%% WHY the ridicule?? Mainly because they did not study/want to study the subject much. ToMorton;Several ways Websters defines soul, including ; ''total self''. Also includes your mind, will + emotions.Animals have a soul, not that they are equal with humans -they're not equal with humans.
"The mind is the brain, the brain is made of atoms ,we know how atoms work. Evidence for an afterlife is that some ill-defined metaphysical substance, not subject to known laws of physics, interacts with the atoms which are our brains in ways that have thus far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed in the history of science OR... People hallucinate when they are nearly dead." Sean Carroll
I think I take comfort in believing that the energy and matter that is my body goes on and is consumed by the universe around me. While I may not go on in consciousness, I will go on in other ways. But regarding the idea of what God was doing before creation, one could easily ask the same question to a belief without God. What was the universe doing before it existed?
The difference is that scientists are actively trying to answer "What was the universe doing before it existed". We may never know the answer but think it's worth trying to figure out nonetheless. The religious folks I grew up with would tell you that you were a bad person who was questioning God if you asked "what God was doing before creation" and actively discouraged such evil outbursts of intellectual curiosity.
The problem with such questions is that we are trying to take a role that is beyond us. The fact is that space, time, and even our logical system (scientific thru the medium of our 3-pounds of grey matter) are all interwoven, and products of the universe. Asking what it is like without the universe is a null question - we cannot even ask that without the universe.
"Beyond us" says who? Life is full of questions we can answer without having the thing in question. What is life like without water? How can you even answer that without water? Or to be more esoteric, how does the human brain work? How can you even answer that without a human brain. Screw it, no point, let's all just blindly put our faith in a book written by semi-literate goat herders 2000 years ago and modified by the power's in power since then to advance their goals instead?
What did a real thing like the universe do before it existed against what did an imaginary or conceptual thing do before it existed. Isn't that a chalk and cheese question? The universe is defined as everything that exists anywhere, so it's reasonable to say whatever it was doing, was still the universe. But don't imaginary things need real things to exist. It's only possible to imagine imagination existing on its own. So what imaginary or conceptual things like God or fairies at the bottom of the garden do before they exist is apparently, not exist before real things like you and I do.
I'm saying is that the question can be posed in a universe with God and without. The fact of the matter is that our lives are so insignificant in the grand scheme of things, we are so ignorant of the rules of the game, so lost in the cosmos with so little an understanding that who the hell knows what truth is. People who say there is no soul - how do they know? From the little understanding we have of the existential? What a laugh. It doesn't seem that the universe wastes anything. It is one giant closed circuit. So whether we go on in this form or another form, or whether our matter and energy are used for other things or whether we have a consciousness that transverses the corporeal act of death or not, the one thing we can take comfort in is that our atoms and energy go on. At least that much.
If you haven't read it already I highly recommend Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem trilogy, I think you'd enjoy it given this discussion.
Your whole argument stems from the concept that God or a god-like being is imaginary. You're approaching the subject from the point that this is a given. I find that amusing that you, I or anyone else on this forum can state that as a fact - as if we have all the equations of the universe to review and declare unequivocally that it is truth.