From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sun Oct 13 2002 - 23:18:17 MDT
At 07:20 PM 10/13/02 -0700, Mike Lorrey wrote:
>So I concluded that twins (and therefore the rest of us) couldn't get
>their souls till at least x many cell divisions after conception. She
>couldn't dispute this conclusion at all. I then said that this also
>means that if stem cells are harvested prior to this x many cell
>division point, then there would be no danger of souls getting in the
>way of this operation. She agreed. I then said that if a fetus was
>aborted prior to this x many cell divisions, then such an abortion
>would not be murder.
This is the point where I usually roll out the mosaic soul dilemma: in at
least some cases, dizygotic twins fuse into a viable single individual.
This can be forced in vitro. What happens to the extra souls?
Of course such questions cut no ice with theologians, who might reply that
the creation and insertion of souls in the free act of the deity, Who Knows
All, Tells very little. A god that can accurately foretell quantum outcomes
(and who's going to trust a less potent god than that?) isn't going to be
fazed by twins, chimeras, mosaics and clones.
Damien Broderick
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