Cloning - Ethics - Morality - Souls?

Cloning - Ethics - Morality - Souls?
Hello, this is my first post on these boards, and I would like to discuss with you all some thoughts that have circulated in my head recently.


Cloning. I was recently watching a TV program when I heard the gentleman state, "Will clones have souls?" I immediately began pondering the subject and would like to share with you my conclusion so far.

I really do not know where to start though, because I for one do not consider myself to be a great writer, or an organized writer for that. My thoughts ussually come out somewhat scrambled and I force the reader to put them together like a giant puzzle and I then consider the more intelligent reader the one who was able to understand my writings. I will try my hardest to organize my thoughts for you all.



RELIGION-

The firsts thoughts that ran through my head when I heard this gentleman on TV were of my own belief system. Came to a conclusion quite suddenly, and went on with life for about 5 seconds. Then I though, well... wait a second, what if I was Hindu, Budha, Christian, or Even Catholic. I realized that the answer will be different for many of kinds.

For me however, it went like so. I am a firm believer in Astrology. If you all didn't know, the C-Section came from back in the time of the Roman Empire, when the astrologers at the time knew that if Ceasar was born a little bit earlier that the stars would be perfect for him to come out with the greatest chance of being the most powerful ruler in the world. So they cut open his mother's womb and pulled him out at the precise moment. So therefore, you can not duplicate the same birth / natal chart for a clone, therefore they will be affected differently.

That was the obvious arguement to pop up in my head, however it didn't answer the question about wether or not they would have souls. So now you have to think about reincarnation. What religions belief about reincarnation, or if they don't, how they feel the soul gets into what physical body and how it's gone about.

Now I believe that ALL things in like have souls no matter what, it's called energy. Rocks and minerals even have souls/energy, why do you think they are called healing stones, because they posess a certain healing energy. But that is all moot. If your religion believes that only Humans have souls, not angels, not dogs, not cats... and that God created your mother and your father and yourself, but did not create this clone... then it is only logical to assume that this clone does not have a soul and is strictly a body.

You surely cannot assume that this clone has the person's soul who you have had cloned, because if they are still alive.... need I finish, and if they are dead, then their soul is either on its way to heaven or hell. Maybe with a little purgatory inbetween if you're Catholic. So, if your religion believes that only Humans have souls, not angels, not dogs, not cats... and that God created your mother and your father and yourself, but did not create this clone... then it is only logical to assume that this clone does not have a soul and is strictly a body.

Now if you are a practitioner of a religion or should I say spiritual ideals similar to that of the 'Law of One', then you pretty much believe that we are souls in the 3rd density of the universe, waiting to reach the 4th density, and the only way we can get there is through > 50% service to others. Otherwords, less than 50% service to self. I will assume you also believe that your souls are one of a kind, they are yours, there is no soul exactly like yours.

Therefore it is impossible for this clone to have the same soul, so does the universe just throw a different soul in? Where's it get this soul? Just like when a new baby is born, this clone will be born a baby, and when it breathes life the universe will have shown you that it give that baby a soul, because it wouldn't be alive if it didn't have it's own energy and vibration. So that answers that.

Basically, with these two scenarios, I figure that you can figure out the basic idea that I'm working with here... no matter what religion, as you go down the line, the soul will not be the same just because the physical matter that makes up the body will be the same. Afterall, it is just a, hows the saying go, it's your temple, treat it nicely.

So the second question that most have, which surprizes me. Well wait, you know what surprizes me more, is that people automatically assume that if you clone someone or something that it's personality will be the same. This is just an obvious no. And this is the second question, "Will the clone have the same personality or be the same person?"

The no is obvious for me because science has proven that when different actions are taken within the early stages of child developement MANY things are affected. For instance, the sooner, and more often a baby feels skin to skin contact with it's mother, the better off they are in life...

"At five years of age the differences between the two groups of children were still apparent. The 'ex*tended-contact' children were better adjusted and had higher lQ's than the con*trol group. They also obtained more ad*vanced scores on language tests than the 'low-contact' children".

Therefore there are a multitude of minute things that could occur to one's self that establish basic personality traits. So therefore along with the astrology chart, the living in a different era, a different home, a different neighborhood, keep in mind this is all excluding media attention, that just wouldn't be fair to bring into the study if 200 yrs from now it is a widely excepted practice, this wouldn't be a variable. So with all these differences then there is no way I could see the clone being similar at all.

Often at times, what makes people people, is life experience. Do you think it would help if we cloned Albert Einstein and allowed him to further his study? To me, I know it wouldn't. You think his brain's genetic make up is what made him so damn smart? Hell no, there were alot more factors involved.

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Comments are welcomed... what did you guys think?

 

$0.02

Hey. Here is my take on things.
Concerning souls, I think that maybe souls are just 'soul essence' of a collective soul entity of different parts, so if one was cloned they would have this extreme ESP kind of link to the clone, unless maybe they had a really low capacity for that kind of thing... it's kind of a wierd concept I'm aiming at here, I haven't met alot of people who can understand what I am trying to say.. I think all "souls" are very very subtle energy waves all taken from the same source (all IN the same source... on the same frequency..) and these 2 beings, the original person and the clone, would have ... a psychological link, a spiritual link, because they are the same person. I mean, have you ever seen documentaries on twins who walk around together and they say the EXACT same thing, and it sounds like echoing? That is what I am talking about. They would be like twins.

Concerning 'would they be the same person'.. well, assuming that this spiritual thing I am talking about does not exist, or that they don't have the spiritual capacity for that 'link', they would only genetically be the same BUT like you said they would be different from the way they grow up... they would have a different subconcious programming- and the extent of how different it is I guess depends on the situation of both characters.

/$0.02

 

I think it would be very interesting to clone some of the great minds that have existed in our world to see what they could do now. Einstein, Newton, and others come to mind.

 

I think you're getting ahead of yourself. First, we'd need a definition of a soul. Is it something in the material, physical world (energy or something?), or is it in a totally different, but parallel world, like a spirit world? What is a spirit world?

Second, we would need to know what would a soul do? Is it one's personality? Doubtful, as one's personality can change dramatically with brain lesions/damage, like a gunshot to the head or a frontal lobotomy. So, clearly personality is an effect of the brain, not some soul. Does the soul cause emotions? Unlikely, this is also a brain activity, a feature shared with the animals. Is it thought? Also no, that's another brain function. Does the soul do anything at all?

Third, we'd need to prove that they exist, that normal people have them, before pondering whether a clone would. This has not been done, it's usually taken for granted that we have souls.

Lots of people are in favor of saying the soul is simply one's life energy, or some energy at an atomic level, the collective system of energy in a body (or object for that matter). In this case, everything has a soul simply because it exists. But this soul wouldn't do anything, it would just be there. It would just be the object, since matter is energy. I heard a saying "the soul is not in the body, the body is in the soul." That I can believe.

If we believe the soul is as stated in the previous paragraph, then the question of "does such and such have a soul" is meaningless.

 

Yeah, I saw in our local paper that some dude in Germany, whose jaw had been ruined by cancer, actually grew a new one from stem cells in a metal cage implanted in his back. They took it out and surgically attached it to his face and it worked. They don't know the long term ins and outs, if it will hold, but how sweet is that?

 

Cloning: IF a life can be saved by Cloning, without harm to the Clone, Go For It!


Souls: Souls in my humble and often wrong opinion, are developed through life experience. When we're young, (3,4,5 whatever.) We belive what Momma & Daddy tell us. We believe what any grown up tells us. From the Parish priest or Rabbi to the Cop on the street. It's like we're all recording devices.

 

Clones happen in nature all of the time.

Indentical twins-
In a major nonfraternal type of twinning, only one egg is fertilized; but during the cleavage of this single zygote into two cells, the resulting pair somehow become separated. Each of the two cells may implant in the uterus separately and grow into a complete, whole individual.

It is just the clones mature and develop at the same time, not 40 years apart.

Which is what some people want to do, like clone a dead love one or make clones of themselves instead of making babies the normal way.

Which brings up how would a child feel about being cloned in an atempt to bring back the dead?

As for souls and personality, each person cloned or not goes through life veiwing the world in a slightly different angle. These actions, there
consequences and your feelings are what develop your soul, like a book.
Identical twins might look, act and seam alike but they are two seperate souls, each with it own story to tell.

Cloning tissue and organs individualy will help millions of people, no argument there.

Cloning is not the problem, its how they plan on using it that is.



Peace

 

Very Good i think you are geneticaly superior so ill be contacting you in regards to cloning you in the near future.


PS dont worry your clone will get lots of skin to skin contact with its suragate mother and many other important things some of which you mentioned.

 

PS your clone will be born aquarian as the picean age is at its closing stages,

no longer will the picean energies like gesus and budda have any relavence
for its the age of aquarius but dont worry your picean influence has given us a strong base to work on.

 

There are a lot of theories about the existence of a soul. There are new studies about the mind/brain connection too. What tickles me is the idea that a probable clone would be identical to the parent tissue.

Remember Dolly, the ewe sheep clone? She suffered from severe arthritis. I wonder if the ewe who was the tissue donor for Dolly's propogation suffered from arthritis... at the same age Dolly was stricken, and with the same degree of severity.

Armadillos. I say armadillo to you. When a female armadillo cannot mate at the time of ovulation, she becomes gravid on her own (no male sperm donor). She then gives birth to 4 daughters... genetically identical. But then again, who knows about the geneticists... they're finding out that the so-called 90% "garbage DNA" that they don't know or understand the purpose of...Yet, may actually have a purpose after all.

One thing I do believe about cloning though; It isn't the immortality of self that some may fatasize about. One body, one life... whatever life IS and whatever it may hold. No one that I know who's crossed over has come back and talked to me about it yet.

 

I question whether we can really separate people totally from Nature. Things like cloning may just be a part of the progression of Nature.

 

Don't quote me, but I believe it took something like 800 attempts before they got as far as Dolly, the cloned sheep, and she still had problems.

 

a person is just the sum of their experiences, by that i mean cloaning is just the replication of some things DNA/RNA so you can produce some one/thing that looks the same but aslong as do different thing they will be different.

 

............................what?

 

Here are some very insightful commentaries by Jeremy Rifkin on cloning and related issues:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4161345,00.html



http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4229850,00.html



http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4337092,00.html



http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,874312,00.html

 

I do not see why a clone wouldn't have a soul. I do think it would be cruel to the child because of the high risk of genetic health problems.