Of the Belief in Immaterial Souls Surviving Death

Topic: Suppose that members of some religious sect, the Soularians, hold the following beliefs:

(a)There exist immaterial souls.

(b) Every living human being is 'permeated' by a single immaterial soul throughout its life.

(c) The soul that permeates a body plays a role in bringing about the observed behavior of
that human body.

(d) When a human being dies, the soul that permeated the body leaves that body and goes
elsewhere, never to permeate a human body again.

Does a Soularian have good reason to believe that she will survive the death of her body? Why or why not?

The Soularian has every reason to believe that they will survive the death of their body. Their four beliefs give rise to four parallel assertions which support the idea that they will survive.

First, on the belief that there exist immaterial souls. In positing such a material dualism, it should be noted that whatever constitutes immaterial souls - which constituents we shall not pretend to know nor presume to guess at - is qualitatively different from the material which makes up the world and things in it, including human bodies. This being the case, we can imagine that whatever processes of change souls undergo (if any) are likewise different from the material changes things like human bodies undergo. Doubtless the Soularian scriptures or oral tradition contain specific accounts of this difference.

Second, since every living human being is permeated by a soul throughout its life (and since, as we will examine below, the soul departs at death), the life of a human being seems to be inseparably bound up with the presence of the soul. Furthermore, it would appear that the Soularian ought to hold that their soul really is their life. Third, that the soul permeating the body is involved in bringing about the body's behavior bolsters this assertion, that is, the soul is the very thing which animates the body and directs its action, and is all the more clearly seen to be the very life of a human.
Fourth, that the soul departs at death is no doubt the final proof to the Soularian that the soul is the life. The soul brings about the action of the body, all of that which we know of a person, and leaves when the body dies. When the soul leaves, therefore, the Soularian would be rightly inclined to think that what they knew as the person - the soul, which was represented in the material realm through the body which it controlled - has departed from the body.

Since the body is material, the soul immaterial, and the two separated, there is no reason for the Soularian to think that the soul undergoes after death change like the body does. Material decays, but the soul is not material, and whatever processes of change it may undergo do not resemble those undergone by material. Furthermore, since the soul has left the body at the time of death, and gone elsewhere, and never shall return to another body, that which was known as the person, their soul, still exists intact somewhere else.

The Soularian can thus conclude, at the very least, that the person, or rather, what truly made up the person, survives the death of the body without having to face the same kind of decay experienced by the body. Where the soul survives is not immediately clear, since the realm of the immaterial is more or less entirely unknown to us, whose souls are still in material bodies. What the Soularian must keep in mind is that the life that awaits the soul separated from the body is not like that of the soul permeating the body, since the life will no longer be bound to material existence, no longer limited to perception through material organs, and no longer threatened by physical harm. The nature of immaterial life, immaterial perception, and immaterial threat, however, is not known until arrived at after the separation of the soul from the body at death.