SpaceMonk Posted November 1, 2006 Share Posted November 1, 2006 Not much to it, but watching a recent news story on christians against Stem Cell Research using frozen embryos, and George Bush's 'Snowflake' children (kids born from frozen embryos that would have been discarded or used for research), I had a thought. If these cells can be frozen and unfrozen then they cannot be 'fully' human, even in a religious sense. If you freeze a normal human, then unfreeze them, they are dead. They can't just be thawed out and still be Ok. If one believes in a soul or a spirit then when that person is frozen, and so dead, their soul leaves them. Thawing them out won't bring back the soul. Yet embryos are able to freeze and unfreeze and still seem to be able to produce fully 'ensouled' (from a religious viewpoint) live human beings. So whenever it is that christians may think a 'soul' does 'enter the body' it's probably safe to assume that it at least can't be at that young embryo stage... So it's OK to do stem cell research and cure all those diseases out there, without even harming the fundy conscience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilentLoner Posted November 2, 2006 Share Posted November 2, 2006 Thats a really good point, I'll have to use that next time I'm confronted on the issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rafiki Posted November 3, 2006 Share Posted November 3, 2006 But didn't you watch South Park? Cartman was frozen and unfrozen 500 years later. That is a good point though. I like what Sam Harris points out... "...let us assume, for the moment, that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. Embryos at this stage occasionally split, becoming separate people (identical twins). Is this a case of one soul splitting into two? Two embryos sometimes fuse into a single individual, called a chimera. You or someone you know may have developed in this way. No doubt theologians are struggling even now to determine what becomes of the extra human soul in such a case." "It has been estimated that 50 percent of all human conceptions end in spontaneous abortion, usually without a woman even realizing that she was pregnant. In fact, 20 percent of all recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage. There is an obvious truth here that cries out for acknowledgement: if God exists, He is the most prolific abortionist of all." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceMonk Posted November 4, 2006 Author Share Posted November 4, 2006 I like those points by Sam Harris. I also wonder what happens to all the souls in those embryos that are frozen and never used, maybe for decades, and then disposed of? Wouldn't it be some kind of torture for a soul to be trapped in that frozen state for so long? The 'right' thing for christians to do then would be to let them all become snowflake children, or ban freezing of embryos at all. Except that's what the parents of these snowflake children have done (unless they're adopted). They probably also still have spare embryos in storage, and haven't yet decided what to do with them ... just so long as it's not research for curing disease. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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