If nothing exists outside the mind, God could be said to not exist.

But the fact that every sort of sensor duplicates what we perceive indicates that there is a physical world. But the only problem there is that even if the sensor detects a nd records, if a mind is not available to interpret the data, it still does not exist. You may be thinking, "what if the data was analyzed by computer or some s uch device?" That really doesn't change things, whatever it is that analyzes the data would have to be conscious. And so we find that consciouness is irrevocably tied to existence, and vice vers a. The interesting thing about consciousness is that it cannot be defined, only experienced. I can say that you are conscious, but I can not know that for a fac t nor can I experience your consciousness. Where the soul comes into play is the question, "if something is conscious, does it have a soul?" I believe the soul to be slightly different. It may or may not be necessary for consciousness, but I think it is necessary for free will. Most religious texts a ssert that a human is the only custodian of a soul. They also state that we are the only beings that exercise free will. It is a logical fallacy to state that a soul and free will are one and the same, but I think there is a definite connec tion. I also think that is why the price for selling your soul to the devil is d amnation. Supposedly, the most preciou gift that God gave us is free will. If you revoke y our free will, you are spurning the most precious gift that God gave you, and th e price is damnation. From the Devil's viewpoint, it makes sense as well. You ar e in his employ, exercising his will, and it would be a doddle to make things co me up rosy. Maybe the question is that if you can exercise free will, do you have a soul? Bu t even that argument falls down if not for a minor detail. You are the product o f the sum of your experiences. You are conditioned to think in a particular mann er, same as a computer is programmed to do things a certain way. What seperates us from everything else we know is that we can disregard past experience and do things in a completely different way, and that is the minor detail. If you have free will, do you have a soul? If you have a soul, does that make yo u conscious? If you are conscious, do you have a soul? Rather amazing when you t hink of all the quesitons that surround you, existing just beneath the veneer of normality. We exist, there can be no refutation of that. We are all conscious, there can be no denying that either. The question is, is consciousness a constru ct that arises when conditions are right, or is it something far stranger?