"It just takes so many scientists all their lives to work that one out."

Well, I think they already have worked that out, and most scientists, including those with a religious bent, are smart enough to keep those concepts separate. "There is evidence for this, so I'm pretty sure that it's true. There is no evidence for this, so if I want to believe it, I have to take it on faith."

Soul? I don't know what that is. Awareness? Consciousness? Yes, of course. But are they the same thing? I don't know. Neither, for that matter does anyone else.

As to an afterlife, this is also a matter where I chose to "let the mystery be." I cannot conceive of the idea that my consciousness will not continue after I fall off the twig. And I think this is the same with everyone, hence the persistence of a belief in an afterlife (including many elaborate scenarios about what it will be like). Yet we lose consciousness when we sleep. The confusing part of it is that we regain it (most of us do, anyway) when we wake up.

I don't sweat the matter of an afterlife for two reasons:   first, I can do nothing about whether there is an afterlife or not. What is, is. Second, when my time comes to shuffle off this cortal moil, if there is and afterlife, it will be a whole new adventure. If there is no afterlife, I will have no longer have a consciousness with which to be disappointed.

Don Firth