Will a cloned human have a soul?

[pajarito 0]

I agree.
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1:20

[miked10270 0]

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I agree.

Watch it mate... That's 3 agreements for 3! We're gonna get accused of being the same person any minute now!!!

Mike.

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Taking the piss out of the FrenchAmericans since before it was fashionable.

Prenait la pisse hors du FrançaisCanadiens méridionaux puisqu'avant lui à la mode.

[pajarito 0]

I really like your quote!

"Taking the piss out of the French since before it was fashionable."

That is excellent!

[quade 4]

Only if it's a clone of James Brown.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Zenister 0]

what if they cloned Rick James?

edit to fix title

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Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

I need to ask, "What good is a bible that doesn't contain definitive information on this subject (and many others, actually)?"

I think that the main reason that it doesn't set down exactly how all this stuff "works" is that the humans who wrote the bible didn't know the answers, so they could hardly be definitive about them.

This reminds me of how prior to discovering other planets, and the immense possibility of life on other planets, in other solar systems or galaxies, the big brains of history claimed to KNOW that the EARTH was the center of the universe. Making grandiose claims to stupendous facts of creation only to be undermined by actual scientific discovery years later is very damaging to one's credibility. Perhaps the b ible's authors didn't assert much specificity about the soul because they were afraid to be disproven later, when their disprovers could then say, "Um, HOW did you say you 'knew' this stuff about the soul, given that it's not true, again?"

People have made the mistake of asserting a "be-all, end-all" answer to questions in the past when they were anything but justified in doing so, i.e. they didn't REALLY have the answer, they had to have known they didn't really have the answer, and so they were out of line to assert that their THEORIES were the unequivocal TRUTH.

We can thank people like Galileo and Copernicus (fellow Polack!) for helping dispel this kind of mythmaking.

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-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[wildWilly 0]

Do you have a soul?

growing old is inevitable, growing up is optional.

[pajarito 0]

The primary purpose of the Bible is not to be a science book.

Christianity & Science

[MarkM 0]

Will a cloned human be made of matter? Will they be physically animated by energy?

Why would soul stuff be any different?

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

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i do very much believe in the soul, and i think a cloned human would have a soul, unique personality, call it what you want. For whilst it is genetically identical to the parent cells it was cloned from, it would have unique experiences, environment, life in general. And i think that would make it a unique individual, even if it has the same genes as someone else.

I think that even people who don't believe in SOULS can agree that the product of cloning would likely grow to exhibit all of these traits.

I don't see how your post gets to the heart of whether there would be an actual "SOUL" as in the religious notion of a soul that can go to heaven or hell, etc. (that nature of which has not, of course, been fully worked out by adherents to religion, either).

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-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[billvon 3,077]

>"What good is a bible that doesn't contain definitive information on
> this subject (and many others, actually)?"

What good is a history book that contains no definitive information on aerodynamics?

[billvon 3,077]

>Take an egg whisk. 27 pieces of pressed steel and moulded plastic.
> Reduce it to it's component parts. Put them in a box and shake
> them about. Let me know when you have recreated the egg whisk.

Millions of years, and it likely wouldn't look the same as when you took it apart. But if that new whisk could reproduce itself - within a very short time you'd have millions of whisks.

>Now consider the simplest of god's creations, a leaf, a virus,
> bacteria... and look at how much more complicated they are. NOW
> tell me that life is chance.

Go to the Giant's Causeway in Ireland. Tell me that those millions of perfect hexagons, laid out as if in a highway, were created by chance. But it was - it just took us a while to understand how.

Structural iridescence - rainbows - nuclear fission reactors - fusion reactors - all amazing things, yet all created by a combination of random chance and physics.

[Zenister 0]

what happens when that history book includes blatantly false information on aerodynamics? Should we question the value of the remainder of the 'knowledge' inside? or do we accept the rest of the 'historical' information (which we cannot verify by other means, but that disagrees with other history books) at face value?

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[billvon 3,077]

>what happens when that history book includes blatantly false
>information on aerodynamics?

Some history books do. Very old books mention in passing the idea that lift is always above a curved wing (a popular concept for a long time) and that rockets can't work in a vacuum because they have nothing to push against. That doesn't invalidate their views on the Battle of Trafalgar.

> Should we question the value of the remainder of the 'knowledge'
> inside? or do we accept the rest of the 'historical' information (which
> we cannot verify by other means, but that disagrees with other
> history books) at face value?

Question everything, I say. Decide on your own what to take from each book.

[kallend 2,107]

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Hi Jeffrey,

The proof of existence of "God" and his creation was once proved to me. At least to my satisfaction.

Take an egg whisk. 27 pieces of pressed steel and moulded plastic. Reduce it to it's component parts. Put them in a box and shake them about. Let me know when you have recreated the egg whisk.

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Silly example

Now consider the simplest of god's creations, a leaf, a virus, bacteria... and look at how much more complicated they are. NOW tell me that life is chance.


.

An artificial virus has been created. Kind of spoils your argument.

www.usatoday.com/news/science/2003-11-13-new-life-usat_x.htm

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

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>"What good is a bible that doesn't contain definitive information on
> this subject (and many others, actually)?"

What good is a history book that contains no definitive information on aerodynamics?

The bible is supposed to tell you what god wants out of human behavior, i.e. it's about the only guidebook there is that supposedly tells us how to get into heaven, right? That and the ten commandments. So I think it's fair to expect of the bible some sort of explanation of what we are, and how to use it properly according to god's will. It is not the same as asking for aerodynamics out of a history book, bill.

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-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[quade 4]

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The bible is supposed to tell you what god wants out of human behavior, i.e. it's about the only guidebook there is that supposedly tells us how to get into heaven, right?

Kind of a limited view of world religions you've got there.

There are -numerous- books on the subject, the Bible being the most popular in western society.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Deuce 1]

I'm watching a movie about it tonight. It has DeNiro in it, so it should be good.

I think the premise is that cloned people are vessels of Satan.

It has DeNiro in it, so it's probably true.

In Vitro babies, too, no doubt. All those middle class folks in their late 30's and 40's having multiple baby pregenacies, vessels for Satan.

I don't know what he's gonna do with hundreds of thousands of them, though.

[cloudseeker2001 0]

The bible knows nothing of the Soul, please read Plato.

"Some call it heavenly in it's brilliance,
others mean and rueful of the western dream"

[miked10270 0]

Hi John,

No, my point is that the egg whisk would not be created by random chance, only by direction from a higher being (in this case the egg whisk assembler, in the case of the Universe, God).

Yes we have created an artificial virus. With all our skills, all our technology, all our knowledge and mastery of science and nature, we can almost create the simplest of God's creatures.

My point is that the universe, Earth, us, are not here by random chance, but by higher direction.

Mike.

.

Taking the piss out of the FrenchAmericans since before it was fashionable.

Prenait la pisse hors du FrançaisCanadiens méridionaux puisqu'avant lui à la mode.

[kallend 2,107]

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Hi John,

No, my point is that the egg whisk would not be created by random chance, only by direction from a higher being (in this case the egg whisk assembler, in the case of the Universe, God).

Yes we have created an artificial virus. With all our skills, all our technology, all our knowledge and mastery of science and nature, we can almost create the simplest of God's creatures.

My point is that the universe, Earth, us, are not here by random chance, but by higher direction.

Mike.

.

Not one Earthly structure, from egg whisk to diamond crystal to human brain, has ever been found that violates the laws of physics and chemistry. Only when you to to the scale of galaxies and bigger are things found that can't currently be explained (such as dark energy), and that's because we've only just started collecting the data.

So if you define "higher direction" as the physical laws, then I agree.

And those physical laws do allow spontaneous assembly of complex objects, such as crystals and organic molecules.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[miked10270 0]

Hi John,

Yes, life, the universe, and everything exists according to physical laws which we are barely beginning to understand. But in the abscence of spontenaity, there must be direction.

Mike.

Taking the piss out of the FrenchAmericans since before it was fashionable.

Prenait la pisse hors du FrançaisCanadiens méridionaux puisqu'avant lui à la mode.

[kallend 2,107]

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Hi John,

Yes, life, the universe, and everything exists according to physical laws which we are barely beginning to understand. But in the abscence of spontenaity, there must be direction.

Mike.

What evidence do you have for an absence of spontaneity?

Back in the '50s it was shown that complex organics molecules (amino acids) could spontaneously assemble in a lab experiment lasting only a month. Why would you think it impossible that self-replicating molecules could not spontaneously assemble given a billion years?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Faber 0]

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I don't believe in a soul. so it will be the same as anyone else.

what he said...

Stay safe
Stefan Faber

[billvon 3,077]

>The bible is supposed to tell you what god wants out of human
> behavior, i.e. it's about the only guidebook there is that supposedly
> tells us how to get into heaven, right?

Well, it's one of about two dozen.

>That and the ten commandments.

That's in the bible.

> So I think it's fair to expect of the bible some sort of explanation of
> what we are, and how to use it properly according to god's will. It is
> not the same as asking for aerodynamics out of a history book, bill.

Is it your position that since the bible does not contain a definitive definition of "what we are", and sometimes contradicts itself, that it is invalid as a moral guide? Dealing with such inconsistency is one of the things required of philosophers. Take the greats in philosophy. Hegel claimed the mind was pretty neatly divided into three sections - the subjective (sensory perception and reaction) the objective (interpretation of sensory data, conclusions based thereon, discovery of objective truth) and the absolute ("free thought", the part of us that can understand god, art, compassion etc.) Kierkegaard came along and said he was wrong - there is no such thing as objective truth, and instead the mind was divided into the sensory and spiritual world. The constant tension between those two he called angst, and it gave rise to much of our behaviors. Freud claimed instead that there was no such thing as spirit; our minds were divided into the id (basic programmed drive) and the superego (our higher thought processes.) The conflict between these two leads to the expression of the ego, and this conflict often manifests itself as a variety of neuroses. In many ways he was the father of psychoanalysis, which is one of the primary tools of psychiatrists today.

Then Skinner came along and disagreed with Freud. Someday a brilliant philosopher will come along and disagree with Skinner. Does that mean that they are all invalid? Since so many philosophies disagree with each other (and sometimes say the exact opposite) would you discard Hegel as meaningless? Would you think that there was nothing to be learned from Kierkegaard because you don't like his idea of spirit? Should we abandon any sort of psychoanalysis because Skinner disagreed with Freud?

The wise man, I think, chooses wisely among all the works available to him and formulates his own theories on things. I have studied the bible pretty extensively (the result of going to a catholic high school for four years) and I base a lot of my morality on it; I think it's a valid expression of a religion. It contains errors (it was, after all, written by men) but to discard it because (for example) there was no one single Adam or Eve is like discarding all of what Hegel wrote because you don't like his take on the spirit. If a philosopher discarded the entire works of anyone he disagreed with, or anyone who contradicted a basic principle of philosophy, his philosophy would be shallow indeed.

You clearly dislike the bible. That's fine; choose another book, or choose none. But claiming that the bible is invalid because it omits or contradicts something is like claiming that no philosopher has any insight on the human condition because they contradict each other.