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The mindset that test tube babies have no soul, are an abomination, and we should not play God would be in the same backward category as saying; if man would have been meant to fly, God would have given us wings. Some men's sperms or women's eggs are not stong enough for reproduction, therefore an escalation process is required. This can be acomplished by a chosen mate (spouse) or sperm bank. The sperm is injected, the fetus grows in the uterus, and is just as much of the woman, as you or me therefore will have an equal soul. The Good Lord gave us a brain for a reason!
For example:If you were dying of cancer and chemotherapy was your only option, would you deny the tratment, stating readiation is an abonimation? If you were falsely accused of, a multiple first degree homicide and DNA would exonerate you, would accept the death penalty, with the same mindset, that this technology is playing God? Are doctors playing God or are they the hands of God, saving dying individuals with advance technology? Think about it with the MIRACLE of your brain, then pray about with the MIRACLE of your Holy Spirit and/or Soul.
My next thread is gonna be "What makes Montana think up with these questions?"............ When a person receives a soul? Genesis says when God breathed the breath of life into Adam that he became a living soul..So IMO a person receives their soul once born and maybe with the first breath.
That sort of negates the idea that life begins at birth which by the way would dismantle the argument that life begins at conception or at least sentient human life. Just sayin'.
The questions of zygotes having souls makes no sense to me. For example how does one explain what happens when the egg splits into twins later in the process. Did one soul become 2? If so where did it come from? Or did it become two half souls? Do people think twins only have half a soul? I would love to see someone espouse that one to a room full of twins.
Also it is common enough that twins will start to develop in this way but then one absorbs the other again for no known reasons. What has happened here? Has one soul been cast into limbo? Is one guilty of the murder of the other? Are two half souls added together to one soul again? There appears to be an arithmetic of souls that descends very easily into nonsense going on here when one starts making up notions about zygotes being endowed with them.
In a neverending attempt to rile up my sidekicks in the religion forum I thought I'd throw out a confusing situation just to see what people think about it. We all know that the first so called test tube baby was born back in the late seventies in England and became instantly famous. This was the first time that an egg had been fertilized outside of the human body. This does raise certain religious implications because it creates an artificial humanly devised method to allow a pregnancy to begin in the first place. We've had a number of discussions about the soul and how it's implanted into the body. Well, if there's a soul does it pop into the test tube at the appropriate moment or does it hang out for several days until the multiplying cells have been put back into the human body? Ok, yes I know I'm being my usual overly analytical self but it really is a legitimate question. What do you think?
This is what is called a biased question. The asker already has a preconceived notion that souls don't exist, and is trying to undermine belief in such by drawing distinction between "natural" beings and "manmade" ones. This same distinction gets made with abiogenesis. "Welp, I just made a Felix canis, this proves God doesn't exist." Ummmm, NO, actually it proves that in order to make life, requires (1) a creator/Creator in this case you, (2) a place of origin, in this case a laboratory, and (3) sufficient planning, in this rather than a sex act, we have a bunch of boring men in lab coats who prefer to code life rather than get it on themselves. Does this theoretical catdog have a soul? You bet it does. There is NO distinction between God-made, creepy space alien-made, Eldritch Abomination-made (though perhaps they COULD make something that did not have a soul), and manmade. There was a thought experiment years back where a group of children were raised without any love, they were given food and water, but no affection at all, just to see what happened. These children sickened and died. Not just children either, when adults don't feel love anymore, they start to check out emotionally or binge-eat or not eat. We have a name for this, alternatively either weariness of life or heartbreak, depending on whether or not this is cause by a breakup. This is also why "failure to thrive" laws are on the books.
The other problem of this question, is that it fails, completely to ask what exactly a soul is. It goes by some creepy definition that every natural childbirth has some point where God just stuffs a ghost into a person, and "yahaha you didn't get to add one to this body" umm no. In order to address this question properly, we have to address the question of what is a soul.
1. Existence? Everything that exists according to certain religions has a soul. It is either a being soul or an object soul. Here we don't see any distinct difference between manmade and natural life, something that exists has a soul, regardless of creation type.
2. Fuzzy white ghost implantation? Scientists have actually recorded the coitus event in a lab with test tube babies. There is a moment where there is something akin to a "spark" when male and female chromosomes mix. Happens inside the body, still happens even if selecting among batches of subjects. No diff.
3. Life? Kinda see 1 and 2.
4. Personality or individual nature? This would happen after the actual birth, as a long process of nurture and development of individual traits. Going back to the children in the thought experiment, the slightest slip-up and the scientists might feel connection to and affection for this child, and it actually might start to think life is worth living.
There are still more definitions of a soul, but the point is, practically none of them actually explain why there is a difference between a being made by lab technicians and by a mother.
This is what is called a biased question. The asker already has a preconceived notion that souls don't exist, and is trying to undermine belief in such by drawing distinction between "natural" beings and "manmade" ones.
So it's forbidden to ask a question if you're a skeptic?
If souls exist then questioning their existence should not pose an existential threat to soul-believers. They should have a calm and ready answer to the question, rather than take umbrage that someone is "attempting to undermine belief". Why is belief so fragile in these matters? Couldn't be because of lack of evidence, I don't suppose.
I think part of the point here is that the religious assertions about souls didn't originally contemplate anything other than natural conception. I will grant you, though, that if a god has pre-assigned souls ready to install in beings at conception, there's no reason in principle why he wouldn't install them in lab-created beings, and as your answer strongly hints, theists would find a way to suggest that it proves nothing even if creatures were created in the lab.
You do however make this interesting comment:
Quote:
Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
(though perhaps they COULD make something that did not have a soul)
How would one go about determining if a being had a soul or not? How would that be substantiated or documented or measured?
My guess is, it wouldn't. You'd just look at a creature and shriek: "Its eyes! They're like gimlets!" and declare it soulless. Or something similarly subjective. All it would really require is that the creature be different in some primally threatening way that would make it easy to otherize. After all, souls are said by many believers to be the exclusive province of humans; others, for not particular reason, posit differences between the "souls" of human, non-human and even non-living things. I think a (much) earlier poster in this necro-thread that you've bumped, in fact, made just such a distinction, confidently prattling about it with zero evidence as if it were obvious fact.
Do you realize the Abrahamic God of the Bible states he is the ONLY God and he will not share his glory with anyone else?
I am aware that this claim is made in the Bible. But the Bible was written by humans. Just like ALL OTHER religious books.
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