Welcome @jrfarris, great to have you here.
Invited to the Table
You are invited to the table @jrfarris. So are philosophers and theologians. Scientists love to talk with you all, and wish you were around more to engage with our work. The conditions, however, are to play by the rules of the scientific table when we are at that table: The Rules of the Game.
At the “Scientific” table, we keep a sharp line between the scientific arguments and findings, and our personal reflections on those arguments and findings. There is both (1) a large public and “official” conversation that follows strict rules and protocols, and (2) and informal side-conversations where any rules are allowed, as long as basic politeness and honesty are valued.
The strength of this system is that no matter our personal beliefs and views, we can work with each other as scientists, understanding the basic presuppositions of scientific work. The strict rules are how science becomes a common effort to expand our knowledge of the natural world. We are also granted autonomy to integrate in our own ways what this means for others fields and for us too. Also, that means there are well defined blind spots for science too. We all know from the get go that science does not tell us, for example, if God does or does not exist.
We can even hold personally that scientific conclusions are wrong: A Better Way to Reject Common Descent. Science just does not care what you believe in your heart, and what you say outside science, as long as you do not misrepresent science.
Theologians and philosophers have always been invited to the table to participate in the informal side-conversations, to explore the implications of scientific findings, and even their limits, ethics, and greater meanings. We might even ask you to speak up louder often, so others can hear your voice.
It is, however, considered very rude to burst into the “official” conversation to tell us that we do not do science right, and that our rules must change. That is not allowed. It takes an immense amount of training to understand how to do scientific work. There is an immense amount of tacit knowledge here, and we as scientists ourselves do not feel we have the right to change the rules. For that reason, it can even be taken as insulting when a transient philosopher tries to do such things. That breaks the rules. That, also, should be obvious.
Theologians and philosophers that play by the rules are welcome and embraced in science. Just be a good guest. Explain the limits of scientific findings outside of science. Help scientists understand the true meaning of their findings. That is all welcomed and encouraged. It does not require, also, changing the rules.
We’d love to hear more about that too. Maybe this fall we can do an Office Hours on just this. What do you think?
The Origin of the Soul
I’d love to talk about that with you. First off, it was considered.
I think the general consensus (both in theology and science) is that this experiment was misguided. There is no a prior reason to think that the soul has mass. There is no reason to think it appears in exposed film. There is no reason to think it disturbs electrical signals.
The problem, it seems, is that the concept of a soul is too poorly defined to settle what we should or shouldn’t look for. We’ve talked bout this before with @purposenation. The Souls of our Ancestors. It is such a flexible concept that I even convinced our resident atheist that he has a soul:
Recall that even theologians can’t agree on what a soul “is,” whether it be a monist, dualist, or trichomist view. The best scientific accounts might be from “information.”
Yes, I am well aware of the objections of the dualist that arise (like the continuity of the self problem). However, we can construct examples of this that account for dualism. Moreover, if God is the only one able to duplicate us, and He chooses to keep the continuity of our identity intact (by never making more than one of us), then I’m not sure what the objection is.
In this view, then, the “immortal soul” arises at the point at which God decides to care enough about us to remember us. That is, I think, the best integration between science and the soul I can give, and it deeps necessarily into science fiction. 
As a theological anthropologist though, I wonder what @jrfarris would think about this.
We are not ready to change the rules of science, but the voice of the philosopher-theologian on the soul is very welcome here. Science, after all, is merely dreaming. Theology is the waking world.