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Religious people often refer to things like a spirit or a soul, but what exactly do they mean when they say this? I've attempted on multiple occasions to extract a coherent definition to no avail.

The last unfortunate individual could only go so far as to compare it with breath.

But we already have a word for breath...it's breath. So it seems to be a superfluous term in this scenario.

Can anyone proctor a meaningful definition of what a spirit is and what reasons we have to suspect that it does exist? After a satisfactory definition of what a spirit is, it seems to me that we ought address what a spirit does. What function does it serve in our lives and how do we know it is responsible for this function?