Do atheists have souls? Agnostics? Animists? They don't think they do, or need to think they do. The notion of having a soul is believed by certainly the Big Three religions. I don't know the Buddhist, Taoist, Sikhist, Hindu stance on the condition of souls. So we have a soul if our belief says we have a soul.
Spiritualists believe we leave our physical bodies and live on in some sort of harmonic (as in wavelength, not Billy Shand and His Band) energy, contacting the living through those able to tune into their wavelengths. Though using the wavelength of the TV or the phone instead of making their beloved pay £35 a pop would be a darn sight more sensible. (Maybe intelligence doesn't go with the flight of the soul or spirit.)
I would've settled for 'Dead Horses' rather than RIP - I think 'RIP' is a bizarre term, implying that the dead lived their lives in turmoil and unrest, and that it's only by being dead that they'll find peace. And 'rest'? :brows: What, are they just snoozing a bit down there, and likely to spring alert from their tombs, yawning, stretching, and saying, "By golly, I needed that!" years from their interment?
I don't know why a log of dead horses - for that is what it is, apart from trying to discuss the reason for the mass demise of some at 'festivals' (not for them it wasn't!) - causes so much angst. There are any number of topics of absolutely NO interest to me at all, which I can swerve without making remark.
I don't see the problem with adoring horses (or any other animal, including the human species) and even sentimentalizing about them PROVIDED you recognise that one day they'll all die. Every human death is surely NOT a tragedy, is it? Surely the world isn't populated with billions of tragedies-in-waiting JUST BECAUSE we're humans? We're born, we live a bit, we die. Same for every sentient creature.
Whether we have a soul/spirit after death is largely a matter of wanting to will ourselves, and others, to have one. I'm not sure what the purpose of having this soul is, though, since the billions of humans past don't seem, en bloc and with soul, to be doing much to better the lot of the humans extant, do they? And why wait until you're dead, and no use to man nor beast, to find your soul? Why not put a bit of soul into your life now, rather than wait for the Grim Reaper to cut you down?
If there is a purpose to believing humans have souls, it's surely for the comfort of the bereaved living, since many of us want NOT to accept that this is all there is. So, joining an angelic version of the Mothers' Union, crossing over Jordan, getting reincarnated into a Nobel Prize-winning scientist next time round, or playing merry hell with someone's ouija board - you can hope for any of that, or you can decide it's been quite enough like hard work on Earth, thank you, without running the bleedin' Christmas Raffle up among the harps and wings!