deeva59

I am new to this venue but don't see any discussion on these questions of souls: 1) Is the soul a separate thing from our biological body? Near-death experiences seem to support this, very little proof is available to us. This primary question must be answered "yes" before any relevence can be put on the matters of spiritual existance or an afterlife of any kind... 2) When do we receive this soul? This impacts on the morality of reproductive interventions (abortion) and fetal experiementation and cloning... 3) Where does this soul come from? Are they distributed from God to every human? Are they recycled (as expected under conservation of energy/matter physics) in some form of reincarnation? Do we gain anything from such reincarnations (evolve in spirituality) or is it purely a recycling process?... 4) If souls are given by God, what about a clone? Will it receive a soul? Is it really humanity "playing God" by creating a new soul or will a clone be truly soulless?... 5) Can a cloned human function normally? If so, this seems to argue against the existance of any reincarnated evolution (wisdom? conscience? consciousness?), and reincarnation would be seen as a meaningless and impersonal process. If not, the evidence supporting the existance of a soul would be self-evident. I think this scenario is the real fear of religious objections to cloning - there would be an obvious answer to some of these questions that could not be explained away by "faith" or dogma. I welcome discussion of these points....for me these questions impact on the very existance of a higher power and/or an inner spirit.

MortalWombat

Why is it then that dissociative anaesthetics such as <a href="http://leda.lycaeum.org/Documents/Using_Ketamine_to_Induce_the_Near-Death_Experience.9260.shtml" target="_blank">ketamine</a>, which is a chemical that interacts with our biological body, induce near death experiences if the soul is separate from our biological body?

deeva59

deeva59

sorry...dang newbies lol... I would say that there is obviously a CONNECTION between the body and the soul...this does not preclude their separate natures. Chemically, we can cause death - perhaps Ketamine is affecting the same brain area that remains aware longer or stronger in some people at the near-death experience...

Francois Tremblay

Tsh. There is no such thing as a soul, medecine has proven that the brain is all there is to our minds. Get on with the program.

The Lone Ranger

Certainly there is no evidence that suggests that any such thing as a "soul" exists.

As I understand the concept, a "soul" is supposed to be a non-material thing that is nonetheless the "seat of consciousness" somehow. Since it's trivially simple to alter a person's consciousness through purely physical means -- drugs and lobotomies, for example -- the notion that an immaterial soul is somehow responsible for consciousness seems ludicrous.

In any event, here are two things to consider. First of all, cloning is nothing new. Every identical twin is a clone. If one believes that clones would necessarily be soul-less beings, then shouldn't at least one member of every monozygous twin pair be soul-less?

Second, it's estimated that something like 70% of human conceptions end in spontaneous abortions. If "ensoulment" occurs at conception, then the great majority of ensouled beings don't even live long enough to be born.

(Fundamentalists sometimes claim that abortion is murder. If these spontaneous abortions are "acts of God", wouldn't that therefore make "God" the biggest abortionist of all time?)

Cheers,

Michael