Re:Scientific errors (Score 1)

Cloning a human from embryo would however be good criticism of the position that non-physical souls exist. Cloning is a purely physical action, and therefore could not divide/duplicate/create a soul. Nevertheless it creates a human, therefore belief in the existence of the soul is irrational.

Following Rene Descartes' definition, a soul (at least the "mind" part) is a thinking, unextended entity. Unextended means that it has no physical properties (otherwise we could detect it with our instruments), and no spatial location.

Having no physical properties unfortunately means that physical events (cloning) cannot affect the soul. The reverse problem is the "interaction enigma" criticism, which holds that mental events (such as willing to move a finger) cannot affect the physical realm. Any mechanism which did so would give the soul physical properties and thus make it physically detectable.

Therefore, non-physical souls do not exist.

Other philosophers (fans of Descartes) tried to get around the interaction enigma with "parallelism", which holds that God set things up so that mind/body events are synchronised (like clocks or swimmers) so that mental events happen in parallel with physical ones. However this contradicts our fundamental conviction that mental events (willing the finger to move) _cause_ physical ones. Other fundamental convictions include things like the belief in an external reality, and one would need a conclusive proof of parallelism (i.e. a conclusive proof of the existence of God) to warrant giving up a fundamental conviction.

I hope you can see why I can believe that non-physical souls do not exist, without resorting to faith.