It's precisely a metaphor for an amorphous compilation of various things. It's like a cake. We eat a piece of cake and we think "that's a great cake", not "that's a great combination of three parts flour, two parts sugar, some vanilla -- a little cinnamon, nutmeg -- and two well beaten ostrich eggs", a soul is just a combination of our personality, experience, subjective interpretation by other people, and socialization (and other stuff to other people). But we can't get our heads around that, and so we call it a soul -- the God of the gaps comes into play -- and bam: people have these arguments, as though there's any meaning to them.

Well, there is meaning to them, and that's the only interesting part to me. Or perhaps it's very absurdist, in a way. A bunch of large mammals staring into blinking screens spending time on something that doesn't matter, while ignoring things that do matter. I could go on. I should probably read something brainy, at this point.