You could say that about anything you imagine might possibly exist.
Indeed, for seven pages and counting people have been pointing out that all of this is nothing but an ever-shifting circus of speculation and circular reasoning. The empirical data don't fit the hypothesis? Just imagine that the data are "really" more favorable. Standard Model not allow for your proposal? Just imagine extending it so that it does. Plot holes in your proposal? Just speculate that there must be suitable unknowns that you declare will work out in your favor.
Nobody gives a standing ovation for that. It takes zero effort to just idly conjure up an imaginary world in which some desired idea can make sense.
Replace fairies with wizards, demons, djinns, etc.
And this is a common rebuttal pattern. We try to show the parallels to other mythical concepts. We make up works that have no intrinsic meaning and point out that the same logic "validates" those too. We attempt
reductio ad absurdum with notions like invisible elves or transvestite space cows. And it never works because the claimant has generally strongly normalized to his pet idea and disagrees with the premise of the rebuttal: "That may be the case for your MacGuffins, but a soul is reasonably well-accepted concept. Therefore my speculation is reasonable."
Oh, but is it?
A Mormon, a Hindu, and an atheist
walk into a bar have a near-death out-of-body experience. Each of them says, "I felt like I was floating above my body." The spiritualists propose that we should take all those accounts at face value, and our claimant suggests further that each account should be construed as if the patient actually believed the alluded-to animism. Let's grant that,
arguendo.
The Mormon and the Hindu will each have a fairly concrete, fairly well-developed notion of a soul. So it's tempting to say that the Mormon believes in a soul and so it's reasonable to suggest that he is literally saying his soul left his body. Ditto the Hindu. Except that the Mormon concept of the soul and the Hindu concept of the soul are as utterly incompatible as they can be, as are the respective concepts of the afterlife in each belief tradition. Both traditions can't simultaneously be true, so either the Mormon or the Hindu is mistaken, or perhaps both. And even an atheist who rejects the concept of gods may still want to keep his mind open to the notion that something as-yet uncharacterized in the natural world could be a seat of consciousness aside from the organism.
The point is that once you start talking about
actual constructions of the soul, you can't escape the contradictions in particular formulations -- they can't all be true, yet many are believed. You can't escape the contradictions by softening the construction to the point where it says nothing about which we can ask questions and get answers. You can't fix it by flitting
ad hoc between different traditions of belief.
Even a hard-core skeptic might accept a definition of "soul" as an abstract label for cognitive behaviors and factors that affect well-being, even if nothing he intends by it transcends the organism. I have no problem saying that a hike in the mountains "is good for my soul" without intending that to mean some supernatural entity that's going to try to flee the scene of the crime if I have a heart attack.
So no, the concept of a soul is not well enough nailed down or commonly enough construed that animist proposals escape all the various analogizing and reductionist rebuttals.
