[Curious Cat (OP)]

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[marklivin]

As a materialist, I can say that a person does not have a soul and cannot have it, because everything is subject to physical material laws in which there is no place for a soul.

[Bored chemist]

Has Man a soul?
There is no evidence to suggest that he has.

[Bored chemist]

Well if the man has no soul, why does the man wonder about it?

Because he has a brain.

[Bored chemist]

a word nature has been using for quite some time

That's just silly.
Nature does not use words.

[hamdani yusuf]

In many religious, philosophical, and mythological traditions, the soul is the incorporeal essence of a living being.[1] Soul or psyche (Ancient Greek: ψυχή psykhḗ, of ψύχειν psıkhein, "to breathe", cf. Latin 'anima') comprises the mental abilities of a living being: reason, character, feeling, consciousness, qualia, memory, perception, thinking, etc. Depending on the philosophical system, a soul can either be mortal or immortal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul

Thus soul is the result of objectification of mental abilities.
objectification : the expression of something abstract in a concrete form.
It's a process running in living organisms. Just like the term wind is used to represent moving air, or sound to express propagating vibration in media. We can't separate/isolate wind from the air, nor sound from its propagating media. Although we can convert their energy into different forms, and recreate them in another time and place. For example, use the wind to produce electricity and store it in batteries, which is then used to run an electric blower.