Human mind is lazy. That is why it opts to the easier task: generalization rather than analysis of individual concepts. At some point some people wanted to do away with the ideas such as souls, God, ghosts etc. At the same time, some other people wanted to rationalize the undetectability of these entities. The idea of 'material' vs the 'immaterial' proved to be handy for both groups. So instead of arguing why a certain entity don't exist, simply instill a belief like 'material' is all there is and then categorize the entity under 'the immaterial'. At some point, though, it became clear that what they call ' material' cannot possibly be all there is. So they invented the 'physical' to push the goal post further . The concept though is too broad to be meaningfull.
'Physical' has grown into a misnomer. But it would have remained meaningful if it were not redefined over and over. Lets take example of the so called 'electromagnetic field'. A mathematical physicist will define 'field' as 'the force that a unit pole will experience in a given region'. From this definition, it is clear that 'field' here resorts to an abstract concept, and never a stand alone object. Without a mind to try to imagine how a tiny magnet will behave in the vicinity of another far bigger magnet, it is not clear at all what 'field' rifers to in an entirely empty space around the bigger magnet. Despite this, they 'spray' this concept 'field' with another perfume called 'physical'. At this point, it should be clearer that 'physical' has evolved into a quite meaningless label.
Now there is no reason why they say 'electromagnetic field is physical' except to distance themselves with the 'non-physical' which has been associated with spirits and the like. They create an illusion of understanding. It is like 'we know what exist around a magnet' and guess what, 'it is physical'. In reality, no physicist have a clue of what is happening around magnets. When we use words and categorizatinons, we often fool ourselves that we know what we realy don't. Rather than saying that something non-physical is affecting a magnet, they simplify redefine 'physical' to encompass the phenomenon. 'Physical' now resorts to abstract concepts.
In effect they are actually defining 'physical' to include everything that can affect matter. They are defining 'physicality' to always agree with experiments, rendering it meaningless! To be clearer, say 'soul' should absolutely affect matter if soul is 'us'. Your decision to move your hand must be a soul affecting matter, the hand. Same case in you seeing something. The light getting to your eyes then to the brain, then to awareness will constitute light affecting and being affected by soul! This means that if soul is unseen and we were observing matter, we would observe matter, at some point we must see matter being affected by something invisible. In other words 'soul-matter interaction' must appear to be exactly like the way a magnet is affected by something invisible. So why would we not say that 'soul' like 'magnetic field' is also 'physical'? This is just to further highlight how meaningless the label 'physical' is.
Ironically the group which have spearheaded the 'physicality' misnomer is the 'spiritual' camp. They are oblivious to the fact that they are thus undermining themselves. The lazy ' spiritual' camp want an easy way of rationalizing their views. Rather than painstakingly explain what a soul is and why it is invisible, they opt to a label: the soul is 'non- physical'. By this we easily get into the illusion that they know what they are talking of. However, they don't! Infact they don't know what 'physical' realy mean. Indead it is meaningless!! It is just a way in which the 'physicalist' camp brashes aside the 'non-physical' . This is because by definition, the 'non-physical' wont affect matter and hence the explanations by the 'spiritual' camp will always be contradictory! So it is realy ironocal that the 'spiritual' camp buy into this 'physicality' concept that actually undermines them! How foolish!!
Originally, soul or spirit was never defined as 'non-physical'. Indead the concept 'physical' did not even exist when the concept 'soul' etc was formed. The concept 'spirit' exists even in cultures and in languages that don't have the concept 'physical'. Therefore it is very un-wise to define 'spirit' as 'non-physical'. It forces someone to negate another concept: 'physical' which is, itself ill-defined and too malleable. What exactly are we saying a 'spirit' is not? Is a wave-packet 'physical'? Is a one dimensional string 'physical'? Is spacetime 'physical'? Is a 26th dimension 'physical'? Is a stone 'physical'? Just what does the word 'physical' resorts to if it can label all such wildly different notions?
Take bible for example. Jesus, when talking to Niccodemus said that 'the wind blows wherever it pleases, you hear it sound but you cant tell where it is comming from nor where it is going to. Same is the case for anyone born of spirit'. Nowhere in the bible do the word 'non- material' used in conjunction with spirit. Indead the word 'material' don't have any counterpart in ancient Hebrew , like in many languages. How bad is it that modern man shoves concepts to the minds of ancient men and insinuates that 'this must be what they meant'. Jesus never meant 'non-physical' when he said 'spirit'. Jesus strictly meant 'unseen'.
Some people naively say 'bible should not be read like a science book'. However, by 'science' they only have in mind the modern science which was unknown to the ancient. This is the real reason why bible don't read like science:it doesn't read like modern science for understandable reason . It is not that the bible is asking us never to use science to try to understand its concepts. Wind is scientific concept. If Jesus lived in our time, he would tell us that electrons flow wherever they please, we can see them make things glow but they themselves can never be seen. Then the bible would now begine to sound like 'science' to the naive people. Then also we can now see that jesus could not have meant ' the immaterial' or 'the non-physical' when he said 'spirit'. He just meant 'the unseen'. Indead if a spirit moves a particle inside the Large Hadron Collider, a physicist would discover it. However he will understand it as a discovery of a new 'particle' hence as something 'physical'. In other words the concept 'physical' has been so expanded that it perfectly includes what Jesus called 'spirit'!
People originally wanted to understand how something like 'spirit' can exist without been visible, tangible, testable etc. But they realy could not understand the seen. They nevertheless amuse themselves that they did understand, afer inventing the word 'matter'. The illusion is that 'matter' is something that they know it to be necessarily tangible. In reality they had no clue why a stone etc is visible. The 'stone is matter' was a stupid, stop-gap explanation of why a stone is visible. Same is true for 'spirit is invisible because it is not matter'. Indead calling a stone ' matter' adds zero understanding to just what it is that we see. Consequently the 'immaterial' or 'non- physical' adds zero understanding to conceot 'spirit'. These concepts only creats an illusion that we understand. So if we have no clue of what we label it as matter, why do we still exclude it a priori from 'spirit' by defining the latter as 'immaterial'? We should stop this definition!
SPIRIT: the unseen.
Nothing more!
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