If souls exist, when and how do we get them?
Does God give them out?
Do they “attach” at the moment of conception?
If so, do zygotes that won’t even be attaching to the uterine wall have souls?
Julie
Look, you are looking for theological answers with no starting point. I can give you mine, and my reasons for my answer, but it probably won’t satisfy you.
I’m asking for a starting point. If souls exist, where do they come from?
If it helps, I’m not an atheist.
Julie
I believe in the existence of souls but I don’t believe they spring into existence momentarily at some magic watershed; I believe they grow (or possibly emerge) as the sentient individual develops.
YMMV and all that…
I see no reason why God would give a zygote or embryo a soul at such a volatile point in its existance. Heaven would have to be FILLED with the souls of miscarried embryos if the hard core pro-lifers are correct.
Part of me thinks that as the soul leaves with the last breath, so it must come with the first.
The other part of me says
Hard question. Brain hurt. Ow Ow Ow
(Blalron, a lot of Christians believe in baptism in order to attain heaven, so I guess some of the fundamentalist types believe in a limbo/purgatory/hell filled with embryonic souls. Which kind of goes against the idea of a merciful God.)
From the Mormon POV, your spirit (like your physical body, but not matter like we know it) existed before you were born. And before you were a spirit, you were something else that could not be created nor destroyed.
Based in no fact or scientific evidence whatsoever, my personal explaination is that your soul is created when you’re first aware you’re being loved. So technically that puts it at about the 7 month fetus point I think.
Well, since heaven is infinite in size, it cannot be filled. Thus, the numbers are no problem.
When does one “gain” a soul? That all depends. If one is a Gnostic, then one believes that souls merely “inhabit” bodies or that bodies are merely “containers” for souls and that souls are themselves immortal and eternally extant.
My own Church maintains that the condition of “life” for a person essentially describes a soul and body united. Without both together, one is not alive.
Some philosophies say that we are all part of one universal soul and that your sense of having one individual soul is erroneous and due to your not yet fully understanding.
JS:
You might want to check out this thread where there were many posts on this subject. Gotta say I never saw what I thought was a believable answer. Good luck.
I tend to view my “soul” using a computer analogy; my soul is my software, that runs on my brain, the hardware. The soul develops as your intellect develops.
Isn’t life supposed to be a test of some sort of a person’s faith in God to determine where he/she goes after death? If so, then what’s the point of God creating life if some people (people who die young) can just bypass the test?
That’s why it’s a SIN to kill from the moment of conception! Killing an embryo prevents it from growing up and going to eternal torment later on! :rolleyes:
Not necessarily abortions, I’m talking about death from natural causes.
The problem is that God would know exactly what’s going to happen to that physical vessel. So, say he doesn’t give a zygote a soul because a zygote’s continued existence isn’t guaranteed. Well, by that same reasoning, he wouldn’t give any fetus a soul if he knew that the fetus wouldn’t survive until birth.
Or am I making too big a leap?
I guess giving souls to bodies if the bodies are doomed before they would have a chance to sin or not sin seems kind of odd. What is the soul for if not to be what carries over after the body dies? And why would you hand out soul No. 1987453252354 if you knew it was a pointless exercise?
Julie
If certain embryos/fetuses would not survive and God didn’t give a soul to them, wouldn’t that make the who pro-life Christian-anti-abortion argument meaningless?
God has providence, God is outside time.
Therefore for God, it is not “I will give this now, though it will be returned later”, but “I will give this” and at the same time “it is being returned to me.”
The best way I can explain my understanding of it is think of everyone’s lives like long ribbons, put together side by side - some ribbons end before others begin, etc etc, different people living at different times, some lifespans overlapping with others. Like one of those history-of-the-world display friezes they have in museums and stuff, showing the jurassic age, and the ice age, then the arrival of humans, etc etc.
God doesn’t start at the start of that long stream and walk along. God has been outside it all along, looking at the whole thing of it all together from start to finish.
Therefore when things happen, or lengths of time for certain things, are sort of irrelevant.
Imagine what it would be like in heaven meeting all those embryonic souls:
“So what was your life like?”
“Uneventfull. I only lived for one month, then my mother miscarried me.”
“Bummer.”
What does that have to do with anything?