cloning souls? doubtful

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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I’m curious if anyone here has any opinions on cloning. My main question is, is it something that should be allowed by our government, or any gov’t for that matter?

My main issue with it is souls, or lack there of. Sure we can create a fully operable human being, but will this being have a soul? My guess is no. Only God can create souls, not man. So each cloned human will not only be an abomination, but destined to a questionable existance.

Any thoughts on this? I’d love to elaborate but I’m pressed for time. I will be back later to respond and engage further :wink:

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Just 'cause you do something willfully in the realm of the microscopic, means the soul is absent from the (cloned) body which is produced? We take our whole (uncloned, visible to the naked eye, but surely able to observed under the microscope) bodies and exercise our will through/with them – and we still (according to you) have souls…?

I wonder if the “ain’t got no soul” argument will be used to justify the mistreatment of clones (if that ever comes about)…

3

I’m not sure I understand your arguement.

We have free will. But there are certain things that we can’t do, even if we wanted. IE - Create souls.

You are a human made up of physical material and “holy” material.

Thanks to advancements in science, we now have the ability to manufacture/replicate physical material. However, the soul is something we can not manipulate and hence the physical material (clone) will not be a true human.

4

the basic question is how can you give a clone a personality?.. Yes you can stimulate a physical corpse to breathe…You can give a clone the many million brain patterns in order to be logical…but do you think a clone will have common sense??..a soul is the illogical part of your being, the intangible reality of your existence…A clone could exist but in what reality???

5

according to everything we see about humans being formed, god zaps a soul in there without us ever seeing it. presumably he would be able to this as the cloned baby grows.

unless soul insertion is directly related to the action of the sperm entering the egg, or some physical action that takes place in regulars and not clones, theres no reason to think anything will be any different. if the soul is inserted at the time of brain development, or is slowly created by the babies empirical experience, the method of dna creation shouldnt matter.

and welcome to ilp

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Thanks for the welcome :slight_smile: Hope to one day be 1000+ posts too :slight_smile:

As for “soul development”…who’s to say?
That is why cloning is something I, like many others, fear. No one knows how souls “come into existance”…

Are we all in agreeance that a “soul” is the work of some higher power?

It’s my belief (I wont say understanding because I dont understand it) that each time a baby is conceived, a soul is created. Conception might be the actual second sperm enters egg, but it might be something higher…something that only God knows and can do.

Either way, I feel as though cloning circumvents both of these processes, hence only creating the “physical” and not the “holy”.

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How can you say that God does something?..God doesn’t do, he just is! He’s forever emmanating, actions come out of the existence of the creator without movement… How can you subject the most omnipotent, omnipresent being in the world to something as restricted as action? Speak without moving your mouth, make a sound without the vibrations in your throat…Move without making an action…<-God!..Only humans subject themselves to restrictions through actions…

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i think if god wanted us to know that cloning is evil, he would have made more clear. perhaps when the first human is cloned, he will forever drool and make retarded noises, even though it looks like he should work properly. maye he will be pure evil and kill all the scientists and start a clone army to ring in the apocalypse.

but if it looks like he is totally normal, there is no way that god expects us to think otherwise

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and I apologize for subjecting the creator to restriction through words and the world…

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Does god make anything so clear? The only reason we think murder is wrong is because people have said (just as you have) "i think it’s wrong.

There will be no clear answers or “hints” from God. We will undoubtably never know if God wants us to clone.

Care to respond to the metaphysical byproduct comment?

11

I’m in favor of bans on cloning for the foreseeable future, but not over any issues of clones “having souls.” If we have souls, I imagine so would the clones. No, my reluctance to have cloning stems from the fact the our reach greatly exceeds our grasp where technology is concerned. We had the ability to create enough nuclear reactors well before we’ve come up with a plan for the waste. We’ve been able to create bioweapons that no one will have a cure for. Digital technology has created issues that baffle the courts. We learn how to hydrogenate oil to preserve food long before we realize it kills us.

We should continue to research cloning, but the fact that we cloned a sheep after a couple hundred tries doesn’t mean we understand it. It would unethical to proceed to human trials this soon given our simplistic understanding of genetics. The human genome may represent a pandora’s box far more dangerous to unlock than the power of the atom.

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I think I’ll just stand still in one place for as long as possible. But… that could have a million negative consequences, too… oh, no, what to do, what to do…

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I’m not advocating we do nothing…I’m just pointing out a child can figure out how to light a match long before he comprehends the power of fire.

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i dont remember saying murder is wrong simply because i think it is. in fact, ironically i just got done responding to somebody and i said the only reason why we know murder is wrong is because we see the consequences and we can put ourselves in the shoes of our victim. we have plenty of reason to believe that other people pain the same way that we do, and nobody wants a knife in them.

god makes everything perfectly clear as far as moral decisions are concerned (unless you are a leader and faced with hurting some so that an almost equal number of others may approximately benefit enough to make up for it, in which case good luck).

what do you think he hasnt made clear and ill tell you what he really thinks about it. of course nothing religious is clear, but religious stuff is wrong. when i say god makes things clear, i mean that god made a universe and all messages are contained within it.

15

If a human clone didn’t have a soul when it was first made, then it’s experiences and given personality would form a soul inside. (This follows my a certain doctrine of Aviemus). If a soul isn’t present in an empty shell, then something in the Spirit Dimension could eventually attach onto it. I think FutureMan knows what I’m talking about, since he read my Doctrine post, I think.

16

Now i believe in good and all that stuff but lets think for a moment… What happens when a human is cloned i mean you take a cell dupicate it and then allow it to grow in a womb like a normal baby except that you know exactly what it will look like and and all. Is that not the same thing a twins… Theres the zygote some situation arises that causes it to slit and volila you have identical twins you know that they, when born, will be exactly alike except for scars and or deformities from natual birth, a c-section would eleminate this. Ok so do the twins have exactly the same soul just that situation arise that cause each one to decide such as one all ways goes first, and so jealousy develops. But if the twins are raised in identical enviroment with identical situations and everything but the twins never saw each other were never informed of the other would they act the same??? Does the so called soul split between good and evil, happy and sad, quiet aggressive??? or are there 2 different souls occuping the twins ??? I think that perhaps when a human is cloned he will be a blank slate, how the world responds to him will determine how he responds to the world. Another thing if a Human is cloned could he live because some say he wouldnt even have a soul, and since a soul provides the electricity for the body to jumpstart into action it allows the body to function and think, then this souless body would A. be dead B. only have the basic motor functions and instints ( reaction to stimuli and a need to eat sleep etc.) OR even C. Function like a normal human being.

 I believe that the only reason why we havent cloned a human is because of mans psychopathic fear of the unknow. Science was evil black magic because no one knew... Now cloning is evil because no one knows...  later robots and nanobots will be evil because no one will knows about it, heck maybe one day aliens will be evil because they are unknow and i think that because of our attitude of being afraid of the dark we will turn away a helping hand or peace or some liberal promoting crap....
17

let me be a little more clear in what I believe…

Cloned humans, in my opinon, can and will act/seem like normal human beings. You and I would never be able to tell the difference between a clone and a “regular”. This goes along with what I stated earlier, how humans now have the ability to manipulate/reproduce physical material . Meaning that clones will live the same lives as ‘regulars’ (same emotions, same desires, and even religious beliefs!)

HOWEVER, its the holy material which I am interested in.

You made the comparison of clones to twins, and while an interesting idea, I’m not so sure I agree with it.

Basically, God (or some higher deity), has a ‘master plan’, if you will, which accounts for all of the people on this earth that have been born, are being born, and will be born. When I say “born” I’m referring to the results of a natural union between a man and a woman. By cloning humans, who will undoubtably be ‘made’ without any deformities, and being manipulated in such a way as to be perfect (I know we’re not there yet technology wise, but eventually!), would be circumventing God’s master plan, meaning lack of a soul.

I know this is only a theory, but it seems quite logical to me.

I guess the main question is this: Does God create the soul, or does a “natural process” account for it. And if God does create it, is it something predefined to natural births, or to all human life regardless of creation method?

More questions than answers. Sigh :cry:

18

As an athiest this topic is largely irrelevent to me (soul? What soul? :smiley: ) . But it seems to me that if you are going to beleive in “Higer being”/“Master Plan” won’t clones all be part of that master plan. Is it really possible to “circumvent God’s master plan”.

As an aside on the topic of cloning I remember reading an article (in “New Scientist”?) on a couple of cloned kittens (genetically identical) that far from being identical had different markings, same colur, different shape, and also different personalities definitely pushing the Nature/Nuture debate towards nurture.

As for cloning human beings there would probably be very little point. In term of medical science, Gene therapy and Stem cells are much more likely to produce meaningful clinical outcomes

19

Upon speculation, it can easily be argued that if one were to clone someone…say, JFK, the body would be identical, the mind would have the capacity and potential as the original, and all the flaws that lie within would exist. In a sense, even if the JFK clone is a spitting image, he will still be a completely different person, considering factors of who will be raising the clone, what education, living enviroment, opportunities, and most importantly, culture and era of time. Consider, if we cloned Honest Abe, he would be a completely different man than the one who graced the mid 1800s…

So, to your argument, I would speculate that you would be incorrect. Cloning would not be an abomination, just inaccurate. You can’t bring back a dead relative and expect it to be the same in every way…our enviroments shape us, and that is the order of things.

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crazy person, while crazy, made a good point. arent identical twins the same thing as clones? i think any of them would tell you that they both have a soul just fine.

and dontgetangry, there is nothing that anybody can say about the placement of souls besides what luke said, you cant circumvent gods plan, because god invented cloning! if he wanted us to not do it, he would make it very clear. you certainly cant rely on old bibles to do that for us. so either a new jesus comes and writes a new anti-cloning bible (i wont, i promise) or cloning is gods will.