Keep in mind here that I sat down and wrote this in one go without editing so please be kind.
Do clones have souls? To first answer this question we must first define what a soul is. “The principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body, ([www.dictionary.com](http://www.dictionary.com)).” If we take this to be the definition of a soul then the answer will be yes, clones will have souls.
I for one believe that clones will have souls. After all, a clone is still a human being with thoughts and feelings, which would meet the aforementioned definition. Let us create a hypothetical scenario. Let us imagine a clone, which we can call “John” is created in a laboratory, placed in the womb of a woman and is then brought into the world through natural birth. John studies hard and grows up to be a good man who attends seminary and becomes a priest. In this scenario I cannot imagine a God that would not allow John to have a soul.
A clone is nothing more than a twin separated by time, environment, and is artificially created. Once the clone takes its first breath after birth it will then be endowed with a soul.
Anyone who argues that because a clone is not natural it does not have a soul must look at in vitro fertilization, or IVF. If this is the case there are already many people in the world who do not have souls and are somehow sub-human. The question is absurd in my opinion. If a human being is living then, it has a soul. Of course the easy way around this whole argument is to say that you are an atheist and nobody has a soul.
This argument makes me think of another questionable soul haver, sentient robots. Human kind is fast approaching a day that robots will have artificial intelligence and will become sentient beings. When that day does arrive and the robot says that it does not want to do such-and-such because it thinks that it is morally wrong does it obtain a soul? Or is being a human being a necessary condition of having a soul? I tend to believe that latter.
When humans and robots start to merge then what? If a person receives a memory upgrade with an implant in their brain, does that no longer make them a human being? And if it does then, have they lost their soul? What if a robot is given living tissue to start the transition to being alive, does it gain a soul at some point in the transition? I have many questions with the robot problem and no answers yet…
It’s insulting to the idea of a god as described as God…that thing most say is that being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe.
What?
He’s like the Genie in Aladin?
“Phenomenal cosmic power; itty-bitty living space.”
It just doesn’t make any sense to say that God is this super powerful being that can do any damn thing God wants and then turn around and say…wait, but not allow man to clone himself; God can’t do that.
God can’t allow for more than just intercourse replication of the human.
Wait…what about artificial insemination?
Oh, that’s still natural, just managed.
Supposing there is a God and that humans have souls, there’s nothing stopping God from “generating” a soul for a newly created body…
I suppose a “soul” will belong to any sort of being that can make decisions independent of the electro-chemical impulses of its brain (meaning such a being has a non-physical part of the mind). Perhaps this is not a matter of whether God “bestows” a soul on such being, but rather if BEING such a being necessarily “brings about” a soul. Could a being exist with a free will (a mind that is not merely physically contingent) and NOT have a soul?
This may lead into problems with artificial intelligence “having souls” since their thought processes will never be able to go beyond that of “very complex physical processes,” whereas there is the possibility that humans have a mind that is not part of the body.
Also, keep in mind that none of this soul talk matters if the human mind is nothing but a deterministic, physical object. We would be the same as a very complex “A.I.”
It would be strange for no souls to exist, yet for man to somehow fabricate the concept of them. The soul isn’t exactly the combination of other things we’ve experienced; it is not like a man who fabricates a unicorn by combining things that really do exist. So, if the concept of the soul is not gathered from experience, is it a priori?
Just because someone doesn’t believe in God doesn’t mean that they don’t believe in souls.
IVF isn’t carried out in the same way that cloning is. So it doesn’t make sense to say that there a plenty of people walking around that don’t have souls based upon the idea that clones don’t have souls.
Just because someone doesn’t believe in God doesn’t mean that they don’t believe in souls.
IVF isn’t carried out in the same way that cloning is. So it doesn’t make sense to say that there a plenty of people walking around that don’t have souls based upon the idea that clones don’t have souls.
I can’t remember exactly but I remember reading that buddhists believe that the soul comes forty days after conception. The bible says: “Jer 1:5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.” Which would imply conception perhaps.
The word SOUL in Hebrew usage, is translated from the Hebrew word “nephesh” meaning simply any breathing creature not a spiritual essence unique to humans. This would imply from the first breath. Pneuma - greek for breath - and in some contexts also for spirit would also seem to support this.
So anyway, for a clone, that’s probably good news as far as common definitions and conceptualizations go.
For me a ‘soul’ is more a process than a thing, a dynamic of an experiential nature. They are conventionally intangible because they are an emergent construct, supported by the connectivity in our brains, altering over time in accordance with our personal internalizations of external experiences and forces. A standing wave ghost in the machine.
It dies with the body however, like a TV picture when the plug is pulled.
