Does clone or fertilized egg have soul?

This is a strange question for me to ask. As a non-mystic, I do not believe that anybody has a soul. However, I am curious about the beliefs of others.

If some scientist manages to clone a human being, would the clone have a soul? As of today, the creation of a clone requires implanting an ovum with a full complement of DNA in a woman’s uterus resulting in pregnancy and ultimately childbirth.

In the future, it might be possible to build an artificial uterus-like environment. Would this affect your answer to the question?

Suppose biochemistry advances allowed the creation of DNA from basic chemicals, allowing for the creation of an artificial human being, indistinguishable from a natural creation. Would the artificial human being have a soul?

Does a fertilized egg have a soul? If not, when does the soul come into existence? At birth? When the embryo has measurable brain waves?

What about the Star Trek transporter, which I do not believe will ever exist? If such a device were possible, it could make as many copies of an individual as you wanted to make. All would consider themselves to be equivalent to the original, although it is obvious that they would differ among themselves as they accumulated new and different life experiences. If it could happen, would each have a soul? This question might be a reason for a religious person to disbelieve the possibility of such a device. BTW: The Star Trek device seems to destroy the original and create a remotely located copy, rather than transporting her/him

What the hell is up with these religious threads all of a sudden?

Every time you use the startrek transporter you will die and a copy of you (a machine) will be instantiated. Funny. After some 50 years most of the people would be non-humans, that is those that have used a startrek transporter or is descendant of them.

As a non-mystic I refuse to believe in anything at all. I do however give a name to myself. "I think therefore I am" and that who I am is the soul. I don't nessesarily take it as generated by my physical me.

I think two theories are reasonable:
1. Everything that is intelligent is also conscious, that is have a soul. I define intelligent as something that can process information and information is more or less axiomatic. If there's anything that says information is connected to physical reality, then that is intelligence.
2. Everything you think exists is a projection of your mind.

So, when it comes to this issue. I think #1 needs to be applied.
The fertilized egg, the human clone, the transporter copy will all have a soul, at least if you consider other humans to have souls.
However isn't it useless, if someone acts like if it has a soul, the effect is equal with that person having a soul. The piece of information "x have a soul" is useless, since "x acts like if it has a soul" is applied all the time. The ability to act as if it has a soul shouldn't be mixed with have a soul.

it basically depends on your religion, the general idea of the christian religion is that it is wrong anyways so people shouldn't have to worry. My personal view is that it would, because supposedly all living beings are created with souls. This could potentially be a very touchy subject, especially on these boards with visitors from so many social, ethical, and religous backgrounds. You will probably get for example Jesus4u in here arguing about the same point as me, but then you could get my satanic 2nd personality :D in here arguing that we will all burn in hell anyways so why would it matter. I can't wait to check this tommorrows though, guarantee it will rack up many posts.

only humans and jinn have a soul
if you ask me that is

ok, then would you consider a cloned being a being. Technically they are living, but they are living in a false sort of pretense.

we havent successfuly cloned a human
so there for no clone has a soul

but if we do someday
it will have a soul

cloning is not like ZAP and done
technically it goes through the same process if a woman were to naturally have a baby

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Originally posted by kovan
cloning is not like ZAP and done
technically it goes through the same process if a woman were to naturally have a baby

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How do you know that?

because a clone needs to grow inside the right environment,
stomach of the mother, or something smiliar

i highly doubt we can just zap n done

well he is right, but the person if they were to be cloned i agree would have a soul, but what if they genetically altered the clone before it was injected into the uterus?? In belief of my religion the doctors/scientists would go to hell for trying to replace god, and the child would be forgiven for the original sin. The problem with the baptismal sacrement in this case is the fact that the original sin (sex) was not done. Do the sacraments have to be re-written to include alteration of human genes??

but as technology advances it could be as easy as zap and go. Scientists must first develop the womb like environment that can give the clone its nutrients during the growth process. Doing this would allow them to give the baby extra nutrients such as calcium that would overall help extend the life of the clone. I am hesitant to call "it" a baby because im not really sure what i should believe on this subject.

it doesnt really matter if its in the uterus or not

it will still have a soul even if it never was in the uterus, uterus doesnt give soul

accordign to my belief
man is capable of everything, however, it is still god that GIVES the soul

Skitchen8, why is sex a sin?

One thing is for sure, your religion is about to get outdated

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Originally posted by kovan
it doesnt really matter if its in the uterus or not

it will still have a soul even if it never was in the uterus, uterus doesnt give soul

accordign to my belief
man is capable of everything, however, it is still god that GIVES the soul

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yes, but with a genetically engineered baby the humans are in control. This is us trying to play god, and i do believe the soul will still be placed in the body, i think that overall the scientists/doctors will be forced to repent or live in hell for trying to be god. The other side of that argument is of course that they can "build" babies that will not have any diseases, and will supposedly be geneticaly perfect. just out of curiosity what religion are you kovan??

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Originally posted by kedaman
Skitchen8, why is sex a sin?

One thing is for sure, your religion is about to get outdated

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hey, its not my fault. The christian religion has the baptismal sacrament, where the child is clensed of the original sin of creation which is sex. Mary had birth to Jesus Christ simply because god had asked her to have his son.

and please call me eric.

I didn't accuse you. I don't understand why sex would be a sin. You didn't explain it to me either. Can you do it?

but they arent playing "god"
they are merely using their knowledge

heeling someone from a sickness also was considered "playing" god back in history

most religions are about morality, and intentions
so if someone is able to "clone" a human, they are not playing god, so if God doesnt want to let these people do these things
God can always stop them..
it has a lot to do with how you look at the situation

personally i think we should discover new things, such as explore space, and go beyond this galaxy

i wish i was that guy that went to space for 20 mill
i jsut wanna SEE out there :)


oh ya to answer your q

I am Muslim, from the religion of Islam

sex is not a sin
infact in my religion its a good thing (if done properly, under right circumstances..)

i know i wasnt asked
but i liked to answer hehehe

Eric
are you Deans brother?

not really, i am 14 and not one of them people that will kill to get to church every sunday (im lucky if i go maybe 5 times a year). Though just as a theory from my demented mind it would be a sin becuase god is supposed to do the whole child creation thing, and man and woman should not have sex. There is a good chance that i am wrong, but like i said before you may want to wait till tomorrow when im sure jesus4u will be here, and he should be able to explain it all to you. Sorry i am no help.

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Originally posted by kovan
sex is not a sin
infact in my religion its a good thing (if done properly, under right circumstances..)

i know i wasnt asked
but i liked to answer hehehe

Eric
are you Deans brother?

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who is dean?? like i said there is a good chance that i am absolutely totally wrong in everything i said. Being up at 1 o'clock in the morning, having half a can of beer and 5 cans of pepsi isn't helping my though process any.

Stop reproducing yourselves, god will do it for you, is that what you mean? God will though place a soul in each and one of the soulless babies that are born?

kedaman
yes :)

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Originally posted by kedaman
Stop reproducing yourselves, god will do it for you, is that what you mean? God will though place a soul in each and one of the soulless babies that are born?

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agreed.. .the last thing we need is more of me

hey Finish guy
are you athiest?
or do you have a cool religion in Finland that i dont know about

Kovan
I don't believe, i think i stated that earlier, i'm not an Atheist either because Atheists believe there is no god.

Eric
I was talking about sex. Would that be more mixes of me&my partner? Does that mix have a soul if there was to be no God putting it in it?

what dont you believe though, if you believe there is god
if you dont mind me asking

Kovan
I think information is a tool. If that doesn't say anything to you, you can take it that I don't want to commit myself to a religion as you do.

cool

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Originally posted by Guv

What about the Star Trek transporter, which I do not believe will ever exist?

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What is it that means the transporter will never be?

Everyday I send data half way around the world and it arrives there on most occasions without error and in a matter of seconds. The data goes through a process of modulation and demodulation, and if it travels over optic fibre cables, I think it travels at the speed of light (could be wrong about this though).

Following from such real world examples it seems intuitive that sending organic matter from one point to another be achievable in the future. I am not saying that it is possible, I am just interested in hearing your insights on this matter.

I don't care if it's going to be possible or not, but i think it's useless

Kedaman

why do you think its useless?
imagine you can ZAP and are on mars?

not that we gonna live to see it
but i also think the possibility of that happening are VERY VER VERY small
however, i think it will be one of the greatest achievements if done

I just can so to speak see into the future, or whatever you can call it. But let's not talk about it.
The main thing that disturbs me about the startrek transporter is potential energy. If you could move any object from a to b then the net potential a-b could let you make a infinite source of energy and a infinite source of energy is a infinite source of matter or anything else for that matter.

maybe i am kinda lost
but wasnt there rumor or perhaps it could have ben authentic
that somewhere in britian

using a LOT of energy, they were able to move a tooth pick from a to b?

according to what i heard about this
that based on how much energy it was required to just move the tooth pick
it will take us MANY MANY years to be able to do that with human

but then again, tooth pick and human are 2 different matters

i wouldnt certainly want my hand moved to my crotch when i am transported from a - b

We'd probably just Zap down all in the closest black hole then

While not a religous person, I know a fair amount about theology.

I thought that the original sin was disobedience. Adam & Eve gained forbidden knowledge by eating fruit from a tree. God had told Adam that he could partake of anything (not sure about meat) but the fruit from that tree.

Prior to the fruit eating incident, god had commanded them to be fruitful and multiply, which seems to suggest that sex was okay, rather than being a sin.

BTW: Have any of you heard of Lilith, Adam's first wife? If you read Geneisis carefully, you will find an account of man and women being created on the sixth day. Later, Adam is described as being alone, after which Eve is created. This story line has given rise to a myth about Lilith being the first woman, and there are various stories about her and her descendants.

No opinions posted about when the soul appears. Why not?

Perhaps, like me, none of you believe in the existence of a soul.

If you do believe, when do you think a person gets it?

When the ovum is fertilized?
When the embryo has brain waves?
When birth occurs?

according to Islam
i could not find any reference to when the soul is entered into the body

i asked around some said It is the will of God, meaning God does it when he wants, during the embroy stages to birth

and one said 3 months

i couldnt confirm neither statements with reference
i will see if i cant find it

but in my opinion
if you are a believe of religion and god

then one would believe that God does it when he will

at least that is my opinion

Depends how you define "soul"
If there's any effect of something having a soul, it's that effect that is any use to refer to. What's the result of something having a soul?

The religous people posting on this topic have suggested that at some point (exactly when is unknown), God gives a human being a soul.

There are two interesting quesitons that arise from this belief.

1) Is it only humans that have souls or do other life forms also have them?

2) What would a human (clone or otherwise) be lacking were it not imbued with a soul?

My younger sister got a bit disappointed when I told her that christians don't think you can take animals with you to heaven. She's a christian of course and had buried some animal (i don't remember what is was) and even put a cross over it when i mentioned that. She got really mad at me when i told her that animals don't have souls and are just meat&blood machines.

Some years later I told her that rocks have souls too, but she didn't believe me.

I'm unsure if I am using soul in the right contexts, is there any difference between soul and conscience? If there is how do they relate to each other?

personally, i believe that anything that has a nervous system has a soul (that's where i believe the soul lives while in the physical world, not in the heart like most people seem to believe). the reason this makes sense to me is that the nervous system is basically our link to the physical world. it allows us to experience what physical things feel like, taste like, etc., so that we can retain those memories when we leave the physical world. it also carries electric pulses (ie. energy (ie. the soul)).

i'm uncertain on my beliefs regarding a God. i have 2 thoughts on this:

1. God has always existed, created the universe (by turning some of "his" energy in to matter (hence The Big Bang), which is the reverse of an atomic bomb), and created new souls from "his" energy.

2. There is no God, only souls that are all equal to one another that have always existed, and created the universe in the same way as i decribed in #1.

as for when we enter the body, i believe that takes place when the body is able to support a soul (ie. when it has a developed nervous system). it doesn't happen at birth because we all have subconcious memories of being in the womb.

this might sound a little stupid to most people, but have you ever seen what psychics can do? there's a guy call John Edward who does a show called Crossing Over, where there's an audience of people, and he'll come to a person or persons with messages from relatives/friends who have passed over. the people in the audience are not actors, as their emotions are obviously real (plus they've had celebrities on there before), and the stuff he comes up with aren't just lucky guesses, as he comes up with some very specific stuff, and is always accurate.

nullus

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as for when we enter the body, i believe that takes place when the body is able to support a soul (ie. when it has a developed nervous system). it doesn't happen at birth because we all have subconcious memories of being in the womb.

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What determines that a soul must enter the brain? If a soul exists before we are born, why do we have no consious memories of existance pre-body? Is it because we can aquire no memories without sensory experience? If so, does that then imply that we stop accumulating new memories (and experiences) after we leave our physical body? If the souls exist in a form of pure energy, why aren't they detectable by physical apparatus (that can detect other forms of pure energy)?

There are so many assertions that are left unexplained when we introduce the notion of a soul. Personnally, I think the notion of a soul gives us a way round accepting our own mortality, which is what makes the idea so attractive to many people.

You are ready to believe in anything they put into you, that's how you all work, I'm feeling like talking to Leo. Your successors will surely agree with me. Do you want me to qwestion you or do you want me to accept your situation?

Simon
1. what is soul?
2. whats the difference between soul and conscience?
3. how do they relate to each other?

Kedaman

1. what is soul?
I don't know. That's what I'm trying to find out. I suppose that if consiousness is not a brain function, and the brain is a mere tool of the consiousness, then the soul is your consiousness.

2. whats the difference between soul and conscience?
Well your conscience is the sensation you get when you feel guity. I don't know why we have it but I would imaging it arises from our sense of empathy. Psycopaths are supposed to be lacking a conscience so does that mean they don't have a soul?

3. how do they relate to each other?
I don't know if they relate to each other attall. I think you're asking the wrong person really.

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Originally posted by simonm
What determines that a soul must enter the brain? If a soul exists before we are born, why do we have no consious memories of existance pre-body? Is it because we can aquire no memories without sensory experience? If so, does that then imply that we stop accumulating new memories (and experiences) after we leave our physical body? If the souls exist in a form of pure energy, why aren't they detectable by physical apparatus (that can detect other forms of pure energy)?

There are so many assertions that are left unexplained when we introduce the notion of a soul. Personnally, I think the notion of a soul gives us a way round accepting our own mortality, which is what makes the idea so attractive to many people.

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i believe we have no concious memories prior to this life because they're buried in our subconcious. the only memories we have access to while in a concious state are the memories in our brain. these memories also exist in the subconcious memory. you may then ask me why we sometimes remember dreams, seeing as we're in a subconcious state then. well, i believe that when we dream, we sort of partially come out of the body and exist in between the spiritual and physical world. ever get the feeling, when you're drifting off to sleep, that you suddenly come crashing down with a thud? i believe that happens because you're kind of falling back in to your body.

but the energy of the soul is detectable by physical aparatus: the brain. you can choose to disbelieve it, but i believe in psychic ability.

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Originally posted by kedaman
You are ready to believe in anything they put into you, that's how you all work, I'm feeling like talking to Leo. Your successors will surely agree with me. Do you want me to qwestion you or do you want me to accept your situation?

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are you talking to me? :)

Simon

consciousness, soul and conscience, aren't they synonyms?

4. whats the difference between soul and consciousness?
5. how do they relate to each other?

If conscience is the ability to feel guilty then I think it's just information. Does phychopaths have a part of their brain damaged or inactive?

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Originally posted by nullus


are you talking to me? :)

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Yeah, I didn't mean to sound rude :)

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Originally posted by kedaman
You are ready to believe in anything they put into you, that's how you all work, I'm feeling like talking to Leo. Your successors will surely agree with me. Do you want me to qwestion you or do you want me to accept your situation?

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ok, do you mean i'm just blindly accepting that this John Edward guy is telling the truth? i don't think i am, as i can't think of any other explanation to what he, and other psychics, do. maybe reading people's minds? but they sometimes come up with stuff that a person has no knowledge of, then that person goes and reasearches it and validates it.

you can question me or accept my beliefs, i don't care. it's up to you. :)

nullus
There are people who refute nonscientific information, they call it "belief in the mystic" or at least Guv seems to use that term.
I argue that information is mere nonvalidable data, and it's reliability or objective value is nonsense. Information is a tool.
That pretty much says that I think believers are stupid, whether they are scientist or religious. To believe is to commit yourself to information as if they were constantly true and build up a universal method of handling any other information.
Now if you go scoop in a lot of information on your way, say a kid could learn almost anything you teach it, you encounter information that is rendered obsolete, that is useless, but actually is considered false. This information is useless because it can't be used on anything in particular, say "there are ghosts" can't be used since you haven't encountered any ghosts, it doesn't mean that there aren't any ghosts but only the degree of uselessness renders it obsolete and is therefore considered nonsense. Now let's take a very consistent information, "everyone dies" or "1+1=2" that information can be applied on a large scale of phenomenons and it seems to never fail, that you call "fact" however there's no particular difference between a fact and a strong belief. They are both strong commitments to information.
I have to pause here and ask if you understand what I have so far.

Kedaman

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consciousness, soul and conscience, aren't they synonyms?

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No. They convey completely different meanings (although they may be related to each other).

As for questions 4 and 5, as I have said, you are asking the wrong person. I don't believe that we have a soul so I can't really define it.

Nullus

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i believe we have no concious memories prior to this life because they're buried in our subconcious. the only memories we have access to while in a concious state are the memories in our brain. these memories also exist in the subconcious memory.

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OK, what you're saying here (if you will allow me to summerise) is that: Our subconsious memories exist in the mind of our soul and do not in the brain and are therefore innaccessible to our consious minds. Is that correct?

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ever get the feeling, when you're drifting off to sleep, that you suddenly come crashing down with a thud? i believe that happens because you're kind of falling back in to your body.

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I have not had that particular sensation but I have had weird experiences in the half awake/asleep state. I would be more inclinded to attribute these experiences to self projected realities that we are capable of rendering due to free forming brain patterns (not normally possible when we're fully awake) which are in turn due to the extremely relaxed state we are in.

Another reason I doubt so called "out of body experiences" is why do feel sensations of motion when we are not "connected up" to our body (which has the sensors required to detect motion).

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but the energy of the soul is detectable by physical aparatus: the brain. you can choose to disbelieve it, but i believe in psychic ability.

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Well, those that detect other souls due to phychic ability would do so by detecting them with their souls and not their physical brains right?

Still, why can't we detect these forms of energy by any independant and measurable means?

If soul is energy, can it be converted to mass, electromagnetic radiation or kinetic energy? E=soul*k=mc^2 or something?

Kedaman

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That pretty much says that I think believers are stupid, whether they are scientist or religious. To believe is to commit yourself to information as if they were constantly true and build up a universal method of handling any other information.

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I think what you are saying here really is that to hold beliefs with absolute certainty is stupid rather than to hold any sort of belief.
The key, as I think you are getting at, is that beliefs are tools and are to be held and applied where it is useful to do so and discard them when they are no longer helpful.
I agree with this and to anyone who would state that they can be sure that any one of their beliefs can be held with absolute certainty, I would ask them how they would judge the reliability of a belief. By what scale can you validate a belief to test it's truthfullness?
OK, some beliefs will appear to be verified by observational evidence but that is not sufficient proof to guarantee the validity of a belief. That is mere inductive reasoning (which has been shown to be vastly inadequate for proving anything).
The pros/cons of inductive reasoning aside, you still can't be sure that observational evidence is truly verifying what you already believe. The brain's ability to interpret information in such a way that re-inforces it's existing beliefs has been shown to be a very selective mechanism indeed.

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Originally posted by kedaman
There are people who refute nonscientific information, they call it "belief in the mystic" or at least Guv seems to use that term.
I argue that information is mere nonvalidable data, and it's reliability or objective value is nonsense. Information is a tool.
That pretty much says that I think believers are stupid, whether they are scientist or religious. To believe is to commit yourself to information as if they were constantly true and build up a universal method of handling any other information.
Now if you go scoop in a lot of information on your way, say a kid could learn almost anything you teach it, you encounter information that is rendered obsolete, that is useless, but actually is considered false. This information is useless because it can't be used on anything in particular, say "there are ghosts" can't be used since you haven't encountered any ghosts, it doesn't mean that there aren't any ghosts but only the degree of uselessness renders it obsolete and is therefore considered nonsense. Now let's take a very consistent information, "everyone dies" or "1+1=2" that information can be applied on a large scale of phenomenons and it seems to never fail, that you call "fact" however there's no particular difference between a fact and a strong belief. They are both strong commitments to information.
I have to pause here and ask if you understand what I have so far.

If soul is energy, can it be converted to mass, electromagnetic radiation or kinetic energy? E=soul*k=mc^2 or something?

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it is often quite hard to understand what you're saying, but i think i'm following you... ;) continue with what you wanna say anyway, and i'll try to make sense of it. :)

like i said, i believe we were responsible for The Big Bang, by converting some of our energy to matter. :)

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Originally posted by simonm
OK, what you're saying here (if you will allow me to summerise) is that: Our subconsious memories exist in the mind of our soul and do not in the brain and are therefore innaccessible to our consious minds. Is that correct?

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yup, that's basically what i'm saying.

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Well, those that detect other souls due to phychic ability would do so by detecting them with their souls and not their physical brains right?

Still, why can't we detect these forms of energy by any independant and measurable means?

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i'm not too sure how it works, seeing as i don't posess any strong psychic ability, but i believe it's kind of a mix of the two. your soul would tune in to the energy of another soul, which would then allow your brain to interpret messages from them.

well, i'm no scientist. maybe the energy of a soul can be detected by a machine someone builds. but maybe we'd have to build a machine as advanced as a brain to do it.

Nullus

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well, i'm no scientist. maybe the energy of a soul can be detected by a machine someone builds. but maybe we'd have to build a machine as advanced as a brain to do it.

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I'm not talking about being able to build a machine that can interpret, understand and even interact with a soul. All I want to do is just detect it for starters. That would be nice. That would at least show the sceptics that there is something there even if we couldn't understand it.

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Originally posted by simonm
I'm not talking about being able to build a machine that can interpret, understand and even interact with a soul. All I want to do is just detect it for starters. That would be nice. That would at least show the sceptics that there is something there even if we couldn't understand it.

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that's kind of what i meant though. :) maybe we'd have to build a machine as advanced as a brain to even detect souls. but if we did build a machine that could do that, why would you believe it any more than when a living being detects spiritual energy?

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I think what you are saying here really is that to hold beliefs with absolute certainty is stupid rather than to hold any sort of belief.

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As you say sort of belief, i think you mean there as a certain degree to belief, I'm not quite if we could say absolute certainty but if we say belief as a degree, I'd take as a proportional parameter. Otherways a definitive solution would be to define belief to commit to a piece of information as if it was true.

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The key, as I think you are getting at, is that beliefs are tools and are to be held and applied where it is useful to do so and discard them when they are no longer helpful.

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Yes

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By what scale can you validate a belief to test it's truthfullness?

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I think validation of beliefs are nonsense. Information cannot be true nor false. That is the main problem with human reasoning. I think the cumulative information that we've gained both conscious and unconscious (of which genetic information is also part of) is a result of this kind of reasoning which in turn inprisonate our minds to think certain things are the way the seems to be. "We die because we believe we will die". "We can't fly because we don't believe in that". This might sound a bit radical so I might have to give lot of explanation
to why I think this.

Unconscious information is such information we are not aware of, however our minds process it anyway because it's rudimentary and doesn't need any further thought on. It's some kind of big database of principes we never think of but still use when we experience our environment. I'm not only talking about our insticts or reflexes. I'm also talking about how we look at ourselves and our environment, our body might for instance just be a very detailed piece of information stored deep within our database, the universe around us more or less built in in the database, and when we think we percept stuff, we just dig up stuff from that database. "Where's the real universe i used to know?" you might ask. Who said anything about real? If there is one thing we can closely study and operate, that is information, if there's something that we can never reach, that is outher reality.

Okay that was lots in a heap, didn't intend to go that fast, anyway if there's something that doesn't make sense, ask :)

Nullus

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that's kind of what i meant though. maybe we'd have to build a machine as advanced as a brain to even detect souls. but if we did build a machine that could do that, why would you believe it any more than when a living being detects spiritual energy?

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I don't see why. If souls are just pure energy, why can't we detect them (as we might any other energy)?

We can detect enery in the brain (when it is alive) in the form of electrical impulses and this just stops when the brain dies (and cannot be detected moving away). I don't think people will ever accept an explanation of the soul existing as pure energy unless we provide an independant means of verifying it's existance.

You are calling it "spiritual energy" so does this mean that you suspect that it is an entirely different form of energy that is yet to be discovered?

The so called "evidence" for detecting spiritual energy can often be explained by other means and we do not have to resort to the paranormal explanation. Why do I dislike the paranormal explanation? Because it makes additional assertions that themselves are unexplained and raises more questions that it answers. The paranormal explanation is just one possibility that I could make up to "fit" the evidence and untill the other questions that I posed (and many more) are answered as well, it remains an unlikely explanation in my mind.