deleted response to deleted comment
There are several interesting passages.
Here’s one.
this may not address the soul directly but it’s interesting to note that the punishment for loosing a fetus is not the same as homicide.
off topic though.
Though not a specific request of the OP,here’s a Buddhist take on cloning.
From that link:
To throw another thoughtful biscuit on the stove of thought. The whole link is worth a read.
To me, that says that the human body is just a vehicle, and , once created, by whatever means, the facilities that are necessary for spiritual development are in place, and can then be brought to fruition through the environment of raising.
Children brought into the world via external fertilization and implant are welcomed now, perhaps because the parents are by majority couples who greatly desire a child, so, that is welcomed. If a single person wants to raise a child by cloning, I don’t see it any less worthy a goal, in it’s best sense. Then we get into market sensibility, which might stray toward abuse .
And I might have strayed way off the OP, but, with all that in tow: if she is a wide eyed born human being, yes, she has right to all the blessings thereof. If I missed the gist of the OP, clarify the reasons why might not.
Lots of thoughtful answers, and an admirable absence of extraneous proselytizing. My sincere thanks to everyone so far.
I chose to include the retina/blood vessel thing specifically to include a change in genes that does not occur naturally in humans. While I am not really surprised that Dopers, both atheist and theist Dopers, are unwilling to reject a child for reasons having to do with her genetic circumstances, I am less than sure that would be a majority opinion in the world at large.
No, you should take as given that the newborn child has no parent, a host mother who does not want to become a mother in life. In fact, the biologists, and doctors who created her were only interested in her as a creation, and never planned for her to be born, or become a child. She is an unwanted construct, given life, discarded, and rescued from oblivion by an unidentified doctor, and host.
I am interested in the religious aspects here, and understand that sectarian and theological arguments are a part of it. But mostly I wonder about the life of this baby girl. To make it very clear, to me she is immediately my child, if she needs me to be her father. (I am way too old, but let’s leave that out of the mix, for purposes of discussion.) However, I happen to think that she would benefit from having a mother, and I have no wife. So, I think about her family more abstractly. Likewise, I want her to be a part of, and have access to a spiritual community. I’m a Christian, so, I think in terms of a local Christian Church. The one down the road from me won’t accept homosexuals; I am not even interested in finding out how they feel about artificially created humans.
On the matter of her soul, I am serenely confident that she has a soul, and that soul is beloved of the Lord. In my mind she immediately falls into the special case of “the least of these, my children” and because of her unique heritage, I am called upon to treat her with all the love I have for my Lord Himself. I am unwilling to lie to her, but, I am not at all unwilling to deceive any person or group that I think might persecute her for her nature. So, there are a few churches I trust enough to take her to, and ask them to keep her secret. There are even fewer governments. I am saddened to think how few there are. Perhaps that is a reflection more of my own cynicism, and less of the real facts of human nature.
That said, I would teach her that she is my child, first, and until that ceases to be enough, I would not burden her with more. But I would also teach her that she is the child of man, and the child of God, and in her life, I would need to teach her to deal with those who would deny her as the child of man, and even the child of God. In the end, I would give her the room in life to decide all these things, and accept her choices. I would strive to make her certain that no other person could deny that she was my child.
Now, I admit that my own reactions are highly emotional, especially considering that she is a nameless fiction. That certainly reveals more about my nature than society’s probable response to her. I want her baptized. I cannot lie about her in that frame of reference. So, I need a genuine holy man for the task. I used to know one, but he has passed away.
It’s all a bit of a ramble, but I have been thinking about it all day.
Tris
If you don’t accept human clones, even modified ones, as humans, you yourself are inhuman just as if you refused to accept blacks or Jews as humans.
Trisk life is just too complicated for me in your world.
Tris, i realize this is but a mental exercise, but I think you’re making this more complicated than it would be in reality. If you’re the parent of this girl, and have the emotional bond any normal parent has for his/her child, you would, as you alluded, want to protect her from all harm. Therefore, how would your church find out about your daughter’s extraordinary nature, unless you told them? And why would you tell them if you were concerned about how she would be perceived? There would be no reason for you to ask your church to keep it a secret because there’d be no reason to tell them in the first place…unless I’m missing something.
Also, why would you have to teach your daughter something self evident, such as her humanity? She’s extraordinary at the genetic level. Her improvements could not be perceived by anyone without a medical background, and only then by direct examination and review of her medical history. She would take you at your word that she is special, but it really wouldn’t mean much to her until she was probably well into adulthood. So, unless you yourself foster in your daughter an emotionally damaging complex that she may not be as Human in the biblical sense (or to use your term a child of man) as other people then I don’t see a problem. You say that you would teach her that she was your child first; something I’m not clear why you believe has to be taught but okay, and that you wouldn’t burden her with anything else. Yet in the next breath you say you would teach her that she’s the child of man. Why? Life’s tough enough. Why inject stigma when there’s no need?
My religion teaches that God loves Pol Pot. Not explicitly, of course, but the basic notion that God loves everyone, including people like Pol Pot, and that if/when people like Pol Pot want to turn toward God’s love, it’s going to be there for them. So I’m pretty confident that little girls are beloved by God as well. I don’t think God is freaked out by laboratory equipment. God isn’t Unfrozen Caveman God, easily confused by cloning …
Personally, life is like one big Nova episode for me. It’s amazing that babies can be created inside a uterus. It’s also amazing that babies can be created inside test tubes. And in the future, I will be amazed when babies can be created inside shiny clone pods. Although the uterus method is more common, new human life seems complicated and impressive no matter how you look at it. Maybe I’m easily impressed. But babies are cute – when come back, bring more babies!
I am Drago Museveni, & all these perfected new humans are my children.
Wait, did I say that aloud?
OK, seriously, this doesn’t bother me. When I was a Christian, I eventually settled on the pragmatic side of the ethic of St. Paul (he who said, “I will eat what is set before me”). It’s not my place to accuse anyone of being a free-will zombie, a soulless automaton, or an inhuman changeling. You seem to be human, I will treat you as human; that’s the best & most practical application of Christianity, & anything more sophisticated is an exercise in delusion &/or childish excuse to dehumanize somebody.
These days, of course, I lean more toward a Hindu-influenced view in which there are not discrete & indivisible individual souls so much as a general supply of “soul-stuff,” or whatever animates us. This genetically manipulated creature has access to that as much as any other animal, including us.
Basically, what he said, except that I am not affiliated with any institutionalized religion (I’m strictly a “roll your own” kind of guy when it comes to religious beliefs).
Spent some time thinking about this.
Some points. I see no stigma. I am, however aware of the potential that others will. While folks here say, “soulless zombie” in joking derision of those who might think that, it would not be entirely impossible for her to have the epithet thrown at her by sincere and hate filled voices. Leaving her defenseless to that seems neglectful.
No, I would not invade her childhood with these facts. But, secrets are the near kin of lies. I cannot keep this from her forever. I will keep her secret for her, but I cannot keep it from her. Her doctors might know without my information. Her ophthalmologists will certainly have questions, and I have to be ready to keep that out of her life, but eventually let her know about it. The fact is that as so far presented, I need to make sure that her ophthalmologist doesn’t write a paper on her. She might have unknown persons who would be very interested in her, as an experimental subject. She will eventually need to know that.
It’s been a while since I was baptized, and my children were baptized by long term friends. Do Preachers baptize kids without asking any questions? I don’t want to lie. So, I need the aforementioned saint of a priest for this particular baptism. Certainly, I could ignore that, but for me, it is a part of life, and I want her to share a community of faith. I am not going to tell the rest of the congregation about it. I am not asking the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church to do it. But I still wonder about the response, and hence, the thread.
Any Christian pastor in the audience who would baptize a child for me, knowing only that I want her to be baptized, and no one else needs to know? Do you have to know her beginnings? If you do find out, does it matter to you?
Tris
Evangelical Christian here & she’s totally human in my book. I think my denomination at large, the Assemblies of God, would agree, tho it may take a while for some members to get on board with that.
A lot of fund’ist Christian Sci-Fi has unfortunately poisoned the well by presenting clones as soulless containers for demons. In fact- full disclosure here- from 1982-84, I was involved in a New Agey Pentecostal group (NOT AoG-related) that taught such a thing- the Biblical reference being Revelation 13’s “Image of the Beast”.
Going back to Genesis, the punishment for sin was death, not loss of soul. When a person dies he or she has no life in their body,if one has a soul, and it is not the same thing as life, where does the life go? Also animals and plants life also leave, is that their soul?
I think the idea of a souls came about by some one being unconsious or fainted then came to and people thought that there was something in the body other than life so they called it soul.
Monavis