God as the Supplier of Souls

Many in the Abrahamic religious traditions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam—believe that God dispenses souls actively to each individual (whether at birth, conception, or some arbitrary time is irrelevant here). Whether all these original souls are the same kind of tabula rasa, indistinguishable initially one from another, or whether each soul has its own particular properties or propensities, is a matter of debate.

Aaron Segal addresses another anti-dualist challenge—i.e., dualism would require material things like our bodies to have the extraordinary power to generate souls ex nihilo—by invoking the God who created them. “If God exists,” he argues, “then God might well be creating those souls in accordance with the laws; otherwise, this process would happen by itself. Either way, I'm not sure how much more extravagance any of this adds to the fact that souls are coming into existence ex nihilo in the first place. God is already supposed to be able to create ex nihilo, so if God is creating the souls, this would add no more extravagance at all. If God isn't involved, there would be no agent at all creating the souls—the body would be no more of an agent than the sun is in growing trees” (Olson & Segal, 2023; Segal, 2023).

A few religious denominations, especially in the Christian tradition, go further and assert that not only does God dispense a soul to each individual, but also God makes a determination, prior to or at that moment of allocation, of what the future holds for that individual soul-person: the soul-person's ultimate destiny, whether that soul-person will attain salvation or be condemned to damnation. This controversial doctrine is called “predestination,” and most mainstream religions reject it (“Predestination,” 2024).