Naomi -
“Birdie, Yes, we do all have our opinions, and I've made no claims, but you, Chakka and Mibs are claiming the non-existence of the soul to be 'fact', when in truth you know no more than anyone else. That's all I'm taking issue with...”
I think you may have misunderstood my post. I actually specifically stated that, “... I can no more prove that a soul does not exist than anyone else can prove that it does...”. I also said in my last paragraph that, “... No one has ever shown under reasonable scientific conditions that there is a life after death. Until they do, I shall continue to assert that it is a false claim [that souls exist].”.
Being a reasonable and rational person, I'm sure you'll agree that both of those above statements are correct. Until something is proven to exist by empirical science it cannot be considered to be a 'fact' as we currently understand the word. The Oxford English Dictionary [OED] defines the word 'fact' as, “[noun] a thing that is known or proved to be true...”.
The existence of the 'soul' has never been proved to be true. I'm not necessarily ruling out the existence of the soul but right now, the existence of such a thing has not been proven. Therefore, I am correct in describing the existence of the 'soul' as not being a 'fact'.
It is not a 'fact' in precisely the same way that the following are not facts: spiritual aura photography (existence of), crystal healing (efficacy), homeopathy (efficacy), tarot cards (future prediction), etc (and the list could go on and on and on...). None of these things have been proven to work in the way that their adherents claim that they do and therefore they cannot be considered to be 'facts' if we are working to the definition of the word that I cited from the OED.
The existence of the after-life and/or souls is not a fact, therefore by definition, it is a fact that these things do not exist. They are (at best) an unproven hypothesis. People who disagree are not necessarily 'closed minded'; they simply want some substantive proof before they accept the premise.