

a metaphysical victory for atheists who consumes the concept of soul would be that the concept ceases, which is equivalent to its physical death in the competing theist's view, and completely unconsequential to the atheist, which only proves that atheism is at least not that bad.

That isn't necessarily true. All you have to do to keep the concept of external soul alive is to accept the idea of simpler souls. Maybe there isn't am irreducibly complex soul.

Moral victory for atheists sounds like an oxymoron. Atheists don't need victories - there is nothing to prove - and atheism is amoral.

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